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November as We Have Seen
Writing in a security-related document in the month of December, 2009, i.e., one year after 26/11 of 2008, no security analyst in India can avoid facing a very tricky question: `How safe is India now?’ A similar question in the international perspective is equally relevant: ‘How safe is the world today?’. While reports in this Newsletter, culled from various sources, now or earlier, will not suggest any hopeful or positive response, the Indian Home Minister candidly said India was still vulnerable to 26/11 like incidents. A very perceptive writing in the Hindustan Times of November 22, 2009, has put the matter in still more simpler terms, “A year on, we are still sitting ducks”. A copy of this has been placed after the Editorial. We have also taken the liberty of sharing with the readers two more rather significant assessments on the present situation in the region, one from the Editor-in-Chief of India Today of November 16, 2009, and the other from M.J. Akbar from Sunday Times of November 22, 2009 on: “Terror threat: We have lost the plot”. Anniversaries for 26/11 have been observed, pious intentions have been expressed, but the best tribute to the fallen heroes and victims would be to join hands, keep eyes and ears open and take a steely resolve to put in one’s best individually in order that “We shall overcome.” Cooperation and coordination – both at national and international levels – are imperative for successfully fighting the menace of terrorist violence, of whichever hue it might be and wherever these may occur.
There had been yet another attack on Pak Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi and also on ISI building in Peshawar. Al Qaeda has been rated as the biggest threat to the nation – both in the UK and the USA. Japan has also come on the hit list of All Qaeda, who have now started mobile armed training camps. Iran has reportedly pledged to fund the militants in their fight against the West. “Peace process is just a tactic and another round of armed rebellion to capture power was not far away”, so declared a key ideologue of the Maoists in Nepal, who have also threatened to run parallel government in the country. They had not only participated in secret parleys with their counterparts in India, a senior party leader has also confirmed extending full support to their Indian comrades. According to a Maoist leader in India, “killing is normal in any form of movement.” The Maoists in India are now reported to be reaching the cities, referring to their presence in the capital city of India, New Delhi. They are also having logistic support from the LTTE of Sri Lanka, and have planned a ‘new corridor’ for consolidating their hold on the ground.
The confusion and uneasiness in the European Union got resolved with the Belgian Prime Minister having been elected as the President of the European Council. India and the European Union have inked a civil nuclear pact. Hamid Karzai was formally sworn in as the President in Afghanistan. The US and China have reached the consensus that India and Pakistan “have agreed to work together to bring about peaceful relations in all of South Asia.” Interestingly, a US think-tank has assessed India as a rising global power.
Great news in the field of scientific development. The biggest scientific experiment, namely, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has started functioning again. Scientists have developed devices that could smell fears in individuals. Then you can now book 3-nights’ stay in a space hotel by 2012. ‘May also like to read the story why one should necessarily give 100% in a relationship.
Thanking you and with best regards,
D. C. Nath, IPS (Retd.)
Former Special Director, IB (MHA), Govt. of India,
Executive President & CEO,
International Institute of Security and Safety Management,
New Delhi, India.
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‘May like to glance through the input below from India Today, Sunday Times of India and Hindustan Times:
The Situation in Pakistan
Aroon Purie
November 5, 2009
All of this year, the news from Pakistan has been extremely alarming and has only got worse. Terrorists have been running amok in the country and most recently there were attacks at the heart of the country’s army headquarters in Rawalpindi. In fact, it is estimated there have been 300 terrorist attacks in two years, killing as many as 2,500 people. Along with the brazen attack on the army headquarters, bomb blasts and suicide attacks have taken place in Lahore, Peshawar, Islamabad and other smaller towns. The targets have been busy markets, five-star hotels, university campuses and bustling centres of urban life. There seems to be a violent incident every week and the death toll keeps mounting. Pakistan is at war within, under siege and in desperate trouble as a nation.
It is the Pakistan Taliban which is responsible for these attacks in response to the army’s operations to drive them away from south Waziristan. They seem to be able to strike at will and the Pakistan Government too appears incapable of preventing them from doing so. What these horrific events have now led to is a dangerous political rift between President Asif Zardari’s Government and the military top brass. The army is unimpressed by Zardari’s functioning and getting more restless as the attacks continue. Nine years of military rule under General Pervez Musharraf also means that the army is unlikely to kowtow to the civilian government or have any respect for it. It could now well want to seize power and of course, Zardari would not want to surrender it.
The province of Balochistan is also simmering; the economy is in a shambles and a country which has only just returned to democracy and an elected government is on the brink of collapse. Pakistan’s impending disintegration threatens not just its own civil society but also the rest of the world. It is not called the most dangerous place in the world for nothing. Today, Pakistan has become the new breeding ground of the Islamist terrorist while also being a nuclear power with a weak government. All this is a most lethal cocktail.
Our cover story this week is on whether Pakistan can be saved and why it actually needs to be. Our man in Karachi, Hasan Zaidi, reveals how seriously close the country is to collapse, the tug of war between Zardari and the army and talks about the options now available to civil society and the political class. We also look whether a reconciliation between political enemies like Nawaz Sharif and Zardari is possible, whether civil society and the judiciary can play a role and the impact that the developments in Pakistan could have on India.
Whatever India may think of Pakistan, it is important that our neighbour does not implode and become a country with an internal situation like Afghanistan. The collapse of an elected government is actually detrimental to India. The last thing we need is our troublesome neighbour with loose nukes ruled either by its military or constantly struggling against the Taliban.
The Editor-in-Chief, India Today
India Today- November 16, 2009.
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Terror threat: We have lost the plot
The ebb from outrage to rage, its decline to umbrage, and then a drift to amnesia is the narrative of the 12 months since the terrorist assault on Mumbai, which shook India and startled the world. America's immediate response to 9/11 was over the top; our phased reaction has been under-the-table. But a message went out from Washington: you provoke the US at your peril, no matter what the collateral damage. We play piped music before one trapped cobra and call it an opera. Then we fall asleep at our own show.
It is both easy and pointless to blame the government. Every government keeps a thermometer in its holster and calibrates its decibel levels according to ground temperature. If it's warm, it will blow hot, as Delhi did so vigorously between November and January. If it has cooled, Delhi will cool it as well. It is meaningless to blame our Opposition. We have an Opposition that has become impotent without ever turning potent. The politician will only be as resolute as the citizen, and our sensitivities have been dulled by a culture of complacence.
Even trauma has been reduced to television drama; once the scenes are played out, our bluster slowly splutters into silence.
It is possible that the military-intelligence-political establishment of Pakistan understands us far better than we understand them. They must have dismissed us as a soft state whose breast-beating is easily calmed by tokenism. On the first anniversary of 26/11, it is not Pakistan alone that is laughing at our weakness. Washington too has measured the tensile strength of a nation that finds unique ways to postpone its threats to the next calamity. Last year, we gloried in the belief that the US had promoted us to the ascending plateau of a regional power, en route to the status of world player. This week, President Barack Obama used a communiqué in Beijing, of all capitals, to tell us where we stand in his estimation, as one of the nations of South Asia whose border problems the worldwide partnership of equals, US and China, would help sort out.
The lean and lissome Obama has learnt to slap with a long hand.
Obama did not have a word to say, incidentally, about Dr A Q Khan's latest revelations on Chinese help in fuel and technology for Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, a clear instance of illegal proliferation. Do not be surprised, however, if India gets a lecture or two on nuclear proliferation.
War is not the only definition of strength. This fallacy has been promoted to disguise a policy of inaction. We have been cheated by this argument since it is obvious that war can have attendant consequences capable of deadly havoc. But there is a whole array or diplomatic and economic instruments that can be mobilized, nationally and internationally. We had the world's sympathy a year ago. We squandered it with inaction. Pakistan maneuvered its way out of international condemnation with some brilliantly painless promises. Islamabad bought the time that Delhi sold.
This week President Zardari presided over a meeting of the PPP's Central Executive Committee during which, in the words of Najam Sethi, an eminent Lahore editor, there was "a reassertion of Pakistan's maximalist position by both the prime minister and foreign minister on the resolution of the Kashmir dispute". This is probably a pre-emptive measure. Obama is likely to lean on Dr Manmohan Singh during the latter's visit to the White House, and push for a compromise on Kashmir acceptable to Pakistan. He might even wave a lollipop called a future seat in the Security Council as a distant prize for good behaviour.
Normalcy with Pakistan is a good idea: put me down as lead advocate of the band of peace missionaries. But before we seek normalcy, we must know what it means. Does it mean reward for unrepentant terrorism by post-Shimla Pact adjustments to the map of Jammu and Kashmir?
It used to be said that we do not have a foreign policy, just a Pakistan policy. We could have moved ahead; we may not even have a Pakistan policy now. We seem to indulge in a series of engagements with different nations, as if the world were an old-fashioned marketplace in which you could haggle your way through different shops, purchasing what was available at whatever price, without a coherent theme linking departure to destination.
Some politicians take recourse to fudge, and sell the notion of India as a soft power. This is a useful screen when you have turned the nation soft, instead of making it powerful. If we were in the midst of the Garden of Eden, this would have been laudable achievement. But we live in a region where terror haunts the headlines.
Amnesia is an invitation to the next terrorist assault.
M.J. Akbar
Sunday Times of India – November 22, 2009.
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A year on, we are still ducks
Now that the first anniversary of the Bombay attacks is nearly here, this might be a good time to work out how much has changed since 26/11. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, many of us believed that we were at a watershed in India’s fight against terror and that things could never be the same again. As we shall see, I’m not sure it has worked out that way.
Police/Paramilitary: Now that foreign security experts have had a chance to examine the TV footage and to analyse those terrible events, there seems to be a broad consensus that the Indian security establishment failed. There is something intrinsically shameful about a situation where ten young Pakistanis can hold India’s greatest city to ransom for nearly three days. Clearly, we took far too long to take out the terrorists and to regain control of Bombay.
Much of the fault lies with the Bombay Police. Despite several acts of individual valour, it seems obvious in retrospect that these ten men were able to completely outwit and terrify the thousands of policemen entrusted with keeping Bombay safe. Experts say that the first 12 hours of a terrorist situation are crucial. In the case of 26/11, the police did virtually nothing for those 12 hours. They refused to go into the Taj, the Oberoi or Nariman House on the grounds that the terrorists were better armed. Even when individual officers wanted to go in, their bosses pulled them back. It wasn’t till the National Security Guard (NSG) arrived the next morning that the battle against the terrorists began in earnest.
You can argue that the police were given shoddy equipment. You can also say that they are not equipped to fight terrorists. Both explanations are bogus. The failures of the Bombay Police on 26/11 had little to do with equipment and everything to do with poor leadership. And in this day and age, does it make any sense for a police force not to have a SWAT team or its equivalent trained for such situations?
The government has accepted that the police screwed up: the commissioner has been sacked. What is less clear is that it has made any attempt to ensure that should 26/11 happen again, the police force will be better placed to handle the situation.
On the other hand, there has been a difference in the way in which the NSG is organised. The force has finally got the aircraft and equipment it required and its men are now posted in cities all over India.
Intelligence Agencies: The reason why there have been so few terror attacks against the UK and the US in recent years is because their intelligence services are constantly monitoring terror modules and act to prevent attacks before they occur.
We know now that 26/11 was preventable. R&AW had forwarded intercepts that suggested that terrorists were on their way to attack Bombay to the office of the National Security Advisor (NSA). Shamefully, the government did nothing and let the attacks happen.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, there were calls for a reshuffle in the intelligence set-up. The government rejected these calls and stuck by the men who allowed 26/11 to happen. Since then, the intelligence apparatus has fallen into even greater disrepair.
A well-researched series of articles in the New Indian Express (run by the former editor of the Sunday HT, Aditya Sinha) reveals how R&AW, India’s foreign intelligence agency, has been raped and ravaged by senior officials. The level of morale in R&AW is so low today that if an attack were to take place outside the CGO Complex, the spies inside would be too depressed to notice.
Despite the efforts of P. Chidambaram to strengthen domestic intelligence, there is very little to suggest that India’s agencies will be able to warn us of any future attacks. Bizarrely, the government has not just allowed the decline to continue, it has allowed it to get much worse than anyone thought possible.
Politicians: I was never a great supporter of the upsurge of middle-class anger against politicians. It seemed to me to be too knee-jerk and too unconsidered a response. The officials who had let India down kept their jobs. The politicians were sent on enforced holiday.
Well, that holiday is now over. Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was removed as Maharashtra chief minister, now has a Cabinet post in Delhi. Former home minister R.R. Patil is back in the government. Shivraj Patil is about to be appointed a Governor.
So, the one visible evidence of change after 26/11 — no matter how symbolic or meaningless — has now been wiped out. It’s back to business as usual.
US/Pakistan: In foreign policy terms, our response to 26/11 has been a failure. At the time we believed that the event was so horrific that Pakistan would stand isolated in the community of nations. And that our shared experiences would lead the US to help us in our own battle against terror.
Both hopes have been belied.
Whatever horror the US felt over 26/11 has long since dissipated. Under Barack Obama, America seems to be abandoning the pro-India policy of old and there is no sense in which its attitude to Pakistan has been altered by the Bombay attacks.
Most disastrous of all has been our failure to successfully demand any kind of accountability from Pakistan. Our government speaks in two contradictory voices. On the one hand, our home ministry keeps sending dossiers to Islamabad and threatening Pakistan with dire consequences if it continues to back terror. On the other, the foreign ministry promises eternal friendship to Pakistan and even agrees to allow India’s alleged interference in Baluchistan to be included in a joint statement suggesting a kind of parity that at once destroys the Indian position that what Pakistan has done is so horrific that Islamabad deserves to be isolated.
Only one of these positions can be valid at any given time. The government cannot try both approaches simultaneously and then wonder why the Pakistanis laugh in our face and refuse to take any serious action against the men who sent the terrorists into Bombay.
And finally: It’s a depressing conclusion. But it is inescapable. Very little has really changed. A new terror attack like 26/11 can happen again.
And our government may not be able to protect us.
Vir Sanghvi
Hindustan Times – November 22, 2009.
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