Shyam Saran: Securing India's borders

It is legitimate for the government to consider all options against terror sponsors. But, the more serious challenge is internal

India will remain vulnerable unless it does a better job of managing and securing its long land and maritime frontiers. The recent terrorist attack against an army camp at Uri and the previous and similar attack on the air force base at Pathankot have shown up vulnerabilities in our management of our borders, which remain to be addressed. Some of the vulnerabilities relate to the still limited use of new technologies such as thermal imagers, night vision equipment, surveillance cameras and drones to monitor movement along and across the border. Such equipment require constant maintenance and prompt repair without which dangerous gaps can emerge, ready to be exploited by inimical elements. The other aspect relates to the adoption and strict enforcement of standard drills and procedures to ensure the safety and security of critical border infrastructure, including defence installations and personnel. During the border infrastructure surveys carried out a few years ago, one came across equipment which were not working because technically qualified persons were not available to set them right. Thermal imagers at some stretches were not in use because sufficient spare batteries were unavailable to keep them going throughout the night. At Uri, it was obvious that several of the troops were billeted in exposed environs, which in itself is unusual in a sensitive sector. Were the entry points properly manned and were they under electronic surveillance? There are usually several layers of defence for such military establishments so that even if one layer is breached there is a subsequent one to prevent access. Were these in place at the Uri base? While we mourn the death of our jawans in the terrorist attack, were there lapses from the strict safety drills which must be implemented with uncompromising rigour? After such attacks, are those guilty of lapses identified and given exemplary punishment? In the series of incidents that have taken place in recent years there has been no public acknowledgement of such action. Lack of accountability only condemns us to be the target of terrorist attacks in the future.

Border security is not only the responsibility of border-guarding forces. In fact, there should be a seamless connect among the forces deployed at the border, the law and order machinery of the state concerned and the central and local intelligence agencies. In practice, this is rarely the case. Even in border states one finds a woeful lack of qualified police personnel, the result of years of under recruitment. Political patronage plays a major role in the recruitment of the lower ranks of police so that many of them are virtually illiterate, untrained and often untrainable. This also means that local intelligence gathering and assessment is either absent or of little operational value. Even if central agencies are better equipped and trained, the lack of local intelligence means that authentication and verification is difficult. There is usually a steady stream of unverified intelligence reports, which are in the nature of general warnings and are not useful operationally. This is what seems to have happened in the Uri incident, where a warning of a possible terrorist attack had reportedly been issued a few days earlier but probably ignored.

A general disdain for the law of the land on the one hand and endemic corruption among those responsible for upholding the law, means that it is relatively easy for terrorist and hostile elements to gain ingress across the border and carry out all kinds of hostile activities, including serious terrorist attacks. One cannot ensure safe borders in a country where there is such widespread flouting of laws, from jumping traffic lights, muscling ahead of a queue, insisting on exemption from security checks claiming VIP privileges, which may seem relatively minor, to indulging in contraband trade, drug smuggling and unaccounted money transactions. Such activities create a congenial environment in which national security is seriously undermined. On our borders with Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal, trade in contraband goods now runs into hundreds of crores of rupees. In our sensitive Northeast, large consignments of Chinese goods, all contraband according to current regulations, flood across the border with the complicity of border-guarding forces and local authorities. Who knows what else enters the country along with these contraband goods? Since the trade is technically illegal, it is conducted by powerful criminal mafias, who subvert and corrupt the official machinery, buy support from political patrons and resist any counter measures. In the past, the illegal trade across the Manipur-Myanmar border, controlled by Tamil expatriate merchants settled in that country, generated significant finances for the LTTE in Sri Lanka. We all know that drug trafficking across the India-Pakistan border, as also across the Northeast border with Myanmar, is now becoming a huge challenge, not only for the social problems it is causing in border states, but also by creating serious breaches in border security, which are then exploited by terrorist groups.

There is understandable anger over the loss of life and the physical and psychological damage caused by repeated cross-border attacks from Pakistan. It is also legitimate to consider options available to the government to punish the perpetrators of these attacks and their state sponsors. However, the more serious challenge is internal. We need to have an overall national security strategy, which addresses our obvious vulnerabilities even as we try and impose costs on our adversary across the border. A good starting point could be the setting up of an independent commission of respected and credible experts, similar to the earlier Kargil Commission, to fully investigate both the strengths and weaknesses of our current security set up, particularly as exposed in our handling of the Mumbai terrorist attack of 26/11, the serial attacks at Gurdaspur, Pathankot and now Uri. The commission may be tasked with the examining the state of our readiness at the India-China border and the gaps still existing on borders with Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh. This is not a plea for closing down borders. On the contrary, open but regulated borders, the promotion of regular trade as against tolerating smuggling, the breaking of the unholy nexus between politics and illegal trade and addressing the pervasive lack of respect for law - these are all part of the response to security challenges we confront. Unless we turn the searchlight on to our own failings, acknowledge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities and identify and make the difficult choices required, we will remain at the receiving end of terrorism.

The writer is a former foreign secretary and currently, chairman, RIS, and senior fellow, CPR