Wake-up call for Everybody

By M H Ahssan

Politicans need to rise above petty politics and put national interests at the forefront

What happened in Mumbai on the night of November 26 was not similar to the other terrorist attacks which this country has been subjected to often in the recent past. Some may see comparisons with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, which exacted a toll of over 200 lives, or the multiple explosive attacks on the Mumbai suburban trains in 2006.

This, in fact, was a more diabolical attack which targeted foreign businessmen and tourists in India and a clear assertion, as it were, of the jihadi war on crusaders (Americans and Europeans), Zionists (Israelis) and the Hindus. It was targeted at damaging India’s relations with the US and UK and Israel and the commercial relations between India and the US, Western Europe and Israel. It was also aimed at demonstrating, on the eve of some state elections and a few months before the general elections, how vulnerable the Indian state is to terrorist threat and, in the process, cause deep fissures in our polity.

It also exposed the fact that while our anti-terror intelligence tended to focus on intelligence collection on our own people and that too in a fragmented way, statewise, the enemies of India can strike at it from the seas, perhaps from across the state and international boundaries. It thoroughly exposed the weaknesses in our security surveillance system.

We have to wait for a few more days to have a comprehensive assessment of the operation and the identity of those who masterminded this attack. Unlike the previous terrorist attacks in India, which were tended to be ignored by the West, this time foreigners have been killed and their commercial interests are affected. Therefore there is bound to be a lot more foreign interest in this terrorist outrage. One of the queries will be whether this is an operation by jihadis and rogue elements in the Pakistan-based ISI who are opposed to the policies of the newly established democratic government in Pakistan.

It is obvious that this meticulously planned and executed operation would have taken time, a lot of expertise in training the terrorists and elaborate logistics. Since some of the terrorists have been reported to have been captured it should be possible to get information on planners of this attack.

The Indian political parties will now be on trial over whether they will put national interests above their party interests. In the US, when the 9/11 attack took place, the leaders of the Democratic Party immediately rallied behind the Republican Administration and pledged their full support. The Patriot Act, with stringent anti-terrorist measures, passed with bipartisan support. The 9/11 attack was investigated by a bipartisan commission and the recommendations of the commission were implemented. While there may be criticisms in the US about the severity of the Patriot Act and follow-up actions of the Bush administration including the rendition procedures and torture allegations and Guantanamo Bay detention camps, the bipartisan cooperation on anti-terrorist operations have proved so effective that US has not suffered a second attack after 9/11.

Compare that with the behaviour of the Indian political parties. The leader of the much reviled Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Hemant Karkare ,was the first among the fatal casualties in this attack as he led his men to fight back the terrorists without any bias, in the discharge of his duties. Do we expect our politicians to apologise to his memory at this stage for casting aspersions on him?

There has been a crying need for the country to have a federal integrated anti-terrorist organisation. Yet some of the chief ministers of the states have been opposing it on the grounds that under the Constitution, law and order is exclusively a state subject. They have no constructive alternative on how to carry out effectively intelligence collection, coordination and counter-terrorist activity across state borders on an all-India basis or how to coordinate the counter-terrorist intelligence within a state with activities of terrorists from across the international borders.

India is perhaps the only country in which a terrorist is not viewed as a terrorist but seen through a communal prism. Terrorism has to be fought effectively by curbing the activities of the terrorists. Law does not condone a crime like murder because there are extenuating circumstances. That may be taken into account in sentencing the convicted. While any group of people may have legitimate grievances and they have a right to agitate to get the grievance rectified in a democracy; no group has a right to resort to terrorist violence and kill innocent people. Instead of adopting such a democratic and humanitarian approach many of our political parties prefer to look at the problem of terrorism from the point of view of electoral politics.

Further there is a very well-known nexus between the politicians, organised crime and sections of bureaucracy which provides a shield behind which the enemies of India are able to operate their terrorist instrumentalities. Therefore fighting terrorism in Indian conditions has proved to be far more difficult than in the rest of the Democratic world.

One wonders whether in the aftermath of this terrible attack on Mumbai our major political parties will unite to create an integrated anti-terrorist organisation like the Department of Homeland Security set up in the US after 9/11. What is more likely is terrorism is likely to become a contentious electoral issue in the forthcoming general elections. Those out to hurt India through a thousand cuts can always take into account our disunity, lack of commitment to national interests on the part of many of our political parties and the politician-organised crime-bureaucracy nexus in planning their attacks on India. It is perhaps because of its manifest destiny India has survived and prospered this far in spite of our politicians who will not unite even under such terrible attacks.