By Ibu Sanjeeb Garg
Beating the Rhetoric
India has emerged as a success story in the 21st century. A part of the rapidly developing EME (Emerging Market Economy), India has embarked on a growth path which has been at best exemplary. Coming in the wake of the 1991 economic crisis in the backdrop of the Gulf War India has emerged as a stronger and a resilient nation. The economy remained stable as the financial world crumbled around it in 2008.This serves as a reminder to the resilience that India exhibits today. Yet India today faces far more challenges than it did 20 years ago. One prime example of the various challenges that constitute threat to India today is terrorism. The Mumbai carnage of 26/11 demonstrates the vulnerability of the Indian state and also points to the fact that today India is one of the prime terrorist targets.
In the past 10 years we have witnessed incessant terrorist attacks across the length and breadth of the country. While endangering the lives of innocents it has also posed a question as to whether our security establishment is equipped to handle such threats .There must also be concrete efforts towards formulating a policy that addresses the structural faults that have existed in the security policy till now. It is in this respect that we must address two fundamental issues while formulating a policy to combat terrorism.
Human intelligence today has emerged as a prime tool in effectively curbing the menace of terrorism. The power of human information was on acute display during the Cold War when the very tool of human intelligence acted as a deterrent. A similar analogy can be drawn in the present times when human intelligence can be effectively used to monitor terrorism activities. A marked feature of terrorist groups is the existence of “sleeper cells”. These sleeper cells remain dormant with its members going on about their daily lives until they are activated. Once they are activated they carry out the orders given by their bosses and execute terrorist activities. This is the reason why we see normal people with simple lives executing gruesome attacks. Indoctrinated in the school of violence they wait to execute their plans. And no amount of technology can detect these sleeper cells and their movement. And it is at this juncture where human intelligence becomes important.
Human intelligence indeed is a powerful medium to combat terrorism but yet it cannot refute the effectiveness of technical intelligence in today’s world. As the war of terrorism moves from the street to the information highway the internet, policymakers have to start addressing the concerns of restructuring the technical intelligence. At the onset it must be understood that technical intelligence does not mean intelligence that has been gathered by using scientific and technical mediums. For example information collected by a drone or a satellite is not technical intelligence it is a source of information that forms a fundamental of the technical intelligence but it is not technical intelligence in itself. Technical intelligence is defined by the CLAWS (Centre for Land warfare and Strategic studies) as intelligence about the arms and weapons used by the enemies of the state. Technical intelligence offers an advantage to the security personals so that they are not taken by surprise when involved in a conflict with enemies. This becomes all the more important in LIC (Limited Impact Conflict) where conventional weapons are discarded and variations are used. For example in a war between two nations there is always a fair idea about the type of arms the nations will use from artillery to bombs. Such a liberty is not involved in a limited impact conflict like a terrorist attack wherein there is always an element of surprise in the weapons used. And it is to mitigate this element of surprise that the security establishment needs a robust technical intelligence background.
Technical intelligence does not stop at the weapons or the technical finesse of the enemies. It must also seek out the source of those weapons and also they production capabilities of that source and how the money has been routed. Thus technical intelligence effectively encompasses the “white collar” division as well. It has been often found that “Hawala money”, participatory notes etc has been used to promote terrorist activities in India. The security establishment must make concerted efforts to address these sources of money and how it has been utilized in terms of procuring weapons. Such economic intelligence converged with the technical finesse can strength the security establishment to a large extent. Today modern warfare is not limited merely to guns and bombs it has transgressed into domains like biological weapons and chemical weapons for e.g. ` anthrax. In such a scenario it becomes all the more important to have an idea about the strength of the enemies. For example in the event of an anthrax attack mere guns and bombs would not be able to mitigate the effects. Scientific research coupled with remedial measures is the key in the event of such a attack. And to have such a mechanism we must have a fair idea of the weapons the enemies possess beforehand. Thus technical intelligence not only acts as a deterrent but also as a effective tool of mitigating the threats posed by terrorism.
Thus seen in totality human intelligence and technical intelligence are important building blocks towards building an effective tool to combat terrorism. And this can be achieved when there is a perfect synthesis between the two.