Total tolerance

The pathetic image of the hijacked Airbus in Kandahar has come to symbolise the abysmal state of the nation's security. Wasn't it just the...

The pathetic image of the hijacked Airbus in Kandahar has come to symbolise the abysmal state of the nation8217;s security. Wasn8217;t it just the other day that the Prime Minister had so emphatically announced that his government meant business when it came to cracking down on terrorism. Zero tolerance for terrorism was to be the new battle cry. Zero tolerance. In a few short weeks, the words have a ugly ring of irony about them. It8217;s not zero tolerance, Mr Prime Minister, that is in evidence, but total tolerance.

Anything goes. Here is a nation of one billion that has become a sitting duck for the masked man with the hand grenade or the AK-47. And it is the citizens of this country who has been asked, time and time again, to tolerate to tolerate the bomb blasts that rip through their lives, to tolerate the deaths of dear ones caught in an never-ending spiral of violence, to tolerate the hijacking of an aircraft with 180-odd people on board, to tolerate the storming of army camps and security headquarters.Tolerate, tolerate, tolerate.

For how long can this go on? For how long can excuses be found to explain away the fact that two members of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen could worm their way into the ammunition room of the headquarters of the the Special Operation Group in Srinagar on Monday, at a time when the hijacking of flight IC-814 should have meant that the red alert was on? Besides resulting in the deaths of at least seven security personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police, it required a massive operation to free the 100-odd personnel trapped inside. If such adversity can so easily visit an institution that supervises policing in a disturbed region, the general state of security in Jamp;K and the rest of the nation can well be imagined.

Throughout the last three months, it is the writ of the Kashmiri militant that has run. Consider this calendar of events. In August, there was that devastating attack at the Rashtriya Rifles camp at Kupwara and intermittent attack in Poonch and Doda. InSeptember, militants succeeded in bombing the high security Srinagar secretariat. In early November, a suicide squad of the Lashkar-e-Toiba stormed an army camp, in mid-November unnamed militants perpetrated a blast on a Delhi-bound train, in late November the National Conference headquarters in Srinagar was attacked as well as another army camp. December was no different. Two weeks ago, at least six policemen were shot dead in various areas of Srinagar in what seemed a premeditated, coordinated action.

This points to a fatal flaw in the very conception of security management in the country. It seems that the authorities in charge of this responsibility have run out of not just ideas on how to manage the situation, but the very will to do so. It seems that between concentrating on the minutiae of security management and the big picture, there are too many slips. The nation needs a security management regime that will utilise the services of several agencies, whether it is the Intelligence Bureau or theArmy, the paramilitary forces or the police, to craft a cogent united response to the designs of the terrorist. Above all, the need of the hour is to bring a modicum of reassurance to people who have been horribly let down by the institutions that have ostensibly been set up to make their lives more secure.