The Uneducable Indian

A long derided union home minister, Shivraj Patil hasbeen forced out; Maharashtra State Home Minister, R.R. Patil has succumbed topublic and media pressure and resigned after a crass comment that "suchthings keep happening in big cities"; the Maharashtra Chief MinisterVilasrao Deshmukh, is tottering on the verge of resignation after engaging insome heedless ‘disaster tourism’ at the devastated Taj Mahal Hotel; otherheads are poised to roll. 

• Has the latest Mumbai carnage pushed India beyond the ‘tipping point’ in its responses to terrorism? 
• Is it now possible to expect a radical break with past patterns, where each major incident has been followed – to borrow a phrase applied to the Left parties during the nuclear debate, but which accurately describes the entire political class in this country – by some "running around like headless chickens", to lapse quickly into a habitual torpor? 
• And can India’s polarized and unprincipled political parties come to a consensual understanding and strategy on counter-terrorism, instead of subordinating the national interest to partisan electoral calculations and the politics of ‘vote banks’?

Regrettably, there are already too many signs that it is going to be‘business as usual’ in India. 

At the height of the confrontation in Mumbai, L.K. Advani, the Leader of theOpposition and the man projected as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) PrimeMinisterial candidate in the coming elections next year, kindled a spark ofhope, calling for an all-party consensus on counter-terrorism, and declaring,"at this juncture, the country needs to fight the terrorist menaceresolutely and stand together". 

However, even before the fighting had ended, partisan political sniping hadcommenced on the round-the-clock television coverage and debates, and this hasescalated to a point of viciousness even while the debris of the attacks isbeing cleared out. 

Crucially, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh convened an all-party meetingat Delhi on December 1, 2008, Advani and BJP President, Rajnath Singh, chose toabsent themselves, though V.K. Malhotra, Deputy Leader of the BJP ParliamentaryParty, did attend. 

Governmental responses, moreover, show little sign ofcoming to terms with the enormity of the issue. 

The Prime Minister has chosen to emphasise amendments to the prevailing lawson terrorism – currently a set of toothless provisions inserted in 2005 intothe Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 – and the mirage of a FederalInvestigation Agency that is intended to make all terrorism in the countrymiraculously vanish, simply because it pretends to imitate the American FederalBureau of Investigation in nomenclature and intent. 

Neither of these initiatives, however, has any potential whatsoever tocontain the rampage of terrorism across a country that remains pitifullyunder-policed, with a paper thin intelligence cover concentrated in a few urbancentres and strategic locations. 

There has also been a reiteration of assurances that ‘maritime security’will be beefed up, with more power and resources to the Coast Guard and CoastalPolice Stations, and better coordination between these forces, and with theNavy. 

But this is all tired old stuff and has been articulated ad nauseum, since2001, with little evidence of change in capacities on the ground. 

Indeed, the critical capacities – those for policing – are actuallyundergoing continuing erosion, with the latest National Crime Records BureauReport indicating that the police – population ratio for the country at largeactually declined from an abysmal 126/100,000 in 2006 to 125/100,000 in 2007. 

Of course, a few random sanctions for augmentation of capacities have beenannounced in the wake of past attacks – including the sanction of 6,000additional personnel for the Intelligence Bureau (IB), immediately after theserial blasts in Delhi on September 13, 2008. 

Given the country’s turgid and obstructive bureaucracy, however, there areno signs of these sanctions resulting in an augmentation of capacities on theground any time soon. The very idea of responding on a war footing, cuttingthrough red tape and existing institutional limitations, does not appear toexist in any aspect of the country’s counter-terrorism responses. 

And then, of course, there is a question of response tothe very obvious role of Pakistan – and this is a palpable dead end. Evenpreliminary investigations have thrown up overwhelming evidence that everystring of control in the multiple terrorist strikes in Mumbai leads back toPakistan and to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) – an organization that, under itsnew identity as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa continues to enjoy direct state support inPakistan. 

In a rare outburst, Prime Minister Singh warned unnamed "neighbours"that "the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not betolerated, and that there would be a cost if suitable measures are not taken bythem." 

His Government is now reportedly "under pressure" to act againstPakistan, and a range of hair-brained responses are doing the rounds in officialcircles, including massive troop mobilization along the border, mimicking thepurposeless massing of troops under Operation Parakram, launched on December 16,2001, after the terrorist attack on India’s Parliament. 

680 soldiers were killed, without a single shot being fired, by the timeOperation Parakram was, inexplicably, called off on October 16, 2002, with theunsupported claim that its undefined "objectives" had been achieved. 

If this worthless and counter-productive exercise is the model to bereplicated in the present case, it would be no less than tragic. 

If, on the other hand, it is not, then there is little capacity – at thisjuncture – to design effective alternatives, in the foreseeable future, toimpose any "cost" on Pakistan, and such capacities can only beconstructed, gradually and systematically, over time, and with a clear strategyin mind – and there is little evidence of the latter at this juncture.

Indeed, the overwhelming focus of the Indian response to Pakistan’s role –either as the source of these attacks, or more direct involvement of thestate’s agencies in engineering or facilitating them – appears to beconcentrated on diplomatic efforts to bring international pressure to bear onPakistan. 

This has been an apparently successful initiative, with world leaders comingout with some of the most unambiguous condemnations of the incident andcommitments to support India’s efforts to address the problem in all itsdimensions. 

Crucially, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to arrive at Delhi onDecember 3, on a visit that many expect (or, more likely, hope) will producemore than just a very strong ‘message’ to Islamabad. 

While all this will certainly make the powers that be in Pakistan squirm abit, there is little reason to believe that the dynamic that has protected themin past and even greater transgressions, both in the region and well beyond,will not, once again, reassert itself.  

The truth is, it is not just India that is powerless to impose any unbearablepain on the basket case that is Pakistan – the ‘international community’,particularly including USA – are no better positioned. 

It is useful to recall, here, that US intelligence agencies concurred withAfghan and Indian agencies, that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)had engineered the terrorist bombing of the Indian Embassy on July 7, 2008, andthere had been great expectations, at that juncture as well, that this wouldresult in stronger action against Islamabad. 

Pakistan, however, has weathered many such storms and its diplomats andproxies are quick to range across the world peddling their theories of rootcauses and Muslim grievance to ever-willing audiences in the West and, indeed,even in victim countries such as India. 

In the meanwhile, the attack in Mumbai has done what maywell be irreparable damage to the "shining" image of the"emerging global power". 

The utter incapacity and incompetence of India’s security apparatus hasbeen incontrovertibly demonstrated in what may be an audacious attack by as fewas 10 terrorists (nine have been confirmed killed and one is currently incustody, singing like a canary). 

It is crucial, here, to notice the exemplary courage, exemplary leadershipand exemplary dedication to duty, among those who responded from the securityforces, who were given virtually nothing to fight with, and who still puteverything they had into the fight, with many losing their lives. 

Their personal commitment and attainment notwithstanding, the reality of theinstitutional and structural responses is disgraceful. 

While a detailed analysis of the counter-terrorism (CT) operation must waittill far more information is available, a few aspects are already evident.

The most significant of these is the sheer tardiness and inadequacy of response.The first shots in the multiple attacks in Mumbai were fired at about 21:40 inthe evening of November 26, and the incident was already on national televisionby 22:00 (all timings are approximate and based on available open sourcereportage).

Local Police contingents – including the Anti-terrorism Squad (ATS) headedby Hemant Karkare, who lost his life in the encounter – responded fairlyquickly, but, lacking protective equipment, firepower and even the mostrudimentary CT training, with tragic consequences, losing top line Policeleaders in the very first engagements. 

After that, the world witnessed the most astonishing paralysis, as thelocations of attack were loosely cordoned off by variously armed Policecontingents, but no forces appeared equipped or willing to enter and engage forhours following. 

It was evident that even the most basic of response protocols had not beenestablished, and the word repeatedly occurring in every live report in theselong initial hours was "chaotic". 

As one commentator in the New York Times noted, "The grainytelevision imagery suggested not so much a terrorist attack as the shapeless,omnidirectional chaos of Iraq." 

Local contingents of the Army – arriving at about 02:50, more than fivehours after the incident commenced – brought some semblance of order to theincident environments, but still did not enter the major sites of ongoingterrorist carnage. 

The first ‘special response team’ to arrive was a small group of MarineCommandos (Marcos), who actually sought engagement with the terrorists – buttheir own accounts suggest that they were not able to neutralize a singlyterrorist before they were pulled out. 

Eventually, a 200-strong contingent of the ‘elite’ National SecurityGuard (NSG) was deployed at 08:05, in the morning of November 27, and this isthe point at which the terrorists can seriously be considered to have beenengaged. 

But the NSG went into the locations blind – with no maps of the Taj MahalHotel and the Oberoi-Trident complex initially available – and wereextraordinarily tentative, unsure weather they were dealing with a hostagesituation, and transfixed by their fear of inflicting civilian casualties –the reality eventually disclosed was that the massacres in the three principalsites, the two hotels and Nariman House, where a Jewish family was trapped, wereover long before the NSG engaged.

The result was a stand-off that lasted all of 62 hours.

There is also, of course, the long succession ofintelligence warnings that were given to the state government, and that werealso passed on to the security establishments of the hotels under threat, buteven the limited security measures that were implemented by both local Policeand the hotel security apparatus were, as Praveen Swami notes, "lifted aweek before the attacks, after businesses and residents complained ofinconvenience." 

Swami, quotes an unnamed Police source, further, as stating, "We alsoremoved additional security… because our manpower was stretched to the limitand the personnel we had did not, in any case, have the specially-trainedpersonnel needed to avert a suicide-squad attack."

The Maharashtra state government has tried to package this operation as agrand success, arguing that the terrorists had "come to kill 5,000people" and to "blow up the Taj" (both pieces of unmitigatednonsense), and that, consequently, the eventual loss of life and damage tovarious structure, was not ‘as high as it could have been’. 

The reality, however, is that the multiple attacks – at 11 differentlocations – by a tiny contingent of terrorists, inflicting 195 fatalities (thefigure is tentative, with numbers still rising, and pending officialconfirmation) and leaving over 300 injured, and virtually devastating two majorlocations (the Taj and the Oberoi-Trident), fully achieved their attainablepotential and were complete successes from the point of view of their planners. 

They cannot, consequently, be thought of as anything but comprehensivefailures from the point of view of India’s security establishment. 

Indeed, the Mumbai carnage shows every mark of a botched operation from thesecurity point of view. 

If anything, security forces’ (SF) action appears to have trapped theterrorists in the locations, blocking off their avenues of planned escape –even as it gave them significant freedom of operation within them – instead ofquickly neutralizing them, and protracting the carnage for an incredible 62hours. 

Despite the extraordinary courage and evident commitmentof SF personnel and leaders, the reality is that there was a comprehensivestructural failure in Mumbai. 

Any terrorist operation can only be contained, in terms of its potential, inthe first few minutes. Which means that the "first responders" –invariably the local Police – have to be equipped, trained and capable of, ifnot neutralising, then, at least, containing the terrorists. 

If the first batches of Police personnel had arrived in sufficient strengthat each of the locations of terrorist attack in Mumbai, with appropriateweaponry, communications, transport and other technological force multipliers(such as, for instance, night vision goggles and thermal imaging systems for themajor standoffs in the Taj, Oberoi-Trident and Nariman House) and immediatelyengaged with the terrorists, they probably would have been able, in at leastthese three locations, to isolate the terrorists in small corners of the targetstructures and would have been able to minimise the loss of life, the materialdamage, and the operational time.

Many journalists ask the routine question after each of the increasinglyfrequent major terrorist strikes across India: why did this happen again? Themore rational question, given India’s capacities for intelligence, enforcementand CT response, is: why does this not happen more often?

Imitative mantras, such as "strong laws" and "federalagency" will not diminish the threat of terrorism that confronts India.  

It is only the hard slog of building effective capacities – notincrementally, in terms of what we already have, but radically, in terms of whatwe need – on a war footing, that will help diminish the enveloping and,progressively, crippling, threat of terrorism confronting India. 

Only this can help the government recover from the loss of public confidenceand of international prestige that this devastating attack has inflicted on thenation.

Regrettably, a national leadership – across party lines – that hasrepeatedly betrayed the national security interest for partisan political gains,does not demonstrate the necessary capacities for learning that can createdefences within any time frame that could be immediately relevant to thetrajectory of terrorism in the country. 

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for ConflictManagement. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the SouthAsia Terrorism Portal