Counter-intelligence imperatives: NIA can't deliver
By Prem Mahadevan
The existing counter-terrorist regime in India lacks a vital pre-requisite identification of the threat.
Counter-intelligence does not function in a vacuum — its efficacy depends upon national will. The newly-formed National Investigation Agency (NIA) will neither prevent terrorist attacks nor, with occasional exceptions, succeed in apprehending their perpetrators.
Three factors limit its utility as a counter-terrorist instrument. First, the agency has no intelligence mandate.
Its role is restricted to post-incident investigation, exactly like that of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). For warning of terrorist plots, state police forces will continue to depend on the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).
Secondly, the NIA will face enormous resource constraints.
An agency with a sanctioned strength of a thousand personnel cannot hope to smash terrorist networks that have eluded the 25,000-strong IB. {IIRC only 3000 odd are field operatives in the 25000}Having arrest powers will only marginally increase its effectiveness, since ground-level presence of operatives will remain extremely poor.
Lastly, the NIA will be constrained by the cross-border nature of terrorist activity. The 26/11 attackers came from Pakistan; it is likely that many more attacks aimed at India will be planned there.
Without a commando team poised to snatch terrorists from Karachi or Lahore, the NIA will soon be reduced to compiling dossiers on Pakistani support for terrorist groups.
Current efforts at reforming counter-intelligence have derived from a presumption that future terrorist attacks can be prevented by better information-sharing. This is not borne out by facts. Prior to 26/11, information on the terrorists’ activities was shared with the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the armed forces. Neither found it actionable.
On innumerable previous occasions, the IB did not send information up to the JIC but instead, worked directly with state police forces to further develop it. Through relentless follow-up on leads, the agency has been able to neutralise terrorist cells at the impressive rate of one per week. Any shortage of information on terrorist plans does not arise from poor intelligence coordination, but from the difficulties of acquiring such information.
Here, the R&AW has been unable to deliver, albeit for understandable reasons. Since Pakistan has instituted a counter-espionage mechanism that would be the envy of any fascist dictatorship, R&AW coverage of jihadist groups is patchy.
Indian spies posted under diplomatic cover in Islamabad operate under the constant threat of being beaten up and declared persona non grata. Agent-running simply cannot be done when handlers find their movements restricted, families harassed and local contacts intimidated.{Why is the ISI allowed to operate with impuntiy here? 
}
What this means is that the existing counter-terrorist regime in India lacks a vital pre-requisite: identification of the threat.
For too long have politicians and peace activists obfuscated the fact that Pakistan is at war with this country. Since the early ‘80s, its Inter Services Intelligence has refined state sponsorship of terrorism to the point where it has become integral to their foreign policy.
Khalistani terrorism in Punjab, separatism in Kashmir and jihadism in the Indian hinterland are chapters in a book with a common theme — the Balkanisation of India.
Nowadays, alongside Islamabad’s routine condemnation of terrorist attacks comes an equally routine propaganda line: such attacks will cease only if India yields on Kashmir.
In effect, Pakistan is using terrorism to blackmail India. Its efforts in this direction are sustained by widespread participation from sections of the Pakistani public.
Through anti-India propaganda, a criminal economy based on narcotics-trafficking and a parallel government run by radical Islamists, the ISI has mobilised the Pakistani society for a long-drawn proxy war. In doing so, it has resurrected an 18th century concept called the levee en masse.
Introduced in the years following the French Revolution, the levee en masse held that every citizen had a duty to fight his country’s enemies. There were no non-combatants: entire societies needed to contribute to the war effort. Using this concept, Napoleon conquered most of Europe. He was only defeated once his enemies too mobilised their own countrymen to wage total war.
Defeating the Pakistani terrorist threat will require a matching transformation in how Indian society functions.
Corporate houses will have to bear the expenses of permanently enhancing their security arrangements.Neighbourhood watch schemes will have to be set up, with close cooperation from local police thanas. Television cameras will have to be installed in all public places within major cities, and constantly monitored. Police intelligence funds will have to be increased and extra manpower assigned to state intelligence branches.
At the higher levels, politicians will have to cease making overtures to Pakistan, or even statements which lower hostility between the two countries. For, as history has proven, counter-intelligence can only be effective when governments explicitly identify their enemies and communicate knowledge of these enemies down to the common public.
Towards this, the Union home ministry should publish a White Paper on ISI support for terrorist groups.
{Aint gonna happen}
Legislation should be introduced to criminalise the over-ground support activities which sustain terrorism, such as fund-raising.
Only by shutting down the systems which permit terrorists to enter and leave India at will, can counter-terrorist operatives bring down the frequency of attacks. The effort needed will be vastly greater than that required to set up an agency like the NIA — which has only been created because it threatens nobody’s interests. Not even the terrorists’.
(The writer is a specialist on intelligence studies.)
... after that some 
..... falling short of it.... 
let us know if a black sedan picks you up one of these days 
