Muslim India

Police & State | V. Balachandran

DON'T SEEK FOREIGN SOLUTIONS TO SECURITY

First we mess up with our internal security by ignoring standard operating procedures, and then we rush to foreign countries to learn how to handle it. The Maharashtra Government is sending a delegation to Israel to learn counter-terror methodology. There is nothing wrong in learning what we do not know, but we have seen similar visits earlier. In May 1996, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde visited Israeli counter-terrorism schools and was "impressed" with their efficiency; in June 2000, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani led a police and intelligence delegation to Israel. Israel has not changed its methodology, so, did we undertake any meaningful internal security reforms after those visits?

Indian and Israeli situations are incomparable. Israel is less than 5% of India's area and population. It is surrounded by threatening neighbours 640 times its size. Survival, security is Israel's topmost priority. Politics, even at the cost of security, is our priority. Otherwise, the Maharashtra Cabinet would not have decided to relegate the 26/11 enquiry report into the dark labyrinths of "secrecy" on, what the media described as, "political grounds". Even the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, who told Parliament that the "Pradhan Committee" was enquiring into 26/11, had nothing to say when the Maharashtra Government did not let its police improve intelligence and counter-terrorist methodology by perusing the 26/11 report.

The Israeli police is fiercely independent. It questioned serving PMs Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert for alleged corruption. Deep politicisation of the Indian police affects its professionalism. Israel, being a small country with better infrastructure, marshals its entire counter-terrorist forces, including defence commandos, in minutes. We are very sloppy in anticipating any such crisis or trying to learn after the event. US Department of Homeland Security prepared protection plans in April 2008 anticipating seaborne attacks from 17 million small boats. Their waterfront police systems conducted dry runs of their schemes in December 2008 after Mumbai 26/11 to improve their methodology. The police in India did nothing, until prodded by Home Minister Chidambaram.

Israel treats terrorism like war. It uses all methods, including the demolition of suspected terrorist homes and aerial strafing, to crush terrorism. Our political system does not permit such high-handed measures. In 2008, Israel suffered 1,750 rocket and 1,528 mortar attacks from Palestinian areas. Israel killed 782 Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza in preventive or retaliatory measures, including 315 in airstrikes. Yet, it suffered ten serious suicide attacks in 2008 that killed 27 civilians. It is not able to overcome terrorism, but tries to keep it under control as a survival strategy. A reason for its success is heavy investment in intelligence coordination, which we have neglected. Israeli counter-intelligence has achieved very close coordination among Shin Bet [internal intelligence], Mossad [external intelligence] and Aman [military intelligence] after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. We failed to do this even after the 2001 Kargil report on intelligence reforms. Even now we have not set up an efficient national counter-terrorist intelligence integration centre. We are satisfied with purchasing gadgets and weapons. Gen. Meir Dagan, who occupied a senior position in Israeli counter-terrorist operations, said, "Investments in intelligence are invisible, whereas increased security is visible and often wasteful." 

THIS HAS BEEN the UK's experience as well. The May 2009 issue of BBC's science magazine Focus quotes a senior London Metropolitan Police officer saying that the CCTV system in England, the largest in the world, is an "utter fiasco" as the cameras are not able to identify images clearly. It took hundreds of hours and hundreds of staff to scan through more than 90,000 CCTV tapes to identify the Mercedes used in the June 2007 Haymarket bombing. The Maharashtra Home Minister has declared that Mumbai will purchase 400 CCTV cameras, and in two years the number will go up to 4,000-5,000. Are we satisfied that this is the latest technology keeping in mind the British experience? It was only on 8 April 2009 that a leading national daily accused the Mumbai police of selecting outdated weapons without field trials [¼] 

V. Balachandran, a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, was part of the two-member "High Level Committee" appointed by the Government of Maharashtra to enquire into 26/11