Today, marks the 9th anniversary of the heinous 26/11 terror strike in Mumbai – ten terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) sailed to Mumbai by a boat from Karachi, landed near Colaba on 26 November 2008, entered the city late that evening, and shot their way to the Taj Hotel, the Chabad House (Jewish centre), the Oberoi Towers, and the Chattrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus: The city under siege for more than three days during which the terrorists killed at least 166 persons and injured scores of others: while nine terrorists got killed during their encounter with security forces, one of the terrorists, Ajmal Kasab, who was caught alive on the first night of the attack, was put to death after a judicial trial, nearly five years after the incident. The Mumbai 26/11 was not the first or the last terror strike against India by Pakistan-based terrorists, there have been several such incidents in the last couple of decades or so.
Besides the Mumbai 26/11, other such well-remembered attacks against India by Pakistani terrorists include the Kargil attack 1999; the Indian Airlines Airbus – IC 814 hijjack, 1999; The Parliament attack 2001; the January 2 attack on the Indian Air Force Base in Pathankot, this year; and the September 18 attack on the 12th Brigade headquarters at Uri in which 19 soldiers were killed, also this year. All these incidents led the Indian government to weigh its options for response in the face of the grave provocations that it attributed directly or indirectly to Pakistan. In fact, at least since Kargil in 1999, there have been several occasions which the nation and the government have found themselves in a situation similar to the one that has unfolded after the Uri attack – extreme public anger and pressure to give a ‘befitting reply‘ to Pakistan.
What is interesting to note here is that, shortly after the Pathankot attack, without any immediate agitation, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had telephonically assured India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Islamabad would support in investigating leads provided by New Delhi. The Union Ministry of External Affairs had said: “Prime Minister Modi strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against organizations and individuals responsible … specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan”. Sharif reportedly “appreciated the maturity shown by the Indian government”.
But, unfortunately, despite Islamabad’s assurance, India suffered yet another terror attack (in Uri) within less than nine months of the Pathankot incident. A latest analysis of various terror attacks in the country in the last couple of decades indicated that besides places close to the border with Pakistan, most of India’s major cities and certain popular tourist locations are under serious threat of terrorists strikes. The situation is unlikely to get better anytime soon.
In these circumstances, it wouldn’t be out of place to suggest that, besides Pakistan’s complicity in all the attacks, involvement of some individuals within the country, at least in few of the incidents, like the Kargil, Mumbai, Pathankot and Uri, could be a definite reality. These attacks may not have been possible without the help of local traitor, who could be anyone amongst the country’s citizens, including persons from the Intelligence bureau and even from the Defence Forces. The anti-terrorism agencies need to thoroughly investigate the ‘insider’ role in all the terror attacks that have taken place in India post-Kargil in 1999, particularly in view of the fact that the country’s key security installations and high-profile civilian buildings and religious places are under a serious risk from terrorist strikes. Without solving internal security issues, planning to counter only external threat perception will remain purely an academic consolation, not a practical exercise.
Coming back to Mumbai 26/11, a preliminary inquiry in the attack had revealed that the local police were ill-prepared and under-equipped to tackle terrorists. Besides, infighting and ego clashes within the force had prevented them from responding in an effective manner to the challenge of the terror strike. That was one of the reasons the Maharashtra government refused to make public the report of the R.D. Pradhan Committee, that inquired into the functioning of the Mumbai police. However, since Mumbai 26/11, India has been making efforts to streamline policing and improve its intelligence gathering mechanism, but the pace of implementation of crucial security projects has been abysmally slow, and this is precisely the reason the country continues to be an easy target of terror attacks. Agreed, restructuring the internal security architecture is a continuous process as it involves many agencies at many levels; but the threat of terror attacks is immediate and so security agencies as well as the political class and the bureaucrats must rise to the challenge effectively.
Take for instance, the security on sea is currently handled by multiple agencies that include the National Navy, the Coast Guard and the Coastal Police stations of various state governments. The Union Government has given nine states and UTs the responsibility to set up, among other agencies, marine police force and execute central programmes to identify fishing folk and their vessels, while the Navy has been given responsibility as an over-all in charge of the coastal security. But absence of an appropriate mechanism has meant that the agencies directly responsible for coastal security still do not have guidelines on crucial issues, such as how to deal with suspected terrorists who operate in or close to the Indian waters. Bureaucratic red tape is said to be holding back concrete steps planned but not implemented due to undefined responsibilities of various policing agencies.
Unfortunately, our bureaucrats, who have a dreary approach towards tackling terrorism, don’t seem to have learnt anything from the past terror incidents, and as a result, India continues to be under a serious security risk.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
