Kasab, Guru and Security!

Public opinion inspired by the electronic media has gone gung-ho after the hangings of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru. At last, people say, the government is serious about fighting terror.

Is it? These belated hangings reveal absolutely nothing of significance regarding the war on terror. At best two cogs of the terror machine that were prized out earlier have been eliminated. The terror machine remains intact.

Satisfaction that the government means business will come if its investigation against terrorism starts to appear credible. It is woefully inadequate.

Only two examples need to be cited.

First, there is as yet no explanation by the government how security agencies cleared a function to be attended by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh at Mumbai’s Trident Hotel after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had specifically warned the government that terrorist attacks from the sea had been planned against three hotels including the Trident. By a whisker a great calamity was averted because 26/11 occurred just two days before the PM’s projected visit. Who was responsible for this lapse?

The government is silent.

Secondly, currently the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probing Hindu terror continues to accumulate evidence on the Samjhauta Express bomb blasts without once addressing in its probe the detailed UN Resolution that named five Pakistanis for that terror act and even imposed sanctions against Hafiz Saeed for his responsibility for the blasts. The UN sanctions could not be imposed only because China used its UN veto to block the sanctions.

What kind of credible probe is it where such a glaring omission continues to persist? Does a UN resolution based upon a detailed probe have no relevance? Should not NIA explain to the public how its findings are compatible with the UN probe? If the UN probe was spurious it is NIA’s duty to state this. But the NIA neither contradicts nor conforms the UN probe findings that counter its own allegations regarding the Samjhauta Express blasts.

The government is silent.

The hanging of Kasab and Afzal Guru may excite certain media elements and the public into believing that the government is at last beginning to get its act together against terror. The public is deluding itself. Such delusion could prove fatal.