The Hindu Business Line : How can a soft state defeat the forces of terror?

With India’s 8,000 km of land border and 4,000 km of coastline, we can ill afford to take the Mumbai attack lightly. All manner of strategies, including a complete overhaul of our intelligence gathering system and of the security forces, if necessary with external help, need to be urgently adopted, says PRABHAT KUMAR.

It was in 1964, while on a visit to India, that Nobel Laureate Gunnar Myrdal called India a ‘soft state’. If Nehru’s India, with the then Congress having brute majorities in Parliament and State legislatures was a soft state, then the India of 2008 would qualify to be called ‘a marshy state’.

Today, we are wholly unprepared for the kind of new challenges that Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Taiba have thrown up, striking at the root of the Indian state. The e-mail from Deccan Mujahideen should not be dismissed lightly. The forces of terror had carried out enough experimentation by blowing up city after city, attacking Parliament, the Red Fort, and Akshardham, in Ahmedabad, and possibly have, by now, the complete blueprint of India’s weaknesses. They have reached a stage where they can choose their targets at will.

They certainly appear to have developed a strong infrastructure in the country for logistics and other support. The big question today is whether India will have to live like Israel and Palestine, where bombings, etc., are the order of the day.

Our political masters seem to be completely clueless. There are a number of weaknesses that make us an easy target. The fault-lines are visible in our political, bureaucratic and police systems, in particular, the organisation of the intelligence agencies and their system of collecting intelligence, lack of training and other factors.

The rot starts from the Central level, with dozens of parties at the Centre fighting among themselves incessantly. Coalition and dynastic politics, the absence of vibrancy in the political system and huge political corruption are some of the other factors. Political parties have no time for going into details of real governance issues.

Two-pronged approach

Any long-term solution to tackle the problem of terror will have to involve a two-pronged approach: internal and external changes in our system of working. First, the deep-rooted problems in the working of the police force have to be urgently addressed. They start at the lower levels, with appointments that are non-transparent and largely based on favouritism. There are even cases reported of money changing hands to seek favours. What motivation can such recruits be expected to have to devote themselves to serious policing work?

Political interference in policing is also rampant. A number of expert committee reports are gathering dust, with no serious attempt to reform the police force. Now urgent steps are required to detoxify the organisation, starting with cleansing of the selection process.

The police force must also be organised in a professional manner, where aptitude of the senior cops is kept in mind in planning their careers and developing them along such professional streams as intelligence gathering. Another urgent step required is in the area of training. Compared to the present deadly challenges of the Al Qaeda and Lashkar kind, the training the cops receive now appear to be of bullock-cart age.

The police force needs to be divided into different tiers to handle different kinds of work. Those with exceptional abilities should be identified during the initial training after recruitment for exceptional work such as commando operations and they should be given military training to deal with the challenges of the kind the terrorists posed in the Mumbai attack.

A part of vacancies should also be reserved for retired army-men to join the ranks of the local police forces. Overall, the training programme for the police force has to be upgraded by over ten times and elevated to the highest standards, including proper indoctrination of the police forces to counter the indoctrination of the jihadis.

Flexible strategy

One of the key strategies the terrorists adopted was to use local resources by mixing with the locals, and hijacking boats locally to suppress their identity. The terrorists have also been highly flexible and agile in each attack, learning their lessons from the previous attacks and using them for the next. The police force also has to demonstrate a similar strategy to stay ahead of their rivals.

The external strategy in dealing with the terrorists is to pro-actively highlight the matter at the international level and India now must be part of the global anti-Al Qaeda strategy. Hiding behind the cover will do more harm than good, if the deep rooted intentions of the jihadis are kept in mind.

The Al Qaeda is under pressure in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, they would like to choose soft targets and be in the limelight to carry on with their work. In view of conflicting signals emanating from our neighbourhood, we do not know where we stand vis-À-vis Pakistan. There appear to be three possibilities.

First, that Pakistan is itself becoming a victim of terror (remember what happened at Marriott Hotel at Islamabad) and possibly terrorists are aiming at taking over the state of Pakistan into their hands. The second presumption is that ISI is not under the control of the Pakistan President, Asif Ali Zardari and is hand-in-glove with Al Qaeda. It has an opportunistic dual face and acts according to convenience. And the third premise is that Al Qaeda and Lashkar are independent and have built up sufficient strength to carry out operations on their own, without any outside help.

Of the three possibilities, the second appears to be most likely, as Al Qaeda would need resources for training their forces, knowledge of armaments and deployment of the same in a lethal manner and would also need ideological support. All these could be easily provided by the ISI, as there is no indication that it has had a change of heart. It suits their strategy if Al Qaeda carries out what ISI cannot achieve on its own by acting against the Indian state.

Therefore, we have to work assiduously to expose the ISI and its link with Al Qaeda, et al. India has to come out in the open and support other countries such as the US in eliminating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where they seem to be still well-entrenched.

We have to draw up short-term and medium-term strategies to deal with such forces and their liquidation. This can be achieved at the level of intelligence collection, learning about their newer strategies and techniques in use in other countries.

External help

We should also join forces with countries like Israel to learn how it has tackled similar situations over the decades. Israel can certainly help us in providing training to the police forces in India. We should also develop active collaboration with the UK, which has also faced couple of terror attacks and successfully brought them under control.

It is time for the political leadership to wake up and contain their tendency to politicise such terror attacks. With India’s 8,000 km of land border and 4,000 km of coastline, we can ill afford to take the Mumbai attack lightly. Deccan Mujahideen’s warning through e-mail must be accorded the highest priority to detect and decimate such forces for ever; otherwise the showcase of India’s emerging economy is in grave danger.

Over three millennia ago, our ancestors, Harappans too faced similar challenges from the invaders and became extinct. We must learn from the past and become serious in tackling terror.

(The author is a practising advocate and President of Innovative Radical Reforms Organisation, an NGO. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)

Related Stories:
Combating terrorism should be an obsession

More Stories on : Security | Terrorism | Maharashtra

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page