India was not the first nation in the history of
counter-terrorism having had to make concessions to terrorists to save the lives of
innocent civilians, Indians as well as foreigners, or to prevent an exacerbation of the
ground situation. Other nations have done so in the past, including Israel in 1968 (El Air
hijacking), Pakistan (PIA) and the USA (TWA) in the early 1980s.
Nor was the BJP-led Government the first in India to have
compromised with terrorists to retrieve a difficult situation. The V.P.Singh Government
did it in 1989 and that of Shri Narasimha Rao in 1993 (to get the Hazratbal shrine vacated
by the terrorists and to avoid another "Operation Blue Star").
There has to be a hard-headed recognition by all political
parties that over-rigid adherence to principles, regardless of the ground realities, could
prove counter-productive in the long run, that there may be situations where a temporary
compromise may be unavoidable in national interests and/or on humanitarian grounds and
that the opposition should avoid taking advantage of the resulting discomfiture of the
Govt.
The Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi assassinations, the Mumbai
blasts, the Kargil conflict, the post-Kargil incidents such as the terrorists'
infiltration of high-security areas in Srinagar and the Kandahar episode were the result
of the failure, not so much of the national security management (NSM) system as of the
human elements in it.
All these incidents, if objectively analysed, would bring out
three common causes-- the failure of the intelligence assessment machinery to anticipate
the crisis, that of the operational machinery to enforce effectively the security
regulations already laid down and the required additional measures in the light of new
ground conditions and the cover-up of the deficiencies by the political leaderships,
instead of bringing them to light after the event and ensuring accountability.
It has been well known for years that apart from the complicity
of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with Pakistan-based terrorist
organisations operating in India, the inability of the security agencies of Bangladesh,
Nepal and Bhutan to prevent these organisations from using their territory against India
is an equally important reason for our national security problems.
While all political parties in India are agreed on the hard
measures needed for dealing with the Pakistani angle, there has been a post-1996
ambivalence with regard to the other three countries.
The pre-1996 policy was to keep up pressure on the Governments of
Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan to act effectively against anti-India terrorist and insurgent
elements and their foreign supporters and, at the same time, maintain a strong Indian
capability to deal with such threats instead of wholly depending on the goodwill of these
governments.
The co-operation from these countries, despite friendly
Governments being in power, has not been satisfactory due to various reasons such as the
inexperience of the political leaderships in dealing with terrorism and insurgency; a
certain secret sympathy for the ISI and the Islamic terrorist organisations of Pakistan in
Bangladesh's security machinery; the absence of a professional intelligence and security
set-up in Nepal and Bhutan and so on.
Taking due account of these ground realities, the pre-1996
Governments had maintained an active capability to frustrate the activities of anti-India
elements from their territories, even at the risk of a possible misunderstanding with
their political leaderships. The basic principle was: Friendship with these countries
definitely, but not at the cost of India's national security interests.
A negative outcome of the manner in which the so-called Gujral
Doctrine was implemented was a dilution of the emphasis on our national security interests
in the perceived long-term interest of "bhai-bhaism" (fraternal ties) with them.
This distortion has to be corrected and this can be done only by the political leadership
and not by the security bureaucracy.
There is nothing esoteric about national security and crisis
management. The basic principles and the required ingredients are universally known---an
effective intelligence machinery, an active, perspicacious assessment set-up which is able
to analyse a developing security situation and draw attention to emerging threats and weak
links in our ability to meet them, an operational machinery which acts with promptness and
precision and a political leadership, which acts and guides decisively.
All these ingredients have been woefully inadequate. Kargil and
the subsequent security breaches by the terrorists in Srinagar were the result of the
failure of the intelligence assessment and security enforcement machineries and Kandahar,
that of the enforcement and crisis management machineries.
Security enforcement depends on timely and adequate attention to
the nuts and bolts of security management such as physical checks, frequent and energetic
supervision of the implementation of the measures laid down and automatic reflexes in case
of an unanticipated crisis. These pre-requisites were found lacking in respect of all the
national security crises that we have been passing through since May last year.
While the security bureaucracy has a large share of blame for
this, the political leadership cannot exonerate itself of any responsibility. The BJP-led
Government faces some understandable difficulties because of its being in office only for
less than two years now, its lack of familiarisation with the techniques of national
security and crisis management as distinguished from the rhetoric and jargon of it and its
inadequate knowledge of the relative capabilities of the human elements in the security
bureaucracy responsible for management.
Despite this, there can be no excuse for the failure of the
Government and its Ministers even to make a start in acquiring the necessary expertise to
make the political supervision and direction thoroughly professional. A politician has to
transform himself or herself into a professional expert once he or she assumes high
office, but in India and more particularly under the present Government, politicians
continue to function as politicians even as Ministers dealing with complex national
security matters.
Most leaders of the present Government are good Hyde Park orators
in national security matters, but barring the Prime Minister, Shri A.B.Vajpayee, the
Foreign Minister, Shri Jaswant Singh, the Home Minister, Shri L.K.Advani, the Finance
Minister, Shri Yashwant Sinha, the recently-inducted Minister of State in the Department
of Personnel, Shri Arun Shourie, and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Shri
K.C. Pant, the others do not have a clear grasp of national security and crisis
management. Nor is there a desire to learn.
There are certain nuts and bolts aspects of the Kandahar episode
such as threats to national security from the security vacuum in Nepal, the future
handling of hijackings, the crisis management and our relations with Pakistan, the Taliban
and the USA. These have to be dealt with separately.
B.RAMAN
(1-1-2000)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt, of India and,presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai. E-Mail:corde@vsnl.com)
