We need to focus on urgent efforts to build, consolidate and reorient the state’s capacities to deal with threats that remain, at best, dormant, even as new dangers loom on the horizon.
Across India’s Northeast, total fatalities dropped from 1,054 in 2008 to 843 in 2009. Even Manipur, the state worst affected by a multiplicity of criminalized insurgencies, saw a marginal improvement, with fatalities declining from 492 in 2008 to 416 in 2009 – a figure that is still devastatingly high in this tiny state of 2.4 million people. Counter-insurgency (CI) gains in Manipur are, however, tentative and remain reversible, with little evidence of civil governance in the state.
Though Assam saw an escalation in total fatalities, from 373 in 2008, to 392 in 2009, virtually the entire ‘executive committee’ of the United Liberationa Front of Asom (ULFA) is now in custody, barring the group’s ‘commander-in-chief’ Paresh Baruah. Another of the state’s virulent terrorist groupings, the Black Widow (BW) was forced to surrender en masse after the capture of its ‘commander-in-chief’, Jewel Gorlosa. The year also saw the mass surrender of the United People’s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) cadres . By and large, the most dangerous terrorist and insurgent formations have suffered dramatic reverses in the state.
Despite soaring apprehensions after Mumbai 26/11, no major Islamist terrorist attack was witnessed at any urban centre outside J&K. However, union home minister P. Chidambaram has repeatedly spoken of at least 13 terrorist attempts that have been averted by intelligence and enforcement agencies in the year after 26/11, and continuous alerts, arrests and exposures of international networks and conspiracies have kept the temperature high.
Bangladesh, which had emerged under Pakistani and radical Islamist influence, as another canker in India’s side, gave dramatic evidence of a sharp reversal of its policy and orientation after Shiekh Hasina’s electoral sweep in December 2008. The Sheikh Hasina government has, since, cracked down on terrorists of all shades, including the Islamists, as well as various insurgent groupings active in India’s Northeast, who had long secured patronage and safe haven on Bangladeshi soil.
No doubt, the situation is not quite as alarming as the 223 district figure may initially suggest. A third of the country has by no means been ‘captured’ by the Maoists, nor are these vast areas seething with disruptive violence. The home minister thus clarified that violence "has been consistently witnessed in about 400 Police Station areas of around 90 districts in 13 states" (there are over 14,000 Police Stations in the country). But 90 districts experiencing ‘consistent violence’ is significantly greater than the total of 55w variously affected districts in 2003. The steady expansion of Maoist networks and the calibrated extension of their violence reflect a significant strategic failure on the part of the state. The data on fatalities provides an index of the degree to which the Maoists have monopolized the initiative, with civilians and Security Forces (SFs) accounting for nearly 71 per cent of the 998 killings in 2009, as against 66 per cent of the 638 fatalities in 2008.
With regard to the Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorism in J&K and across the wider Indian theatre, the most significant and potentially threatening unknown, in the medium and long term, remains the outcome of the US ‘AfPak’ enterprise. This is a project that has been hobbled by persistent incoherence, with each announcement of a ‘surge’ accompanied by unrealistic ‘exit’ deadlines that can only give encouragement to the enemy, and fuel greater violence. A possible failure of the AfPak campaigns threatens not only the descent of the entire target region into anarchy, but would have crucial consequences on India’s internal security. A premature Western withdrawal from Afghanistan would restore the open alliance between the Pakistani state and the Islamist extremists to a "pre-9/11 plus" status, with even more virulent capacities and networks being directed outwards – and substantially into India. While this danger is now increasingly acknowledged within the Indian strategic community, there is little evidence of a sufficient effort to create the necessary capacities for response.
Within the internal scenario, while improvements in many theatres are manifest, vulnerabilities persist. The quality of governance remains indifferent, often abysmal, most dramatically in the Maoist affected areas, but also in J&K and the states of the Northeast, as well as across wide territories of many of the states that are still outside the ambit of terrorist and insurgent violence.
Crucially, the crisis of capacities remains substantially unaddressed within the intelligence, enforcement and administrative apparatus. It is not the intention, here, to make a detailed assessment of this crisis, or of the faltering efforts of the recent past to address the colossal cumulative deficits that have crippled India’s security systems. It is useful, however, to note that, notwithstanding a nascent coherence of perspectives at New Delhi, translating this into effective capacities is a project still very much in the future. Regrettably, moreover, the Centre’s efforts have been undermined, at least in some measure, by an obsession with form, to the abiding neglect of content. Moreover, the Centre has failed to impress upon many of the states the urgency and magnitude of what is required of them, and a conflict of perspectives remains recurrent – manifested most recently in the Jharkhand government’s brief suspension of anti-Maoist operations, though this decision was quickly reversed after the hue and cry raised by the media. It is evident, however, that there are several state governments and political constituencies whose heart is not in the CI efforts the Centre is trying to catalyse.
There has certainly been significant relief in many theatres, and in the overall levels of terrorist and insurgent violence experienced across India. A sagacious use of this respite would focus on urgent efforts to build, consolidate and reorient the state’s capacities to deal with threats that remain, at best, dormant, even as new dangers loom on the horizon.
Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal