It is true
that our enemies have weakened – some temporarily, some
more permanently; but it would be wrong to believe that
we have become significantly stronger.
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For the first time
since 1994, the year 2012 registered a total number of terrorism
and insurgency linked fatalities across India in the three digits
– at 804, as against 1,073 in 2011 and a peak of 5,839 in 2001.
The trend of sustained decline in such fatalities has been near-unbroken
since 2001 (with a marginal reversal in 2008), giving tremendous
relief to theatres of persistent violence. The most prominent
among these is
Jammu and Kashmir
(J&K), which has been wracked by a Pakistan-backed Islamist
terrorist movement since 1988, with a resultant total of 43,439
fatalities (till March 10, 2013). J&K recorded 117 fatalities
in 2012, down from 183 in 2011; and a peak of 4,507 in 2001.
Pakistan-backed
Islamist terrorist attacks outside J&K also registered a remarkable
drop, with just one incident – a low intensity blast in Pune (Maharashtra)
on August 1, with no fatalities – recorded through 2012. Forty
two such fatalities had occurred in four incidents in 2011, ,
and a recent peak of 364 killed in seven incidents in 2008.
No incident of
suspected Hindutva terrorism has occurred since 2008, though two
extremists were arrested in 2012 on charges of involvement in
earlier incidents – the 2006 Malegaon bombing which left 40 dead.
The
Maoist insurgency,
which had surged after the
unification of
the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist
Centre (MCC) in September 2004, and had come to be regarded as
the country’s ‘gravest internal security threat’, has also witnessed
a dramatic decline in violence and fatalities. From a peak of
1,080 fatalities recorded in 2010, there was a near-halving, to
602 in 2011, and a further and substantial drop to 367 in 2012.
Bucking these trends,
however, India’s troubled Northeast
saw fatalities rising to 317 in 2012, from 246 in 2011. While
this is natural cause for concern, it is useful to recall that
the region recorded 1,051 fatalities in 2008, and has seen a continuous
decline in insurgency-related killings since. The recent reversal
in this trend is substantially the result of an escalation in
fratricidal killings between various insurgent formations, particularly
in Nagaland
and
Manipur . Of
the 61 fatalities recorded in Nagaland, 55 were of insurgent cadres
of various formations, all killed in internecine violence. The
remaining six killed were civilians. No Security Force (SF) fatalities
have been recorded in Nagaland since 2008. In Manipur, 74 of 111
fatalities in 2012 are of insurgent cadres, of which 25 were killed
in fratricidal conflicts, and the remaining 49 by SFs. Twelve
SF personnel and 25 civilians also lost their lives.
Meghalaya also
saw a surge in militant activities, with 48 killed in 2012 – including
19 insurgents, 27 civilians and two SF personnel – up from 29
killed in 2011, including eight insurgents, 11 civilians and 10
SF personnel.
Nevertheless, the
broadly declining trends in a preponderance of the theatres of
chronic violence in India have brought succour to many, and encouraged
others to believe that the worst is over, and that the state,
finally, has got its act together. Clearly, if all the insurgencies
in the country – including those that have long enjoyed external
state support – are now crashing into (apparently) imminent oblivion,
the Government must have done something right.
However, on March
13, 2013, a suicide attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
camp at Bemina in Srinagar (J&K) killed five CRPF personnel
and two terrorists. On February 21, 2013, twin explosions in Hyderabad
by suspected Islamist terrorists killed 17 persons. On January
7, 2013, the Maoists killed 16 CRPF troopers (two Maoists were
also killed in the incident); and to add the element of the bizarre,
stitched explosives into the abdomens of two dead troopers. Then,
on February 2, 2013, Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA)
militants stormed Williamnagar District Jail in the East Garo
Hills District in the Northeastern State of Meghalaya, and shot
dead the Assistant Jailor and injured a Warden, who later succumbed
to his injuries.
These incidents,
among several other ‘lesser’ occurrences, are sharp reminders
that India’s vulnerabilities remain intact. Indeed, the declining
trends in terrorism and insurgency are the consequence of a
range of factors
substantially independent of state policy, linked to the broader
global environment of the declining ‘tolerance of terror’; the
preoccupation of our enemies with other theatres – particularly
Pakistan’s currently more urgent priorities in Afghanistan; a
tactical hiatus imposed by certain insurgent formations – particularly
the Maoists; changing policies of some of our neighbours – most
prominently Bangladesh; and in some cases – particularly the many
groups in the Northeast – the sheer attrition of time and exhaustion.
Such an assessment
may appear churlish in denying due credit to the security establishment
and apparatus for the sustained gains registered over the past
12 years. It is not the case, moreover, that operational successes
have been lacking. Since the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, for instance,
at least 626 persons involved in Islamist extremism, particularly
including Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
militants and Students Islamic Movement of India – Indian Mujahideen
(SIMI-IM)
cadres and Pakistani nationals, have been arrested. However, such
operational successes are entirely consistent with the past, at
times when little or no relief from the threat of Islamist terrorism
was visible, and, indeed, even during phases when the situation
was worsening sharply. The correlation between operational successes
and security gains is complex, and a range of other factors need
to be assessed to arrive at a clear picture.
It is significant,
within the context of Islamist terrorism, for instance, that operational
successes have themselves exposed an expanding network of Pakistan-backed
groupings into areas hitherto regarded as relatively unaffected
by their activities. Between August 29 and September 2, 2012,
Police arrested at least 18 persons across Karnataka, Maharashtra
and Andhra Pradesh, and claimed to have dismantled terror modules
linked to the LeT and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (
HuJI). Significantly,
at that time, the then Director Intelligence Bureau, Nehchal Sandhu,
had underlined the fact that groups such as HuJI and Indian Mujahideen
had developed a formidable complex in Southern India through the
SIMI network. Similarly, the arrest of Abu Jundal aka Zabiuddin
Ansari, the prime handler of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, on June
21, 2012, on his deportation from Saudi Arabia was another major
success; as were the following deportations and arrests of A.
Raees on October 6, 2012, who was linked with a consignment of
explosives seized in Malayalamkunnu in Kerala in 2009; and Fasih
Mohammad on October 22, 2012, a suspect in the Chinnaswamy Stadium
blast in Bangalore, on April 17, 2010, and the Jama Masjid shooting
on September 19, 2010. However, evidence emerging from their interrogations
exposed the degree to which Saudi Arabia had been consolidated
by the Pakistan intelligence and terrorist apparatus as an operational
hub for terrorist recruitment and coordination of operations against
India. Earlier, substantial evidence had already been amassed
demonstrating the degree to which Saudi Arabia was being used
for funding the subversive-terrorist
SIMI-IM complex
in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
It is useful, here,
to recall that 252 of the country’s 640 Districts continued to
be afflicted by varying intensities of chronic subversive, insurgent
and terrorist activity in 2012, including 173 Districts where
the Maoists remained active; 15 Districts in J&K afflicted
by Pakistan-backed Islamist separatist terrorism; and 64 Districts
in six Northeastern States where numerous ethnicity based terrorist
and insurgent formations operate. This is, of course, down from
a peak of 310 Districts so listed in 2010, principally as a result
of the abrupt contraction of the Maoist rampage which had escalated
enormously in the 2009-10 period. Maoist violence and activities
have diminished partly as a result of severe losses at leadership
level that resulted from their over-ambitious and premature plan
to “extend the people’s war throughout the country”, and particularly
their forays into urban areas; and partly because opportunities
created by the perverse pre-election politics of West Bengal –
where the Trinamool Congress (TMC), then in the Opposition, colluded
with the Maoists in its successful bid to unseat the then-ruling
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) – ended with the new
TMC Government discovering that a collusive arrangement between
a Government and a rebel formation was not sustainable. It is
crucial to note, here, that the Maoists have, essentially, withdrawn
to their areas of traditional strength in the so-called ‘Red Corridor’
States, and that the overwhelming proportion of their leadership
losses were sustained in narrowly targeted intelligence-led operations
far from their ‘heartland’, and not in the blundering ‘clear,
hold and develop’ or ‘cordon and search’ operations that much
noise has been made about. Indeed, 2012 estimates of Maoist armed
cadres indicated further strengthening, at 8,600, as against 7,200
armed cadres in 2006; an additional strength of 38,000 ‘jan
(people’s) militia’ and unnumbered ‘sympathisers’ back the ‘full
time revolutionaries’ of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army
(PLGA).
Despite the demonstrable
success of intelligence-based operations against the Maoists and
the evident necessity of the dominance of the State Police apparatus
throughout its jurisdiction, the lessons the Centre and many of
the States have ‘learned’ are both counter-intuitive and counter-productive.
Inordinate emphasis continues to be placed on the raising and
training of Special Forces, despite the demonstrable necessity
of improving general Force and intelligence capabilities at State
level. Indeed, in a complete misreading of the experience of the
successful anti-Naxalite campaign in Andhra Pradesh, the Centre
is now funding a scheme for the raising of Special Forces in the
worst afflicted States – Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar
– “as per the approved guidelines of Greyhounds”. Meanwhile, the
general policing apparatus in these States remains largely dysfunctional
and divorced from the challenge of the Maoist insurgency, even
as a comprehensive failure to develop effective intelligence capabilities
hobbles operations by both Central Forces and the States’ special
and ‘commando’ units.
While flashy technological
acquisitions and ‘architectural’ innovations and proposals are
paraded by the political executive as ‘solutions’ to the challenges
of insurgency and terrorism, the hard core of capacities and capabilities
continues to be substantially neglected. Many of the most important
initiatives continue to founder, often due to the structural inflexibility
of the existing system, and significantly because of the sheer
dearth of an appropriate profile of manpower. According to a statement
in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) by the Minister
of State of Home Affairs, R.P.N. Singh, on August 16, 2011, a
total of 9,443 posts were lying vacant in the Intelligence Bureau
(IB). The situation has improved, at best, marginally, since then.
On March 12, 2013, in a written statement to the Lok Sabha,
Singh disclosed, “As against a sanctioned strength of 26,867 personnel
in IB, at present 18,795 personnel are available with a total
of 8,072 vacancies (30%).”
The statement speaks
volumes of the disarray in the national intelligence establishment.
For one thing, a total sanctioned strength of just 26,867
personnel (including an undisclosed proportion of staff unrelated
to the principal tasks of intelligence gathering, analysis and
operations) for an organisation with as wide a mandate as the
IB, and for a population of 1.24 billion is, in itself, an absurdity.
That a 30 per cent deficit exists against even this meagre allocation
of manpower is utterly inexplicable, particularly within a context
where the Centre is pretending that it has the capacities to set
up a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) ‘like the US NCTC’.
The sheer stupidity of the national approach to counter-terrorism
(CT) in general, and to CT intelligence in particular, is abundantly
manifested in this single snapshot of the Centre’s scandalous
approach.
India’s capacity
for self-deception is extreme, and this constitutes the gravest
threat to national security. The state’s counterterrorism (CT)
‘policies’ have been based principally on political posturing,
and not on objective and urgent considerations of strategy and
response. Over the past years, and sharply since the 26/11 Mumbai
attacks of 2008, creating an illusion of security has been given
far greater priority than giving real muscle and substance to
the CT apparatus. Flashy, superficially imitative and wasteful
initiatives such as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and
the National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) have been projected
as panacea in an atmosphere of hysteria that follows major terrorist
strikes, and have unfortunately captured the imagination of the
political leadership, the media and the public, with very rare
individual exceptions. No objective assessment of the utility
of such institutions, given the actual profile they can be expected
to attain within the Indian context, has been forthcoming. The
obtuse narrative advanced by camp followers at the Centre and
lapped up by the opposition, the media, and the public, for instance,
is that 9/11 occurred in the US; then the US created the NCTC;
and there has been no incident of domestic terrorism in the US
since. This narrative is false at
every level National
Confusion on Counter-terrorism], and yet, it constitutes virtually
the sum of the rationale advanced for the creation of the NCTC
in India. That the US has spent trillions of dollars on virtually
reinventing its domestic intelligence, CT and security apparatus;
launched two wars; hunted down and killed terrorists across the
world; located and executed Osama bin Laden in the heart of a
military cantonment 192 kilometres inside Pakistan; and virtually
violated every principal of its own Constitution and international
law to detain and torture suspects and enter into unprincipled
‘rendition’ treaties with a multiplicity of regimes notorious
for human rights violations, is entirely missing from this narrative.
That we cannot, or in many of these elements may not wish to,
do most of these things is also entirely ignored. But our NCTC
will be ‘like the US NCTC’, just as our National Investigation
Agency (NIA), with a 2011-12 budget of USD12.53 million, was intended
to be ‘like the FBI’, which had a 2012 budget of over USD 8 billion,
seems to be an entirely acceptable proposition to the many ‘blind
men of Hindoostan’.
In the meantime,
essential institutional capabilities – most importantly the Multi-Agency
Centre (MAC) and the national database it was intended to create,
and the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS)
– fail to attain the critical mass necessary to impact on the
country’s operational capabilities. The Police-population ratio,
repeatedly
falsified by
the Home Ministry in statements to Parliament, has barely crept
up from 128 in 2008, to a severely inadequate 137 as on December
31, 2011. By most objective measures – with the exception of the
unwarranted emphasis on Special Force capabilities – broader Police
capabilities and the efficiency of the security system as a whole
have not manifested any dramatic improvement, and each new crisis
exposes vulnerabilities that are no different from those that
disgraced India during the 26/11 attacks in 2008.
It would be a grave
error to take declining trends in terrorist and insurgent violence
in India as proof that we are now proportionately more secure
against these threats. India’s vulnerabilities have not diminished,
though her enemies’ strategic priorities may have temporarily
shifted, or their energies or motivation may have flagged. The
substructure of enveloping factors – mis-governance, corruption,
abysmal poverty, rising demographic stresses, a hostile neighbourhood,
and global instability – remain unchanged, and will yield new
cycles of future violence. The limited relief India is currently
experiencing offers a brief opportunity to strengthen our systems
and to enhance our capabilities, so that we are better prepared
for what might well be an even more devastating phases of violence
in future.
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