The New York Times recently released a report on the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which was covered in detail by The Indian Express. An important revelation of the report is that all the planning for 26/11 took place right under the nose of US, UK and Indian intelligence agencies, and yet they failed to prevent the brutal act of terror. As the report bluntly puts it, “…may rank among the most devastating near-misses in the history of spycraft. The intelligence agencies of the three nations did not pull together all the strands gathered by their high-tech surveillance and other tools, which might have allowed them to disrupt a terror strike so scarring that it is often called India’s 9/11.”
Zarrar Shah, the media head of LeT, was being monitored by the GCHQ as he searched for VoIP systems, online security systems, small scale warfare, secret communications, tourist and military locations in India, etc. However, the information was held in silos, and was shared only after the attacks in Mumbai started. The use of technology was immensely useful to the terrorists, who were many steps ahead of technological awareness that our police had. Zarrar Shah used Google Earth to show the exact locations of their targets in Mumbai; and today we become all the more vulnerable as Google displays information about some of our sensitive locations on its maps.
Coordination issues between intelligence agencies were a big factor. On 18th November 2008, the US had alerted R&AW that a LeT ship was trying to infiltrate into Indian waters. It also gave latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the vessel. This input was passed on to the IB for dissemination to the respective agencies, including the Naval Headquarters and the Coast Guard. While the Naval Headquarters never passed on the intelligence to its sword-arm (the Western Navy), the Coast Guard launched a search for the suspected LeT vessel on November 21. It could not find the ship and so asked the IB to get more intelligence. But the IB did not respond.
These pointers again highlight the need for bolstering our intelligence capabilities. The need is even more acute today, when religious fundamentalism is acquiring globally threatening dimensions, and Pakistani non-state actors getting bolder day by day. The broad areas that need attention are improving the intelligence capabilities, in terms of manpower and analysis, and solving coordination issues amongst various agencies.
Intelligence in itself is a highly specialized field, and requires language skills, knowledge of strategic matters of different countries, their cultures, etc. But the deputation is done mostly from the IPS, and this results in lack of experts in defence, economics and Science and Technology (S&T) needs. The secondment of military officers in intelligence organizations is plagued by procedural delays. To create a capable and expert organization, the recruitment must focus on inducting more specialists, especially from S&T and finance domains, as these have growing linkages with many areas of national security. Outsourcing of intelligence works can be taken up in specified areas. This will help in utilizing the required expertise, as it is not always possible to build in-house capabilities for all domains. The US intelligence, for example, contracts out crypto-deciphering work to specialists in Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and Princeton Universities. Military intelligence is outsourced in part to private industry giants like Lockheed Martin.
Interpreting the intelligence inputs and putting it all together is one of the most important lessons we learnt from the above NYT report. After the internet revolution, the amount of data that one has to monitor has increased manifold. We need to take care of privacy concerns, but discarding these oversight mechanisms won’t do us any good. They need to be improved, and capabilities to mine for the required data enhanced. Analysts are expected to be not only correct, but also quick enough to warn significantly before any damage occurs. Projects like NATGRID, which aim to create an integrated database of several departments so as to get comprehensive information, must be brought back to life quickly.
Mechanisms of coordination are extremely essential, for without it they would be just disjointed pieces of a puzzle. While national coordination exists in most countries (regardless of its effectiveness), we need to institutionalize international coordination as well. This is an extremely difficult task, since strategic goals of different countries often clash. India, unfortunately, cannot do much about it unless everyone agrees that terrorism is a common threat to all. Until that happens, strengthening our national intelligence capabilities is the only way forward.
NCTC (National Counter Terrorism Centre) is a major proposed change that has been waiting for long now. It will be an integrated platform to collect, evaluate and analyse intelligence, maintain a databank and coordinate counter-terrorist operations. The current body- MAC (Multi Agency Centre) has informal intelligence sharing mechanisms, and does not collect/carry out intelligence operations itself. NCTC’s arrest, search and seizure powers will ensure better effectiveness of follow up activities.
These changes will definitely strengthen our intelligence capabilities. But we must not live with the perception that our intelligence agencies are totally incapable today. Their successes cannot be highlighted, and we see only the dark side of the coin. They would have surely analysed their strengths and weaknesses, and with super-spy Ajit Doval as the NSA, we should expect our intelligence capabilities to become even more intelligent.
GRAY BUBBLES 