Terror threat & the need for vigilance

The Pope called 2014 the “Year of Terror”. The Global Terrorism Index avers that religious extremism has replaced national separatism as the main driver of terrorism. India, rated in the second-highest risk zone for terror attacks, has been somewhat less affected during the year. Most fatalities were caused by ethnic issues in the Northeast, particularly Assam where close to 110 people, including terror suspects, perished in 2014. While globally the Islamic State, Boko Haram, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been responsible for causing the most mayhem, most of the damage in India was wrought by Maoists and Bodos.

The bomb blast at the Central Station in Chennai on May 1, and the one at the tail end of the year in Bengaluru, may have caused only minimal damage, but the threat of terrorism is probably far higher than ever as younger and more fanatic groups, including students involved with SIMI and Indian Mujahideen, aim to step up activity. Young, tech-savvy extremists are likely to pose the biggest challenge.

The inevitable blame-game took place before the severity of the challenge of investigating and pinpointing the perpetrators may have sunk in. Terror alerts were certainly put out weeks in advance, specifically in the wake of the arrest of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the ISIS Twitter handler, in Bengaluru on December 13. But, as the police chief of that city said, there was only “some amount of generic threat perception and a general alert”. The need to be alert was clearly heightened, although the police’s task is impossibly challenging. Only a general alertness among the general population can help avert incidents like the one in Bengaluru.

The home minister has spoken of the need for more CCTVs. The issue is, however, of costs involved in monitoring what can be seen 24x7 on the screens. It is mostly businesses in the private sector that mount surveillance systems at their own cost, but it is a moot point how many are manned and monitored effectively even during the working hours of the day. The security forces cannot be in all places at all times. The onus, therefore, is on all people. Intelligence inputs, especially on picking up Internet and social media chatter, are going to define the fight against terrorism rather than just cops on the beat and cameras on the street, which thus far have been helpful more in post-event investigations. The vigil in 2015 is going to be long and arduous if India is not to descend into a bigger terror zone than it has been in the year fading now.