Tag Archives | counter-terrorism

Counter-posterism tactics

By on 18th May 2012 in Security

The mindgame of fighting terror

Earlier this week posters appeared in Pattan in Jammu & Kashmir’s Baramulla district, threatening to kill 13 persons for assisting security forces. Here is the poster by a group with a grand sounding title of “Al Mashterqa Lashkar-e-Taiba Hizbul Mujahideen”.

Al Mashterqa Lashkar-e-Taiba Hizbul Mujahideen's Poster

Here’s the Indian Army’s counter-poster.

In the first panel it says “Hey terrorists, why are you fighting these innocent people. Fight with the Army, your fight is with the Army.” In the second it tells the people “Don’t fear these terrorists because the army is with you. Call us for help.”

Now let’s see if the message gets through.

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The Red Herring Dealers of Lahore

By on 10th May 2012 in Foreign Affairs, Security

There’s more to the Mumbai terror alert than meets the eye

Yesterday, reports in the media indicated that a terror alert had been sounded in Mumbai and across many Indian airports: five terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba had entered the country and planned to target petrochemical installations in Mumbai using the sea routes. These reports were similar to those a couple of days earlier, concerning Gujarat, where coastal police tightened watch over offshore islands and the petrochemical complex at Jamnagar.

Reports in today’s Pakistani newspapers reveal that three of the five alleged LeT terrorists are shopkeepers and a security guard from Lahore, who have sought police protection in the light of the Indian terror alert.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a goof-up by Indian intelligence authorities, citing Occam’s & Hanlon’s razors. To do so would be to ignore the little known fact that the Lashkar-e-Taiba has, in the past, used red herrings to befuddle and embarrass India’s intelligence agencies, including during one of the biggest terrorist attacks in recent times. It would also be to ignore the alacrity with which the three gentlemen from Lahore discovered their photographs, sought police protection and, according to one popular website that peddles a ‘nationalist’ line, were to address a press conference. All this within hours of the photographs appearing in the Indian media. Things do happen pretty fast in the internet age, but a mere three six hours to mobilise all this should raise eyebrows. (Gujarat police had put up the photographs across the state as early as May 6th). [See update below]

So what, other than incompetence, are the possibilities?

The first is that real terrorists used fake identities to enter India. If they have entered India, it means they are still around and might use the lowering of guard caused by this episode to strike. Also, the alerts indicated five terrorists. It is important, therefore, for the authorities and the media to treat the threat as ongoing and serious, and not drift into complacency.

Second, this was an information operation designed to embarrass India and the United States, and use it to show that India always makes false accusations against Pakistan. By implication, Hafiz Saeed and Lashkar-e-Taiba were victims of a ‘false flag’ operation by India (and the United States) to implicate Pakistan. The best time for this would have been when Hillary Clinton was on Indian soil. However, by accident, inefficiency or design, the terror alert was sounded after she left the country. In the event the grand expose in Lahore turned out to be a damp squib.

Be that as it may, the myth-making machines of Pakistan will turn this episode into a narrative of how Hafiz Saeed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are unfairly blamed by India and the United States. Even if its for domestic consumption, it’s still an effort that didn’t go waste.

We must, of course, consider the Occam & Hanlon razors. Did India’s intelligence agencies goof up? They could have erred in terms of the existence of the threat, the presence of terrorists and their identities. Each of these is a separate issue. That said, at this stage, we are better off if they raise an alert at the risk of looking red-faced rather than let the fear of embarrassment cause them to less on the ball.

Tailpiece: There’s also a chance that the Indian media put up the wrong pictures. How and why they’d end up publishing photographs of the three gentlemen from Lahore is a mystery.

Update: May 11th, 2012 Praveen Swami & Mohammad Ali report “late on Wednesday, shopkeeper Mahtab Butt said he had on a whim used Google to search for the word ‘India.’ The search led him to an India Today group site. There, he discovered a photo of himself, fellow storeowner Atif Butt and night guard Muhammad Babar, illustrating a story on the alleged Mumbai terror plot. Mr. Butt said he immediately called Pakistani television show host Mubashir Lucman — a controversial figure known for his dogged support of the religious right — with the news…Later that evening though, both Mr. Butt and Mr. Atif Butt provided The Hindu with a quite different version of events. The two men said they had learned of the report from a common friend, whom they identified as Khubaab.”

This increases the likelihood that India’s intelligence agencies were fed misinformation to either divert or embarrass them. We can only speculate the reasons for this. Embarrassing India during Mrs Clinton’s visit is enough of a motive. While it is unlikely that the ISI would wish to escalate tensions with India at a time when Pakistan’s relations with the US are close to breaking down, it would be inappropriate to dismiss the risk of a terrorist attack.

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Jayant Choudhry on debating IT rules in parliament

By on 2nd November 2011 in Public Policy

Jayant Choudhry, the Rashtriya Lok Dal MP from Mathura was the only legislator who expressed in the Lok Sabha concerns raised by citizens against the draconian Information Technology Rules (IT Rules) that came into effect this year. (More about what’s wrong with these rules in my DNA op-ed, Sunil Abraham and M R Madhavan in Pragati)

Here’s a discussion with Mr Choudhry on the topic.

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Lifting the AFSPA, by the numbers

By on 2nd November 2011 in Foreign Affairs, Security

The case for a step-by-step lifting of AFSPA from Jammu & Kashmir

(My op-ed in the Indian Express)

If war is politics by other means, counter-insurgency is even more so. Since the early 1990s, the national endeavour in Jammu & Kashmir has involved three battles: a military contest to crush jihadi militants by force, a political battle to defeat secessionism and a psychological one to ensure that it is India’s narrative that dominates the discourse.
Ending the insurgency requires us to win all three. One reason why the conflict has continued for so long is that we have not been able to simultaneously attain positions of military, political and psychological dominance. Now, after over two decades we have a chance to try and bring a painful, unfortunate chapter in our history to a close.

Consider. Militancy has dwindled. The Pakistani military-jihadi establishment is entangled in a face-off with the United States over Afghanistan and might not wish to scale up violence on its eastern borders. A few months ago, Jammu & Kashmir successfully conducted panchayat elections which saw record turnouts, putting curmudgeonly separatists to shame. In a year where even New York was not spared of public protests, Kashmir’s cities distinguished themselves by staying out of the news, not least due to Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain’s enlightened approach to security management. Tourists got wind of all this, and more of them turned up in the first three quarters of 2011 than in any year in the last twenty-five.

What has not reduced, however, is the affective divide between those Kashmiris hurt by the consequences of insurgency and the rest of the nation. It is important to start bridging that now. Continuing to neglect this psychological aspect of strategy risks undermining hard-won successes in the military and the political battles.

A careful, judicious and step-by-step revocation of the Armed Powers Special Powers Act (AFSPA) can set off a virtuous cycle that will send a positive signal to the people of the state, strengthen the desirable political forces, put separatists on the backfoot, and take New Delhi a few moral notches higher. Such a move is seen as necessary by Omar Abdullah’s government. It is viewed favourably by many in the UPA.

The defence ministry has opposed it on the grounds that we cannot expect our army to fight with its hands tied behind its back. Other thoughtful analysts have argued that it is better to err on the side of caution and wait a few more years before considering lifting AFSPA. What should we make of these serious objections?

First, it is important to recognise that while the defence ministry’s opinion must be considered with the greatest seriousness, the final decision vests with the Union cabinet. No ministry or arm of government ought to be entitled to a veto. We might already have arrived at the point where further application of military force in populated areas of Kashmir will yield negative returns. Sure, the army must remain deployed along the Line of Control to prevent infiltration and keep a watchful eye on Pakistan, but its visibility in towns and villages where there is no militancy will only deepen resentment.

Second, revoking AFSPA does not mean the army’s hands are tied in the whole state. Rather, the provision can be lifted prudently in surgically chosen geographical areas — which can be smaller than districts — with an explicit caveat that it will be reimposed if violence rises. If the situation holds, the revocation can be extended to the next set of locations. If it gets worse, the Central and state governments can declare the areas disturbed and employ security forces as they do now.

Third, a number of steps have to be taken in tandem to manage the risks of an escalation in violence. The army and the security forces must be employed in a manner such that militants and malefactors cannot treat areas where AFSPA has been lifted as safe havens. State police and intelligence agencies must gear up to contain militant mobilisation and activity in such areas. Politically, the UPA and the Omar Abdullah governments must engage their respective opposition parties meaningfully to achieve a measure of bipartisanship.

So there are risks to making a carefully calibrated move towards the endgame now, but these can be managed. Our policy discourse is ill-served by framing the issue as “AFSPA vs no-AFSPA” and rehashing standard arguments. We would be much better off asking what the Central government, the army and the state government ought to do to ensure that lifting the AFSPA leads to the desired results.

Why not wait and see? Waiting has risks too. If the current window of opportunity closes, the UPA government might find itself with its back to the wall, compelled to revoke the AFSPA as a concession to separatists. Surely Kashmir has taught us that yielding from a position of weakness is a very bad idea.

Copyright © 2011. Indian Express. All Rights Reserved

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Fighting terrorism, starting with the easy stuff

By on 17th July 2011 in Security

Manage grievances, improve social capital, take security seriously and get better ambulances.

This appeared in Saturday’s DNA.

It’s not difficult to set off a bomb blast in Mumbai, or for that matter in any Indian city. It doesn’t require the person to be highly trained, it just requires the person to be motivated enough to want to do it. It doesn’t even need foreign terrorists to use inflatable rafts to land on isolated beaches, or trek across high Himalayan terrain. It just needs local individuals with greed, grievance, or sheer malice to be persuaded to use locally available material — with some help from those who know who to rig up explosives — to plant a bomb or three.

If our cities don’t suffer terrorist attacks more regularly, it is, to some extent, because our much-maligned police forces manage to foil some conspiracies. The main reason might well be that not too many people want to commit terrorist attacks. If they did, we would see terrorist attacks become as common as other acts of serious crime.

Tackling terrorism, therefore, requires us to ensure that terrorism doesn’t become more attractive. The greedy and the malicious can be deterred by raising their costs: if would-be terrorists are exposed, caught and punished, such people might not want to take the risk. Those with grievances can be harder to deter, so we need to ensure that we address them and don’t create new ones. It is impossible to completely erase grievances, but we can manage them. One way to do this is to strengthen social capital. It’s hard to do this in Mumbai, a city given to outpourings of selfless public-spiritedness during crises but abjectly lacking a public ethic otherwise, but it has to be attempted. Mumbai needs to link its social islands together more urgently today than at any time in its history.

We cannot stop a really motivated terrorist, but we can make it hard for him to succeed. Our shopping malls, office buildings, car parks, bus stands and railway stations have installed metal detectors and the like and appointed security personnel to operate them. Let’s be honest: most of the time, it’s just a charade engaged in by both sides. The security people pretend to be checking us, and we play along. How many times have security guards asked to inspect the boot of your car without even bothering about what’s on the back seat?

The places for the rich and powerful — five-star hotels, government buildings and upmarket offices — are veritable fortresses. Most other places at most times just cheat. Yes, it’s not practical for a solitary metal detector to screen a crowd fast enough. That suggests we install more detectors or devise sophisticated methods to screen some people. In any case, the dishonest business of going through the motions has to stop. Do we introspect on our own lack of diligence with a tenth of the energy we use to, quite rightly, blame the government for failing to prevent a bomb blast?

Similarly, does it register in our collective mind that our emergency services are pathetic? After Wednesday’s bomb blasts, bodies and survivors were carried to hospitals in appalling conditions. Why do we have such poor and so few public service ambulances? Is our fire brigade really equipped to handle a city of over 13 million people? Why, do we give way to emergency vehicles while driving everyday? If we cannot prevent diabolical terrorists from trying to kill people indiscriminately, we can certainly try to mitigate the damage. At Thursday’s press conference, reporters asked questions about such things as intelligence failure and what India might do if the plotwere traced back to Pakistan. No one asked why it is that in the richest city of a country with claims to be a global power, survivors had to be bundled in the back of rusty cargo vans to be taken to hospital.

Preventing terror attacks is very tough. Much of it is not in our hands. But making sure we take security procedures seriously is in our hands. So too is insisting that Mumbai have an adequate number of decent ambulances. It’s important to get the simpler things right first.

The author is founder and fellow for geopolitics at the Takshashila Institution and editor of Pragati — The Indian National Interest Review

Permission to reprint or copy this article must be obtained from www.3dsyndication.com

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Pax Indica: Why they killed bin Laden now

By on 3rd May 2011 in Aside

The military-jihadi complex is likely to grow stronger

In today’s Pax Indica column on Yahoo, I warn that India has at best two summers before cross-border militancy and terrorism rise again.

You might remember a Shekhar Suman gag on Zee TV’s Movers and Shakers several years ago: An angry George W Bush announces that the United States will bomb the place where Osama bin Laden is found to be hiding.

Hearing this, Vajpayee looks under his bed, pauses, and with a characteristic flick of his wrist says: “Thank God! He isn’t here!”

Over in Rawalpindi, General Musharraf looks under his bed, sighs in relief, and says: “Thank God! He is still here!”

Shekhar Suman, more than most Western analysts, got the plot right. Keeping Osama bin Laden out of Washington’s hands was vital in order to prevent having to publicly deal with revelations of how the Pakistani military-jihadi complex not only was connected with al-Qaeda, but might also have been involved in the conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks. [Read the rest at Yahoo!]

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My op-ed in WSJ Asia – Dr Singh’s leap of faith

By on 19th February 2011 in Foreign Affairs

India’s decision to resume dialogue with Pakistan is a triumph of faith over reason

The following is the original draft of my op-ed that appeared in the pages of the Wall Street Journal Asia earlier this week:

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh waited until public memory of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai on 26th November 2008 faded to a level that it was politically feasible for him to resume the composite bilateral dialogue with Pakistan. The attacks had compelled him to reluctantly suspend official talks two years ago. Despite increasingly compelling evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out those attacks with the connivance of the Pakistani military establishment, Islamabad has preferred to engage in a dilatory game of dossiers-and-lawsuits to avoid having to take any action against the perpetrators of one of the most provocative acts of terrorism in recent years. Yet, in the absence of the tiniest acts of good faith from his Pakistani counterparts, Prime Minister Singh has dogmatically persisted with his pursuit of dialogue — a policy which last week saw New Delhi effectively yielding to Pakistan’s demand of talks without preconditions.

Dialogue for Mr Singh is neither an eyewash to satisfy the international community nor a pragmatic policy tied to outcomes. It is almost a matter of faith, oblivious to facts or reason. Continue Reading →

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Letter to the Jakarta Post

By on 14th August 2010 in Public Policy, Security

Regarding the situation in Jammu & Kashmir

An edited version of the following letter was published in Indonesia’s Jakarta Post today:

Sir,

I refer to the article by Laura Schuurmans in the Jakarta Post dated 12 August 2010.

Ms Schuurman’s makes a specious argument linking the situation in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir to the spread of extremism across South Asia. The fact of the matter is that Jammu & Kashmir is a victim of Pakistan’s dangerous policy of using radical Islamist militants as a tool of state policy right from 1947. In other words Pakistan’s cynical manipulation of religion predates the Kashmir ‘dispute’. Secondly, as borne out by numerous statements by leaders of Pakistan-based militant organisations like Hafeez Saeed, leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the extremists’ goal is not limited to the liberation of Kashmir, but extends to the dismemberment of a India, multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation which is very similar to Indonesia.

In fact, while Ms Schuurman regurgitates the Goebbelsian language about troop numbers and ‘repression’ of the people in Jammu & Kashmir, she neglects to mention that despite bloodshed of the last two decades, including the ethnic cleansing of the Hindu minorities in 1989-90, the Indian government has respected the special status given to Jammu & Kashmir state. Your readers might be surprised to know that Indian citizens cannot migrate to the state, cannot purchase land and property there and face hurdles in marrying their Kashmiri counterparts. The state not only enjoys greater political and economic freedom than Pakistani administered Kashmir, and indeed Pakistan itself, but is also the second largest recipient of fiscal transfers (per capita) from the federal government.

This is not to deny that proxy war and insurgency has not created an affective divide between Kashmiris and the Indian state. But the idea of India is big enough to bridge this gap, as indeed has been happening since 2002. Chemotherapy is painful and hurts the body, but it is necessary to treat the underlying cancer which is fatal. Despite the Ms Schuurmans’ flawed arguments, I am sure that of all the people in the region, Indonesians will appreciate the challenges of governing a diverse, deeply religious yet plural society.

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When BlackBerry went to New Delhi

By on 13th August 2010 in Economy, Public Policy, Security

BlackBerry must comply with Indian law. India needs a new debate on privacy.

Yes, terrorists can use anything to communicate with each other, plan attacks and help carry them out.

Hafiz Mohammed Saeed can write letters, in code, and send it by post to his sleeper agents in India. He probably does that. But not all means of communications are alike in their ability to help terrorists carry out attacks. A terrorist with a satellite phone with real-time voice and data connection is far more dangerous than a terrorist who carries letters in his pocket. So the argument that terrorists can use anything to communicate is not a valid counter to the argument that government agencies can prevent, investigate and prosecute terrorists better if they are capable of intercepting or blocking real-time communications.

For instance, there is a reasonable argument that the damage to life and property in Mumbai during the 26/11 attacks might have been lower if the terrorists had been denied access to real-time communications, from satellite phones, to cellular phones to broadcast television. There is also a reasonable argument that the ability to intercept the phone calls made by the terrorists plays an important role in prosecuting them in courts of law and in courts of public opinion. India’s law enforcement agencies have had the ability to tap your phone for ages, but apart from the odd political scandal, it is difficult to build a case that this has somehow led to the infringements of the rights of ordinary citizens.

The current debate over Blackberry’s messaging system must be placed in this context. The ongoing discussion between the Indian government and Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that provides BlackBerry services, involves two inter-related issues.

First, whatever might be RIM’s values, business practices and corporate policies, its business in India is governed by Indian law. The contention that “no one else has a problem with our service” is no defence—India has security considerations that might be peculiar to it, and as long as the requirements are constitutionally legitimate, RIM must comply. It is disingenuous to conflate the legitimate authority of a constitutional democracy—imperfect as India’s is—with that of the demands made by totalitarian or authoritarian states. The two are morally and practically different. [See this editorial in the Globe and Mail].

RIM could insist—as it has just done—that it is not treated any differently from others in the field, but it cannot get away with the excuse that its corporate policy overrides the rule of law in India.

Second and the more important issue is for India to establish due processes to determine just who, under what circumstances and under what checks and balances gets to actually block or intercept communications. A national debate over digital privacy, powers of government and mechanisms for redressal is now urgent, as the Indian economy and society become ever more reliant on communications networks.

It is clear that citizens need greater, more credible safeguards. It is also clear that the government needs to be more capable of addressing threats that arise from advances in communications technology. What is not clear is whether the political establishment sees these as priorities worthy of wider public deliberation. The usual practice of passing legislation without adequate parliamentary debate is neither likely to reassure citizens of their rights nor offer new ideas to law-enforcement agencies.

This blog has consistently argued against blunt measures like banning telecommunication services, even and especially in insurgent & terrorist affected areas. Governments must learn how to operate in an information-rich, networked world. Therefore, to the extent that the Indian government’s threat to block BlackBerry services is a device to press RIM to better co-operate with the law-enforcement agencies, it is tolerable. Such a threat is credible only if it can hurt both the government itself and RIM. This appears to be the case.

However, it would be a serious mistake if the government were to make such a ban permanent. Not because India needs the BlackBerry, but because the underlying rationale is self-defeating.

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What we learn from our COIN campaigns

By on 4th March 2010 in Security

…is that we don’t learn from them

Here’s a passage from my review of India & Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned, a volume of case studies and analyses edited by Sumit Ganguly & David Fidler.

A recurring theme in the book is that lessons that were to be learnt in one counter-insurgency campaign were not learnt, and mistakes repeated over and over again. That is as much a damning indictment of the Indian armed forces—particularly the army—as it is of a political class that treats political violence as within the ambit of legitimate politics. But while the failings of political leaders are well-known and roundly condemned, the lapses of the security forces are masked by information asymmetries.

Shouldn’t a counter-insurgency doctrine help prevent mistakes from being repeated? Comparing the counter-insurgency doctrines of the United States and India, Dr Fidler writes that the exercise of developing the Indian Doctrine for Sub-Conventional Operations (DSCO) was “mainly one of codification—collecting in one document guidance accumulated over the course of more than fifty years. The objective was not to revolutionise how the Indian Army or government thought about how to fight insurgencies.” That sounds quintessentially Indian and evokes images of the Vedas, which were codified into written form after centuries of existence as oral tradition. It will be a challenge to translate this kind of a document into a strategy for current and future conflicts.

Dr Fidler also points out that India’s counter-insurgency doctrine “has not involved the civilian government agencies affected, such as the state and central police forces.” This is perhaps its biggest weakness—by its very nature, counter-insurgency is a problem of (re-)establishing governance. The Indian pattern has been one where, even after a successful campaign by security forces, the civilian government is somehow expected to miraculously appear and resume administration. Unfortunately, this does not usually happen, setting the state for the insurgency to resume. It is unclear if this broad point has registered at the highest levels of the Indian government. [Pragati---The Indian National Interest Review]

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