On The Spot
Tavleen Singh
A question I have asked myself over and over again since the Boston bombings is why terrorists in India always remain faceless? The history of jihadi terrorism on Indian soil is at least a decade older than it is in the United States if we count the bombings in Mumbai in March 1993 as the first horrible manifestation of the jihad. More than 200 people were killed. Those who like to take a compassionate view of jihadi terrorism and try to understand motives usually blame the demolition of the Babri Masjid for why jihadi terrorism came to India. People like me who do not take a compassionate view prefer to see jihadi terrorism as an extension of the Pakistan army’s war long war against India. Whichever way you view it the biggest threat to national security for twenty years has been jihadi terrorism and the enemy continues to remain faceless. Why?
Within hours of the bombings in Boston we knew that the brothers Tsarnaev, Tamerlan, 26, and Dzhokhar, 19, were the two men in baseball caps who planted those pressure cooker bombs at the finishing line of the marathon. From the first time we saw them on our TV screens it was less than a day before we knew who they were and from then it was mere hours before we found out that Tamerlan was dead and Dzhokhar on the run. By the time he was caught we knew that the brothers were Chechen and had grown up in America.
We knew that Tamerlan wanted to be a professional boxer, that he had problems adjusting to American life, that he had become a radical Islamist after possible contact with Chechen militants on a trip to Russia. We knew that he was questioned by the FBI in 2011. Of Dzhokhar we learned that he was just a ‘normal American kid’ who liked parties, ate pork and had recently enjoyed himself at a hookah bar in New York. We soon learned that
the father of the boys now lived in Makhachkala, Dagestan and that he was separated from their mother who like her older son had recently become a passionate Muslim.
If so many details can emerge so soon after a terrorist attack in America why does it takes so long for us to discover anything about our own terrorists? Keep in mind here that it was only with American help that we managed to find out the identities of the ten terrorists responsible for the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. It was American technology that helped the Indian government intercept the conversations they had with their handlers in Pakistan and it was because Ajmal Kasab was caught alive that we found out more about the plot to destabilize Mumbai. It was Fahadullah’s last conversation from the Oberoi Hotel with his handler in Pakistan that enabled us to hear the handler advise him to tell the Indian media that ‘this was just a trailer, the movie will come later.’
This should have been enough to frighten our intelligence and security agencies to improve their methods but if this has happened there is no sign of it on the ground. As someone who lives in Mumbai, not far from the Oberoi Hotel, I can report with conviction that if there was a repeat of a 26/11 type attack on this city the results would be as devastating as they were last time because nothing has changed. The hotels have metal detectors outside their main entrances but if the terrorists came in shooting then those standing on this fragile frontline would be the first to die. For those unfortunate people caught inside the hotels escape would be even more difficult than it was last time because so many exits have been sealed.
At railway stations, airports, shopping malls, cinemas and other public places security is showy but lax. And what is most important is that there has been no improvement in training, patrolling or intelligence gathering in the past five years.
If we consider what happened after two other major jihadi terrorist attacks on Indian soil you will see that nothing has changed elsewhere either. The men who hijacked IC 814 remain unpunished and mostly unidentified. We know a little about Omar Sheikh and Maulana Azhar Masood because Sheikh was involved later in the sickening murder of Daniel Pearl and Azhar Masood masterminded the attack on Parliament house in December 2001. But, we still do not know why these two men remained in Indian jails for five years before they were released in Kandahar in exchange for the passengers on IC 814. Once they fled across the border into Pakistan along with the hijackers they disappeared from the radar of India’s intelligence agencies. Since then there have been any number of jihadi attacks in Indian cities and in most cases we never find out who was responsible.
Sometimes the police informs the public that they have killed such and such a person who was responsible for such and such an attack but more often than not the information is hard to believe because there is no way of ensuring its veracity. Instead of sharing information with the public, as we saw happen after the bombings in Boston, our security agencies like to hide their information. If this is a deliberate, considered strategy it should be clear by now that it is outdated, stupid and dangerous. If we are to get any closer to dealing with terrorism as effectively as we saw the Americans deal with the Boston bombings then the first thing that has to happen is that information about the identity of terrorists is shared with the Indian public.
Once this starts to happen it becomes that much easier to understand whether we are still dealing with jihadi terrorists nurtured and trained in Pakistan or whether we are dealing with a more insidious homegrown variety with specific grievances of their own. Not only must the terrorists no longer remain faceless but nor should the policemen and officials who are responsible for our security. Just as they love popping up our television screens to talk about peace time problems it is time they turned up to talk about their failures to protect us when times are bad.
This would not be a solution to our problems with jihadi terrorism but it would be a small and vital beginning. We can only hope, meanwhile, that those in charge of national security learned some lessons from Boston.
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