Fighting terrorism the right way

The recent Global Terror Index puts India among the top five terror-victim nations

In the last one decade starting 2003, terror struck India 24 times, which works out to at least twice every 365 days, except in 2009. And 2013 has already taken the first hit with the twin blasts in Hyderabad  on February 21, killing 16 people and injuring another 119.

Juxtapose these brutal statistics with the equally disturbing recent Global Terror Index that puts India among the top five terror-victim nations along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen.

Of these, India is the only true democratic and secular country with several sub-identities drawn from multi-religion, linguistic and diverse regions. The rest  harboured perpetrators of terror, who later grew out of their dens only to start biting the hands that fed them.
 
The identical pattern in terrorist attacks is matched by the ineffective counter-terrorism response of the security establishment and insatiable 24x7 media that has little patience and time, but loads of competition for breaking news first, to actually exercise due diligence before putting out information that is hurting the fabric of the society.

Why India has failed to learn lessons from repeated terror strikes when other countries, especially United States and the United Kingdom, have at least assembled a structured and, perhaps, un-breachable architecture? Does India actually have a counter-terrorism policy? Does the nation have political will to unitedly fight terrorism?

Before getting into what ails the system, let’s have a look at the broad security infrastructure India has to fight the menace that is not diminishing with the pace at which the country is growing economically.

The country has Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act to legally handle the issue, Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research, Analysis Wing (RAW) and NTRO – the primary central agencies responsible for intelligence gathering and passing it on to the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) for analysis and sharing with other stakeholders for action. Besides, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is the central investigation arm for launching prosecution against the militants.

At the state level, special task forces gather intelligence and carry out operations as well.
Serving internal security experts insist the problems largely stem from lack of quality intelligence generation, coordination between different agencies and states, and terror politics. This was explicitly visible when Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde announced post-Dilsukh Nagar blast in Hyderabad that the Centre had alerted the states about possible terrorist strike. And Andhra Pradesh police retaliated saying that the alert was too hazy for taking pre-emptive action.

Though MAC was created post-Mumbai terror attack for creating a pool of high value intelligence, analysing it and passing it on for action, an intelligence agency officer said that it has failed to deliver the objective.

Prevention, a weak spot

The security agencies have managed to solve many terror cases but pre-empting a strike has been a difficult proposition.

“Tell us one terrorist incident which was thwarted due to the hard intelligence input sourced from MAC?” a source asked, pointing out that unless comprehensive changes are brought in the entire system, mere tokenism will not yield any result.

A premature leak of an input shared by RAW with MAC on some Pakistanis having entered Maharashtra some time back, ended in stifling the source in the neighbouring country, confided a senior officer from the external spy agency.

In the last few years, the stress is on technical intelligence, especially on phone interceptions. But, the terrorists have become smarter since they no longer merely depend on cell phones to communicate and coordinate their action. If they do, they use a combination of multiple phones and public booth phones to pass routine and brief messages which mean nothing on listening.

Despite the fact that post-Mumbai attack, the government invested on upgrading monitoring equipment for intelligence agencies, they still fall short when it comes to eavesdropping on the cyberworld. The Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is the nodal agency to fight terrorism, lacks both skilled men and machine to keep pace with the fast developing Internet, acknowledge government sources.

The conventional wisdom of relying on human intelligence, which was planting moles in terrorist organisations, has outlived its utility. A senior officer said that during their training, the spooks were always told that human-int should be the tool to generate information and tech-int should be used merely as an aid.

But, worldover the intelligence agencies are passing through this phase. The talent spotters in Indian agencies, in particular, are finding it difficult to create human assets as Hindus and Muslims are becoming more orthodox due to the exposure to images beamed through television and Internet and also owing to social and economic stress.

Funds crunch

Lack of adequate funding for counter-terrorism operations is another issue as winning over minds is increasingly becoming mercenary, explains an officer.
Perhaps, because of these inherent contradictions the country is facing virtually an intelligence drought.

The coordination among the agencies is the biggest casualty since the successive governments at the Centre have created more organisations instead of streamline the existing paraphernalia.

The North Block has failed to address plaguing intense rivalry among the stakeholders to take credit and win gallantry awards for cracking cases.
The birth of National Investigation Agency (NIA) in December 2008 to probe terrorism cases has only added to the complexities, as the Centre has neither given them adequate manpower nor created a cooperation mechanism for operation. Prior to that, the unwritten arrangement was that the intelligence agencies would source information and share it with the STFs for action.

Working jointly with the Hyderabad police to probe the twin blasts, the NIA faces resistance, disclosed sources in the agency, from the intelligence organizations and state STFs as they are considered as intruders on the anti-terror turf. An officer of a state STF asked why should they share hard earned information with the NIA, which was developed by them.

 To overcome professional hazards, the NIA has had meetings with the STFs to assure them that they are willing to share bounty, said the agency source.

The cat fight will always occur when there are scores of agencies around. A senior Delhi police officer argued that there is a need to define the territory as the STFs should also be told not to venture into other states to catch suspects without permission.

A couple of years back, the Delhi police special cell and Mumbai STF had got themselves into an  embarrassing fight after the Maharashtra police had picked up a ‘suspected terrorist’, who was a mole of the national capital cops. Ultimately, the MHA had to intervene.

Unless these issues are sorted out, the proposal for creating National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), which has already courted controversy over the UPA government’s attempt to vest it with wide-ranging powers undermining the states, too will have rough edges. The proposed NCTC, which would also subsume MAC, will be a single organisation for generating, processing and launching action in terror crimes.

The states too need to strengthen their special branches or intelligence units and better equip STFs for counter-terrorism results.

All these years, the government’s focus has merely been on the security approach to tackle a problem that essentially revolves around a section of the society’s lack of trust and faith in the governance and justice delivery mechanism.

Trust deficit

Worldover, the need to de-radicalise the disturbed elements was recognised, debated and implemented as part of the counter-terrorism policy years back. In fact in 2008, the United Nations Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force had compiled a report on the basis of programmes nations were following for “counter-radicalisation” and “de-radicalisation” – the need for which was highlighted last year by the then Intelligence Bureau director, Nehchal Sandhu, in his address at the annual conference attended by top cops of states, paramilitary forces and other agencies.

The UN defined counter-radicalisation as policies aimed at addressing some of the conditions that may propel some individuals down the path of terrorism. It calls for having social, political, legal, educational and economic programmes to target the affected population.

The ministry of home affairs is already using such programmes to counter Maoist spread in many states, including Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
And, de-radicalisation programmes were directed at individuals who became radical, and the equivalent of it could be de-addiction plan for drug addicts and re-integrating them into the society.

Interestingly, the MHA is working on the two-pronged strategy only now – which is needed given the fact that educated youth have been lured into terrorism as the workforce of the Indian Mujahideen suggests.

Terror politics is another area of concern. The BJP, Congress and regional parties, including the SP, TMC and JDU, dangerously play politics with terrorism involving Hindus or Muslims, encouraging the separatist forces.

US author Denis Waitely had famously said that “mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience”. That's true but shouldn’t India become wiser from the experience gained after committing endless mistakes.

Related articles:

• National security is an integral concept
• Why Hyderabad emerged a soft target for attack?