Indian Response to Counter Terrorism

Terrorism has resulted from irrationality, miscalculation, xenophobia, fanaticism, and religious extremism. Historically mankind has remained in a state of conflict and resorted to violence to bring in changes in the society and in political systems. Acts of terrorism have caused very considerable losses to life and property without warning. At its worst, terrorism has even severely affected the political and economic systems of countries. Terrorism usually involves a pre-planned campaign of violence with little or no moral restraints, practiced by various types of groups in pursuit of their usually political objectives. Although terrorism is different from other forms of conflict-waging, such as wars or riots, terrorists may exploit these forms of conflict-waging to promote their own agenda. Terrorist groups are often categorised based on their motivation or political cause.

The scourge of terrorism has haunted Indian policy-makers since independence. Some of the states, particularly the bordering states, having different cultural and ethnic composition from the heartland, suffered from a real or perceived sense of neglect and misgovernance. Inimical powers exploited this aspect and sowed seeds of sedition and secession amongst some sections of society of these states-particularly the states of the North-East, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir-by providing them with arms training and financial support and instigated them to take up arms against the state machinery.

Comdt. N. S. Jamwal says that, “India's experience in combating insurgency / terrorism in these states has mostly been of finding a military solution to a political problem. Central and state governments have responded with various actions, mostly military, within own borders but lacked a coherent counter terrorism policy.”

“Terrorism continues to inflict pain and suffering on people all over the world. Hardly a week goes by without an act of terrorism taking place somewhere in the world, indiscriminately affecting innocent people, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Countering this scourge is in the interest of all Nations” says a press release of ‘United Nations’.

India has witnessed one of the world's highest levels of terrorist violence in the last three decades, with a unique hybrid of both domestic and international terrorism. Two audacious attacks, one on the Indian parliament in 2001 and the other in Mumbai in 2008, along with scores of smaller ones that have left thousands dead over the past ten years alone, have unsurprisingly brought into question the effectiveness of India's security and intelligence agencies in counterterrorism. (GP CPT Srinivas Ganapathiraju, IAF).

Failures of Counter Terrorism

The Indian take of countering the terrorism is analysed in great details in the book titled, “The Politics of Counterterrorism In India” by Dr. Prem Mahadevan who is a senior researcher at the Centre for Strategic Studies in Zurich. He specializes in the study of intelligence agencies, sub-state conflict, and organized crimes. He manages to delve through many layers surrounding the complex problem of Counter Terrorism (CT) in India to identify the core problems. He points out counter-hypothesis to following two:

CT failures are caused by intelligence failures. He disproves the first hypothesis by applying a "four constraints" paradigm as it applies to India: lack of political consistency, lack of political consensus, lack of operational capacity, and lack of operational coordination. He argues that Indian CT policy vacillates between coercive and conciliatory stances on a purely ad hoc and reactive basis. Any attempt by the central government to mount an offensive strategy has invariably been scuttled due to lack of domestic political consensus and international support.

CT failures might arise from the poor quality of such intelligence instead of poor follow-up on strategic intelligence. Mahadevan concludes on the basis of India's CT experience that the action the security services take on strategic intelligence is more important than the quality of the intelligence itself. Without discounting organizational deficiencies, Mahadevan connects them as contributors to the lack of operational capacity among the intelligence agencies. He attributes the cascade of CT failures to the decision makers' inability to develop strategic intelligence into tactical intelligence through timely follow-up action, a symptom of low operational capacity combined with poor coordination.

Ingredients of Counter Terrorism Policy

According to KPS Gill, former DGP, Punjab Police, the terrorism in Punjab was controlled through a politico-military and social process that inter alia included various factors like the following:-

• Clear political resolve and strong police leadership

• Fencing and floodlighting along the Indo-Pakistan border in Punjab

• Effective utilization of police and central para-military forces

• Rejection of public support by the Sikh community to the militants

• Effective intelligence network, which could penetrate the militant organisations

• Lack of international support to the militants

• Signing of the Rajiv-Longowal peace accord  

No antiterrorism legislation similar to the U.S. Patriot Act?

In the US war against terrorism, President George W. Bush signed an Executive Order on Terrorist Financing on September 24, 2001 and the US Congress passed the USA-Patriot Act 2001 which deals with terrorist funding among other issues. Further, on September 28, 2001, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1373 under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.30 Its provisions require, among other things, that all member states prevent the financing of terrorism and deny safe havens to terrorists. States also need to review and strengthen their border security operations, banking practices, customs and immigration procedures, law enforcement and intelligence cooperation as well as arms transfer control regulations.

In 2002 India passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), expanding the government's powers in combating terrorism. Some measures, such as the ability to keep terror suspects in custody without bringing them to trial, met with objections, and the law was repealed in 2004 after allegations that officials were abusing their powers. However, after the recent spate of bombings, some Indian politicians are calling for the law to be restored.

Some Indian states such as Karnataka and Maharashtra have other laws, Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) and the Karnataka Control of Organized Crime Act, that are used to try suspected terrorists. The MCOCA was also extended to Delhi in 2002. Some lawyers have alleged that MCOCA is even more draconian than POTA and has often been misused by the investigative agencies. Other states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are also seeking similar anti-terror laws.

Indian Counter-terrorism Policy

The fundamental question today is that since in India we are the worst affected by jihadi terrorist attacks, how to formulate a strategy to deal with Islamic terrorism. The strategy we choose for terrorist attacks should not be worse in the long run than the consequences of these attacks as in the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnap case of 1989 and the Kandahar IC-814 plane hijack case. Terrorism in India worsened as a consequence of the deal made by the NF and NDA governments to free the notorious terrorists in custody.

More innocent people, for example, have been killed in terrorist attacks since the release of Maulana Azhar, Umar Qureshi and Zargar in exchange for the passengers and crew in the Kandahar case. These three upon reaching Pakistan, continued as heroes in their terrorists acts against India including 26/11 in Mumbai.

Thus we need a clear-cut policy, which means a clear-cut statement of objectives, defining the priorities of these objectives, the strategy to achieve the objective, and the committing of necessary human, financial and infrastructural resources.

In 1996, India presented a draft of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism (CCIT) to the Ad Hoc Committee of the UN General Assembly on International Terrorism. It is intended that the CCIT, when concluded, would provide the international community with a legal framework that can supplement the existing Conventions to comprehensively deal with terrorism.

India acknowledges the concerns of the member states in regard to outstanding issues, namely the importance of the need not to affect the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination; the need to capture concerns relating to “State terrorism”; resolution of matters concerning potential impunity of military forces; and the need to delineate activities to be covered by the scope of the convention and those covered by humanitarian instruments..

India welcomed the adoption in 2006 of the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy that recognizes the need to express solidarity with innocent victims of this scourge and specifically addresses victims of terrorism.