Terrorist Carnage at Mumbai

By Air Marshal BD Jayal

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Not since the Kargil conflict of 1999 has the national conscience been so aroused, inflamed and saddened as it has been in the reaction to the terrorist carnage at Mumbai starting on the night of November 26. The reasons are not far to seek. The former was a war on our borders. The latter is a war within the heart of India. A war that was launched many a year ago, but one in the existence of which the nation did not want to believe. A war of which India was perhaps the first target, but one to which we were blind. A war that the likes of al Qaida and its cohorts had long ago announced, but one we thought would be fought on foreign soil. A war that over the years has spread through trains and markets across many cities in India, and which has consumed thousands of innocent lives, but whose spread and perpetrators we are unwilling to acknowledge. Now that the truth has dawned upon us, let us not overreact, but act with deliberation and calm. Wars such as these are complex, multi-dimensional and fought over the long term. They can neither be measured in electoral time lines nor are they subject to instant solutions.

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How strange that for nearly three days, as every electronic news channel across the world was showing us footage of the battlefield of urban Mumbai, the leaders, who otherwise spare no opportunity to hog television screens and sermonize to the nation, were hidden from public view. As always it was left to uniformed men putting their lives on line to be seen doing what best they could. And even as they receded taking their dead with them, politics is back on stage with a bang.

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That the patience of the people of India was wearing thin with each progressive onslaught in this war waged by terrorists was evident to all but those blinded by the sheer magic of vote-bank politics and their greed to either gain access to power or to hang on to it, depending on which side of the aisle they were. Every terrorist attack, major or minor, was within minutes reduced to the rhetoric of vote-bank politics. In the seat of our democracy, the parliament, which itself had been the target of one such attack, there was never any serious attempt to discuss and debate the internal war that was spreading in our midst. In 2006, in Havana, the prime minister had even come to accept Pervez Musharraf's plea that we forget the past and work together in the future. We had even accepted that we were both victims of terror ("Art of surrender", Oct 2, 2006).

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To be brutally frank, we had this coming, and many writers, including this one, have for long been cautioning that we are not only acting like a soft State, but being perceived as one. What is worse, this is not the end. We have nuclear plants to protect and challenges from the air are even more demanding.

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The danger one fears is that in an effort to be seen to be doing something to respond to the public mood, we may do the wrong things. Already there are signs that this is happening. For example, it has been announced that the National Security Guard units will be based in major cities. Clearly this stems from the criticism of the long time taken by the NSG to arrive in Mumbai. But one doubts whether this is a well thought-out decision from the larger national security perspective. Special forces are special for their training, ethos, comradeship and many other qualities. If you spread them around, expose them to different local influences, there is a danger that over a period of time, they will lose that special edge and become normal forces, and worse — at the hand of local politics, like the police. We would then have succeeded in demolishing one more institution, like we have done so many others.

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The answer is not to take ad hoc and hasty decisions, but to streamline procedures and inculcate a sense of operational fluency. If indeed the operational urgency had been identified, Indian registered civilian aircraft in Delhi could have been commandeered. And, surely, local state police are not expected to be so powerless that they will throw up their hands at first signs of trouble. Let these operational issues be thought through and optimum solutions found. The question that comes to mind is, have the implications of these decisions been thought through in totality? Indeed, if they can be taken so promptly, why were they not taken earlier?

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In the of 'fog of war' that we are in, judging by the very inflamed public mood being displayed across the country, there is a temptation for the government to take on a macho posture and show results. This takes on urgent dimensions because of electoral compulsions, considering that some states are going to polls now and that national polls are in the offing. Mature leadership demands that the government avoid this trap as this will be detrimental to national security not only in the long run, but even in the midst of this undeclared war. One hopes that the one message of the Mumbai tragedy is now loud and clear to the political leadership and the bureaucracy of the nation. The people put national security above everything else and they are watching.

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It is therefore incumbent upon the leadership to inculcate a culture of national security into governance consciousness. This needs a change in the mindset of legislators, politicians and the bureaucracy. Those who fail to get the message do so at their peril. To ensure that national security transcends political affiliations, it is important that the approach to national security now be non-partisan and carry political consensus. It is in this spirit that the following five-point plan needs to be looked at, not selectively or priority-wise, but in totality.

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As a result of the Kargil review committee, four task forces were formed to look at management of defence, at intelligence, border management and internal security. The recommendations of these task forces were reviewed by a group of ministers under the then deputy prime minister and formally approved by the cabinet committee on security. One is aware that, as is the norm in our bureaucratic system, while the simpler recommendations have been implemented, the more complex ones and, therefore, the more crucial ones are buried in files or doing the proverbial ministerial rounds. Since all these are directly linked to national security, the government must immediately announce a time-frame for all pending issues to be implemented. Concurrently, let these and their progress be put up on the government website for the people of this country to monitor how their security is being managed.

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Appoint a high-level committee to revisit the report and the recommendations of the task force on intelligence, and review it in case there are additional issues to be covered and recommendations made, as in this area the challenges have expanded manifold over the last few years. This committee must submit its recommendations in one month. Pending this, implementation of the previous recommendations must continue.

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Within the next two months, let a comprehensive paper on national security be prepared and deliberated upon so that a White Paper on national security is debated and approved in a special session of Parliament. The nation will then be informed of national security challenges and priorities, and the commitment of the various political parties to safeguard the future.

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Issues arising out of the sixth pay commission have not only caused great harm to the institution of the armed forces, but their subsequent handling has also affected their morale. These need to be accorded the priority they deserve.

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Police reforms are not being implemented owing to lack of political will. The reforms must be implemented within a specified time-frame announced by the government. The reforms, along with the time-frames, should be put on the government website for the people of India to monitor.

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If the tragedy of Mumbai results in national security being accorded its rightful place in national priorities, if it results in a genuine change in the mindset of those in politics and governance, and if it results in security being accorded a non-partisan place in our polity, then the sacrifices made by all those who lost their lives will not have been in vain.