Crush Terrorists, But Don’T Brush Aside Grave Security Lapses

Eyeopeners are useless if we keep our eyes closed. National unity and national security also involve national accountability. As we have been saying in these columns, the word accountability does not exist in the NDA government’s dictionary. The government which is busy rewriting the NCERT textbooks deleting reference to Mughals from the history, must rewrite its dictionary by reintroducing words and phrases such as “accountability”, “restraint”, “tolerance” and “truth” and delete forever “hate mongering” and “whataboutery”

The terror attack at the Baisaran Valley was not an ordinary killing. It was a targeted, well-planned attack to defeat all our efforts to rebuild the Jammu & Kashmir economy, confidence among the people above all to divide India on religious grounds. The target of the killers and their sponsors was to cripple India by cashing-in on the atmosphere of religious hatred perpetuated particularly over the past decade. And we can confidently say that the terrorists terribly lost in their gameplan. It may take some time for the normalcy to return but tourism is limping back. The entire J&K stood with rock-solid support for the government action. The common man wants peace and nothing else which was proved by the fact that the ordinary Kashmiri helped the stranded tourists after the attack.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, this attack shows the desperation of the patrons of terrorism; displays their cowardice… At a time when peace was returning to Kashmir, there was a vibrancy in schools and colleges, construction work had gained unprecedented pace, democracy was getting stronger, the number of tourists was increasing at a record rate, people's income was increasing, new opportunities were being created for the youth. The enemies of the country, the enemies of Jammu and Kashmir, did not like that.

Baisaran Valley is barely 8 km from Nunwan, the base camp destination for Amarnath Yatra in Pahalgam district of Jammu and Kashmir. Yet, the kind of security lapse that has led to the terror attack is beyond imagination, to say the least. The government needs to attend to that, conduct a thorough root cause analysis while stepping up security and taking targeted action against the attackers and their masters. All these must be done simultaneously and not of them need to wait for any other.

Meanwhile, the war mongering Godi media channels are at it again with messages such as: crush Pakistan, finish Pakistan, teach them a lesson and so on. They have nothing better to offer. On top of that they provide their platforms for Pakistan guests to abuse India and pay them for that in dollars. And they call themselves nationalists and unbiased, straight forward media professionals. Yet, they do the same thing that the terrorists want – hate mongering. The not-so-funny part is that and PM and most BJP ministers follow these hate and war mongers.

As if this, and what the BJP IT cell do, are not enough, we have ministers such as Piyush Goyal stating, “As long as all 140 crore Indians do not consider patriotism and nationalism as their param dharma, such types of incidents will continue to trouble our country”. This directly contradicts what PM Modi says. “In this war against terrorism, the unity of the country, the solidarity of 140 crore Indians, is our biggest strength. This unity is the basis of our decisive fight against terrorism. We have to strengthen our resolve to face this challenge that has surfaced before the country. We have to demonstrate strong willpower as a nation. Today the world is watching, after this terrorist attack, the whole country is speaking in one voice,” Modi said.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said not just those who perpetrated the attack, but even those who conspired from behind the scenes to commit such nefarious acts on the Indian soil will soon get an appropriate response.

Despite all these visibly firm statements made by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues, Modi himself was conspicuous by his absence at the all-party meeting convened by the government to discuss the Pahalgam attack. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge made a strong point on this but restrained himself from making any attack on the PM. Good.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiran Rijiju also admitted the lapse. But this part was subsequently deleted from his statement on a social media platform. Why?

Notably, the PM has yet to admit the security lapse. Well, that is his choice. But the families of the victims, including a boy whose father was shot dead, have raised the issues of absence of any kind of security at a sensitive place where 2,000 tourists were taken. And Minister Rijiju’s explanation was that the tourism operators did not inform the police for three days that they were taking hundreds of people there. The question is where is the intelligence if you have to wait for someone to inform you?

Moreover, the Minister said, the valley is away from the main road and Baisaran Valley is accessible only on foot. Going by that reasoning, the Pulwama attack on February 14, 2019 took place on Jammu-Srinagar highway and has the government been able to explain the security lapse there? Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh said the Pahalgam events are an eye-opener.

It is heartening to note that the opposition has been behaving in a responsible manner, backing the government on its actions against Pakistan and not trying to take any political advantage. Had it been a Congress government, the BJP would have reacted differently, tearing the government apart. Modi’s criticism of Dr Manmohan Singh, over a decade ago, are still fresh in our memory.

Post Article 370 abrogation in August 2019, the Jammu region has witnessed an increase in terror activities with certain security indicators, including recruitment of terrorists, showing an upward trend over the past nearly four years, news agency PTI reported quoting official data in August 2023. Any terror attack should be seen as an eyeopener and the government is expected to be answerable to the taxpayer.It is important to analyse the weaknesses that lead to such incidents,including the 26/11 attack on Mumbai.

In fact, the US Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs held hearings in January 2009 on learnings from the Mumbai attacks. I just quote Charles E Allen, Under Secretary For Intelligence And Analysis, who said: We are also reminded that security must be unpredictable for the adversary. It needs to be predictably responsive to those who need to implement the measures, however. During a period of heightened security earlier this year, several of the hotels in Mumbai installed security scanning devices. According to open-source reporting, said Allen, some of those devices were not in operation during the attacks and all security personnel were not properly trained on how those devices work. Why can’t we in India hold such public hearings with all stakeholders, security experts and analysts? They will help find causes and keep the security machinery on its toes, under public pressure.

Eyeopeners are useless if we keep our eyes closed. National unity and national security also involve national accountability. As we have been saying in these columns, the word accountability does not exist in the NDA government’s dictionary. The government which is busy rewriting the NCERT textbooks deleting reference to Mughals from the history, must rewrite its dictionary by reintroducing words and phrases such as “accountability”, “restraint”, “tolerance” and “truth” and delete forever “hate mongering” and “whataboutery”.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a YouTube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)