Intelligence gathering and post-event investigation are but two facets of the entire gamut of anti-terror capabilities. What is also needed is to create comprehensive preventive and counter-terrorism capabilities.

David Coleman Headley, alias Daood Gilani, has acquired a larger-than-life notoriety with his entanglement and subversion by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)—the same outfit that he was assigned to reportedly by the US FBI to infiltrate. Headley, it now appears, was working as a ‘confidential informant’ in the Af-Pak region for almost the entire last decade, engaging in multifarious assignments for the enforcement and intelligence/investigation departments of the US. Subsequently, he turned a double agent and while acting as an informer to his US mentors, Headley was actively engaged in the preparation and execution of the ghastly 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai.

A year after the heinous terror strikes in Mumbai, India continues to be under terror threat, manifest from the fact that had the US authorities not arrested him, Headley would have been instrumental in perpetrating greater damage this year also. Interrogation of Headley, clearly an LeT operative who is currently under US custody, has revealed that terrorists (including him) had undertaken a fresh reconnaissance in many parts of India to target important buildings and religious centres, besides high-profile politicians and other prominent personalities. Somnath Temple in Gujarat, Bollywood personalities, Shiv Sena leaders and the National Defence College in Delhi were some of the targets on his radar. Reports continue to filter in claiming Taliban/LeT-trained terrorists may have already sneaked in from across India’s western border to carry out the terror attacks.

Flashback

Having failed to achieve its objective of forcefully annexing Kashmir after many abortive military attempts, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) establishment under the aegis of then military ruler Genera Zia-ul-Haq decided to “bleed India with a thousand cuts” by unleashing terrorist activities on its soil from across the border. Launched in 1988, the operation was code-named ‘Op Tupac’ a designation derived from ‘Tupac Amaru II’—the 18th century prince who led the war of liberation in Peru against the Spanish rule. The main objectives of Operation Tupac, however, went much beyond the illegal liberation of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to complete disintegration of India, utilising the spy network as an instrument of sabotage and to exploit porous borders of Nepal and Bangladesh to set up bases and conduct operations.

Although General Zia-ul-Haq may have long gone, assassinated in his own country, ISI-masterminded terrorist jihad continues against India. Even though the Pakistani establishment concedes to only moral and political support to the jihadi movement, it is commonly known that all terror groups, such as the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Ansar, Al Umar, Al Baqr, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, have not only been spawned but are financially supported, armed, trained, controlled and tasked by the ISI on a regular basis. Taliban, which was originally created for operations in Afghanistan, is the latest group to unleash terror against India. In addition, the ISI has continued to support India’s own home-grown violent dissident groups, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam, National Security Council of Nagaland and North-East Students’ Organisation, to name a few.

India’s Response

In the years following Independence, the Indian government focused its attention on maintenance of law and order, communal peace and harmony, crime-control and counter-insurgency which was mainly confined to the Northeast in the early years. However, in the past five decades or so, the ongoing insurgency in the Northeast, the now extinguished uprising in Punjab, the dissidence and proxy war in the J&K, the burgeoning Naxalite violence which has engulfed 16 states (194 districts) of the Indian territory, coupled with poor governance, have strained the internal security scenario of the country. Further, cross-border terrorism, if left unchecked, may become serious enough to destabilise the Indian state—a much cherished dream of the ISI and the Pakistani establishment.

Cross-border terrorist attacks continued to unfold with increasing regularity in 2008 in different parts of the country. These included the terrorist attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, serial bomb blasts against soft targets in Jaipur, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Tripura, Imphal and Guwahati. The crescendo came with the nerve-shattering savage attack in Mumbai on November 26, by terrorists who came from Pakistan via the sea route. The attack, which lasted for more than two days, killed over 166 civilians and police/security forces personnel, including 26 foreign nationals. In addition, several hundred persons were injured. The carnage left a deep scar on the very psyche of not only the Mumbaikars but the entire nation as a whole. The attack and the public protest that followed finally stirred the sluggish government to come out of its slumber and take concrete steps to beef up the nation’s internal security. In a knee-jerk reaction to 26/11 terrorist attack, the government initially unleashed promises of a large number of internal security reforms without much thought. However, it soon dawned on the planners that some sort of cohesive thinking would be needed to put into place meaningful reforms.