02-12-2008, 11:28 AM
<b>From the above story some importants things.</b>
<b>The MAC story</b>
Plan to create the Multi Agency Centre, an overall hub for Indiaâs counter-terrorism efforts, were first proposed by a high-level committee set up to study intelligence reforms in the wake of the Kargil war. Chaired by former Research and Analysis Wing chief Girish Saxena, the committee included now-National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan among its members, and carried out the first full appraisal of Indiaâs intelligence services since independence.
<b>MAC, along with state-level subsidiaries called SMACs, was to have run and operated a national counter-terrorism database, identified operational priorities, and built the capabilities needed to execute them. In turn, MAC was to have been fed by State-level police-intelligence Joint Task Forces. Ground-level intelligence work would have been carried out by Inter-State Intelligence Support Teams reporting to MAC.</b>
Mr. Saxenaâs proposals were accepted without modification in 2003 by a Group of Ministers which studied internal security issues. Five years on, though, MAC is staffed only by a skeleton crew of Intelligence Bureau personnel. While MAC does operate a database, powered by bare-bones computer systems designed in house, it has no real-time links to state police forces. Just five SMACs are in existence, one in each metropolitan centre, again run by a skeleton staff.
Given that the 140 jobs would involve an annual expenditure of less than Rs. 3 crore a year â a tiny fraction of Indiaâs intelligence budget â the delay is hard to understand. Finance Ministry officials say the problem is built into the language of the Group of Ministers recommendations. Since the Group mandated that MAC pool the resources of several separate services, the Finance Ministry believes MAC should draw its personnel from their existing staff.
But the intelligence and defence services have pointed out that government service rules mandate that personnel can only be assigned to MAC on deputation once jobs are created for them to be posted to. The Indian Army, in particular, has been hostile to proposals for informally assigning personnel to MAC outside of the structured deputation system, saying it would create serious problems of discipline and accountability.
Interestingly, several expensive projects cleared by the Group of Ministers â among them the fencing of Indiaâs borders, as well as the setting up of a Disaster Management Committee, a Financial Intelligence Unit and a Serious Fraud Office â are up and running, even as MAC languishes. âItâs all a question of which bureaucrat is pushing what project,â one Ministry of Home Affairs official noted, ânot what needs doing first.â
<b>The global experience</b>
<b>Even as MAC has been choked, similar bodies have sprung up elsewhere in the world âinformed by the ideas of intelligence experts whose proposals have been ignored at home.</b> In the wake of the Al-Qaeda strikes in the United States of America on September 11, 2001, intelligence services across the world reviewed the weaknesses that had allowed terrorists to conduct an operation of unprecedented scale and sophistication without detection.
Officials in the United Kingdom, in particular, drew heavily on the MAC idea. Although its domestic intelligence service, MI5, had extensive experience of combating groups like the Irish Republican Army, its experts understood that the transnational reach and technological resources of Islamist organisations like the Al-Qaeda required a new degree of coordination between different services, each of which focussed on separate parts of the picture.
Under a broad government counter-terrorism strategy code-named CONTEST, reforms were instituted to pursue four distinct aims: the prevention of terrorist acts, the pursuit of perpetrators, the protection of targets, and preparation for future threats. MI5 assessments fed the work of the Joint Intelligence Council, which served as the governmentâs focal point for intelligence appraisal, and were made available to key politicians.
<b>In June, 2003, the United Kingdom established the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, or JTACâan umbrella organisation that closely resembles Indiaâs stillborn MAC.</b> Officials on assignment to JTAC helped the United Kingdomâs police special branches to develop regional intelligence cells, which work to turn information provided by the covert services into on-ground action against terrorist groups.
Similar reforms were implemented in the United States of America, after it emerged that failures of communication and appraisal facilitated the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda strikes. One major change was the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, with an express counter-terrorism intelligence charterâa one-stop assignation of political and bureaucratic responsibility for securing its citizens that India still lacks.
<b>Among the reforms that were put in place to improve intelligence coordination was the creation of a new intelligence top-job: the Director of National Intelligence. A National Counter-Terrorism Centre, which closely resembles MAC in its conception</b>, was set up to facilitate appraisal of intelligence flows from multiple agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigations consolidated many of its counter-terrorism functions into a National Security Service.
In a June, 2007, article for the journal Homeland Security, analyst James Burch noted that the âdomestic intelligence challenge in the United States is similar to Indiaâs in terms of organisation and the scope of the problem.â Despite the reforms, the FBI experiences problems âwith coordinating with multiple state and local efforts,â Mr. Burch pointed out, adding that âthere is no clear linkage or relationship between the NCTC and the numerous state and local fusion centres.â
<b>Still, countries across the world have realised that some coordination, even if it isnât perfect, is better than none at all. Six years since the Saxena Committee submitted its findings to the government, and almost five years after a Group of Ministers on Internal Security accepted its recommendations, India is still waiting for action. For hundreds of citizens, action â if and when it does come â will have come too late.</b>
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<b>If intel agencies from other parts of the world are using Indian ideas for setting up new agencies for better co-ordination and action against terrorists what is the problem with this UPA gov led congress. Cant it do it's basic duty of safeguarding the life and property of it's citizens?</b>
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<b>Ulfa-Huji bid to hijack plane foiled</b>
Tue, Feb 12 10:40 AM
Guwahati: Two days after the Assam police foiled a plan to hijack planes flying out of Guwahati's Lokopriyo Gopinath International Airport at Guwahati, they arrested United Liberation Front of Assam sympathiser Lachit Bordoloi on Monday.
The police arrested Bordoloi on the basis of a confession by Manoj Tamuly, who was trained by Afghan militants to hijack planes.
Bordoloi was also a member of the People's Consultative Group that negotiated for Ulfa with the Centre. Police have seized a laptop and two CDs from Bordoloi's house in Guwahati.
"Whatever he has said, it has to be corroborated along with other evidence and then we will come to know the depth of the design," said government spokesperson Himanto Bishwasharma.
<b>Tamuly had confessed before media that the plan was to hijack the plane to Thimpu and from there, a new set of ULFA men would take the aircraft to Rawalpindi.</b>
The police also arrested an Air Deccan employee, Sumon Dutta, who they claimed was helping Ulfa militants along with Bordoloi.
<b>In the past, there have been inputs from CISF, which raised suspicions about Dutta, sources said.</b>
Earlier, on Monday morning, the police had arrested a journalist, Pradip Gogoi, and a lawyer on similar charges.
<b>Sources in the police claim the plan to hijack planes was hatched by Ulfa and the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami. They added that the militants wanted to free some Huji and Ulfa militants lodged in jail.</b>
<b>The MAC story</b>
Plan to create the Multi Agency Centre, an overall hub for Indiaâs counter-terrorism efforts, were first proposed by a high-level committee set up to study intelligence reforms in the wake of the Kargil war. Chaired by former Research and Analysis Wing chief Girish Saxena, the committee included now-National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan among its members, and carried out the first full appraisal of Indiaâs intelligence services since independence.
<b>MAC, along with state-level subsidiaries called SMACs, was to have run and operated a national counter-terrorism database, identified operational priorities, and built the capabilities needed to execute them. In turn, MAC was to have been fed by State-level police-intelligence Joint Task Forces. Ground-level intelligence work would have been carried out by Inter-State Intelligence Support Teams reporting to MAC.</b>
Mr. Saxenaâs proposals were accepted without modification in 2003 by a Group of Ministers which studied internal security issues. Five years on, though, MAC is staffed only by a skeleton crew of Intelligence Bureau personnel. While MAC does operate a database, powered by bare-bones computer systems designed in house, it has no real-time links to state police forces. Just five SMACs are in existence, one in each metropolitan centre, again run by a skeleton staff.
Given that the 140 jobs would involve an annual expenditure of less than Rs. 3 crore a year â a tiny fraction of Indiaâs intelligence budget â the delay is hard to understand. Finance Ministry officials say the problem is built into the language of the Group of Ministers recommendations. Since the Group mandated that MAC pool the resources of several separate services, the Finance Ministry believes MAC should draw its personnel from their existing staff.
But the intelligence and defence services have pointed out that government service rules mandate that personnel can only be assigned to MAC on deputation once jobs are created for them to be posted to. The Indian Army, in particular, has been hostile to proposals for informally assigning personnel to MAC outside of the structured deputation system, saying it would create serious problems of discipline and accountability.
Interestingly, several expensive projects cleared by the Group of Ministers â among them the fencing of Indiaâs borders, as well as the setting up of a Disaster Management Committee, a Financial Intelligence Unit and a Serious Fraud Office â are up and running, even as MAC languishes. âItâs all a question of which bureaucrat is pushing what project,â one Ministry of Home Affairs official noted, ânot what needs doing first.â
<b>The global experience</b>
<b>Even as MAC has been choked, similar bodies have sprung up elsewhere in the world âinformed by the ideas of intelligence experts whose proposals have been ignored at home.</b> In the wake of the Al-Qaeda strikes in the United States of America on September 11, 2001, intelligence services across the world reviewed the weaknesses that had allowed terrorists to conduct an operation of unprecedented scale and sophistication without detection.
Officials in the United Kingdom, in particular, drew heavily on the MAC idea. Although its domestic intelligence service, MI5, had extensive experience of combating groups like the Irish Republican Army, its experts understood that the transnational reach and technological resources of Islamist organisations like the Al-Qaeda required a new degree of coordination between different services, each of which focussed on separate parts of the picture.
Under a broad government counter-terrorism strategy code-named CONTEST, reforms were instituted to pursue four distinct aims: the prevention of terrorist acts, the pursuit of perpetrators, the protection of targets, and preparation for future threats. MI5 assessments fed the work of the Joint Intelligence Council, which served as the governmentâs focal point for intelligence appraisal, and were made available to key politicians.
<b>In June, 2003, the United Kingdom established the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, or JTACâan umbrella organisation that closely resembles Indiaâs stillborn MAC.</b> Officials on assignment to JTAC helped the United Kingdomâs police special branches to develop regional intelligence cells, which work to turn information provided by the covert services into on-ground action against terrorist groups.
Similar reforms were implemented in the United States of America, after it emerged that failures of communication and appraisal facilitated the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda strikes. One major change was the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, with an express counter-terrorism intelligence charterâa one-stop assignation of political and bureaucratic responsibility for securing its citizens that India still lacks.
<b>Among the reforms that were put in place to improve intelligence coordination was the creation of a new intelligence top-job: the Director of National Intelligence. A National Counter-Terrorism Centre, which closely resembles MAC in its conception</b>, was set up to facilitate appraisal of intelligence flows from multiple agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigations consolidated many of its counter-terrorism functions into a National Security Service.
In a June, 2007, article for the journal Homeland Security, analyst James Burch noted that the âdomestic intelligence challenge in the United States is similar to Indiaâs in terms of organisation and the scope of the problem.â Despite the reforms, the FBI experiences problems âwith coordinating with multiple state and local efforts,â Mr. Burch pointed out, adding that âthere is no clear linkage or relationship between the NCTC and the numerous state and local fusion centres.â
<b>Still, countries across the world have realised that some coordination, even if it isnât perfect, is better than none at all. Six years since the Saxena Committee submitted its findings to the government, and almost five years after a Group of Ministers on Internal Security accepted its recommendations, India is still waiting for action. For hundreds of citizens, action â if and when it does come â will have come too late.</b>
------------------------------
<b>If intel agencies from other parts of the world are using Indian ideas for setting up new agencies for better co-ordination and action against terrorists what is the problem with this UPA gov led congress. Cant it do it's basic duty of safeguarding the life and property of it's citizens?</b>
-------------------------------
<b>Ulfa-Huji bid to hijack plane foiled</b>
Tue, Feb 12 10:40 AM
Guwahati: Two days after the Assam police foiled a plan to hijack planes flying out of Guwahati's Lokopriyo Gopinath International Airport at Guwahati, they arrested United Liberation Front of Assam sympathiser Lachit Bordoloi on Monday.
The police arrested Bordoloi on the basis of a confession by Manoj Tamuly, who was trained by Afghan militants to hijack planes.
Bordoloi was also a member of the People's Consultative Group that negotiated for Ulfa with the Centre. Police have seized a laptop and two CDs from Bordoloi's house in Guwahati.
"Whatever he has said, it has to be corroborated along with other evidence and then we will come to know the depth of the design," said government spokesperson Himanto Bishwasharma.
<b>Tamuly had confessed before media that the plan was to hijack the plane to Thimpu and from there, a new set of ULFA men would take the aircraft to Rawalpindi.</b>
The police also arrested an Air Deccan employee, Sumon Dutta, who they claimed was helping Ulfa militants along with Bordoloi.
<b>In the past, there have been inputs from CISF, which raised suspicions about Dutta, sources said.</b>
Earlier, on Monday morning, the police had arrested a journalist, Pradip Gogoi, and a lawyer on similar charges.
<b>Sources in the police claim the plan to hijack planes was hatched by Ulfa and the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami. They added that the militants wanted to free some Huji and Ulfa militants lodged in jail.</b>