Anti-terror: Is US hard line better than India's soft line?

If the Boston Marathon terror blasts on Monday prove anything, it is this: no matter how tight your security, no matter how many billions of dollars you spend on counter-terrorism, there is no stopping the determined terrorist. A state better prepared to fight terror may also be attracting the more competent terrorist. This far, the arguments we hear whenever terror rocks an Indian city run something like this: we need stronger terror laws. Look how the US has fared after 9/11. It has not faced any terror attacks on its soil. After Boston, we need to revise that view. Our counter-argument to those who point out our incompetence in tackling terror has always been on these lines: the US has succeeded not just because it has better anti-terror laws and implements them seriously, but because it has neighbours who have little interest in terror. We have precisely those kinds of neighbours. We now know that both arguments are at least partly wrong. Fortress US is not 100 percent safe; even with better technology and more counter-measures in place to deter terror (including better intelligence and surveillance), the US is not invulnerable. It is not as if Canada and Mexico are great anti-terror buffers to have. If a terrorist wants to target you, he can. Moreover, the US is focused more on Islamic terror; its own internal terrorists  — the White-supremacists and racists who attacked a Gurdwara last August  — are going under the radar. If the US was so good at tackling terror, this is the terror they needed to tackle first. Home-grown terror is the toughest to handle, since the trouble-makers are well embedded in society. As for India, despite the very poor quality of policing, intelligence, and anti-terror capabilities built up, and despite having at least one neighbour who provides active aid and succour to terrorists, fatalities are actually showing a significant decline. As the South Asia Terrorism Portal notes , “For the first time since 1994, the year 2012 registered a total number of terrorism and insurgency-linked fatalities across India in three digits - at 804, as against 1,073 in 2011 and a peak of 5,839 in 2001. The trend of sustained decline in such fatalities has been near-unbroken since 2001 (with a marginal reversal in 2008), giving tremendous relief to theatres of persistent violence.” The point is not that having no strategy is good for us, but that, over time, maybe, just maybe, terrorism is finding diminishing returns in India. What distinguishes the US counter-terror strategy from our own non-strategy is this: America believes in a hard stance, where two eyes have to be gouged out of the enemy for every one eye lost; in India, after an initial burst of anger and public outcry, we go back to business as usual. Both as a people, and as a government. The US is extra-legally eliminating, one-by-one, all its major al Qaeda enemies, with Osama bin Laden being the most obvious one in 2011. Not only that, the US continues to bomb all alleged jihadists on the Pakistan-Afghan border through drone attacks. (Read how many have been killed here and here ). So much so that the main job of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) today seems to be the assassination and murder of the US’ violent enemies. New York Times columnist Bill Keller notes that the conversion of the CIA into a “killing machine” may have weakened the agency’s ability to gather better intelligence. So one should not be surprised if more jihadists think the US offers a better risk-reward ratio for future violence. Keller bases his view on a book by colleague Mark Mazzetti, who wrote The Way of the Knife. The book charts the shift in the CIA’s brief from being “a traditional spying shop into more of a man-hunting paramilitary — custodian of lethal drones, sponsor of dark ops, employer of secret armies and shady contractors.” The shift in the CIA’s unspoken charter is clearly about two things: extracting vengeance for American lives lost and pre-emptive killing. The strategy rests on the dubious principle that if I think you will try to kill me, I have the right to kill you first even without clear proof. It’s not just self-defence, but pre-emptive offence. This is, of course, dangerous territory — exactly the kind that will ignite interest in a new kind of terrorism — including home-grown ones in America. In fact, the US no longer focuses only on foreign jihadis, but domestic ones, including American citizens. As The Washington Post reported in 2010, the CIA had put Anwar al-Awlaki, an American al Qaeda militant who is alleged to have attempted to bomb a Detroit-bound airline, on a “kill or capture” list. He was assassinated in October 2011. Since killing American citizens needs sanction directly from the US President, Obama apparently sanctioned his killing. As noted by Firstpost earlier, there apparently is a secret group that authorises such assassinations. Anthony Gregory, writing for the Center for Research on Globalisation portal, noted: “American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.” So here’s what contrasts the US’s approach to terror and ours. 1: The world’s most robust democracy is not beyond “encounter killings”. And we berate ourselves endlessly for killing some of the lethal ones back home. 2: The official US policy is to bring anyone attacking Americans to justice. It’s usually two eyes for one eye. America believes in retaliation and vengeance and calls its justice. We believe in fulminating about it (26/11) and then quietly moving on to something else. 3: America believes in proactively protecting itself, if needed by strategically damaging its enemies. We are largely reactive, and believe in good fortune or luck. As Ajai Sahni wrote in Firstpost recently: “It is, indeed, safe to say that, in the main – though not in their entirety – the improvements in India’s internal security environment are consequences of factors extraneous to the strategies, policies and actions of the state and its agencies; unless, of course, an attitude of majestic indolence can be regarded as ‘strategy’, ‘policy’ or ‘action’.” 4: America believes in defeating its foes by violent confrontation. Our default strategy is to wear down the foe by moving on. Sahni writes: “India has, more often than not, simply worn out its enemies by its indifference, than defeated them by the vigour and sagacity of its responses.” In sum, America believes in landing punches; we believe in rolling with the punches – less as a strategy, and because we don’t know any better. Now, the jury is out on which way is better. One cannot rule out the possibility that America is by far the juicier target for terrorists – and may hence attract the more skilled ones to pit their wits against virile state power. Exhibit A is Boston blasts. After more than 60 years of a hardline stance, Israel is nowhere near winning the war against Palestinian terrorism precisely for this reason.  This is not to commend a weak-kneed policy on terror, but to point out that a hard stance attracts a hardened enemy. India is easy meat – and offers no challenge to the professional terrorist. In the absence of purposive action, our incompetence may be our best asset. We attract the losers. A babe such as Ajmal Kasab. Because it is so easy to commit a terrorist act in India.