Tower of Babel or Dialogue of the Deaf? Both could be appropriate to describe the proceedings of the special session of the chief ministers’ conference presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) for India. The conference reportedly became more a clash of egos and personalities than a constructive meeting of minds. It should be no surprise that no positive conclusions could emerge from it. But even the darkest cloud has a silver lining however faint, and in this case the episode drew national attention to the imperative of intelligence coordination if effective action was to be taken against terrorism, whether externally sponsored, or of indigenous variety.
The NCTC, in its original form, is an American organisation whose mission statement requires it to “lead the national effort to combat terrorism at home and abroad by analysing the threat, sharing that information with partners, and integrating all instruments of national power to ensure unity of effort”.
The partner agencies of the American NCTC include, amongst others, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for internal security and counterterrorism, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for external intelligence and covert operations, including counterterrorism, abroad.
The NCTC functions under a designated Director National Intelligence (DNI) who coordinates and focuses the entire intelligence effort of the country on given specific objectives and functions as a knowledge bank with respect to terrorism and its associated activities as they affect the security of the United States. It is known to employ 600 trained intelligence analysts in 72 fusion centres for intelligence inputs and operates national security networks like the Worldwide Incident Tracking Systems (Wits) and the Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group.
The Indian version of the NCTC that stirred up such a storm at the conference of chief ministers was established under the executive direction of home minister P. Chidambaram. He had visited the American NCTC during one of his visits to the US and had been much taken up with the idea.
The entire thought process, which ultimately led to the idea of the Indian NCTC, commenced with the nasty surprise at Kargil in 1999 when Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry, masquerading as mujahideen, totally outwitted the Indian Army and seized the dominating ridgelines. Kargil 1999 is often held up as the most classic case of Indian intelligence failure, but it is not really so. It is merely the most recent amongst similar disasters in Kashmir (1947), NEFA and Ladakh in 1962 and Chhamb-Jaurian in 1965.
The tragedy in all these cases was that notwithstanding adequate forewarning from various sources, organisational and attitudinal lapses and lack of coordination amongst multifarious agencies became fatal obstacles in conveying the required warning to the troops and commanders on the ground, who ultimately faced enemy’s onslaught often under grave disadvantage.
The Kargil Review Committee — set up under the chairmanship of Dr K. Subrahmanyam in July 1999 to study and analyse the lessons to be drawn from the Kargil War — was particularly harsh and scathing about the entire intelligence process, and the resultant information void that sent the Indian Army into battle totally blindfolded. Some excerpts of the report by the committee are worth quoting, especially since the “black hole” of intelligence at Kargil in 1999 was repeated again in 2008, during the jihadi raid on Mumbai on November 26 — India’s own 26/11.
The report says: “…there was overwhelming evidence that the Pakistani armed intrusion in the Kargil sector came as a complete and total surprise to the Indian government, Army, and the intelligence agencies…” The situation was retrieved as always by the enormous courage and sacrifice of the troops and junior commanders. They unhesitatingly paid the price for faulty intelligence and miscalculations at the highest level — 527 killed and 1,363 wounded.
To avoid such catastrophic intelligence failures in the future, one amongst the many recommendations made by the Kargil Review Committee was the establishment of a Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) composed of representatives from all intelligence agencies for coordinated processing, collation and dissemination of analysed intelligence. The intelligence information could be received from many diverse sources within and outside the government, often in total isolation from each other but nevertheless with overlapping functions.
The concept envisaged a chain of subsidiary MACs at the state level, under the respective director generals of police, as well as district collation centres under the district superintendents of police. The MAC was set up in 2001. The Indian concept of an NCTC is thus not new. It is the erstwhile MAC dressed up in new clothes and given a makeover in updated security jargon. However, what the Kargil Review Committee did not address was the complementary requirement for separate but linked Central investigative agencies (like the FBI in the United States) with powers of search and arrest to back up the NCTC.
An attempt to rectify this lacuna was made with the formation of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on December 21, 2008, for investigation of terrorism related crimes as well as other crimes with national ramifications. There is also the well-known Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), though its track record is not too impressive.
But operational requirements were relegated to the backbenches and the chief ministers’ conference was purely political in nature, dominated by apprehensions based on past experiences of the misuse of such organisations by all political parties when in power. The tone and tenor was hijacked by the emotive issue of the “federal structure of the country”, and individual states expressing their unease, especially those with governments led by the Opposition, over the possibility of interference by the Central government under the guise of national security. The proceedings once again reflected the bitter and highly personalised divide between various political parties and their regional satraps. In the final reckoning, this mutual suspicion is the greatest threat to the national security.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament