Trivialising Counter Terrorism

Despite the recent attack by suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) terrorists on Hindu pilgrims in a temple inGandhinagar and periodic reports of the activities of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in itsterritory, Gujarat is not yet a terrorism-affected state. But, it is a terrorism-prone state due to thefollowing reasons:

• Its border with Pakistan and its coastline and innumerable creeks which facilitate infiltration ofanti-national elements by land and sea.
  
  
• Its reputation as the state, next to Maharashtra, which provides the most congenial conditions for theoperations of Pakistan-based transnational mafia groups, which operate in tandem with Pakistani pan-Islamicterrorist groups.
  
  
• The presence in its territory of economic and other strategic targets, which could attract  anyterrorist groups wanting to destabilise our economy.
  
  
• Its weak intelligence-collection, preventive, investigative and law enforcement machinery as seen duringthe massacre of Hindus in Godhra earlier this year  and the subsequent massacre of a large number ofinnocent Muslim civilians, who had no responsibility for the Godhra horror.
  
  
• The inevitable feelings of alienation of the Muslim community due to their traumautic experience and theperceived failure of the State to protect them and its alleged  indifference to their hurt feelings.
  
  

Any plan for strengthening this capability would have to address the reasons mentioned above which havemade the State terrorism-prone.  Surprisingly, instead of doing so, the ruling party, in its manifesto,has reduced  CT to a farce by focussing on issues such as providing CT training to youths, compulsory NCCtraining, setting up sainik schools along the borders etc.

Such issues have greater relevance to counter-insurgency where the insurgents operate from amongst thepeople like fish out of water and to States already affected by terrorism such as Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) than to Gujarat.

What the election plank as projected and the rhetoric based on it might achieve is not a better CTcapability, but a public paranoia of terrorism directed at the members of the minority community, therebyfurther aggravating the already worrisome communal polarisation in the State.

This writer has been the most relentless in drawing attention to the threats to India's national securityfrom the hydra-headed monster of Pakistan-based pan-Islamic terrorism, inspired by Osama bin Laden and hisInternational Islamic Front (IIF), and to the need for exercising our right of active defence against it bycarrying our CT operations, if necessary, to Pakistani territory, through appropriate overt/covert means.

At the same time, he has been equally consistent in cautioning that we should not nurse or encouragesuspicions about the Muslim community just because some of their co-religionists have taken to terrorism. 

If one leaves aside J&K,there are no reports of even  a single Indian Muslim from other parts ofIndia  undergoing jehad training in any of the madrasas of Pakistan which have hundreds of Muslims fromall over S.E. and Central Asia undergoing training. 

In the 1980s, not a single Indian Muslim joined the mercenary force created by the USA's CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA) to fight against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.  When bin Laden created hisIIF in 1998, many Islamic extremist organisations of the world joined it.  Not a single Indian Muslimorganisation -- not even from J&K -- has done so. 

Hundreds of Muslims from all over the world rushed to Afghanistan to help the Taliban and Al Qaeda when theUS started its air strikes on October 7, 2001.  Not a single Indian Muslim -- not even from J&K --has done so.  Many countries in the world were rocked by anti-US and pro-bin Laden demonstrations bylocal Muslims, but not India. You visit any bazaar in S.E. Asia or even in Hong Kong.  You will find manyshops selling bin Laden T-shirts, caps etc. Rarely in India.

The overwhelming majority of our Muslims have remained nationalists and patriotic and kept away from thepan-Islamic terrorists. When they feel aggrieved by the perceived failure of the Government to protect them,they go and cry on the shoulders of the media, non-governmental organisations, the National Human RightsCommission, the opposition parties or at the most, foreign human rights organisations, and not on theshoulders of bin Laden and his irrational tribe.

One must be careful that by the way they project the problem of terrorism during the election campaign, thepolitical parties do not drive sections of them into bin Laden's embrace.

India has been facing the problem of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism for over 40 years -- first in theNorth-East, then in Punjab and J&K and then in other parts of India.  Till to-day, the nation doesnot have a credible CT doctrine based on national consensus. There is no lucid understanding of the problem. There has been no clear identification of the overt and covert options available, no attempt to create thecapability to exercise those options and no determination to use those options.

All we have is rhetoric.  CT is used by political parties as a stick  to beat not terrorists, buteach other with -- in Parliament and outside.  Of the four Special Task Forces appointed by theGovernment after Kargil in 2000, three -- those on the intelligence apparatus, internal security and bordermanagement -- made important recommendations in September, 2000, having a bearing on CT.  Our politicalparties have had no time till now to have a meaningful discussion on them and on the follow-up action taken bythe Government.

9/11 has been followed by intense debate in the US Congress on CT and  the measures to strengthenhomeland security.  How many debates, marked by knowledge and expertise,  we have had on thissubject in our Parliament?

Instead of evolving a credible CT doctrine followed by resolute  action to enforce it, we have reducedCT to the level of Hyde Park oratory.  If we continue at this rate, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's militarydictator, and bin Laden may have the last laugh. 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and, presently,Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)