Hot Pursuit of Terrorists – Why India will never do an Operation Geronimo

Operation Geronimo or the now famous "kill Osama" initiative of the US in the early hours of 2nd May 2011 is in all aspects a mind-blowing and unique operation. Shall not bore you on the details as it has already been reported ad nauseum in terms of its planning, execution and the aftermath.

What concerns me is the sudden cry from several quarters in India to do something similar to bring to "vigilante” justice the perpetrators of Mumbai blasts of '93 (12/3) or of the 26/11 attacks. Some Defence Department types also exhibited the usual mindless bravado that Indian forces, if allowed, can certainly do as good a job as the Americans. “All we need is political will and the go ahead from our political bosses”, thundered these armchair Generals and Colonels. Some even added that our political leadership is not assertive or strong-willed enough to bring forth such a brave and patriotic decision! And there is Pakistan immediately reacting to all this saying such misplaced activism on the part of India will have “dire consequences”. It went on to add that the present Pak PM is not after all a great fan of the “no first use” principle, blah blah blah. Read, “we will not be shy to use a nuclear bomb against India if it tries to indulge in hot pursuit of terrorist suspects inside Pak”. Not to be undone, this side then countered by saying, “before the plane lands back in Pak after bombing a target in India, we would have annihilated Pakistan, virtually wiping it off the face of the earth”. Wow! If bravado and saber-rattling somehow magically translated into growth, India and Pakistan would be the most developed Nations on this earth……..

Let us come back to reality for a moment. I can sense at least 3 reasons why India would never be able to do an Operation Geronimo, now or any time in the next decade…..

First…….. Indian intelligence agencies have to precisely locate the target on a rugged terrain of about 800 000 sq km that is Pakistan!! For this, we need a huge collaboration with Intelligence agencies, agents, informers on the ground on the other side for several years and collect painstaking data, collate it, sift through and eliminate misleading outliers, analyse it with great rigor and then take the right decisions. Forget it!!! Now now now….. am not for a moment doubting the competence of our Intelligence agencies in doing all this and matching the Americans in skills but recent facts speak otherwise. Imagine for a moment that our guys knew how to do all this. We would have had Dawood Ibrahim by now or at least known his whereabouts precisely rather than guessing each time. We would have nailed Velupillai Prabhakaran of the LTTE within a few years of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, we would have found and eliminated Sandalwood smuggler, Mr. Veerappan within a few months and not let him roam free for decades. Or more importantly, we would have located Mr. Osama bin Laden himself in Abbottabad well before the Americans did and informed them and collected a big time brownie point from America and its people. Did you know that President Obama called a few select World leaders to personally inform them of Osama’s death before he announced it to the World but sadly, Mr. Manmohan Singh was not one of them. Aa ha!!!

Second, the Government’s decision-making machinery is too bureaucratic and too slow. In a situation such as this, we would need one person who would have the “balls” (pardon my French here, pls) for calling the shots decisively, enjoying the complete trust of the people and being able to give the command to the all the agencies - Intelligence, Military leadership, and the Bureaucracy – and have them all listen and follow. Its my sense that we do not have today such a person at the top and this Nation probably had only one in recent history and that was Mrs. Indira Gandhi - none before and none after! Thus, even if we had all the capabilities to nail a target, we would end up taking days if not weeks and months to act on a tip-off by having so many of those EGOM, Cabinet and other meetings. And by then, media would get a wind of it through some insider, who would sell this information to them for a few crores. The media would then actually discuss it on National TV at prime time, even calling it “exclusive”. Aa ha agan!!!

Third, we as a people lack the necessary instinct to go for the kill and finish off a prize fight. Look at Saina Nehwal going all the way to the finals and tripping on a No. 3 after beating the No. 1 in the quarters!, Look at our Hockey team’s record and the countless finals we have lost. Our “World champion” cricket team’s record in Finals of tournaments hasn’t been exactly stellar either. Look at the infamous terrorist, Afzal Guru and how long he has been cooling his heels to be executed. Add Ajmal Kasab to the list now. And in how many Indian films we see the hero not comprehensively finishing off the villain but only handing him over to the police or simply letting him get away no matter how murderous the villain may have been – from Gabbar Singh of Sholay, or the villainous hero in Red Rose to the terrorist, Liaqat Khan getting safe passage in Roja to even a villain sparing the hero of certain death in the recent movie, Raavan. We simply are too tender-hearted and tolerant to kill – be it sport or real life. Hmmmm……..

Thus, in spite of all the saber-rattling, bravado and tough talk, am quite sure India will never do an Operation Geronimo. It is just not in our character. Having said that, I would say, thank God as that is last thing I would want India to do. This is because, something like this would only further antagonize our smaller neighbours and we would be seen as a even more of a bully. We would further weaken the moderate voices inside Pakistan that stand for dialogue and sustained peace and also give fillip to splinter groups to intensify their guerrilla warfare against India and take on innocent unarmed targets. Let’s just do it our way – gently and not too fast.

Terrorism in this World is not the result of one or two madmen taking law into their own hands. It is a manifestation of the deep hurt that a fairly large group of people feel for being left out in the cold. Let’s go kill the cause and not the effect …………