The Cure for the rot
force which can be deployed within minutes to counter such attacks but
as this story points out the real rot is in the system and both the
planners and the executors of any new force need to get their act
together to make sure that the very best and most up do date equipment
is issued and personnel trained to use them.
In the past 2
encounters with terrorists at the BATLA HOUSE encounter in Delhi & now the
CAMA HOSPITAL. Police force leaders were killed because they either
didn’t wear their Bullet Proof Jackets or mistakenly removed it
thinking the shooting was over. The IPS needs to review its encounter
tactics so that such mistakes don’t end in the loss of lives of
experienced police officers at such a rate.
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‘Rot’ at heart of Indian intelligence
|
By Soutik Biswas BBC News, Mumbai
|
The blame game over who was responsible for bloody terror attacks in
the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) has a sense of déjà vu about
it.
Security experts have
criticised the response to the attacks, which left nearly 200 people
dead, as "amateurish, sluggish and feeble".
Indian intelligence agencies are leaking information
that they gave about half a dozen warnings to the government in
Maharashtra state – of which Mumbai is the capital.
The reports say Maharashtra was warned that strikes
were being planned on city landmarks, including, possibly, the Taj
Mahal hotel at the historic Gateway of India.
Authorities in Mumbai flatly deny that they received
any tip-offs. "It is unimaginable that we would have got this sensitive
information and not react," says state Interior Secretary Chitkala
Zutshi.
Knee-jerk responses
But security experts confirm that information extracted from a group of
Indian and Pakistani men arrested in northern India earlier this year
revealed that some men belonging to Pakistan-based groups had done a
reconnaissance of major landmarks in Mumbai. The agencies had also been
picking up militant chatter on attacks in the city.
Yet the local police and intelligence agencies appeared to have failed
to act on any of the information – despite doubts as to whether the
information was shared promptly enough between the Mumbai authorities.
This is a story which keeps repeating itself in a
country which has been hit by over half a dozen big "terror attacks"
this year – the central and local security authorities trade charges
over the sharing and quality of intelligence, followed by knee-jerk
responses and investigations which fizzle out in a couple of years.
The attacks and their aftermath again point to the rot
that has set into the country’s internal security system and a lack of
cohesion between civilian and security wings of the government.
One telling example: six days after the attack, even
the number of dead and injured keeps going up and down, due to poor
co-ordination between the police and hospitals.
More seriously, the Indian police appear to be incapacitated by a lack
of money and training. Poor working conditions, rudimentary
surveillance and communications equipment, inadequate forensic science
laboratories and outdated weaponry are making matters worse.
"The Mumbai attacks prove that the whole system is
falling apart. The police in India are working on manpower and
equipment assessments last made in the 1970s," says security analyst
Praveen Swami.
The fact that the gunmen came by sea – and sneaked into
the city through a crowded fishing colony – points to almost
non-existent coastal police patrols, as a local officer admits.
All that the police have is a couple of launches. They have no radar.
The Mumbai police – like most police in India – remain in a time warp:
they are equipped with World War II vintage rifles and carbines handed
down by the army. In most states, an average policeman’s salary and
status is equivalent to that of an unskilled municipal worker,
encouraging corruption.
Inadequate protection
Budgets do not extend to supplying food to police personnel on shift,
so many end up extorting food from street hawkers. They also routinely
hitch free rides because they don’t have enough vehicles.
Bullet proof vests are of inferior quality and phone interception equipment remains largely rudimentary.
And three years after the central government announced the setting up
an ambitious National Police Mission to set out the future needs and
requirements of the force, nothing has happened.
India’s commando forces are also not exactly in good shape.
A group of the elite 7,400-strong National Security Guards (NSG) – who
were flown in to Mumbai eight hours after the attacks – is based near
the capital, Delhi. Many of the commandos, say experts, are wasted in
giving protection to politicians and other VIPs.
The country’s best commando force does not have its own
aircraft. As a result, it has become used to spending hours reaching
crisis locations, with mixed results.
"On average, the commando force has taken six to seven
hours to reach and begin their operations and get their act together
every time they have been called for. There have been delays," says
Praveen Swami.
He says the commandos have been trained to rescue small
groups of people. "They have not been trained on multiple location
operations of such scale."
‘No way to fight terrorism’
Any deficiencies in their training may be explained by the fact that a Mumbai-type attack only happens very rarely.
That is why Indian security experts like Ajai Sahni say that the response to the attacks was so poor.
"This is no way to fight terrorism," he says.
After the Mumbai attacks, the local government announced it would set
up a state commando force: to begin with, some 500 armed men would be
ready in four months.
This, when the basic training for the NSG commandos
takes six months. And Maharashtra, along with other states, has no
commando training centres.
A number of states where there have been attacks by
Maoist rebels plan to raise their own commando forces, but early
results point to hasty, faulty planning.
The authorities in eastern Orissa state, for example,
hired 8,000 new policemen for anti-Maoist operations, but found to
their dismay that it took six months to train just 350 of them.
There are allegations that many of the candidates paid bribes to get into the force.
Painfully slow and lazy bureaucracy means that the modernisation of the
security forces often takes ages. Police in Uttar Pradesh state took
four years to buy imported surveillance equipment.
By the time it arrived, it had become outdated and now
lies disused. One police official even paid by his own credit card to
pick up a piece of $60 equipment from a foreign website for his forces
because it would have taken him months, if not years, to acquire it.
With their bureaucratic ways of working, the intelligence agencies are also struggling.
There is a dearth of language specialists. India’s spy agency, the
Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is reported by insiders to have only
two Arabic and two Chinese language specialists, hired from language
schools.
But the best do not stay on because of poor wages, and
one of the Chinese language specialists who was trained in
cyber-technology quit to join one of India’s top industrial groups.
"Things have to begin from scratch to boost internal
security in India. Authorities should come clean to the people and tell
them how bad the situation is and set time-bound targets to begin
improving security infrastructure," says Praveen Swami.
Otherwise, he warns, India will continue to be one of the softest targets for terror strikes in the world.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7760460.stm
Published: 2008/12/02 13:13:13 GMT
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