Govt unveils country’s first counter-terrorism policy — Prahaar

Background

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has officially launched ‘Prahaar’, India’s first comprehensive national counter-terrorism policy. This landmark policy is built on the core principles of zero tolerance towards terrorism, intelligence-led prevention, and a coordinated response to extremist violence. Its primary objective is to prevent terrorists, their financiers, and supporters from accessing funds, weapons, and safe havens, both within India and abroad.

Key Points of the Prahaar Policy

The Prahaar policy outlines a multi-layered strategy structured around seven key pillars:

1. Prevention: Proactive measures to stop terror activities before they occur.
2. Responses: Effective and swift actions to counter terror incidents.
3. Aggregating Internal Capacities: Strengthening India's domestic capabilities in intelligence, security, and law enforcement.
4. Human Rights and Rule-of-Law Based Processes: Ensuring all counter-terrorism efforts adhere to human rights standards and legal frameworks.
5. Countering Conditions that Enable Terrorism: Addressing factors like radicalisation that contribute to the spread of terrorism.
6. Alignment with Global Efforts and Shaping International Efforts: Collaborating with international partners and influencing global counter-terrorism strategies.
7. Recovery and Resilience through a Whole-of-Society Approach: Building societal strength to recover from terror attacks and involving all sections of society in counter-terrorism efforts.

India's Stance on Terrorism:

• The policy reaffirms India’s principled approach of zero tolerance against terrorism, stating that there can be no justification for violence.
• It explicitly states that India does not associate terrorism with any religion, ethnicity, or civilisation.
• While not naming specific countries, the policy notes that "a few countries in the region have sometimes used terrorism as an instrument of state policy."

Threat Landscape Identified:

• Sponsored Terrorism: India has long been affected by terrorism sponsored from across its borders, with Jihadi terror outfits and their frontal organisations continuously planning, coordinating, facilitating, and executing attacks within the country.
• Global Terrorist Groups: India remains a target for global terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which attempt to incite violence through sleeper cells.
• Operational Modus Operandi:
  • Terrorists operating from foreign soil hatch conspiracies, using advanced technologies like drones to facilitate terror-related activities and attacks, particularly in regions like Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
  • There is an increasing nexus between terrorist groups and organised criminal networks for logistics and recruitment.
  • Social media platforms and instant messaging applications are extensively used for propaganda, communication, funding, and guiding terror attacks.

Technological Challenges and Counter-Measures:

• Anonymity: Technological advancements like encryption, the dark web, and crypto wallets provide terrorists with a "cloak of invisibility," making it difficult to track their funds and operations.
• Material Threats: Disrupting and intercepting terrorist efforts to access and use CBRNED (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosive, digital) material remains a significant challenge for counter-terrorism agencies.
• Emerging Threats: The misuse of drones and robotics by state and non-state actors for lethal purposes, along with cyberattacks by criminal hackers and nation states targeting India, are growing concerns.
• Internet Misuse: The internet is widely misused for communication, recruitment, and glorification of jihad. Intelligence and counter-terror agencies are actively engaged in proactive disruption of such cyber activities, online networks, propaganda, and recruitment efforts.

Community Engagement:

• The policy highlights the government's commitment to a whole-of-society approach, involving a team of doctors, psychologists, lawyers, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), religious, and community leaders. Their role is to sensitise and reintegrate affected communities, addressing the root causes and consequences of terrorism.

Exam Relevance

• GS Paper: GS Paper 3 (Internal Security; Challenges to Internal Security through communication networks, role of media and social networking sites in internal security challenges, basics of cyber security, money-laundering and its prevention, security challenges and their management in border areas – linkages of organized crime with terrorism).

• Likely Question Angles:

  • Discuss the significance and key features of ‘Prahaar’ as India's first comprehensive counter-terrorism policy.
  • Analyze the evolving nature of terrorist threats in India, particularly highlighting the role of technology and cross-border sponsorship, and how Prahaar addresses these.
  • Examine India's zero tolerance approach to terrorism and its stance on not associating terrorism with any religion or ethnicity.
  • Evaluate the importance of a whole-of-society approach and international cooperation in combating terrorism, as outlined in Prahaar.
  • Critically assess the challenges posed by the misuse of emerging technologies (e.g., drones, crypto, dark web) by terrorist groups and the strategies adopted by India to counter them.
  • Discuss the nexus between organised crime and terrorism and its implications for India's internal security.