The long war demands a changed approach

A week is a long time in a crisis. Last week I wrote about how war should not be our first response and that the India-Pakistan military balance was such that there could be no useful outcome from the use of force. I had argued that if we set out to give Pakistan a bloody nose, we could be bloodied too.
There were three assumptions behind my reasoning. The first was that the government of Pakistan, including its armed forces, were sincere when they said they were appalled by the Mumbai massacre and that they would do everything to help us to get to the bottom of the issue. The second, flowing from the first, was that Mr Zardari and his government were one with India in delivering a bloody nose to the terrorists and non-state actors operating in Pakistan. The third was that India was not keen on any option that could involve some loss to itself.
A week later, it seems that all three of my assumptions were wrong. Pakistan has decided to brazen it out. After having gone through the motions of proscribing the Jamaat-ud-dawa (because of the UN Security Council decision and not to oblige India, as their Minister of Defence insists), the enthusiasm to aid India has vanished. It has been replaced by a systematic and organized campaign of barracking, whose goal seems to be to protect those involved in the attacks by raising the spectre of war.
India’s Prime Minister correctly noted on Tuesday that “the issue is not war, it is terror and territory in Pakistan being used to promote, aid and abet terror here.” Significantly, the PM noted that “non-state actors were practicing terrorism, aided and abetted by state establishments.” To me it appears he is saying that the Lashkar were aided by the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.

Dynamics

This seems to have a startling confirmation from across the border in Pakistan. One of the most telling responses has been from the real boss of Pakistan — General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani. In the past month, neither he nor the Pakistani military establishment has uttered a single word regretting the Mumbai massacre. The ISI, which has been mentioned as a co-conspirator, reports to General Kayani. The general could have taken the opportunity to tell the world that since the ISI was mentioned, he had personally looked at the records and could assure everyone that his organization was in no way involved in the horrific event.
But he has said nothing to that effect. Instead, he has blustered about how Pakistan was prepared for war and that the Pakistani armed forces would mount “an equal response within minutes” if India carried out any kind of strike. This seems to be the behaviour of a cornered guilty party, rather than that of one who has nothing on his or his institution’s conscience.




So, the government in New Delhi is faced with little option but to contemplate a chastisement strategy that could cost India some. But the mood in the country is such that the government would pay a higher price for doing nothing. In other words, it has the public backing for the use of any measure that would send a message to Pakistan that enough is enough.
In my article, I had expressed my hypothesis that the attack had been initiated by elements in the Pakistan army. I still think this is correct. At its lowest point in history, and faced with a debilitating war against people of their own ilk, the ISI came up with the terrible strategy of attacking India and provoking an Indian response. Two months ago, Asif Zardari and his civilian government were riding high; today they have tamely lined up behind Kayani and are hiding behind the national flag.
There is an important subsidiary reason why the international community needs to take the Mumbai massacre very seriously. Terrorist organisations have an internal dynamic. These are dependent on successful operations which enable them to expand their area of influence and boost recruitment. It is important to disrupt this process either by unearthing underground cells by arrest, choking funds, or by military action that targets their overground infrastructure like camps.
If India does not react adequately to the Mumbai strikes, the Lashkar will be tempted to step its attacks up to a higher and presumably more horrifying level. The logic here is that after being formally banned in Pakistan in January 2002, the ISI relocated Lashkar camps to Azad Kashmir. Simultaneously, it began to use its Bangladeshi proxies and other assets to create the “Indian Mujahideen” who would be Indian recruits, using local material to make bombs, but under the command and control of the ISI.

Mumbai

But the serial bombing campaign across Indian cities in the past few years has not yielded much return. There have been no communal riots or signs that India has been seriously hurt economically. Besides their ability to plant the bombs, the IM achieved little in terms of jihadi goals.
This could have been the trigger for the Mumbai attack. And as the logic goes, Mumbai has united rather than disunited the nation, and so there is a need to press home the idea of an even more intense strike. India needs to break these dynamics, and it can do so with the help of the government of Pakistan and the international community.

Pathology

But if this help is not forthcoming, it must go it alone. The price of failure will be an even higher intensity of attacks and could well culminate in the use of nuclear weapons as well. Don’t forget, these are supposed to be in the custody of the Pakistan Army.
A month after the Mumbai strike, we have the strange situation where Pakistan has seized the mantle of victimhood. The issue, according to its leaders, is not that of a terrorist strike struck at a premier metropolis of a neighbour, killing nearly 200 people, injuring hundreds and terrorizing thousands, whose origins are in Pakistan, but that that neighbour is now allegedly threatening military action against Pakistan.
There is a strange pathology at work here and New Delhi needs to carefully feel its way towards a response. But being careful does not necessarily mean that it should be indecisive. It should not to be pushed to military action, but it should not rule it out either.
The issue should be seen from the perspective of the outcome. At present there is nothing more important than ending the dynamic of terrorist violence in the country. One part of this requires an internal response in terms of institutions, doctrines and action. The other part is external.
India has been found wanting in both because it has so far seen terrorist attacks as episodic distractions. The unfortunate reality is that we are in the midst of a long war which requires changed strategies and tactics. The sooner we begin to act on this realisation, the better.
This article appeared in Mail Today December 26, 2008

Revenge is a dish best served cold

Some Indians believe that November 26 is India’s Nine-Eleven. And, following from that, argue that India should respond just as the United States did — by making war on the country responsible for sheltering the terrorists. This sounds logical, and even reasonable, for something so horrendous as the Mumbai massacre deserves condign punishment, and hasn’t Barack Obama said that a sovereign nation like India has the right to protect itself?
The flaw in the argument is what realpolitik is all about. The US as a preponderant military power, with a blessed geography, can go half way around the world and make war on two countries, not just one, without facing any direct retribution. The wars have cost the US a great deal of money, but the loss of the lives of some 5,000 soldiers is hardly proportional to the death and destruction that has visited Iraq and Afghanistan.
India is not in that position. An air strike at a camp in Azad Kashmir is likely to be met by a retaliatory strike in Jammu & Kashmir. You bomb Muridke, and the Pakistanis are likely to hit an equivalent target in India. A ground attack on one part of the border could be met with by a counter thrust on another. In other words, there is no way in which we can give Pakistan a bloody nose without getting somewhat bloodied ourselves.
So, any war would become a slug-fest and the UN would soon step in. The international sympathy and support for India would melt away and the Mumbai massacre would mutate into an “Indo-Pakistani” problem. At this point, someone could append a clause to a UN resolution saying that not only must there be a ceasefire, but steps taken to settle the J&K dispute.

Capacity

Put simply, the US has the capacity to exercise military power and block any retaliation, military or diplomatic, whereas India does not. There is little value in using the military option, unless you can be sure that it is the bad guys who get the chastisement, not the chastiser. As of now only the most foolhardy military commander will offer such an assurance vis-à-vis Pakistan.
This is uncomfortable logic, but there it is. Its primary lessons come from the 2001-2002 near-war with Pakistan. India mobilized some 700,000 troops to teach Pakistan a lesson in the wake of the attack on the Parliament House. Islamabad mobilized its own army and used the opportunity to crack down on sectarian groups, even while permitting the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba to relocate in Azad Kashmir.
Later in 2002, on May 14, there was yet another attack, this time provocatively targeting the families of military personnel at the Kaluchak cantonment near Jammu. As many as 31 people, mostly families of jawans, were killed in the massacre carried out by three terrorists who had come from Pakistan.

The Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (aka Victoria Terminus) where most of the people were killed by two terrorists including Ajmal Kasab.

Despite an army ready to go to war, India did nothing. The reason was clear — there was no guarantee of a clear military outcome in our favour.
The reason why we cannot behave militarily as the Americans can is not only because we confront a nuclear-armed country, but also because India does not have the military capacity to carry out a military attack on Pakistan which will be free of the risk of retaliation.

Coalition

As President Pervez Musharraf put it in an interview to the Christian Science Monitor in September 2002 after the threat of war had passed “… my military judgment was that they [Indians] would not attack us… It was based on the deterrence of our conventional forces. The force levels that we maintain, in the army, navy, air force is of a level which deters aggression. Militarily…there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that — far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself....”
Even taking into account the Musharrafian bluster, there is more than a grain of truth in this assertion. The only way in which India could have overcome the tyranny of numbers is to have had much greater mobility and fire-power. But that is not the case. India’s armed forces follow archaic organizational principles and doctrines that do not allow them to combine their army, air force and navy to fight a single, integrated battle where all three services combine to deliver a single punch.
As it is, the army does not have adequate mobile artillery or real-time information systems to conduct long-range precision strikes. Our Air Force disdains supporting the army, and is, in any case, not geared for deep-penetration ground attacks of the kind the US and Israel specialize in.
It is an uncomfortable fact that Pakistan has fine-tuned a strategy of hitting us using proxies, even while holding out the threat of nuclear retaliation were we to use our military to hit back. The challenge for India is to craft another kind of strategy — one that understands that political authority in Pakistan is fragmented, and that while there are many elements that wish to live in peace with India, there are some that are determined to prevent this from happening. So, there is a need for a nuanced policy that encourages the former and isolates the latter. One way to do this is to take advantage of the international climate and build a global coalition to isolate the jehadi forces in Pakistan, even while encouraging those forces in Pakistan who are for peaceful co-existence.
The prospects for building such a coalition are very good. No country in the world, probably not even China, is comfortable with what is happening in Pakistan. This is the reason why they did not stand in the way of the UN Security Council putting the Jamaat-ud-dawa and Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed on a list of people and institutions associated with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
India and the world needs to investigate and analyse the Mumbai attacks thoroughly and act in a manner that will effectively prevent another attack, as well as ensure the dismantling of the jehadi infrastructure in Pakistan. This inevitably leads to the need to do something about the corporate culture of the Pakistan Army.

Beneficiary

The question to ask is: Who is the principal beneficiary of the Mumbai attack? It is not Asif Zardari or Geelani, or, notwithstanding the conspiracy theorists, the US, Israel or Hindu chauvinists. It is that part of the Pakistan Army which remains open to the jehadi temptation.
For the past year and more, these forces have been down in the dumps. They have been compelled to fight a deeply unpopular war against the Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Going by the 2001 book, a massive terrorist attack on Mumbai ought to have provoked India into launching a limited military strike in Pakistan.
In such circumstances, the Pakistan Army could have ended their anti-Taliban campaign and marched off to counter the Indian challenge. They would once again have become heroes in the eyes of the public, and the US would have found it difficult to question the decision. A subsidiary consequence of this would have been an end to Asif Zaradari’s peace rhetoric relating to India.
Because generals usually learn to fight the last war better, the Pakistani plot has failed. India has not reacted militarily. The Pakistan Army must continue its war in the west, and at the same time face increasing international opprobrium and pressure with regard to their proxy warriors. The game has just begun, but with patience and fortitude, we can yet prevail. Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold.
This article was first published in Mail Today December 18, 2008

Be (a little) careful of the United Nations

So India has made a formal request to put the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed on the list of individuals and organisations under United Nations sanctions for being linked to terror activities. This is fine enough as it goes, and is part of India's overall strategy of taking the international community along in its bid to isolate elements in Pakistan which are using and sheltering the instrumentality of terrorism. But there are clear limits to the process, as well as hidden hazards that we need to be aware of.
The Indian request was distributed to all 15 Security Council member states on Tuesday by Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahmed who said in his address to the UN Security Council that “Jamaat-ud-Dawa and other such organisations need to be proscribed internationally and effective sanctions imposed against them.” He did not refer to Pakistan by name but his remark “Their country of origin needs to take urgent steps to stop their functioning,” made it clear that he was alluding to Pakistan. The Indian request is to put the JUD on a list maintained by the UN Security Council under resolution 1267 of 1999, also known as the Al Qaeda Taliban Sanctions Committee.
Separately, there is a move by the United States to get four Pakistani retired military officials — former ISI chiefs Hamid Gul and Javed Nasir, retired Major General Zahirul Islam Abbasi, and General Mirza Aslam Beg — included in the list.
Action against them could involve the freezing of their funds and financial assets, a ban on entry or transit through UN member states of the designated individuals and an arms embargo against the entities involved. The action is aimed at sending a signal to the Pakistani military elite that their continued support for outfits like the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Taiba could result in their being declared international pariahs. For a status-conscious group with personal and family linkages to the west, the ban would be a humiliating development.

Experience

India has had a bitter experience of the United Nations. After all, the world body has done little to check the continuous terrorist attacks against this country since the mid-1980s. But the really bitter experience predated the rise of terrorism. In January 1948, India went to the UN Security Council with a complaint that its territory — Jammu & Kashmir — had been attacked by tribal raiders sent from Pakistan. The UN, manipulated by the British, decided that the issue of wanton aggression on a member state was secondary and the main focus had to be on what it declared was the “India-Pakistan” problem. That fire lit by the British continues to haunt us in the form of UN resolutions to resolve the Kashmir issue. Indeed, it was because the UN insisted on putting the cart before the horse that its efforts to resolve the issue, spread out over the next decade, failed.
So it is not surprising that the Pakistani authorities are even now trying to convert a terrorist attack on Mumbai into an “India-Pakistan” issue. After all what was the purpose of an all-party meeting in Islamabad expressing the “resolve of the Pakistani nation to defend its honour and dignity”? And expressing support “to the government and armed forces in defending Pakistan's security interests.”
If there is a threat to Pakistan's sovereignty or security, it comes from the so-called “non-state” actors that its army uses to further strategic objectives vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan.

Resolutions

Just how the UN functions is apparent in the case of the sanctions committee. According to The New York Times, a note distributed by the sanctions committee to its members said that the US, backed by Britain and France, had tried to add Hafiz Mohammed Saeed to the list in May but they were blocked by China. An earlier attempt of 2006, too, was blocked by China. No doubt the Chinese acted at the instance of Islamabad.
Since 9/11, the world has sought to present a united front against terrorism. The UN has passed three major resolutions. In the wake of 9/11, UN Security Council resolution 1373, acting on the draconian Chapter VII enjoined on states to criminalise fund collection for terrorist acts, freeze such funds and sequester property of people involved. It also demanded that states refrain from support “active or passive” to those involved in terrorism, “deny safe haven” to those who planned or carried out such acts, and sought cooperation of states in fighting terrorism, declaring “ ...acts, methods and practices of terrorism are contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations”. It called upon Member States to “become parties as soon as possible to the relevant international conventions and protocols” and “to increase cooperation and fully implement the relevant international conventions and protocol”. It also established a 15-member Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC).
In 2004, it adopted resolution 1535, that led to the creation of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) to provide the CTC with expert advice on all areas covered by resolution 1373. CTED was established also with the aim of facilitating technical assistance to countries, as well as promoting closer cooperation and coordination both within the UN system of organisations and among regional and intergovernmental bodies.
During the September 2005 World Summit at the United Nations, the Security Council — meeting at the level of Heads of States or Government for just the third time in its history adopted resolution 1624 that called on states to prohibit “by law incitement to commit a terrorist act …prevent such conduct…[and] deny safe haven to any persons” who may be involved in terrorism. The following year the UN General Assembly passed the UN Global Counter-terrorism strategy and plan of action which condemned terrorism and called for cooperation in fighting it.

Definition

Yet the problem with this impressive body of international law which by the last count includes some seven UN resolutions condemning terrorism is that we still lack a single definition of terrorism. The United Nations has been struggling to come up with one, but has not yet put it down in black and white. Some blame the Israelis for this, others the Arab world. So we all end up “condemning” and “fighting” terrorism, without being agreed on what it is. This is the escape clause that had helped countries like Pakistan to make their war against terrorism a highly selective act. They are assisted in this by countries
like China which think nothing of privileging friendship over international morality.
In this climate of opinion India needs to exercise some care. While the kind of move that has been initiated by E. Ahmed is fine, it must be wary of trying to push a resolution in the Security Council or having someone else do it. This is because China could append a clause demanding that the world body address the Kashmir issue. This is transparently a case of a wanton terrorist attack on India, not an India-Pakistan issue.
This article appeared in Mail Today December 11, 2008

Our shield is broken, and our swords blunted

On Tuesday, when asked by media persons as to what India would do if Pakistan did not hand over the "most wanted" terrorists, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji said "We will wait for a week and then you see." This was a perfectly reasonable statement with just a hint of menace. Then motormouth Mukherji could not stop himself.
In quick order he declared that the military option was not ruled out and in equally quick time the Ministry of External Affairs started passing around the message that the military option was not on the table. By categorically ruling out war, Mr Mukherji needlessly threw away one of the instrumentalities at the command of this government. No reasonable person wants war. Yet, almost all thinking persons will agree that you need to be able to threaten your adversary with retaliation in order to prevent him from attacking you. This has been summed up in the old Roman saying si vis pacem para bellum. In other words, if your diplomatic and political policies work well, you deter war, and if for some reason things don't work out, you have an instrumentality to preserve and foster your interests. The reason why we spend hundreds of crores of rupees on defence is not that we intend to fight a war, but to avoid one, if possible, by warning the adversary that the price of adventurism would be unacceptably high.

Force

To deter an adversary, both parts of your military machine — the shield and the sword — must work well. You should be able to block the worst your adversary throws at you, and at the same time be able to hit him where it hurts. Unfortunately for India, both our shield and sword are in a bad shape. This was manifest, most recently, by the many faultlines that the Mumbai mayhem exposed. But the problem is deeper, and there is a psychological element to it, too. In the wake of the terrorist attack on Parliament House on December 13, 2001, India massed its entire Army on the Pakistan border to back up its demand that Pakistan give us the 20 most-wanted terrorists. After a tense stand-off lasting eight months, the Army was pulled back.





Not only did we not get any of the 20 terrorists, but we also had the ignominy of having to swallow another terrorist outrage — the attack on families of military personnel in Kaluchak cantonment—without being able to do anything about it. To repeat the 2002 military maneuver would be futile and would hardly generate any confidence among the armed forces themselves. At that time, the political authorities authorized the armed forces to act. But by the time they were in their assembly areas for an offensive into Pakistan, by January 10th, the moment had passed. General Musharraf outflanked us by announcing to the world on January 12, 2002, that he was cracking down on terrorists in Pakistan. In the ensuing months he played a double game by hitting at the sectarian groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba, but allowing the Talibani and Kashmiri groups to change their names and regroup. The LeT was allowed to set up shop in Azad Kashmir and its chief held in comfortable house arrest for three months and then let off. After the Kargil war, the army began to speak of the doctrine of limited war — finding the space between conventional and unconventional war. But so far they have not found it. They have, since 2002, spoken of the "Cold Start" doctrine which essentially means that the armed forces would be able to launch an offensive in quick order without the lengthy process of several weeks which it takes to get strike forces to their concentration areas from various locations in India. But such a doctrine is far from becoming operational. India has two armies — one is a largely static force which is strung out along the border to ensure that Pakistan or China do not occupy any Indian territory in the event of war. This is because the sub-continent's wars have been short affairs and victory is counted in the square kilometers of land you occupy at the end as bargaining counters.

Integration

The second army is the kind of force you see on Republic Day — with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, mobile artillery, surface-to-air missiles and the like. But these comprise just about a quarter of our million- man army. This is the army that has the firepower to punch through the adversary's defences and endanger his cities and road and rail networks. When it comes to such forces, India and Pakistan are roughly equal. Which means India lacks the firepower which is usually calculated on a 3:1 basis in the plains and perhaps 10:1 in the mountains to penetrate Pakistani defences. This is the situation that arises even after we spend more than Rs 100,000 crores on defence annually. To build up the ratios would be an impossible task, given our resources. But there is way out — integrate our forces. Currently, our armed forces claim they fight through "joint" operations, but the fact is that each service plans its own battle. This was evident in Kargil when the three services had their own respective code-names for the operations against Pakistan which were only loosely coordinated. Integrating the combat capabilities is the only way we can get a bang for the buck. The Americans, the Israelis and the Chinese follow this principle. But this is resisted by all three services in India because it means that there will be fewer three and four-star officers at the top. This is not unusual. Across the world militaries have had to be pushed towards integration, which also saves a great deal of money by preventing duplication and triplication of assets like aircraft, helicopters, missiles, etc. The NDA government group of ministers (GoM) recommended a process through which India could integrate its forces. They had suggested the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff to initiate the process, but the UPA has been hostile to the idea allegedly because Ms Sonia Gandhi feels that a CDS could overawe civilian authority and even carry out a coup!

Intelligence

The identical problem afflicts the intelligence services. The same GoM recommended far-reaching changes, but they have been undermined by the UPA government because of poor leadership by the National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan and the ferocity with which existing organisations have defended their turf. To rebuild its shield, India needs to act bottom-up. Combat power and high-quality intelligence is the top of a pyramid that rests on very shallow foundations. The problem of ground intelligence begins from the poor policing of this country. There are large chunks of the country that are not policed. And where the police is active, it is distrusted, if not hated because of its corrupt and arbitrary ways. Information is hardly likely to flow to such a force. Overhauling the police forces of the country is an idea whose time came a long time ago. Poor policing not only limits our ability to fight terrorism, but also enables communal violence which generates support for terrorists. A reform through which people will begin trusting their police forces is absolutely vital to reconstructing our shield. It is true that India is faced with a complex situation vis-à-vis Pakistan. It needs to carefully navigate the Pakistani faultlines between those who are themselves victims of terrorism and those who think there is nothing wrong in using terrorism as an instrument of state policy. The government is right in not taking recourse to the military option because, first, given the current state of our military, the option could not have delivered the desired result. And second, the outcome could well have been negative to our own interests, viz. the withdrawal of Pakistani army from the western front where it is being compelled by the Americans to fight the Taliban. By walking away from that unpopular war and confronting India, the Pakistan Army can regain some of its lost sheen in the minds of the ordinary Pakistani. So, it was important not to give them that opportunity. But we still need to work in a determined manner on a systematic plan that will defeat the enemies of our Republic.
This article was published in Mail Today December 6, 2008

Revamping Intelligence

This country’s intelligence culture is evident from two books that appeared in 2006. The first, the Mitrokhin Archive spoke of high-level penetration and influence-peddling by the KGB in India. It was politely ignored.
The second, by a former Intelligence Bureau (IB) official, Maloy Krishna Dhar detailed the political shenanigans of the IB, including the outrageous episode where Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi allowed his office to be used to bug President Giani Zail Singh in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Again, the book and the charge were coolly ignored by the entire political class.
The Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) arose from the disastrous defeat India suffered at the hands of China in 1962. Till then IB handled both internal and external intelligence as well as military intelligence. The R&AW got a good start under the leadership of Ramnath Kao, its first Director. But it would seem it has been downhill since.
India is one of the few democratic countries where the intelligence agencies are not supervised by the legislature. Actually there is little supervision by anyone at all. The misuse of money and facilities has become a byword. The Aviation Research Centre has aircraft for surveillance and liaison activities, yet there are reports of its aircraft being used to ferry politicians and provide joyrides for the bosses. Some of these were brought out in a book by Maj Gen V.K. Singh who’s now being prosecuted under the colonial Official Secrets Act.
Last month when a Pakistani minister announced that the ISI was being asked to shut down its political wing there was a great deal of amusement around the world and in India. But the fact is that the IB runs an equally big political operation. The IB may not funnel money to politicians, but it uses its machinery to spy on them for the benefit of the government of the day. The IB has a sophisticated secretariat to cover the entire political spectrum.
The result, naturally, is that these outfits don’t do their real job properly—protecting the country from external subversion and battling India’s enemies abroad.
Though a Group of Ministers’ decisions were approved in 2003, intelligence agencies used the 2004 change of government to block reform. The process got underway only in mid-2005 due to the sudden demise of National Security Advisor J.N. Dixit. The appointment of M.K. Narayanan as his successor led to expectations that reforms would be fast-tracked because he had himself been an IB director. Unfortunately, the opposite happened. Narayanan brought in cronyism into the intelligence agencies, allowing them to revert to the pass-the-buck culture.
In the process, the country’s new high-tech spying agency — the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) was not allowed to come up as directed by the GoM decisions. The NTRO was created to centralise all high-tech, and hence expensive, assets under one organisation to look after imagery and communications intelligence. Predictably, there was a lot of hue and cry from existing agencies who had to surrender turf. Narayanan as the chairman of the Technology Coordination Group to mediate conflicting claims refused to push the R&AW and IB to allow NTRO to come up. The agency remains stymied by poor leadership and morale.

Narayanan’s poor leadership of the National Security Council system is now becoming clearer. The coordination expected from the Joint Intelligence Committee does not seem to be working. The deputy National Security Advisers, a position once occupied by first-rate officers like Satish Chandra and Vijay Nambiar, are today held by people who need to be
accommodated for one extraneous consideration or other.
Actually, our intelligence services, particularly R&AW, do not have much of an operations culture. The bulk of their work is done through electronic intercepts and imagery intelligence, therefore the reluctance to allow the NTRO to come up. Another significant part of the work is to use money to buy influence and information. But the gap in an operations culture means that India has not even been able to deal with the ULFA militants living in Bangladesh.
As it is, little effort has been made to create a wider knowledge base for the intelligence agencies.The country’s language and area studies disciplines are the places where they can find interpreters, translators and analysts. Yet that is the last place they would go for them. First, because the output of our academic institutions is second or third-rate and second because the suspicious and bureaucratised agencies think that the best option is to train people in-house. As a result they can barely get the vast numbers of people you need to translate intercepts, foreign language papers and assess information. Just how skewed the system has become is evident from the fact that there are no Urdu interpreters in government service. We have millions of people who speak, read and write Urdu, but they are Muslims, and our intelligence agencies do not hire Muslims. So is it any wonder that they cannot penetrate jihadi groups?
Our agencies require urgent restructuring to enable their monitoring in a two-tier process. The first tier is supervision by ombudsmen to prevent misuse of the powers they wield. The second is that by the political class to ensure that public funds are spent for the purpose they have been appropriated in Parliament.
This appeared in Mail Today December 5, 2008

Mumbai attack

Commentary: We could have done better
Mail Today December 1

THE MUMBAI mayhem is likely to get security services of the world back to their drawing boards. A commando raid by highly motivated and trained radicals at soft targets like hotels, just to kill people and not take them hostage, is as new and alarming a development as was the use of passenger airlines to bring down a sky-scraper on 9/11.
The arrival of the team by sea is another disturbing innovation. The Shin Bet officer who has criticised the National Security Guard and the Marine Commandos for going into action without gathering adequate intelligence is barking up the wrong tree. In a hostage situation, all the victims are in one or two locations, which may be wired with explosives and guarded by terrorists ordered to kill should there be any sign of a rescue attempt. In such circumstances, it is important to gather intelligence about the location of the hostages and their captors and the explosives.
But in Mumbai, there is no indication that the gunmen wanted to take hostages. The terrorist rampage had a plain end in view — international publicity by killing foreigners and humiliating India. Their plan was to storm the two hotels, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Nariman House, shooting whoever came in their way, and then battle with security forces with the world looking on in a Thanksgiving Day weekend.
After the initial mayhem, the focus of the terrorists was to prolong the battle with the security forces. They moved between floors and sections of the hotels that they seemed to know very well.
In these circumstances it was important to neutralise the killers as soon as possible, as well as provide a means for those trapped in their rooms to escape. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons enumerated below, this was not done.
It is inevitable that in hindsight, there will be many flaws emerging in the conduct of the police and commandos. The first fact we need to digest is that this was a one-of-a-kind event. No previous operation or event could have prepared the police or commandos to deal with this better. Mind you, there are no questions about their bravery, which was evident to everyone.
Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare and his colleagues died because they did not assess their adversary adequately. You cannot take on commandos armed with assault rifles — with a killing range of 400 metres — with pistols that are only good at about 20 metres. Neither in training nor equipment was the Mumbai or the Railway Police at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in any position to take on the terrorists.
The National Security Guard arrived at the site of action only by 7 am. Reportedly, they had to wait three hours for an aircraft in New Delhi, despite the fact that they are supposed to have an aircraft on standby all the time. They spent another hour waiting at the Mumbai airport for buses to take them to the sites of action. Because of the delay, the Marine Commandos were sent in. But neither agency had maps or any idea of the layout of the hotels they were dealing with.
Had Mumbai had a dedicated Special Weapons and Tactics team, trained and equipped to the level of the NSG, they could have gone into action within an hour or two.


Commentary: Pakistan, Why, Why, Why ?

Mail Today November 30, 2008

Reading the accounts of those who went through the trauma of the Mumbai siege and watching the funerals of those who died combating the terrorists, the question most Indians are asking themselves is, why? Why does Pakistan send these well-trained killing machines so far away from their home and hearth to wreak havoc in our metropolises regardless of the consequences?
Don’t they realise everyone knows they have done so. Pakistan has become a pariah nation in addition to being a failing state. If Islamabad’s somersaults are any indication, Pakistan remains determined to take the low road to perdition. Nothing, not international opprobrium and loathing, nor India’s pleading for creating a peaceful and prosperous South Asia seems to make any difference.
As long as the issue is Kashmir it is at least comprehensible. Pakistan claims Jammu & Kashmir on the erroneous belief that it was meant to be part of their country and is supporting a guerrilla war there. But surely there is some law of proportionality even in revenge. So, why Mumbai?
The answer lies in the tortuous history of what strategic affairs expert K. Subrahmanyam says in his essay on Page 14 of today’s edition is a “clash of civilisations” created by Partition in 1947 when the composite civilisation that is India was set off against a self-consciously Muslim Pakistan.
Somehow this new nation felt compelled to rationalise its own, somewhat improbable, birth by hating India. These were feelings not so much of the ordinary people but of those who believed they were the guardians of the new
state, which soon meant the Pakistan army.
India has always been Pakistan’s obsession. The attitude of the Pakistan army is best brought out by Ayub Khan’s order of the day to the Pakistani forces going into battle with India in 1965 where he declared “Hindu morale” would not be able to take more than a couple of hard blows. The stereotype Lala or Bania India has more or less vanished from polite discourse in Pakistan, but not in the army and other macho institutions like the ISI, which still believe Pakistan and Muslims are somehow superior to India.
This self-image took a beating in 1971, but the Pakistan army was itself to blame for Bangladesh’s secession. The sense of injustice deepened when in the 1990s, as India’s economy began to surge, Pakistan’s declined. The perverted response was to use terrorists to target India’s economic powerhouses. In the 1993 blasts, the Stock Exchange, Jhaveri Bazar and Air India building in Mumbai were targeted.
Many thought the possession of nuclear weapons would help Pakistan overcome what is clearly an inferiority complex, but that has not happened. Instead, the army has felt emboldened and fine-tuned a policy of what it calls “sub-conventional” war against India. That this war involves blowing up innocent men, women and children and rampaging through vibrant and human cities like Mumbai does not seem to have any effect on those who see themselves as the ultimate guardians of Pakistan. The jihadi virus is eating Pakistan from within and yet it seeks external adventures in Afghanistan and India. Pakistan, it was said, had an army with a country; soon there could be no country or army left.


Commentary: Why the Pakistan link is not a surprise for New Delhi
Mail Today November 29, 2008

The suggestion that the terrorists have come from Pakistan came first from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself on Thursday.
Later, confirmation came from intercepts made by the Army on Thursday. On Friday, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee added his weight to the charges. We now have a captured terrorist to add to this evidence.

But why should there be any surprise at this knowledge? Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate has been deeply involved in terrorist activities in India since the mid-1980s. Once the US turned the heat on them, they fine-tuned a system through which they could deny their involvement in such activities. But the charge-sheet of the 1993 Mumbai blasts will tell you in great detail how Pakistani officials persuaded the underworld to send recruits to Islamabad via Dubai, trained and equipped them and sent them back to carry out what was till 9/11 the worst act of urban terrorism in history.
General Pervez Musharraf followed the two-faced policy of denying involvement, even while backing the ISI. He was running a complicated operation in which he sought to keep Pakistani options open in Afghanistan by backing the Taliban, even while claiming to fight America’s war on terror. Things changed when the general himself felt the swish of the executioner’s sword in the form of two abortive blasts in Islamabad. At once, one set of militants were outlawed, though another set remained kosher.

The former were groups like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the latter was the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, which, many Indian intelligence officers believe, was actually created by the ISI to fight India. He followed his Afghan tactic of talking peace on one hand and preserving his options for future use. Terrorist infiltration was reduced but the infrastructure to support terrorism was kept in working order.

American pressure in Afghanistan and India’s diplomatic success with the US has acted like a nutcracker on the ISI. The disrepute the Army is in has affected the ISI as well and it is currently under greater pressure from the US and the energised civilian government. Announcements on the ISI coming under the Interior Ministry, and the declaration that its political wing had been abolished, is a manifestation of this.

The ISI has been compelled to duck and weave between the various things thrown to it. But while the Army can sit back and allow the civilians to come apart, the ISI has to maintain its tempo of operations or find itself not just defeated, but made irrelevant.

After 9/11 and the onset of the US war on terror, there has been a great churning in South Asia. Old groups and loyalties have come apart and new power centres have taken their place. This has given rise to a bunch of even more tough, ruthless and committed jihadis. But our biggest problem is that we still have no way of assessing just how the most dangerous element in this mixture — the ISI — is behaving. If the Kabul bombing and the Mumbai action are to be taken into account, it would appear that the cornered ISI is lashing out in all directions.