No Gossip, No Politics with Terrorism Please…

The 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai not only warned India how vulnerable it is to terrorism, but also it exposed the easy going attitude of India’s sleepy intelligence system that couldn’t smell possibility of such an attack even though it had received some inputs about it and was warned by foreign agencies well before. The attack brought to the notice of public how the loud anti-terrorist measures in the country are nothing but for the name shake and how, technically and skill wise, our anti-terrorist squads (ATS) are much behind to deal with the current trends and practices of terrorism world over.

Few terrorists landed up at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST) in Mumbai on November 26 evening with an intention to kill as much of people and cause as much of damage they could. Even though the security personnel present there traced them and tried to face them, they were not equipped enough to deal with the terrorists armed with sophisticated weapons and ammunitions.

On information of presence of some armed terrorists in the city, Mumbai ATS took over the operation but grossly failed in nabbing or killing the terrorists to give the city a quick breath of relief but lost some of its most effective members. The reason, as placed by our leaders and the senior police officials, was that the ATS jawans were less equipped than the terrorists. Soon the National Security Guard (NSG) Commandoes had to take over and gun down the terrorists who took three important establishments of Mumbai like Nariman House, Oberoi Hotel and Tajmahal Hotel Buildings. It’s not only the city of Mumbai, but the whole country felt terrorised for about 60 hours till the ‘operation black tornado’ (as the NSG chief termed the operation) was successfully accomplished.

The terror attack and the subsequent operation to free the establishments from the terrorists brought to public many systemic flaws in the defence system of India and political leaders’ urge to politicise such act of terrorism. When the whole nation was stunned with the terror attack in Mumbai, the political leaders seemed easy responding to the incident before media.

The attack made it clear that how ineffective our intelligence and internal security systems are in gathering information on such possibilities and getting control over the situation and the miscreants on such incidence. It was very unfortunate to see the union home minister Sree Prakash Jaiswal talking on TV that the government now realises the necessity of upgrading its defence force and the security agencies to face the challenges from terrorists of the present scale. When terrorism has become a global problem and, in the attacks on WTC and London railway, terrorists have shown how equipped and ruthless they could be, home ministers great realisation seemed to be a hard slap on the face of Indians who have placed these leaders on the chairs to rule.

26/11 terror strike in Mumbai drew international attention and the act was severely condemned by leaders of most countries. But in the land where it happened, the leaders tried to churn political benefits by blaming each other and fooling people. Leaders of every political party – from the self-claimed nationalists to the extreme regionalists – saw the issue of terrorism on their own political canvass and started a tug-of-war in the name of national security. No leader came out of the political and party limits and urged for strong measures and urgent action for combating terrorism. But everybody tried to fulfil its own interest in the recent incident of terrorism n the commercial capital of the country.

One party urged re-execution of POTA, where the other party tried to make afresh the issue of Marathi Manus – North Indian conflict in Mumbai and Maharastra. As elections are on the head, some leaders tried to bag the image of most accountable by politically guillotining few ministers at almost the end of their tenure. Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned from the cabinet making himself accountable for what happened in Mumbai. But Mr. Patil, where was your sense of accountability during serial blasts in Delhi and Rajasthan? Where was your sense of accountability during the violence against north Indians in Mumbai and Assam?