India’s Security Failure – Who is Responsible?

A blog from an angry Indian

India is no stranger to terrorism. When I was born, Kolkata was in the grip of Naxalite terror. When I was a teenager, Khalistani groups terrorized us. When I was in university, the LTTE assansinated Rajiv Gandhi. Over the last two decades, we have been constantly at the brunt of various Islamist groups, both home-grown and foreign.

However, the attacks in Mumbai suggest a totally different level of threat to national security. First, the terrorists seem to be able to strike simultaneously and with impunity at some of our most iconic social institutions – the Taj hotel, CST station and so on.
Second, the terrorists clearly knew what they were doing and who they were targeting. This is no bomb-and-run job. They knew their way around and inside the two hotels, they knew where to find the Jewish rabbi, they knew about tourist-friendly Café Leopold and possibly they deliberately killed the head of Mumbai's anti-terror unit. Third,
and most important, this is the lastest of an accelerating series of deadly attacks we have suffered in the last two years, starting with the Diwali bombings in Delhi two years ago to the Assam bombings a month ago.

I accept that India is a large country and one cannot stop some attacks for taking place from time to time, but the government seems totally unable to deal with this threat. There is clear failure at every level.

The first and most obvious
failure is in terms of gathering intelligence. The knee-jerk reaction to every terrorist strike is to add a couple of extra constables at the site of the previous attack. This is laughable. As any security expert will tell you, the battle is half-lost if the attackers have already made it to your doorstep. I was staying at the Taj hotel just last week (my room is probably now in ashes) and the porch had been closed and there were metal-detectors at the entrance. This may deter the odd free-lance terrorist but, as we have seen, cannot be an answer to a serious effort. The latest attack on Mumbai must have required co-ordination between a very large number of people. Why did we not have an inkling?

Second, once the attacks tooks place, our response was abysmally amateurish. There were multiple security groups rushing around with no unified command structure. Thoughout the episode, we got contradictory statements from different officials. We first heard that the Taj hotel is fully under control. A few hours later we heard, "Oops sorry, there are a few left afterall". At one stage we were told that there many hostages, then that there were none and even later that there were quite a few hostages. We do not even seem to have a proper way to get our commandos to the site. They arrived in BEST buses. Thank the gods that they did not have to call a Meru cab.

Finally, there still does not appear to be serious political pressure on the government to deal with this. A month will pass and we will forget all this just as we seem to have forgetten the attack on the Parliament, the massacre at the Akshardham temple, the repeated bombings in virtually every major city in the country. There is no public outcry that no one has been arrested for the series of bombings we have suffered in the last two years. The little debate we have seen, revolves around the suspects of the Malegaon bombing. The accused, if indeed guilty, must be punished but that is just a side show. No one seems to be really bothered about the central problem.

The point is simply this – the time has come to demand accountability from our country's leadership. We no longer want to be told that Mumbai is resilient and will cope. We no longer want to be told that our security officers bravely gave their lives for the country. Bravery is the last resort of the unprepared.

Who has failed us so repeatedly? We want to know……..

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November 28th, 2008

by sanjeev sanyal