EXTERNAL TERROR AND INTERNAL SEIGE THE TWIN ISSUES BEDEVILLING OUR SECURITY by Shantonu Sen

Last updated Jul 4, 2014

The ISIS( Islamic State of Syria and Iraq ) now rampaging in Iraq, an external terror, is impacting our security . That terrorist set – up has included parts of India, the North West including Gujerat in their Map of the Islamic State of Khorasan. Its Supreme Commander Abu Bakr El- Baghdadi, on the day of the holy Ramzan , has announced that Indians are among its rolls. Domestic concerns must consider the global ones when our nation’s security is under the scanner. It was therefore , interesting, to read Sashank Joshi’s analysis ( Hindu 23rd June 2014 ) of the writings and speeches of Ajeet Doval the National Security Advisor(N S A ). Ajeet Doval clearly believes, he writes, that” national security begins at home”. His writings and speeches reflect that his perception is “emphasis on the primacy of the domestic problem over the global one”.ISIS’s ruthlessness, its overunning of the Iraq armed forces , its inexorable march capturing one city after one in Northern Iraq, now more than ,a blur in our security map, will surely not escape the N S A’s close monitoring precisely because national security is very much at stake. Bush, visiting India when the Indo-Nuclear deal was in the offing , reportedly, was heard telling his wife while introducing the Indian prime Minister Man Mohan Singh,’my dear, Man Mohan Singh is a leader of 250 million Muslims and not a single one of them is a member of Al Queda’! Today with modules of IM (Indian Mujahideen) surfacing in several parts of Karnataka, Bihar Rajasthan , Delhi , Maharastra all that is history. True, members of IM are not factions of Al Queda but they are not too far , ideologically , that is. Now the ISIS factor.

Delicately poised is the question whether under Narendra Modi the ISIS and their fellow travellers will plant saplings that they will expect to grow to be their images in India. Since the IM grew even without Modi being in power , will there be more determined attempts by them and their ilk to nurse home made terrorists in India? Without doubt they shall. India, polarised, is a tempting target. But, as they say, forewarned is forearmed. The present NSA cut his teeth in Mizoram in the early 70’s .The insurgency in Mizoram was foreign based, partly . Later in Sikkim , he watched and fathomed the Dragon’s role in the North -East. Very soon. thereafter in the hot seat in Delhi he actively thwarted Pakistam’s attempts to add fuel to fire the so-called Khalistan movement. He capped many successes with the apprehension of Pakistan trained and backed terrorist from the Punjab Harjinder Singh@ Jinda , a mastermind in this arena and the killer of Gen A. S. Vaidya in Pune in 1986 as well as key planner of the looting of the State Bank of India Ludhiana of Rs 5.70 million in in 1967. The present N S A joined hands with the Central Bureau of Investigation in their investigation of Sikh youth who fell prey to the idea of Khalistan with aid flowing to them from Pakistan, Canada Germany and even the U K. He knows that our internal terror movement is an orphan in India. It is is parented by foreign terror. The latter is ever on the lookout for human material that will readily respond to their various exhortations. In Iran they are fighting their co-religionists , In India they will go to the muslim ghettos and identify the pliable to pick up the easy meat nursing grudges, imaginary and real.

For the NSA areas of internal conflicts wil be of paramount concern, surely. Then , what are these areas and how best can such areas be made to vanish must find a place in his agenda. He must , for one, look to change the face of Juhapura and its mirror images. Situated in the south–western neighbourhood of Ahmedabad Juhapura is a place where 400, 000 people live without even basic civic amenities like being without piped water . They drink the salty insalibrious smelly water punped from the wells and yet are also made to pay for the municipal water. They live in tiny single story tenements with asbestos lined roofs where the sun, the wind and the rain water have easy access. Too add to this Mulim ghetto’s discomfort, with in sight, is a a massive wall, fitted with oval surveillance camera housing beige apartments with air conditioners fitted in the windows, homes for middle class Hindus. Basharat Peer, author of ” Curfiewed Night” has written all this and more in New York Times 18th April 2014 . Sashank Joshi , himself a fellow of Royal United Services Institute in London and a Phd candidate at Harvard University as well as one who has worked with Ajeet Doval calls him the ‘NSA For Hard Times’. He goes on to suggest that NSA’s vision of internal security is internal , peripheral and cultural. The interplay here, astutely choreographed at the NSA’s bidding, has, surely , among his myriad tasks on the security front, the task to locate budding ISIS , IM and similar organization’s aspirants and shoo way those terror elements fishing in our troubled waters like Juhapura.