'Please Stop Running To Mummy'

Rajya Sabha debate -- unedited, verbatim

Mr. Chairman, Sir, the Prime Minister and my dear friends, Sir, I think, Ican speak for everyone that the entire House is with the Government in theeffective steps that it may take in fighting terrorism; and it is wonderful,Sir, you have suspended the Question Hour today to alert the country about theurgency of the matter, and the appeal which the State Home Minister has made forunity in the country in fighting this menace is entirely welcome.....and all ofus endorse that appeal. But, Sir, the effective steps have to be taken. TheMinister of State for Home Affairs has just read out a Statement in which anumber of steps, which were required and which have been urged time and again,have, at last, found a mention and an endorsement by the Government. I welcomethat, and I will supplement that list, Sir. I hope that you will proceed onthose lines as you do, and I am sure that you will find the entire House withyou. 

Before I come to making suggestions, I very much want to compliment theGovernment on the initiative which has yielded fruit just now. I have just seen,Sir, through Mr. Jaswant Singh's office, a report of rediff.com that 'because ofthe initiative that has been taken, the United Nations Security Council hasplaced sanctions on the Pakistan based Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is just an alteredname of Lashkar-e-Toiba, and the four top leaders of LeT, including HafizMohammad Saeed whose vituperations against India have not been acceded byanybody. He and three others, including Lakhvi, have been declared 'terrorists'by the Security Council, and their assets have been frozen. In all suchinitiatives, Sir, the entire House, indeed the entire country, will be with you.

Sir, nine facts stand out in much of what the Minister of State has just readout. Those are, actually, things that are already known. But there are ninefacts which stand out about this incident. The first of these is exactly whatour attention has been drawn to by my friends from Assam, and to which the PrimeMinister has so graciously responded just now. Sir, this is a sort of thingwhich is happening every month, every two months. In the count that Mr. JaswantSingh and I made of the incidents that have happened only in 2008--I am notgoing to blame the Government, and so on, but please see this as a nationalproblem--in 2008 alone--I could have picked up any other year--there were 49such incidents in 19 cities; about 2,525 people have been killed in theseincidents.

Sir, the second fact is that this is happening right across the country. Now,we have seen that these actual incidents have happened everywhere. But there isanother telling fact which the people who follow terrorism, and this is what theGovernment reveals from time to time, know that in just two years, from 2004 to2006, 81 modules were busted by our intelligence agencies. These were ISImodules in the country, all over the country; 81. These exclude the modules inJ&K and the North-East. So, you can see their reach which they have beenable to get. Now, we compliment the intelligence agencies, and I am sure that,because these modules were busted, many such incidents were prevented. But thefact that they were busted is a testimony to the fact that they exist, and thatone of the most lethal espionage and terrorist agencies in the world, ISI, hasbeen able to get that penetration into India.

The third fact that stands out in that, Sir,--and the Minister has just readout the Statement in which he also said that--is that the finger of suspicionpoints to Pakistan or to actors within Pakistan. But the first point to rememberin that, Sir, is that of its 60 years of existence, Pakistan, for 50 years, hasbeen under the heel of the army. I think that none of us, in India, can realisethe terror and the pervasiveness of ISI in Pakistani state and society.Therefore, to imagine that Lashkar-e-Toiba or any other agency could do thingswithout the knowledge, patronage, guidance, training and equipment of ISI, is tolive in a fool's paradise.

Sir, Mr. Jaswant Singh has always been emphasising it and the Americans havesaid, not particularly they are dependent on the Pakistanis, that the attack onthe Indian Embassy in Kabul was the handiwork of the ISI and the attack on ourEmbassy is an attack on the country. You will see the operational significanceof this when I just come to what the Government has been doing, withoutcriticising the Government, what India has been doing.

The fourth fact, Sir, is that in these circumstances to ask Pakistan to helpnail the masterminds just does not make sense. To ask Mr.Zardari, the PakistanPresident, to do anything like this is meaningless. On the one hand, we arebeing told that Mr. Zardari is not in control of these agencies and, on theother, we are being told that we are appealing to him, "Please help; pleasesend the Director-General of the ISI here". This is the Zardari who, forgetting the killers of his own wife identified, did not trust the Pakistaniinvestigators. He got the Scotland Yard there. He appealed to the UnitedNations. And we are appealing to him! This is only to set up India in thismanner and to put faith in the statement of such persons. It is a pathology inIndia to look for some straw of a statement on which to hang our hopes. Mr.Musharraf came here. He said, "mai is baar nayaa dil le ke aayaa huuN",and all sorts of acclamations to that. Similar is, just now, the statement ofMr. Zardari that the fellows causing all the trouble in Jammu and Kashmir areterrorists. Again, great acclamations and hope, and the moment these things camein India, Ms. Sherry Rehman, the Minister of Information there, immediatelyissued a statement that the President had never called the legitimate struggleof Kashmiris an expression of terrorism and she reiterated that support forKashmir's struggle for selfdetermination has been a consistent position of thePakistan People's Party for 40 years. Therefore, in these circumstances, toinvite Pakistan to come here for even discussions to put hope in the so-calledjoint mechanism for fighting and investigating terror is to fool oneself.Actually, it is worse than fooling oneself, because it means that you put themin the place of judges. They will say whether our evidence is adequate or not.

Sir, the fifth point that comes out is that no one in Pakistan has sufferedfor the 50,000-60,000 people who have been killed since the early eighties inIndia by Pakistan-sponsored action and what the Minister of State for HomeAffairs has just read out has to be seen in the light of the fact that his veryMinistry has been placing in Parliament papers saying that infrastructure forterrorism in Pakistan has not been rolled up at all. "Dismantled" isthe precise word. There is a Status Paper on internal security situation whichwas presented by Mr. Shivraj Patil to the Parliament on 30th November. It saysthat the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and PoK is yet to be dismantledand is being used by Pakistan-based and Pakistan ISI sponsored outfits likeJaish-e- Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al Badr, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, etc., and theywant to do nothing about it. Why? Because these organisations are theinstruments of the ISI and the Pakistan Army. When there was internationalpressure on them, they made a show of it. Mr. Musharraf banned theseorganisations, and the Pakistani newspapers immediately published the old nameand the new name. Their offices continued in the same way and their meetings forcollection of donations for terrorism continued in the same way.

[And it wasn't as if they were operating from some bank account that couldbe freezed] So to repose hope is to put ourselves in for difficulties. Thesixth point that comes out is local help. Yes, these are ISI inspired; they areISI orchestrated. Their principal instruments are Lashker-e-tayeba, etc. Butnone of this could have happened without local help. Just see what the HomeMinister has revealed. They come to Colaba. They must know something about thecoastline. They immediately know where to go for the targets, which he has justlisted out. Within the hotels, as everybody has said, they knew the entirelayout. They went into the Taj Hotel, precisely to the place where the Manager'swife and two children were. How could that be known from satellite photographsor to somebody sitting in Karachi? So, it was because of the local help. And weare politically hamstrung in pursuing that and talking openly about it.

The seventh point is -- it is a very important point -- as you have just saidabout the Coast Guard and so on, it has been established, time and again, thatthese agencies abroad and these networks abroad like Lashker-e-tayeba, useexisting channels, for instance, of smugglers. I only have to remind you,because we are talking about Mumbai, that in 1993, it has been established bythe Government that 1,800 kilograms of RDX and other arms and ammunitions alsowere smuggled into India by using those smuggler's networks. Just to get a banthere is a wonderful first step, but unless we get at these networks and theexisting channels -- I will come to that as to what we are doing in this regarda little later -- we will never get anywhere.

Sir, I completely endorse what the Home Minister has said that the entirenation feels grateful for the bravery and the sacrifice of our poor NSG peopleand the other security personnel. The fact of the matter is, if you look at theinstitutional response to the attack, there was much to be desired, not becauseof the fault of any individual in the Forces. In the first account, when thepoor Mumbai policemen and the Mumbai Anti Terrorist Squad got there with theirexemplary courage, you should have seen their arms and unpreparedness. I havetried to make a timeline of the whole sequence. Even the Naval Commandos, whowere in Mumbai, were not called and did not come to the scene till two hoursafter the attack. Everybody, who has studied terrorism, knows that whatever youhave to do to neutralise the terrorist plans can only be done in the first fewminutes. After that they have already succeeded. I am very happy that the HomeMinister, at last, has acceded to requests and entreaties from many quarters formany years that there must be many NSG hubs. What has happened, Sir? Sir, fromthe timeline that I have been able to establish, it took three hours for theGovernment to decide to deploy the NSG. Whether it is because of the laterequest from Mumbai or because of decision-making here, I do not want to castany aspersions. But it took three hours. After that it took five-and-a-halfhours, a total of nine hours, before our specialised Force was able to reachthere. When they reached there, after nine hours of the beginning of theassault, they were blind. They did not have maps of the hotels and targets.

The ninth fact, which has now been acknowledged here on page 3 of thestatement, which the Home Minister has read out, is about Intelligence reportsactually having come. There are many qualifications to what has beenacknowledged. But if you see para 12, it says: "Intelligence, regarding asuspected LeT vessel attempting to infiltrate through the sea route, was sharedwith the Coast Guard..." And then, of course, what the Navy did or did notdo. There have been earlier reports, and the Home Minister says that it is notright for him to comment on them. But the fact of the matter is that it has beenleaked by intelligence agencies that there were intercepts that these two hotelswould be among the targets. The third factor, which has now been acknowledged,is that the coordinates of this vessel were given the information. You say nowthat, at that moment, it was in the Pakistani territory. But you also say thatit was two days earlier. Do you mean that nothing happened after that? Somebodyhas said, "Here is the Lashkar-e-Toiba vehicle. Hijack it." And we canjust forget about it, [ke abhii to Pakistan ke waters meN hai..that it is stillin Pakistan waters]

So, intelligence was given. Yet what was our response? Again, I am notblaming anybody. I am requesting everybody to kindly look upon it as aninstitutional matter of what we have to strengthen and what we are up against.And the fact that the Intelligence has been saying all these for a long time isevident from very, very high, and I say, heavy quarters. I will read out to youhow much advance warning the Government has been giving to other people. In theannual meeting in November, 2006, -- the Home Minister has an annual meetingwith the Director-Generals of Police and the Inspector General of Police --which the Prime Minister also was kind enough to address, the Home Ministertells them, "Our coastal areas are coming under increased threat fromterrorist groups which have decided to use the sea route to infiltrate intoIndia. They also plan to induct arms and ammunitions through the searoutes." That was in November, 2006. Then, he says: "SomeLashkar-e-Toiba operatives are also being trained specifically for sabotage,etc. There are plans to occupy some uninhabited islands of the country'scoastline to use them as basis for launching operations on the Indiancoast." What I want you to remember in this is that these things could nothave been said off-hand. I will come to several of these; [koii alhaam to aanahii rahaa thaa], that by a certain revelation, the Ministers were sayingall these things. 

As everyone knows, from ground intelligence, things must have gone upwards,and then, it made it, through the bureaucratic ladder, into the Home Minister'sstatement. This was in November, 2006. Then, on 8th March, 2007, the HomeMinister was asked in the Lok Sabha: Whether intelligence agencies have warnedabout the possibility of terrorists trying to infiltrate through the sea routeand trying to target offshore installations." The answer was: "Yes,Sir. There are reports about terrorists of various tanzeems being impartedtraining and likelihood of their infiltration through sea routes." He wasthen asked: "Whether maritime terrorism, gun-running, drug-trafficking andpiracy are major threats which India is facing from the sea borders of thecountry?" His answer was: "Yes, Sir." Then, we come to 9th May,2007, what he said in this very House. On 9th May, 2007, the Home Minister wasasked in the Rajya Sabha: "Is it a fact that there are strong apprehensionsof terrorist threats to the country through the sea route?" He says:"As per available reports, Pak based terrorist groups, particularly LeT,have been exploring possibilities of induction of manpower and terroristhardware through the sea route." Then, on 8th December, 2007, the NationalSecurity Advisor, Shri M.K. Narayanan, was educating the world at Manama, in theMiddle-East, at a Security Conference. He says, "According to ourintelligence reports, there are now certain new schools that are beingestablished on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border which now specialise in thetraining of an international brigade of terrorists to fight in many climes.According to our information, recruits from 14 to 15 countries have come."

Then, he says, "The sea route, in particular, is becoming the chosenroute for carrying out many attacks, even on land. References to this are to befound replete in current terrorist literature. I would like, therefore, to sounda note of warning" -- he is telling other people -- "that there is noscope for complacency." Sir, that is in 2007, December. Now, on 11th March,2008, Mr. A.K. Antony, the Defence Minister, also addresses the same thing. Heis addressing the International Maritime Search and Rescue Conference in Delhi.He says that the dangers of terror attacks from the sea in the region are nowmounting, and he says, what you are now acknowledging, Sir, that you are takingsteps, he says then, a year ago, that the Coast Guard has deficiencies, but asbureaucrats say, all necessary steps are being taken.

Then, Sir, I come to the Prime Minister himself, and his alertness in thesematters. On the 13th November, 2008, just a fortnight before the assaults, he iseducating the BIMSTEC leaders that terrorism and threats from the sea continueto challenge the authority of the State. But, that is just a fortnight beforethe assaults. But, on the 22nd November, 2008, four days before the assaults,the Home Minister is addressing the Directors-General of Police again, and hesays, "To control terrorism in the hinterland, we have to see thatinfiltration of terrorists from other countries does not take place through thesea route." [Arre, aap kisko kah rahe ho? Hey, who are you saying this to?

"Or through the borders between India and... you can't say Bangladesh,friendly countries. The coast lines also had to be guarded through the Navy, theCoast Guard and the Coastal Police." I am reading this because that is thecontext in which we must now see the new assurances which have been given,whether they will also become like this. "The States' Special Branches andthe CID should identify the persons forming part of the sleeper cells andlodging in cities and towns and studying in educational institutions" --they got those fake passes of educational institutions -- "and working inindustries and professions." Sir, they are not consultants to the Government; they are the Government. [You are saying this to the states…] But, it is the IB's job to identify these. Sir, I want to supplement thisby drawing the attention of the House to the fog of unreality in which all thisis being done. [I just read out the statement of the hon home minister that hehad given on November 22, 2008. Now look at the facts of that day.] On the 25thand 26th November, 2008, that is, very literally on the eve of these attacks,our Home Secretary and his entire senior team was in Islamabad for a JointConference with the Secretary, Interior of the Pakistan Government. In theirjoint statement, what do they say? Now just see what is our psychology? ThisJoint Statement is issued on 26th November, 2008. Just now, Sir, you said thatthe terrorists came in those inflatable boats between 8.00 and 8.30.Now let'ssee what statement was given there, after gol gappas

"The meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere. Both sidesdiscussed the issues related to terrorism and drug trafficking and reviewed theimplementation of decisions taken during the last round." Now, see,"Both sides noted with satisfaction the progress made and identified waysto further promote cooperation in a number of areas. Both sides condemnedterrorism in all its forms and manifestations." [And they are organising!]"Both sides condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations andaffirmed their resolve", as just now we have been asked to affirm ourresolve, "to cooperate with each other to combat the menace ofterrorism."

Exactly these are the words that have been used for Assam.