THE DEFENSELESS DEFENSE

The terror mail has said a matter of fact – ‘Hindus should not think that the Indian ATS, Army are well endowed with high-tech weapons and are brave too.’ Though they are brave, no doubt about that, they surely are quiet backward in weaponary, infrastructure, or even professional planning and management. Lets assess why:

The terrorists came in, fired indiscriminately, held hostages and caused terror for nearly two days. These two days of terror was a result of at least 6 months of planning, organizing and training. Still our intelligence had no clue ofThe terrorists came in, fired indiscriminately, held hostages and caused terror for nearly two anything about it is alarming, shameful and sorrowful. The navy or the coastal defense has been poor. After the Kargil war a committee had been set up. Which said that in order to improve coastal security and to prevent small ships from infiltrating more than 30 radars would be installed in the Indian seas. But this surely seems to have been remained only in the papers of the committee report. Due to absence of patrol mechanism in the waters as well as on the Indian lands these terrorists were able to move from their drop spots to their terror spots alongwith AK 47 rifles and a bag full of hand-grenades.

Later at the CST station the metal/ weapon detectors which have been installed seem to be mere showpieces as they were unable to detect any weapons or explosives. Also the security at the CST was pathetic. The small amount of security that was there was left with lathis to face AK 47s and hand grenades. Also there was no quick back-up or quick help sent to the CST.

Later the terrorist fled in police/ Govt. vehicles. These were not having any GPS installed on them. The pursuit was not a highly co-ordinated pursuit as the ones we see on the AXN show on real police videos. The delay in catching these terrorists caused even more casualties and deaths. The local police machinery was no way capable or prepared to face the attacks of AK 47 rifles and showering grenades. The guns most of the local police had were like 9mm and such other low power weapons. Also their armor vests were not of high quality.

Then moving on to the hostage situation at Taj, the Oberoi and the Nariman Point. Firstly there was local police. Then came the rapid action force. Then the military commandos. And then quite behind time by at least ten hours came the National Security Force commandos who are actually the right people which needed to be present there. So they all came together and joined the chaos and the confusion. Initially the lack of planning was evident among the different forces which saw the death of 3 of the most finest officers of India, who were very brave but unfortunately also a bit complacent and a bit ill-prepared as well. Though we cannot blame them. It is the training that they get which leads them to such ill-preparedness. The commandos weren’t having night vision goggles or thermal vision goggles. The US had it decades back. The commandos used the walkie-talkies or they were shouting in order to communicate with each other. I don’t think ear-phones based parallel communication is a very high-end technology that we cannot have. It would have been useful if choppers had been used right from the initial stages of the operation. Simple technological wonders such as our very own remote controlled ‘Daksh’ or such other remote-controlled vehicles could have been used to get the inside pictures of the activities going on. A very alarming fact was that the fire brigade didn’t know if there was a basement to the building in Nariman point when asked by a reporter. This shows the lack of intelligent planning and effective information sharing by the officers in the operation. The whole operation was rather snail-paced. Though it was justified by the fact that the commanders were concerned of the hostages and also of the presence of booby-traps. But this slow pace might have been responsible for some of the injured being transferred to the list of the dead. Also till the very end, if it is the end, the commanders were not having any specific information of the number of terrorists that came to India and if the hostage areas were completely secured. On and on it was a complete security failure which all through showed the lack of experience in crisis management.

All through the news channels the politicians, the reporters, the news anchors were just saying that the people of Mumbai will fight back by getting back to normalcy, by going back to their jobs without caring that whether there has been anything done about the whole thing. And the same thing happened. The people came out of their houses, some with a sad face some with a smile, and they used the trains, they went to work, they used taxis and some might have even went to some park because the malls and multiplexes are closed. The sensex was on a high. Stocks were in green. Here the share prices were important than the death toll. Wow! What a sick way to fight back by being indifferent as if nothing has happened. I would have thought that a better way to fight back would have been if the people would have been not going to their offices today but coming on the streets doing silent protests. Or at least planning some for later to raise the issues of national security, peace, protection, justice! I think unlike America we people rather prefer pursuit of local trains instead of pursuit of happiness.

- Tanmay Prashant Mehta

(The Awake Indian Citizen)