Have we forgotten lessons of 26/11?
It is not unlikely that the evil minds who set off a high-intensity briefcase bomb — which has killed nearly a dozen people and injured many more — at the reception gate of the Delhi high court on Wednesday morning were probably seeking to make a celebratory point on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on America which went some way in shaping international relations. And there lies the irony.
A “ceremonial” strike can be conceived in the Indian capital, but not in places which might offer international terrorism greater propaganda mileage. (An unverified claim by a terrorist group of acting to get Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s death sentence overturned could be a diversionary tactic.) Given their record of a string of failures, it is hard to imagine that terrorists can even venture to think of hitting the United States at this point: they have come to appreciate that it is extremely difficult to do so. The same is broadly true of Western Europe, where several terror strikes have been clinically thwarted in recent years. But India, sadly, is a different story.
Half a dozen terror attacks have occurred in different Indian cities since November 26-28, 2008, when Mumbai was assaulted by Pakistani terrorists in an extraordinary manner. None of these cases has really been solved, although strong suspicions have been voiced from time to time. Our readiness to meet the onslaught of terrorism remains doubtful even after the wake-up call of 26/11. Among key issues to emerge from the attack at the Delhi high court (and the recent one in Mumbai, when several crowded commercial locations were struck simultaneously) is that even elementary fixtures such as CCTV cameras have not been installed in sensitive places. The forensic work is inadequate. Political noises begin to be heard when investigators get on to a particular track. The legal system takes for ever, as the Ajmal Kasab saga underlines. In short, India remains the world’s only major democracy which can be attacked by terrorists at virtually no cost, any day of the week, any time of the day.
Three years ago, P. Chidambaram was paradropped to replace Shivraj Patil as Union home minister in the wake of 26/11 to instil a sense of confidence, and set in place modern and reliable systems of intelligence gathering and collation, providing real-time data across state borders, equipping local police forces — who are the first line of defence in counter-terrorism, and getting right the system for successful prosecution of criminals inclined towards terrorism. How much of this has materialised, and if not, why? If the political class cares, it should ask these questions in a non-partisan manner.
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