Evil state in Bharat: Samshayatma vinashyathi (Ditherers perish)! Root out
terror, else get rooted out.
Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Evil state in Bharat: Samshayatma vinashyathi (Ditherers perish)! Root out
terror, else get rooted out.
http://dharma1.blogspot.com/2008/05/evil-state-in-bharat-samshayatma.html
Evil state in Bharat: Samshayatma vinashyathi (Ditherers perish)! Root out
terror, else get rooted out.
Why terrorists attack soft targets
By B Raman
May 14, 2008
Soft targets are those that are not subject to special
protection, that are frequented by the public, which could
be local nationals or foreigners. Attacks on such targets
cause many human fatalities and demonstrate the capability
of terrorist groups to operate without being detected by
the intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies.
Destruction of or damage to economic or other capabilities
is not the primary aim of such attacks. The primary aim is
to kill human beings, though destruction or damage of
capabilities may also result from such attacks.
For such attacks on soft targets, a long period of
preparations such as keeping surveillance on the target etc
is not required. All that is required is the creation or
infiltration of a sleeper cell to undertake such attacks
and reaching to the cell, the weapons or explosive devices
to be used.
A sleeper cell is a small group of operatives specifically
raised to undertake a terrorist strike. The cell generally
consists of persons, who will actually undertake the strike
with the help of hand-held weapons or IEDs, and some
others, who will provide the logistics such as smuggling in
the weapons or explosives, storing them safely till the
time for the strike comes, providing a hide-out for those
who will actually undertake the strike if they come from
outside the area and facilitating their get-away after they
have carried out the strike.
Those, who carry out the strike, are generally specially
trained in the handling of weapons and in the assembly of
IEDs. Those, who help in the logistics, need not be
specially trained, but they should sup****t the ideology and
objectives of the terrorist organisation, which undertakes
the terrorist strike, and should enjoy its confidence.
Those who carry out the strikes are generally from outside
the area where a target is chosen for attack. A resident of
the area may develop qualms of conscience about killing
people whom he has known and with whom he has grown up.
Moreover, his absence from the area after the terrorist
strike makes the identification of the perpetrators by the
police easier.
An outsider is unlikely to have such qualms of conscience
and his get-away may not attract attention. Those providing
the logistics back-up could be from the same area or from
outside.
Thus, a sleeper cell could consist completely of outsiders
infiltrated into the area of intended operation or could be
a mix of outsiders and residents of the area. These are
called sleeper cells because its members are specially
trained or have a natural aptitude for maintaining a low
profile and are able to lead a normal life as students or
in some occupation without attracting attention to
themselves.
In the case of the Mumbai blasts of March 1993, the
perpetrators were easily identified by the police because
many of them except Dawood Ibrahim were normal residents of
Mumbai and not from outside. Their get-away from Mumbai
after the explosions attracted police suspicion.
A new modus operandi for attacks on soft targets noticed in
recent years is the use of unconscious bombers by the
sleeper cells so that the explosions cannot be easily
traced back by the police to the real perpetrators.
The United Liberation Front of Asom in Assam has been
periodically using this modus operandi by paying
unsuspecting individuals for leaving bicycles fitted with
IEDs in markets and other crowded areas. Al Qaeda was
re****ted to have used this modus operandi in Casablanca in
May 2003, and in Baghdad on February 1, 2008.
In Casablanca, an unsuspecting individual was asked to
carry a package containing a remote-controlled IED to a
third person. As the carrier was walking in front of a
restaurant the IED was activated through remote control. In
Baghdad, two mentally disturbed women, who used to beg in
the market places, were fitted with IEDs and these were
exploded through remote control as they were begging in the
markets. The Chechens had also used this modus operandi.
There are various reasons for which terrorists periodically
attack soft targets in widely dispersed areas. Firstly,
they want to demonstrate their reach. They want to show
that they can operate in any part of the country in the
case of indigenous organisations and in any part of the
world in the case of the pan-Islamic jihadi organisations.
Outside Jammu and Kashmir, the pan-Islamic jihadi
organisations have struck on soft targets in places like
Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi, Lucknow, Faizabad, Hyderabad,
Bangalore, Chennai and Coimbatore. Al Qaeda and pro-Al
Qaeda organisations have struck in places like Bali
(twice), Jakarta, Mombasa, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid,
London and Sharm-el-Sheikh.
Secondly, they want to discredit the intelligence agencies,
the police and other security agencies in the eyes of the
people by demonstrating their capability to strike despite
the vigilance of these agencies. In their calculation, this
could result in a gradual loss of faith of the people in
the efficacy of these agencies.
Thirdly, they want to make the police and the security
agencies over-react in response to their successful
strikes. Such over-reactions often come in the form of
large-scale arrests of the members of the community from
which the terrorists have arisen and the alleged use of
harsh methods to interrogate them. This creates animosity
towards the police and the government in the victim-
community and adds to their sense of alienation.
Such over-reactions could also create a divide between
different communities, thereby resulting in the flow of
more recruits to the ranks of the terrorists. Anger
resulting from over-reactions facilitates their
recruitment.
Fourthly, attacks on soft targets are also undertaken in
reprisal for perceived wrongs allegedly committed by the
government or the police towards the members of the
community from which the terrorists have arisen or even
towards the terrorists themselves. If they are not able to
retaliate against hard (well-protected) targets, they
retaliate against soft targets.
The LTTE in Sri Lanka often resorts to such attacks on soft
targets in retaliation for the government's strikes against
it. Such retaliatory attacks are meant to intimidate the
security forces into going slow in their counter-terrorism
operations. Reprisal attacks on soft targets may also be
directed against foreign nationals, though local nationals
may also die during the strikes.
The two explosions in Bali in October 2002, and October
2005, by the Jemmah Islamiyah were directed mainly against
Australian tourists in reprisal for Australia's cooperation
with the US in the so-called war against terrorism. Many
Indonesian nationals also died during the strikes, but the
possibility of such deaths of local nationals did not deter
the terrorists from exploding IEDs in places crowded by
Australian tourists.
During the subsequent trial of the perpetrators, they
apologised in public for the deaths of fellow citizens and
fellow Muslims, but did not regret their action in carrying
out the strikes. Similarly, Al Qaeda's attack on a hotel in
Mombasa in November 2002, and in the Egyptian tourist
resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in July 2005, targeted Israeli
tourists in reprisal for Israeli policies towards the
Palestinians, but many local citizens also died.
The three explosions outside courts in Lucknow, Faizabad
and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on November 23, 2007, were
also reprisal strikes against soft targets to protest
against the perceived harsh sentences awarded to some of
the accused in the Mumbai blasts of March 1993, by a Mumbai
court and against the alleged failure of the government of
Mumbai to act against certain police officers, who were
blamed by an enquiry commission for allegedly committing
excesses against Muslims during the communal riots that
followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December
1992.
An anonymous e-mail received by some television channels on
the day of the explosions alleged that the criminal justice
system in India was unfair towards the Muslims. While these
are essentially tactical strikes, certain kinds of strikes
against soft targets have a strategic purpose.
Strikes in certain places of economic im****tance like stock
exchanges, crowded market places, offices of business
companies and tourist resorts have the objective of
disrupting the economy and discouraging the flow of foreign
investments by creating a feeling of nervousness about
security conditions in the minds of potential investors.
The Mumbai blasts of March 1993, and the Delhi blasts of
October 2005, would fall in this category. Strikes in
places of religious significance -- whether holy cities or
places of wor****p -- are meant to create a communal divide
in the long-term interests of the terrorist organisation.
The blasts in Varanasi in March 2006, in Malegaon in
Maharashtra on September 8, 2006, in Hyderabad on May 18,
2007, and in Ajmer Sharif on October 11, 2007, would fall
in this category.
Soft targets do not have the benefit of protection of
physical security measures by the government, though some
of them such as places of wor****p, business establishments
etc may have their own physical security measures.
There are hundreds of thousands of potential soft targets
of terrorists all over the country. It would be just
impossible for the government to provide them with physical
security. One cannot totally eliminate attacks on soft
targets, but one can reduce them by effective intelligence
capability and policing in order to detect and neutralise
sleeper cells before they go into action, educating the
public in matters such as looking out for suspicious-
looking persons and objects, close police-community
relations and close liaison between the police and those in
charge of security in those cases where soft targets have
their own security arrangements.
While there have been successful instances of sleeper cells
being detected and neutralised in time by the intelligence
agencies and the police acting in tandem, there are many
other cases where the sleeper cells managed to evade
detection and carry out the strike.
Every successful terrorist strike on a soft target is due
to the failure of the agencies and the police to detect the
sleeper cell responsible. The agencies and the police do
face difficulties due to the fact that the terrorists
operate in a vast area and keep moving from state to state
in order to attack.
They operate like the old so-called criminal tribes, who
used to keep attacking in different places in different
times in order to make it difficult for the police to
detect them. The only way of effectively countering this is
through effective co-ordination of the police in all the
states, the creation of a national database to which the
police of different states can have direct access and the
quick sharing of the results of the enquiries and
investigations through this data base.
The creation of a Federal Counter-Terrorism Agency
patterned after the FBI of the US, with powers to
investigate all terrorism-related cases occurring in any
part of the country, would facilitate action and
prevention, but there continues to be strong resistance
from the states to proposals for the creation of such an
agency.
The ease with which the terrorists have been operating in
different parts of the country is also due to deterioration
in the quality of policing in the urban as well as rural
areas. Normal tasks, which the police are expected to
perform such as making enquiries about suspicious-looking
persons in hotels, inns, railway stations and air****ts;
making a random background check of arrivals from outside
etc, no longer receive the required attention.
Similarly, intense police-community relations, which
encourage the people to share with the police information,
which could have a bearing on terrorism, are increasingly
neglected. The public will come forward to share
information only with a police officer whom they know and
in whose discretion they have confidence.
Close interactions between the police and the security
officers of private establishments is more an exception
than the rule. Sometimes, I am invited to address
gatherings of such security officers in different urban
areas. Almost all of them complained of a lack of
accessibility to senior police officers and the reluctance
of the police to keep them briefed on developments having a
bearing on terrorism.
They complained that it was rarely that police officers
took the initiative in briefing them when the media carried
sensational stories about the plans of the terrorists. When
they asked for a briefing, they were asked to meet junior
officers, who often were not in a position to brief them
adequately and did not have the required self-confidence to
be able to answer their questions.
It is im****tant that senior police officers interact with
the security officers of im****tant private establishments -
- particularly those from abroad -- at least once or twice
a year as a matter of routine and also on other occasions,
when there is a need for it. Senior police officers cannot
be expected to interact with the private security officers
of all establishments -- big or small, im****tant or
unim****tant.
However, such interactions should take place with the
private security officers of large establishments, which
play an im****tant role in our economy. Perceptions of
police indifference towards them could have a negative
impact on the investors' confidence in the security
environment in the country and in their particular areas of
operation.
The above is an extract from B Raman's forthcoming book
Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow being published by
Lancer Publishers http://www.lancerpublishers.com/
later
this month.
URL for this article:
http://www.rediff.com///news/2008/may/14raman.htm
Fight the war on New Terrorism to the finish
By B. S. Raghavan
May 14, 2008
Has anyone thought why there has not been a single instance
of terror in the United States of America post-9/11
http://www.rediff.com/us/usblasts.htm
unlike India where
such attacks occur almost every day? The difference lies in
the desire to study the problem scientifically and take
remedial measures.... We do not have the political will to
fight terrorism... .When new challenges come, new solutions
also have to be found. Terrorism is a gift of the last
century� Terrorist acts require an altogether new type of
investigation. It requires new laws and new methodologies.
A study should be conducted to identify the causes and
suggest remedies. But there is no serious study in our
country' -- Former Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/aug/29spec2.htm
How many more terrorist attacks should occur, and how many
more lives should be lost, before the powers-that- be in
India awake to the fact that practically every human being
that lives, every building that stands, every vehicle that
moves and every activity that goes on in the country is
within the cross hairs of the terrorists who kill for
attaining martyrdom?
The rabid motivation for murdering anyone within sight has
ceased to have anything to do with policies pursued by this
or that country; it is simply rooted in inhuman hatred,
all-consuming ill-will and raging fanaticism. The Jaipur
blasts, http://www.rediff.com/news/rajblast08.html
like
all the previous ones, form part of a carefully
masterminded operation that has managed to hoodwink the
elaborate intelligence structure and police machinery; such
meticulous planning which must have gone on for weeks, if
not months, could not have been undertaken without local
hospitality, sup****t and collusion.
In the face of the terrible prospect confronting the
country, anyone who underplays the mortal danger from the
remorselessly and relentlessly advancing tide of jihadi
terrorism has no mind to think and no eyes to see. Any
party which plays vote bank politics at this critical hour
mortgages the nation's stability and security to the
jihadis. Any government that displays smugness,
complacency, callousness, slackness, softness, weakness and
indifference oblivious to the depredations caused by their
outrage is itself guilty of inciting and assisting them in
executing their murderous designs with still more
ruthlessness.
Muslims living in India and loving India have a duty to
their motherland: They should not assume the role of silent
onlookers but should bring the evil elements in their midst
out into the open so that they can be visited with condign
punishment.
Equally, there is need for a change in the mindset of the
country's elite and intelligentsia as well. They should
realise that their habit of trivialising and communalising
issues at the heart of a nation, denigrating the 83 per
cent of Hindus, rubbi****ng their institutions, values,
customs and traditions, and demonising those who speak up
for them, while placating and pandering to minorityist
self-seekers under the guise of secularism and human
rights, gives indirect encouragement to jihadis.
It is their type which springs to the instant defence of
Muslims when they take to violence
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/feb/21sai.htm
over the Danish cartoons and to the instant attack of
Hindus for criticising M F Husain's
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/feb/07****.htm
depiction of Hindu goddesses in the ****. It is
their type that exhibits outrageous solicitude to Abdul
Nasser Madhani's
http://in.rediff.com/news/2007/aug/01coimbatore.htm
health.
For a moment let them ask themselves whether they will be
tolerated, nay, whether their lives will be secure if,
assuming themselves to be Muslims, they conduct themselves
in Indonesia, Iran or Saudi Arabia in the above manner as
the doughty champions of non-Muslims, or keep depicting
members of their own faith (Islam) as vicious monsters.
B Raman: Why terrorists attack soft targets
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/may/14raman.htm
The situation calls for firm handling. There should be no
vacillation, hesitation or prevarication in bundling out
lock, stock and barrel all the illegal immigrants who not
only rob the genuine citizens of the due fruits of economic
development but also pose grave danger to the country.
Their numbers have swollen to huge pro****tions thanks to
unchecked infiltration and political connivance precisely
in those areas of the country which are breeding grounds of
anti-national elements. They deserve no consideration on
the grounds of natural justice or human rights. The only
place for them to go is back to where they came from, and
all steps must be taken to that end and executed within a
specified time-frame.
Next, analogous to the Central Bureau of Investigation and
the Intelligence Bureau, a new Central Counter-Terrorism
Bureau should be established, vesting it with the entire
range of duties and responsibilities to extirpate
terrorism, and with power and authority to override State
jurisdiction in its best judgement.
In order to make it strong and effective, its functioning
should be made totally independent of, and fully immune
from, political meddling, manipulation and machinations,
except for the government's right to institute inquiries
into any abuse or misuse of authority.
Finally, the government owes it to their sovereign masters,
the people, and to itself, to put on the statute book a
special law for curbing terrorism, providing for summary
trial akin to military tribunals, and detention without
bail until the trials are completed. There should be only
one chance to appeal and that too only on substantive
points of law, and on conviction, the perpetrators should
be given deterrent punishment of death or life-long
incarceration. It is totally unacceptable that the trial of
accused in the devastating serial Mumbai blasts of 1993
dragged on 15 years after the event.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/may/18verdict.htm
Any further shying away from its paramount duty would
expose the government to the charge of dereliction and
betrayal of the safety and security of the nation. The no-
holds-barred measures against terrorists adopted by the
world's two tested and long-standing democracies, the
United Kingdom and the US, must be equally good, if not
even better, for the world's most vulnerable and fragile
one.
Terror strikes Delhi
http://us.rediff.com/news/delhiblast05.html
The emerging scenario, in fact, calls for a law stronger
than the Prevention of Terrorism Act which was misguidedly
repealed in order to retain the vote-banks. The taunt that
the existence of POTA did not stop terrorist acts is easily
answered: No law is proof against commission of any
offence. The existence of the Indian Penal Code has not
prevented commission of murder, rape and the like; the
Prevention of Corruption Act has not banished corruption.
It is also disingenuous to claim, as those seeking to soft-
pedal action against Islamist terrorists do, that the
existing laws are adequate. For 10 years, between 1961 and
1970 in the central home ministry, and later as chief
secretary, I have had occasion to appraise them.
Take my word for it: They are not adequate. A more rigorous
law strengthening the hands of the investigative agencies
providing for quick and deterrent punishment will certainly
help prevent terrorism from assuming more deadly
pro****tions.
As regards the possibility of its misuse, civil society
should be trusted to exercise constant vigilance so that
instances of harassment of any particular community are
taken up for inquiry and appropriate remedial action
without delay.
The value of such a law, taken together with manifest
firmness of the central and state governments in the other
respects already mentioned, is that it will enhance the
trust and faith of the people at large in the government.
Indeed, in view of the distrust, hostility and resentment
engendered by the impotence in the face of jihadi
terrorism, Israel's example of swift and stern retribution
is already finding many appreciative takers. (Israel is a
democracy, may it be noted!) The absence of determined
action against terrorism is bound to lead to violent
upheavals.
To conclude: The war on what may be called New Terrorism
has to be fought to the finish, with neither qualm nor
compunction, neither apologies nor regrets. For, it is
capable of growing new arms, new heads and new bodies, and
wreaking havoc, elusive and unseen, unless it is stamped
out without any trace whatsoever.
For far too long, the vote-banks crippled the government
from being single-minded and firm in cru****ng the venomous
forces striking at the root of the nation. If it does not
shake itself out of its stu****, and deploy and use all the
resources under its command now, those forces inimical to
the nation will see to it that it does not get a second
chance. In the war on new terrorism, there is no mercy for
ditherers.
Hearken to the ancient saying of India's sages: Samshayatma
vinashyathi (Ditherers perish)!
- - -
B S Raghavan is a retired IAS officer who was a member of
the Joint Intelligence Committee, Director of Political and
Security Policy Planning in the home ministry, and chief
secretary of a state.
URL for this article:
http://www.rediff.com//news/2008/may/14guest1.htm
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
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