ELIMINATE LEADERS OF TERRORIST OUTFITS, LIKE ISRAEL DOES

Some years ago Indian Expresshad published extracts of the terrorist killer Omar Sheikh's Diary. This was at the time when he was exchanged for the Kandahar hostages, and went on to lead Daniel Pearl to his death. Sheikh's brief from his handler in Sahranpur was to use his British accent to snarea half dozen foreign tourists in India, to be exchanged for captured militants held in Kashmir. The third foreigner captured was an Israeli and when Sheikh went to report his jubilation to his handler, he was roundly abused and told to release the Israeli immediately. The jehadi political agenda in Pakistan does not include tangling with Israel, a hard state. The last full scale war fought by Israel was in 1973, and since then, it has eliminated almost a hundred terrorist leaders, without going to war. There is much we have to learn.

In India, any social scientist, civil servant, politician, TV anchor or film star has an opinion -- on whether India should use force when attacked by terrorists. Force, apparently means going to war, where armoured columns rampage through Pakistan, occupy Islamabad and rule over a capital devastated by aerial bombing. This kind of uninformed opinion is akin to this writer, a military man for 33 years, and a security analyst for 15 more, holding opinions on how to run a TV channel, or make a Bollywood dance number, orhow to solve the child marriage problem in India. Raising the debate on retaliation to a respectable level to permit the professionals to participate without the accompanying noise, would be a worthwhile media venture.

Our retaliation for the Parliament attack, by mobilising for war, was an unmitigated disaster. There are some professionals who hold a contrary view, but the Mumbai attack is proof that we achieved nothing in 2002. The U-turn promised by Musharaf, never took place, because the masters of terror were never restrained. Our enemies are individuals, more than the Pakistani state, especially with a civilian government in place.

There is no record of so many private individuals who have 'waged war' on a country for as long as Hafez Sayed, Azhar Masood, Syed Salahuddin and Dawood Ibrahim have done on India. When Dawood flaunted himself in Dubai, all we did was send a letter to Interpol, in the best traditions of babudom.

To this gang of four we could add their henchman --the operational boss of the LeT, the financier, the computer specialist , the Pakistani major who burnt the Charar-e-sharif mosque and the ISI Colonel who put the Mumbai operation together. Individuals in 
Pakistan, who say good byes to their families and go to office every morning to wage war on India, must be eliminated. There are a few ways to do this, as the Americans and Israelis have demonstrated.

One of them is for a car bomb to go off when they start their cars in the morning, put there by 'god knows who'. In many ways this is the neatest. Another is to pick them up while they are on a relaxed foreign trip to Dubai, or Equatorial Guinea or wherever these sickos go to get their highs. Another is for a drone to fire a missile at their armour-plated SUVs when they are listening to Lata Mangeshkar. The Americans specialise in this. Alternately they fire a 250-pound laser guided bomb at their favourite terrorist, who has been illuminated by a laser gun held by 'god knows who'. This method leaves no trace. The best way is for the terrorist to have disappeared when his bearer goes to give him his morning tea, to be rediscovered in India, later.

These are the only ways of waging this war. After the event, we in India can (strike out where inapplicable) act innocent/blame the Taliban/blame internal conflict in the Lashkar/blame the ISI/blame the Americans/Israelis /blame god and make the same statements that the Pakistan foreign minister does: "We don't want war, but if it is forced upon us,we will, by god," etcetera etcetera.

Any lieutenant commander doing his staff college course in Indiais taught that the dumbest option is to have the choice of escalating to be forced upon us. This choice must be left to the other side. Pakistan as a smaller, weaker state will NEVER escalate, beyond a low threshold. But where are the tools to act the way the Israelis or Americans do?

Today we are acutely deficient in all the technologies required. Let Antony whois competing with Fernandez to be the worst defence minister India has had, get one thing right, and direct the three chiefs to put the required capability together in six months. Another attack will surely come.