Indian Defence Review

The Indian counter-terrorism strategy has been more coherent when it comes to dealing with jihadi terrorism than it has been in dealing with Marxist/Maoist insurgency/terrorism.

The next threat in order of seriousness has been that posed by jihadi terrorists—- indigenous elements as well as Pakistanis belonging to different organizations based in Pakistan, which were born during the US-inspired operations of the Afghan Mujahideen — trained by a triumvirate of the US, Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies— against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan post-1988, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which continues to fund, motivate, train, arm and co-ordinate them— diverted them to India to serve its strategic agenda against India. It initially used them in J&K, where it continues to do so and has been using them in other parts of India since 1993. Indian security agencies have been able to deal with the jihadi terrorists—the indigenous kind as well as those from Pakistan— more effectively than with the Marxist/Maoists because the jihadi terrorists have not been able to get the kind of local support that the Marxists/Maoists have been able to get.

While the violence in J&K did assume the proportions of an insurgency similar to the Marxist/Maoist insurgency in the 1990s, the jihadi terrorism in the rest of India has remained sporadic and not sustained. The failure of the jihadis to win local support was illustrated in J & K by the large voter turn-out in the last elections and in the rest of the country by the failure of the jihadis to drive a wedge between the Hindu and Muslim communities and to disrupt the economic progress of India. India has managed to achieve and maintain a GDP growth rate of 7 per cent plus despite the desperate efforts of Pakistan to disrupt India’s economic development by using the jihadis.

The lack of local support for the Pakistan-sponsored jihadis is also dramatically illustrated by the failure of Al Qaeda to develop any following in the Indian Muslim community—either in J&K or in other States. India has the world’s third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan. The Indian Muslim community has kept away from Al Qaeda and its ideology.

The Indian counter-terrorism strategy has been more coherent when it comes to dealing with jihadi terrorism than it has been in dealing with Marxist/Maoist insurgency/terrorism. The Army has the leadership role in dealing with the threats from jihadi terrorism in J&K, while the police has the leadership role in other States.

The 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai by a group of sea-borne terrorists of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) exposed certain weaknesses in the Indian counter-terrorism machinery

The active interest taken by the State and civil society in identifying and addressing the problems of the Muslim minority has helped in preventing an aggravation of the sense of alienation among some sections of the Muslims. The easier availability of modern education to the Muslims of India as compared to the inadequate availability to the Muslims of Pakistan has prevented many of the Indian Muslims from gravitating to the madrasas, which are Muslim educational institutions often kept running by the flow of funds from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai by a group of sea-borne terrorists of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) exposed certain weaknesses in the Indian counter-terrorism machinery such as an inadequate capability for the collection of preventive intelligence, poor state of physical security in sensitive infrastructure and an inadequate rapid response mechanism.

P.Chidambaram, who took over as the Home Minister of the Government of India after the 26/11 terrorist strikes, has considerably revamped the counter-terrorism machinery and improved co-ordination. Counter-terrorism co-operation between India and the US has improved to the benefit of India. The US pressure on Pakistan to stop using terrorism against India has not yet had the kind of impact that India would have liked to see, but has apparently made the Pakistani agencies more cautious in their operations against India.

A beneficial fall-out of this has been seen in the fact that barring two terrorist strikes of medium intensity in Pune and Benares, there has been no major act of jihadi terrorism since 26/11. It was also seen in the success of the security arrangements made by the Indian agencies for two major sports events— the Commonwealth Games of October 2010 in New Delhi and the World Cup cricket tournament which was spread all over the country in February-March,2011.

We keep criticising ourselves and our police all the time. We are given to chest-beating about our so-called failures. We tend to forget that our track record against terrorism and insurgencies is not bad at all.

Any counter-terrorism campaign against jihadi terrorism cannot be fully effective unless the State of Pakistan is made to give up the use of terrorism as a strategic weapon against India. There are no indications of any change of Pakistani thinking and tactics in this regard despite the obvious restraint that it has been observing since 26/11 because of the exposure of the role of the ISI in the 26/11 strikes by the intelligence agencies of both India and the US.

A policy-mix of incentives and disincentives designed and executed separately and in tandem by India and the US is required. The initiatives taken by our Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh to improve State-to-State relations with Pakistan despite the persisting public anger in India over the ISI’s role in the 26/11 terrorist strikes are designed to create such an incentive. The continued flow of US economic and military assistance to Pakistan despite mounting evidence of the involvement of the ISI in fomenting terrorism not only in India but also in Afghanistan is also designed to wean Pakistan away from the use of terrorism.