26/11: Six critical lessons we still haven't learnt
On the sixth anniversary of the ghastly 26/11 Mumbai attack, Headlines Today broadcasted the never-before-seen videos of the anti-terror operations mounted by the National Security Guards (NSG). These videos had been filmed by NSG commandos who were involved in the Mumbai operations and they captured the action as it unfolded during the encounter. Watching the video and seeing the kind of risks our brave NSG commandos had taken, I wondered if the lessons of the 26/11 attack have been learnt.
The operations had been criticised because the NSG took almost ten hours to get to Mumbai and needed almost 60 hours to neutralise the Lashkar terrorists. Would India's response to another 26/11 style attack be faster and better executed? I had a long chat with Brig GS Sisodia, who was the Inspector General (Operations) of the NSG who led the operation to flush out terrorists from the Taj Hotel at Nariman Point. It's shocking that several of the critical lessons of the attacks have still not been learnt by our government and corrective action has not been taken.
Woefully inadequate technical capabilities
NSG requires state of the art surveillance capabilities to keep an eye on the terrorists. This includes advanced listening devices, cell phone interceptors and bugs. Despite six years having passed since 26/11, the NSG still does not have access to cutting edge interceptors. The NSG should be able to set up a mobile command and control post vehicle close to the scene of action. During the Mumbai operation the command centre at Nariman House was set up out in the open on plastic chairs near the hotel. You would have seen operations being directed by senior officers in Hollywood movies from a mobile command centre equipped with a galaxy of live cameras and hi-tech listening devices. The NSG still does not have a mobile command and control centre and our officers might end up on plastic chairs, outside an encounter venue, yet again.
Unbearably cumbersome acquisition process
World over special forces acquire the latest weaponry off the shelf. A lot of the weapon systems used by commandos are new proprietary innovations that are only available with a single vendor. In India, however, Special Forces too have to go through the same laborious weapon acquisition process as the rest of the services. It takes at least two years to complete the tendering process and by the time weapons finally arrive, very often technological advances have already rendered them obsolete. Despite concerns over the possibility of graft the NSG must be allowed to buy latest weaponry from a single vendor without having to go through an elaborate tender process, otherwise the terrorist will always be one step ahead of our soldiers.
Poor institutional memory: Soldiers come and go
The NSG is a deputational force. Officers and jawans from the Indian Army spend a maximum of three years in the NSG, while those from paramilitary forces spend five years before being repatriated to their parent cadre. It takes almost six months for a soldier to get accustomed to the standard operating procedures of the NSG and by the time he truly settles down and learns the ropes of the special forces trade it is already time for him to go back to his regiment. This problem is illustrated by the fact that one of the best commando training officers is presently busy building border roads instead of training a new crop of commandos. In case there is another 26/11 style attack there will be no one on the ground who would have seen action during the Mumbai operation and be at hand to share the lessons he learnt with his comrades. The old phrase, "They learnt nothing, and they forgot nothing" is apt for today's NSG.
Confused approach to composition
On paper, India does not want to involve its army in internal security challenges. Most often the NSG has to be deployed to deal with domestic terror threats and therefore the NSG comprises soldiers from the army, police and paramilitary forces. The director general is always a police officer while the strike elements of the NSG are drawn from the Army. 53 per cent of the NSG is drawn from the Army while 47 per cent comes from the BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP and the SSB. While theoretically, the varying backgrounds of the soldiers in the NSG should make no difference to their effectiveness, in reality the NSG is crippled by serious problems in inter-operability. The NSG is often described as running a three-legged race. Officers from the IPS, paramilitary forces and army often do not see eye to eye. In terms of combat effectiveness, there is a caste system with army soldiers proving themselves to be a cut above the others and hence always the first to be deployed in any big operation. But the administration and procurement wings are run by IPS officers, who often over compensate to ensure that their colleagues from the IPS get equal importance as the army men.
For the NSG to be truly effective, it must be a homogenous force drawn from the most operationally effective wing of the services, which is the Indian army. Making an IPS officer with little or no combat experience DG of the NSG and putting Army Brigadiers under him leads to a disjointed force with an in-optimal command structure. All NSG soldiers must be equally effective in operations and creating an informal caste system is a farce that must end.
No armoured ballistic shields for commandos
Major Sandeep Unnikrishan died while climbing up the stairs of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. He was shot from the front by terrorists at a range of less than five meters. He could have been saved if he had an armoured ballistic shield like the ones even regular cops are shown using in the movies. Not only did the NSG not have this basic gear at the time of the attack, they still don't have it. During 26/11 the absence of the ballistic shield was felt dearly and an in-principle decision to purchase the equipment was taken. About a year after the attacl, a field trial was conducted. However, the ballistic shield being tried out failed the field trial and that was the end of the effort to procure these crucial life saving shields.
No airborne element in the NSG
One of the lessons of the delayed response of the NSG to the 26/11 attack was that the force has been given the powers to requisition the first available aircraft to get to the scene of attack, even if this means offloading passengers from a civilian airliner. While this sounds effective on paper, the reality is that a passenger aircraft simply cannot carry a lot of the equipment that the commandos would need for a full scale attack. In the baggage holds that store our luggage, there is no space for bomb disposal vehicles, armoured personnel carriers and communication vehicles. For the NSG to be truly effective the commandos need to have 24/7 access to a military transport aircraft that can carry the troops and their full posse of weapons to the scene of action without delay. All NSG base stations should be co-located with an air force unit where transport aircraft can be made available. This unfortunately has still not been done in all cases.
Conclusion
After the 26/11 terror strike the terror masterminds would have looked at their success and devised ways to staging even grander attacks which would catch the Indian state by surprise. Instead of equipping our forces to deal with new threat scenarios, our special forces are still not equipped to deal with the previous challenge that confronted them. If former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi were to come back from the dead, he would recognise the special forces he set up because they still carry most weapon systems that were bought by Rajiv when the force was formed in the mid-eighties. Our enemy is thinking ahead, we cannot afford to slack else much blood will be shed to pay for the follies of those responsible for India's defence management.
Also, for more details about the operation mounted by the NSG commandos in Mumbai you must read Black Tornado, a new book written by my colleague at India Today magazine Sandeep Unnithan, which has intimate details about the operations based on a series of interviews with the soldiers and the officers who were involved in the 26/11 operations.