On November 26, 2008, ten Pakistani jihadists of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba travelled by sea to Mumbai in a fishing trawler, infiltrated ashore from rubber assault boats near Cuffe Parade, split up into teams and attacked pre-selected locations in the city to terrorise the country. Surprise was total and the terrorists succeeded in murdering 166 Indians, including women and children, and wounding another 300. All were killed, except one, Ajmal Kasab, who was captured and stood a much publicised trial under the Indian judicial process. He was eventually hanged. The phrase “Mumbai-type attack” has now passed into the lexicon of national security, surely a dubious honour for India. Thus 26/11 became India’s day of infamy.
After the attack, the government of Maharashtra set-up the two-member Ram Pradhan Committee officially known as the High-Level Enquiry Committee on 26/11 to inquire into the incident and all that went wrong in dealing with it and how to prevent future attacks. The findings of the committee were extensive but given its point of origin and terms of reference, the committee was understandably focused only on the city of Mumbai as well as the Konkan coast.
But the Mumbai terror attack has much wider strategic implications in the context of overall coastal defence of the country, particularly other metropolitan cities either directly fronting the ocean like Chennai and Visakhapatnam, or located in its close vicinity like Kolkata. The Konkan and Malabar coasts have traditionally been the hunting grounds of smugglers and terrorists like Haji Mastan and Dawood Ibrahim, and now, the Coromandel Coast of eastern India too has acquired some degree of public notoriety after the emergence of the LTTE. It is essential that any comprehensive coverage of national coastal security incorporates the eastern and southern coastlines as well.
India has a three-tier organisation of coastal and security, with the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard providing the outer and intermediate tiers, and the state police the final backstop along an inner line running along the coast and its adjacent hinterland. Broadly speaking, the implement-ation of the outer and intermediate tiers is the responsibility of the Centre, while the security of the innermost tier should be handled by states which have coastlines to protect. For this, the concerned state governments should create coastal police stations and marine police units.
However, the implementation of the steps has been unsatisfactory. Coastal security is subsumed within the larger aspect of national security. Here, the biggest and most crippling post-26/11 casualty is the non-implementation of the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), and the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) which would have been the apex agencies for Central coordination of all anti-terrorist intelligence and activities, including those in the maritime domain.
These proposals were discussed at the meeting of CMs in 2012, but were dropped after strong resistance by the CMs of states ruled by Opposition parties, sceptical of the intentions of the ruling party at the Centre. Once again, issues of national security were overruled by political expediency. The issue of the NCTC and NATGRID have remained in limbo ever since. This is a classic case of drowning national security in the murky water of politics.
The victims of the Mumbai terror attacks are ceremonially commemorated on 26/11 every year, but only in Mumbai. For the rest of the country, 26/11 does not seem to have ever occurred. It indeed speaks volume about the country’s sense of national values, that on 26/11 in the current year, the prime focus of public attention was the sleazy drama being played out in the boardroom of the BCCI for control over the vast financial resources of the organisation, whose record of past manipulation by dubious personalities does not inspire much confidence by the public.
Meanwhile, six years after the event, media footage of the current state of readiness of the planned “marine wing” of the Mumbai Police remains disturbing. Images of expensive new speed boats procured for close protection of Mumbai harbour, lying corroded and inoperable for lack of fuel and regular maintenance, and reports of lack of police personnel to man them, apparently because harbour and coastal policing is not considered as “attractive” as, say traffic control or in police stations, arouses a sense of deep despair.
There are some who argue that 26/11 is now long gone and its lessons no longer remain relevant. For them the only advice is to wake up and smell the coffee, because all indications are that the lessons of 26/11 have yet to be fully absorbed and the follow-up actions concretised, particularly in respect of the rest of the country. Maritime as well as riverine security of international borders, particularly in the east continues to be a work in progress, often for the wrong reasons.
At least one day in the year the people of India should be called upon to remember that India’s nose was rubbed in the dirt on November 26, 2008, with no retribution exacted.
Meanwhile, for all we know, the next 26/11 attack might well be lying just around the next bend of the road, and this time it might not be in Mumbai.
The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament
