Sydney and Peshawar Attacks: Warning Bells for India

By Deepak Parvatiyar

December 18, 2014

The twin terror attacks in Pakistan and Australia have far reaching impact on India – a sitting duck for terrorists for over four-decades now. The terror attacks in the country have already consumed two prime ministers – Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Jammu & Kashmir as well as North-Eastern States such as Assam, Nagaland and Manipur, continue to live on the edge in the wake of the several militant outfits operating from there. The home-bred terror network of the Maoists in the red corridor remains a perennial security threat.

Consider the recent killings of military and Central Reserve Police Force personnel at Uri (Jammu & Kashmir) and Sukhma (Chhattisgarh) by Pakistani infiltrators and Maoist naxals, respectively.

India: A hotbed of Terrorist Activities

In 2008, the then National Security Advisor, M K Narayanan, had stated that at least 800 terrorist cells were operating in the country. Reports suggest that as of 2013, still 205 of the country’s 640 districts are afflicted by terror activity in some form or another. Maoists are active in 120 of these districts while the remaining districts are in the grip of different form of terror activities. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, at least 36 terror or secessionist outfits were active each in Jammu and Kashmir and Assam as well, while Manipur had 39 such groups.

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However, over the years home-bred terror has been dealt with effectively both through political interventions and people’s participation. Even measures such as fencing along the line of control and introduction of 74 automatic identification system (AIS) and 46 coastal radars to keep an eye on the entire coastal belt after 26/11/2008 terror attack in Mumbai have proved effective at checking cross-border infiltration. Such measures have resulted in sharp decline in terror and insurgency related fatalities in the country. In the last 12 years the numbers of fatalities in terror attacks have considerably gone down from 5839 fatalities in 2001 to 885 in 2013. Today a system is in place where 15 national and state agencies coordinate with each other to ensure that 26/11 is not repeated again.

Growing Tentacles of Jehadi Terrorism in India

International terrorism has fast changed its face. A 2013 intelligence report suggested that the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen had considerably spread their reach and developed capabilities to strike at short notice in various parts of the country. While there has been a spurt in attempts by Pak-backed terrorists to infiltrate in J&K in recent times, the fatalities have been on a rise in the state yet again — from 117 in 2012, to 181 in 2013 and 191 thus far in 2014.

The rise of the deadly Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in the last one year is another major factor in this regard. As some Indian Muslim youth even joined the terror groups in its war in Iraq and Syria, this has given a totally new dimension to the terror-threat perception in India.

The ISIS is eyeing India as its target is no secret anymore. The arrest of the ISIS twitter account operator Mehdi Masroor Biswas in Bengaluru on December 13 this year, though, has put a big question mark over the capabilities of Indian intelligence agencies – they are rather reactive than being pro-active.

The fact that Biswas could continue operating “@ShamiWitness” twitter account for the last many years without getting traced is an uncomfortable development. That he could be traced only after a British channel blew the whistle, is equally disturbing. Yet, the most destructive part of the whole episode was an open threat by the ISIS via twitter to the Bengaluru Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), Abhishek Goyal who was part of the crack team that arrested Biswas, which stated: “…we will not leave our brothers in your hand, revenge is coming, wait for our reaction”.

Given the multi-pronged terror threat perception, the December 16 terror strike in the neighbourhood, where in one of the goriest attacks thus far the Taliban laid seize of a school in Peshawar in Pakistan for eight hours and killed 132 children, calls for an immediate evaluation of our preparation in case of such a threat. The terror attack in Sydney just a day earlier, where a heavily armed gunman held 17 persons as hostage for 17 hours at a Café and demanded among other things the delivery of an Islamic State flag, too needs a careful analysis in Indian context.

Vote Bank Politics: Hampering Anti-Terror Measures

There are many discomforting facts that indicate otherwise with respect to the country’s overall preparedness to tackle the hostage crisis. Even after 15 years of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight in 1999 wherein the government was compelled to set free notorious terrorist Azhar Mahmood in exchange of the hostage passengers, the country still does not have a hostage crisis policy in place. However, now particularly after the Sydney hostage crisis that the government seems to have woken up again to the requirement of such a policy and has announced its “plan” to have a comprehensive National Hostage Policy that will spell out its strategy in case of a hostage crisis.

The very politicisation of the issue is one major factor that comes in the way of any concrete anti-terror measure in the country. Consider that there were attempts by the rivals to drag the the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) into the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai then! Another case in point is the October 2 Burdwan bombing incident in West Bengal. The state chief minister Mamata Banerjee even went to the extent of accusing the Narendra Modi government at the Centre of “stage-managing” the blast with the objective of triggering riots in the state.

Indeed, excessive politicisation and vote bank politics reflect on the overall terror management!

It requires no battalion but only a handful of mercenaries to inflict deadly terror blows. We saw that in Mumbai in 1993 (serial bomb blasts), 2007(serial blasts in local trains) and 2008 (terror attacks), in Delhi (Parliament attack in 2001 and serial bomb blasts in 2008 and 2011), and in North East and J&K on a routine basis – the latest being in Uri in J&K where six terrorists attacked an army base earlier this month. With the ever growing threat perception, it is high time we get prepared in the best way, for the worst. But it also requires a political resolve.