By Col R Hariharan
LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
When Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa visits New Delhi from June 8 to June 11 he will be stronger than ever before. The three things he achieved in his first term of office – wiping out Prabhakaran and his Tamil Tigers, re-election for a second term with increased margin of votes and an unprecedented victory in parliamentary poll with 60% mandate from the voters - give him the confidence to talk from a position of strength to New Delhi.
Added to this Rajapaksa, in spite of his deceptive simplicity, has cleverly turned the Sinhala triumphalism in the wake of victory in the Eelam War to eliminate potential rivals. The popular hero of the Eelam War General Sarath Fonseka is facing court-martials. And the suave and articulate UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe is locked in a survival struggle to retain his position as leader of the United National Party.
With Sri Lanka under his sway for next seven years, New Delhi will be contending the rejuvenated Mahinda Rajapaksa - the most powerful head of state from Sri Lanka ever to visit the Indian capital.
Is New Delhi ready for the rejuvenated Rajapaksa? It should be because Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has his own success story. He is stronger politically after an enlarged mandate from the people for his second term of office. The destructive coalition partners and opposition he faced in earlier term have been cut down to size. The Congress-led coalition’s economic management, despite complaints of absence of transparency, cronyism and corruption, has maintained the country on the growth path. Dr Manmohan Singh’s aspiration to take India-US relationship is getting a further lease of life. Of course this is largely due to the US coming to terms with the limitations in building a win-win relationship with China ignoring India.
In spite of all this, New Delhi continues to show a subsuming hesitancy in handling Sri Lanka. If we look at the silent support New Delhi had provided the President ever since he was elected in 2005 and all along thereafter, both sides appear to have worked out a flexible model of collaboration, co-ordination and at times mutual condescension.
The collaboration came with India providing Sri Lanka all facilities, short of modern weapons, to improve the capability of its armed forces. It provided real time intelligence to control, curb, and destroy the international logistic and support system of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). But Indian leadership could not trumpet its support as it had to tread the ground carefully at home as the ruling Congress-led coalition was weak and depended upon octogenarian leader Karunanidhi and the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) party in Tamil Nadu.The shrewd Tamil Nadu chief minister milked the Eelam issue to gain maximum clout in New Delhi and divided the sympathy votes for Eelam Tamils at home in Chennai.
As the war is over logically India should be expecting dividends from Rajapaksa for its support. And the expectations are probably on three major fronts: equity for Tamil minority, closer economic bonds, and greater strategic convergence between the two nations with India remaining a favoured partner in Sri Lanka’s strategic horizon. President Rajapaksa’s style is to turn compulsions into favours to be dispensed at a time and situation of his choosing. So how will India handle him?
INTERNATIONAL DISCOURSES OF SRI LANKA
As K Venkatramanan of the Times of India said in a recent seminar, the Eelam war and its aftermath in Sri Lanka has thrown up a few international discourses. India has to show a sustaining interest in handling these discourses to fulfil its responsibilities as a nation. What are these discourses?
Human rights and humanitarian issues
How to deal with Sri Lanka (or any other nation in a similar situation) that has chosen to ignore international calls for improving its accountability on human rights as it feels it infringes its sovereignty. The European Union and the UK will continue to pressurise Sri Lanka on this count in the coming months. What should be India’s attitude on this moral issue cloaked in politics? India cannot afford to be either wholly idealistic or coldly real politick when human rights skeletons are rattling in its own counter terrorist operations. Can India continue to depend only upon back room diplomacy to prevail upon Sri Lanka to produce results, particularly when it is dealing with an ever more powerful Rajapaksa?
Increased profile of the U.S. and China in Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka’s war and its aftermath both the U.S. and China asserted their roles with greater visibility and gained a strong foothold. India facilitated this by playing a muted role due to self imposed restraints due to internal political considerations. After the war Sri Lanka is facing two major problems in resolving which it needs international help.
The first is the huge financial outlay required to rebuild north and east, and to speed up economic recovery to repair the crippling effect of war. The second is the growing pressure on Sri Lanka articulated by the UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon and in the UN human rights forums.
Though India can match either the U.S. or China in meeting Sri Lanka’s economic needs, only the U.S. and China, as UN Security Council members with veto powers, can influence the UN course of action against Sri Lanka. This is going be crucial as the international lobby against war crimes in Sri Lanka is gathering more momentum. So logically, President Rajapaksa will have to accommodate the U.S. and China more in the national strategic spectrum without treading upon India’s toes. Will he do it is a more difficult question than can he do it? And what is going to be New Delhi’s strategy?
Tamil issue
During the war, many Sri Lankan Tamils rightly or wrongly perceive India as the villain that helped Rajapaksa bury the Eelam dream. Of course, in their passionate denouement they conveniently forget that India had always been opposed to independent Tamil Eelam. But this disenchantment of India has not been countervailed by increase in favourable Sinhalese attitude towards India. Even half-hearted Indian efforts to bring ethnic amity in Sri Lanka are still looked upon by many of them with suspicion. So unlike in the past, India has a problem at hand in carrying its voice heard in Sri Lanka in the midst of cacophony of its detractors.
As the Tamil issue has an umbilical connection with Tamils in India and the Diaspora elsewhere its tugs and pulls go far and wide. This should not be understood merely in terms of electoral politics in which it continues as a peripheral issue. It has larger moral and social implications for Tamil society and its sensitivities. It should not be forgotten the Tamil society is only recently overcoming the sense of exclusivity and alienation that had bugged it since early days of India’s independence. A recent manifestation of this phenomenon was seen in the strident calls that came from Tamil movie industry for boycott of the non political International Indian Film Academy awards function in Colombo. Thus India’s actions and their impact on Sri Lanka continue to be relevant to Tamil people everywhere regardless of their attitude to India.
This sensitivity rules the minds of many among Sri Lanka Tamil Diaspora still recovering from the elimination of the Tamil Tigers as a powerful entity. They are smarting under the loss of face as many Sinhalese are trumpeting their triumphalism. And President Rajapaksa had shown no hurry to address Tamil sensitivities on the issue of autonomy, perhaps because there is no Prabhakaran to threaten Sri Lanka’s unity. He has largely chosen to ignore the need for animation of the 13th amendment that is serving only as a wall paper of the Tamil issue. India had been promoting its full implementation as a face saving device; but Rajapaksa had so far shown a marked reluctance even to save India’s face, let alone tackle the Tamil issue head on. So what is India’s strategy?
Economic discourse
For some years now India had been building its economic relations with Sri Lanka. By signing its first ever the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1998, India has shown Sri Lanka has a preferred status in its relations over other countries of South Asia. It is not merely Sri Lanka’s demonstrated capacity to remain with the highest human development index and highest GDP among South Asian countries that triggered India’s economic foray. Sri Lanka’s domination of the Indian Ocean also has a part to play in its economic strategy.
In the last nine years since the FTA came into play India-Sri Lanka trade has increased by four times to US $ 2719 million (2009). In fact, in the SAARC region Sri Lanka is now India’s second largest trading partner. The two countries set up a Joint Study Group in April 2003 to enlarge the scope and content of the FTA and work out a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). After 13 rounds of negotiations the CEPA has been given a final shape.
The CEPA when signed will take the mutual trade between the two countries to higher levels of cooperation and coordination. The proposed agreement addresses four areas: trade in goods; trade in services; economic cooperation (in mutually agreed areas like fisheries, energy, pharmaceuticals, textiles, financial, infrastructure, tourism etc) and investment issues. In real terms it provides for seamless customs procedures, consumer protection standards and procedures.
There had been some delay in signing this agreement due to opposition among sections of local business community in Sri Lanka. This is understandable as India is already a dominant trading partner with large economic clout. Both countries will have to convince them of the advantages in signing the CEPA. Of course, traditional India baiters among political parties now using the CEPA bogey will have to be tackled politically. President Rajapaksa who is supportive of the agreement will probably sign it at a time of his choosing - a politically opportune moment.
From India’s point of view signing of CEPA is important as it signifies the growth of relations between the two nations to a higher level. It could also signal the graduation of SAARC from a talk shop to a forum of solid achievement as the CEPA would set a precedence for other members to enhance economic cooperation. Thus it will have implications for the region and beyond. So how India is going to push it through?
TALKS IN NEW DELHI
Considering the complex issues cooking in India-Sri Lanka platter for sometime, President Rajapaksa’s visit assumes importance. However, according to media reports emanating from New Delhi, out of the 11 agreements under negotiation, only five have been finalised and are ready for signing. The five agreements do not include crunch issues. They relate to cooperation to fight terrorism, transfer of sentenced prisoners, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, cultural cooperation, and Indian assistance for small development projects in Sri Lanka. So apparently there are not going to be any dramatic breakthroughs except for the usual diplomatic rhetoric. But President Rajapaksa is a man full of surprises, as Prabhakaran discovered to his detriment. So what is going to come out of his visit? We will have to wait and see.
Monday, 7 June 2010
Friday, 4 June 2010
Sri Lanka Perspectives - May 2010
[This assessment written on May 31, 2010 exclusively for www.security-risks.com is reproduced here with their permission.]
Issues at stake
As Sri Lanka celebrated the first anniversary of its victorious war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s appears to have shifted his to refurbish Sri Lanka’s international image weathered due to allegations of human rights violations and war crimes committed during the Eelam War IV.
There is also the major problem of rehabilitation and reconstruction of the north. The Asian Development Bank has asked Sri Lanka to prune the size of its budget stressing the need for a sustainable budget deficit. The ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda has pointed out that .top priority now was to rebuild infrastructure in the ravaged north and east; and ensure economic stability reaches everyone in the country.
In 2009 Sri Lanka's fiscal deficit shot up to 9.7 percent of GDP well above the target of seven percent set by the International Monetary Fund when it released a $2.6 billion dollar bailout package in July 2009.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has assessed that 76,568 of the displaced were still residing in temporary camps run by the government. On the other hand 214,227 people sent out of camps in the last few months have reached their home towns and villages across the northern, eastern and central provinces. And majority of them were without livelihood. In addition to this it estimated that 93,329 former inmates of the camps were residing with families that have hosted them.
President Rajapaksa has said he would complete the task of rehabilitation by end 2010. To resolve this colossal problem Sri Lanka needs all the help from the international community to recover from the ravages of war. So the President has little choice but to do mend fences with international community. His efforts to ward off international cricism so far had not convinced his detractors. Both the Human Rights Watch and the Amnesty International have raised their pitch with more evidence on government complicity in violating human rights and humanitarian issues.
On top of all this, the International Crisis Group (ICG) in its report on Sri Lanka issued during the month claimed that it possessed ‘credible evidence’ to show that both the LTTE and the security forces had committed war crimes. It called for an independent international war crimes probe. The ICG held top government and military leaders as potentially responsible for those crimes.
Not to be out done, domestic opposition has also taken the government to task on this issue. General Sarath Fonseka leader of the opposition Democratic National Alliance (DNA) in the parliament also focused on human rights violations during the war although he absolved the army of committing any war crimes. And the issue has also become a foil in the opposition United National Party (UNP) in its fight for survival.
These issues have already done some damage to Sri Lanka. The EU has already suspended import tariff concessions extended under the GSP+ scheme affecting the nation’s exports. Despite Sri Lanka’s strong objections, the UN is in the process of selecting the members of a panel to advise UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon on the implementation of Sri Lanka’s commitments made on human rights accountability. Irritated by this, Foreign Minister GL Peiris on the eve of his meeting with the UN General Secretary had asked the UN to keep off Sri Lanka. He said: "...There is no justification legal or moral for this step (UN probe) to be taken at this time."
In a bid to take some wind out of the UN sail, President Rajapaksa appointed an eight-member ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation’ Commission (LLRC) to report on the lessons to be learnt from the events in the period Feb 2002 to May 2009. The LLRC was also tasked to study attendant concerns and to recommend measures to ensure no recurrence of such a situation. However, in spite of lofty wordings the commission’s mandate is worded vaguely. In an interview the President has made it clear that if the LLRC points out war crimes he would look into them. So it was not surprising that the UN Secretary General had been lukewarm in his comments on the LLRC.
However, Sri Lanka can derive some consolation that India welcomed the appointment of the LLRC describing it as “an important first step.” The U.S. Secretary of State Ms Hillary Clinton has also welcomed the Sri Lankan initiative in appointing the LLRC. In her statement after meeting with Foreign Minister Peiris, she said the U.S. expected its “mandate will enable them to fully investigate serious allegations of violations and to make public recommendations that commission members and potential witnesses must enjoy adequate and effective protection” underscoring the real concerns about the working of the LLRC. However, she would not comment on the UN panel.
It is significant that the U.S. has lifted the travel advisory on Sri Lanka on the eve of the first anniversary of the end of the Eelam War. This would indicate that in the U.S. assessment LTTE threat does not exist within Sri Lanka anymore.
Indian moves
India and Sri Lanka appeared to have once again appear keen to push through the mutual trade pact - the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) which will bring in greater trade integration between the two countries. However, this could run into trouble in India as political parties in Tamil Nadu could link the issue to issues of resettlement of displaced people and greater devolution of powers to Tamils. At the same time in Sri Lanka there are sections of trade and politics which see the CEPA as a sign of Indian hegemony which have to be convinced to give the go ahead.
Ms Nirupama Rao, Secretary, Indian Ministry of External Affairs has once again drawn Sri Lanka’s attention to the need for speedy implementation of 13th amendment to Sri Lanka constitution that gave a level of provincial autonomy. This issue is likely to gain more momentum in the coming months as there are detractors within Sri Lanka’s ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) who are opposed to it. Moreover it could get entangled in the constitutional revision proposed on abolition of executive presidency and proportional representation electoral system.
LTTE and Tamil Diaspora affairs
The crackdown on LTTE and its supporters among Tamil Diaspora has continued both within and outside Sri Lanka. Police arrested an alleged key woman supporter of the LTTE on her arrival in Colombo from Frankfurt. She is said to have raised funds for the LTTE in Frankfurt.
In Vancouver, Canada Prapaharan Thambithurai, 46, was convicted of "providing financial services, knowing that they will benefit a terrorist group, namely the (LTTE)" and sentenced to six months jail. This was the first case to be tried under new Canadian legislation against financing foreign terrorist organizations. Thambithurai, a low level LTTE fund raiser, pleaded guilty.
The Special Task Force (STF) has arrested two suspected LTTE cadres in Kalmunai and Kalawanchikudi in eastern province for engaging in anti-state activities and promoting the LTTE.
The controversial Transnational Government of Tamil Eelaam (TGTE) held its inaugural sessions in the city of Philadelphia in the U.S. from May 17-19. A committee of 13 ‘experts’ known to be sympathetic to the LTTE cause has been formed. The TGTE claims it would lobby for the support of the inter-national community to find a political solution to the Tamil national question on the basis of Nationhood, Homeland and the Right to Self-determination through political and diplomatic channels.
However, the formation of the TGTE by the former LTTE cadres and supporters has caused a great deal of concern in Sri Lanka. It had been cautioning the inter-national community on the need to curb TGTE in order to prevent resurgence of LTTE in their soil. In particular Sri Lanka has urged the European governments not to provide any political or symbolic support to the TGTE. Sri Lanka is also investigating suspected LTTE activity in Venezuela after receiving a report from its ambassador in Havana.
Despite all these efforts as of now, the Diaspora shaken by the wiping out of the LTTE is disillusioned. It will take quite sometime for the TGTE to cause any major impact as its support inside Sri Lanka is probably minimal and muted.
Issues at stake
As Sri Lanka celebrated the first anniversary of its victorious war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s appears to have shifted his to refurbish Sri Lanka’s international image weathered due to allegations of human rights violations and war crimes committed during the Eelam War IV.
There is also the major problem of rehabilitation and reconstruction of the north. The Asian Development Bank has asked Sri Lanka to prune the size of its budget stressing the need for a sustainable budget deficit. The ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda has pointed out that .top priority now was to rebuild infrastructure in the ravaged north and east; and ensure economic stability reaches everyone in the country.
In 2009 Sri Lanka's fiscal deficit shot up to 9.7 percent of GDP well above the target of seven percent set by the International Monetary Fund when it released a $2.6 billion dollar bailout package in July 2009.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has assessed that 76,568 of the displaced were still residing in temporary camps run by the government. On the other hand 214,227 people sent out of camps in the last few months have reached their home towns and villages across the northern, eastern and central provinces. And majority of them were without livelihood. In addition to this it estimated that 93,329 former inmates of the camps were residing with families that have hosted them.
President Rajapaksa has said he would complete the task of rehabilitation by end 2010. To resolve this colossal problem Sri Lanka needs all the help from the international community to recover from the ravages of war. So the President has little choice but to do mend fences with international community. His efforts to ward off international cricism so far had not convinced his detractors. Both the Human Rights Watch and the Amnesty International have raised their pitch with more evidence on government complicity in violating human rights and humanitarian issues.
On top of all this, the International Crisis Group (ICG) in its report on Sri Lanka issued during the month claimed that it possessed ‘credible evidence’ to show that both the LTTE and the security forces had committed war crimes. It called for an independent international war crimes probe. The ICG held top government and military leaders as potentially responsible for those crimes.
Not to be out done, domestic opposition has also taken the government to task on this issue. General Sarath Fonseka leader of the opposition Democratic National Alliance (DNA) in the parliament also focused on human rights violations during the war although he absolved the army of committing any war crimes. And the issue has also become a foil in the opposition United National Party (UNP) in its fight for survival.
These issues have already done some damage to Sri Lanka. The EU has already suspended import tariff concessions extended under the GSP+ scheme affecting the nation’s exports. Despite Sri Lanka’s strong objections, the UN is in the process of selecting the members of a panel to advise UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon on the implementation of Sri Lanka’s commitments made on human rights accountability. Irritated by this, Foreign Minister GL Peiris on the eve of his meeting with the UN General Secretary had asked the UN to keep off Sri Lanka. He said: "...There is no justification legal or moral for this step (UN probe) to be taken at this time."
In a bid to take some wind out of the UN sail, President Rajapaksa appointed an eight-member ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation’ Commission (LLRC) to report on the lessons to be learnt from the events in the period Feb 2002 to May 2009. The LLRC was also tasked to study attendant concerns and to recommend measures to ensure no recurrence of such a situation. However, in spite of lofty wordings the commission’s mandate is worded vaguely. In an interview the President has made it clear that if the LLRC points out war crimes he would look into them. So it was not surprising that the UN Secretary General had been lukewarm in his comments on the LLRC.
However, Sri Lanka can derive some consolation that India welcomed the appointment of the LLRC describing it as “an important first step.” The U.S. Secretary of State Ms Hillary Clinton has also welcomed the Sri Lankan initiative in appointing the LLRC. In her statement after meeting with Foreign Minister Peiris, she said the U.S. expected its “mandate will enable them to fully investigate serious allegations of violations and to make public recommendations that commission members and potential witnesses must enjoy adequate and effective protection” underscoring the real concerns about the working of the LLRC. However, she would not comment on the UN panel.
It is significant that the U.S. has lifted the travel advisory on Sri Lanka on the eve of the first anniversary of the end of the Eelam War. This would indicate that in the U.S. assessment LTTE threat does not exist within Sri Lanka anymore.
Indian moves
India and Sri Lanka appeared to have once again appear keen to push through the mutual trade pact - the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) which will bring in greater trade integration between the two countries. However, this could run into trouble in India as political parties in Tamil Nadu could link the issue to issues of resettlement of displaced people and greater devolution of powers to Tamils. At the same time in Sri Lanka there are sections of trade and politics which see the CEPA as a sign of Indian hegemony which have to be convinced to give the go ahead.
Ms Nirupama Rao, Secretary, Indian Ministry of External Affairs has once again drawn Sri Lanka’s attention to the need for speedy implementation of 13th amendment to Sri Lanka constitution that gave a level of provincial autonomy. This issue is likely to gain more momentum in the coming months as there are detractors within Sri Lanka’s ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) who are opposed to it. Moreover it could get entangled in the constitutional revision proposed on abolition of executive presidency and proportional representation electoral system.
LTTE and Tamil Diaspora affairs
The crackdown on LTTE and its supporters among Tamil Diaspora has continued both within and outside Sri Lanka. Police arrested an alleged key woman supporter of the LTTE on her arrival in Colombo from Frankfurt. She is said to have raised funds for the LTTE in Frankfurt.
In Vancouver, Canada Prapaharan Thambithurai, 46, was convicted of "providing financial services, knowing that they will benefit a terrorist group, namely the (LTTE)" and sentenced to six months jail. This was the first case to be tried under new Canadian legislation against financing foreign terrorist organizations. Thambithurai, a low level LTTE fund raiser, pleaded guilty.
The Special Task Force (STF) has arrested two suspected LTTE cadres in Kalmunai and Kalawanchikudi in eastern province for engaging in anti-state activities and promoting the LTTE.
The controversial Transnational Government of Tamil Eelaam (TGTE) held its inaugural sessions in the city of Philadelphia in the U.S. from May 17-19. A committee of 13 ‘experts’ known to be sympathetic to the LTTE cause has been formed. The TGTE claims it would lobby for the support of the inter-national community to find a political solution to the Tamil national question on the basis of Nationhood, Homeland and the Right to Self-determination through political and diplomatic channels.
However, the formation of the TGTE by the former LTTE cadres and supporters has caused a great deal of concern in Sri Lanka. It had been cautioning the inter-national community on the need to curb TGTE in order to prevent resurgence of LTTE in their soil. In particular Sri Lanka has urged the European governments not to provide any political or symbolic support to the TGTE. Sri Lanka is also investigating suspected LTTE activity in Venezuela after receiving a report from its ambassador in Havana.
Despite all these efforts as of now, the Diaspora shaken by the wiping out of the LTTE is disillusioned. It will take quite sometime for the TGTE to cause any major impact as its support inside Sri Lanka is probably minimal and muted.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Recommended Reading
Is the nation in a coma?
Mohan Murti writing in the Business Line dated:31/05/2010 gives a sample of European opinion on India’s stunted democracy in action. But to answer the question in the title, it is not India but its politicians are in a coma.
URL: http://www.business line.in/cgi- bin/print. pl?file=20100531 50300900. htm&date=2010/05/ 31/&prd=bl&
India’s Rise and the Promise of U.S.-Indian Partnership
William J. Burns, US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, spoke on emerging dimensions of US-India relations at the Council of Foreign Relations on June 1, 2010. I wish I could be as optimistic about US-India relations as he is.
URL: http://www.state.gov/p/us/rm/2010/136718.htm
A Tragic court martial
Former Indian army chief General Shankar Roychowdhury discusses the much hyped investigation into the Kargil defence procurement scam which ended with a whimper. It showed the soft underbelly of India’s lethargic arms procurement system and its impact on strategic security of the nation. http://www.deccanchronicle.com/node/140630/print
Not to be missed reading on this issue is the companion piece Former navy chief hits back at govt with RTI that appeared on the blog Soldierscorner on August 27, 2009 available at URL http://soldierscorner.blogspot.com/
India no more a big brother to Sri Lanka
Upul Joseph Fernando in his regular column My Serendip in the Daily Mirror, Colombo discusses the downsizing of India's role in Sri Lanka. Interesting analysis on the role of Congress party in this.
URL http://www.dailymirror.lk/print/index.php/opinion1/12029.htmlWednesday, 02 June 2010 00:00
Mohan Murti writing in the Business Line dated:31/05/2010 gives a sample of European opinion on India’s stunted democracy in action. But to answer the question in the title, it is not India but its politicians are in a coma.
URL: http://www.business line.in/cgi- bin/print. pl?file=20100531 50300900. htm&date=2010/05/ 31/&prd=bl&
India’s Rise and the Promise of U.S.-Indian Partnership
William J. Burns, US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, spoke on emerging dimensions of US-India relations at the Council of Foreign Relations on June 1, 2010. I wish I could be as optimistic about US-India relations as he is.
URL: http://www.state.gov/p/us/rm/2010/136718.htm
A Tragic court martial
Former Indian army chief General Shankar Roychowdhury discusses the much hyped investigation into the Kargil defence procurement scam which ended with a whimper. It showed the soft underbelly of India’s lethargic arms procurement system and its impact on strategic security of the nation. http://www.deccanchronicle.com/node/140630/print
Not to be missed reading on this issue is the companion piece Former navy chief hits back at govt with RTI that appeared on the blog Soldierscorner on August 27, 2009 available at URL http://soldierscorner.blogspot.com/
India no more a big brother to Sri Lanka
Upul Joseph Fernando in his regular column My Serendip in the Daily Mirror, Colombo discusses the downsizing of India's role in Sri Lanka. Interesting analysis on the role of Congress party in this.
URL http://www.dailymirror.lk/print/index.php/opinion1/12029.htmlWednesday, 02 June 2010 00:00
Israeli attack on Turkish aid ships
The Israeli naval forces attack on a Turkish flotilla carrying aid to the Palestines trapped inside Gaza has received worldwide condemnation. What is behind the incident? George Friedman's incisive analysis on the incident explaining the hidden dimensions published in www.stratfor.com is reproduced here courtesy the website. And the incident shows that creating adverse public opinion globally has now become a new dimension of strategic warfare.
URL:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100531_flotillas_and_wars_public_opinion?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100531&utm_content=readmore&elq=f53c84c488be470ea6c16e4bb49fe9fa
Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion
By George Friedman, May 31, 2010
On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.
A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.
The ‘Exodus’ Scenario
In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.
There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.
It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.
The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.
The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.
In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.
The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza
The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.
The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis.
The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.
The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.
Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.
The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel
It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.
In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.
The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.
With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.
Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.
The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.
Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.
While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.
The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).
Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.
And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it.
In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.
URL:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100531_flotillas_and_wars_public_opinion?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100531&utm_content=readmore&elq=f53c84c488be470ea6c16e4bb49fe9fa
Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion
By George Friedman, May 31, 2010
On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.
A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.
The ‘Exodus’ Scenario
In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.
There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.
It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.
The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.
The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.
In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.
The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza
The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.
The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis.
The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.
The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.
Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.
The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel
It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.
In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.
The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.
With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.
Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.
The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.
Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.
While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.
The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).
Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.
And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it.
In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Recommended Reading
1. ‘Frankensteinistan foretold by Dhiren Barot’ describes how lone Jihadist of Hindu origin and subsequent neo-convert to Islam Dhiren Barot (currently languishing in a British Jail for having planned attacks on New York city) saw Pakistan state’s role in Jihadi terrorism way back in 1999.
URL http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/frankensteinistan-foretold-by-dhiren-barot/
2. ‘Why India must swing’ by Nitin Pai explains why despite an alignment of interests, India must not always side with the United States. It must swing.
URL http://in.news.yahoo.com/columnist/nitin_pai/2/why-india-must-swing
3. ‘Sen. Tom Coburn: America’s Fiscal Defense Crisis’ U.S. Senator Tom Coburn analyses the woes of U.S. armed forces; most of the problems are faced by Indian armed forces also.
URL: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Sen-Tom-Coburn-Americas-Fiscal-Defense-Crisis-06412/
URL http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/frankensteinistan-foretold-by-dhiren-barot/
2. ‘Why India must swing’ by Nitin Pai explains why despite an alignment of interests, India must not always side with the United States. It must swing.
URL http://in.news.yahoo.com/columnist/nitin_pai/2/why-india-must-swing
3. ‘Sen. Tom Coburn: America’s Fiscal Defense Crisis’ U.S. Senator Tom Coburn analyses the woes of U.S. armed forces; most of the problems are faced by Indian armed forces also.
URL: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Sen-Tom-Coburn-Americas-Fiscal-Defense-Crisis-06412/
Intelligence: No More Co-Ordination Czar?
By B. Raman
The “Times of India” has reported (May 28,2010) that the Government of India is contemplating the setting up under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of a coordination committee on all matters concerning security and intelligence. This committee will initially comprise the National Security Adviser (NSA), the Cabinet Secretary and the Union Home Secretary.
2. If this proposal is approved and comes into being, it could mean the retention of the co-ordination responsibility in the PMO, but with the NSA, who is part of the PMO, sharing that responsibility with the Cabinet Secretary and the Home Secretary,instead of exercising that responsibility exclusively as has been the practice till now.
3. The Task Force for the Revamping of the Intelligence Apparatus set up in 2000 under the chairmanship of Shri G.C.Saxena, former head of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir, had recommended a two-tier mechanism for co-ordination---- the first consisting of all intelligence agencies and the second in respect of technical intelligence. It recommended that the Principal Secretary to the PM, in his concurrent capacity as the NSA, should head both. Shri Brajesh Mishra thus became the Co-ordination Czar of the then Government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
4. Shri J.N.Dixit, who succeeded Shri Mishra as the NSA in 2004, and Shri M.K. Narayanan, who succeeded Shri Dixit after his death in January 2005, continued to exercise exclusively the responsibility for co-ordination with the Principal Secretary to the PM having no responsibility in the matter. While the intelligence agencies were not quite comfortable with Shri Dixit inheriting this role, they were quite happy with Shri Narayanan, a former head of the Intelligence Bureau and a former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, exercising this responsibility.
5. Ever since Shri P.Chidambaram took over as the Home Minister after the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai, there were indications that he was not happy over the marginalization of the role of his Ministry in the co-ordination of the functioning of the intelligence community. It was apparent from his 22nd Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture at New Delhi on December 23, 2009, that he wanted his role and that of his Ministry in matters relating to internal security management to be strengthened. His desire for a more participatory and active role for the MHA in the co-ordination of the functioning of the TECHINT agencies became clear during his intervention in the Lok Sabha at the time of the recent debate over allegations of phone-tapping by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).
6. If Shri Chidambaram has his way it would dilute the role of the PMO in general and the new NSA, Shri Shiv Shankar Menon, in particular in the co-ordination of the functioning of the intelligence and security agencies. If the TOI report is correct, the PMO is trying to find a new mechanism under which the PMO will continue to exercise the co-ordination responsibilities through the NSA, while at the same time partly satisfying the desire of Shri Chidambaram by making the NSA share this responsibility with the Cabinet Secretary and the Home Secretary.
7. Before 2000, the responsibility for co-ordination was being exercised by the Secretaries’ Committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary and consisting of the Home, Defence and Foreign Secretaries and the Principal Secretary to the PM. This collective responsibility for co-ordination, which was replaced in 2000 by the exclusive responsibility of the NSA, is now sought to be revived in a modified form under which the NSA will still be responsible for co-ordination but with his powers shared with the Home Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary. Shri Menon will not be an intelligence and security Czar as his predecessors were.
8. Nor will Shri Chidambaram be the Co-ordination Czar. He will have a more important role than his predecessors since 2000, but not as important as he would have liked it to be.
9. This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article of December 24, 2009, titled “the Internal Security Czar” (reproduced below).
Courtesy: South Asia Analysis Group, May 28, 2010
Revamping of The Internal Security Machinery
By B. Raman
In a detailed interview to Shri Vir Sanghvi, telecast by the CNBC-TV 18 channel, Shri P.Chidambaram, Minister for Home Affairs of the Government of India, has spoken, inter alia, of how in his view the counter-terrorism machinery of the Government of India should work. Relevant extracts from the interview are annexed.
2. Two important points emerge from the interview---- the exclusive responsibility of the Home Minister to exercise political oversight over the internal security machinery and the limited executive role of the National Security Adviser (NSA) in internal security management.
3. The principle of the exclusive responsibility of the Home Minister for internal security management had been observed right from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru as the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister of the day depended on the Home Minister for ensuring that internal security was effectively maintained. For this purpose, the Home Minister had under his administrative and operational control the Intelligence Bureau and the various central police organizations or para-military forces. He also had the responsibility for guiding and co-ordinating the work of the State Police forces.
4. The line of responsibility for political oversight was very clear with no room for doubt till the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October, 1984. After her assassination, this clear line of responsibility got increasingly diluted or blurred due to various reasons such as the following:
• The creation of new agencies for security-related duties such as the Special Protection Group (SPG) for the security of the incumbent and past Prime Ministers and their families and the National Security Guards (NSGs) as a special intervention force against terrorism. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, decided that the SPG and the NSG should work under the political oversight of the Prime Minister and the operational oversight of the Cabinet Secretary.
• Terrorism assuming international dimensions necessitating co-operation with the counter-terrorism and homeland security agencies of other countries. Diplomacy assumed an important role in counter-terrorism particularly against State sponsors of terrorism. The US created a counter-terrorism division in the State Department to deal with these international and diplomatic dimensions. It continues to function even after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004. Some other countries followed the US model. Under Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, this international and diplomatic dimension was given greater importance than under the predecessor Governments. A number of Joint Counter-Terrorism Working Groups with different countries came into existence and joint counter-terrorism exercises were organized with interested countries, including the US and China. While the responsibility for the co-ordination of the international and diplomatic dimensions was given to the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Defence exercised the co-ordination responsibilities in respect of joint counter-terrorism exercises.
• With terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and its associates acquiring or attempting to acquire specialized capabilities for what came to be known as catastrophic terrorism such as terrorism involving the use of weapons of mass destruction material, terrorism in the cyber space to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure, aviation terrorism, maritime terrorism etc, the need for the State acquiring specialized counter-capabilities was realized. For meeting these needs, the role of the Ministry of Defence, the Armed Forces and the various science and technology institutions naturally got enhanced.
5. The problems we face in India arise from the fact that whereas terrorism has increasingly assumed new dimensions and new frontiers, no attempt has been made to work out a comprehensive approach to deal with terrorism in its classical form, terrorism in its post-9/11 form and likely forms of terrorism of the future as well as with State-sponsors of terrorism such as Pakistan and other States failing to act against terrorism such as Bangladesh. While the threat posed by terrorism of different hues continues to evolve, our concepts to deal with it has not been keeping pace with the threat.
6. In working out a comprehensive approach to internal security management in general and counter-terrorism in particular, the National Security Adviser (NSA) has to play an important role as an ideas man, who looks beyond the day-to-day nuts and bolts aspect of counter-terrorism. Shri Chidambaram is right when he says that the NSA should have little executive role in internal security management. The executive role has to be that of the Home Minister. However, the NSA has to play an active role in evolving concepts which take into account the international and specialized dimensions of the new terrorism of today. He would also be the right person for co-ordinating and supervising the evolving machinery to facilitate India taking advantage of the growing international co-operation against terrorism.
7. The concept of intelligence co-ordination has also been evolving. The role of intelligence in internal security management has many components:
• Intelligence collection within our frontiers.
• Trans-border intelligence collection.
• Intelligence collection in foreign countries.
• Use of technical gadgets for the collection of intelligence specifically required for internal security management.
• Use of technical gadgets for the collection of intelligence of relevance to internal as well as external security.
8. Presently, there is no single Ministry or Department capable of co-ordinating all these roles. Is it necessary to create a single nodal point in the Prime Minister’s office to co-ordinate these roles in the form of a National Intelligence Adviser? This question has been posed by different analysts from time to time since the Kargil conflict of 1999, but has not been addressed seriously. It is time to address it as part of an exercise to revamp our security machinery----internal as well as external.
9. In India, the concept of an intelligence community has not evolved. Similarly, the concept of leadership roles in security-related matters has not received attention. In the US, under the Intelligence Community Act, all agencies are required to function as an organic whole. There is a consolidated intelligence budget for the community as a whole, which is prepared and got approved by the Congress by the Director, National Intelligence. After the Congressional approval, he makes the individual allocations to different agencies. The leadership role in respect of counter-intelligence is with the FBI, in respect of counter-terrorism with the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, in respect of Homeland Security with the Department of Homeland Security and in respect of covert actions with the CIA. The designated leaders coordinate the follow-up action.
10. In Israel, the leadership role in respect of internal security is that of Shin Bet, the security agency, in respect of external security that of Mossad, the external intelligence Agency, and in respect of trans-border security that of the military intelligence agency. We dot not have such clearly-defined leadership roles.
11. From a perusal of Shri Chidambaram’s address of December 23, 2009, in the Intelligence Bureau, and his latest interview to Shri Vir Sanghvi, it is apparent that he has been approaching the exercise for the revamping of our security machinery essentially from the point of view of the Home Ministry. This is a very important aspect, but it is equally important to give the exercise a larger dimension in order to evolve a comprehensive security machinery with clearly laid down concepts, carefully defined leadership roles and a workable co-ordination drill. In such a larger exercise, the NSA has to play an active role not only as an adviser to the Prime Minister, but also to the Cabinet as a whole in matters relating to national security.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
ANNEXURE
EXTRACTS FROM THE INTERVIEW OF SHRI P.CHIDAMBARAM, HOME MINISTER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, BY SHRI VIR SANGHVI FOR THE CNBC-TV 18 CHANNEL
Vir Sanghvi: The other thing that is said is that the first thing you did apparently when you took over as Home Minister is you instituted a meeting at apparently noon every day at which the chiefs of intelligence agencies came and you had a look at what the situation on the ground was and that the National Security Advisor also started coming to these meetings. There is a suggestion that you were given as part of your brief the job of bringing the security agencies within the ambit of the home ministry, is this accurate?
P Chidambaram: No that is a job I wrote for myself.
Vir Sanghvi: It was completely your own job description?
P Chidambaram: Yes but then when I took over, the Prime Minister graciously said, you will have a free hand because time is very limited, and if there is any problem, come back to me. When I thought about my job that weekend, I said, the first thing is we must bring everybody together, because I had to learn and act and change and deliver all in five months.
Vir Sanghvi: You know the background which is it is being posited by many people that you took away a lot of jobs that Narayanan use to do – your answer is always been look you people are making too much of this we have been friends for years – but let us leave friendship out of this. On purely functional terms you did take over a lot of the job didn’t you?
P Chidambaram: No. I did not take away any of his responsibilities. I did not take over any of his responsibilities. All I said was that whoever is doing whatever, it must be under political oversight. I happened to be the person providing the political oversight and therefore everybody accepted it.
Vir Sanghvi: Which is a departure from what had happened before? In Mr Advani’s time it did not happen, Mr Shivraj Patil’s time it didn’t happen. So in that sense the home ministry did assert itself over the national security advisor.
P Chidambaram: That is how it should be isn’t it.
Vir Sanghvi: I personally agree that is how it should be but it wasn’t how it was?
P Chidambaram: It wasn’t for whatever reason I do not know. But if I was going to be responsible as I was made responsible on that day then I was going to make sure that I knew it was going on. The only way that I could know what was going on what happen and what did not happen was to exercise political oversight over every agency that was concerned with security.
Vir Sanghvi: My question to you therefore is what is the role of national security advisor should he be an intelligence overload to whom the chief of intelligence’s report should he be an advisor to the Prime Minister?
P Chidambaram: Essentially I think he is an advisor to the Prime Minister, advisor to the National Security Council. He heads a very important body, the NSES, the Secretariat, which combines not only intelligence from internal security matters but a number of other things - Diplomatic intelligence, external intelligence, nuclear command authority etc.
So he brings all the strands together and then advises the Prime Minister. Surely he must be in the loop as far as internal security is concerned, who can he not be in the loop, he has to be in the loop. But whether he should have executive responsibility given the pressures of work and time I think is an open question.
My personal view is that he should have very few executive responsibilities as far as internal security is concerned. That should be given to other professionals.
Vir Sanghvi: That leads me to the question of where Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) reports because R&AW cannot report to the home ministry by definition because it is an external agency, of course you have said that when it comes to terrorism the R&AW chief must be involved because there has to be a nodal point on terrorism. But what happens to R&AW, it is a bit fatherless, isn’t it in the current system?
P Chidambaram: R&AW reports to the Prime Minister now. But I think there is broad agreement that so far as counter terrorism is concerned, I don't think anybody has a serious objection that R&AW would have to report to the Home Minister.
Vir Sanghvi: Let me now go back to 26/11, do you think one of the reasons we were so ill-prepared for what happened was because mechanisms like these were not in place?
P Chidambaram: Yes, of course. There should have been one point where everything converged, all information converged. Today it converges in a group of about six-seven people who meet everyday. That is how it should be which is what the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) will be.
It will be an institutional mechanism rather than an individual-headed mechanism. And the response will be an institutional response rather than an individual driven response.
Vir Sanghvi: You have seen the evidence that there was a fair amount of intelligence pointing to 26/11 which was ignored. Do you think it was inevitable that would have been ignored or if there had been a system like this in place we would have acted on it?
P Chidambaram: The system in this place would have surely connected the dots. There were three separate pieces of information, they were not connected.
Vir Sanghvi: So there was a failure?
P Chidambaram: I said so.
Vir Sanghvi: There were two aspect to 26/11, one was that 26/11 happened without us knowing because we didn’t connect the dots as you said. The second was our response which was surely inadequate and took too long to put together, so would that happen again?
P Chidambaram: I don’t think so. If god forbids anything like 26/11 happens, we will respond in a much swifter passion. We have a much better command and control system here and our people will respond very quickly.
Vir Sanghvi: What about state police forces, one of the problems of 26/11 was that they now know were the problems within the Bombay Police, and it’s the same?
P Chidambaram: That’s not correct, they are getting better every day, the capacity is better, response time is quicker. We have set out SOPs now and when we sent the NSG or the Central Paramilitary force what will be the command and control structure. They can command any plane, why their own plane.
Vir Sanghvi: Which they were allowed to under the NSG act any how?
P Chidambaram: Because no body had been authorized to do that.
Vir Sanghvi: It was as simple as that?
P Chidambaram: I think so. I am not going into the past I didn’t decide that I will issue but I issued authority and they can take over any plane now.
The “Times of India” has reported (May 28,2010) that the Government of India is contemplating the setting up under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of a coordination committee on all matters concerning security and intelligence. This committee will initially comprise the National Security Adviser (NSA), the Cabinet Secretary and the Union Home Secretary.
2. If this proposal is approved and comes into being, it could mean the retention of the co-ordination responsibility in the PMO, but with the NSA, who is part of the PMO, sharing that responsibility with the Cabinet Secretary and the Home Secretary,instead of exercising that responsibility exclusively as has been the practice till now.
3. The Task Force for the Revamping of the Intelligence Apparatus set up in 2000 under the chairmanship of Shri G.C.Saxena, former head of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir, had recommended a two-tier mechanism for co-ordination---- the first consisting of all intelligence agencies and the second in respect of technical intelligence. It recommended that the Principal Secretary to the PM, in his concurrent capacity as the NSA, should head both. Shri Brajesh Mishra thus became the Co-ordination Czar of the then Government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
4. Shri J.N.Dixit, who succeeded Shri Mishra as the NSA in 2004, and Shri M.K. Narayanan, who succeeded Shri Dixit after his death in January 2005, continued to exercise exclusively the responsibility for co-ordination with the Principal Secretary to the PM having no responsibility in the matter. While the intelligence agencies were not quite comfortable with Shri Dixit inheriting this role, they were quite happy with Shri Narayanan, a former head of the Intelligence Bureau and a former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, exercising this responsibility.
5. Ever since Shri P.Chidambaram took over as the Home Minister after the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai, there were indications that he was not happy over the marginalization of the role of his Ministry in the co-ordination of the functioning of the intelligence community. It was apparent from his 22nd Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture at New Delhi on December 23, 2009, that he wanted his role and that of his Ministry in matters relating to internal security management to be strengthened. His desire for a more participatory and active role for the MHA in the co-ordination of the functioning of the TECHINT agencies became clear during his intervention in the Lok Sabha at the time of the recent debate over allegations of phone-tapping by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).
6. If Shri Chidambaram has his way it would dilute the role of the PMO in general and the new NSA, Shri Shiv Shankar Menon, in particular in the co-ordination of the functioning of the intelligence and security agencies. If the TOI report is correct, the PMO is trying to find a new mechanism under which the PMO will continue to exercise the co-ordination responsibilities through the NSA, while at the same time partly satisfying the desire of Shri Chidambaram by making the NSA share this responsibility with the Cabinet Secretary and the Home Secretary.
7. Before 2000, the responsibility for co-ordination was being exercised by the Secretaries’ Committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary and consisting of the Home, Defence and Foreign Secretaries and the Principal Secretary to the PM. This collective responsibility for co-ordination, which was replaced in 2000 by the exclusive responsibility of the NSA, is now sought to be revived in a modified form under which the NSA will still be responsible for co-ordination but with his powers shared with the Home Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary. Shri Menon will not be an intelligence and security Czar as his predecessors were.
8. Nor will Shri Chidambaram be the Co-ordination Czar. He will have a more important role than his predecessors since 2000, but not as important as he would have liked it to be.
9. This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article of December 24, 2009, titled “the Internal Security Czar” (reproduced below).
Courtesy: South Asia Analysis Group, May 28, 2010
Revamping of The Internal Security Machinery
By B. Raman
In a detailed interview to Shri Vir Sanghvi, telecast by the CNBC-TV 18 channel, Shri P.Chidambaram, Minister for Home Affairs of the Government of India, has spoken, inter alia, of how in his view the counter-terrorism machinery of the Government of India should work. Relevant extracts from the interview are annexed.
2. Two important points emerge from the interview---- the exclusive responsibility of the Home Minister to exercise political oversight over the internal security machinery and the limited executive role of the National Security Adviser (NSA) in internal security management.
3. The principle of the exclusive responsibility of the Home Minister for internal security management had been observed right from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru as the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister of the day depended on the Home Minister for ensuring that internal security was effectively maintained. For this purpose, the Home Minister had under his administrative and operational control the Intelligence Bureau and the various central police organizations or para-military forces. He also had the responsibility for guiding and co-ordinating the work of the State Police forces.
4. The line of responsibility for political oversight was very clear with no room for doubt till the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October, 1984. After her assassination, this clear line of responsibility got increasingly diluted or blurred due to various reasons such as the following:
• The creation of new agencies for security-related duties such as the Special Protection Group (SPG) for the security of the incumbent and past Prime Ministers and their families and the National Security Guards (NSGs) as a special intervention force against terrorism. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, decided that the SPG and the NSG should work under the political oversight of the Prime Minister and the operational oversight of the Cabinet Secretary.
• Terrorism assuming international dimensions necessitating co-operation with the counter-terrorism and homeland security agencies of other countries. Diplomacy assumed an important role in counter-terrorism particularly against State sponsors of terrorism. The US created a counter-terrorism division in the State Department to deal with these international and diplomatic dimensions. It continues to function even after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004. Some other countries followed the US model. Under Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, this international and diplomatic dimension was given greater importance than under the predecessor Governments. A number of Joint Counter-Terrorism Working Groups with different countries came into existence and joint counter-terrorism exercises were organized with interested countries, including the US and China. While the responsibility for the co-ordination of the international and diplomatic dimensions was given to the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Defence exercised the co-ordination responsibilities in respect of joint counter-terrorism exercises.
• With terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and its associates acquiring or attempting to acquire specialized capabilities for what came to be known as catastrophic terrorism such as terrorism involving the use of weapons of mass destruction material, terrorism in the cyber space to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure, aviation terrorism, maritime terrorism etc, the need for the State acquiring specialized counter-capabilities was realized. For meeting these needs, the role of the Ministry of Defence, the Armed Forces and the various science and technology institutions naturally got enhanced.
5. The problems we face in India arise from the fact that whereas terrorism has increasingly assumed new dimensions and new frontiers, no attempt has been made to work out a comprehensive approach to deal with terrorism in its classical form, terrorism in its post-9/11 form and likely forms of terrorism of the future as well as with State-sponsors of terrorism such as Pakistan and other States failing to act against terrorism such as Bangladesh. While the threat posed by terrorism of different hues continues to evolve, our concepts to deal with it has not been keeping pace with the threat.
6. In working out a comprehensive approach to internal security management in general and counter-terrorism in particular, the National Security Adviser (NSA) has to play an important role as an ideas man, who looks beyond the day-to-day nuts and bolts aspect of counter-terrorism. Shri Chidambaram is right when he says that the NSA should have little executive role in internal security management. The executive role has to be that of the Home Minister. However, the NSA has to play an active role in evolving concepts which take into account the international and specialized dimensions of the new terrorism of today. He would also be the right person for co-ordinating and supervising the evolving machinery to facilitate India taking advantage of the growing international co-operation against terrorism.
7. The concept of intelligence co-ordination has also been evolving. The role of intelligence in internal security management has many components:
• Intelligence collection within our frontiers.
• Trans-border intelligence collection.
• Intelligence collection in foreign countries.
• Use of technical gadgets for the collection of intelligence specifically required for internal security management.
• Use of technical gadgets for the collection of intelligence of relevance to internal as well as external security.
8. Presently, there is no single Ministry or Department capable of co-ordinating all these roles. Is it necessary to create a single nodal point in the Prime Minister’s office to co-ordinate these roles in the form of a National Intelligence Adviser? This question has been posed by different analysts from time to time since the Kargil conflict of 1999, but has not been addressed seriously. It is time to address it as part of an exercise to revamp our security machinery----internal as well as external.
9. In India, the concept of an intelligence community has not evolved. Similarly, the concept of leadership roles in security-related matters has not received attention. In the US, under the Intelligence Community Act, all agencies are required to function as an organic whole. There is a consolidated intelligence budget for the community as a whole, which is prepared and got approved by the Congress by the Director, National Intelligence. After the Congressional approval, he makes the individual allocations to different agencies. The leadership role in respect of counter-intelligence is with the FBI, in respect of counter-terrorism with the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, in respect of Homeland Security with the Department of Homeland Security and in respect of covert actions with the CIA. The designated leaders coordinate the follow-up action.
10. In Israel, the leadership role in respect of internal security is that of Shin Bet, the security agency, in respect of external security that of Mossad, the external intelligence Agency, and in respect of trans-border security that of the military intelligence agency. We dot not have such clearly-defined leadership roles.
11. From a perusal of Shri Chidambaram’s address of December 23, 2009, in the Intelligence Bureau, and his latest interview to Shri Vir Sanghvi, it is apparent that he has been approaching the exercise for the revamping of our security machinery essentially from the point of view of the Home Ministry. This is a very important aspect, but it is equally important to give the exercise a larger dimension in order to evolve a comprehensive security machinery with clearly laid down concepts, carefully defined leadership roles and a workable co-ordination drill. In such a larger exercise, the NSA has to play an active role not only as an adviser to the Prime Minister, but also to the Cabinet as a whole in matters relating to national security.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
ANNEXURE
EXTRACTS FROM THE INTERVIEW OF SHRI P.CHIDAMBARAM, HOME MINISTER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, BY SHRI VIR SANGHVI FOR THE CNBC-TV 18 CHANNEL
Vir Sanghvi: The other thing that is said is that the first thing you did apparently when you took over as Home Minister is you instituted a meeting at apparently noon every day at which the chiefs of intelligence agencies came and you had a look at what the situation on the ground was and that the National Security Advisor also started coming to these meetings. There is a suggestion that you were given as part of your brief the job of bringing the security agencies within the ambit of the home ministry, is this accurate?
P Chidambaram: No that is a job I wrote for myself.
Vir Sanghvi: It was completely your own job description?
P Chidambaram: Yes but then when I took over, the Prime Minister graciously said, you will have a free hand because time is very limited, and if there is any problem, come back to me. When I thought about my job that weekend, I said, the first thing is we must bring everybody together, because I had to learn and act and change and deliver all in five months.
Vir Sanghvi: You know the background which is it is being posited by many people that you took away a lot of jobs that Narayanan use to do – your answer is always been look you people are making too much of this we have been friends for years – but let us leave friendship out of this. On purely functional terms you did take over a lot of the job didn’t you?
P Chidambaram: No. I did not take away any of his responsibilities. I did not take over any of his responsibilities. All I said was that whoever is doing whatever, it must be under political oversight. I happened to be the person providing the political oversight and therefore everybody accepted it.
Vir Sanghvi: Which is a departure from what had happened before? In Mr Advani’s time it did not happen, Mr Shivraj Patil’s time it didn’t happen. So in that sense the home ministry did assert itself over the national security advisor.
P Chidambaram: That is how it should be isn’t it.
Vir Sanghvi: I personally agree that is how it should be but it wasn’t how it was?
P Chidambaram: It wasn’t for whatever reason I do not know. But if I was going to be responsible as I was made responsible on that day then I was going to make sure that I knew it was going on. The only way that I could know what was going on what happen and what did not happen was to exercise political oversight over every agency that was concerned with security.
Vir Sanghvi: My question to you therefore is what is the role of national security advisor should he be an intelligence overload to whom the chief of intelligence’s report should he be an advisor to the Prime Minister?
P Chidambaram: Essentially I think he is an advisor to the Prime Minister, advisor to the National Security Council. He heads a very important body, the NSES, the Secretariat, which combines not only intelligence from internal security matters but a number of other things - Diplomatic intelligence, external intelligence, nuclear command authority etc.
So he brings all the strands together and then advises the Prime Minister. Surely he must be in the loop as far as internal security is concerned, who can he not be in the loop, he has to be in the loop. But whether he should have executive responsibility given the pressures of work and time I think is an open question.
My personal view is that he should have very few executive responsibilities as far as internal security is concerned. That should be given to other professionals.
Vir Sanghvi: That leads me to the question of where Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) reports because R&AW cannot report to the home ministry by definition because it is an external agency, of course you have said that when it comes to terrorism the R&AW chief must be involved because there has to be a nodal point on terrorism. But what happens to R&AW, it is a bit fatherless, isn’t it in the current system?
P Chidambaram: R&AW reports to the Prime Minister now. But I think there is broad agreement that so far as counter terrorism is concerned, I don't think anybody has a serious objection that R&AW would have to report to the Home Minister.
Vir Sanghvi: Let me now go back to 26/11, do you think one of the reasons we were so ill-prepared for what happened was because mechanisms like these were not in place?
P Chidambaram: Yes, of course. There should have been one point where everything converged, all information converged. Today it converges in a group of about six-seven people who meet everyday. That is how it should be which is what the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) will be.
It will be an institutional mechanism rather than an individual-headed mechanism. And the response will be an institutional response rather than an individual driven response.
Vir Sanghvi: You have seen the evidence that there was a fair amount of intelligence pointing to 26/11 which was ignored. Do you think it was inevitable that would have been ignored or if there had been a system like this in place we would have acted on it?
P Chidambaram: The system in this place would have surely connected the dots. There were three separate pieces of information, they were not connected.
Vir Sanghvi: So there was a failure?
P Chidambaram: I said so.
Vir Sanghvi: There were two aspect to 26/11, one was that 26/11 happened without us knowing because we didn’t connect the dots as you said. The second was our response which was surely inadequate and took too long to put together, so would that happen again?
P Chidambaram: I don’t think so. If god forbids anything like 26/11 happens, we will respond in a much swifter passion. We have a much better command and control system here and our people will respond very quickly.
Vir Sanghvi: What about state police forces, one of the problems of 26/11 was that they now know were the problems within the Bombay Police, and it’s the same?
P Chidambaram: That’s not correct, they are getting better every day, the capacity is better, response time is quicker. We have set out SOPs now and when we sent the NSG or the Central Paramilitary force what will be the command and control structure. They can command any plane, why their own plane.
Vir Sanghvi: Which they were allowed to under the NSG act any how?
P Chidambaram: Because no body had been authorized to do that.
Vir Sanghvi: It was as simple as that?
P Chidambaram: I think so. I am not going into the past I didn’t decide that I will issue but I issued authority and they can take over any plane now.
Friday, 28 May 2010
News Snippets
Army's Kargilgate:
Dont miss Praveen Swami's stories on this sordid tale in yesterday's and today's The Hindu. 'Military tribunal slams Kargil war leadership' at URL http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/27/stories/2010052762611000.htm
and 'Kargil cases point to disturbing command failures' at URL http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/28/stories/2010052861481400.htm
Spy story:
Chand Kumar Prasad, 24, posted in the Navy's Aircraft Maintenance Unit in Mumbai has been arrested on charges of spying for Pakistan. Police claimed to have recovered some "secret and sensitive" documents from him. These include photograph of the Hindan Air Base and map of Meerut Cantonment.Delhi Police's Special Cell from New Delhi Railway Station carried out the arrest on May 27. police sources said. Police alleged that Prasad was passing on classified information to a Pakistan High Commission official through another person.
Is China changing its policy on minorities?
The Dalai Lama sees some change. See The Hindu's Patna datelined news item 'Signs of change emanating within China: Dalai Lama' on the visit of the Dalai Lama for more. URL: http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/28/stories/2010052861681600.htm
Dont miss Praveen Swami's stories on this sordid tale in yesterday's and today's The Hindu. 'Military tribunal slams Kargil war leadership' at URL http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/27/stories/2010052762611000.htm
and 'Kargil cases point to disturbing command failures' at URL http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/28/stories/2010052861481400.htm
Spy story:
Chand Kumar Prasad, 24, posted in the Navy's Aircraft Maintenance Unit in Mumbai has been arrested on charges of spying for Pakistan. Police claimed to have recovered some "secret and sensitive" documents from him. These include photograph of the Hindan Air Base and map of Meerut Cantonment.Delhi Police's Special Cell from New Delhi Railway Station carried out the arrest on May 27. police sources said. Police alleged that Prasad was passing on classified information to a Pakistan High Commission official through another person.
Is China changing its policy on minorities?
The Dalai Lama sees some change. See The Hindu's Patna datelined news item 'Signs of change emanating within China: Dalai Lama' on the visit of the Dalai Lama for more. URL: http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/28/stories/2010052861681600.htm
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