Better Battle Orders for Fighting Terrorism

Posted on | April 25, 2008 | 1 Comment

October 29th serial blasts in Delhi has again proved that the combat tools of the Union and State governments are awfully deficient in drawing up battle plans against Pakistan’s proxy war and behind the lines strikes by Pakistan and Bangladesh based jihadi tanzeems, which are patronised by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) of Bangladesh. The intelligence agencies and police forces have miserably failed to trace, locate, identify and destroy the jihadi modules established in various parts of the country exemplified by sensational assaults on Akshar Dham, make shift Ram temple at Ayodhya, the Red Fort and the Indian Parliament. They simply chase the shadows and are wizened after the incidents.

Clichés in security parlance try to justify absence of intelligence and operational preparedness by chanting that acts of terrorism are front-less and boundary-less wars. Each bullet cannot be replied. Clichés are like Nostradamus’ predictions that can be interpreted in thousand manners-vague, motivated, apologetic and apocalyptically prophetic.

The basic facts of the present war scenario can be classified under following broad categories, for which there should exist individualised battle plans textured together under a broader national plan. Such plans, like most battle plans, require periodical modification.
1. The invisible enemy belong to numerous jihadi tanzeems located across the borders. They are trained and indoctrinated by the resurgent Islamist fundamentalists who want to advance the cause of Islam through jihad.

2. They have defined geographical territories for forward operations in India—like the States of Jammu& Kashmir and Indian North East.

3. The concept of jihad beyond geographical boundaries encompasses the whole of India, particularly vulnerable areas and locations including important national symbols.

4. The war inside geographical areas can be fought from static and mobile positions and can be kept localised.

5. Static forces cannot fight jihad beyond boundaries and it requires innovation, both in intelligence tradecraft and operational methodologies.

6. The jiahdists are financed, aided and operationally readied by important tools of the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh—the ISI and the DGFI. They cannot operate in a neighbouring country without state patronage. To fight these aspects of operational directions by official tools of governance it is necessary to sharpen certain aspects of forward intelligence, pro-active operational planning, diplomatic and strategic offensive. India woefully lags behind in these spheres of defensive and offensive activities.

7. The jihadi tanzeems establish deeper modules in the target areas of operation in collaboration with their own government agencies and spy machines.

8. Such actions involve prolonged planning in collaboration with India based collaborators, sympathisers and believers in jihad beyond boundaries.

India’s defensive and offensive plans can emerge out of in depth study of these and other related aspects and characteristics of operational technologies of the jihadists. Our intelligence agencies are in possession of databank about these jihadi tanzeems and their linkages with the tools of governance of Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, they are pitifully ignorant about their operational plans, timings, targets, logistics, housing inside the target country and location, local collaborators and tradecraft adopted by them to implement the scheme of terror. In most cases they solely depend on electronic and technical surveillance and ruefully lack in human intelligence. The last mentioned deficiency occurs because of human intelligence penetration inside the tanzeems and creation of human assets in the likely target areas is more complicated. The technology of developing human intelligence is universal with local variations, but analysis of the likely thrust areas of the technology and implementation methodologies are not addressed with pro-active zeal.

The operational forces, both intelligence and police are not primed to concentrate on this priority area of national security. Their focus is not automated and concentrated and at best of times they function in isolation. An operational force should be empowered to develop its own intelligence on a given target and execute the same under appropriate legal coverage. The intelligence generating agencies and executing arms lack automatic activation process, communication and advance sharing of intelligence at developing stage.

Quick response to actionable intelligence is related to location, readiness and availability of executing forces equipped with technical support. Tricky targets like the Ayodhya temple and crowded market places demand fast mobilisation and response and on line communication between the executing forces and intelligence. This requirement presupposes a few operational reorientations like dispersal of Special Forces and intelligence generating units. Battlefield commanders carry out such reorientations. Fighting terrorism in undefined geographical locations and against selected vulnerable targets would require precision calibration and reorientation. For this purpose these vulnerable targets would require classification, geographical earmarking tailored to intelligence generating process and executive response.

To achieve some reasonable target of some of these objectives the country will require tougher laws, breaking the barrier of constitutional demarcation between state and union subjects, enhancement of intelligence generating capability and modern training to the executive and intelligence forces to achieve unified command capability to carry out pre-emptive strike, quicker response to developing situation. The job of post-incident handling of an act of terrorism in urban areas should be left to normal policing system.

Our human, technical and electronic intelligence generating assets are appallingly inadequate. A glaring example of such inadequacy can be witnessed at the Security and Immigration offices of Indira Gandhi International Airport. The prime airport of the country does not have hot line, fax and Internet facility giving direct connectivity to other major airports of the country. In case a terrorist suspect is identified the Immigration post has to alert Mumbai through its Delhi head quarter control room. Security forces and intelligence do not have even STD facility in smaller airports.

To be able to combat jihad beyond borders and over a vast geographical area India requires fast changes in its intelligence generating and quick response executing capabilities. Adoption of such methodology and tradecraft is feasible and should override vote bank compulsions of the political parties.

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Comments

One Response to “Better Battle Orders for Fighting Terrorism”

Shambhu Nath
June 14th, 2008 @ 5:56 pm

I am wisened by the article. I agree that India should have better intelligence and commando forces to fight jihad and terrorists.