26/11: A Decade After

A decade has passed since Pakistan-based militants struck the Indian financial capital of Mumbai, killing 165 people (not counting the nine terrorists that were killed by Indian security personnel) and creating panic among the city’s populace. The attacks drew comparisons with the September 11, 2001 tragedy in the United States. Yet, the Mumbai attacks (or “26/11”, for the day that they happened, 26 November 2008) not only provoked public outrage but also gave birth to expectations that the government would finally begin to address the deep-seated, systemic shortcomings in the country’s security apparatus. A decade seems like long enough, and while there have been some changes, a lot remains unachieved. ORF examines the causes and consequences of the 26/11 attacks in this volume of articles that focus on the multiple dimensions of this crisis and its aftermath: strategic, operational and tactical.

We begin with Kriti M. Shah’s piece underlining key policy objectives behind the Pakistani state’s sanctioning of the 26/11 attacks and analysing whether or not Pakistan succeeded in those aims. Deepak Sinha’s essay then looks at the reasons why Mumbai was an attractive target for the attacks and how equipped the city is today in meeting similar challenges. This is followed by a piece by Abhijit Singh that places the attacks as a failure of coastal security, outlining the challenges and the current state-of-play in this arena. Khalid Shah, in his contribution, takes up the issue of Kashmir and its linkages to the wider terror attacks on the Indian mainland, and explores the question of whether the Kashmir issue still drives Pakistani thinking behind such attacks. In the subsequent piece, Pushan Das analyses the counter-terror response of India to 26/11 and underlines the changes in the country’s counter-terror response mechanism since. In the penultimate piece, Maya Mirchandani examines the debate on the role of media in national security crises. She underscores the challenges media faces in covering crises like 26/11, given the need for balancing national security imperatives with the task of disseminating relevant information to the public. Sushant Sareen closes the series by gazing at the future: will 26/11-like crises continue to shape the trajectory of India-Pakistan relations and what are the possible Indian responses?

The sheer scale and audacity of the Mumbai attacks clearly set them apart from earlier terrorist incidents in India. It would be a mistake, however, to suggest that those attacks were “India’s 9/11″. To do so would mean ignoring issues that have allowed such horrific attacks to take place, to begin with. After all, the Indian Parliament, symbol of India’s sovereignty, was attacked in 2001, and India’s response was as ineffective then as it was after 26/11.
India, in many ways, faces a unique set of challenges in dealing with terrorism. First, its very location in one of the world’s most dangerous neighbourhoods — South Asia, now the epicentre of Islamist radicalism – gives it an undeniable structural problem. The vast tribal areas in Pakistan, which have never been under the effective control of any Pakistani government since independence, have become a breeding ground for Islamist radicals. Driven out of Afghanistan after the US invasion and the overthrow of Taliban, the Islamist extremists have found a new haven in the Pakistani tribal belt. It is from there that they wreak havoc in Afghanistan and beyond, and their radical Islamist ideology is penetrating far and wide. India cannot expect to remain immune from such influences. Though the Indian government is keen to harp on the fact that very few Indian Muslims have become radicalised, most of the terror attacks in India in the last few years have involved homegrown radicals. In this series of essays, most of the contributions highlight this structural factor as the central challenge facing India. Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex continues to view proxy war vis-à-vis India as a legitimate tool of state policy and an integral part of their grand strategy. This is unlikely to change in the near future, and India must brace itself for attacks on the mainland.

India’s problems on this front are compounded by its lack of effective institutional capacity to first, prevent, and then manage the consequences of 26/11-style attacks. As these essays seek to highlight, while some progress has been made since 26/11 in enhancing the Indian state’s institutional capacity, the overall situation is far from satisfactory and the reforms have not gone far. The appalling state of India’s internal security apparatus became evident in how Indian agencies confronted the Mumbai massacre. As terrorists wreaked havoc over three days, Indian security forces struggled to even get a handle on the situation, and moreso to respond effectively. To be sure, there were efforts at mending certain aspects of existing institutional and legal frameworks. However, the Indian government has not made any attempt towards a systemic overhaul. Major initiatives like the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) and the National Intelligence Grid are struggling to get off the ground primarily due to political bickering. This brings to fore the third and perhaps most significant challenge to India: the politicisation of the terrorism debate in the country. Indian politics has made it difficult for the country to nurture a coherent response to terrorism. There is no political consensus across the political spectrum on how best to fight terrorism and extremism. Partisan politics has created an environment in which political and religious polarisation has been so complete and embedded that an effective action against terrorism becomes virtually impossible to accomplish.

As long as India’s response to terrorism is characterised by a shameless appeal along religious lines — with political parties trying to consolidate their vote banks instead of coming together to fight the menace — India will continue to be viewed as a soft target by its adversaries and the people will continue to fight terrorists in their streets. And while no government can make India immune from terror attacks, what it can and should do is better prepare the country to handle 26/11-like crises more effectively. A decade after 26/11, the Indian people must demand nothing less from our policymakers.

• Defence and Security
• Terrorism
• Indian Defence
• India
• STRATEGIC STUDIES

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