Pakistani commentators have questioned the entire story, saying it was cooked up by Indian intelligence agencies. Plenty of reporters in India too have raised doubts about the incident, claiming it might have been as innocuous as a smuggling operation that is being sold as a well-intercepted terror attack. A careful reading of the Coast Guard statement also reveals no mention of the boat being Pakistani or involving terrorists. It simply refers to intelligence inputs pointing to the planning of an “illicit transaction” on the Arabian Sea.
The Ministry of Defence, however, seems to be anonymously holdings its ground, with a front-page Times of India story attributed to intelligence sources insisting that the fishing boat was in touch with the the Pakistani Army and Maritime Security Agency. On the flip side, the Ministry of External Affairs has yet to formally communicate any sort of protest regarding the incident to Islamabad.
At this point, very little is clear about both the intelligence and the incident. But, even if the story about terrorists on a boat heading to Gujarat was accurate, did India's agencies manage the appropriate response to a serious threat? If there were indeed terrorists on the boat, was the whole operation a success?
One of the key questions in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks was how to ensure that the intelligence being gathered by India's various agencies is shared properly and used right. The Cabinet Committee on Coastal Security after 26/11 identified the Navy as having charge of the safety of the coasts, putting in place a joint operations command to deal with threats.
Yet, the entire New Year's even operation was carried out by the Coast Guard, rather than the Indian Navy. This is particularly unusual because the interception itself took place far in international waters, about 197 nautical miles off India's coast. Technically speaking the Coast Guard is only responsible for security within the immediate vicinity of the shore, which is up to 24 nautical miles.
One narrative has suggested that this is because the Navy was not even informed about the terror threat. Instead, the National Technical Research Organisation broke protocol and gave the information directly to the Coast Guard, rather than to the Multi-Agency Centre which is supposed to gather all intelligence and distribute it appropriately.
"The NTRO is not meant to be directly interfacing with these agencies," said Manoj Joshi, a security analyst and distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. "It should pass it on the appropriate agency, and no intelligence is intelligence until it analysed and interpreted. For that purpose you have MAC. NTRO is not supposed to be doing that job."
Another repor, in the Indian Express, however, claims that both the Navy and the Coast Guard were informed about the boat, but that the Naval command chose to ignore it because the data only suggested “small-time smugglers” who did not pose a threat to national security.
That said, the same report goes on to claim a lack of information sharing with the state authorities in Gujarat and Maharashtra, both of which could have faced a serious terrorist attack if the intelligence was accurate, as well as other agencies like the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing and the Border Security Force. A third report still, also from the Express, has the Coast Guard insisting that the intelligence tip-off was indeed given to the Navy and the Gujarat Police.
"The intelligence network that informed us had also informed the Indian Navy and the Gujarat Police,” Indian Coast Guard commander (North West), Kuldip Singh Sheoran told the paper. "Sensitive information of this kind will not be kept in isolation. The Navy was privy to it, and has been helping us in the operations.We were discreet about the operations as per orders from the Ministry of Defence."
In the minds of some, this question of whether the information was shared with everyone, is not only pointless but also reveals a lack of understanding of intelligence. Often tip-offs like this are passed around through fora that are not institutionalised, and attempting to pass the information to everyone would both take too long and potentially jeapordise any operation.
"Without knowing exactly what the transactional process was, in terms of where the intelligence input came from and which agencies it was shared with right up to the coast guard, it's impossible to say whether the process was done badly," said Saurabh Joshi, editor of StratPost, a website about strategic affairs. He added that, leaving aside whether the Coast Guard is being honest about the incident, the fact that they moved quickly and intercepted what appeared to be a terror threat is significant.
"My limited point would be that the fact that intelligence was recovered and shared to the right stakeholder on a timely basis is important," he said. "We didn’t know for sure what it was, but it’s not something that can be left uninvestigated, which the Coast Guard did. In that sense, I would say this is an example of the system working."
But the ORF's Manoj Joshi questioned even this assertion, saying that simply having intercepted the boat, that too so far from the Indian coast and in such a murky circumstances meant that it couldn't be presumed a victory. "The point is that it would have been an even better operation if these guys had been able to come deeper into Indian territory and then you would have had a coup by arresting them," he said. "It doesn't add up, and I can't say that this was definitely a success, because if, they were indeed terrorists and you had the boat passengers and weapons in your hand, it could have been much more successful."
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