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Fog On The Monocles

Our sleuths live that fable, crying 'tiger, tiger' except when it comes

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Fog On The Monocles
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Intelligence Faultlines
  • Poor coordination between central-state agencies
  • Overwhelming emphasis on political intelligence rather than counter-intelligence
  • Turf wars between intelligence agencies
  • No accountability or transparency
  • State police ill-equipped and poorly trained

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"The Indian intelligence structure is flawed. The present structure and processes in intelligence gathering and reporting lead to an overload of background and unconfirmed information and inadequately assessed intelligence. Joint Intelligence Committee reports do not receive the attention they deserve at the political and higher bureaucratic levels. There are no checks and balances in the Indian intelligence system."

It has been seven years since the Kargil review committee made these observations on Indian intelligence. But they obviously fell on deaf ears as just last weekend terrorists struck one more time—with precision, andsuccess—claiming 41 lives at two busy venues in the city of Hyderabad. And the dead horse of 'intelligence failure' was flayed yet again to explain why our sleuths didn't see it coming.

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What everyone saw coming was the staccato war of words that ensued between the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the state police. The former was quick to point to the warning it conveyed to the Andhra Pradesh police on August 23, five days before the blasts. The state police was equally prompt in retorting that the UO (Unofficial Order, as all IB reports are referred to) was vague and "not actionable".

Who do you blame then? Not much has changed in the intelligence-gathering mechanism since the Kargil committee report. And state police across the country continue to operate in the same time-warp that breeds chronic blindness. This translates into ignoring warnings and failing to keep its ears to the ground in sensitive areas. With little attention being paid to the basic tenets of policing, the force often resorts to making false arrests and faking encounters after a terrorist strike. This may satisfy its political masters and quieten the media but proves counter-productive in stemming the tide of terrorism.

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May 20, 2007: Two days after a blast killed eight during Friday prayers at Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad’s earlier tryst with terror

Prakash Singh, ex-DGP, UP, says as much. "Policing in India is in a shambles. It is no longer professional. CMs today are more interested in intelligence on their political rivals than on anti-national elements." Singh has for a decade been spearheading a campaign to usher in police reforms that will ease the political stranglehold on the police. "If we can ensure good thana-level policing and generate actionable intelligence from the local police station, we can immediately make the job of the terrorist a lot more tougher," he says.

What Singh and others like him advocate is simple. Ignore politicians, not intelligence warnings. Resources of the police and intelligence machinery, they feel, should focus on ensuring law and order, detection, investigation and gathering of real-time intelligence. Once this happens, the police will be geared to act on an intelligence tip-off and take preventive action. Had the Hyderabad police built on IB's August 23 input, the blasts in the city could perhaps have been averted. Instead, it was simply dismissive of the warning.

The Hyderabad police is not alone in ignoring intelligence alerts. Forty-four days prior to the July 11 train blasts in Mumbai, the IB had sent in a reasonably specific input to the Mumbai police calling for immediate action. "On May 26, we asked the Mumbai police to arrest a known suspect because we had specific information that he could be involved in a major terrorist attack," a senior Union home ministry official told Outlook. "No action was taken on the ground that it would be politically sensitive. But after the blasts, his interrogation helped us make the first arrests in the case. By then most of the actual conspirators, including a few Pakistani nationals, had already escaped."

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"We have to get out of this mindset of merely blaming the central intelligence agencies and understand the systemic failures," says Ajit Doval, a decorated police officer and a former director of IB. "We must question the political establishment to whom the agencies are answerable. We should look at the common minimum programme of the UPA government and see whether they have spelt out their commitment to end terrorism. If so, what are those postulates?"

Senior intelligence officials also rue the fact that the political leadership on several occasions actually comes in the way of the police taking action. This causes a major gap in the generation of intelligence and follow-up. It only helps the terrorist or shields those providing him support.

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Be it the police or intelligence agencies, bureaucratic wrangling brings any effort to improve functioning to nought. This is the fate National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan's move to ensure intelligence-sharing between RAW and IB met. By all accounts a laudable step, it came undone courtesy the turf battles within RAW. The agency is afflicted with that typically Indian malaise of officials undermining each other and promoting favourites at the cost of professional excellence.

Indian agencies are also gathering more slack than intelligence because they are above any external audit or scrutiny. Bring them under parliamentary control and you might see them change, is what experts prescribe. As a senior serving intelligence official told Outlook, "The agencies are already under some sort of political control as they report to either the prime minister or the home minister or the chief ministers in the states. What needs to be done is to expand the ambit of political control as it is in other democracies. The only way we will ever see a professional approach is when a parliamentary committee periodically reviews the intelligence they produce and corrects the systemic failures."

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And the police? Committee after committee has underlined urgency with regard to reform. If even a few of their recommendations are implemented, they would go a long way in making our police a real force and perhaps even free them from political interference. But even a suggestion of reform is anathema to most state governments. Not even the Supreme Court ruling to implement changes has made them comply.

To ask that same old question: How many more terrorist attacks will it take for the intelligence agencies and the police to stop holding the other responsible and get down to some real work? We have heard a lot about "the need for systemic changes" but unless they actually happen, and the apparatus is allowed to operate impartially, sans any political interference, terrorists will continue to play their evil hand—and win.

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