I cannot but begin this column by mentioning the happiness and relief felt by the nation at the successful rescue of the 41 workers trapped for 17 days in the collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand. It was a herculean effort, in which no resources—of organisation, technology, planning and expertise—were spared to achieve a task that was fraught with danger and uncertainty and unexpected setbacks.
This is not the time to discuss whether the rescue could have been better or faster, or why the disaster occurred in the first place, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. What this miraculous rescue does show is that when there is a challenge, all Indians can come together and collectively work to face it. This is a matter of legitimate pride.
A secondary question is whether after the challenge has been faced, we draw the right lessons to ensure that mistakes of the past are not repeated. I raise this question not only in the context of the collapse of the tunnel. Simultaneous with the unfolding tunnel rescue, India also commemorated the carnage of death and violence that was perpetuated on November 26, 2008, when a handful of terrorists from Pakistan literally held Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, to ransom. Across the mighty Himalayas, where the tunnel collapsed, lie two countries which are implacably hostile to us: Pakistan and China. Pakistan, in particular, is the epicentre of terrorism against India. What has been our track record in facing this challenge?
I think it has been far from satisfactory, and I will bolster my argument by citing three incidents. In May 1999, Pakistan launched a massive aggression against India in the remote Kargil sector of Kashmir. The intelligence lapse was glaring, for apparently we were taken completely by surprise or did not act on actionable information. It was clear that Indian troops trying to evict them would be sitting ducks for the Pakistani infiltrators perched on vantage mountain heights. A far better option, in my view, was to allow the Indian Air Force to cross the Line of Control and destroy the staging points and supply lines of the invaders. The option was rejected, at the cost of hundreds of lives of our soldiers and young officers. This exhibition of ‘restraint’, in the face of the certain death of so many, must have few parallels in military history. We have only to think of the reaction in Paris or Washington, London or Beijing, if a dozen body bags arrived in the capital each day as a result of verified and unprovoked enemy intrusion into their territory. Instead, India went about the world collecting certificates of restraint. Ultimately, through the heroic efforts of our armed forces, the invaders were defeated, but we have to ask if the invasion could have been detected earlier or preempted, and the cost of precious lives lost in the option, we chose to fight it.
But did we learn any lessons from this incident? The same year, Indian Airlines flight took off from Kathmandu for New Delhi on December 24 at 4:53 pm. Within minutes, it was hijacked by five Pakistanis, led by Ibrahim Athar, the brother of Maulana Masood Azhar of the terrorist organisations Harkat-ul-Ansar and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Delhi was informed of the hijacking at 4:56 pm. At 7 pm, the plane landed at Amritsar to refuel. Authorities at the airport had instructions not to let the plane take off, but it managed to do so, and landed at Lahore, and then via Dubai at Kandahar.
Former Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit later wrote: “There was lack of coordination in terms of speed and time between the authorities at Delhi and Amritsar. The National Security Guard (NSG) commandos did not scramble into their operational mode with sufficient speed. The hijackers had enough time to take off without facing any effective Indian resistance”. Finally, the government capitulated by agreeing to release three of the most dreaded terrorists—Mushtaq Zargar, Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar—who were escorted to Kandahar by Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh himself. These terrorists became the focal point of terrorism against India in the years ahead.
The third incident was that of 26/11. How ineffective could our coastal vigilance and intelligence machinery be to enable armed terrorists to enter Mumbai without any hindrance, and wreak havoc on the city for days, before they were vanquished? And, while we recall these days of terror every year, and pay homage to those who lost their lives, including brave policemen, have we done enough to ensure that our ‘security architecture’ is today strong enough to prevent another act of this nature? Experts differ, but with such a long coast line, this is an area where we still need to concentrate on, for the key to our overall security is to learn and follow-up on the lessons learnt from past mistakes.
In response to the terrorist strike in Pulwama, Kashmir, in 2019, the alacrity with which we made a lightening air strike on the Jaish-e-Mohammad camp in Balakot in Pakistan, finally demonstrated that we have the resolve and the capability to take appropriate retaliatory action against terrorism—a sharp contrast to our unacceptably docile response after 26/11. We have also, under the Modi dispensation, done much more to upgrade our defense infrastructure on the northern borders.
Similarly, after the legitimate rejoicing over the rescue of the trapped workers in Uttarakhand, it would be advisable if the government seriously analyses the causes for the collapse of the tunnel, and draw the right lessons to prevent such tragedies in the future, especially in the fragile eco-system of the Himalayas.
The author is a former diplomat, an author and a politician. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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