High alert. really?

Rewind to the weeks after 9/11. A television panel in the US discusses the way a terrorist’s mind works. It agrees on arguably the most effective terrorist tactic of them all: “Focus on the bigger targets to create maximum impact and hit on the smaller ones to create maximum fear.” Is this what is happening here in India? Are terrorist groups consistently and chillingly employing this strategy in the country? There have been repeated attacks on big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai.Simultaneously, terrorist organizations have time and again carried out strikes on smaller cities such as Coimbatore, Varanasi, Faizabad, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Pune is the latest on the lengthening list and the message is clear enough: Tier-II cities (population of more than a million) are very much on the terrorists’ radar; small is not necessarily safe.
Former intelligence official R Swaminathan says it stands to reason that “small towns are soft targets. The most evident reason is that individually attacking smaller cities creates a fear psychosis and the widespread feeling that we are not safe anywhere.”
The biggest problem for small cities is infrastructure, or the lack of it. India has had a long history of terrorist attacks but small towns have no more than the most basic anti-terrorism infrastructure. Add to this the acute lack of awareness on the part of the average resident of a small city.
This is understandable, reasons defence analyst Commodore (retd) Uday Bhaskar. “By and large, ours is a reasonably trusting society,” he points out. “For instance, if somebody in a small city were to find an unattended bag, his first instinct would be to try and open it. Or, depending on his level of integrity, he might try to pilfer it. The realization that it could be a bomb would not dawn on nine out of ten people.”
The tragedy is small city India’s typically abysmal level of police preparedness. The quality of policing is admittedly poor across the country, but Tier-II cities are especially bedevilled by complacent policemen unused to dealing with terror. And there is more.”Opportunity, intention and capability are the three key elements for a successful strike,” says Ajit Doval, former director of the Intelligence Bureau. “The most crucial is the presence of local support, in the form of sleeper cells. It is therefore essential that local police stations are developed as a hub of ground intelligence in order to neutralize these attacks even while they are in the planning stage.”
Last year, intelligence reports indicated that many terror groups were consciously shifting base to smaller cities in an attempt to attract less attention. They were also said to be actively recruiting in small towns. “The advantages of having a small-city base are many,” says an intelligence officer, on condition of anonymity. “The cost of operation is less and people can be hired cheaply. In fact, illiterate labourers are often used by these groups. Even if they are caught, they cannot divulge much.”
Smaller cities may also have highly visible and opportunistic targets. “The pattern in past attacks has had two common elements — presence of foreign tourists as well as Jewish places of worship nearby. Such a combination is there in quite a few tourist places across the country, which are mostly Tier-II or Tier-III towns,” says counter-terrorism expert Maj Gen (retd) Afsir Karim.
But not everyone agrees that small-town India is in the terrorist crosshairs. “Every single city in India is vulnerable today,” says Ajai Sahni of the Delhi-based think-tank, Institute for Conflict Management. “In each city, there will be areas that are better protected, and others that remain vulnerable. Tier-I cities, despite heavier police concentrations, may also have greater vulnerabilities because of the size of their populations. Similarly, many smaller towns may have some element of uniqueness that could attract terrorist attention.”
The question then, is how to deal with the situation effectively. “The road map is long and winding,” acknowledges Sahni. “It is unrealistic to expect the existing structures of policing and intelligence to deliver the ‘foolproof’ security against terrorism that everyone seems to demand. This is more so because the principal source of terrorism — Pakistan — is in our immediate neighbourhood, and remains outside the scope of our preventive or retaliatory capabilities. Under the circumstances, the only enduring solution is to bring capacities in line with the threat and the requirements.”
But experts agree that a long-term solution depends on the crucial — and active — involvement of enlightened and security-conscious citizs, especially as the terror dragnet spreads to smaller places. “Everyone — in a mofussil town or a Tier-II city — must be aware that their place could be a potential target,” says Bhaskar. “Being alert should be a part of one’s conditioning. Only then can terror be tackled and eventually overcome.”