|
|
Bogus debate on terrorism
There is a constant clamour about the
failure to solve cases of terrorist attacks. But when a case is cracked
and the guilty tracked, there is an immediate uproar over the 'targeting
of innocent Muslims' and human rights activists come up with bizarre
conspiracy theories
Exactly two weeks after the September
13, 2008, serial attacks at crowded market locations in Delhi, terrorists
struck the national capital on September 28, killing one and injuring
over 20. The intensity of the explosion this time was lower, and the
'tiffin bomb' -- packed in a plastic bag -- was simply tossed off a
motorcycle in the Phool Walon ki Sair flower market at Mehrauli in south
Delhi.
The intervening two weeks had seen frenetic
activity in the intelligence and security establishment across the country,
as much of SIMI and its front, the Indian Mujahiddeen (IM), network
unravelled, with the killing of two SIMI and IM cadre in Delhi and the
arrest of several others in Delhi, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh, building
on significant detentions in Gujarat (which had followed the serial
explosions in Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008).
Exaggerated (and often distorted) reportage
by a hysterical media on the Delhi encounter and the arrests across
the country had created the irrational expectation that the spate of
arrests and the 'neutralisation' of the SIMI-IM network would somehow
spell the end of the succession of terrorist attacks that had been inflicted
at apparently diminishing intervals over the past months and years --
but the flower market bombing has, unsurprisingly, put paid to that
rather quickly.
Investigators are still to identify
the perpetrators of the latest bombing, but it should be abundantly
clear that, despite the body blows inflicted on the SIMI-IM networks,
this organisation's capacities are yet to be entirely extinguished.
Moreover, the various other Pakistan-backed Islamic terrorist groups
that have operated -- separately and in tandem, often with SIMI -- to
execute numerous terrorist attacks across India, show no signs of any
significant decline in capacities or loss of support from their state
sponsors in the neighbourhood -- Pakistan and Bangladesh. Under these
circumstances, there is little reason to believe that recent police
successes will have any permanent impact on the Islamic terrorist acts
across India.
It must be evident, consequently, that
the question of containment of the threat and the creation of necessary
counter-terrorism capacities must remain at the forefront of all policy
discourse. It is, in some measure, gratifying that the debate at the
Centre in the aftermath of the September 13 blasts in New Delhi -- polarised
and incoherent as it no doubt substantially remained -- is beginning
to show some signs of urgency. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has conceded
that there are "still vast gaps in intelligence", and this observation
was followed, on September 17, by a Cabinet decision to augment the
Intelligence Bureau's (IB's) strength by an additional 6,000 personnel.
The IB was also tasked to set up a new Research and Technology Wing
dedicated to the continuous monitoring and analysis of patterns of terrorist
activities and responses.
At the same time, significant augmentation
of capacities was disclosed for the Delhi Police as well. The Home Secretary
revealed that recruitment for 5,000 posts sanctioned earlier was ongoing,
and an additional 7,612 posts also received sanction. Further, plans
to install a network of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in
markets and at various border checkposts, and a centralised database
with face recognition software under the Delhi Police were also outlined,
even as the projected augmentation of transport and communications capabilities
was announced.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether,
in what measure, and within what timeframe these decisions are actually
implemented. Crucially, however, as has been repeatedly emphasised in
the past, the idea that terrorism can be contained at its points of
delivery, or that India's cities can be protected even while its 'hinterland'
-- the vast rural and mufussil areas -- remain lawless and un-policed,
is fundamentally flawed. The success of the national counter-terrorism
effort will depend not only on high measures of efficiency of New Delhi
but in a reformation of the policing and intelligence systems across
the country. Processes to secure this objective have, however, yet to
begin, and most States simply lack the political and administrative
capability and -- perhaps more crucially -- integrity and intent, to
take up the tasks of counter-terrorist capacity building with any degree
of seriousness or urgency.
Even more dangerous, however, is the
evidence of increasing communalisation, exceptionalism and a deeply
destructive political dynamic that is progressively crystallising around
the discourse on Islamist terrorism across political parties, sections
of the media, and the country at large. Among the principal objectives
of irregular warfare, Mao Tse Tung notes, is the "destruction of the
unity of the enemy". Terrorists targeting India, it is ever more evident,
require very little effort to secure this objective, as political leaderships
and social elites engage in an increasingly perverse debate on particular
terrorist acts and state responses, or on the issue of terrorism in
general.
It is, for instance, a matter of tremendous
concern that an encounter in broad daylight, in the crowded Batla House
locality of Jamia Nagar in south Delhi, and in which one policemen --
Inspector MC Sharma -- was killed and another was injured, should provoke
significant scepticism not only among people in the immediate neighbourhood
but in a much wider constituency among political parties, the media
and what passes for India's 'intelligentsia'. This is an index, equally,
of the degree of communal polarisation, particularly in ghettoised neighbourhoods,
as of the loss of confidence in the police, especially among members
of minority groups.
Some human rights organisations, in
a knee-jerk reflex, raised the bogey of a 'staged encounter', while
the All-India Minority Forum has called for a judicial inquiry into
the killings. Other communal leaders and some political parties have
jumped on to the bandwagon, perhaps cynically seeing an opportunity
for some harvesting of votes or support through the adoption of partisan
and extreme postures. The argument has been put forward that 'innocent
Muslims' are being targeted in the spate of recent arrests -- but no
evidence has, at any point, been cited to support the thesis other than
an undercurrent of sustained denigration of the police. Crucially, the
responses of enforcement agencies are increasingly being held hostage
to an irrational media backlash that follows both the failure to act
and effective action.
(Published in The
Pioneer, October 1, 2008)
|