Uncomfortable questions are being asked about how India's intelligence failed to detect the plan for Mumbai attacks. US security expert Alex Alexiev blames it on India's poor grasp of terror dynamics and lack of coordination between various agencies.
Alexiev is the vice president for research at Center for Security Policy, Washington DC and has directed several research projects for the US Defense Department. His present research focuses on issues related to Islamic extremism and terrorism. In a telephone interview to Network18 from his home in California, he tells Shloka Nath that the time has come to put Pakistan on notice.
What do you think is the reason behind the Mumbai attacks?
What happened in Mumbai didn’t come as a surprise. Actually, the reason the attacks took place was because India had not bothered to understand the basics of what was happening. There is a deeper malignancy at work here and we are at war with a radical totalitarian interpretation of Islam. With every passing year since the 9/11 incident, the world situation has only got worse – not better. India is a good example of the deteriorating effects of terrorism. India is not willing to accept that there are harmful sects within its own borders which are supported by Pakistan.
The last time I was in India, I was shocked to hear Government officials at a conference on security in India. They stood up and said there has never been an Indian Muslim who was a terrorist. Most might be peaceful but a lot are not. There is certainly radicalization in India and it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
What lessons can India learn from the way America stepped up its security after 9/11?
We have done better than India in stopping attacks. But, in India, there is very little active coordination and sharing of information between different organizations. India today is what the USA was before 9/11 when the FBI and CIA did not even talk to each other. The lack of coordination has to be looked into.
The other thing is poor equipment. The police sent to confront the terrorists had ordinary handguns while the terrorists were better armed. You need to spend whatever money necessary to give your police the right tools so they can deal with all kinds of situations effectively. A well-known police chief of New York City -- William Bratton – says all terrorism is local because ultimately, when it happens, it’s local. It’s on your shores. The police are the first line of deterrence rather than the last. But the police in India are almost like a marginal factor in counter terrorism. It’s the police who know the locals and the neighborhoods and there has to be some level of effective local intelligence.
One of the positive steps we have taken in the US has been to set up terrorism intelligence centers where various agencies of government and local police work side by side. For example, in Los Angeles, you have the FBI, CIA, LA police and various other agencies like the fire department and the airport police all working together. They are intelligence fusion centers, if you will, and are functioning in several other large cities. These professionals sit in the same office, the same department and they become colleagues as opposed to different competing departments. In India, they need to cooperate closely and make sure that no lead goes cold.
Think of the economic damage done by shutting down Mumbai for a day or two -- the billions of dollars lost. The cost of effective policing is actually a very good economic investment. You need to train your police force the best way you can.
India’s Prime Minister is thinking of a crime-fighting agency along the lines of America’s Homeland Security model. What are the benefits and disadvantages in implementing such a framework?
The USA's Department of Homeland Security consolidates 22 agencies and 18,000 employees. It unifies the fragmented federal functions into a single agency dedicated to protecting America from terrorism. But the issue about a Homeland Security (HS) system is that it cuts both ways. Due to a complete lack of cooperation between intelligence agencies it is good to have one place where they can exchange views. Under the HS, there is a Joint Terrorism Task Force, a place at the Federal level where representatives of CIA, FBI and all others sit together and work like the city-level fusion centers I just mentioned. That is very good.
However, on the other hand, bringing all the existing agencies under a single roof could, in a way, mean adding another layer of bureaucracy. I'm in two minds -- because when the HS was formed it was supposed to be an organization where everything was coordinated. It was meant to rally together the separate agencies in the US -- and there were many: The Armed Forces -- the Army, Marine, Navy, the Defense Intelligence Agency, a military organisation, and the NSA military spying agency, the CIA and the FBI. We had so many receptacles for information but no cooperation among ourselves.
Right now, fingers are pointing towards Pakistan. Is this simply a knee-jerk, emotional reaction one can expect from India at this time?
I have spent an extensive amount of time in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. And the one thing I have learnt is that all terrorism is, to some extent, state-sponsored. Let’s be frank. Nearly all terrorist attempts in India can said to have been sponsored by Pakistan. Take Lashkar-e-Toiba, the child of the ISI that continues to be supported by them. You just can’t separate terrorist attacks in India from Jihadi outfits in Pakistan. Many who were banned under the Musharraf regime have simply renamed themselves and continued to operate and be supported by the ISI.
The current Pakistani government knows that the ISI is a state within the state. Look at the number of ISI chiefs who turn out to be zealous Islamists after they retire. The raison d’etre of the Pakistan military depends on India’s image as an enemy. Because, without it, how do you justify spending 40% of the country's income on the military?
And I’m not sure if America has recognized that Pakistan today is not a state with a military but a military with a state. Personally, I thought America’s policy with Musharraf was misguided – Washington thinks Pakistan is a strategic ally. We don't understand that actually we may be losing Afghanistan because of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s support for extremists. We know the ISI is behind the bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul. If they can attack the sovereign territory of a neighbor, why would it come as a surprise if they chose to attack India’s business centre? For some reason there is this pervasive belief that if you don't speak of evil it will go away. The fact is, it won’t. And the time has come to put Pakistan on notice.
The other fascinating thing is the Dawood connection - another example of the state sponsoring terrorism. We know Dawood is protected and given refuge and allowed to operate his criminal empire by the ISI and now it looks like he could be one of the guys involved in this. So you have a possible organized crime and terror nexus – who made that possible?
India’s government needs to wake up to what’s happening and what’s coming down the pipe. There are terrorist incidents in India every one or two months, which are really disruptive. How long can you tolerate that?
Shloka Nath is a senior features writer at the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes, USA.
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