Post-26/11, is India safer?

The BEST assessment is that the Government's strategy has broadly worked but there's no room for complacency. Home Minister Chidambaram gets a pat, but the threat remains and major systemic changes need to be carried out.

Aroon Purie, Editor-in-Chief, India Today:

Our first meeting was in March 2009 when the Board of Experts on Security Terror (BEST) was set up as a part of the India Today Group's campaign on the 'War on Terror' which was launched in the aftermath of 26/11. The idea was to keep our audience briefed with expert viewpoints on security and terror and what can be done. Our focus continues to be on the threat of cross-border terrorism and in the last 11 months, nothing major has happened as far as a terrorist attack is concerned. Is this our good fortune or has the government done something?

Meanwhile, other security and terror-related issues have come up. Naxal terror is now on top of the national agenda and we want to hear from you on how the Government should tackle it. We can't, of course, stop looking at Pakistan which seems to have its own internal problems but doesn't appear to be repentant for what it does to India and continues on its stubborn path. How we should tackle Pakistan remains an issue. Add to all this, of course, is tensions with China. We are keen to hear from you how India is dealing with China and what it really needs to do.

Raj Chengappa, Managing Editor, India Today:

In March, the BEST assessment was that the Government had totally failed to tackle the terror threat post-26/11. We are just a month away from the first anniversary of 26/11 and we need an assessment as to whether we have progressed, have there been any big shifts or as Aroon mentioned, are we just lucky that we haven't had a major cross-border terror attack?

Ved Marwah, Former Governor, Jharkhand:

A number of factors have helped in ensuring that we haven't had any major incidents since 26/11. Some credit for it goes to the Government and some to developments in Pakistan where the jihadis are busy fighting a battle for survival; India and Jammu and Kashmir is no longer on top of their agenda. If the Pakistan Army wins, we will have trouble and if the jihadis win, of course, we will have more trouble. P. Chidambaram taking over as the Union home minister has helped in creating a feeling of urgency in the security agencies-intelligence agencies, state police and paramilitary forces.

Certain legislative actions have been taken, the law has been tightened with the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act and an investigative agency has been set up. But the Government should not be complacent. The danger is very much there and the moment things settle down in our neighbourhood, we will be a big target for the jihadis. The apparatus inside the country is there; it hasn't been identified or eliminated. This can be activated at an opportune moment. For that the Government still needs to do a number of steps. Among them is that the Government needs to give the National Anti-Terrorism Agency a mandate to keep an eye on developments within the country and in the world. It should analyse every incident and take steps to strengthen our preparedness. We need a comprehensive law which is understood by the investigative agencies, the prosecution and the courts. We need a broad national consensus among all political parties and they should not make political capital out of a terror incident.

Satish Nambiar, Former Deputy Chief of the Army Staff:

Last time we started on the premise that our focus should be on prevention. I have been articulating this for sometime and this is relevant. Now it's almost a year and we have not had a major strike. So let us credit the establishment. I would also like to see us evolve a pre-emptive strategy and develop a capability for pre-emptive strikes on terrorists dealing with the jihadi groups. This means that we have to find out where they are located and where their leadership is. If we have not done that then there is something seriously wrong. The Air Force has the capability to effect precision attacks. We must focus on developing it because we cannot wait for things to happen. We must pre-empt terror attacks.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor, Strategic Studies, Centre for Policy Studies:

There has been no terror attack for nearly 11 months but that doesn't mean that India is less vulnerable to terror attacks since we last met. The vulnerability level remains the same, but are we better prepared? Yes, we are better prepared not institutionally but at the level of Governmental response. It goes to show that if you put a professional in charge of a ministry he or she can make a difference. Ever since Chidambaram took over as the home minister, we have seen a conscious effort to revamp India's internal security policy.

He began from scratch and today knows exactly what is happening. Plus, he has put everybody under pressure. Every morning, he meets the heads of different agencies and the National Security Adviser (NSA). Therefore, for the first time there's coordination at the senior-most level. The prime minister has given him a blank cheque and doesn't interfere at all with the execution of Home Ministry policies and therefore suddenly you find there is a sea change in terms of management of India's internal security policy.

For the last three-and-a-half years, I have heard the prime minister periodically say that Naxalism is the biggest threat to India's security but there was no action. It was as if just waving the red flag was enough. But suddenly we have at least an effort, if not a strategy, to deal with Naxal violence. All this is happening at a personal level. What happens if the person is no longer there, there will be a slide back to where we were a year ago. It is remarkable that there hasn't been a single major terror attack in the last 11 months because we have ensured that 26/11 is not forgotten.

Even though we know at the policy-making level that Pakistan will not do anything about it, we have adopted a policy of throwing a dossier at them to keep them on the defensive. I was quite sceptical at the beginning of the wisdom of preparing a dossier and handing it to the sponsors of terrorism in India. So far, we have seen that these dossiers keep them off balance and remind Pakistan that as long as it would not act against the masterminds of the 26/11, there will be no normalisation of relations with India. Earlier, the Government had not shown this kind of will to stay on the course for more than few months. It came close to reversing the policy at Sharm el-Sheikh. But then stepped back. In a way a message has been sent to Pakistan that the onus is on them.

Ajit Kumar Doval, Former Director, Intelligence Bureau:

When you say, "Is India now better prepared to tackle terror attacks?" the terror threat has got to be seen in two areas. First, Pakistan and terrorist groups are entities, and second is the response that is the Indian state in its pro-active capability to prevent and to punish. The threat level has gone down-partly due to what is happening inside Pakistan; partly due to diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, partly what India has done diplomatically- playing its card in sustaining the pressure, calibrating it and not letting it be put on the backburner. Pakistan has come to some sort of an assessment that any covert action may probably incur an unacceptable cost.

It appeared that they are working on this assessment as was evident during former Pakistan NSA Major-General Mahmud Ali Durrani's recent visit. Institutional changes have not come up in a big way, except in building up an organisation for investigation. Chidambaram has been able to put the house in order. It is not that new capacity building has been done, but the existing capacity is now being used more optimally. In being pro-active, intelligence services have an important role to play. Our intelligence services too are performing and they have been much more effective than they were before.

G. Parthasarathy, Former High Commissioner to Pakistan:

India's ability to influence the real decisionmakers in Pakistan is limited. Your leverage with the Pakistan military is limited. The US, China and Saudi Arabia are the only countries which wield clout in the Pakistan military. Now, Saudi Arabia seems to be going along with what the Americans want. I think our effort to thwart Pakistan's attempt to bring Kashmir into the entire terrorist Afghanistan-Pakistan equation was imaginatively done. The focus, therefore, remained only on Afghanistan-Pakistan. The second point is that we are able to work with this system and get provisions in the Kerry-Lugar Act which for the first time singled out and conditioned aid to Pakistan to fund terrorism across its borders.

This was a conscious effort and the embassy and the ambassador deserve some credit for it. We have been able to influence one side, but also managed to move away from the initial pressure. We will have to find a mechanism at least on a back channel to engage the ISI. Whether or not to share intelligence is debatable, but we should spell out specifically what they should not do and what we mean by the infrastructure of terrorism. How that works out still remains to be seen. Pakistan has got its hands full on its western border and it may have to pay a heavier price if it repeats or even tries to repeat something like the 26/11. This message has been conveyed primarily because many citizens from other countries were affected by the terror strike and, most importantly, the Israelis too had their own impact.

This was the fall out of Mumbai. India derived a benefit and, in fact, it neutralised many things the previous government did like weeping about Pakistan being a victim of terrorism, joint terror mechanism and all such nonsense. If the Government shifts its focus with respect to Pakistan, to tell them about the price which they will have to pay and about what we mean by the terrorism infrastructure, it will be useful. Pakistan is in a very delicate situation and my hunch says that its army will run into a mess in Waziristan. There's a power struggle going on between the army and President Asif Ali Zardari.

If the army prevails, then they will be emboldened to look eastwards. If they don't, they could well be emboldened to divert attention and so under no circumstances should we let down our guard. Chidambaram has changed the ambience of the Government and the way it looks towards terrorism. In China's case though, its Government seems to have gone the other direction. Immediately after Mumbai, they welcomed Pakistan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Tariq Majid and held out all sorts of goodies to him. The Saudis have been quiet apart from voting on Kashmir in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Kapil Kak, Additional Director, Centre for Air Power Studies:

We are congratulating ourselves that nothing has happened in last 11 months. Let's reverse this. Nothing has happened as Pakistan is pre-occupied with its troubles on its western border. In the wake of 9/11, infiltration into J&K has virtually been reduced to a trickle, from 13 to less than one a day. Since Chidambaram took over as home minister, preparedness levels have been heightened but we have a long way to go. If there is an aerial attack, which has been feared and talked about, we are not prepared at all on the southern side which is very vulnerable as there are no radars to detect an aerial intrusion. Unless we get a homeland security kind of a template to prevent terror attacks, nothing much can be done. There has been a great deal of improvement on the intelligence side but I am not sure whether there has been an improvement in assessments. Situational awareness in managing terror now and in the next 10 or 15 years is crucial for any mechanism that would come in. I think it was a statesman-like act in not exercising the military option post-26/11. We have seen the rich dividends that philosophy has paid.

Yes, we have precision attack capabilities and have strengthened it competently and can deliver punishment precisely, but we also need to factor into our calculus that Pakistan is not going to let that attack or series of attacks go uncontested. Are we prepared to get into a limited war? I would much rather go the Chinese way. After the war with Vietnam, they tucked their tail between the legs and ran back to Beijing because they wanted to develop. We must follow the same strategy and keep in mind that strategic importance of India is its 9 per cent growth rate in the next 20 years.

Kiran Bedi, Former DG, Bureau of Police Research and Development:

We have more than a million policemen. I don't know whether any assessment has been made on their training, welfare or personnel policy. We invest nothing and have no objective assessments. I have not come across a single objective police assessment on police performance and their impact on us. The real intelligence, tackling of terror is actually done by the footsoldiers. I don't think that Chidambaram has reached the footsoldiers. Chidambaram has only reached the Central Police Organisations (CPOS). He has at least met the Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief and the NSA, but why didn't he meet the state DGPs? The BSF and CRPF should be a part of his meeting and he should start involving others CPOs.

I don't think the responses are truly corrective, they are still only reactive. I want to see Chidambaram grooming leadership. I doubt if he is doing it. I don't see impatience in him. We all have to be in a hurry to be good leaders. If Chidambaram says police is a state subject, it is not acceptable to me because he can groom leadership. Maybe our expectations from him are high.

There is a big difference in the way we are responding to this meeting and the last one; the last one was one of total helplessness. Today, we may be over the moon but we should not be satisfied. We expect Chidambaram to spread good practices, structures, systems, responses and human resource policies down the line.

Ajai Sahni, Executive Director, Centre for Conflict Studies:

I agree with Kiran. There is a tremendous change in ambience but it is essentially something on the surface. Basically, our expectations are too high. Our standards have fallen so low that we are delighted with anybody doing anything. India is the only country in the world which idolises people for doing their jobs. What has been done in terms of real capacity transformation? Yes, there has been some additional efficiency in utilisation of existing capacities. In certain sectors, intelligence is one of the critical areas, the Central agencies have also been geared up to start trying to coordinate with the state agencies.

Are we better prepared? Chidambaram's answer was "we are as vulnerable as we were on 26/11". It would be wonderful if he becomes the home minister of India and not just of the Centre. It's not his job. He can't be running police stations at the ground level. Yes, he can coordinate better and create a better ambience, but he can't be running the security apparatus of the whole country. I am not an admirer of his predecessor Shivraj Patil but it was completely nonsensical to say Patil must go because there has been a terror attack in Mumbai. Protecting Mumbai is the job of the Mumbai Police, in coordination with the other agencies. Is the Mumbai police better off today? The National Security Guards (NSG) and Force One of the Mumbai Police have been allocated land which has been encroached by a builder and a slum colony.

One can meet all the DGs in the country but are the DGs running a police force that can be effective? No. Orissa has a sanctioned strength of 207 IPS cadres. It has 84 officers in place. There are 30-40 per cent capacity deficits in leadership at different levels in the state police forces. You can coordinate all you like and pass any law in the country but who will implement this law? You can do nothing with 1.2 judges per lakh population when worldwide, it is between 11 and 39. A police force can't do its job efficiently because it doesn't have the capacity to do so. The IB has improved tremendously, in terms of coordination, but what about capacity building? There is, moreover, a certain critical mass below which no augmentation is going to diminish our vulnerabilities. See the training of police forces: raw recruits are being thrown into special operations groups after 13 weeks of training.

Chidambaram is doing a good job but it is not his exclusive job to protect India. The rest of the system is still dysfunctional and the accumulated capacity deficits are so great and the rate of redressal so slow that Chidambaram's efforts will soon be overtaken by challenges. You can celebrate 11 months without any terror incident but it has nothing to do with any response that we have put in place; the critical mass is simply not there to alter the quantum of threat we are confronted with. We are just as vulnerable today as we were before.

V.K. Datta, Former DDG MO (Special Operations):

Let's not be lulled into complacency because nothing has happened since 26/11. We have been lucky and the luck is due to circumstances that Pakistan is facing now. The demon has not gone away, only his attention has been diverted. What we must examine is that after 26/11, it was for the first time that we were able to actually prove to the international community that Pakistan is a rogue nation. The cumulative pressure of the whole episode of producing evidences and handing over a dossier of these to Pakistan, has put them on guard. It is not non-state actors like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or the Hizbul Mujahideen which are attacking us, but it is the Pakistan Army and the ISI. If we wonder why Hafiz Saeed is not being hanged, it is because he is being run by the Pakistan army and they will not harm him irrespective of the government in power.

We created more NSG hubs. If a terror attack were to take place in Hyderabad, how much time will the NSG hub there take to intervene in the city's outskirts? In Hyderabad's traffic, it takes a minimum of an hourand-a-half to move. Has the commander on the ground in that metro been given the mandate to move his force immediately, the moment the state police chief asks or is he still going to seek clearances from the Centre, the Home Ministry and from the director-general of the NSG. If you don't have this response mechanism properly organised, we will find a time lag in our response. A terror attack should have an immediate response from the NSG team in the metro and the mandate should be given to that officer immediately.

Can 26/11 happen again? Yes, any time. Our responses may be better. When we talk about our crisis and a disaster, we always propagate prevention. Prevention involves intelligence and pre-emptive strikes on terror modules before they can strike. We have not improved our preventive capability but our response time to a strike has improved from two hours to half-an-hour. But we will take a long time as there is no equipment, finances are short and motivation depends on individual personalities.

Amitabh Mattoo, Professor, International Politics, JNU:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We haven't had a major terrorist attack since 26/11. Some things have changed. What is happening inside Pakistan makes it difficult or costly for elements there to mount the kind of attacks they did last year. Then there is turmoil whether as a result of our pressure, international diplomacy or from internal elements in Pakistan. We need to be cautiously optimistic as we have always been but the fact is that changes have happened in the NSG hubs, the NIA and the IB. There has been more coordination. Chidambaram is right but let's not forget the prime minister, who has given him the leeway, freedom and carte blanche. It's a combination of personalities, policies and systemic factors.

Kashmir is Ground Zero. For Pakistan, it still remains a central issue. And a deeply emotive one whether we recognise it or not. Even now, Kashmir remains a deeply passionate issue which when provoked can create the most virulent ideologies prevalent in Pakistan. I feel that there is a moment of opportunity even on the Kashmir issue because you had the most inclusive elections in J & amp;K which have brought a large section of the state in favour of certain accommodation with New Delhi. I am not one of those who believe that Sharm el-Sheikh was a disaster. Even today, Pakistan is in turmoil and requires a multiplicity of engagements. You need an engagement with the LeT, of the kind that Doval or Datta might be capable of or have the capacity to deal with, but you need a diplomacy to deal with both civil society actors and actors that you might want to strengthen.
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