Establishment of MAC,NIA and NCTC etc are expected to convert hard Intelligence into ‘actionable’ Intelligence

The evolution of the Indian counter-terror policy in the twenty-first century has roots in the 1999 India–Pakistan Kargil conflict and the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 by the Harkatul-Mujahideen. In both the cases, the intelligence agencies were caught napping and even the response was leaden, to say the least, with huge consequences. As a result, the government set up a Group of Ministers under the Indian Home Minister to reform the national security system. Among its many recommendations for enhancing counter-terror response was establishing the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) under the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

However, it was after the 9/11 upheaval that the MAC was formally set up, on 6 December 2001. Its mandate was ‘to centrally pool and process all operational and actionable intelligence and disseminate them among the executive agencies for real time action, value addition and conversion of raw intelligence into actionable intelligence; build a national memory bank; develop round-the-clock early warning capability and communication network interfaced with Central security agencies and state police forces; and ensure coordination and synergy in response action through pooling of resources, manpower, technical equipment and intelligence’. But this evidently did not help as India was hit by a spate of bombings and terror attacks culminating in the 26/11 attack in Mumbai.

By the government’s own admission, made after 26 November 2008, the MAC had not lived up to its promise; the databases had not been created and no data relating to terrorist activities had been received from the central and state security forces and agencies.

Counter-terrorism Centre

In the interim, the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), which was set up by the present government, in its report titled ‘Combating Terrorism’ in June 2008 recommended the following: ‘The MAC should be converted into a National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) with personnel drawn from different intelligence and security agencies. Besides, it should be given the nodal role to ensure convergence and coordination of relevant intelligence data on terrorism from all such agencies in the country. At the state level the subsidiary MAC should play a similar role.’

With the government concurring with the ARC on enhancing its counter-terror capabilities, the Indian government on 1 January 2009 promulgated the ‘Multi Agency Centre (Functions, Powers and Duties) Order, 2008’. Its charter was:

• Gather, collate, store, analyse, share, disseminate and do any other thing or act that may be necessary in the respect of intelligence pertaining to terrorism, terrorist threats and terrorist offences.
• Develop, improve and enhance the capacity of the government to deal with terrorism and terrorist threats.
• Devise strategic and tactical measures to counter terrorism, terrorism threats and terrorist offences.

The Indian NCTC proposal, albeit similar to its US counterpart, was a step ahead as the latter only assigns roles and responsibilities for counter-terror operations and limits itself to operational planning. It is this very idea to arm the Indian NCTC with operational capabilities and an umbrella agency with intelligence agencies reporting to it that has caused serious debate within the Indian security establishment.

Reservations

After analysing the home minister’s NCTC proposal, M.K. Narayanan, former NSA to the Prime Minister, extended his support to establishing the centre but wanted the intelligence agencies and particularly the MAC to be left alone. He argued in writing that the MAC should not be a part of the NCTC and that the operational capabilities of the proposed counter-terror outfit should not be made by hiving off the operational wings of Indian intelligence agencies.

Narayanan is not the only one who is opposed to the basic structure of the NCTC. The Indian intelligence chiefs also feel that like in the US NCTC, the IB and RAW should only send their representatives to the proposed centre with information they need to share, rather than report to the NCTC boss and be accountable to the Indian Parliament. The nay sayers within the Indian government got a shot in the arm when the US NCTC could not prevent the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab despite having scraps of intelligence pointing to the same. Deposing before the US Senate Intelligence Committee on 20 January 2010, Dennis Blair, Director, National Intelligence, said: ‘The counter-terrorism system failed. We told the President that we are determined to do better.’

Although there are pros and cons to every new concept, the basic problem with the Indian NCTC or the foundation of the counter-terror architecture is its operationalisation. The easiest part is to appoint a head of the NCTC and empower him or her with a humongous mandate but who will train the operating counter-terrorism teams? Even if they were sent to mitigate a terrorist situation in a country as vast and diverse as India, who would take the responsibility of providing support and logistics? There is a growing fear that the NCTC would be like a number of bodies that were set up with a serious mandate but have become dysfunctional.

Beef up the police

The other argument against the NCTC is why not strengthen the existing Indian intelligence agencies and their operational wings. The British response to the 7/7 bombings was to beef up the capabilities of the MI-5 and MI-6 agencies rather than set up a new organisation. Perhaps, the answer to Indian needs does not lie in setting up another agency but in consolidating the existing mechanism. It has to begin at the grass-roots level as India desperately needs to increase police footfalls on the ground.

As of 2006, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs, India had a total of 16,32,691 persons in the police force with 145.2 policemen for every 1,00,000 inhabitants. Compare this with 559 police personnel per 1,00,000 inhabitants in Italy or even 192.7 per 1,00,000 in Nepal and you get the idea about the pathetic state of affairs.

What is even more alarming is that 145.25 was the sanctioned strength in 2006 but the actual strength is only 117.09 since the states have not taken police recruitment seriously in the past. In the most populated states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, police recruitment was riddled with corruption in the past with the ruling parties hiring personnel on caste considerations to further their electoral gains. Intelligence agencies face the same problem as either there aren’t enough personnel to pick up ground intelligence on terrorist modules or the priorities are lopsided and focused towards collecting political intelligence.

This meant that intelligence agencies had to overtly rely on technical means like communication intercepts, mobile phone tracking and call matching with little corroboration on the ground.

 

(Excerpted from Indian Mujahideen—the enemy within (Pages 314, Rs 550) with permission from the publishers Hachette India)