Stray Thoughts on Terrorist Tormentors

In several of my earlier posts, I have warned of the dangers of what is emanating from Pakistan. The attack that unfolded over the the last four days in Bombay may have been audacious but wasn't unexpected. India can blame the attackers for anything but not for being taken by surprise.

The owner of the Taj Hotel says there were warnings of a likely attack on the heritage building. The home ministry says it had alerted the coast guard of the likely attack on installations in Bombay by sea. The year 2008 has stood apart for the number of attacks which have taken place across cosmopolitan India. Bombay has been particularly vulnerable over the last 15 years and there were adequate number of warnings. There are several general points we need to now ponder about.

The 1993 serial Bombings in Bombay also had its origins in the sea. RDX and weapons were smuggled in by sea. A time span of 15 years is long enough to plug the loopholes in coastal security.

When the terrorists attacked Ramjanambhoomi Temple in Ayodhya, India's Parliament in New Delhi, RSS headquarters in Nagpur and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, we got away with lesser damage due to the alert security and a stroke of luck but unless the national security is taken to the next very very high level, it is unlikely that we will succeed against every such attack.

The latest attack shows that a new phase of terrorism has begun. World has seen guerilla warfare in jungles of Sri Lanka and mountains of Afghanistan but the Bombay attack shows urban, cosmopolitan guerilla warfare where handful of agile and heavily armed terrorists play hide and seek like a few rats across more than 1,300 rooms, corridors, elevators and stairs of two massive international hotels. Earlier terrorist attacks on hotels worldwide pale into insignificance in front of the latest prolonged battle.

The Bombay siege also remind us of the Parliament attack of 2001, which led to the largest ever peace-time mobilization of armed forces to the border under Operation Parakram and Pakistan respondedin kind. It is possible that terrorists who are feeling the heat on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border felt it necessary to again create an icy relationship with India. This will force Pakistan to move troops again from its western front to the Indo-Pak border, arguably making life slightly easier for Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The terrorists were looking for foreigners during the latest Bombay attacks, which has a tinge of the Al Qaeda elements.

At a time when Pakistan is going around with a begging bowl for money and its economy is in tatters, there may be at least some elements in that country, who would be keen that India should also be projected as a risky destination for foreign investment. But such attacks on India's economy though relentless, are unlikely to have a major impact in the near-term.

Nevertheless, it will be difficult to pin blame on Pakistan because that country functions at many levels. Government in Pakistan will easily wash its hands off the incident saying that terrorists who attack its own domestic installations may also be induldging in such heinous crimes abroad. Pakistan may give the "terrorists provoking escalation of tensions between the two countries" argument.

Having acquired nuclear capability, Pakistan feels confident of looking the other way when terrorists take such initiatives in India. It is not a mere coincidence that Pakistan's proxy war and covert anti-India operations were given a special push only after it acquired the technology to make nukes. Somewhere down the line, particularly after 9/11, these terrorists have been given reasonable amount of autonomy to conduct their anti-India operations.

Germany's late chancellor, Adolf Hitler followed to two pronged strategy to acquire power and form the Third Reich. He contested parliamentary elections even as his Storm Troopers, or SA, under Ernst Rohm ruled the streets, brutally stifling opposition and creating social unrest. Pakistan's strategy seems to be no different, its government uses diplomacy to cultivate good relations and a peaceful dialogue even as the Army, spy agency, the ISI and terrorists work together to launch brutal attacks like the latest one in Bombay.

India's strategy should be to take a leaf out of the book of another German chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck of the Second Reich, who had remarked, "the great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood". Had Bismarck been India's Prime Minister, he would have siezed the opportunity to extract at least some concessions from Pakistan after the latest attacks. The least Pakistan can do is, hand over Dawood Ibrahim and also the mastermind of the attack on India's embassy in Kabul earlier this year. Afghan intelligence chief is on record, saying that his agency has given the name and address of the criminal behind the attack on India's Kabul embassy, to the government in Pakistan.

For Pakistan to handover these terrorists would be tantamount to accepting that they were playing host to them for so many years, using, nurturing and aiding them. But an extradition can always be stage managed, for example by showing them as arrested in jungles of Nepal. Apparently, something similar was done, when Yakub Memon was shown as arrested at the New Delhi railway station in the 1990s even though he had willingly returned via Nepal followed by the rest of the family.

The time to act is now. We missed the opportunity to take strong action after the attack on India's Parliament in December 2001. The Operation Prakaram ended with a whimper. Many soldiers died because of the land mines that were laid under the operation, finally it was called off, a ceasefire with Pakistan was announced, new land and rail routes were opened for travel and 6,500 crore rupees went down the drain.