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Security Alarm
The bogey of ‘intelligence failure’
masks the deeper infirmities of India's counter-terrorism apparatus.
There is a complete absence of strategic vision, of the capacity to
assess and prepare for challenges at all levels.
How is a country’s vulnerability to
terrorism and sub-conventional warfare to be assessed? This question
must be coherently addressed before serious attention can be focused
on the challenge of counter-terrorism policy and response; it remains,
unfortunately, almost entirely unanswered in the establishment discourse
in India.
Instead, there is inordinate focus on
transient patterns or specific incidents – a focus enormously provoked
by largely uninformed and often distorted and sensationalised media
commentary and coverage. After each new incident, a relentless search
for novelty results in the discovery of ‘new patterns’, ‘new perpetrators’,
‘new technologies’, ‘new strategies, ‘new tactics’ and, crucially, ‘new
intelligence and police failure’, and the inescapable necessity of ‘new’
and ‘out-of-the-box solutions’. Assessments are also deeply coloured
by the character and magnitude of the latest incidents, rather than
by any rational evaluation of trends, and the aftermath of the latest
serial blasts in Ahmedabad (and subsequent discovery of large quantities
of explosives and unexploded improvised devices) produced a reaction
no different to what followed after the Jaipur serial bombings, the
Lucknow-Varanasi-Faizabad courthouse bombings, the attack on the CRPF
camp at Rampur, the two cycles of bombings in Hyderabad, the Samjhauta
Express, etc. etc. etc., to name only a few major incidents in an unending
series that goes back, if one focuses on Islamist terrorist attacks
alone, at least a decade-and-a-half.
But the incidence – or lack thereof
– and profile of particular terrorist attacks, or even the surface trends
in terrorist violence, are not the best index or context of evaluation
of the state’s vulnerabilities, and this is even now being dramatically
demonstrated in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). For years, now, the Government
has been boasting of the decline in fatalities in J&K, from their
peak, at 4,507 killed in 2001 (South Asia Terrorism Portal data),
to the sub-high intensity conflict levels of 777 killed in 2007, and
down further to 328 killed between January and August 6, 2008. In this,
and the ‘peace process’ with Pakistan – as well as its various ‘gains’
in terms of ‘people to people contacts’, back-channel diplomacy, the
opening up of travel routes between Pakistan and Indian administered
Kashmir – the Government discovered the crystallization of an inexorable
process of ‘normalization’. Behind this Panglossian façade, however,
was the reality of Pakistan’s unchanging intent and continuing support
to Islamist terrorist and subversive groups operating in J&K and
across India, and the acute instability of the prevailing equations
of power between key players. The fact that the improvements in J&K
were the consequence, not of any shift in the Pakistani mindset, but
rather of abrupt constraints that emerged in the country’s capacities
to openly support terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the US,
were deliberately brushed under the carpet – though this was, from time
to time, forced into public consciousness by dramatic terrorist attacks
and, more recently, repeated and major ceasefire violations along the
Line of Control.
The truth is, for all her great power
pretensions, her rampaging multinational corporations, and her seven
to nine per cent rates of GDP growth, India is a tremendously fragile
state, deeply vulnerable to the threats of subversion, terrorism and
sub-conventional warfare.
This is now more than evident in the
abrupt and tragic meltdown that Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is experiencing
in the wake of the Amarnath Land Diversion agitation. At the core of
this fragility is the political and administrative infirmity that has
gradually undermined the country’s security apparatus, systematically
and progressively eroding its capacities, or where such capacities have
been preserved in some measure, paralysing their exercise through political
vacillation and constraints imposed through mandate and directives.
On December 18, 2008, for instance,
as crowds dispersed from the ‘mass rally’ organised by separatist leaders
Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH) and Mirwaiz Umar
Farooq of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), they approached
Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) bunkers in the old town and forced
the personnel deployed there to withdraw. Under explicit orders from
the highest authorities in the State not to fire on the crowds, the
troopers reluctantly complied, abandoning their posts. Their bunkers
were then smashed and reduced to rubble by the mob.
Across the old town in Srinagar, entire
neighbourhoods have now been abandoned by the Security Forces on orders
from above. These are the very neighbourhoods that were the hotbeds
of terrorism and secessionism through the 1990s. It was through a slow
process of attrition, fighting to gain control from street to street,
house to house, at an enormous sacrifice in lives, that control was
re-established in the Old Town. All these gains have now been wilfully
relinquished by a weak, vacillating and directionless Government. And
when the time comes – as it inevitably must – to restore the state’s
control over these areas, it will, again, be the Security Forces who
will have to pay in blood for the present political and administrative
folly.
This has, with rare exception and some
variance, been the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism in India:
hard won gains have repeatedly been frittered away; advances that have
been secured over years and decades are quickly surrendered in a moment
of political debility or, equally often, partisan and criminal opportunism.
And yet, when terrorist successes are registered, talk invariably goes
back to ‘police’, ‘security force’ and ‘intelligence’ failures – despite
the numerous successes these agencies have secured in brief periods
of the crystallization of an unambiguous political mandate and direction.
The extended and unending sequence of
Islamist terrorist attacks across India – culminating, most recently,
in the Ahmedabad serial blasts and the failed conspiracy in Surat –
once again, expose the utter hollowness of the country’s approach to
counter-terrorism, if, indeed, any coherent approach can, in fact, be
attributed to Government. As in the past, the subsequent political debate
remains polarized, partisan, and entirely divorced from the realities
of the ground. The issues being emphasised by the Government and the
Opposition – the necessity of a ‘Federal Investigation Agency’ and that
of a POTA-like law, respectively – are, in fact, altogether irrelevant
to effective counter-terrorism responses at the present stage. The Government’s
position, in particular, was intended, essentially, to distract from
the necessary tasks of building capacities of response that had been
ignored for decades, to the cumulative detriment of the national interest
and security.
India has, of course, a substantial
experience of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency successes. Regrettably,
there is a comprehensive lack of institutional memory and learning,
and the experiences of the past in different theatres have not been
sufficiently studied, distilled and transferred to present and emerging
theatres of conflict and terrorism. There is, indeed, a near total absence
of strategic vision, of the capacities to assess and prepare for challenges
at all levels. The result has been a succession of random and unstructured
‘emergency responses’ and improvised defences that have consistently
failed to address and accommodate the magnitude and complexity of the
challenge. The security establishment and political leadership have
constantly been taken by surprise, and there is a comprehensive absence
or failure of all emergency response protocols. At a macro level, the
‘battalion approach’ has dominated the state’s reactions to each new
large-scale atrocity, and bodies of central forces have simply been
deployed to the site of the latest outrage without plan or mandate,
often abandoned to insurmountable odds, themselves transformed into
preferential targets of terrorist and insurgent attack. Such randomized
responses are the consequence of a chronic failure to invest in the
creation of adequate capacities of response on the part of the state,
and this is more than evident in the most basic data relating to policing
and security in India today.
India’s vulnerabilities have also been
immensely augmented by the continuous erosion of governance and administrative
capacities; the degradation of grassroots politics and of cadre-based
political organisations; the enormous expanse and growth of inequalities
and inequities, particularly, but not exclusively, in rural India; and
a range of demographic factors that create vast opportunities for extremist
mobilisation.
Great faith has repeatedly been placed
on ‘developmental initiatives’ in terrorism and insurgency affected
regions to neutralize the recruitment base of and sympathy towards extremist
groups. There has been a regular reiteration, at the highest levels
of the national Government, of the need for ‘speedy land reforms’ and
‘streamlining’ the delivery mechanisms for implementation of various
developmental and poverty alleviation schemes. These exhortations, however,
neglect fundamental realities of the ground in areas of conflict, where
the delivery mechanisms and administrative machinery of the state cowers
under the shadow of violence, with Government officials often paying
extortion sums and ‘revolutionary taxes’ to extremist groups.
The problem cannot, moreover, be dealt
with by mere tinkering – which appears to the principal pattern of response
at the national level, as well as in most States. The Group of Ministers’
(GoM) Report of February 2001 clearly noted that constitutional, legal
and structural infirmities had "eroded the Union Government’s authority
to deal effectively with any threat to the nation’s security",
and called for "appropriate restructuring of the MHA (Ministry
of Home Affairs)". After the United Progressive Alliance Government
came to power, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly emphasized the
enormity of the crisis and, just months into his tenure, in June 2004,
promised a "comprehensive approach" which would "create
greater synergy between our intelligence agencies, closer coordination
between internal security structures". Regrettably, little of this
promise has since been fulfilled.
The crisis of India’s internal security,
today, arises out of the fact that the emergency response paradigm,
which dominates – indeed, virtually exhausts – the state’s reactions
to every emerging challenge, has collapsed. This paradigm fails to recognize
that terrorism, proxy wars and insurgency are no longer transient ‘emergencies’
and are, rather, chronic conditions across vast and expanding areas
of the country, which demand permanent, coherent, coordinated and colossal
institutional responses, distributed right across the state’s jurisdiction,
and empowering local first responders, rather than any centralised concentration
of capacities.
It is the infirmities of the presently
under-manned, under-trained, under-equipped and primitive security and
justice systems, and not some inchoate ‘police and intelligence failures’,
that lie at the core of our inability to effectively tackle extremist
subversion, terrorism and sub-conventional warfare.
Briefly, for instance, manpower deficits
in the security system are acute. India has a 126 per 100,000 police-population
ratio, compared to Western ratio’s that range between 250 and over 500
per 100,000. Worse, the Indian ratio is worked out against sanctioned
posts, and there is a 9.75 per cent deficit against sanctions across
the country, with some States recording a nearly 40 per cent deficit.
Leadership deficits are worse, and often staggering. Across the country,
there is a 17 per cent deficit in the sanctioned strength of Indian
Police Service (IPS) cadres; and some states record a deficit of nearly
40 per cent. These deficits in manpower and leadership, moreover, are
often calculated against sanctions that date back more than two decades,
and are woefully inadequate in terms of the country’s current population
and challenges.
Further, Western intelligence and enforcement
agencies are backed with cutting-edge technologies, the best technical
support, enormous resources and responsive and efficient judicial and
legislative systems. The Indian security apparatus, meanwhile, remains
trapped in policing techniques and technologies, most of which date
back to the early 20th Century, and even the best of which
are decades old. Other elements of the justice system, including legislation
and a formalistic, lingering, unaccountable and often hostile judiciary,
offer little support to law and order administration or counter-terrorism
in India.
In the public imagination, the Intelligence
Bureau (IB) is a million-armed octopus, present and watchful everywhere.
That is why, after each major terrorist strike, criticism of the IB
and ‘intelligence failures’ is loudest. But even in Government, few
people are aware that the total strength of field personnel engaged
in intelligence gathering in the IB is under 3,500 for this entire country
of 1.2 billion souls, and for all issues, not just counter-terrorism.
While, in the wake of the Jaipur and
Ahmedabad serial bombings, the Centre sought to mislead the media and
public by blaming fractious Centre-State relations and the Constitutional
scheme for its deficiencies, stridently emphasising the need for a Federal
Investigative Agency, it has offered no explanation for its failure
to implement long-standing decisions – based on the Girish Saxena Committee’s
recommendations – dating back to 2001, for a massive upgrading of technical,
imaging, signal, electronic counter-intelligence and economic intelligence
capabilities, and a system-wide reform of conventional human-intelligence
gathering. Crucially, while the role of any proposed FIA could only
be investigative, and would consequently come into play only after a
terrorist crime is committed, it is intelligence that is the principal
preventive tool, and this is the function of the IB. No one has ever
argued that the IB has been obstructed by the States or by the Constitutional
scheme in carrying out its duties across the country. Indeed, some of
the most significant cases of terrorism that have been ‘solved’ have
reached such resolution as a result of active cooperation between State
Police investigators and the IB. The States are, in fact, eager for
any help they can get from Central agencies to tackle the scourge.
Most ‘intelligence failures’ are, in
fact, failures of capacity. Yet the Centre continues to ignore the most
basic requirements of capacity building. The Multi-Agency Centre, the
national intelligence database, and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence,
which were to be set up under the IB, remain mere shell organisations
more than seven years after the decision was taken to create these,
with endemic manpower, technical, technological and resource shortages.
The Saxena Committee’s recommendation to immediately increase the IB’s
strength by 3,000 personnel, accepted by the Government in February
2001, had resulted in the sanction of just 1,400 additional posts till
August 2008.
Another crucial area of persistent neglect
is the National Identity Card Scheme, which has critical ramifications
for all security related issues. Yet, decades after the decision to
have a unique centrally issued magnetic identity card for each citizen,
with embedded biometric identifiers, the project is still dragging on
in the ‘pilot’ stage.
But the Centre is not at fault alone.
Despite liberal Central schemes under-writing Security Related Expenditure
and Police Modernisation in the States, the latter have failed even
to spend the monies allocated (utilisation in 2006-07, for instance,
stood at 63.71 per cent). The deficits in the Police Force are essentially
the consequence of neglect and administrative incompetence in the States.
The State’s are quick to blame the Centre for failure to provide ‘actionable
intelligence’, but offer no explanation why no credible intelligence
emanates from their own (in most cases, degraded or defunct) intelligence
apparatus.
Imaginations often run riot to propose
‘new’ and ‘out of the box’ solutions to the challenge of counter-terrorism
in India. The reality is, all the solutions already exist ‘in the box’.
The problem is implementation, and regime after regime has failed on
this count for decades. The very possibility of a coherent response
to the rising challenges of internal security and to the dangers they
pose to continued economic growth and development in India depend on
the state’s willingness to recognize and competence to address, the
endemic capacity deficits in its security, policing and justice establishment.
(Published in Defence and Security
of India, Volume 1, Issue 2, September 2008)
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