There is a great need to integrate all radars, military and civil, to be brought together in a seamless network for the IAF to discharge its responsibility in an adequate manner

Havin g fought four wars in six decades since independence —a short span in a nation’s history—India is no stranger to external military threats. But what is most consternating is the never-ending crossborder terrorism thrust on the nation either directly from external sources or home-grown but aided and abetted in whole or substantially by the same sources to create mayhem in the country. Whether it was the tribal insurgency in the Northeast (still ongoing in some form or the other), the extinguished insurgency in Punjab, the dissidence and proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, the burgeoning Naxalite violence and the jehadi terrorism unleashed by its unscrupulous western neighbour, threats to India’s homeland security have been multi-faceted and multi-directional.

Considered to be a soft nation with one of the highest levels of tolerance-quotients, India has been repeatedly subjected to humiliating terror activities without adequate response. Couple this with short public memory and a government lacking in political will and resoluteness in tackling the menace of terror, the nation continually faces the ignominy of being subjected to repeated terrorist activities at regular intervals. To cite an example, other than perhaps the Indian Air Force (IAF), how many Indian citizens remember the fateful evening of December 17, 1995, when a Ukrainianbuilt An-26, on a flight from Karachi in Pakistan to Dhaka in Bangladesh, laden with a cargo of illegal arms and ammunition dropped the entire lethal load clandestinely in Purulia, a remote district in the Indian state of West Bengal, by hoodwinking the civilian radar/air traffic controllers at Kolkata and escaping to Thailand. Was it not for an alarm sounded by an alert IAF corporal at the Chennai Flight Information Centre (FIC), which started a chain reaction ordering the aircraft to return to Mumbai, the audacious crew and the villainous arms dealer on board would have managed to again escape from the Indian airspace on their return journey from Bangkok to Karachi. Paradropping of such a large cache of weapons (later used for unlawful/terrorist activities) over the Indian territory with total impunity by a foreign aircraft represented severe public embarrassment for New Delhi. While its subsequent apprehension did save the blushes for the Indian Government, it also brought to light gaping deficiencies in India’s air surveillance capabilities, severely impinging on its homeland security mechanism.

The failure however paled in comparison to the maritime intrusion perpetrated by a bunch of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-trained Pakistani terrorists in 2008. On November 26, a mere 10 km from the Mumbai shore, where the night waves from the Arabian Sea routinely splash against the bustling Marine Drive, popularly known as the ‘Queen’s Necklace’, lay an Indian registered trawler, Kuber, hijacked by the Pak terrorists off the Gujarat coast, the craft’s sole legal occupant, the skipper, lay slain with his throat slit from ear to ear, aljehadi style. Two inflatable rubber boats, with 10 men and substantial quantities of arms and ammunition, detached themselves from the trawler and raced towards Mumbai, their navigation made easy by the hand-held GPSs. What followed was a blatant and brutal assault on the Indian soil carried out with military precision. The planners in Pakistan had selected the targets for the human carnage with a sinister focus to also include affluent segments of society as also high-value citizens from abroad. The terrorist act not only brutalised Mumbai with a senseless death toll reaching 180 and a much bigger figure for the wounded, it traumatised and left a permanent scar on the very psyche of the financial capital of the country, an otherwise vibrant, dynamic and a world city. The terrorist attack once again laid bare the porosity of the Indian borders—this time adding the maritime frontier to the many times exposed land borders and airspace domains of the country.

US Response to Terrorism

Why is it that India continues to be subjected to repeated terrorist’ activities while the other most vulnerable democratic country, the USA, has succeeded in preventing such occurrences since the gruesome 9/11 attacks? The main reason is that the US, starting from its President downwards swore to do their utmost to protect the country—never to be subjected to such an atrocity again—and went methodically to achieve the aim. In less than a month after the attacks, the then President George W. Bush established the Office of Homeland Security within the White House on October 8, 2001, and gave it their first task of producing a comprehensive ‘National Strategy for Homeland Security’ which was prepared within eight months. In a proactive move, he also unleashed a war against global terrorism (GWOT) during the same period, which is still continuing. To counter the most horrendous challenges of terrorism, the US Congress considered the most extensive reorganisational mechanism by creating a Department of Homeland Security at the national level and integrating all concerned agencies, including federal and local, into a seamless network, imbibed with across the board ‘unity of purpose’ for greater accountability over critical homeland security missions. Vastly improved intelligence gathering mechanisms and networked to and fro dissemination has ensured that timely actions can be taken to thwart terrorist activities by nipping them in the bud. While constant vigil is maintained to prevent any in-house activity, special efforts have also been made to insulate the continental US (CONUS) from unwanted ingress, in any form or from anywhere—be it land, air, sea or space—to prevent terror attacks on the US homeland. That the concerted efforts taken at each level of the US homeland security apparatus have paid off is evident from the fact that no repeat terrorist attacks have been allowed to take place in CONUS for almost a decade since 9/11.