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| Anti terrorism is a mind game; the strongest emerges as the winner | | | Jasbir Sarai | 8/5/2011 10:04:58 PM |
| 13th of July, 2011 witnessed yet another terror attack on the much vaunted financial capital of India – Mumbai, the eternal prostitute of the terror monger, to be used, abused and discarded at will. At least 21 people were reportedly killed and another 141 injured in what the government said, “Appeared to be another terrorist strike in the city”. The, by now, tired Indian Government and leadership did not even make the usual noises of a foreign hand in the “Dastardly act of terror”. The terrorists would have felt very let down by this passivity, after all what is the fun in killing people in case their villainy is not acknowledged.
Around the same time, there was some more terrorist activity happening in another corner of the country. The Indian security forces in Kashmir were involved in a very lethal encounter with terrorists. In a surgical operation on July, 15 at village Maidanpura, Lolab, North Kashmir, security forces killed five terrorists of foreign origin belonging to the dreaded Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) also said to be involved in the terror attack at Mumbai. This is not all; sustained anti-terrorist operations have been going on relentlessly all through this summer even as lakhs of people have thronged to Kashmir for a holiday. As recently as Thursday, August, 04, three terrorists were killed in two encounters once again in the Kupwara District of North Kashmir. As per estimates at least 20 terrorists have been killed in separate encounters in the last three months in the Kupwara, Sopore and Bandipura belt of the Kashmir valley. It is to the credit of the security forces that they have not allowed this anti terrorist activity to interfere with the all important tourist season and the ongoing Shri Amarnath Yatra.
These successes in a short time span have seriously undermined the capability of LeT in North Kashmir. An important aspect is active participation of the local populace in the security network. We must always remember that success in anti-terrorist operation in J&K came about only after the local populace got disenchanted with the terrorists and came out with actionable intelligence that helped launch surgical operations. This is even more important in metropolitan, crowded cities like Mumbai
A leaf can be taken from the success achieved in anti-terrorist operations by the security forces operating in Kashmir. Around the same period when 22 innocent lives were lost on 13th of July in Mumbai, the security forces in Kashmir managed to save many lives by killing top terrorists. It was not very long ago that the city was hit by the worst terrorist strike ever to have hit Indian soil. The images of the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai in 2008 still haunt the collective Indian psyche. The entire nation witnessed the nightmarish hostage drama on national television for 72 hours consecutively. Many pledged to wipe out terrorism for good, when people took to streets angrily. Since the November 2008 attack, money has been promised for upgrading police and intelligence capabilities in Mumbai and elsewhere, budgetary sanctions have also been given, but knowing the Indian procedural systems, even the most basic measures get indefinitely postponed. According to The Guardian ‘a Mumbai police plan to set up a city-wide 5,000-camera surveillance network has been gathering dust in the Home Department of the State since January 2009’.
Therefore it does not come as a surprise that the city that has time and again witnessed lives being lost to mindless terrorist activities is considered to be a soft target by these groups and organisations. "Mumbai is a soft target, it will always remain a soft target. The only way to combat this is through good intelligence, and that's not there," media professional Prahlad Kakkad told the CNN-IBN news channel.
During a plenary session at the Asia Security Summit in Singapore last month, the Indian Minister of State for Defence, M M Pallam Raju had issued an open warning to Pakistan against another 26/11. He emphatically stated that India would be forced to retaliate if any such incident launched by Pakistan based terrorists was to occur in the future. Now we are a mute witness to yet another blatant hit in the same place by terrorists. The recent dialogue between the Foreign Minister’s of India and Pakistan ended rather unconstructively amid an air of connived positivity. The media talk is more about the persona and fashion statement made by the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani, rather than any concrete development on the critical issue of containing the flow of terror from Pakistani soil into India.
It is this mute posture and incoherent, passive policy in engaging Pakistan that gives to terrorists the impetus to continuously embarrass the Indian State and the Indian people. We should not say anything that we cannot do, instead we should work quietly on multiple levels and give the terrorists a run for their money while embarrassing Pakistan in the international community with irrefutable evidence of its involvement.
What, we as a country, need is a policy against terrorism that ensures the safety of the Indian citizens and not an endless saga of unyielding bilateral talks with the neighbour. Instead of waiting for Pakistan to act upon the dossiers and bring the perpetrators to book, it could be better to first tighten the internal security and boost up intelligence to avoid these abominable acts of terror. The fact that Mumbai is an easy access point for terrorists makes a mockery of our system. If we can contain terrorism in Kashmir we can do it in other places also. Anti-terrorism is basically a mind game, it involves building psychological ascendency over the adversary, this happen with patience and sustained effort. Can the police services of our country come up to the challenge?
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