When people stop terror

When Capt Smit Machchhar, the Indian pilot of the Flydubai plane foiled a terrorist plot and saved hundreds of passengers, it reminded me of so many people from ordinary jobs and backgrounds who rise to the occasion every day to keep the country safe.

In recent years, Indian state police forces working with central agencies have dismantled scores of terror sleeper cells, many of them belonging to a group loosely tethered to al Qaeda. Each bust made headlines. What the headlines never showed was the machinery humming beneath. Government agencies were only part of that machinery. The rest was an entire society's resolve to tear terrorism out by its roots.

Here is how that works in the real world, told as a parable inspired by real events.

It began with a phone call. A state police chief was informed by an old batchmate, now serving in the country's premier signals intelligence agency. In 2020, an intercepted conversation between a West Asian country and a Sahel nation carried a chilling message. al Qaeda, through its associates, planned to test a new technique in the state. The timing would coincide with Navratri, one of the holiest periods of the year. No names. No places. No dates.

The police chief switched on every intelligence network under his command. Then he did something unusual. He called on the chief of a central agency whose mandate did not even cover domestic terrorism, and asked for help. The answer was a resounding yes. “Aap ek kadam aaye hain, toh hum dow kadam aayenge (You have taken one step to come to us, we will come two steps to meet the challenge).

The Agency sent some of its finest operations officers, professionals who had spent decades studying, penetrating and recruiting within al Qaeda's world. They came to train, guide and stand beside a special strike team of the state police. Nobody asked for credit. Nobody asked whose turf it was.

Within weeks, a hastily assembled unit began turning into one of the most professional outfits in the state. Yet the questions before it were brutal. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Navratri was only weeks away, and the team knew almost nothing about the people planning to strike. They were hunting for one particular straw in a field full of haystacks. Every source came back dry. 

Then an officer remembered a man. Years earlier, the man had been a valuable informant until careless handling by his then handler exposed him. His own community shunned him for a time. He had gone cold, and he had every reason to stay that way. Officers from the Agency and the unit went to see him together. He was bitter and wanted nothing to do with them. Who could blame him?

They offered him neither money nor threats. They spoke to his faith. They spoke of the Ummah, and of the disgrace an attack would bring upon an entire community that had no part in it. He was a deeply religious man and a proud Indian. He could not look away. Within days, word came. He had been invited to a closed-door dawat, a private gathering, where a foreign national would preside.

It was the first ray of light. One meeting led to another, and then another, until the source had become a trusted core member of the module. The agency brought in its technology to capture every word. Raw intelligence began to pour in. It revealed a sophisticated enemy. The cell communicated over platforms protected by military grade encryption. Here, the Agency's global reach proved decisive, prying open al Qaeda's digital fortress. Behind its walls lay a network stretching far beyond the state, across the length and breadth of the entire country.

As the picture sharpened and the threat turned imminent, the Agency and several state police forces moved together in one sweeping operation. The entire network was rounded up. The cases went to the nation's premier terrorism investigation agency, which secured convictions in court.

The festival lights stayed on. Families celebrated through the nine nights, never knowing how close the darkness had come. Then came the victory after the victory.

The investigation showed that the group had exploited a web of private qawmi madrassas as recruiting grounds, operating bases and cover. The police chief now faced a choice. He could treat an entire community as a suspect, or he could make it a partner. He chose partnership. He laid the hard evidence before community elders and religious leaders and let the facts speak.

They answered with remarkable resolve. Working alongside the police chief, they ensured that every madrassa in the state, private or otherwise, was registered with the government along with details of its teachers and their antecedents, just like any other educational institution. Poorly run institutions were brought under professional governance or shut down. A fringe had tried to hijack their places of learning. The community reclaimed them back. No raid could have achieved such an outcome which trust and partnership did.

Look closely at this parable and the lesson is unmistakable. Lasting counter terrorism needs more than muscle and intelligence. It rests on human relationships, joint action, community partnership, trust and uncompromising professionalism. A bond between two batchmates lit the spark. The Agency brought technology, tradecraft and global reach. The state police brought local intelligence and deep community ties. The prosecuting agency and the courts delivered justice under the rule of law. A wounded informant put his country above his grievance. And a community chose to reform its own institutions rather than let a fringe define it.

Remove any single link from this and the chain breaks. That is the Whole of Society approach. Security becomes a shared enterprise between the state and its citizens, between agencies that work as one, and between communities that refuse to let extremists speak in their name.

Terrorists bet on our divisions. They count on agencies guarding their turf, on communities retreating into suspicion, on citizens believing that security is someone else's job. They gamble that a society full of fissures and fault lines will crack under propaganda. This story shows how badly that bet can fail. When a police chief picks up the phone, when an agency steps beyond its comfort zone, when a betrayed informant chooses to return for a larger cause, when elders open their institutions to scrutiny, the fault lines do not widen, they close.

India will keep facing those who wish it harm us. Its strongest shield are the ordinary citizens and dedicated professionals who decide, again and again, that the nation's peace is their own business. The terrorist needs only one gap to succeed. A society that stands together gives him no such portal.

The author is a strategic consulting and national security expert, and a governing body member of SHARE (Society to Harmonise Aspirations for Responsible Engagement).