By Murali Krishnan, IANS,
New Delhi : After the horror and shame of 26/11, India had a relatively terror-free year in 2009, attributed largely to the covert and overt measures the government undertook. But even as the country was spared cross-border terrorism, Maoist guerrillas emerged as a big security threat.
The year started with blasts rocking Guwahati and killing six people on New Year’s Day. Fortunately, it ended at that.
A premium was put on strengthening India’s internal security. The sharp as nails Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who was tasked with the onerous responsibility of securing India, set himself a blistering pace.
First, the government set up a National Investigation Agency (NIA) on the lines of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to tackle terror exclusively and strengthened provisions in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, making it tougher for terror suspects to obtain bail.
“A number of things have changed. I think what has changed most importantly is that there is better intelligence gathering, intelligence sharing and what I call intelligence follow-up,” Chidambaram told IANS.
He established four National Security Guard (NSG) hubs – each with an operational strength of around 250 personnel – at Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai to enable a speedy response to terrorist attacks that may occur in any part of the country. He also provided them with sophisticated weaponry.
Making the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) – tasked with collecting intelligence in real time – fully operational and establishing subsidiary MACs in the states has been perhaps the most tangible achievement and helped the security establishment foil terror attacks.
A year on, the decision-making process was fast, transparent and accountable.
“One can clearly see that security response mechanisms are being tightened up and this is largely because of the lessons learnt from the 26/11 attacks,” D.C. Pathak, a former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief, told IANS.
Shoring up both coastal and hinterland security, setting up counter-insurgency schools and improving manpower in the IB – only a fifth of its total strength was being used to gather hard intelligence – were some of the other steps initiated.
But deficiencies remained. Chief among them were critical shortages in budget allocations for the police, recruitment, training, procurement of equipment, introduction of technology, and personnel management.
Chidambaram himself admitted the vulnerability of terror attacks still exists.
Intelligence reports and electronic chatter picked up suggested that terrorists based in Pakistan were still planning attacks in India similar to last year’s Mumbai carnage. It was a refrain repeated several times on various forums.
“Every day I receive intelligence reports saying that terrorists based in Pakistan are planning other similar acts,” said prime minister Manmohan Singh.
If India could breathe slightly easier because it was terror-free, there was trouble on another front. The Maoist surge in vast swathes of the nine affected states showed the ferocious and brutal face of the rebels who stepped up their attacks.
Till Nov 15, over 770 civilians and security personnel were killed in Maoist violence, the largest number of casualties in four years. In Jharkhand alone – one of the worst affected states – there have been 1,885 incidents of violence since 2006.
Despite threatening a crackdown on the armed rebels and stepping its anti-Maoist operations, they struck at will.
In October, 17 policemen were killed in an ambush by Maoist guerrillas dressed
in olive green fatigues in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. All the dead belonged to the elite C-60 anti-Maoist force raised by the state government.
Three months earlier, in one of their most audacious attacks on the security forces, Maoists killed 30 policemen, including a superintendent of police, in three separate incidents in the Rajnandgaon district of Chhattisgarh.
“Considering the groundswell of support it received from civil society and political parties after 26/11, and that there was a respite from terror, the government should have done more in capacity building and cleared up its domestic problems in a year of peace,” said A.K. Doval, a security expert and a former intelligence chief.
“Its housekeeping record was found wanting,” he said.
Clearly, India’s worries from terror threats are far from over. The David Headley-Tahawwur Rana episode – they are being linked to the Mumbai attacks that claimed 166 lives last year – has demonstrated just that.
Arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges and linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the unravelling plot has revived fears about the Pakistani militant group’s global reach and its ability to plot attacks in India and around the world.
The unearthing of the Headley-Rana case by the FBI shows the global ambition of the LeT and how radicals continue to galvanise enough people to launch mass casualty terrorist attacks.
There is no way India can let its guard down.
(Murali Krishnan can be contacted at [email protected])