How about some lessons on security?

Muneer’s story, as I read it in The Hindu last week, is that he was grazing cattle near his Pakistani village when he accidentally wandered onto our side and was arrested by our ever vigilant Border Security Force and remanded to police custody in Sriganganagar. ‘‘Repeated interrogation’’ followed but all that his interrogators managed to extract from the weeping, terrified child were repeated pleas to be allowed to go home because ‘‘ammi intizar kar rahi hongi’’. The Hindu quoted a local police officer as saying, ‘‘The boy seems to be innocent and no criminal case is made out against him. We are trying for his deportation and have explained the situation in this regard to the State Government through police headquarters.’’ But, nobody knows what to do with Muneer. The easiest thing should be to just let him wander back across the border but as the Pakistani authorities are as paranoid and inhumane as our own he might get arrested on the other side as an Indian spy, so the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) who are trying to help him are seeing if they can send him back on the recently restarted Lahore bus. Since he is an illiterate cowherd from somewhere in Sindh he might be as lost in Lahore as he is in Rajasthan but it would be better than spending the rest of his life in an Indian jail.

That he should have been arrested at all is a sad comment on the futile vigilance of a state that shows such a frightening lack of it when it comes to apprehending those who really need to be caught and killed. But, it’s that old, familiar story again. Our security forces are remarkably ruthless when it comes to dealing with children, civilians and women but let them confront terrorists and they are so powerless that suicide squads enter top security military camps and kill senior officers. How else to explain what happened in Tanda last week? How else to explain that other attack on a military compound near Srinagar a few weeks ago? What is going on? Why are suicide squads finding it so easy to enter high security military establishments?

Last time we were told it was because they hid in tall grass that surrounded the camp without anyone explaining why grass was allowed to grow that tall in the first place. This time we hear that a single suicide bomber nearly killed the GOC (General Officer Commanding) of the Northern Command and three other Generals because the killer managed to hide — unnoticed despite a full attack — in abandoned barracks. Why? How? Surely, explanations are in order.

Could it be that the reason for this inexplicable laxness has much to do with the fact that despite more than 20 years of terrorism we have come no closer to evolving a counter-terrorism strategy? As someone who visited the United States shortly after September 11 and then just over a month ago may I say that one of the things even visitors cannot fail to notice is that there is a clear strategy in place now that did not exist two years ago.

As part of this strategy, suspicious Muslims from certain countries find it harder to enter the United States than they used to, suspicious bank accounts have been frozen and a Department of Homeland Security has been set up to examine what other steps can be taken to ensure that there is never a repeat of September 11.

Compare this with it being nearly three years since IC-814 was hijacked from Kathmandu on Christmas Eve and we still do not have a strategy for action if something similar were to happen again. Nor do we have a strategy for dealing with attacks on military camps or government buildings despite innumerable attacks and despite it coming up to two years since the Lok Sabha was attacked. Could it be that the Home Minister has been too busy with Ayodhya and other matters related to the Hindutva cause? If so can we please have a separate department of Homeland Security that knows how to distinguish between terrorists and children?

Meanwhile, will someone please help Muneer go home? Could some of the emotion and media attention we have seen expended on little Noor Fatima be diverted towards releasing a little boy who has done nothing wrong except cross a border he probably never knew existed. Since there is currently such an outpouring of bonhomie that Pakistan’s leading Islamic fundamentalist could come here to a hero’s welcome, could we please at least agree to stop arresting children whether they stray across the border or not?

— Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com