How not to catch a terrorist - By Maseeh Rahman - The Indian Express, Mumbai

 

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/how-not-to-catch-a-terrorist/576341/0

 

 

How not to catch a terrorist

Maseeh Rahman Tags : Batla House, Mumbai, Digvijay Singh, IndiaPosted: Saturday , Feb 06, 2010 at 0203 hrs

The Delhi Police Special Cell has been indicted in the past for organising fake “encounters”. But clearly Batla House was a genuine one — a top inspector was killed, besides two alleged IM terrorists, Atif Amin and Sajid Hassan. Yet despite a public outcry there was no magisterial inquiry, while the National Human Rights Commission produced a dodgy report. As a result controversy still swirls around the Batla House encounter. So how does one explain some of the lacunae pinpointed by human rights activists in the police version of events?

Even though the IM had bombed several cities from 2005 onward, in no state had police been able to crack the urban terrorist group. The lucky break came after the July 2008 Gujarat bombings. A car that had failed to explode in Surat had been stolen from Navi Mumbai. The Mumbai Police Crime Branch nabbed the car thief, who revealed the identity of the stolen car’s buyer. But there was a problem — the guy was holed up in a village in Gujarat. Lacking local contacts, the Crime Branch sleuths realised the target could escape if there was a blind raid on the village. So they asked for assistance from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which has a national network.

After the Mumbai Police picked up the stolen car buyer, the first genuine IM member to be nabbed, they got leads on others. Atif was one of them. A Crime Branch team was sent to Delhi to arrest him. Once again the cops lacked local resources, and felt it would be foolhardy to raid an unfamiliar, congested locality. But they had another lucky break. During a phone intercept, they overheard Atif arrange to see a film with a woman friend. This seemed like a golden opportunity. The Mumbai cops decided to grab Atif and his companion at the cinema theatre, and grill him for details about the Batla House flat: its layout, the number of people staying there, who among them were IM members and who were just students, where the weapons were stored, the escape routes, and so on. Since Atif was out with a woman, the cops believed his flat-mates wouldn’t get alerted if he didn’t return home in time. The plan was to raid Flat 108, Building L-18, Batla House in the wee hours of the night when everyone would be fast asleep.

But while this was going on, tremendous pressure was being mounted on the Delhi cops to move quickly. Someone from IB tipped off the Delhi Police about Atif and the Mumbai Police operation. It was hurriedly decided that the Special Cell should pre-empt the Mumbai Crime Branch. But the Delhi Police had few details — just Atif’s name, telephone number, and the flat address — and no ground-level intelligence.

So on the day the Mumbai cops were poised to grab the alleged IM bomber at the cinema in the evening, a Special Cell team showed up in the Batla House area around 11 am. It tried to do everything all at once — confirm the phone owner, identify the flat occupants, and arrest the IM suspects at an hour when everybody was awake and fully alert. The odds that something would go badly wrong were high. And it did.

This is an object lesson on how not to conduct a counter-terror operation. Contrast it with the way the Mumbai Police quietly and effectively picked up IM suspects from several locations around the country. When they finally announced the arrests four days after the Batla House encounter, they publicly thanked the Muslims of the Cheetah Camp slum for their help and cooperation in the arrest of Sadiq Sheikh, another alleged IM bomber. Local Muslims had alerted the Crime Branch on Sheikh’s movements. No Muslim or human rights group protested after the Mumbai arrests.

But the Delhi Police’s slambang action had two serious fallouts. It alerted other IM members. As a result, many are still at large. And it raised questions that made Muslims suspicious and angry. In Batla House, if you ask anyone about the encounter, they are all convinced it was fake, that Atif and Sajid were innocent, even though the IM group did not belong to the locality. What is worse, Muslims across the country see it as another instance of police highhandedness and brutality against their community.

Yet no one in government appears to take notice.

After Mumbai 26/11, aren’t we supposed to be developing a more sophisticated counter-terrorism doctrine? Is it enough for officials to just go on insisting that Batla House was a genuine encounter? What is being done to clear the doubts, even if misplaced, of ordinary Indian Muslims?

Though he has denied it, Digvijay Singh reportedly said in Azamgarh that he would ask the PM to order an inquiry by the newly created National Intelligence Agency. This isn’t a good idea. The Delhi Police will strongly oppose it, justifiably worried that it could turn into a witch-hunt.

There’s a better precedent. After the 1993 Mumbai blasts, there were accusations of indiscriminate arrests and even extortion against the city police. Maharashtra handed over the case to the CBI, which conducted its own investigations and dropped charges against nearly two dozen accused. The rest were tried in court. So: transfer the entire IM case to a central agency, to be dealt with as those skilled CBI officers did then. If Shahzad had nothing to do with the IM and was en route to Australia to join a flying course, then he will be let off. If not, he will be tried. Ditto for all the other accused.

But the larger lesson is that there’s a world of difference between counter-terrorism and anti-underworld operations. Many policemen seem to confuse the two. Indiscriminate arrests and needless shoot-outs may turn nondescript officers into instant media celebrities. But they subvert the faith and support of local communities, an absolute necessity in the battle against urban terrorism.

Maybe police “conscientisation” programmes can include a study of a real police hero, the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who fell to terrorist bullets on 26/11. A few months before he died, some of his over-zealous officers provoked anger by misbehaving during raids in Muslim colonies in northern Mumbai. Karkare visited the areas during Ramzan, broke iftar bread with Muslims, apologised for the mistakes, promised it wouldn’t happen again, and asked for cooperation. “It was amazing to witness the transformation,” says human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, who accompanied him. “At one moment, the Muslims were resentful and angry. At another, they were excitedly promising Karkare they would do their utmost to help him nab terror suspects.”

Shrewdness, and not just bravado, will win the battle against terror.

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist

Grave Tidings for Indian Leadership

Thursday, August 13, 2009

GRAVE TIDINGS FOR INDIAN LEADERSHIP

If the Chinese analyst's posting on a private Think Tank website is surprising to Indian Establishment, it should not waste time in coming out with its own counter strategies, with a view to take its own people in confidence. It should not seek and accept any lame excuses from our adversaries over the apparently a calculated move to shake up India.

The alleged dream of a 'Afghanistan to Myanmar' can hardly be the priority of Indians at any stage of their nation building.

The inclusion of Afghanistan and Myanmar into a 'Greater India’ appears to be throw back to British India.

It is possible that India's and Manmohan Singh's new friends from the West, have their own plans to draw up a new nation in the subcontinent, and are leaking out details as a working model of their imperialist design for India.

Indian people are not aware if by signing up strategic partnership with the US and its allies, our leaders are ushering in such a dubious, hazardous and dangerous element, which could trigger reactions like that of the Chinese Strategist, risking a virtual balkanization our nation.

The figuring of Hindutva as the most touted center-point of Indian nationhood by the Chinese is a clever device to justify the break-up design for other disgruntled regionals.

This should give a food for thought to the Hindutvadis too. As a start, they will have to discard their narrow exclusivist Idea of India, if they do not want forces beyond their control to make them the culprit and find excuse to threaten the very foundation of our nationhood. From now on, they should be the last people to have any role in the future of nation building. In fact, they are our weakest link to the future integrity and security of our country. A handful of minority, in these times of democratic rights, cannot be acceptable to the world, especially to our adversaries, as fit to claim India, even if they manage to muscle in by garnering spurious electoral majority.

India is at the threshold of very crucial changes and it will need leadership that inspires trust and confidence among its people.

As a nation, in the face of such grave challenges, we are a nation without vision, without direction, without a consensus to face the future.

Let our leaders stand up and face the nation, as soon as possible to explain what is happening around us and how are we supposed to be coping with such challenges.

India needs a strong, robust, confidant and visionary leadership at this juncture that is not given to hallucinations and hubris. It is time to consolidate what we have and not covet what we can never digest.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

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http://www.c3sindia.org/india/719

China Should break up the Indian Union, suggests a Chinese Strategist

D.S.Rajan, C3S Paper No.325 dated August 9, 2009

Almost coinciding with the 13th round of Sino-Indian border talks (New Delhi, August 7-8, 2009), an article (in Chinese language) has appeared in China captioned “If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up” ( Zhong Guo Zhan Lue Gang, www.iiss.cn , Chinese,8 August 2009). Interestingly, it has been reproduced in several other strategic and military websites of the country and by all means, targets the domestic audience. The authoritative host site is located in Beijing and is the new edition of one, which so far represented the China International Institute for Strategic Studies (www.chinaiiss.org).

Claiming that Beijing’s ‘China-Centric’ Asian strategy, provides for splitting India, the writer of the article, Zhan Lue (strategy), has found that New Delhi’s corresponding ‘India-Centric’ policy in Asia, is in reality a ‘Hindustan centric’ one. Stating that on the other hand ‘local centres’ exist in several of the country’s provinces (excepting for the U.P and certain Northern regions), Zhan Lue has felt that in the face of such local characteristics, the ‘so-called’ Indian nation cannot be considered as one having existed in history.

According to the article, if India today relies on any thing for unity, it is the Hindu religion. The partition of the country was based on religion. Stating that today nation states are the main current in the world, it has said that India could only be termed now as a “Hindu Religious state’. Adding that Hinduism is a decadent religion as it allows caste exploitation and is unhelpful to the country’s modernization, it described the Indian government as one in a dilemma with regard to eradication of the caste system as it realizes that the process to do away with castes may shake the foundation of the consciousness of the Indian nation.

The writer has argued that in view of the above, China in its own interest and the progress of whole Asia, should join forces with different nationalities like Assamese, Tamils, and Kashmiris and support the latter in establishing independent nation-states of their own, out of India. In particular, the ULFA in Assam, a territory neighboring China, can be helped by China so that Assam realizes its national independence.

The article has also felt that for Bangladesh, the biggest threat is from India, which wants to develop a great Indian Federation extending from Afghanistan to Myanmar. India is also targeting China with support to Vietnam’s efforts to occupy Nansha (Spratly) group of islands in South China Sea. Hence the need for China’s consolidation of its alliance with Bangladesh, a country with which the US and Japan are also improving their relations to counter China. It has pointed out that China can give political support to Bangladesh enabling the latter to encourage ethnic Bengalis in India to get rid of Indian control and unite with Bangladesh as one Bengali nation; if the same is not possible, creation of at least another free Bengali nation state as a friendly neighbour of Bangladesh, would be desirable, for the purpose of weakening India’s expansion and threat aimed at forming a ‘unified South Asia’.

The punch line in the article has been that to split India, China can bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support ULFA in attaining its goal for Assam’s independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal and lastly
recover the 90,000 sq km. territory in Southern Tibet.

Wishing for India’s break-up into 20-30 nation-states like in Europe, the article has concluded by saying that if the consciousness of nationalities in India could be aroused, social reforms in South Asia can be achieved, the caste system can be eradicated and the region can march along the road of prosperity.

The Chinese article in question will certainly outrage readers in India. Its suggestion that China can follow a strategy to dismember India, a country always with a tradition of unity in diversity, is atrocious, to say the least. The write-up could not have been published without the permission of the Chinese authorities, but it is sure that Beijing will wash its hands out of this if the matter is taken up with it by New Delhi. It has generally been seen that China is speaking in two voices – its diplomatic interlocutors have always shown understanding during their dealings with their Indian counterparts, but its selected media is pouring venom on India in their reporting. Which one to believe is a question confronting the public opinion and even policy makers in India. In any case, an approach of panic towards such outbursts will be a mistake, but also ignoring them will prove to be costly for India.

(The writer, D.S.Rajan, is Director of Chennai Centre for China Studies, Chennai, India, email: dsrajan@gmail.com).