CHANGE IN INDIA'S DEFENCE DOCTRINE CALLED FOR

We are aiming at the wrong guys. The Kasabs are mere pawns. This battle needs to be carried into deeper fronts.

Against the masterminds who plan 26/11 attacks, the financiers who fund them, the criminals who facilitate them and the handlers who train and control the pawns.

Terrorist leadership is a demanding profession. Operational leaders have to be merciless, courageous, highly mobile, hardy, charismatic and have an uncanny warrior instinct. The ruthless nature of their calling needs all these competencies not only to become a leader but just to stay alive. Loss of hit men is irrelevant--as a matter of fact, if it is glamorous enough, such encounters serve as a recruitment drive like 26/11 proved to be. Loss of leaders is a different matter altogether.

The very nature of terrorism limits the number of good leaders.

First, leadership in terrorist organizations emerges by a probabilistic process of natural selection and elimination.

Second, high needs of secrecy and mobility keep the tacit knowledge of the leaders in limited pools--usually inside their heads. Finally, the siloed structure of terrorist outfits prevents the transfer of one body of followers to another leader if their own is killed. Which is why it makes a lot of strategic sense to take the battle into enemy ground and start targeting their leaders, planners, financiers and handlers.

Hot pursuit, reprisal strikes and deep penetration raids are phrases bandied about, especially after we get a bloody nose.

But beyond token sabre-rattling or posturing, we have rarely managed to stage a convincing retaliatory strike against any degree of provocation. This seeming impotence has often been attributed to our lack of capability--which is incorrect.
Indian security forces, if unleashed and adequately supported, could create capability to storm the very gates of hell. On the contrary, what India needs to change is its doctrine of dealing with enemies.

If nations don't defend themselves forcefully, they will become the playground of other countries' power struggles. The fact that Pakistan has little control over large parts of its territory is obvious. The Pakistani high command has to make appropriate noises about dominance, but the reality is that US drones and special forces have a free run in Pakistan's territory and more tellingly, even its army headquarters-possibly the best defended location in Pakistan--is not safe.

These should be clear signals that India needs to take matters into its own hands rather than keep whimpering about Pakistan's inaction against its terrorist strongholds.

I am not suggesting hot pursuit as an alternative to diplomacy; instead, it is a strong complementary strategy.

Given our virtual encirclement by hostile forces, India does not have the luxury to endure another 26/11. The recent resolute action initiated against Naxalites clearly demonstrates that the nation has had enough. It is time to unleash the Indian wrath on the masterminds who sit in the safety of foreign shores and believe that Indians don't strike back.

(Raghu Raman is chief executive of corporate risk consulting firm Mahindra Special Services Group that advises companies and organizations on threat assessments and risk mitigation strategies).