Why Terrorist Attacks Can Be So Pathetic

© World BulletinI arrive back in Delhi and, sure enough, people are blowing things up again. This time, it was an attack outside the High Court that killed 12 people. Two emails have been sent out claiming the attack for either the Huji-ul-Jihad Islami or the Indian Mujahideen. Both seem pretty shoddy, particularly the second one which appears to have been written by a semi-literate moron with little grasp of English and none of the usual attempts to justify the attack with some cobbled-together gibberish distorted out of religious scriptures. So it was probably neither.

Not that claims of responsibility matter. As we find ourselves engulfed this weekend by the torrent of reminiscences and earnest searches for something original to say about 9/11, it is hard to see the recent spate of terrorist attacks in India as anything other than pathetic and insignificant by comparison. Ten years ago, as an impressionable young student, I remember thinking that day was the beginning of some all-out holy war, in which planes would come crashing from the sky on a near-daily basis, nuclear mushroom clouds would become routine viewing on the evening news, and we would all be travelling to work with gas masks and parachutes in our rucksacks. Instead, we have this pointless crap.

Without wishing to diminish the trauma of the victims from Wednesday’s attack, or apologise for the Indian security forces (I mean, bloody hell, a bomb was planted in the same place only three months ago and they still haven’t installed any CCTV), anyone who has spent any time in an Indian city will know how ridiculously easy it would be to plant a bomb in a public place. Walk to the entrance of any major railway station in India and you will see metal detectors at the entrance with hundreds of people streaming around them, or setting them off as they stroll blithely through while the guard snores away happily on a nearby seat. It is frankly impossible to stop someone planting a bomb in places this chaotic.

So the question is: Why are terrorists so bad at their job? Take for example the bombing in Varanasi in December. One of the busiest religious sites in the world, with practically no security presence whatsoever, and the best they could achieve was the killing of a two-year-old child (plus a 50-year-old woman who died later from her injuries). If my entire raison d’etre was killing people unexpectedly, that would make me seriously reconsider my ability to live up to my raison.

If this all sounds flippant, it should not, because there are important lessons in the uselessness of recent terrorist attacks in India. The last attack to exhibit any kind of imagination, professionalism or strategic intent was that on Mumbai in November 2008. Since then, there have been seven terrorist attacks in India, all of them small in scale.

There are two of the lessons I take from this:

1.     Terrorist groups have to keep launching attacks, even when they have limited capabilities, support or any likelihood of dramatic success. They have to keep the ball in play so that people don’t forget they exist, otherwise their financial (and political) sponsors – as well as their admiring public – will lose faith. One might infer from this that if these groups stopped ranting and raving and blowing things up for a while, people would probably forget what all the fuss was about.

2.     American pressure on Pakistan following the Mumbai attacks may have had more of an effect than it is often given credit for. Let’s face it, everyone knows these recent attacks are emanating from Pakistan and that there is more its military establishment could do to crack down on anti-India militancy if it wanted to. But the lack of major attacks and the reluctance to make (credible) claims of responsibility, point to a genuine concern among the Pakistan establishment that another Mumbai could have serious repercussions. America is only concerned right now because it doesn’t want anything prolonging its exit from Afghanistan. The question is whether it will maintain this pressure on Pakistan after its troops leave the region, or will it pull another 1989 and leave the militants to run amok once its immediate goals have been achieved?

Some of these points are also discussed in my story for today’s National:

The Indian government and its security forces are facing severe criticism for their failure to protect the Delhi High Court after Wednesday's bombing which left 12 people dead, but experts say the attack points to deeper structural failings in the country's intelligence agencies.

The government has yet to confirm whether an email claiming responsibility in the name of Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, an Islamist insurgent group based in Pakistan and Bangladesh, was genuine. Three people in Jammu and Kashmir, including the owner of an internet cafe, were arrested yesterday in connection with the email. Another email sent later to two media companies claimed the attack was carried out by Indian Mujahideen.

Investigators scrambled yesterday for leads into the latest blast, offering a 500,000 rupee (Dh39,800) reward for clues, even as the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, acknowledged "there are weaknesses in our system".

"Obviously I think there are still unresolved problems, that's why terrorists take advantage of them," Mr Singh said on Wednesday night during a flight home from neighbouring Bangladesh.

The headline in the Times of India reflected a general mood in the Indian media yesterday: "Terrorists strike yet again, at will".

Reports focused on the failure of the Delhi Police and local authorities to install CCTV cameras at the court complex after a bomb, which failed to explode, was planted there on May 25, in what effectively became a dry run for Wednesday's attack.

Beyond the recriminations and the search for suspects, experts see fundamental problems in India's overall security apparatus.

"The criticism of the police misunderstands the nature of the terrorist threat in India," said Ajai Sahni, of the Institute for Conflict Resolution in New Delhi. "There is nothing the urban police force can do unless the networks that plan and implement these attacks are terminated.

"This attack took place outside the court complex in an area where the public can circulate freely. You can put a security perimeter around buildings, but it has to end somewhere, and there will always be this vulnerability.

Read the rest here...