POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 1 September 2007

India Soft On Terror

SET WONKY PRIORITIES RIGHT

By Poonam I Kaushish

This is a tragic tale of the myth and reality of mounting terror in India. Circa 1993-2007. The story of a Government that meekly looks at violence as no more then someone playing dirty tricks. That hot air and empty rhetoric will take care of it. Oblivious that the horror is for real and the dead and maimed are not mere statistics. Wallowing in the false belief that wars are games born in the minds of men which can be won peacefully by waving the white flag. A war can be won only by war!

Over a year after Mumbai went down the suburban railway in seven serial blasts that hit the heart of the city on Black. Tuesday 7/11 and barely three months after the blasts at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, India’s cyber city was once again rudely jolted by the icy harsh reality of terror, terror and still more terror. When the city was ‘lasered out’ by two gift-wrapped bombs. Which left over 40 innocents dead and 60 injured.

The irony of India’s myth and reality was on full display when VVIP after VVIP fell over one another in condemning the perpetrators ‘cowardly’ (sic) act. Followed by a series of high-profile appear-and-vanish visits to the city to profess their angst and, hopefully, extract political mileage. The Opposition seized the opportunity to blast the UPA Government for its failure to combat terrorism by moving an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha. The Union Home Minister reiterated what the Prime Minster has repeated ad nauseum: “No one can make India kneel. We will win this war against terror.” He also announced grandiosely: “We will look at setting up a federal agency to combat terrorism.”

Needless to say, it was mostly myth and little reality. A make-believe that has no co-relation to the fact that India is in the crosshairs of terrorists, serious and deadly terrorists. Please think. Of the 670 districts in the country as many as 270 are terror-prone of which 70 districts have already been ravaged by terrorists. Terror has already cost India more than 72000 civilians and 12000 security personnel. In fact, since 2004 the country has lost more lives to terrorist incidents than North, South and Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together. So much for fighting terror!

Besides terror today has become a big yawn. Our polity cocoons itself in the mistaken belief that terrorism has seeped into our psyche so deeply that it no longer scares. Reduced to becoming an inane excuse for incompetence and dubbed as an intelligence failure a la Kargil. Or the Centre and the affected State conveniently fobbing off their responsibility on the other. Never mind the guns that send a chilling reminder that all is not well with India.

Forgetting that the problem of dealing with terror is not merely limited to cracking the Hyderabad blasts, the Mecca Masjid strike, the attack on the Samjhauta Express train, Delhi’s serial blasts in October 2005, the twin blasts in Varanasi in March 2006 and the Mumbai carnage. The malaise is infinitely deeper and widespread. Thanks to New Delhi’s continuing short-sightedness and half-baked measures.

Each terror attack elicits a predictable and misdirected State response. Pakistan’s ISI and their jehadi cahoots within India and elsewhere are accused of the dastardly attacks, followed by a slew of VVIP visits. Knee-jerk reactions are then announced with dollops of false bravado. A ritual drama whose script is familiar and draws the same cynical reaction ---- more and more of the same.

Fire-fighting measures and quick-fix solutions are put into force without either understanding the issues involved or any comprehensive plan to resolve the crisis. Myopic in its introspection, the Centre unfortunately ends up mostly reacting, instead of looking ahead and acting. Crisis over the State is soon forgotten like a bad dream till another crisis erupts. Merely curing the symptoms, not the disease.

Interestingly, a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Ajit Doval, has blasted as “a myth the widespread belief that the terrorists strike anywhere, at any time and any target.” In his view, they strike where their intentions and capabilities meet the opportunities. Hence, the success of counter-terrorism lies in degrading their capabilities, forcing them to change their intentions and denying them opportunities to strike. New Delhi, he feels needs to think of ways and means to neutralise their fast-growing domestic base, availability of hardware and human resource, collaborative linkages with organized crime, gun runners, drug syndicates, hawala operators, subversive radical groups et al.

That is not all. He then spells out what he believes should be the broad approach: “For any anti-terrorist operation to succeed one needs to be focused on the vitals, keeping a watch on the essentials and leaving the desirables till the vitals have been achieved and essentials addressed.” He also has a timely message for India’s polity. “For those who govern, let political interests, at best, fall in the category of desirables.”

Doval is dead on. The tragedy of India is that we have our priorities badly mixed up, indeed, upside- down. Today what may be viewed by some as “desirable” (read minority appeasement) have become vital and essential and what should be “vital and essential” (read eliminating terrorism) has been relegated to merely desirable. Thus, the country’s basic security imperatives and supreme sovereign interests play second fiddle to political interests and electoral considerations. Concurred another security expert B. Raman: “The problem is that our polity is not concerned with the lives of people. They are concerned only with their votes”. Thus, more and more are aggressively pandering to the Muslim voters, a la Sachar report.

Only in India terror is being compartmentalized on the basis of caste and creed for the sake of votes. Only in India can we think of pushing for granting pardon to those who dared to attack India’s high temple of democracy ---- Parliament. Recall, seven brave men and women gave their lives to protect Parliament in 2001. Six years on, the UPA’s secular Government is virtually pleading for clemency for the terrorist Mohammed Afzal Guru. Despite the Supreme Court awarding him the death penalty for his heinous role in the attack.

Most sadly, the Government has callously ignored the strong signal it would send to the Muslims that the Government will not do anything which may even remotely hurt the Muslim sentiment. Plainly, this is appeasement at its crassest worst. More. There is no sense of shame or remorse that the families of those who laid down their lives to defend Parliament have returned the gallantry medals and monies in sheer and understandable disgust.

No amount of appeasement will change the intentions of the terrorists who are determined to bleed India whatever it takes. Remember a terrorist has no caste or creed. For him terrorism is the religion. Be it a Hindu, a Muslim or a Sikh. He is an invisible enemy who uses our resources and freedom to hit us. Adept in exploiting the latest technologies, he identifies and exploits our weaknesses. While we talk, he acts. Inflicting maximum loss at minimum cost.

Clearly, the time has come that our polity should shed and shed fast its blinkered communal approach. If the battle against terror has to be won, terrorism will have to be de-communalised. Political considerations, communal pressures, administrative and police lethargy and a weak legal-judicial regime will have to be negated. New Delhi must realize that normal deterrence doesn’t work against a faceless and fearless enemy. Specially when terror comes packaged as a suicide bomber as in the case of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

When the State’s existence is in peril, the only way to strike back is to carry the fight into the enemy camp effectively. It is not enough to assert “we have might and muscle.” One has to display that power. The Government desperately needs to restore its Iqbal, the shining authority that ensures respect for law and order. The British did. Under the Raj no one dared to even touch the uniform of a policeman.

We need to give sharp teeth to our anti-terror laws. Top experts are agreed that we need stringent laws like the defunct POTA which provided for all the safeguards suggested by the Supreme Court in TADA. True, POTA was not able to end terrorism. Parliament was attacked when it was in operation. Nevertheless, POTA helped in speedily tackling cases of terrorism and bringing the culprits like Afzal Guru to book. Such a revamped anti-terror law would send a much needed signal down the rank and file of terrorists that India is no longer soft.

What next? Much will depend upon the Government’s willingness to acknowledge without any sugar-coating that India is ensnared in the vicious grip of terror. Already prolonged inaction has proved much too costly. The Centre may have to launch major offensives to drive home the message that terror is not a zero-sum game and that India has no use for a live terrorist.  Self-serving decisions of minority appeasement may feed the polity’s vote-banks temporarily. Ultimately, it will only fuel discord and spell double disaster. Enough of self-invited terrorism and self-seeking vote-bank politics. India’s freedom and unity is at stake. ----- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance