|
CT:
Programmed to Fail
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, ICM & SATP
|
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.
|
Five years
have now passed since the devastating terrorist attacks
in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 (26/11), and the protracted
counter-terrorist (CT) debacles that ensued. There were
resounding declarations of determination to fight terrorism,
promises that such an incident would "never again"
be allowed to happen, policy commitments to a "zero
tolerance of terrorism", and an immediate suspension
of the dialogue with Pakistan 'until the infrastructure
of terrorism' in that country had been completely dismantled
and the architects and planners of the 26/11 attacks had
been punished.
Within
months, however, India was
importunately approaching
Pakistan for a restoration of the
'dialogue' between the two countries, despite the fact
that Pakistan had done nothing whatsoever to comply with
even the most minimal of India's terms, and was, indeed,
visibly protecting the principal conspirators in this
case, including Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Amir
of the banned (and hence, legally invisible) Lashkar-e-Taiba
and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, as well as identified officers within
the country's military intelligence agency, the Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI).
Worse,
the many promises about CT reform and 'strengthening internal
security' translated into little more than high profile
political gambits that sought to
manipulate public perceptions,
rather than to address the core issues of capacity and
capability. Unsurprisingly, after three-and-a-half years
of heading India's Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA),
P. Chidambaram, towards the end of his tenure, reiterated
the assessment he had given a year after 26/11 - that
India remained as vulnerable to terrorist attack as it
was on that fateful day. There has been no evidence to
suggest that this assessment requires any amendment in
the past year under Chidambaram's lusterless successor,
Sushil Kumar Shinde.
Indeed,
if the language and content of the latest addresses by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister
Shinde, at the Conference of Directors General of Police,
on November 22 and 23 are anything to go by, the entire
impetus of CT and internal security reform has been lost.
The Prime Minister, it appears, has also lost the speech-writer
who drafted his dramatic statement at the Conference of
Chief Ministers on April 5, 2005, where he declared, "There
can be no political compromise with terror. No inch conceded.
No compassion shown… There are no good terrorists and
bad terrorists. There is no cause, root or branch, that
can ever justify the killing of innocent people. No democratic
Government can tolerate the use of violence against innocent
people and against the functionaries of a duly established
democratic Government." Now, however, a dispirited,
Prime Minister heading a Government crippled by scandal
and a mounting financial and political crises, merely
waiting out his term till the General Elections due before
May 2014, told the "important conference" of
Police leaders, "I don't know if I have anything
new to say on this occasion,” and proceeded to read out
a tired and tedious bureaucratic assessment of the various
internal security challenges facing the country. Beyond
exhortations to find 'creative solutions', to 'minimize
vulnerabilities', and to 'tackle all these issues with
collective resolve and firm determination' there is not
a single phrase that inspires confidence or indicates
clearly that the Government has, or is evolving, a coherent
CT strategy.
The visible
manifestation of terrorist and armed extremist violence
have, of course, declined dramatically over the past years
for
a wide range of extraneous reasons.
Total fatalities related to terrorism and insurgency across
the country have dropped from 2,619 in 2008, to 803 in
2012, and presently stand at 791 in 2013 (all data till
November 24, 2013). More specifically, Pakistan-backed
Islamist terrorism has registered a sharp drop, both in
Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and across India. 541 fatalities
were recorded in J&K in 2008, and just 117 in 2012,
though there has been a spike in the current year, with
172 already killed. 366 fatalities related to Pakistan-backed
terrorism outside J&K had been recorded in 2008 -
including the 195 killed in the 26/11 attacks (according
to South Asia Terrorism Portal data); the number
collapsed to just three in 2009; rose again to 20 in 2010,
and 42 in 2011; just one fatality was recorded in 2012;
but the toll registered another small surge in 2013, with
the total standing at 24, as on November 24.
Worryingly,
however, the pattern of attacks, arrests and seizures
have exposed a network that is evidently spreading into
areas that had earlier remained outside the ambit of Islamist
extremist mobilization. Patna, the capital of Bihar, thus
recorded its first serial bomb blasts on October 27, 2013,
killing eight persons, including one of the bombers, and
injuring at least 100. On July 7, 2013, Bihar also recorded
the first ever attack on a Buddhist target in India, when
10 low intensity blasts shook the Mabodhi Temple complex
at Bodh Gaya, one of the most sacred sites of the Faith.
The Gaya blasts were also the first Islamist terrorist
attacks in Bihar. Investigations into the Patna blasts
also discovered a strong IM module in the neighbouring
Jharkhand State.
Islamist
terrorism also inflicted its major attack (resulting in
three or more fatalities) in Madhya Pradesh, when motorcycle-borne
Indian Mujahiddeen (IM) terrorists shot three persons
dead, including a Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad
(ATS) trooper, in the Teen Pulia area of Khandwa on November
28, 2009.
Unsurprisingly,
Syed Asif Ibrahim, the Director of India's Intelligence
Bureau (IB), speaking on November 21, 2013, at the Conference
of Directors General of Police, warned, "The LeT
and IM have enlarged their network and developed capabilities
to carry out acts of terror at short notice in various
parts of the country... Evidence gathered from various
cases indicates Pakistan continues to nurture terrorist
groups..."
The declining
trends in terrorist violence and the exposure and neutralization
of significant Islamist terrorist networks can, at least
in part, be attributed to the extraordinary efforts exerted
by the existing intelligence and enforcement agencies,
despite the paralyzing deficits that continue to afflict
them. Crucially, partial data compiled by the South
Asia Terrorism Portal indicates that at least 929
persons involved in Islamist terrorism and extremism -
including LeT and IM cadres, as well as ISI agents, and
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Nepali nationals - have been
arrested outside J&K since the 26/11 attacks; 141
of these persons have, thus far, been arrested in 2013
alone.
A significant
aspect of several recent arrests has been the degree to
which foreign intelligence and enforcement agencies –
including many that tended to look the other way at Pakistani
and Islamist terrorist mobilisation and mischief in the
past – have increasingly cooperated with India. Some significant
actions that involved support from foreign agencies include
the arrest of IM operative Fasih Mohammad (deported from
Saudi Arabia and subsequently arrested at Delhi’s Indira
Gandhi International Airport on October 22, 2012) - Fasih
Mohammad was a suspect in the April 17, 2010, Chinnaswamy
Stadium (Bangalore, Karnataka) blast case, and the September
19, 2010, Jama Masjid (Delhi) shooting case; the arrest
of LeT operative Abu Hamza alias Sayeed Zabi ud Deen alias
Zabi Ansari alias Riyasat Ali alias Abu Jundal, the 26/11
attacks handler, arrested on June 21, 2012, after being
extradited from Saudi Arabia; and LeT terrorist A. Rayees,
deported from Saudi Arabia and arrested on October 6,
2012, named as the third accused in the case of the seizure
of explosives at Malayalamkunnu under Chakkarakkal in
the Kannur District of Kerala, in 2009.
Indian
security agencies arrested three top terrorists – Yasin
Bhatkal aka Mohammad Ahmed Siddibappa Zarrar aka
Imran aka Asif aka Shahrukh; Asadullah Akhtar
aka Haddi; and Abdul Karim Tunda – from the Indian
State of Bihar along the Indo-Nepal Border in the month
of August, 2013. These arrests reconfirmed the fact that
the Indo-Nepal Border has long provided safe passage to
terror groups operating on Indian soil under the direct
patronage of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
These successes,
however, do not reflect any dramatic improvements in CT
capabilities over the past five years. Despite massive
increases in the expenditure on internal security, capacity
augmentation has been no more than marginal, and most
state agencies continue to struggle with manpower, technology
and resource deficits that are little different from the
situation in 2008.
Significantly,
for instance, the annual budgetary allocation for the
UMHA has escalated dramatically since 26/11, more than
doubling, from INR 254.39 billion in 2008-09, to 592.41
billion in 2013-14. A detailed breakdown of this expenditure
is not available, nor is any detailed assessment of its
components possible here. It is useful, however, to take
an overview of some of the most pressing heads and commitments
made post-26/11, to see the sheer magnitude of implementation
failure.
One of
the proudest 'achievements' of the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) Government was the creation of the National
Investigation Agency (NIA) within a month of the 26/11
attacks. The legislation to establish the agency had been
bulldozed through Parliament in an atmosphere of hysteria,
with the promise that the NIA would be "like the
FBI", America's Federal Bureau of Investigation,
and would play a crucial role in 'fighting terrorism'.
The commitments were manifestly
dishonest, even as the legislation
to establish NIA pushed beyond the limits of India's Constitution.
Nearly five years after its establishment, the NIA has
little to show in terms of quantifiable CT impact. The
NIA has a sanctioned strength of 650 officers - yielding
an investigative caseload that can only be the envy of
most investigative agencies in the States. Just 72 "important"
cases of terrorism have been cherry-picked for investigation
by the NIA, and chargesheets have been filed in just 32
of these. Three persons have been convicted in two of
these cases. Many of the investigations 'taken over' by
the NIA had already been at least partially completed
by State agencies. The cumulative CT impact of the NIA
- if at all measurable - would at best be negligible.
It is useful to note that the total strength of all Crime
Investigation Departments (CID) in the State Police across
the country stood at 11,729 personnel in 2011; they were
intended to handle as many as 6,252,729 offences registered
that year, yielding a ratio of 533.09 cases per officer
(it is no surprise that most of these cases go uninvestigated).
The promise
to set up a national database for terrorism and crime
has made little headway. The task of creating such a database
was handed over to the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) in the
Intelligence Bureau, but the critical element of implementation
- the creation of networks linking up all the Police Stations
in the country - lay within the jurisdiction of the States.
The project was expectedly beset with many difficulties
relating to software and hardware architecture (as, indeed,
has been the case with such databases globally), but the
core of the project, a database linking all IB units in
the country, was eventually established towards mid-2012.
However, the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems
(CCTNS) project, which was intended to link up all Police
Stations, and which received sanction on June 19, 2009,
is yet to take off, with several States failing even to
initiate first steps. Crucially, the CCTNS project is
a reinvention of the PolNet (Police Network) project,
which was sanctioned as far back as 1996, with the same
objective of linking the Police Stations across the country.
INR 2.76 billion has been allocated for the CCTNS project
in 2013-14, but most observers believe it will take years
before the network is ready.
The NATGRID
project, which was intended to integrate 21 existing databases
- including banking, finance, and transportation databases
- and which the Government claimed would help 'fight terrorism',
has also failed to take off. NATGRID's potential impact
on terrorism is, moreover, debatable,
and its efficacy has been questioned even by the IB. Crucially,
sources indicate that the project is "several months
to several years" away from providing real-time access
to existing Government databases, or to identifying suspicious
transactions.
The Government
has, of course, implemented the decision to establish
'hubs' of the elite National Security Guard (NSG) in four
major metropolitan centres but the utility of this move
has always been in
question. Further, the hubs are functioning
under acute limitations for training and readiness of
Forces, and the NSG has a critical leadership shortfall,
with a deficit of over 22 per cent in its sanctioned strength
of officers.
Both the
Prime Minister and successive Home Ministers have spoken
a great deal about 'bringing the beat constable into the
vortex of our CT strategy', and have repeatedly emphasised
the necessity of enormously strengthening general policing
capabilities. Bringing the Police-population ratio in
line with international norms has been a crucial element
in this context. And yet, this ratio has risen from 128
per 100,000 in 2008, to no more than 138 per 100,000 in
2012, as against a general norm of 220 per 100,000 for
'peacetime policing', with some Western countries maintaining
ratios above 500 per 100,000. There is no evidence whatsoever
of any significant change in the very poor manpower profile
of the Police Forces, or in their training and capabilities.
Mumbai, today, has the same Police that so dramatically
failed to protect the city against the 26/11 attacks;
the State Police across much of the country, moreover,
is measurably worse in terms of resources, capacities
and capabilities.
While some
augmentation in strength of the Central Armed Police Forces
(CAPFs) has occurred, there is increasing evidence of
rising neglect. Thus, the total sanctioned strength of
the CAPFs rose from 838,893 in 2008, to just 906,504 in
2012. Worse, the CAPFs are suffering from sweeping resource
cuts, even though they play a critical role in CT and
counter-insurgency (CI) across the country. Shortly after
26/11, a 'modernization plan' for the CAPFs was announced,
with a total allocation of INR 41.85 billion, to acquire
the latest weapons, surveillance and communication equipment,
vehicles, body protection gear, etc. But only a fraction
of these financial commitments have actually been met.
Thus, the CAPFs sought INR 23.60 billion for 2013 for
their CT-CI and border control acquisitions; the MHA released
just INR 900 million. The Central Reserve Police Force
had raised a demand of INR 8.73 billion, but was sanctioned
just INR 200 million. The Border Security Force (BSF)
sought INR 6.94 billion, but received just INR 200 million.
The IB,
the Centre's principal CT bulwark, continued to function
at a total strength of 18,795 in March 2012, at a 30 per
cent deficit against its meagre sanctioned strength of
26,876 personnel. Any augmentation since, would, at best,
be insignificant.
With the
breach in Mumbai 26/11 coming from the sea, there was
enormous rhetorical focus on strengthening coastal security,
and much has been claimed by Governments thereafter of
measures taken to secure this objective. Five years later,
however, it would be necessary to concede that, fitful
efforts notwithstanding, we remain as vulnerable to terrorist
attacks along our coastline as we were in 2008.
The latest
and dramatic evidence of this vulnerability came with
the discovery of the 390 tonne Seaman Guard Ohio, owned
by a private US firm, AdvanFort, which its commander admitted
had been functioning undetected as an illegal 'floating
armoury' for merchant vessels in Indian territorial waters
for 45 days prior to its detention 10 nautical miles off
Tuticorin along the Tamil Nadu coastline, on October 12,
2013. 35 weapons, including 34 rifles, one pistol and
ammunition were recovered from the vessel. The vessel
was supposedly checked and found clean when it had berthed
on August 23, 2013, at Kochi in Kerala, suggesting, either,
that the inspection was far from thorough, or that the
arms had been acquired in Indian waters before the vessel
reached the point of its interception.
Clearly,
a terrorist attempt to pass through Indian waters to a
target port would take considerably less than 45 days
of undetected movement.
There have
been a number of such breaches over the past years, the
most dramatic of these being three incidents in 2011,
when three massive vessels simply drifted into Mumbai,
completely unnoticed by the purportedly enhanced vigilance
exercised by Naval, Coast Guard and Marine Police patrols,
as well as by the numerous Coastal Police Stations, check-posts,
outposts and land patrols that had been established after
26/11. On June 12, 2011, thus, a Singapore-flagged cargo
ship, MV Wisdom, en route to Alang in Gujarat,
drifted towards the Mumbai Coast after breaking its tug,
and eventually ran aground on the very busy Juhu Beach
in the heart of Mumbai, at which stage it was noticed
by citizens, long before any security agency took cognizance
of it. Again, on July 30, 2011, a Panama flagged ship,
MV Pavit, which had been abandoned by its crew a month
earlier near Oman, drifted onto the same Juhu Beach in
Mumbai. Very quickly thereafter, on August 4, 2011, an
oil tanker, MV Rak, again from Panama, with 60,000 metric
tonnes of coal and 340 tonnes of fuel oil on board, entered
Indian waters unchallenged, and sank just 20 nautical
miles off the Mumbai coast, causing a major oil spill.
If Mumbai
itself, the target of the 26/11 attacks, remains so open
to the undetected movement, not of little fishing vessel
or dhows, but of massive commercial sea transports, it
must be abundantly clear that India's 7,516 kilometre
long coastline and over two million square kilometre Exclusive
Economic Zone, across nine states, dotted with 13 major
and 185 minor ports, remains entirely susceptible to terrorist
attack even today.
Official
sources insist that there has been "significant increase
in the coastal surveillance patrols by Naval and Coast
guard ships and aircraft", and that four Joint Operations
Centres have been established by the Navy at Mumbai, Vishakhapatnam,
Kochi and Port Blair, to ensure coordination between the
Navy, Coast Guard and State Marine Police. Numerous coastal
police stations and posts have been established, and many
high speed vessels have been purchased and deployed.
While substantial
expenditures have certainly been incurred on these various
initiatives, the systems are far from functional and effective.
A CAG report released in July 2013 further compounded
a critique of failing systems that the same organisation
had submitted to Parliament in 2011. The 2013 was scathing
in its observations on procurement, ageing vessels and
manpower shortages, noting “72 per cent of the fast patrol
vessels (FPVs)/inshore patrol vessels (IPVs), 47 per cent
of the advanced offshore patrol vessels (AOPVs) and 37
interceptor boats (IBs) were either on extended life or
their extended life had expired..." Many of the coastal
Police Stations and Posts sanctioned had not been established.
Sea patrolling was a fraction of the prescribed frequency,
and there had been no night flying. "Out of the 50
CCPs [Coastal check-posts] and COPs [Costal outposts]
completed, 36 remained non-operational as police personnel
were not deployed…"
Worse,
even if all these measures had been fully implemented
and operational efficiencies ensured, we would remain
as vulnerable. The very core of any effective system of
coastal defence is not the number of patrols, but the
capacity to detect and interdict the entry and illegal
movement of ships and boats in Indian waters. In the immediate
aftermath of 26/11, the necessity of fitting GPS devices
on all boats and fishing vessels plying in the high seas,
a protocol for registration of routes of each vessel,
and a surveillance and radar system to identify any illegal
entrants and deviant vessel, had been repeatedly emphasised.
No such system is yet in place, and even the "satellite-based
vessels tracking and warning device system, sanctioned
at a cost of Rs 46.16 crore in May 2008, to caution fishermen
before approaching international boundary, was not established."
India's
coastline is vast; there are tens of thousands of vessels,
large and small, at sea in Indian waters each day; unless
there is a GPS tagging system to identify those whose
presence is legitimate, it is impossible, irrespective
of the intensity of patrolling, to identify the interloper
or deviant. The process of securing India's coastline,
consequently, is yet to begin.
It is impossible,
here, to make any detailed evaluation of CT-CI capabilities
and responses in the States, but recent terrorist attacks
in Patna (October 27, 2013); Bodh
Gaya (July 7, 2013); Bangalore
(April 17, 2013); and Hyderabad (February 21, 2013), have
again and again provided evidence of unpreparedness and
inadequacy of response. While limited, and often purely
symbolic, augmentations have fitfully occurred in some
of the States, their cumulative impact remains inconsequential.
The cumulative
deficits of capacity and capability that have been built
into India's intelligence and security apparatus are so
great that they would require a massive and sustained
commitment of resources and purpose, before they reach
the critical mass necessary to have a measurable impact
on the country's vulnerabilities to terrorism. The present
Government has demonstrated neither the vision nor the
will for such a commitment. The country has been fortunate
that the attention of its adversaries has, for some time,
been turned elsewhere. But India cannot think itself secure
if her only defence remains a reliance on the inattention
of her enemies.
|
