Ignorance, arrogance retard India’s battle against terror

Just to recapitulate. A missed opportunity to be ahead of Terrorists warning not heeded!
Deccan Chronicle , 18 August 2008
By Arun Kumar Singh

A day after the nation celebrated Independence Day last week, the Gujarat police announced it had cracked the July 26 bomb blasts case with the arrest of 10 Simi activists from Uttar Pradesh. This was a welcome development, as was the decision to set up an anti-terrorist academy in Gandhinagar. But one cannot but be bewildered by a series of recent events:

* The narrow escape of Surat, where 29 unexploded bombs were found;
* The disastrous incidents in Jammu and Kashmir in the past six weeks, after a new governor was installed;
* The statement on August 12 by the national security adviser that since 2004, about 800 terror modules had been unearthed (given a rough thumb rule of five undiscovered modules for every one unearthed, some 4,000 sleeper cells are still unaccounted for);
* In Uttar Pradesh, counterfeit rupee notes worth thousands of crores found in SBI branches;
* At the Beijing Olympics, a nation of one billion-plus finally got its first individual gold medal since the modern Games started in 1896;
* Inauguration of the same Olympic Games was attended by Sonia Gandhi, making this her second visit to China in a year despite ongoing Chinese incursions along the border;
* Pakistan, despite its ongoing war on terror along the Afghan border, and its preoccupation with impeaching President Pervez Musharraf, found time to violate the four-year-old ceasefire on the Line of Control almost on a weekly basis;
* Russia, alarmed by the eastward expansion of Nato, sent its armed forces into Georgia;
* India remained focused on the progress of the nuclear deal with the US despite various American spokespersons saying there were no inconsistencies between the 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act and the 1954 US Atomic Energy Act.

I have been astounded by some recent statements by so-called experts and retired government bureaucrats. Here are a few samples: A retired bureaucrat told me that "changing borders or creating new nations was no longer possible, and the 1971 creation of Bangladesh was an aberration." He was stumped when I reminded him about the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 states, and Yugoslavia into another four. But with typical arrogance, borne out of spending years in the "corridors of power", he stated these too were "aberrations".

He got rather upset when I mentioned East Timor, because he was not even aware of this new nation which had been carved out of Indonesia!

There was another retired bureaucrat who said that despite the recent bomb blasts, "India had nothing to learn from the United States, the UK, China, Russia or Spain, because we were too big, too complex... And in any case, we had taught these nations how to build computerised terrorist data banks. Yes, there will be terror attacks, but we have the resilience to withstand these." He had no answer when I told him: "No human being likes to get blown up or see his family killed or maimed, and it’s only a matter of time before the people of India demand accountability from politicians, bureaucrats and policemen in this undeclared war on terror. After all, following the 1962 war with China, the Army Chief and a corps commander were sacked, and defence minister Krishna Menon was shifted to another ministry."

Let me give you the example of the US, which officially declared war on terror after 9/11. The US set up the department of homeland security and passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Yes, there were some complaints against this draconian but effective law.

So in July 2005, a few cosmetic changes were made. In addition, the homeland security department added a few new sections to deal with "privacy, civil rights, civil liberties." This law now has 25 sections covering every conceivable field, electronically connected by instant data link — these include data banks, airports, seaports, roadways, inland waterways, nuclear, medical, narcotics, immigration, customs, emergencies, US Coast Guard, transportation, border management, intelligence, and emergency management, among others. In India, as in any democracy, the war on terror requires democratically-elected politicians to be advised by bureaucrats, police, intelligence and paramilitary units; the armed forces are only called in as a last resort. The problem is that amongst the "advisers" we have a disastrously lethal combination of ignorance, arrogance, non-accountability and unwillingness to either learn from others or from our own past mistakes.

The concept of "real-time electronic-based situational awareness, from the top to the field operative" is simply unknown to most of these people. It must be realised that the "policeman on the beat" can only deter petty criminals and not fanatic, suicidal jihadis. The proposed police reforms were framed in the pre-global terrorism era, and its results are there for all to see in Jammu and Kashmir, the 13 Naxalite-infested states, the seven Northeast states, and by the recent terrorist strikes. Added to this is the situation on our borders with China and Pakistan, and the estimated 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants — all of which present a clear security threat to this nation. By now, even the most broadminded and secular Indian will agree that we have a fifth column operating in India. Given the present state of affairs, it is imperative that the government officially declares that India is in a state of prolonged war with faceless and stateless terrorists, and that a policy of "zero tolerance" would be adopted to counter them. Once a state of war is declared, certain ruthless wartime measures can be taken, some restrictions can be placed, new ordinances and laws passed, a new wartime integral organisation can be instituted, forces raised and equipped under an unified command, fast-track courts set up and accountability introduced.

The time has come to forget votebank politics and do something different, because the people of India are not sacrificial goats.

Vice-Admiral Arun Kumar Singh (Retd)
Former Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam