Outthink terror

Mumbai 13/7 has overtaken Mumbai 26/11 as the latest outpouring of public outrage and sheer frustration at the almost contemptuous frequency with which terrorists have targeted the Maximum City.

The grim statistics of terrorism in India from 1993 to 2011 are well known and have been extensively analysed. Fourteen incidents of various intensities took place, each one overtaken in public memory by the subsequent outrage.
In this context, it may be relevant to recall the original incident — the Mumbai serial blasts of March 12, 1993. The deadly tally of this single incident (13 blasts in one day, 257 dead, 713 injured) makes it the “great-granddaddy” of all bomb blasts. This is, by far, the largest act of urban terrorism in India, notwithstanding the much greater and more dramatic media coverage garnered by 26/11, which got engraved in the public consciousness as the symbol of the ultimate terrorist attack.
The unthinkable — a nuclear “dirty” bomb explosion — has, of course, not happened anywhere in the world, and all hope that it never does. Though India arguably has amongst the best and tightest rules, procedures, and security and safety controls in the world in all respects, as in most other matters, their practise does not match theory and its implementation and enforcement rates are amongst the laxest.
In this context, the recent news of the theft of 64 missile warheads from a military cargo train in faraway Romania, barely reported in this country, may have ominous implications. The military-criminal nexus amongst the loosely controlled, sometimes almost disintegrating armies in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asian region is well known. The warheads have been untraceable so far. But the possible destination can certainly be speculated upon, with organisations like Al Qaeda and its affiliates featuring amongst the most likely “end users”. There will be many claimants to these warheads in the troubled regions stretching eastwards through the Caucasus. Of prime concern to India being the radical extremist groups targeting it, like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba or the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which are allowed to run free in AfPak and within Pakistan as well. There is certainly a potential threat should even one of these warheads travel southeast and find its way to these organisations.
Mumbai 13/7 also indicated the ubiquitous presence of another commodity whose easy availability makes it the most-preferred ingredient for the terrorist bomb maker. This is ammonium nitrate, or urea, universally used as nitrogenous fertiliser, which was the basic ingredient of all three explosive devices used on 13/7. The same ingredient also cropped up in the recent car bomb explosion in Oslo that killed two people. The attack was engineered by a mentally-deranged right-wing Christian fundamentalist and Islamophobe Anders Behring Breivik, who went on to shoot and kill 93 people in a holiday youth camp. But demented or not, Breivik carefully prepared his camouflage by setting up agriculture and mining enterprises to obtain access to ammonium nitrate from the commercial market.
It is understood that in the aftermath of Mumbai 13/7, the Government of India is reportedly considering legislation to modify the current Explosives Substances Act to bring ammonium nitrate within its purview. It aims to control the sale and movement of this universal and innocuous product, but with a deadly “dual use” potential, to “genuine” farmers only. It is to be seen how efficient this step proves to be. Such a step, if practicable, should have been taken much earlier, but there are serious and obvious doubts about its sheer administrative impracticability.
The Oslo case and the use of farming and mining for deadly camouflage is a pointer in this direction. But whatever be the end result there is nevertheless a requirement for seeking out other solutions seriously. Is it possible, for instance, to chemically “denature” urea to function as fertiliser only, without dual use as an explosive? What about other chemicals freely available in the market with similar potential for dual use? Criminal ingenuity is always difficult to contend with, even if the entire gamut of modern technology is available for the purpose to the security forces, because in the ultimate analysis only human ingenuity can contend with the terrorist mind. Security forces will need to have plenty of their own as well, which must be incorporated into their human resources processes, so that the right quality of personnel are recruited.
Here it bears repetition that law and order is the constitutional responsibility of state governments and the ultimate responsibility for dealing with it finally devolves upon them. However, “law and order” essentially deals with maintenance of public peace and prevention of crime. Internal security dealing with insurgency or terrorism is at an entirely different level of organisation and violence, but is nevertheless completely intertwined. Crime and terrorism feed off each other, often from common logistics and financial support systems. Narcotics, kidnapping for ransom and gunrunning provide the sinews that support a terrorist infrastructure. As such a vigorous police offensive to round up and neutralise the underworld would also handicap the nefarious designs of terrorists and make it much more difficult for them to attain their objectives. The reaction of the Mumbai Police and civil defence organisations in the aftermath of 13/7 might have been praiseworthy, though, perhaps, not perfect. But the main issue is that it was a reaction, a response after a terrorist attack. It was not pre-emptive action, one that could have prevented the incident.
It is the repetitious use of the ridiculously hackneyed term “intelligence failure” that actually summarises and highlights the basic weakness and flaw bedevilling the entire system of national security. Effective intelligence has to be proactive and pre-emptive, not reactive. The so-called Natgrid, or National Intelligence Grid, as a single-point source for multi-source intelligence has long been in the works, due to inter-ministerial differences as well as political, civil rights and privacy concerns. Lack of intelligence is the single prime factor that provides access doors and loopholes to facilitate entry of terrorists inside the security infrastructure. Their apprehension, if at all, after the act is not much consolation to the survivors.

Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament