World of India!

So we are told that the 7/11 Mumbai blasts investigation is concluded and many of the participants have been apprehended. ISI has been accused of planning/instigating the groups which carried out the actual attack. So in essence, we are being told that a state agency of Pakistan is waging a war against us. At the same time, our Prime Minister finds no contradiction in establishing a joint group to tackle terrorism with the same nation! I knew of the saying 'Set a thief to catch a thief', but I had assumed that the first thief would be some one different than the one we wished to catch. The Indian government however, seems to believe in setting a thief to catch itself!

Novel, but hardly amusing.

Or is it that the Govt. knows that not ALL terror attacks are Pak sponsored, but it needs to keep up the propaganda attack anyway? It seems to me that many of the attacks are nowadays being carried out by disgruntled Muslims, who are angry with the Indian Govt.'s handling of the Gujarat riots(no significant punishments of anyone in the state machinery till date and Modi has grown even stronger, after carrying out what amounts to genocide) or with the Babri Masjid episode. Do these people really need the ISI? Common sense tells me that putting together a bomb is no longer a task which requires great expertise (many sites on the web offer free tutorials) and its simply impossible for any state machinery, however strong, to protect against terror attacks, if the perpetrators have the will to carry it out. So who needs the ISI anyway?

Its time for the Govt. to decide which line to take. Either they take a clear stance like Israel, that they wont talk to the backers of terrorists (Pakistan) and take the hard-line against them OR they decide that the Pakistan is not to blame for terror attacks and that we have a home grown militancy, with support from some Pakistani citizens/groups operating from within Pakistan, which the Govt of Pakistan needs to move against, but which is NOT the same as Pakistan sponsoring terror, actively.

The fact is that most of the western world believes Musharraf when he says they don't sponsor terror actively(at least not after 9/11 ,anyway) and he himself wants to curb the extremist elements in Pakistan. Fact is that other than Musharraf there is no alternative who can keep the Banana republic with an Atom bomb, stable. When the Indian Govt., is stupid enough to accuse Pakistan of inciting the train blasts after 7/11 within hours of the blasts, without any investigation taking place, we loose credibility, because govt's abroad are not fools, not to know that we have a significant section of populace which is heavily disgruntled and capable of carrying such attacks themselves. If Pakistan had to be accused, it should have been accused after due investigations, which means TODAY, not on 8/11!

Fighting terror requires a mindset that is different. It needs resolve (which we have). But that’s not enough. We need to develop the technology to tackle and manage terror (closed circuit cameras in public places, tamper proof id cards for citizens, surveillance equipment etc). We need to develop far better intelligence capabilities. We need to identify the fringe which is about to set their foot on the path of terror and incentivize them to abandon that path. We also need to be much more savvy at propaganda and communications.Most important, we need to have a clear strategy on what we need to do to fight terror-fight the thief or collaborate with him.

We can hardly do both without the house being taken to the cleaners.