A matter of intelligence

Last month, my wife and I enjoyed a dream holiday in Spain. From the flamboyant feast of modern culture that is Barcelona, we moved on to the exquisite grace of Seville and Cordoba – former centres of Umayyad Spain – and the extraordinary beauty of the Alhambra, set in the mountains of Granada. A five-hour ride on the high-speed AVE train then brought us to Atocha Station in Madrid– which, one may mention, features an actual, forested park beneath its great, vaulted roof.

Now, I am not going to talk about how organised everything is in Europe: the city streets, the trains, the buses, the simple convenience of the way things work. We know all that. We know that one only has to step out of Pakistan, into almost any other country of the world, to find utilities that are better managed, traffic that is better organised, and people who are clearly better off and happier, than they are here.

[quote]To my surprise, there was no body search[/quote]

The point is this: wherever we went, we felt...safe. We knew that, while it was always possible that we could have our pockets picked (we didn’t) or be ripped off by an overcharging taxi driver (we weren’t), there was practically no danger of being mangled in a traffic accident, shot, stabbed, kidnapped, or bombed.

This is, of course, ironic because, during the early morning rush hour on 11^th March 2004, ten explosions occurred almost simultaneously aboard four commuter trains, travelling into Atocha station. Nearly 200 people were killed. The spectacular bombings, claimed by al-Qaeda, brought the city of Madrid to a terrified standstill. For a while. The terrorists were identified, arrested and sentenced. And, of course, ten years have gone by since then without seeing another such attack. Clearly, Atocha station, along with the rest of Spain, have been adequately secured, both against attacks by the multinational al-Qaeda franchise as well as against Spain’s own ETA Basque separatist guerrillas.

And not just Spain. Consider. The US had its 9/11, Britain its 7/7, Indonesia its Bali bombing. One time, each of them. The trademark murderous extravaganzas innovated by al-Qaeda caught the world by surprise. Only the first time, not again. That such foiled incidents as the ‘shoe bomber’, the ‘underwear bomber’, the Times Square ‘idiot-bomber’, etc, keep happening points to the fact that, around the world and particularly in the US, the terrorists continue to try. But, it seems, good intelligence, general alertness and some good luck have proved an outstandingly successful combination.
Not here in Pakistan. Here, bombings and terror attacks became a feature as early as 1981. The Bohri Bazar bombing of 1987 reduced more than 200 Karachiites to lumps of charred meat. The FIA Centre in Karachi was part of a double bombing in 1991 (I was next door at St Joseph’s School with my wife, who teaches there). And the attacks on the Sri Lanka cricket team, GHQ in Rawalpindi, the Police Academy in Lahore, the CID Centre in Karachi, the Mehran base. The attacks on saintly shrines. The slaughter of Shias in Quetta and Karachi and Ahmadis in Lahore. And now the attacks on Karachi and Peshawar Airports. The list is far from comprehensive.

[quote]Intelligence work begins at the ground level, with the local policeman being aware of what it going on in a neighbourhood[/quote]

Many years back, this author was in the UK on a business trip. Among various meetings held and establishments visited was a large security printing organisation, to explore a possible joint venture in Pakistan that did not, as it happens, materialise. At their sprawling establishment in Surrey, this company printed currency notes, stocks and bonds, postage stamps and cheque books for a number of countries. Obviously, the security arrangements for counting and weighing paper, inks and pigments between different stages of processing and storage were exacting. To my surprise, however, there was no body-search of the workers (or visitors, like us) when leaving the premises. I remarked on this and was told hundred-percent searches would require expensive staff and could be regarded as violating privacy.

“We are not too bothered about someone hooking off with a few pound notes,” I was told. “We write that off as wastage. What we are concerned about is any systematic, organised theft by a criminal gang. So, we prevent that.”

And how did they prevent that? “Oh, by good intelligence, of course. We have former Scotland Yard detectives working for us under cover. And it is their job to pick up the scent of any organised trail and cut it off.” And the system works? “It hasn’t failed us in over 120 years.”

So, there you have it. Where it comes to controlling crime (and terrorism is the most public of crimes), prevention is the name of the game and good intelligence is imperative. Let’s be clear. It’s not only heroic feats of soldiery, but good intelligence work, that is the first and most essential line of defence in the struggle against extremist terror.

As is endlessly trotted out, ours is the country that has suffered the most in this particular war, with more than 50,000 of our brothers, sisters and children slaughtered. In fact, the numbers are even higher, if one counts the casualties from the time we first thrust ourselves into the Afghan theatre to save the satanic regime of the usurper Ziaul Haq. This is not to mention the consequential tragedies of massive human dislocation and the many catastrophic effects of a war that has now gone on for over 36 years.

Yes, Pakistan has suffered many times more casualties than the US, Britain, Spain, Indonesia and India put together. But, having said that, one must also ask: could better intelligence not have helped prevent some of the attacks? Could many of the lives lost not have been saved? Did so many Pakistani civilians and soldiers really have to die?

Each and every day and again and again, massive quantities of high explosives and sophisticated weaponry are being procured, processed, assembled, mobilised and utilised in one terrorist act after another. But no intelligence or investigation has been able to penetrate the financial, logistical and human trails involved. Security lapses? You bet!

Now, I am not necessarily talking about the kind of high-level, hush-hush counter-intelligence scoops – such as discovering the hideout of Ayman al-Zwahiri – that are the stock-in-trade of NACTA, ISI, MI, etc. Intelligence work begins at the ground level, with the local ASI or police constable being aware of who is moving into a Mohalla or what the local lads are up to. That is the most essential level. The rest follows.

With the expected retaliatory terror counter-attacks, the issue of intelligence work at all levels becomes all the more immediate.