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| Casual approach to terrorism | | | SINCE some excellent ideas on how to combat the great and growing menace of terrorism — spelled out by noted experts, some of whom have spent a lifetime dealing with internal security, at a meeting in New Delhi over a week ago — have gone completely unreported, this article is an attempt to fill the gap.
An attempt to consult some other distinguished specialists who hadn’t spoken at the meeting brought me an earful. “When so many members of both Houses of Parliament act with such appalling lack of discipline, when the nation’s apex legislature is not allowed even to function, how do you expect others down the line to do their duty with diligence? Consistently mishandled at the very top, the ship of the state is bound to flounder”, they said with striking unanimity.
Not in such blunt words, but in essence, this was one of the several messages of the meeting at the India International Centre, too. Mr N. N. Vohra, formerly Defence Secretary, Home Secretary and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister; Mr Ajit Doval, a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau; Mr B. Raman, a former deputy chief of the external intelligence agency, RAW; and Mr Ajai Sahni, Director of a think-tank focused on internal security, were all agreed that the country’s political ambience was unfortunately not conducive to an effective fight against the tide of terrorism and other threats to internal security, of which jihadi terrorism was being sponsored and supported from across the border.
Mr Doval pointed out that the decade-long Punjab insurgency was the result of the utterly irresponsible political competition between the Akali party and the Congress, and blatant rigging of elections in Jammu and Kashmir had contributed to the eruption of the ongoing insurgency in that sensitive state. He voiced concern over the Indian State’s indifference to a UP minister’s demand for a “Muslim Pradesh”, another’s offer of a huge award for killing a cartoonist in Denmark, and to the massive and illegal immigration from Bangladesh, a hotbed of anti-India activity.
In a speech that was as candid as it was balanced, Mr Raman stressed that the Muslim community’s concerns and apprehensions would be better addressed if in predominantly Muslim mohallas there were a “greater presence” of Muslim policemen than at present. On the other hand, he added, gone were the days when this country could say proudly that no Indian Muslim had joined Al-Qaeda or other cross-border jihadi groups. In all the recent outrages such as the bomb blasts in Mumbai trains, half the perpetrators were Indian Muslims and the remaining 50 per cent Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals. Nor was this coincidental that Al-Qaeda had extended its jihad from the “crusaders” and the Jews also to the Hindus.
The kind of vigilance, networking and efficient detection and demolition of jihadi modules that the situation cried out for, he regretted, was lacking. Elsewhere, he disclosed later that while the railway police at Mumbai did have sniffer dogs, it was using them only on long-distance trains, not at all on suburban trains. He has also pointed out many flaws in the quality and pace of the subsequent investigations.
According to Mr Raman, despite being one of the worst victims of terrorism, India does little to learn from the experience of others. As far back as at the time of the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, the US and even Singapore had rushed their experts to the city to study what had happened. New Delhi had done nothing to study the terrorist attacks on railway trains in Madrid and London to this day.
On top of it, there is the evidently ineradicable and galloping scourge of corruption. It is virtually omnipresent and omnipotent. And it will defeat even the best-laid plans to save the country from the free play of forces of terrorism, lawlessness, disruption and downright destruction. It is impossible not to mention the case of a Collector, Customs, who had collaborated fully with the gangsters of Dawood Ibrahim in landing one and a half tons of RDX at Maharashtra coast just before the 1993 serial bomb blasts.
Caught and questioned, he wept, fell on his knees and begged forgiveness on the specious ground that he had “honestly believed” that the Mafia Don’s men were brining in the “usual” contraband of gold! It speaks volumes for India’s casualness towards terrorism that the man was never put on trial. By invoking the doctrine of “Presidential pleasure”, he was just removed from service. Why? No one seems able to explain. |
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