By Ramesh Kanitkar
It has been nearly a month since terrorists struck our hapless metropolis with impunity. The investigation into the latest mayhem is plodding through the fog of uncertainty amidst political football, ego- clashes among official agencies and lack of overall direction.
The foot- in- the- mouth utterances of three key figures in the ruling UPA sounded like a Kafkaesque joke on how the custodians of the nation look at the threat posed by terrorism. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed the surprise element in the attack for the governments failure to prevent it; Home Minister Chidambaram was sore that terrorists acted clandestinely and that the 13/ 7 incident slipped through the intelligence gap; and Rahul Gandhi claimed that every single terror incident couldn’t be prevented but 99 per cent of attacks (since 26/ 11) had been prevented due to strong vigilance and intelligence efforts. So it was just Mumbai’s bad luck that it fell in the one per cent category where nothing could be done to stop terror from visiting us again. We are now waiting with bated breath to know from Gandhi the details of those 99 per cent attacks that we have been saved from.
When the top leading lights of the nation cannot offer an intelligent response to the grave threat to the national security, it isn’t surprising that those charged with the task of gathering security intelligence become every ones favourite whipping boys. However, intelligence gathering is something that has suffered worst kind of neglect in the hands of successive dispensations at the centre and the states. Contrary to populist cloak- and- dagger, James Bond- like image of those engaged in spying, the work these guys are required to do is extremely tedious, slow and far from the public eye.
In almost all the states, there are few takers among the local police force for this kind of back- stage work sans public recognition or glamour. Local IB men routinely pick journalists brains to know which way the political wind is blowing in the state. This is because the IB sleuths are mainly used by the ruling politicians for spying on their political opponents. Crime investigators often rely more on the tips collected from the khabristhan their own real intelligence spadework that requires sustained efforts and focus. The IB bureaus are usually short- staffed and poorly backed with funds and equipment needed to keep pace with criminals, gangsters and terrorists using latest weapons and high- tech means. No wonder, Mumbai police is more comfortable with zeroing on dance- bars, rave parties and Hukka joints than tracking down terrorists.
Our national spooks agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is often spoken of with a sense of awe. However, this vital body is riven with factionalism, palace intrigues and lack of professionalism as reports appearing in the media from time to time very often suggest.
We in India suffer from near total lack of real national security culture that aims to deal with the Jihadi terror threat on long- term basis with a sense of purpose and direction. Instead, terrorist menace in India is used, like everything else, by our politicians to tap its electoral potential by perversely playing the communalism versus secularism game. Each terrorist attack in India is therefore responded with what the western security experts call episodic and band- aid treatment. Every incident of terror is followed by shock, dismay, chaos, knee-jerk reactions, shoddy probe and sluggish court trials (if any suspect is caught). India is probably the only country where hanging of a convicted terrorist mastermind becomes a subject of puerile debate, official apathy, and merely a matter of following the chronological order of hanging convicts on the death- row.
In sharp contrast the West has identified Islamist terror as its collective enemy since the fall of communism in the early 1990s. After their initial failure to prevent the 9/ 11 attacks, the US and European countries have totally revamped their security apparatus and work closely together with vastly improved coordination among various agencies. Sufficient man- power and resources have also been made available to train greater number of field operatives in Arabic, Pashto, Urdu and other languages that are spoken by various Jihadi groups; regular study of Jihadi literature and websites has become a routine; and the US State Department now encourages diplomats to study Koran and Islamic culture so that they can effectively use public diplomacy to counter the anti- America/ West propaganda by Jihadi outfits.
Americas avowed commitment to personal liberty and freedom did not prevent Bush and later Obama from extracting vital information from the terrorist suspects picked up from different parts of the world by subjecting them to water- boarding and other forms of torture at Guantanamo, innocuously dubbed as rendition. All this together has helped the US to foil a number of terrorist plots on its soil since the 9/ 11 carnage.
It is a pity we in India are still squabbling about bullet- proof jackets for cops; our patrol boats are lying idle due to lack of trained men to operate them; the new commando force is still without any suitable place to setup its HQ; our terror victims are ferried to hospitals in cargo- vans; our public hospitals are ill- equipped to effectively cope with terror- fallout; our disaster management centres are a disaster themselves; and journalists who expose the dumping of expensive anti- terror weaponry in a railway junk- room, are arrested and harassed.
I recently read a sad tale of a brave heart Indian army commando who successfully fought off Pakistani terrorists holed up in Hotel Oberoi during the 26/ 11 assault but sustained a spinal column injury in a grenade attack in the incident that has left him paralyzed.
The wheelchair- bound hero needs an Ayurvedic treatment for the cure that costs him Rs. 2000 per month which he can’t afford with his measly salary. The army refuses to reimburse him this expense because rules don’t recognize Ayurvedic healthcare for this purpose! How can we hope to fight terror with such treatment to our heroes? INAV