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Last Updated: Mar 25, 2008 - 10:19:10 AM |
The militants
exploit gaping holes in India’s counter-terrorism architecture and strategy as
well as the nation’s ambivalent policies toward religious minorities,
particularly the 150-million strong but largely impoverished Muslim community.
What has complicated the Indian intelligence agencies’ task since the flowering
of al-Qaeda and a global jihadist movement after 9/11 is the alacrity with
which various terrorist groups and their support structures have reworked their
strategy and operational methods to effectively dodge a series of worldwide
bans. The most dramatic change in the Indian context has been the realignment
of terrorist forces, with prominent groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) and
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)—proscribed by the United States and other countries,
including Pakistan—stepping back to allow Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), an
al-Qaeda ally with a pan-South Asian presence, to lead the terror campaign in
India (Rediff.com, May 25, 2007).
Other changes have been noticed in the structure and modus operandi of India’s
terrorist groups. The new recruits to the cause are local men: young, educated
and without previous involvement in extremist activities. These men form the
nucleus of groups throughout India who tap into the local criminal-hawala
network of couriers and handlers to move money and explosives—often locally
acquired—to carry out terrorist strikes [1]. The group carrying out the
operation typically disengages and disappears after striking, leaving hardly
any trace of its existence. Since the simultaneous explosions in Delhi in 2005,
investigating agencies frequently encounter red herrings left by the terrorists
to confuse the investigation and allow greater time to disband and escape.
Changing Circumstances
Two critical aspects in the growth of Indian terrorism are the mounting
evidence pointing to the involvement of the HuJI in terror attacks and the
alliance of this group with the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a
banned network of young Muslim activists who openly claim Osama bin Laden as their
idol (The Hindu, April 3, 2007). For a long time India’s federal and state
investigating agencies did not see the link as a serious development,
continuing instead to rely on past experience by focusing on LeT and JeM
activists.
One of the primary reasons for this poor assessment was the inability of the
intelligence agencies and the whole cornucopia of coordinating agencies at
state and federal levels to think beyond the entrenched “conventional wisdom”
of analyzing terrorist groups through ideological prisms, thereby completely
missing the possibility that these groups might work together for a common
goal. This has happened not only in India but even in Pakistan, where one such
coalition of terror groups called Brigade 313 was involved in assassination
attempts on President Pervez Musharraf (Newsline, August 2004; Asia Times, July
14, 2004).
Equally restricting has been the reluctance, and even refusal, to share
information among the intelligence and security agencies. Along with an inept
information-sharing architecture at the national level, this reluctance has
proved to be the most critical flaw in counter-terrorism intelligence
operations (The Hindu, October 30, 2001). The problem came to the fore recently
when police in the Karnataka state of southern India arrested one Riyazuddin
Nasir on charges of vehicle theft. Nasir would have been let out on bail for
these minor charges but for a single intelligence official in Delhi who decided
to search the database for connections with terrorist activities. Nasir was
found to be a HuJI operative and one of India's most wanted men (The Hindu,
February 12).
Failure to Cooperate
It is not really difficult to see where the problem is—an intelligence
structure which has yet to emerge from its debilitating colonial legacy and a
complementary stranglehold of bureaucracy. The structure and operational
philosophy of state police and intelligence units have not changed much since
British days—they are mostly structured as agencies to protect law and order
and spy on rivals rather than act as investigative and intelligence units.
Criminal investigators are usually inserted into terrorism investigations only
after an incident takes place. There are no independent anti-terror units
carrying out both intelligence and investigations into terrorist groups at the
state level.
At the top of the intelligence pyramid is the National Security Council
Secretariat (NSCS), headed by an all-powerful, politically-appointed National
Security Advisor (NSA), who often has much more than terrorism on his mind.
Intelligence operations within the country are carried out by the Intelligence
Bureau (IB) and its wide network of officers and men, all reporting to the
Ministry of Home Affairs. The ministry is headed by a cabinet minister and one
or two ministers of state—besides a secretary and other senior officials—who
often get tempted, at least close to the elections, to utilize the IB for
assessing the electoral chances of their party while spying on their rivals. EM
Rammohan, a former member of the National Security Advisory Board, notes:
“Instead of concentrating on security issues, they are busy chasing the
Opposition so that the ruling party is kept in power. Is that the job of the
IB?” (outlookindia.com, July 31, 2006).
External intelligence is the responsibility of the Research and Analysis Wing
(RAW), working directly under the Cabinet Secretary but reporting to the NSA
for all practical purposes. RAW keeps a sharp eye on the activities of
terrorist groups with bases in foreign countries. According to former IB
joint-director Maloy Krishna Dhar, RAW’s reluctance to share information with
IB is legendary (Rediff.com, August 17, 2006). There have also been instances
where personality clashes have deterred effective coordination between the NSA
and RAW chiefs [2].
The second set of intelligence agencies are the military ones, led by the
Directorate General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) with a network of field
offices and forward posts in the border areas as well as representatives in
diplomatic missions. Since the DGMI has been historically part of the Army, the
Air Force and Navy have individual intelligence units collecting and collating
information relevant to their operations and bases. The Defence Intelligence
Agency (DIA), created in 2002 to correct this anomaly, is entrusted with the
task of coordinating the whole spectrum of military intelligence but is
presently short-staffed, poorly funded and burdened with an ambitious and
expanding circle of objectives [3].
Paramilitary organizations like the Central Reserve Police Force and Border
Security Force maintain their own intelligence units to support
counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir and elsewhere. Their intelligence
operations have often been stymied by the Army's reluctance to share
intelligence tapped from its wide network of informers and sources. Other
government agencies providing physical security, like the Special Protection
Group, Central Industrial Security Force and National Security Guards, all
maintain their own intelligence units.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the state police, whose intelligence networks
remain the primary source of information and main agency for implementing
action on the ground. The most critical element in this structure is the investigative
branch of the local police forces. These go by various names, such as the
Criminal Investigation Department, the Special Branch or the Crime Branch.
There is no uniformity in responsibilities or operational duties. Typically
these units carry out the investigation and prosecution of terrorist, hawala,
arms and counterfeit cases, placing them in the unique position of being able
to detect the emergence of terror networks or coalitions.
Unfortunately they remain the weakest link in the intelligence chain as these
units carry the burden of acting as colonial-style law enforcement agencies and
not as modern units capable of organizing preventive measures based on
intelligence collection. These forces are commonly afflicted with poor morale
and problems related to accountability, pay and training. Even in metropolitan
centers like Delhi and Mumbai, the police-criminal nexus and pervasive
corruption have rendered effective intelligence from federal agencies
worthless. There was clear intelligence available about terrorist attacks in
Mumbai at least a month before the July 2006 commuter train blasts. This
intelligence was not followed up on, nor were preventive measures put in place
at railway stations. A week after the Mumbai blasts, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh was quoted by the media as saying that “past responses have been
inadequate in dealing with these problems which are of a different intensity,
magnitude, scale and scope” (The Tribune [Chandigarh, Punjab], July 21, 2006).
Reforming the Intelligence Structure
Of the several steps taken in recent years to overcome these outstanding
difficulties, two held great promise. One was the creation of the National
Technical Research Organization (NTRO), with a focus on collecting technical
intelligence (TECHINT), cyber intelligence and cyber counter-intelligence [4].
Beginning with RAW's Aviation Research Centre (ARC) assets, NTRO is rapidly
expanding and strengthening its intelligence capabilities to fulfill this
mandate. On the other hand, the NTRO mandate adds one more agency to the mix,
as the IB, RAW and the Army’s Signals Directorate will continue to maintain
autonomous TECHINT units.
The second step was the establishment of a Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) and a
Joint Task Force on Intelligence within IB as a hub of India's
counter-terrorism effort. The mission objective was to run an umbrella
organization comprising state-level units called SMACs and the development of a
national counter-terrorism database supported by state-level police-intelligence
Joint Task Forces and inter-state Intelligence Support Teams (The Hindu,
February 12). Conceived after the pattern of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism
Center, the MAC was to be responsible for the joint analysis of intelligence
flowing from different quarters and coordinating relevant follow-up actions
(Rediff.com, April 6, 2003).
Five years after MAC was approved, it is today composed of a skeletal staff and
five SMACs, using a database hosted on a bare-bones computer system designed
in-house, with no real-time links to state police forces or other intelligence
agencies. There is no sign of the development of the comprehensive database on
terrorists on which the entire counter-terrorism information grid was to be
built. Senior intelligence officials have pointed out that the interrogation
reports of 16,000 Islamist terrorists caught between 1991 and 2005 could prove
to be a goldmine of actionable intelligence (The Hindu, February 6). These
inadequacies can be overcome by beefing up the present staff strength and
widening the recruitment base to include the qualified technical personnel
needed to develop, integrate and man the information grid. But progress is
delayed due to unseemly bureaucratic wrangling over funding for an additional
140 positions at MAC. Added to this problem is the Indian Army's refusal to
depute officials to the agency, citing disciplinary and administrative problems
(The Hindu, February 12).
Conclusion
Difficulties like these and the tepid response of the state governments to a
2007 Supreme Court directive ordering improvements in the functioning of police
and intelligence agencies continue to bedevil India’s attempts to fashion an
effective counter-terrorism strategy. Meanwhile terrorist groups continue to
display a marked advantage in adapting to newer technologies and modes of
operation, allowing them to function more quickly and quietly than the Indian
intelligence community.
Notes
1. Hawala is an alternative remittance system with both legitimate and
illegitimate uses.
2. Author’s interview with a senior RAW official.
3. Author’s interview with an official from the Defence Intelligence Agency,
New Delhi, in 2007.
4. From B. Raman’s lecture on National Security and Armed Forces Command
Structure, organized by the Forum for Strategic and Security Studies, New
Delhi, on October 16, 2007. Raman is a former senior RAW official who gives
details of various intelligence operations in his recent book, Kaoboys of RAW,
New Delhi, 2007.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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