Flunking the Intelligence Test

Mumbai has a long record of massive terrorist attacks dating at least as far back as 1993, when a wave of bombings left roughly 250 dead and 700 others injured. Deadly incidents have recurred ever since, most notably in July 2006, when seven huge explosions tore through commuter trains at rush hour, killing 160 people and injuring more than 200. On at least five occasions in the past nine months, terrorists have staged devastating strikes across the country. Even so, there has been little response beyond platitudes from politicians and well-publicized visits by government ministers—always surrounded by heavy security cordons.

That's the standard pattern in India: an inept and callous political leadership and a cocooned and corrupt bureaucracy take care of their own interests while ignoring the public's welfare. In the past few years that decay has spread to the country's intelligence services, including RAW. "Ten years ago it was one of the best in the world," says a source close to the French security establishment whose job precludes his being quoted by name. That was before India's ruling parties started appointing top officials based on their political leanings rather than their intelligence credentials. People in the field say a few serious professionals remain even now, like National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan. "He's good," says this source. "But he doesn't have the power."

Not that anyone else in India's intelligence community is truly in charge. Not unlike America's agencies before September 11, India's many spy services are crippled by interagency rivalries and failures to communicate. One result, experts say, is that although nearly 16,000 suspected Islamist militants were detained and interrogated between 1991 and 2006, most of that information has never been analyzed and put to use by any central authority in order to prevent attacks. (Don't even ask about intelligence sharing with India's neighbor and fellow victim of Islamist terror, Pakistan.)

After the spectacular armed attack on India's Parliament Building in 2001, an elaborate Multi-Agency Center was created to oversee the country's counterterrorism efforts and collate information gathered by an array of new state-level agencies. Today MAC consists of a tiny staff using a bare-bones computer system with no real-time links to state police or other intelligence sources. Only five of India's 35 states have done their part by setting up local agencies.

The latest rampage in Mumbai has prompted widespread demands for the country's politicians to do something about terrorism instead of just talking about it. "There must now be public pressure on them the way it was in the United States after 9/11," says intelligence expert B. Raman. "We must tell them they won't get votes if they bicker over terrorism and politicize it."

Indians are fed up. "If the politicians abrogate their duty once again, I am not saying the streets will burn," says Bollywood actor and activist Rahul Bose. "But Mumbai will be a very, very angry place."

With Christopher Dickey

© 2008