ON THE LOOK OUT: Post-Swaminarain attack, police commandos patrol Bhopal's Birla temple

After two decades of organised violence in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, India has learned to live with terror. But last week, the country was rudely greeted by a new face of terror as jehadis mowed down innocents, including women and infants, at the Swaminarain temple in Gandhinagar. Coming just seven months after the Godhra massacre, the latest killings make it amply clear that jehadis have decided to open fronts against soft targets in states other than Kashmir. So what can India do?

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OTHER STORIES RELATED TO COVER Expanding Targets of Terror

The key lies in finding out about such plots before they are executed, taking ruthless steps to crack down on terrorists and disrupting their organisations within the country. That calls for extraordinary intelligence capability. "Terrorism is a global phenomenon and India is doing all it can to protect the soft targets," says A.S. Dulat, former raw chief and adviser to the PMO on Kashmir. "But it's not easy to get specific intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks. Otherwise 9/11 would not have happened."

COUNTER STRATEGY INTELLIGENCE: Improve coordination between the intelligence agencies and state police and increase surveillance of madarsas in border areas. DIPLOMACY: Ask US to put additional pressure on Islamabad to dismantle the entire terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan. COVERT OPERATIONS: Use special forces to strike at terrorist camps in Pakistan. WAR: Last resort after all options are exhausted.

CHECK MATE: Black Cats practise strategies to counter terrorist and hostage situations at the National Security Guard training centre at Manesar in Haryana

Shortly after the 1999 Kargil war, the NDA Government woke up to the urgent need for what is termed "actionable intelligence". The Group of Ministers set up to examine the Kargil Review Committee report suggested setting up of nodal cells that would collect, collate and disseminate intelligence in order to prevent any threat to national security. That saw the setting up of the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) and the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) late last year whose sole focus is to tackle terrorism. The two groups are headed by Intelligence Bureau Special Director A.K. Doval, who reports to the home secretary and the IB director. The JTFI's role is to provide "action-oriented" inputs to the states, particularly those bordering Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Since the JTFI's formation, Deputy Prime Minister and Union Home Minister L.K. Advani has held meetings with state chief ministers to emphasise the need of a nodal agency that caters to their intelligence needs on the terrorism front. MAC has a counter-intelligence role, where senior officials of the IB, the raw and the Defence Intelligence Agency share information on global terrorist activities.

India at present has the National Security Guard as a counter-terrorist force with additional operational role in anti-hijacking, hostage situations and protection of select VIPs. However, in normal circumstances, anti-terrorist operations are carried out by special branches or anti-terrorist cells of the state police on the basis of the IB or local intelligence reports. The real problem lies in greater co-ordination between the Central agencies and their state counterparts to act with alacrity and clarity on the information being gathered.

K.P.S. Gill, former Punjab DGP and security adviser to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, says while it is impossible for the state to guard everything, coordination between the Centre and the state police is vital as the terrorist network is spread all over the country. "During the militancy days in Punjab, the IB and the state police had an informal coordination committee so that actionable intelligence could be exchanged. We had even posted officers in Kashmir with the help of the local state police to gather Punjab-oriented intelligence," he says. Gill believes it is not necessary that terrorists who planned the temple attack be based in Gujarat. "They could be based in Kashmir or even Pakistan," he says. Gill, however, is not in favour of setting up a dedicated anti-terrorism force as it would not be cost effective and perhaps not work in India as law and order is a state subject.

In the wake of the Akshardham killings, the spectre of threats to softer targets is worrying security agencies. Senior government officials admit that with Navratras approaching and devotees thronging temples all over the country, the threat of a suicide bomber will be difficult to counter. "It is impossible to screen thousands of people who visit places of worship during festivals," says a Delhi Police official.

At a meeting held at the BJP headquarters in Delhi after the attack that was attended by Advani and other senior ministers, it was felt that the spread of unregistered madarsas in India was a cause of acute concern. The issue was raised by Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi. But it was agreed that any move to regulate madarsas would require the cooperation of state governments. Another suggestion was to give immediate consideration to the proposal to prepare a national register of citizens. The option of action against terrorist camps in Pakistan was not referred to specifically, but many believed the time had come to make it the only item on the agenda.

Their reluctance was understandable. The larger picture has never been easy to collate. There is a clear understanding that the major internal security threat lies in the form of ideological indoctrination and weapons training imparted in the terror camps in Pakistan. But any move to strike these camps would mean exercising the military option which, experts believe, should be used only after all other means have been exhausted.

Among the more viable options for India is to use the international coalition against terrorism, spearheaded by the US, to exert more pressure on Pakistan to stop supporting jehadi groups hostile to India and take steps to thwart them. After a lull, the US these days is more receptive to India's call. When US Secretary of State Colin Powell called up External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha to express his condolences on the Swaminarain carnage on September 25, he made it a point to mention that he found the terrorists' effort to escalate communal tensions in the midst of the Jammu and Kashmir polls rather intriguing. In his meeting with the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for South-Asia, Christina B. Rocca, on the same day, Sinha conveyed that the "fidayeen" nature of the attack, the violence perpetrated and the weapons used pointed towards the involvement of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which are known to have the backing of the Pakistani Government.

Sinha's basic message to the Americans was that simply designating Pakistan-based jehadi groups as terrorist outfits wasn't enough and the US should push Islamabad into dismantling the entire terrorist infrastructure. India has no options but to keep the pressure on Pakistan, particularly when its President, Pervez Musharraf, continues to make hostile statements. At the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Musharraf played the Gujarat card and his permanent representative to UN, Munir Akram, even claimed there were 3,000 communal incidents in India this year. This was seen by Delhi as a deliberate attempt to fan the communal situation in India and exploit the sentiments of the minority community in Gujarat.

The connection of Pakistan-based jehadis in the temple attack is evident from the fact that the terrorists used Arges grenades, which were made in Pakistan during the early 1970s in collaboration with an Austrian company. Arges grenades were also used in the 1993 Bombay blasts and the December 13 attack on Parliament. Says former IB director Arun Bhagat: "For India, the period of pacificity is gone. It cannot wait indefinitely for Pakistan to change. Islamabad's approach and determination to tackle terrorism is ambiguous and smacks of double standards."

In the circumstances, India may have little choice but to examine the military option in order to force Pakistan to mend its ways. Before this, it can start covert counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistan. It is tricky game but one designed to send Pakistan the message that if it continued to bleed the country, India could pay it back in the same coin. But given the current climate against exporting or supporting terror against other countries, it may backfire.

For a full-scale military operation, India will have to increase its force levels in comparison to Pakistan. It will also have to develop its capability that allows pin-pointed strikes and covert operations inside the enemy territory. This could even mean sending special forces across the Line of Control and obliterating terrorist training camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. In short, a declaration of war. It is always an option that India can exercise but it must be done only when all other avenues are ineffective because both countries are now nuclear capable.