Aman Malik and Elizabeth Roche
Live Mint
June 17, 2014
ITBP had renewed its request for being allowed to use heavier weapons after the attack on the India consulate in Herat.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), a paramilitary force under the home ministry, wants the government to allow it to raise the number of personnel it can deploy in Indian diplomatic offices in Afghanistan.
The ITBP also wants the government to allow it to deploy weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades across all of India’s five diplomatic outposts in Afghanistan—the Indian embassy in Kabul and four consulates in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar-e-Sharif, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on condition of anonymity. The ITBP typically carries small arms and light weapons in Afghanistan.
Although the ITBP was raised in 1962 to man India’s border with Tibet, it provides security to several Indian diplomatic missions abroad. The ITBP had routed such requests to the foreign ministry through the home ministry on “several occasions” after the 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, in which several people, including an Indian Foreign Service officer and an Indian Army brigadier, were killed, this person said. He claimed that the foreign ministry had repeatedly turned down such requests. The foreign ministry declined to comment.
The concerned home ministry official declined to comment, while the ministry spokesperson could not be reached despite repeated attempts. The ITBP had renewed its request for being allowed to use heavier weapons after the attack on the India consulate in Herat, said the unnamed person cited earlier. On 23 May, heavily armed insurgents attacked the Indian consulate in Herat in western Afghanistan, which was repulsed by the ITBP and Afghan security personnel. Since 2008, there have been at least three other attacks on Indian offices in Afghanistan. Last year, an attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad claimed the lives of nine Afghan civilians.
Three suicide bombers involved in the assault were also killed. In October 2009, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 17 people and injured scores of people in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. In July 2008, five people including two Indian diplomats and two ITBP personnel were killed when a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives to the Indian embassy gates. The attack also killed an Afghan driver employed by the embassy, besides scores of people waiting outside the embassy’s visa office entrance near the main gate.
“The ITBP got lucky this time (in Herat). The attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other superior weapons,” the official said. To be sure, the foreign ministry allowed the ITBP to raise its force strength by 79 last year. The force has a sanctioned strength of 250-255 personnel, out of which about 200 people are on active duty, this person said. He, however, said the force requires at least 100 more to beef up defences.
The ITBP has also requested that it is allowed to install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to monitor movements outside the Indian offices, but had been denied permission due to local cultural sensitivities. “The local women objected to the use of CCTV cameras,” this person said. Rumel Dahiya, retired brigadier and deputy director general of New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, who had been India’s defence attache to three countries, differs with the ITBP’s view. “Unless there is deployability of people where they can take up firing positions, numbers have no meaning,” Dahiya said.
“A weapon like an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) is not an anti-RPG weapon. In other words, you need the ability to neutralize the attacker, not his weapon. So, what you need are anti-personnel weapons, and not heavy weapons.”
