The Third Eye: Importance of intelligence-based responses

New Delhi, Aug 24 In the era we live in, knowledge-based decision making is a prerequisite for success in any field, more so in the sphere of national security, where a hidden threat from the enemy can be countered only based on Intelligence that was available about the latter’s secret plans and modus operandi.

Security, by definition, is protection against the covert threat of the adversary; an open attack on the country would be repelled by our Defence forces, who were always in a state of readiness and who had the benefit of their own Military Intelligence keeping track of any signs of the enemy planning to resort to such an attack.

Intelligence is information that had some special tags-it had to be reliable, relevant to national security, futuristic, timely and confidential. It can be said that ‘all Intelligence is information but all information is not Intelligence’.

Our Intelligence agencies report on a threat only when they were totally convinced of the reliability of the information. Intelligence is information about what ‘lies ahead’ and it must come in time for a meaningful response. All Intelligence has to be handled confidentially for you do not want the enemy to know ‘what you know’. Intelligence essentially is ‘information for action’ and gives you ‘secret power’ against the enemy because of its confidentiality.

Security fails for three reasons- absence of Intelligence, failure of communication of Intelligence or its communication with such a delay that time for acting on it was already over and failure of response or ‘action’ which was unfortunate but not all that uncommon.

Intelligence is a rare commodity and none of it should be lost ‘in transit’ or disregarded as ‘un-actionable’ for the reason of not being specific enough. Even a general warning about an impending threat to security from a certain quarter has enough scope for preventive action and the action-taking authorities must confirm that all that was possible by way of preventive measures had been done.

Moreover there is a multiplicity of Intelligence agencies in all countries and institutional arrangements had to exist for ensuring that all pieces of Intelligence on a threat travelled to a point at the national apex where they could be examined for an ‘integral response’. Director National Intelligence in US and the National Security Council Secretariat under the National Security Advisory in India, handled all the issues of coordination amongst Intelligence agencies.

Security is not a static phenomenon and is always in the process of evolution. The institution of NSA was created in 1998 during the Vajpayee government, and the position of Director, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) was created to coordinate the functioning of the Intelligence chiefs of the three Defence Services- Army, Air Force and Navy- in 2002. The Director of the Intelligence Bureau coordinates the flow of Intelligence from the Civilian agencies through Multiple Agency Centre (MAC) at the Centre and it has taken this function down to the state level where the head of Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) performs the same function.

The biggest threat to the internal security of India is terrorism directed from across our borders. Cross- border terrorism is keeping the border state of Jammu & Kashmir destabilised necessitating deployment of Army and paramilitary-military forces of the Centre there.

The simplest definition of terrorism is ‘resort to covert violence for a perceived political cause’. Without such a cause terrorism will be sheer criminality which was not the case.

A ‘cause’ demands ‘commitment’ which in turn was determined by ‘motivation’. The motivation may be ideological as in case of Naxalism or driven by assertion of ethnic identity as was the case with insurgencies of North East in the past.

The motivation behind cross-border terrorism in Kashmir was faith-based -and hence very strong- exploited by Pak ISI to raise elements committed to Jehad. This indoctrination in the name of Islam exercised a pull that turned the minds not only of the ‘have-nots’ but of the educated lot as well.

Pakistan played the communal card in the valley when it organised militant elements to drive Kashmiri Pandits out of their homes in 1990s and in a more fierce way sent in terrorists to blatantly kill 28 tourists drawn from different parts of the country, in Pahalgam on April 22 last -after ascertaining their Hindu identity. The bigger objective was to spread communal violence in the rest of India. The Modi government did well to give a free hand to the Army to carry out a multiple retaliatory strike on as many as 9 terror bases in PoK and across the Indo-Pak border and deal with any further escalation. More importantly India defined the ‘new norm’ of considering any further act of terrorism against India as an ‘act of war’.

In the post-Cold War years open warfare seemed to have given way to ‘proxy wars’ as terrorism emerged as the new weapon for ‘covert’ offensives against strategic targets.

The anti-Soviet armed campaign in Afghanistan run on the war cry of Jehad, proved to be the first case of an ‘asymmetric war’ bringing down even a superpower- forcing the withdrawal Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Terrorism became a cost-effective substitute of an expensive open ‘war’- today faith-based terror has become the biggest threat to the security of the democratic world.

US President Donald Trump denounces Islamic terrorism in no uncertain terms and remains focused on China as an adversary- these mark a major convergence in the geopolitical understanding of India and US and should help to overcome any policy differences in other matters like tariff and trade.

Following the Pak-directed terror attack at Pahalgam, there was a military confrontation between India and Pakistan in which China showed up as a major supporter of Pakistan in terms of supply of military hardware and technological backing.

India has rightly upgraded its profile in Quad and should hope to use its diplomatic power to buttress Indo-US relations to the advantage of both the countries that happened to be the largest democracies of the world too. Transactional approach of Trump on certain issues - rooted in his ‘America First’ doctrine - can be handled by India without yielding on our own national interests. India is a major power having a say in the global issues of war and peace and it should stay firm in its advocacy of the larger good of humanity.

The special importance of operations based on Intelligence is seen in a situation where Army had to be deployed ‘on our own soil’ for countering terrorism as was the case in Kashmir. An Intelligence-guided approach is useful in three ways. First, it helps the ‘orientation’ of the army by getting it to practise restraint in the use of force- defence forces are trained to repel an open attack with maximum force.

Secondly, it is expected to reduce collateral damage by way of civilian casualties because an operation was undertaken on specific information provided by Intelligence about the location and strength of terrorists. Finally, even in a terror-affected territory army’s deployment was in the format of ‘aid to civilian authority’ and Intelligence flowing from the agencies under the civilian control, guided the counter-terror action.

Army can have its own channels for gathering Intelligence but all information of Intelligence value had to be put together and assessed for response- there was no ‘conflict’ in this ‘competition’. The Higher Command meetings in Kashmir are chaired by the Governor/Lt Governor for determining the strategy of counter-terror operations, sorting out issues of coordination and meeting any demands of the forces at work.

Intelligence at the national level is not a stand alone function of reporting on threats to security but is now an integral part of governance. In bringing out ‘what lies ahead’, it throws light on the ‘risks’ to be countered as well as the ‘opportunities’ that could be availed of. It thus assists in policy formulation-without ‘dictating’ policy- and indicates the pathway for any ‘course correction’ that might become necessary in the fast moving geopolitical scenario and swift changes that could occur even on the domestic front.

(The writer is a former Director Intelligence Bureau)

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