Institutional failures
A major difficulty is that terrorism is treated in India as a law-and-order issue, and therefore as a responsibility of state governments, which traditionally have resisted central government interference. India has no specific anti-terrorism legislation, only an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Communication and coordination between states and with the central government is weak; there is no standardisation or application of best practice.
culture according low status to police and intelligence agencies, the latter are mostly poorly trained and equipped, partly because of endemic corruption in government procurement.
Another major shortcoming revealed by the terrorism in Mumbai was the lack of any coastal-security apparatus. In 2001, a ministerial report on reforming the national security system warned: ’India’s long coastline and coastal areas have remained largely unprotected and unguarded ... there is (also) need for a greater clarity in the role of the State Governments vis-à-vis the Coast Guard in so far as shallow water surveillance of the coast is concerned … since our vulnerability to infiltration and smuggling from the coastal areas has increased, a matching security system along the shoreline has become overdue.’
These recommendations were approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security, India’s top decision-making body on security, but they are yet to be adequately implemented seven years later.
More fundamentally, the Mumbai incidents highlighted the fact that India’s government historically has seen terrorism as a peripheral issue to be managed by the security forces as best they can. The result has been a lack of sustained focus; there has been no coherent national strategy to address a problem that has become central to India’s future.
Confused response
Attacks of the scope and ferocity of those in Mumbai would severely test the counter-terrorism response capabilities of any country, and could cause a few hours of chaos in any city. Many national security authorities will now be asking themselves how effective their own responses would be in such an event.
However, India will be under particular pressure to review its apparatus after the obvious inadequacies of its response. Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, which owns the Taj hotels, criticised the failure to build a crisis-management infrastructure that could ’snap to attention as soon as something happens’.
International security experts could also see obvious flaws. Among these was the fact that India’s counter-terrorism response unit, the National Security Guard (NSG), based near New Delhi, took eight hours to reach Mumbai after the alarm had been raised. Though trained for a quick nationwide response, it lacked immediate access to aviation and had to improvise. Once there, it appeared to have no strategy for dealing with the attacks and to have little intelligence on what was happening in the two hotels and the Jewish centre.
No attempt was made to cordon off the attack sites or to control the flow of information to the media. In a situation where it was initially unclear whether the terrorists were engaged in mass killing or hostage taking, it appeared that inadequate attempts were made to gather intelligence on what was happening within the target buildings before launching assaults. While the NSG showed courage and commitment, its approach appeared to rely purely on firepower, with not enough effort to minimise civilian casualties.
Israeli security experts were especially critical of the NSG assault on the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish centre, where a rabbi and his wife were among those killed. The experts said this was conducted in a way that virtually guaranteed no hostages would survive.
It is not clear that application of best practice would have meant significantly fewer Mumbai casualties. But to deal with future terrorist attacks, the need to improve doctrine and practice is clear.
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