Trust is the key to
fight terrorism

All of us should be satisfied with the outcome of the 15th South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit held in Colombo recently. Leaders of all countries in this part of the globe have spoken with one voice against terrorism. While addressing the inaugural function Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for a collective and determined fight against the menace. Very rightly he has pointed out: "Terrorism continues to rear its ugly head in our region. It remains the single biggest threat to our stability… We cannot afford to lose the battle against the ideologies of hatred, fanaticism and against all those who seek to destroy our social fabric." Who can disagree with his observation that terrorists and extremists know no borders? He has cited the gruesome attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad as "gruesome reminders of barbarity that still finds a place' in South Asia. His assertion has been loud and clear: "We must defend the values of pluralism, peaceful co-existence and the rule of law." Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, who was widely seen on television nodding his head in approval as Dr Singh spoke, has been equally emphatic. He has noted that the "curse of terrorism" threatens peace and stability in the area. His view is categorical: "We need to redouble our efforts for collective action to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations…We must ensure strengthening legal mechanisms and intensifying intelligence sharing in order to secure the region's collective prosperity, peace and stability…Terrorism anywhere is terrorism and there are no good terrorists or bad terrorists." Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, whose intelligence outfit Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been under fire for having planned and executed the Kabul Embassy attack, has used the opportunity to clarify his position. He has condemned the assault in Kabul and remarked that his country itself has been a victim of terrorism having "suffered the most" and "lost the great leader" Benazir Bhutto. In the overall context he has expressed the view: "It is our joint responsibility to rid our region of this scourge. We need to fight terrorism individually as well as collectively."

Bangladesh's Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed has assailed the "heinous" terrorist attacks in India, Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent times. He has said that security dimension in the region and beyond have taken the "centre-stage" in the deliberations of the Summit. He has declared: "...Bangladesh is against terrorism in all forms and manifestations...We must combat the menace of terrorism across the broadest possible spectrum." Not many of us may be aware that Bangladesh has been by and large unsparing in its handling of terrorism and its perpetrators. Indeed, it is not possible to ignore the experience of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai who is engaged in a valiant struggle to lift his country out of the debris in which it lies. He has been rather blunt in his criticism of Pakistan for having become a hub of terrorism. He has minced no words while saying: "In Pakistan terrorism and its sanctuaries are gaining a deeper grip as demonstrated by the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto… While existing on the absolute fringes of our tolerant and peace-loving societies, terrorists in our region receive institutional nurturing and support. It is this embedded nature of terrorists that make it a much more sinister threat." Referring to the Kabul Embassy carnage the Afghan president has said no outrage or condemnation will cool down the anger over the mindless violence. "It is time we all realise that the pursuit of narrow geo-political interest and the use of militant radicalism as instrument of policy cannot succeed or serve any long-term purpose." He has called for an urgent and more collective action against terrorism to secure the lives of the future generations. Never before has there been a greater need for collective action against terrorism as today, he has emphasised.

It is heartening that all heads of state have given vent to identical sentiments. Not surprisingly, therefore, they have finalised the text of a combined instrument namely the Convention for Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. The objective of this agreement is to provide a broad framework for the SAARC members to regularly cooperate and assist in the investigation and prosecution of crime, including terrorism, and tracing, restraining and forfeiture of the proceeds and instruments of crime. Under this scheme the member-countries will have to grant to each other the widest possible measure of legal help in criminal matters. Is it not easier said than done? New Delhi and Islamabad have a joint anti-terrorism apparatus in place but it is confined merely to exchange of information. For this bilateral arrangement to become a tiger with teeth any such accord should be given a practical dimension. On the sidelines of the SAARC summit the Prime Minister has again conveyed his serious concerns to Mr Gilani. The United States too has confronted Pakistan with all relevant details about ISI's involvement in the Kabul massacre and in mischief elsewhere. In all fairness nobody can say that Pakistan at this moment does not want action against terrorists. It has been acting against them of late even as strongly on certain occasions as the other countries are doing. Somehow, however, it ends up giving the impression as if it is not doing enough. This is evidently because it has terror outfits and their ideologues openly operating from its soil and spreading venom against India and the US in particular. Why should it find itself ill-equipped to sternly deal with them? The result is that it does not measure up to at least New Delhi's expectations. Pakistan also appears to have got more than one power centre. The most dispassionate Pakistani observers have conceded that the military in their country continues to rule the roost despite the restoration of democracy. This is probably the cause why a "democratic" Pakistan is not able to share its problems with India and seek a joint direct fight against terrorism. For the SAARC bond also to become meaningful it has to be understood that the mutual trust holds the all-important key. It has to be a united fight against a common enemy. Terrorism everywhere is terrorism, as the Sri Lankan President has accurately observed.

Recast intelligence set up

By Brig. (Retd.) S.N. Sachadeva

The security scenario in the country is grim as terrorists are striking at will targets of their choosing from West to East and North to South. In the aftermath the blame game starts; political parties and intelligence agencies start blaming each other. After two decades of violence which has taken a heavy toll of human lives and loss of property no solutions has been found to deal with the destabilising situation.

Terror is the repudiation of justice and politics. It is the creation of excess violence which carries with it the imminence of more. It is presented as a means but is often an end in itself. Torture might be personal, sometimes creating a strange intimacy between interrogator-perpetrator and victim but terror is anonymous and impersonal. The victim may have nothing to do with the original act that is projected as prime cause. Terror lacks the ethics of war. Why would any one wish to bomb a civil hospital and its trauma ward except to create that excess as impact and identity?

Terror came in several incarnations in India, but frequently more in the hybrid form mixed with exploitation, rape, atrocity and riot. It has also developed endemically in Kashmir and the Northeast and around episodes like Naxalbari and Khalistan. But pure terror with its combination of the impersonal and intimate, the rational and the illogical is a product of information and terror needs information to thrive. In turn, it must deprive the victim of access to information and become more enzymatic and indefinable as rumour. Terror must strike with appalling efficacy but always carry the rumour of more; 'where next' or 'who next' is central to narrative to terror.

Information, the availability or lack of it, is central to terror. Terror thrives on rumour, grows with gossip. Yet terror needs precise information to operate. It has to strike to extract maximum surplus. The violence of terror is strategic because it has to maximise insecurity and instability. Everyone must feel target and everyone must be seen as targetable. Every city must see itself a serially vulnerable.

Terror creates tough challenges for democracy. The conundrum lies in the fact that terror is a denial of democracy and through its idea of rights, due process and adherence to the rule of law creates a tactical flexibility for terror. Emergencies and crisis have been regular grounds for abbreviating democracy. Democracies in fighting terror might lose their sense of democracy. Terror demands infinite patience and inventiveness from a democracy, while it can be parasitic on it.

Every time terror strikes, it has become customary for Home Minister Shivraj Patil to talk of the need for a federal agency, which, unlike the CBI, will have direct jurisdiction to investigate offence that are considered to have national and international implications. This radical proposal has, however, made little progress thanks to the resistance offered by states, which fear that such an agency would erode their existing monopoly over law and order.

This is despite the fact that while upholding central legislations like TADA and POTA, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that since terror threatens the security of the whole country, it falls under the first item of the Union List, "Defence of India", rather than the first item of the State List, "Public order".

The Centre-state conflict over the proposed federal agency seems all the more untenable considering that US is endowed with an FBI despite a full-fledged federal system in which states have far greater autonomy than they do in India. Since it is both a federal criminal investigative body and a domestic intelligence agency, FBI has been able to go all out to ensure there has not been a single major terror strike in US since 9/11. In fact, the top investigative priority of FBI is avowedly to "protect the United States from terrorist attack". There is simply no such investigative agency in India mandated to take on terror at the national level. The CBI, which is primarily meant to deal with corruption, comes in if and when a state refers a terror case to it.

As a result, the serial blasts on successive days in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, for all their similarities, are being probed by the local police of respective states, with little scope for institutional coordination or checking if there was any nexus between the two.

The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) set up in 2004, an ambitious initiative to use technology to watch terror groups and pre-empt strikes, has turned into a pensioners' club. Nearly a dozen retired officials hold key position in organisation to monitor phone calls and emails, track the flow of funds on the Internet, and be the repository of the country's technical intelligence assets, including spy planes and satellites. The idea was it would keep an eye on terror groups and Left-wing extremists and prevent Kargil-like intrusions.

The NTRO, which counts National Security Adviser, Mr. M.K.Narayanan, among its enthusiastic backers, should have been just the organisation to help prevent the serial blasts and the Line of Control violation in Kashmir. Instead, it is facing calls for closure. "The NTRO experiment has been a failure, the government should wind it up," is the usual refrain. At least three officials, heading crucial units, have recently opted for repatriation to their parent organisations complaining of suffocating and unprofessional working conditions.

Last year, too, six officials holding key positions had withdrawn from the organisation. With so many superannuated people coming in, the NTRO is becoming more like a pensioners' club than the professional intelligence outfit it is meant to be. A critical post of cyber applications and research is yet to be filled. Former IPS officers and former Intelligence Bureau and RAW sleuths now people the NTRO. There are some scientists too. In fact, the biggest grouse outgoing official have is that it is headed by a scientist K.V.S.S. Prasad Rao.

Rao took over in 2005 after retiring form the Defence Research and Development Organisation, where he was responsible for missiles and strategic systems.

The NTRO should have been able to monitor phone calls and trace emails. The organisation was envisaged as an expert in cyber security and tracking global satellite mobile (GSM) system as also high-frequency (HF) communication. We have money, resources and technology but we don't have the vision and the will to create an effective intelligence sharing mechanism.

The NTRO, set up on the recommendation of the Kargil Review Committee as a nodal agency for technical intelligence along the lines of the US National Security Agency, reports to the national security adviser. Part of the cabinet secretariat, like external spy agency RAW, it has an annual budget of Rs. 700 crore. Its problem is lack of initiative. Some of the responsibilities handed to the NTRO were earlier being performed by RAW, including air surveillance by its Aviation Research Centre (ARC).

RAW has been stonewalling attempts to let go of the ARC, which also snoops on nuclear tests and missile launches in the neighbourhood. So, the government now receives airborne intelligence from RAW and satellite imagery from the NTRO, going against the very logic of having a single agency for technical intelligence. Thus, intelligence agencies are working at cross-purpose much against the mandated duty they are expected to perform. In view of terrorists' and left wing onslaught on the country it is highly desirable that intelligence gathering manual and methodology should be recast, and each agency should be accountable for lapses, as it is happening at present. (INAV)

Pak Nuke technology to Bangladesh

By Ashish Biswas

In the wake of the proposed Indo-US nuclear agreement, Pakistan has offered Bangladesh all help to build a nuclear reactor to help the country meet its growing energy requirements.

Dhaka-based media recently quoted the Pak High Commissioner Mr. Alamgir Babar as saying that the offer was "on the table" and it was now up to Bangladesh to discuss it in detail. Pakistan's proposal is significant in terms of its timing. It is clearly not content with just registering its protests against the Indo-US deal, which it fears will trigger a new arms race and alter the regional alignment of forces. It has also sought parity with India by pressing for a similar deal with the US.

With US officials not expecting Pakistan to follow up its demand very seriously, the Pak establishment obviously wants to counter India's growing stature as the biggest power in the South Asian context.

When Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, there was a proposal to use nuclear energy to meet the growing industrial and economic needs in the Eastern province. Preliminary talks were held with the US, the UK, France and Canada, so that Dhaka, too could get a share of civilian nuclear technology. For a time, talks were held with India too, but not unexpectedly, there was no progress.

As with most ambitious projects announced for the East, naturally this one too did not proceed very far. Continuous economic neglect and ruthless exploitation of natural resources of the East led to total alienation of the locals from their rulers in the West. The rest is history.

Kolkata-based analysts think that Indian policy-makers, who normally are more obsessed with Kashmir and Afghanistan, have not only missed their opportunities in the East. They have also not effectively monitored the recent political trends emerging in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh authorities have been in talks in recent times with Russia and China, seeking their help in introducing civilian nuclear energy. The Russians have responded more positively than the Chinese, with whom the talks began earlier.

About five years ago, Bangladesh authorities intercepted an illegal consignment of Uranium, the size of a football, from a northern district. It came from Kazakhstan, which was a part of the erstwhile USSR and where radio active material used to be stored. The consignment had been smuggled from the West, through large territories in India, until the carriers -- there were two of them, later arrested -- crossed over from Malda district, in West Bengal.

There was considerable speculation among Kolkata-based analysts, who wondered about the possible end use of the material and the target of this exercise. Most came to the conclusion that in view of the increasing hold of religious extremists in the country, a strong anti-Indian sentiment was a strong component of the entire operation.

It was never known whether this was part of any official or covert plan of the Bangladesh to acquire a nuclear capability. Bangladesh is a signatory to the Non Proliferation treaty, unlike Pakistan. The IAEA had recently allowed Bangladesh to use nuclear power for civilian needs.

Analysts feel India should follow what is happening in Bangladesh more closely. The timing of the Pak proposal is intriguing not the least because of the nature and background of the present Bangladesh rulers.

The caretaker regime, which has been postponing general elections in the country for one reason or another, is backed by the army. The present chief is general Moeen, who recently visited India. However, before he visited India, he took care to visit Pakistan, cancelling an earlier visit to India. He did not take part in the Bangladesh freedom struggle in 1970-71 and is a former batch-mate of top Pakistani army officers.

Political observers say he enjoys close links with pro-Pak leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, who want to declare a federation with Pakistan if they win the next general elections .There are others, however, who think that since he has taken over as the army head, he belongs to no lobby, but keeps Bangladeshi interests paramount in all negotiations.

The man who has been shopping around for nuke technology in Russia and China is none other than Foreign Adviser to the caretaker regime, Iftekar Choudhury. Mr. Choudhury, who recently visited Russia, makes no bones about hiding his greater Islamic identity. Two themes are very close to his heart, if his public pronouncements are any indication: a more effective Islamic mobilization all over the world and the alleged repression of Muslims in many countries, including India.

Observers feel India should play a more effective role diplomatically in the East, in view of the distinct quickening of the pace of events in the region. (IPA)