Tuesday, December 2, 2008

कोणी बॉम्ब लावतो कोणी गोळ्या झाडतो, तरी भारताचा राजा झिम्मा खेळतो



My sincere condolences to all those whose near and dear ones have been killed or injured in the attack. I feel really sorry and helpless that this happened and we just watched, paused for a few days and are back to work now. Some politicians are taking the fall - some of them undeservedly, but the real problem of intelligence failure isn't even being debated.

This one aspect that isn't getting enough publicity is what I want to highlight here: The intelligence signals that the government had received, but failed to act on. I don't know why these intelligence signals were ignored, but looking at the news in the past few weeks, all our politicians were doing at the time were filling their coffers through more FSI deals at the Maharashtra state level, and at the national level, after two years of silence, fanning anger among the public by suddenly parading the likes of Thakur, Purohit and Pande in time for the state elections.

My demand here is simply that if the current government considers itself answerable to the people, we need a detailed answer as to why these intelligence reports were not acted upon, and what are we going to do to avoid such failures in the future.

1. RAW had provided several intelligence reports on the same day that they had intercepts, which included specifics like Mumbai was the target and a sea route was going to be used. These reports were given to the government from Sep 18 - Sep 24. An excellent article in livemint.com (a sister publication of the Wall Street Journal) covers this: "Why was warning on Taj ignored?"
2. US Intelligence agencies (CIA?) had warned India about specific locations including the Taj hotel were targets. A news item in ABC news covers this: "US Warned in October of Potential Terror Attack"

Another great article highlighting the intelligence failures is here in Newsweek: "Flunking the Intelligence Test"

I request our media to give this aspect more coverage, and I beg our politicians to do something about it.

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3 comments:

  1. Umesh PatilDecember 2, 2008 at 11:04 AM

    Based on reports in USA Media, this seems to be a story with some legs. If it turns out to be true, that will be a tough deal for Congress. In any case, as if we needed more reasons; this is one more reason why Shivraj Patil needed to be removed.

    The problem is, if the focus shifts to this intelligence failure; India's claims against Pakistan may get side tracked for a while - at least from view of how Media cycles work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 2, 2008 at 2:15 PM

    Very true...thats what is being said even in media.Its difficult to expect it to be hounded so soon.I feel they are trying to build up a case against Pakis..to give us credibility to launch a definitive respose.
    Datawar padayla konalahi avdat nahi!!!!!!thus no importance to intelligence failure.
    Actually i am sure ATS chief would have the info of such activities...this is not the first time this has occured...even the 93
    blasts...
    it remains "unsolved".
    they have enough support within Mumbai
    not only in form of underworld but also some politicians. Its impossible to execute without inside help.
    I may sound stupid but they probably were allowed to enter!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mukul JoshiDecember 3, 2008 at 3:19 PM

    Intelligence failure is buck-passing and finger pointing game
    1. RAW officials say they had told Navy
    2. Police says they had got alerts more than a year back
    3. US says it had given a clear message to the government a month back
    4. Police didn't perhaps even know about the sanctity of the situation, given how the 3 officers faced the situation and got shot in no time

    Things can only change if the politics changes and that is way too tough, almost close to impossible. People have to accept that government is not there to protect them and do whatever they can do.

    There is a lot that can be talked about, the problem being it doesn't reflect in any change. If Mumbaikars stop going to offices in Fort and Nariman point till they feel secure and get financial capital standstill till then, things can improve.

    ReplyDelete

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