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| India Today panel of experts on 'War on Terror' answer surfers' question. |
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| Citizen Experts |
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| Mohan Menon
Retired IPS officer who also served in RAW
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| Murad Baig
Author of a book on Indian heritage
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| Dr Arup Kumar Sen Gupta
Writes that the media has a big role in bringing about the change. |
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| Captain Dinyar Karai
Writes on the counter terrorism strategy that India needs. |
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No people have seen terror like Indians have. Over 18,000 citizens died in attacks in the last decade. |
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 Dr B. Raman
Security and Counter-Terrorism Expert
Dr B. Raman, former Additional Secretary, Research and Analysis Wing. He headed the Counterterrorisim division of RAW, was a member of the National Security Advisory Board and has written several books on security issues his most recent being 'Terrorism in India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow'
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| Why don't we empower the RAW to covertly sabotage the very structure of ISI and render it powerless, thereby destroying the engine of the whole terror mechanism? |
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-Ishan (ishansrivastava@in.com) |
| As an independent country, Pakistan has every right to have its own intelligence agency. We cannot question the right of Pakistan to have the ISI and give it a covert action capability. We should not target the ISI as an institution and its officers. We should target the covert action capabilities of the ISI and make them ineffective. Similarly, we should target the terrorist organisations and their leaders used by the ISI against us. We have not been doing this. Hence our problems. |
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| Other Q&As |
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Q: How can we fight with terrorism when we have so many MPs with criminal backround?
-Champak (champak1periwal@yahoo.com)
- You are right. The number of political leaders with a criminal background or with contacts with the mafia world is quite high in India as compared to other democracies. During the investigation into the Mumbai blasts of March,1993, which were orchestrated by Dawood Ibrahim, it came out that sometimes Dawood's men, during their visits to Delhi, used to stay in the servant's quarters of a senior Minister in the Cabinet of Narasimha Rao. On one occasion, when the servants quarters were not available the Personal Assistant of the Minister had put up a member of Dawood's gang in the guest house of a public sector company. This was brought to the notice of Narasimha Rao. One does not know how many political leaders have contacts with terrorists themselves and give them shelter. When some of our own political leaders give shelter to mafia gangsters and terrorists, our protests to Pakistan over its giving shelter do not carry conviction. No Prime Minister has tackled this issue seriously.
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Q: Do you see any difference between the RAW and the Mossad?
-Vineet (vineet_sahu@rediffmail.com)
- MOSSAD is an intelligence collection as well as an action-oriented agency. THe ISI of Pakistan is somewhat like the MOSSAD. From 1968 till 1997, the R&AW too used to be like the MOSSAD. In 1997, as an unilateral gesture to Pakistan, Inder Gujral ordered that the RAW's Covert Action division should be wound up. Many senior officers represented to Gujral that if he wanted to show a gesture to Pakistan, he could suspend its covert operations for a while and see whether Pakistan reciprocates. If it did not, they could be resumed. They strongly advised him against winding up the division. They pointed out that it took about 29 years to develop the division. If it was just wound up and if a future Prime Minister wanted to re-start it, it would take him at least two or three years. He was adamant and refused to re-consider his decision. When A. B. Vajpayee became the Prime Minister in 1998, the RAW officers were hoping that he would approve the re-starting of the division. But, surprisingly, he took the same line as Gujral and believed that a unilateral gesture to Pakistan was necessary. He declined to reverse the decision of Gujral. Since 1997, the RAW is therefore a purely intelligence-collection agency like the MI6, the British external intelligence agency. When Ariel Sharon was the Israeli Prime Minister, the charter of the MOSSAD was revised to give the highest priority to the collection of terrorism-related intelligence.
About two-thirds of MOSSAD's budget goes towards the collection of terrorism-related intelligence and only one-third towards the collection of political, economic and military intelligence about Israel's adversary States such as Iran and Syria. It is estimated that only about 25 per cent of the RAW's budget goes towards the collection of terrorism-related intelligence. The remaining 75 per cent is spent on political, economic and military intelligence about India's neighbours and State adversaries.
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Q: Why did the NSG commandos take so much time to kill only 4 terrorists in the Taj hotel in Mumbai?
-Nagendra Kumar (npuram@in.com)
- There were about 600 persons staying in the Taj Hotel or eating in the restaurants there at the time the terrorists forced their way in and took them hostages.Only 31 of them died either as a result of the terrorists' action or in the exchange of fire between the terrorists and the NSG. In the Oberoi/Trident hotels there were about 400 people, of whom 32 died. Thus out of the about 1000 people in the two hotels, including the staff, 63 died and the remaining over 900 either managed to escape on their own or were rescued by the NSG. This is a creditable record. A special intervention force such as the NSG requires time to study the maps of the hotels, collect intelligence about the number of terrorists, their weapons, mood etc before they intervene. Some Western analysts criticised the NSG for being too slow.
On the other hand, some Israeli analysts criticised them for being over-hasty. They felt that the NSG should have tried to buy time by engaging in a telephone conversation with the terrorists in an attempt to tire them out. The Israelis themselves on their own through intermediaries tried to engage the two terrorists in the Jewish centre in the Nariman House engaged in a telephone conversation. Unfortunately, the mobile telephone of the terrorists ran short of power and the conversation was cut off. I will not criticise the NSG for taking 60 hours.The most objective assessment of the performance of the NSG and the Police has come from Ami Pedazhur, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of the forthcoming book "The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism," in an article contributed by him to the "New York Times " ( December 19,2008). Mr.Pedazhur wrote : "It is clear that the Indian security forces made some mistakes. However, mistakes are inherent in such crises. At the same time, given the complex nature of the attacks, it seems likely the death toll could have been much higher. After the initial confusion, the Indians seem to have done a thorough job of gathering intelligence and carefully planning their counterattacks. The execution itself was careful and thorough.".
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Q: Why should we wait for our neighbour to take action against the terrorists who are their own children and are nourished by that government only? Why can't we take lessons from Israel's MOSSAD when we know who the culprits are.
-Kunal (kunaal5@yahoo.com)
- I totally agree with you that we must take action instead of depending on the US or other members of the international community to do so. Every country is interested in protecting the lives and property of only its own citizens. This is natural. It is the responsibility of the Government of India and the States to protect the lives and property of our nationals. There are many good things we can learn from the Israelis such as their passion for up-to-date data bases, all their agencies countering terrorism acting as a single team without ego clashes, turf battles and the tendency to pass the buck, public support for their counter-terrorism agencies, high investments in research & development of new technologies for counter-terrorism etc. At the same time, some other methods employed by them such as over-militarisation of counter-terrorism will prove counter-productive in a pluralistic, multi-religious state such as India. We have produced many good intelligence bureaucrats, but we have produced very few good intelligence professionals. Our counter-terrorism experts tend to be over-simplistic and superficial in their expertise, are not innovative and try to deal with technology savvy modern terrorism with methods and thinking which are not equally modern. The terrorists in India tend to be more modern and innovative in their thinking than the counter-terrorism agencies. Increasing their numbers and budgets alone will not produce results unless, simultaneously, there is also a change in their thinking and methods.
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Q: Can’t a terrorist be attacked with a capsule, instead of a bullet, having substance like anesthesia inside it, that can burst and release the gas within a specified area (i.e., surrounding that target) when hit on a target so as to make a person unconscious immediately (within its influence). This will help in nabbing the terrorist alive. Can’t a RDX (or any other such substance) sensor be developed and positioned in places like car parking, etc. Alarm/siren can be set when someone places such substances in that area.
-Tushar (tusharhindocha@yahoo.co.in)
- Some years ago, when the Chechen terrorists raided a Moscow theatre and took all the spectators hostages, the Russian counter-terrorism agencies reportedly had a gas piped into the theatre through the central heating system, in order to disorient the terrorists and weaken their reflexes. They then raided the theatre, killed the terrorists and freed the hostages. Many hostages were also killed ---- some due to their intolerance to the gas and some in the exchange of firing. Vladimir Putin, the then Russian President, strongly defended the counter-terrorism agencies from criticism from human rights organisations, for using such unconventional methods. In India, counter-terrorism agencies are not even thinking of such new ways because they do not have the confidence that the Government and the public will support them if there are civilian fatalities as a result of the methods used by them. They, therefore, continue to use conventional methods.
We must do a thorough post-mortem of how we dealt with the terrorists in the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi/Trident Hotels and in the Nariman House in order to see how effective were the methods used and whether we could use new methods in future. Unless we do such exercises, we will never improve our methods of dealing with terrorism. Unfortunately, our culture is against enquiries due to a mistaken fear that enquiries could demoralise the counter-terrorism community. This is totally wrong
Over the years, the terrorists all over the world have been shifting to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They are using less and less sophisticated explosives such as RDX and more and more ordinarily available and easily procurable substances such as nitrogenous fertilisers, some cosmetics items of women etc for fabricating IEDs. In 1993, fertilisers were used for bombing the New York World Trade Centre by an international jehadi group. Other terrorists started emulating it. Following this, most counter-terrorism agencies in the world have prescribed a permit system for farmers and kitchen-gardeners needing fertilisers. Shops selling fertilisers are required to report suspicious purchases. They have also persuaded fertiliser manufacturers to reduce the nitrogen content so that the fertiliser cannot be used as an explosive. Even though fertilisers are being increasingly used by terrorists in India for the last five years, we have not yet taken any effective action against the misuse of fertilisers. However, we are now following Western restrictions against women carrying certain cosmetic items on board aircraft. Anti-explosives check----whether against RDX or other explosives---- is very weak in India. We cannot afford to have costly anti-explosives check in every public place, but we must identify vulnerable areas where such checks must be there, whatever be the expenses.
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Q:
Terrorism is not a new threat. One man's terrorist is another man's soldier. It is a sorry excuse, but that is what is happening. Why don't we have a special agency to counter such threats and attacks and do we need another Mumbai to happen before we really wake up?
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-Amol (amol_td@yahoo.com)
- Terrorism is a highly politicised crime. That is why there is no international consensus on what is terrorism. This enables states like Pakistan, which use terrorism, to escape the consequences of their sponsoring and using terrorism to achieve their strategic objective. I have been arguing in many national and international conferences since 2004 that instead of trying to define terrorism, we must define what is an act of terrorism and then designate organisations, which indulge in such acts, as terrorist organisations and States, which support them as State-sponsors of terrorism. Unfortunately, there has not been much support for my view----not even in India. India has been a victim of indigenous terrorism without external sponsorship as well as terrorism externally sponsored----from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Before 1979, we were also victims of tribal insurgencies in the North-East supported by China, which is no longer supporting them after 1979. One of the reasons why Indira Gandhi decided to support the independence movement in the then East Pakistan was because the ISI was giving sanctuaries to the terrorists and insurgents in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) from where they were operating in North-East India. The creation of Bangladesh ended this sponsorship in 1971, but it was revived by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in 1975. We are still struggling to cope with it.
One of the lessons of the post-World War history of state-sponsored terrorism is that it never ends unless the guilty state is made to pay a prohibitive price. STASI, the East German intelligence service, was behind much of the ideological terrorism in West Europe. The collapse of communism in East Germany and the end of STASI brought an end to this terrorism. The intelligence services of Libya and Syria were behind much of the West Asian terrorism and the Carlos group, then living in Damascus, played a role in helping ideological groups in West Europe. The US bombing of Libya in 1986, the strong US action against Syria, which was declared a State-sponsor of terrorism and against the Sudan, where Carlos shifted from Damascus, and the prosecution and jailing, under US pressure, of two Libyan intelligence officers for their complicity in the bombing of a Pan Am plane off Lockerbie on the Irish coast in 1988 brought an end to state-sponsorship of terrorism by Libya and Sudan. Syria has stopped sponsoring terrorism against the US, but continues to do so against Israel.
There are many numbers of UN resolutions and international declarations declaring state-sponsored terrorism as amounting to indirect aggression against the victim state. Unfortunately, there has been no political will in India to make Pakistan and Bangladesh pay a heavy price for their sponsorship of terrorism against India. Once a firm decision based on a national consensus is taken that the time has come to make Pakistan and Bangladesh pay a price, the question as to which organisation should do it and how will be sorted out. The problem is not that we don't have an appropriate organisation, but we don't have the will to act against Pakistan and Bangladesh. Our policy of "kabi garam, kabi naram" (Sometimes hot, sometimes soft) towards these two countries is encouraging them not to change their ways .
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Q: Why can’t we launch covert operations in Pakistan by using the Afghan base? We have heard ARC has the capability to take pictures of anything having 3 ft or more dimension. Why can't we track down Dawood and Masood Azhar and teach them a lesson?
-Sanjay (sanjaisingh@hotmail.com)
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No comments for understandable reasons.
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Q: Pakistan has refused to hand over any of the 20 wanted terrorists. Is RAW capable enough in terms of its assets inside Pakistan and otherwise, so as to carry out extraction of any such individuals? Besides, is RAW well informed regarding the Pakistani establishments and tribal militant outfits functioning in Pakistan, as informed well enough to take them down? Is it true that RAW assets have deteriorated in Pakistan in the last 2 decades or so?
-Parth (parth_aggarwal@hotmail.com)
- For understandable reasons, I will avoid specific answers. Over the years, there has been a general deterioration in the performance of the R&AW due to frictions among senior officers, the resulting ego clashes inside the organisation, decline in professionalism, increase in careerism etc. It has produced very few counter-terrorism experts. Its investments in building data-bases and research and development of modern counter-terrorism technologies is very little. Over-secrecy comes in the way of active interaction with the world of science and technology and IT experts. The continued adherence to the principle of promotion on the basis of seniority with professionalism and competence playing a very limited role has led to its becoming a mediocre organisation. When it was formed in September 1968, Indira Gandhi had declared the post of the head of the organisation as an ex-cadre post----- meaning the Prime Minister can bring any competent person as the head----irrespective of seniority or whether he is an insider or outsider. This provision has been used twice----once by A.B.Vajpayee and the second time by Dr. Manmohan Singh--- to bring outsiders as the head when they felt that the organisation had no insider competent enough to be its head. There is an urgent need to induct more counter-terrorism experts from the Intelligence Bureau, the State Police and the Army into the R&AW and make one of them the chief. Indira Gandhi had wanted the R&AW---like the MOSSAD of Israel and the CIA of the US--- to be an intelligence collection agency as well as an action-oriented agency. Since 1997, it has become a purely intelligence collection agency. It has very little capability for action. This state of affairs has to be reversed
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| Join the War on Terror today |
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| You can also |
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SMS ‘WAR’ to52424
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| In case you come across any suspicious activity or have any information to tell the Anti-Terror Squad, |
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| Dial All India Toll-Free
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| Terror Helpline No.1090
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| The identity of the caller will be kept a secret.
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Here's a list of emergency numbers and addresses in 6 important cities.
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We bring together stories, videos and pictures on terror attacks across the nation.
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India Reacts
The prime purpose of the terrorists is to shatter the peace and unity of the country. The only way to defeat them is by defeating their mindless purpose-- stand with determined resilience with the people of the country irrespective of communal, linguistic and regional barriersn.
Swarnima Bhattacharya
, Lucknow
Much has been spoken by the leaders, but no concrete work has been done so far. The ministry should not be headed by any politician but by some retired police or preferably some military official.
Shailendra Vikrant , Chandigarh
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Headlines Today anchors pledge to fight terror
Are we safe anywhere?
