The catastrophic 26/11 miss: how the navy and coast guard missed the LeT vessel despite CIA tip-off

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January 19, 2015

The coastal shadow

The Coast Guard's interception of the mystery boat off Gujarat is rooted in its futile search for the Lashkar-e-Taiba vessel that left Mumbai terrorised on 26/11

Sandeep Unnithan   |    |   January 8, 2015 | UPDATED 08:37 IST

Illustration by SAURABH SINGH


A mystery trawler fishing for trouble on the maritime border between India and Pakistan. A four-member crew said to have set fire to their boat to avoid capture. Hints that the interception of the suspected trawler off Gujarat on December 31 had averted a Mumbai 26/11-style attack gained credence when Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar insisted on January 5 that terrorists were on board. Security forces, Parrikar said, had done "the right job at the right time".
Coast Guard officials say the incident validates their new post-26/11 posture on coastal security. Navy and Coast Guard patrols boarded over 45,000 vessels along the Indian coast last year looking for security threats. "We have now demonstrated our capability to carry out intelligence-based operations, to swiftly shadow and intercept targets on the fringes of our Exclusive Economic Zone," a Coast Guard official told India Today.
At the heart of this operation lies an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) from striking at Mumbai on November 26, 2008. As many as 26 alerts warned that multiple locations, including hotels, in India's financial capital were likely targets.

But one critical alert held the possibility of preventing the outrage while the 10 attackers were still far away from Mumbai, on the high seas.
On November 19, 2008, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) flashed a one-page alert to the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. Stamped 'Top Secret, Most Immediate', it was signed by a joint director of the IB. A Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intercept indicated a suspected LeT vessel at a precise latitude and longitude: 24 degrees 16'36" North and 67 degrees 0'04" East. "The boat was attempting to make an infiltration," the RAW's alert stated. It advised "necessary action to stop infiltration".
This was the LeT-owned fishing vessel Al-Husseini that would sail out four days later, on November 23, with its crew of 10 heavily armed terrorists.
A December 21, 2014 investigation by The New York Times, ProPublica and Frontline PBS cites classified documents leaked by NSA employee Edward Snowden to explain how British and American spy agencies had mounds of data on the LeT's preparation for the Mumbai attack but failed to connect the dots. They mentioned a November 18, 2008 CIA report to Indian counter-terror organisations on the location of a Pakistani vessel linked to a Lashkar threat against Mumbai.
This was most likely the origin of the IB's November 19 alert. Between November 19 and 23, the Coast Guard mounted Dornier air sorties and launched four patrol vessels and one hovercraft searching for this suspected LeT vessel off Gujarat. They boarded and searched 276 vessels along the west coast but evidently failed to notice the MV Kuber, an Indian trawler, which the terrorists had steered towards Mumbai to inflict mayhem. Despite repeated requests, the IB didn't give the Coast Guard further updates on the LeT vessel.
The Coast Guard action was in sharp contrast to the navy's indifference. Admiral Sureesh Mehta told a press conference on December 2, 2008, that the intelligence alerts the navy received were "not actionable". Naval intelligence officials say the position indicated on the IB alert was just 30 nautical miles off Karachi harbour and well within Pakistan's territorial waters. Crucially, the navy stamped 'NFA' or No Further Action on this alert and did not pass it on to the Mumbai-based Western Naval Command for further investigation. It was a monumental mistake because at that moment, over 30 warships of the western fleet were at sea for a 'Defence of Gujarat' exercise.
Six years later, a different story unfolded. A Coast Guard Dornier patrol aircraft took off from Porbandar airport within two hours of receiving an alert from the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) at 7.30 a.m. on December 31. The alert mentioned the 'entity' out at sea in contact with the Pakistani army and Maritime Security Agency. Four other Dornier patrol aircraft ran relay sorties out of Porbandar airport at 12 noon, 4 p.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., ensuring one aircraft was always tailing the boat. A Coast Guard patrol vessel, the CGS Rajratan, closed in on the boat around 10.30 p.m. It began a frantic chase as it pursued the 20-footlong Rajratan, asking them to stop on the loud-hailer, all the while keeping a 600-metre safe distance from it. The chase ended at 3 a.m. when a fire engulfed the trawler-Coast Guard officials say the crew set fire to the boat themselves. At least two crew members are believed to have jumped overboard and drowned. Two others died in the blaze that ended when the vessel sank at 4.30 a.m. on December 2, nearly 365 km west of Porbandar.
The identity of the vessel is yet to be established. A Ministry of Defence statement on January 2 initially called it a fishing boat from Keti Bunder near Karachi that was "planning some illicit transaction in the Arabian Sea" indicating the possibility of a smuggling operation. NTRO intercepts showed the crew speaking with contacts ashore about "goods being delivered" and "payments being made into bank accounts", but no description of the cargo.
At least one other boat in the company of this mystery vessel is believed to have turned back towards Pakistan, well before the Coast Guard Dorniers arrived on the scene.
The biggest enigma in the episode remains the fire. Why would the crew choose a fiery death over surrender? Parrikar sees this as evidence for classifying them as terrorists. "A normal boat even carrying drugs can throw away the drugs and surrender. No one will kill himself unless you are motivated to do that," he said.
Coast Guard officials point at the October 1999 incident of the Japanese cargo ship MV Alondra Rainbow that was boarded by Indonesian pirates and sailed into the Arabian Sea. The pirates set fire to the ship in an attempt to scuttle it when Coast Guard ships closed in.
"The crew of this trawler were quite possibly trying to destroy incriminating evidence onboard and the fire likely went out of control," says Prabhakaran Paleri, former director-general, Coast Guard. The wreckage of the boat lies on the seabed nearly 2,000 metres beneath, preventing the recovery of any conclusive evidence.
The issue did, however, provide political parties with plenty of ammunition. Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar questioned the government's terror attack theory, leading BJP President Amit Shah to accuse them of "batting for Pakistan". Here, the angle the Congress completely missed, as one Coast Guard official put it, was that the entire post-26/11 coastal vigil-the inter-agency coordination, the doubling of the size of the Coast Guard-was a UPA legacy. A political brownie point they completely missed.
Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pakistan-lashkar-e-taiba-vessel-coast-guard-intercept-off-gujarat-coast/1/412203.html

David Headley's Danish plot and the Charlie Hebdo attack

Charlie Hebdo attack echoes David Headley's Danish plot

The attack on the newspaper offices, retaliation for its publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in 2005, began as an LeT plot in November 2008.

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 |   2-minute read |   08-01-2015

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

 @sandeepunnithan

In January 2009, US national David Coleman Headley, 49, travelled from Chicago to Copenhagen, Denmark. Among the places the Pakistani-American extensively video filmed, was the Danish capital’s most scenic square, Kongens Nytorv or Kings Square. Headley, born Daood Gilani, had more on his mind than the equestrian statues and the frozen ice skating rinks he saw there. The ISI-LeT mole paid extensive attention to the building and the area around the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten near the French embassy. Headley was no ordinary tourist. Just months before, he had meticulously filmed all the locations that were attacked by ten boat-borne Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists.

The attacks of November 26, 2008 had killed 166 persons and put the Pakistani terror group in the international spotlight. The attack on the newspaper offices, retaliation for its publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in 2005, began as an LeT plot in November 2008. But they wanted to delay it after feeling the heat on 26/11. This is when Osama bin Laden’s group stepped in. Al Qaeda had already signalled their hatred for the Danes with a car bomb attack. On June 2, 2008, a suicide car bomb had exploded outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad killing six persons. Now, they planned a macabre attack on the Danish newspaper itself. Terrorists would storm the building, behead newspaper employees and toss their heads out on the street for effect. But for that, Headley would have to guide them around the target.

In February 2009, Headley travelled with Abdur Rahman Pasha, a retired Pakistan army major turned terrorist, to Waziristan. Here they met the one-eyed Ilyas Kashmiri, a former Pakistan special forces officer now the al Qaeda’s number three. The trio discussed ways to carry out the Danish terror plot. Kashmiri wanted this to be a suicide attack like Mumbai 26/11. In the al Qaeda tradition, wanted the attackers to prepare martyrdom videos before they set out.

In May 2009, the trio met again. Kashmiri passed on the details of a European contact who would provide the money, weapons and attackers for the attack. In July and August that year, Headley again travelled to Copenhagen and prepared a total of 13 surveillance videos of the newspaper office. On October 3, 2009, he was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport even as he was boarding a flight to Pakistan carrying the surveillance videos to Kashmiri. The Danish terror plot was foiled and in January 23, Headley was sentenced to 35 years in prison. His deadly idea seems to have tragically inspired the attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

#David Headley, #Paris Shooting, #Charlie Hebdo

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DailyO.in or the India Today Group. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.

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SANDEEP UNNITHAN@sandeepunnithan

The writer is Deputy Editor, India Today.

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Book Review/ charge of the NSG

Charge of the NSG A balanced and incisive account of 26/11 terror attacks, Black Tornado brings to focus the ill-preparedness and confusion that prevailed among the authorities By Ghazala WahabA very unexpected (certainly unintentional, on the part of the author) sentiment gripped me as I relived the horror all Indians collectively went through for nearly three days starting 26 November 2008 while reading Sandeep Unnithan’s book Black Tornado. The sentiment was awe. Not for the brave (but under-provided) men of the National Security Guards (NSG) whom the author pays a fulsome tribute through this book. Not for the much-hailed spirit of Mumbai which refuses to say die. But for the 10 enemy combatants who sailed and walked into Indian territory undetected, killed people randomly at several locations and held their own for over three days. If at any stage their faith shook, their morale quivered or their courage wavered, they did not let it come in the way of completing the task they were given. And except for two who lost direction, made mistakes with one getting himself arrested, the other eight were steadfast in their resolve. Such was their fearlessness, the level of their training and motivation that they held not just Mumbai (a place they had never been to before) but the entire India to ransom. I wrestled for a while with this insidious sentiment, debating the appropriateness of what amounts to glorifying those who brutally massacred innocent people; but the truth is when the Indian military is also coming around to talk of and prepare for irregular war, then calling these 10 men mere terrorists is indulging in convenient semantics. They were highly trained combatants, who did not lose their nerves till the end. Raising questions about their cause is again foolish, because aren’t soldiers trained never to ask questions, only to follow orders? Didn’t Alfred Tennyson write in his legendary ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’: ‘Theirs not to make reply/ Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die’. According to Unnithan’s research, an amphibious terrorist attack like Mumbai’s had two (both partial failures) precedents. The first one was in 1975 when eight Palestinian terrorists landed on a Tel Aviv beach. The terrorists lost their moorings upon landing and the operation failed. The second attack was also carried out by a Palestinian group in 1977. This time 11 terrorists from the Fatah group of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) landed on the Mediterranean coast of Israel and once again lost their way to the hotel they were supposed to go to and take hostages. In the random fire-fight on the street, some 50km short of Tel Aviv, 37 Israelis were killed before the terrorists were shot down by the police. Apparently, the ISI had planned a similar attack on Mumbai by gun and grenade-wielding local Muslim youth in 1993 as Phase II of the bomb blasts following the communal carnage (in the aftermath of the Babri demolition) a few months ago. The weapons for the attack had landed in Mumbai along with the RDX which was used in the blasts. But the local boys who were to carry out these attacks developed cold feet. They abandoned the weapons and the plan. This aborted attempt and the earlier Palestinian ones held both lessons and inspiration for the Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba (LeT) which planned and successfully executed the November 26 attacks, with support from the ISI. Instead of relying on the locals, LeT decided to employ its own people and to overcome the limitation of unfamiliar territory, it carried out detailed reconnaissance of the targets over nearly a year, as the subsequent interrogation of David Headley revealed. Unnithan builds this background with chilling details and as said before, it brings out the meticulousness and the professionalism of planning, preparation and execution. What is the point in writing paeans to the Mumbai terrorists and invoking Tennyson, one may well ask. The point is very simple: Unnithan’s book is yet another grim reminder about how far we have come commemorating anniversaries and how little we have learnt. And most importantly, what a formidable enemy we are pitted against. As late as 5 December 2014, when Pakistani irregulars breached multiple security cordons, including the much vaulted Anti Infiltration Obstacle System (AIOS) to attack Indian Army’s artillery camp in Uri, all senior army officers authorised to speak with the media, which in this case were the northern army commander and the Srinagar-based 15 Corps commander, repeated the oft-repeated line: ‘there is a clear Pakistani hand behind this attack.’ Thereafter, they proceeded to give evidence to the media about the Pakistani hand: food packets, ammunition etc, which all bore Pakistani imprint. We did the same six years ago after the 26/11 attacks. And we have been doing this quite diligently after each attack. Another thing that we have been doing equally efficiently is creating obstacles after obstacles for the infiltrators/ terrorists/ irregulars to cross before attacking us. So, we are doing our best to delay him from attacking us; in the bargain we have forgotten how to deter him. This siege mentality (laying siege to our own self) has become so pervasive that the navy chief at his annual press conference on 3 December 2014 rued the fact that one cannot build a fence on the sea! For sparking this line of thinking alone, Black Tornado is an important piece of contemporary history writing. Unnithan is a polite writer. So, while his book is peppered with off-hand comments about the general lack of preparedness and the blunting of the edge that the NSG was supposed to have, he refrains from any harsh indictments, either of the Mumbai police, the marine commandoes (MARCOS) or the NSG. The let-downs on India’s part were rampant confusion, poor equipment and lack of communication. For the first few hours of the attack, despite indiscriminate firing, the administration, including the police thought it was a gang-war. Subsequently, even when the realisation dawned, nobody knew what ought to be done. The police withdrew from the scene; the army unit of 2 Grenadier, including the ghatak platoon, present in south Mumbai thought that they would be called, and kept waiting in readiness; the MARCOS who were summoned were told to rescue the hostages and not engage the terrorists, because there was no intelligence about their numbers or exact location. The refrain of the state administration was: NSG has to be called, no matter how long it took. So, effectively, everyone waited for the NSG to come while the rampage continued. And NSG took time; a lot of time to reach. While lack of communication and intelligence was the running theme during the entire operation, at Nariman House, these twin lacunae led to tragic consequences. NSG’s mandate was to rescue the hostages, just as other teams were doing at the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels. The NSG laboured over the operation, spending time over its planning and execution to ensure that they rescued as many hostages as possible. Before mounting the operation at Nariman House, they evacuated the residents from the neighbouring buildings even as another team painstakingly staked out the terrorists. Realising that there was no way to storm the building without the terrorists retaliating, they planned an insertion by the helicopter onto the roof of the building. This not only took time, but life too. NSG lost another of its men here, Havildar Gajendra Singh, Major Unnikrishnan having lost his life during the Taj Mahal operation. All this while nobody had bothered to inform the NSG that there were no hostages left to be rescued at Nariman House, despite the intercepts of the telephone conversation between the holed-up terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan! Probably for the ease of writing (and reading as well), Unnithan has divided the narration into three clean segments: the three operations. While reading about one operation in a chronological manner saves the readers the hassle of going back and forth from the scene of action, it creates the confusion about the timelines. Also, it lends insularity to all the three operations, as if each were completely independent of the other. Having said that, in Black Tornado, Unnithan’s heart is with the NSG whom he writes about with fondness and a twinge of sadness. He builds up back stories of some of the commandos who played a stellar role in breaching the three sieges of Mumbai to further humanise them, and coaxing empathy out of the readers. Having spoken to a number of survivors who lived through that carnage, Unnithan also brings out their stories with a mix of anticipation and raciness. The mindless blood-letting is disturbing, the fear of the huddled hostages palpable, but the running thought throughout the book is how unprepared we were, despite repeated intelligence inputs over a period of two years. This was compounded by the thoughtless bravado of some among our uniformed class. At one point during the NSG operation at Taj Palace hotel, GOC-in-C, army’s southern command, Lt Gen. Noble Thamburaj (who had absolutely nothing to do with the operation, given that it was being run by the NSG) arrived at the hotel lobby with his wife and personal staff. He asked to be briefed by the NSG, officer in charge of the operation at the hotel. He left the hotel giving a bombastic piece of instruction: Finish it quickly. Outside the hotel, he walked into the parked media and issued a statement claiming that the operation would be over soon. Like a truthful reporter, Unnithan dutifully records all these incidents without editorialising, leaving the readers to judge. But one wishes that in his epilogue at least he should have been a bit more hard-hitting. He rues the shortfall of equipment and inadequacies of equipment, but ignores the complete absence of policy-making, which is the key to India’s vulnerability to repeated terrorist violence. But perhaps, he just wanted to keep his focus on the courage of the NSG. Sadly, in India we continue to rely solely on the courage of young men and officers, in the absence of policies, training and end-state. BLACK TORNADO 26/11: The Three Sieges of Mumbai Sandeep Unnithan Harper Collins, Pg 216, Rs 299

There's a new terror threat in Kashmir

Uri terrorists were as well armed as NSG commandos.

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POLITICS

 |   2-minute read |   08-12-2014

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

 @sandeepunnithan

Two items caught my attention from a neat line of assault rifles, ammunition and food packets, the army recovered from six dead Lashkar Taiba terrorists in Uri on December 5: a pair of sawn-off shotguns. Barrels chopped off to make them lethal in confined spaces, stocks removed for easy concealment. Why shotguns, one would ask, when the terrorists had far more effective AK-47s? I sent the picture to a friend in the special forces. His short response startled me. "Shotguns for opening locked/ latched doors. Indicates change in training/ equipping". It then struck me where I had seen shotguns being used. At the National Security Guard (NSG) training area in Manesar where commandos blasted away door hinges and locks to burst into rooms during hostage-rescue training. A 12-gauge shotgun pressed against door fittings delivers a concentrated burst of pellets that will shatter door fittings in a way that an assault rifle cannot.

I then recalled the eerie CCTV footage of the four terrorists at the Taj, kicking at hotel doors to capture hostages. Over a two hundred guests were saved because they barricaded themselves inside The Chambers.

Except these terrorists at Uri were not carrying the shotguns to rescue hostages. Most likely, to capture them. At the Uri camp, they were fortunately neutralised before they actually got a chance to use the "door openers" or the 25 shot shells. But they did use one or more light anti-tank rockets which they carried, to destroy the guard bunkers of the army unit in Uri; military-style ready to eat meals specially packed to withstand a march through three feet of snow and temperatures of eight degrees below zero where they crossed the Line of Control. They had two night vision binoculars and four radio sets. In short, everything an Indian army special forces team would carry into a mission.

As five terrorists hit the camp from two directions at 3 am, a sixth terrorist was positioned on the road outside. He ambushed a Quick Reaction Team Gypsy carrying Lt Colonel Sankalp Kumar. The jeep overturned killing the officer and a soldier. It would be another few hours before the six terrorists could be neutralised, fittingly, by an army special forces unit.

The 15 Corps Commander Lt General Subrata Saha’s December 7 statement in Srinagar that “the terrorists were highly trained, like special forces, to carry out the attacks” marks an ominous rise in the profile of cross-border terrorists. Terrorists who, like the ten who struck at Mumbai on November 26, 2008 are not just well motivated, but equipped, trained and tasked like the commandos they are pitted against.

#Kashmir, #Terror attack, #Uri

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DailyO.in or the India Today Group. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.

Writer

SANDEEP UNNITHAN@sandeepunnithan

The writer is Deputy Editor, India Today.

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Special Report

December 15, 2014

China's submarine noose around India

Submarine game: How China is using undersea vessels to project power in India's neighbourhood

Sandeep Unnithan  December 4, 2014 | UPDATED 10:53 IST

 

Click here to EnlargeFour decades after the 1971 India-Pakistan war, India's intelligence agencies are once again scanning a stretch of coastline in southern Bangladesh. Cox's Bazar was rocketed and strafed by INS Vikrant's fighter aircraft to cut off the enemy's retreat into the Bay of Bengal. Today, 43 years later, it sets the stage for China's dramatic entry into India's eastern seaboard.
Assessments from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and naval intelligence say the Bangladesh Navy will station two ex-Chinese Ming-class submarines on bases that are less than 1,000 km away from Visakhapatnam, home to the Indian Navy's nuclear powered submarine fleet and the Defence Research and Development Organisation's (DRDO) missile test ranges at Balasore.
The developments on India's Arabian Sea flank are equally ominous. Intelligence officials say that over the next decade, China will help Pakistan field submarines with the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles from sea. Submarines, analysts say, are China's instrument of choice to not just challenge the Indian Navy's strategy of sea domination but also to undermine India's second-strike capability. These developments have been accompanied by a flurry of Chinese submarine appearances in the Indian Ocean this year-Beijing sent two nuclear submarines and a conventional submarine. Two of them made port calls in Colombo, triggering concern in New Delhi.
Toehold in the Bay
"No one interested in geopolitics can afford to ignore the Bay of Bengal any longer," geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan wrote in a seminal essay in Stratfor in November. "This is the newold centre of the world, joining the two demographic immensities of the Indian subcontinent and East Asia." For India, the Bay of Bengal is the launch pad for a 'Look East' policy that has received renewed attention under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Indian Navy is enhancing force levels at its Visakhapatnam naval base even as it has begun building a secret base for a proposed fleet of nuclearpowered submarines at Rambilli, south of Visakhapatnam. Equipped with the 700-km range B05 submarine launched missiles, the Arihant-class submarines will have to patrol closer to the shores of a potential adversary. But equipped with the 3,500-km range K-4 missiles currently being developed by the DRDO, the Arihant and her sister submarines can cover both Pakistan and China with nuclear-tipped missiles from within the Bay of Bengal, providing the "robust second-strike capability" as stated in India's nuclear doctrine.
Inputs suggest Bangladesh has acquired land and fenced locations at the Kutubdia Channel near Cox's Bazar and the Rabnabad Channel near West Bengal. Kutubdia, intelligence officials say, is likely to feature enclosed concrete 'pens' to hide submarines. The possibility of Chinese submarines using this base provides a fresh equation to the strategic calculus.
"Our submarines become susceptible to tracking from the time they leave harbour," says veteran submariner and former Southern Naval Command chief vice-admiral K.N. Sushil (retired). "But a far more worrying strategy is China's ability to be able to threaten our assured second-strike capability. That effectively tips the deterrence balance."
Chinese Han-class submarine Changzheng 2 in Colombo.West Coast Worries
Of greater long-term worry to Indian analysts is a strategic submarine project China finalised with Pakistan in 2010. Intelligence sources say this three-part programme will transform the Pakistan Navy into a strategic force capable of launching a sea-based nuclear weapons strike. Pakistan will build two types of submarines with Chinese assistance: the Project S-26 and Project S-30. The vessels are to be built at the Submarine Rebuild Complex (SRC) facility being developed at Ormara, west of Karachi. Intelligence sources believe the S-30 submarines are based on the Chinese Qing class submarines-3,000-tonne conventional submarines which can launch three 1,500-km range nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from its conning tower. A Very Low Frequency (VLF) station at Turbat, in southern Balochistan, will communicate with these submerged strategic submarines. The Project S-26 and S-30 submarines will augment Pakistan's fleet of five French-built submarines, enhance their ability to challenge the Indian Navy's aircraft carrier battle groups and carry a stealthy nuclear deterrent. "Submarines are highly effective force multipliers because they tie down large numbers of naval forces," says a senior naval official.

Steel sharks on silk route
Speaking in Indonesia's Parliament last October, Chinese President Xi Jinping articulated a "21st century Maritime Silk Road". His vision calls for investments in port facilities across south and south-east Asia to complement a north Asian route. This year, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) put steel into Xi's vision. In February, a Shangclass nuclear-powered attack submarine made China's first declared deployment in the Indian Ocean. This was followed by port calls made by a Han-class submarine in Colombo to coincide with a state visit by President Xi and a visit by a Song-class conventional submarine in November.
China's heightened activity in the Indian Ocean region is underscored by investments in a new port in Gwadar at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, a container facility in Chittagong and Kyaukpyu port in Myanmar. "Such developments have sharpened China's geopolitical rivalry with India, which enjoys an immense geographic advantage in the Indian Ocean," says Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research. "Aspects related to their (Chinese) deployment in international waters are part of securing their maritime interests," Navy chief Admiral Robin K. Dhowan told journalists in Delhi on December 3.
China's new military posture reflects the 'Malacca dilemma' faced by the world's largest oil importer. Close to 80 per cent of China's crude oil imports of 11 million barrels per day, the life blood of its economy, is shipped through the narrow Malacca Strait. Any disruption to this could threaten its economic growth. "Hence, China's economic interests in the Indian Ocean have now taken on an overt military dimension," says an intelligence official.
Naval intelligence officials who correctly predicted that China would use anti-piracy patrols as a pretext for deployments in the Indian Ocean feel vindicated. Their prognosis of this game of 'weiqi'-a game of Chinese chess which uses encirclement, is gloomy. "A full-scale Chinese deployment in the Indian Ocean is inevitable," an admiral told India Today.
"You can only watch it and prepare yourself for it." The preparations include acquisitions of long-range maritime patrol aircraft such as the US-made P8-I Poseidon, investment in anti-submarine warfare and inducting new submarines and helicopters to fill up critical deficiencies in force levels.

Measured Response
China's submarine thrust into South Asia coincides with Narendra Modi's renewed emphasis on securing India's perimeter. "India's response has to be nuanced, a mixture of coercion and largesse," says Jayadeva Ranade, a former RAW official and member of the National Security Advisory Board. While the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government scoffed at encirclement theories, the new Government is clearly concerned over the creeping Chinese presence.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval voiced India's concerns at the 'Galle Dialogue' in Sri Lanka on December 1. He cited a 1971 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution mooted by Sri Lanka calling on the "great powers to halt further escalation and expansion of their military presence in the Indian Ocean".
India's defence diplomacy has been severely limited by its inability to offer military hardware to offset the Chinese presence. Over half the military hardware of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are of Chinese origin. In 2008, India called off a plan to transfer the INS Vela to the Myanmar Navy when it discovered the vintage Russian-built submarine was past its service life.
When plans to transfer hardware materialise, they are too feeble to make a difference-a solitary helicopter such as the one gifted to Nepal by Modi in November and a small ex-Indian naval patrol craft gifted to Seychelles recently. Often, there is a demand for capabilities where India itself is deficient. Bangladeshi officials stumped Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials last year when they asked India, and not China, to provide submarines. The Indian Navy is down to just 13 aging conventional submarines. The MEA suggested Bangladesh buy Russian submarines instead. Their efforts are yet to bear fruit. It is a gap China willingly fills.
- Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/china-submarine-noose-using-undersea-vessels-to-project-power-in-india/1/405191.html

Cdr Khan's revenge

1971 war: Commander Khan's revenge

The death of the Vikrant draws the curtain on the 1971 war’s most spectacular chase.

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POLITICS

 |   5-minute read |   01-12-2014

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

 @sandeepunnithan

As I write this, contract labourers in a Mumbai scrapyard, are slicing away with blow torches at the Indian navy’s greatest warship, the Vikrant. The slow death of the Vikrant rings down the curtains in an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors that began this month, 43 years ago.

On November 14, 1971, the PNS Ghazi, a US-built submarine loaned to the Pakistan Navy, slipped out of Karachi harbour.

War with India was imminent. The Ghazi, helmed by commander Zafar Muhammad Khan, would be in place to fire the opening salvo. Where that salvo would be fired, was a secret known only to commander Khan and a handful of his comrades on shore. Khan was a well regarded submariner. He had been executive officer of Pakistan’s first new-build submarine, the PNS Hangor commissioned in France two years earlier by commander Ahmed Tasnim. Khan’s executive officer, Lt Cdr Pervaiz Hameed, had served as the Hangor’s navigating officer. There were 92 crew on board.

The Ghazi’s destination was not Mumbai, home to the Indian navy’s powerful Western fleet, which she sailed past on November 16. Her knife-life hull glided around peninsular India and Sri Lanka before she entered the Bay of Bengal. She traversed the 2200 nautical miles with ease. The Diablo had a 11,000 nautical mile (17,000 km) range, being specifically designed to transit the Pacific Ocean.

Locating the target for her torpedoes and mines, was the only issue. On November 23, the Ghazi entered a patrol area codenamed Zone Mike: Madras.

The Ghazi was on a blood hunt. Her quarry was the pride of the Indian navy: its sole aircraft carrier the INS Vikrant.

Just where on the east coast the Vikrant was, the Pakistan navy was not sure. But they knew why she was there: a crack in the carrier’s boiler had reduced the Vikrant’s speed to a limp, barely enough to allow her to launch her deadly warplanes— British-built Sea Hawk fighter jets and French Alize anti-submarine aircraft. The Vikrant was now deployed on India’s east coast where it was thought she would be safe from the Pakistani submarines.

The Ghazi prowled off Chennai for three days before a signal from commodore Submarines, Karachi on November 26 electrified commander Khan. “Occupy Zone Victor with all dispatch. Intelligence indicates carrier in port.”

It was the message Khan had been waiting for. Zone Victor was Visakhapatnam.

The Ghazi arrived here on November 27. Commander Khan hunched over the notched crosshairs of his periscope, scanned the coast for a week. There was no sign of the Vikrant’s distinctive 600-feet long silhouette. He then began laying his trap. A series of two-metre-long cylindrical containers — deadly "influence mines" on the muddy seabed at the mouth of Vizag harbour. Each mine was an aluminum container with a half-ton of high explosive. When the Vikrant or any other warship passed overhead, its magnetic field would trigger the mine off. The resulting column of water would leap out of the sea and shatter the warship.

On the night of December 3, the people of Visakhapatnam were awoken by a thunderous explosion. The blast came from out at sea but the shockwave rattled windows ashore. It could not be explained. At daybreak, fishing boats reported life jackets and other debris. Divers onboard a naval patrol craft sent out to investigate, reported a Pakistani submarine sitting on the seabed. The forward section of the submarine had been blown out. When the divers cut open the hatch, bloated bodies of six crewmen floated out. Divers who entered the conning tower recovered maps, charts and signals that precisely detailed the Ghazi’s final voyage. It was clear what had happened. The Ghazi had suffered a catastrophic internal explosion. One of its deadly mines had either been jammed in a tube and gone off, or she had accidentally triggered off one of the mines she had laid. The warrior had fallen on its own sword even before the war had begun.

The Vikrant, meanwhile, steamed out of her hiding place in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over 1000 miles away. On the morning of December 6, three days after the Ghazi blew itself up, the Vikrant launched the first of several air strikes against coastal installations in East Pakistan. The carrier prevented the seaborne escape of the Pakistan armed forces garrison.

The Indian navy manufactured an elaborate story to back the claim that its warship, the INS Rajput, had sunk the Ghazi. The navy’s official history states that the elderly World War II era destroyer, laid up for decommissioning at Vizag, had rolled down depth-charges which had killed the submarine. In any event, the navy did not allow a detailed investigation into the Ghazi’s sinking and refused offers from the United States and the Soviet Union to raise the vessel.

Exactly a decade ago, I was lucky to have become one of the few civilians to have actually seen the Ghazi.

I was on a Gemini inflatable off the coast of Vizag peering into a colour monitor. Over 30 metres below me, a naval diver stood on the wreck of the submarine and pointed a camera, recording what he saw. Over three decades underwater had stripped away the submarine’s outer pressure hull, its barnacle encrusted surface virtually indistinguishable from the seabed. The expedition which could not have been possible without the assistance of the Indian navy helped me to scrape together evidence to solve one of the biggest naval mysteries of recent times. Pictures, sonar images and testimonies of the divers suggested the Ghazi sank after an internal explosion.

The expedition came five years after I ran a successful campaign at the Indian Express which briefly threw it a lifeline to the Vikrant. Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-BJP government gave the historic warship a Rs 6.5 crore grant. But the grant extended the warship’s life only for a decade.

Successive state governments lacked the enthusiasm or the vision to pursue the project. And even the Indian navy, which tended the warship for nearly two decades after her 1996 retirement, washed their hands off.

CommentIn a few weeks, the Vikrant will be atomised. Her role in the 1971 war will be consigned to history books, her valuable steel will be melted into bars, the anonymous building blocks of multi-storeyed buildings and bridges of a new India. The tragic commander Khan remains on board the Ghazi, on "eternal patrol" off Vizag. He has finally had his revenge.

#Indian Navy, #The Vikrant, #1971 War

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