The Best Anti-Terror ideas

Collecting here some of the best anti-terror ideas ever from anywhere I find them:

Intelligence Dominance

Intelligence about terrorist movements or attacks is difficult to come by. It is difficult to mount effective anti-terror operations without accurate and actionable intelligence. The more diffuse the information is, the more resources are squandered while acting on it. Too diffuse, and it is only a hanging sword with little truly effective action possible. Local police and state police need to take a more proactive role in developing and continuously updating capabilities to collect effective intelligence, infiltrate terrorist groups or identify surveillance needs.

The role of people can’t be played down. Training that empowers forces to act confidently rooted in their responsibility and using their authority to make things happen, will encourage the human factor to be optimally functional in their work environment. This could involve optimizing cooperation between services, or even training to build initiative and creative thinking. It will also define work boundaries and needs and power clearly, so that misuse becomes less likely.

The idea is to make intelligence the pillar of the work – collecting as well as operations, so that resources are used to maximum result. This is going to require a change in priority where constantly evaluating, updating and revising how intelligence work is done (not just specific cases) needs to be in permanent residence at the top of the list.

Legalize drugs

This article by Harini Calamur describes the role of drugs in making funding easy for terrorism. Other versions of this thought also speak of the use of drugs in influencing potential recruits by getting them involved in “illegal” activities and thus averse to law enforcement. Legalizing drugs will allow alienated people to find safety within regular society and allow open access to treatment if they desire.

Legalizing drugs will allow licencing and better tracking of their flow as well as bring revenue to the country and allow shadowy financial links to be investigated more easily. Calamur suggested (separately) that the money from taxing drugs could be used on Public Health Policy including Addiction. Makes a lot of sense.

Cracking down on Piracy

Dharmesh Thakkar has commented that piracy of Bollywood music and films is a big source of terror funding too. RAND REPORT of 2009 reveals that 70 crore of piracy money annually gets diverted to terror outfits like LeT and HuJI. Bollywood is the biggest film factory in the world with 1800 films made last
year. Piracy accounts for 38 % loss of film revenues. He says that master prints are smuggled into pakistan and ripped on DVDs and copies are made to be distributed in the gulf region.

Fast Track Courts

In areas troubled by festering conflict and long standing cases pending justice, it is easier to influence communities against the state by pointing out the inaction of the system as a deliberate measure to suppress them. Cases moving faster toward justice will result in more sense of being protected by the country and discredit propaganda aimed at turning victims of crimes against the country.

Establishing better investigative infrastructure

Better forensics in particular come up as an important factor in evidence based investigations and justice, which will reduce need to target communities and prevent a sense of being victimized by the state.

Better intelligence collection and management

The government initiatives to improve intelligence sharing are still in limbo two years post 26/11. It is not as if we do not understand the need, but there seems to be an inability to make it happen, understand its gravity, or adequately design complex processes that might be needed. The obstacles to making this happen need to be diagnosed and addressed. There also need to be easy ways of offering intelligence and verifying, working with or otherwise integrating it with the system so that it adds to information centrally.

Engaging with religious leaders and institutions

Religious leaders and institutions can be used to help people find faith in the systems of the country and discourage illegal actions. They can also be monitored to identify people who may be using them as platform for other agendas and investigating if these agendas are functional for the country or not.

Lowering corruption

While corruption is easy, particularly in matters related with travel, communication, accommodation, etc. It will be difficult to track those who may misuse them. Identification and documents can be unnecessarily difficult for many legitimate people, while forgeries are easy to use for nefarious purposes. Systems of verification need to be less rigid on documents needed and stress more on physical and independent verification of information like addresses or names. The information of the people verifying them should be available in the records of the account to prevent corruption in passing checks.

Political integrity

This comprises of a collection of political improvements like:

  • Moving away from vote bank politics that allows the polarization to also be argued into anti-national sentiment in pockets of perceived minority if the claimed results are not visible.
  • Being able to have a common and stable stand on important matters of security.
  • Streamlining policies to minimize red tape and thus potential for loopholes that can be misused.
  • Minimizing red table in security related issues at the very minimum – allowing updates and upgrades to equipment to happen with lowest latency possible.
Please add any ideas you may have below. I will periodically update this article with more ideas I may find.
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20 thoughts on “The Best Anti-Terror ideas”

  1.  Implement workable Solutions to overcome Terrorism:

    It is almost impossible to take adequate and appropriate action in case of
    terror attacks. Prevention of terrorism is the only way out. This can be done
    only by India
    get immunized itself from terrorism, firstly from internal threats and then
    from external forces. To prevent internal terrorism it is necessary to take
    stern and decisive action against communal violence and disruptive tendencies
    within the country.  The set up of mass participation as envisaged above
    will be the ideal and may be the only solution to eliminate terrorism initiated
    inculcated and practiced by fundamentalists. As mentioned earlier, everyone
    should be trained on anti terrorism awareness programs and prevention
    methods.  There shall be a set up of Citizen Utility Boards as social
    watchdogs in every unit to check anti-national activities. Anti national and
    anti-secular activities shall be construed as treason and anyone indulging in
    it shall be treated as traitors.

    7.1.   Prevent terrorism from external forces.

    Find out and eliminate the root cause.India was the first country to
    recognize Palestine and right of Muslims to have their home land back.India
    also took the courage of joining the nations in severing diplomatic ties with
    Israel. India is one of the
    nations which condemned a unilateral decision of war in Iraq. India
    give moral and physical support for Afghanistan in it’s strive to bring in
    democracy.India continues to support Iran in its legitimate actions and entered
    into cooperation in many areas of trade and sharing of resources even at the
    risk of friendship with America. India  had contributed much
    for the development of many Gulf countries and Arab nations.

    Overall, Indians were treated as friends in every Islamic nation. It is
    necessary to ponder where we have gone wrong for a turn around of the situation
    causing the Islamic fundamentalist groups to take on disruptive activities in India.  It
    would not be surprising that fingers started pointing back to us; to our
    mis-deeds in past decade of India’s
    apathy of in-tolerance towards minority communities and tolerance of
    hyperactive religious extremists and their unholy alliance with power mongering
    politicians.  It is sad that no one including the so called secularist
    politicians is dare enough to stand up against it condemn such activities for
    the fear losing majority votes.

    It is time to realize that the most effective way to eliminate terrorism is
    perhaps the simplest of all other alternates we have in our vision now. Just
    what we need is to stand up and openly admit the mistakes we committed in the
    past; seek apology and mend our ways in future. Unless we change ourselves,
    terrorism in one form or other is likely to grow further and become very
    unmanageable.

  2.  Implement workable Solutions to overcome Terrorism:

    It is almost impossible to take adequate and appropriate action in case of
    terror attacks. Prevention of terrorism is the only way out. This can be done
    only by India
    get immunized itself from terrorism, firstly from internal threats and then
    from external forces. To prevent internal terrorism it is necessary to take
    stern and decisive action against communal violence and disruptive tendencies
    within the country.  The set up of mass participation as envisaged above
    will be the ideal and may be the only solution to eliminate terrorism initiated
    inculcated and practiced by fundamentalists. As mentioned earlier, everyone
    should be trained on anti terrorism awareness programs and prevention
    methods.  There shall be a set up of Citizen Utility Boards as social
    watchdogs in every unit to check anti-national activities. Anti national and
    anti-secular activities shall be construed as treason and anyone indulging in
    it shall be treated as traitors.

    7.1.   Prevent terrorism from external forces.

    Find out and eliminate the root cause.India was the first country to
    recognize Palestine and right of Muslims to have their home land back.India
    also took the courage of joining the nations in severing diplomatic ties with
    Israel. India is one of the
    nations which condemned a unilateral decision of war in Iraq. India
    give moral and physical support for Afghanistan in it’s strive to bring in
    democracy.India continues to support Iran in its legitimate actions and entered
    into cooperation in many areas of trade and sharing of resources even at the
    risk of friendship with America. India  had contributed much
    for the development of many Gulf countries and Arab nations.

    Overall, Indians were treated as friends in every Islamic nation. It is
    necessary to ponder where we have gone wrong for a turn around of the situation
    causing the Islamic fundamentalist groups to take on disruptive activities in India.  It
    would not be surprising that fingers started pointing back to us; to our
    mis-deeds in past decade of India’s
    apathy of in-tolerance towards minority communities and tolerance of
    hyperactive religious extremists and their unholy alliance with power mongering
    politicians.  It is sad that no one including the so called secularist
    politicians is dare enough to stand up against it condemn such activities for
    the fear losing majority votes.

    It is time to realize that the most effective way to eliminate terrorism is
    perhaps the simplest of all other alternates we have in our vision now. Just
    what we need is to stand up and openly admit the mistakes we committed in the
    past; seek apology and mend our ways in future. Unless we change ourselves,
    terrorism in one form or other is likely to grow further and become very
    unmanageable.

  3. Vidyut,

    It is a good effort. We do not often do root cause analysis. Therein lies the reason behind ineffectiveness of our public policy. Most of the times the leaders in the society are either unwilling or unable to address the root causes, and the evils continue unabated. 

    India has traditionally neglected to develop many critical states such as Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh etc. Many young people are unemployed and are easily swayed by anti national elements. By develop these areas and providing gainful employment to young people, we will automatically reduce the local support for terrorism. Good education also will make a lot of difference.

    -Ravi

  4. Vidyut,

    It is a good effort. We do not often do root cause analysis. Therein lies the reason behind ineffectiveness of our public policy. Most of the times the leaders in the society are either unwilling or unable to address the root causes, and the evils continue unabated. 

    India has traditionally neglected to develop many critical states such as Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh etc. Many young people are unemployed and are easily swayed by anti national elements. By develop these areas and providing gainful employment to young people, we will automatically reduce the local support for terrorism. Good education also will make a lot of difference.

    -Ravi

  5. Hi Vidyut.

    There is one major area which I think needs to be worked on explicitly. Recent strikes have shown that home-grown terror outfits are increasing in size and threat. These outfits organize and operate within our society. I am suggesting 2 ideas which can be implemented with immediate effect and can bring visible change.

    There are 2 major issues why any information related to terror activities might not be reported by people.
    1. Fear of harassment by police / terrorists. We need to provide a central place for providing information related to any terror activities noted by any person. The secrecy of this person’s identity can only be secure if it is handled at senior level through remote interaction (a toll free number with a central govt body). This will encourage people to report issues without fear. And this needs to be publicized.

    2. Random arrests by police of youth from minority community has to stop. This is one biggest factor why muslims are losing trust in the system. If you look at it closely, large number of such cases have come in light. This instills fear and feeling of discontent which works against providing information which they otherwise would want to. We really need to address this issue. I understand police works under heavy pressure but we really cannot afford to treat our citizens like this. If we gain trust of people within, I think half the battle will be won.

  6. Hi Vidyut.

    There is one major area which I think needs to be worked on explicitly. Recent strikes have shown that home-grown terror outfits are increasing in size and threat. These outfits organize and operate within our society. I am suggesting 2 ideas which can be implemented with immediate effect and can bring visible change.

    There are 2 major issues why any information related to terror activities might not be reported by people.
    1. Fear of harassment by police / terrorists. We need to provide a central place for providing information related to any terror activities noted by any person. The secrecy of this person’s identity can only be secure if it is handled at senior level through remote interaction (a toll free number with a central govt body). This will encourage people to report issues without fear. And this needs to be publicized.

    2. Random arrests by police of youth from minority community has to stop. This is one biggest factor why muslims are losing trust in the system. If you look at it closely, large number of such cases have come in light. This instills fear and feeling of discontent which works against providing information which they otherwise would want to. We really need to address this issue. I understand police works under heavy pressure but we really cannot afford to treat our citizens like this. If we gain trust of people within, I think half the battle will be won.

  7. I’m posting again because I’m really confused. I’m following your twitter feed as @RelativeNobody:twitter , and I’m really amazed how you can suggest that legalizing drugs will defeat terror.
    The drug problem is Afghanistan is not a new creation, it has been there since the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. Afghanistan used to be a major cultivator of fruits until the Soviets destroyed the irrigation infrastructure. What little remained was destroyed in the civil war that followed. Poppy took its place because its a low-maintenance crop, it requires little water to survive, and with no irrigation infrastructure in place, this is the only option that the Afghan farmer has. Drugs were one of the sources of money which funded the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. All the Afghan warlords, Hekmatyar, Haqqani, and even India’s darling, Ahmed Shah Massoud, actively participated in this business. Some of these warlords, like General Dostum and Ismael Khan are a part of the Afghan government today. These warlords are untouchable by the Americans, since they provide protection to the American assets in Afghanistan.

    Opium in itself is a far less addictive drug than its derivatives. The processing of opium takes place in the Central Asian Republics surrounding Afghanistan, and Pakistan. So while the US and ISAF soldiers have taken to destroying poppy crops in Afghanistan, little has been done to destroy the processing infrastructure in Takijistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, all of which share borders with Afghanistan. 

    So how do you end the drug problem? Destroy the processing infrastructure, rebuild the irrigation infrastructure, and offer incentives for converting to other crops. 

    Does the drug pipeline supply terror organizations? It does. So shutting of the drug pipeline ends this source of funding. But drugs aren’t the only source of the funds for terror organizations. The majority of the funds available to religious terrorists come from donations and governments. This money moves about via the hawala channel. This business needs to be clamped down upon immediately. Engaging in effective diplomacy is another important step that needs to be taken in order to deal with the terror threat.

    1. Thank you. Marking some ideas from your reply for including in the article… eddective diplomacy, hawala channel.

      About the legalizing drugs, if there is a legitimate channel, then the risk of smuggling becomes less acceptable. Terrorist groups may still try to use it, but they become easier to trace with some of the pipleline accessible openly. Also, middlemen become easier to trace.

      If something is illegal, it operates covertly in its entirety, making information as well as monitoring more difficult. Drug money being a channel for funding is feasible as long as the trail is not easily traced.

  8. I’m posting again because I’m really confused. I’m following your twitter feed as @RelativeNobody:twitter , and I’m really amazed how you can suggest that legalizing drugs will defeat terror.
    The drug problem is Afghanistan is not a new creation, it has been there since the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. Afghanistan used to be a major cultivator of fruits until the Soviets destroyed the irrigation infrastructure. What little remained was destroyed in the civil war that followed. Poppy took its place because its a low-maintenance crop, it requires little water to survive, and with no irrigation infrastructure in place, this is the only option that the Afghan farmer has. Drugs were one of the sources of money which funded the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. All the Afghan warlords, Hekmatyar, Haqqani, and even India’s darling, Ahmed Shah Massoud, actively participated in this business. Some of these warlords, like General Dostum and Ismael Khan are a part of the Afghan government today. These warlords are untouchable by the Americans, since they provide protection to the American assets in Afghanistan.

    Opium in itself is a far less addictive drug than its derivatives. The processing of opium takes place in the Central Asian Republics surrounding Afghanistan, and Pakistan. So while the US and ISAF soldiers have taken to destroying poppy crops in Afghanistan, little has been done to destroy the processing infrastructure in Takijistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, all of which share borders with Afghanistan. 

    So how do you end the drug problem? Destroy the processing infrastructure, rebuild the irrigation infrastructure, and offer incentives for converting to other crops. 

    Does the drug pipeline supply terror organizations? It does. So shutting of the drug pipeline ends this source of funding. But drugs aren’t the only source of the funds for terror organizations. The majority of the funds available to religious terrorists come from donations and governments. This money moves about via the hawala channel. This business needs to be clamped down upon immediately. Engaging in effective diplomacy is another important step that needs to be taken in order to deal with the terror threat.

    1. Thank you. Marking some ideas from your reply for including in the article… eddective diplomacy, hawala channel.

      About the legalizing drugs, if there is a legitimate channel, then the risk of smuggling becomes less acceptable. Terrorist groups may still try to use it, but they become easier to trace with some of the pipleline accessible openly. Also, middlemen become easier to trace.

      If something is illegal, it operates covertly in its entirety, making information as well as monitoring more difficult. Drug money being a channel for funding is feasible as long as the trail is not easily traced.

  9. I might be completely naive here, but what do you mean by legalizing drugs? The useful ones like morphine are legal anyway, even though they’re regulated.

    1. We are speaking of recreational drugs, which are currently illegal. They are a big source of funding for terror groups and provide them with an advantage of the entire chain of funding naturally existing under the radar.

  10. I might be completely naive here, but what do you mean by legalizing drugs? The useful ones like morphine are legal anyway, even though they’re regulated.

    1. We are speaking of recreational drugs, which are currently illegal. They are a big source of funding for terror groups and provide them with an advantage of the entire chain of funding naturally existing under the radar.

  11. rand terrorism report says film piracy is funding terrorism….
    bollywood
    is the biggest film factory in the world with 1800 films made last
    year…. piracy accounts for 38 % loss of film revenues ….
    pakistan
    is the epicentre for pirated films…. master prints are smuggled into
    pakistan and ripped on DVDs and copies are made to be distributed in the
    gulf region.

  12. rand terrorism report says film piracy is funding terrorism….
    bollywood
    is the biggest film factory in the world with 1800 films made last
    year…. piracy accounts for 38 % loss of film revenues ….
    pakistan
    is the epicentre for pirated films…. master prints are smuggled into
    pakistan and ripped on DVDs and copies are made to be distributed in the
    gulf region.

  13. also piracy is funding terrorism. bollywood music and film piracy controlled by dawood gang is major source of funds for terrorism. RAND REPORT of 2009 reveals that 70 crore of piracy money annually gets diverted to terror outfits like LeT and HuJI

  14. also piracy is funding terrorism. bollywood music and film piracy controlled by dawood gang is major source of funds for terrorism. RAND REPORT of 2009 reveals that 70 crore of piracy money annually gets diverted to terror outfits like LeT and HuJI

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