The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently released India’s first national counter-terrorism policy and strategy, named “PRAHAAR”. The 9-page document attempts to cover almost all aspects of counter-terrorism. The policy also aims to synchronise the counter-terrorism grid and its response, and to emphasise enhanced coordination and a collective approach in counter-terrorism operations. While the policy scores well on the realisation aspect, there is much to do on the reaction aspect as well in evolving India’s counter-terror landscape.
India’s Counter Terror Landscape
India’s security response to the counter-terror landscape to date has been based on three fundamental ideas: reaction, fragmentation, and legalism. The reactive side of the response has been activated only upon detection, with a limited strategy focused on tactical, reactive responses to terrorist activities.
First, Reactive. A sudden upsurge in terror incidents a few years ago in the Pir Panjal Range, where terrorists often used a tied-up strategy to engage and exhaust forces, led to casualties and ineffective counter-terror operations on the ground. The only way to respond to counter-terror incidents is through a tactical response, which depends on the strategic response to the situation. If the strategic response is poor, the tactical response on the ground is bound to be affected. The counter-terror landscape is evolving significantly, with more battle-hardened and tech-gear-driven terrorists emerging, as seen with the TRF, which requires more than just a pre-emptive or tactical reaction.
Second, fragmentism. Counter-terror work was fragmented, with slow information flow, making the counter-terror grid a bureaucratic exercise without centralized authority to execute and command. The Multi Agency Centre(MAC), created decades ago, was underfunded and unfurnished, and counter-terror meetings looked like another bureaucratic meeting, with no serious operational expansion deliberation or targeted discussions. Fragmented intelligence collection and vague inputs complicated the counter-terror grid and response. This led to increased, sustained terror activities, as responses to such activities were fragmented and not targeted.
Third, Legalism – an excessive focus on designations and legal work to counter terror activities – has produced only more noise than actual substance on the ground, unlike India. The US’s counter-terror strategy before 9/11 was more law-enforcement-driven, and history shows that terror organisations have bypassed sanctions and designations that only disrupt them, not dismantle them. While legal work and sanctions are important for global terror cooperation and diplomacy, the actual results have delivered minimal impact, as some terror organisations bypass legalism and sanctions in three ways:
1- Safe Havens and Porous Borders: Areas with weak governance, such as parts of Africa or Afghanistan in the early 2000s, serve as training, recruitment, and planning hubs. Efforts to designate these areas often fail without cooperation from local and national governments. Following 9/11, Al-Qaeda relocated its base to Pakistan’s tribal regions to avoid US military detection. Similarly, LeT went underground with help from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) after the November 26, 2008, attacks (26/11) in India.
2- Decentralised Operations: Tight, cell-based networks enable terror groups to create multiple offshoots that function as front organisations. This structure allows them to continue operations even if their leaders are arrested or face FTO sanctions. For example, LeT employed IM and TRF, while Al-Qaeda utilised regional branches such as AQI and AQAP to evade sanctions.
3- Alternative funding sources include non-traditional avenues that are resilient to US banking sanctions, enabling terrorist groups to acquire arms and explosives and transfer them to safe zones for training through various cross-border networks. The hawala system, charitable fronts, and support from sympathetic donors help these groups bypass asset freezes and sanctions imposed on Foreign Terrorist Organisations (ftos). Following their designations, Al-Qaeda utilised hawala channels and Gulf donors to fund 9/11, while LeT continued operating through the “charitable activities” of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a front supported by the ISI, which contributed to the 26/11 attacks.
The legal regime and investigations can help build more robust strategic counter-terrorism strategies and detect more terror patterns across various outfits, but the larger question remains: is it actually helping deliver strong deterrence and dismantlement? Perhaps not. Even the US was too engrossed in the legal regime and failed to translate the investigation into an actual counterterrorism strategy. The U.S.’s Foreign Terrorist Organisation designation is one of its strongest counterterrorism legal strategies. However, its own legal regime tends to fall short against terror organisations.
The LeT was designated as an FTO in December 2001, but carried out the Akshardham Temple attack within nine months, followed by the 2003 Mumbai serial blasts — demonstrating continued operational capacity.
The US itself has faced serious threats and attacks despite terror designations. Take the case of Al-Qaeda, which was designated an FTO by the US in October 1999 but, less than two years later, carried out one of the deadliest terror attacks of the decade: the September 11 attack (9/11).
It was followed by further strikes, including the USS Cole bombing in 2000 and the Riyadh compound bombings in 2003. Similarly, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the Islamic State (ISIS), carried out a series of hotel bombings targeting Westerners in 2005, shortly after its FTO designation in 2004.
The National Counter Terror Policy PRAHAAR
The gaps in counter-terror strategy were serious, as they were contrary to the evolving counter-terror landscape. The three fundamentals discussed above demanded a centralised, strategic response within the counter-terror mechanism to ensure a robust anti-terror grid. The recently released policy has recognised the broad set of threats in the threat matrix, including nuclear, cyberspace, and the nexus of Transnational Organized Crimes. Most importantly, it notes the occasional resurgence attempts by terror outfits like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The right recognition of the evolving threat spectrum is one step toward building a strategic response and strategy.
The policy further focuses on operationalising the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) within the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which remains the nodal platform for the efficient, real-time sharing of CT-related inputs across the country and for preventing disruptions.
Close partnerships for CT operations have been established with Central Agencies and State Police Forces under the IB’s MAC/JTFI mechanism. This approach aims to bridge the intelligence management and coordination gap that arose from a fragmented response to intelligence work, stemming from the lack of an efficient command structure for counter-terrorism operations. While not in its entirety, an official command structure akin to the US National Counterterrorism Centre is sought, with at least some efforts to upgrade its centralised counter-terror commands to address disjointed tactical-level responses.
The implementation aspect of the policy was to reexamine and realign with the evolving counter-terror landscape that India is witnessing, through a thorough study of the threat matrix and by improving coordination and management to ensure a strong operational and strategic response, rather than a purely reactive security response. The reaction part of the policy is based on shaping the strategic response through a collective effort and a whole-of-government approach, by bringing civil society into the fold, specifically to counter breeding grounds of radicalisation and subversion, coupled with the threat of psychological warfare that has now gone beyond traditional spaces such as slums and small-town blue-collar areas into cyber and white-collar spaces. The Red Fort Blast a few months back is crucial evidence of the dynamically evolving spectrum of radicalisation. The expansion of the legal regime for counter-terrorism, opening it to experts and civil society, helps improve the quality of investigations, further aiding counter-terrorism strategy. As the strategic response improves, investigations will also help build a robust response, as they did in dismantling the Indian Mujahedin (IM) in 2017.
The realisation and reaction conveyed by this policy indicate that the government is actively reconsidering its approach and moving towards building a strategic response, not a purely security response, by focusing more on preventive measures, identifying threats at the right time, and preventing them from developing into long-term threats. It also aims to attenuate the conditions conducive to terrorism. At the strategy level, it reflects a shift towards more advanced network-centric operations that may be visible in the coming time, anchored in the integration of intelligence across domains. This means building intelligence fusion models that combine human intelligence (HUMINT) and open-source intelligence (OSINT) with technical assets such as drone surveillance, cyber forensics, and satellite imaging.
Such capabilities must be embedded within a broader multi-spectrum counterterrorism strategy: one that combines targeted operations, search-and-destroy missions, and financial disruption.
The critical aspect of the policy is that it focuses more on thought than on action, remaining largely at the surface level, despite its promise. It doesn’t delve into depth and detail, and this is where the strategy becomes vague and general, revealing a glimpse of slight incoherence in the broad strategic thinking and action. However, as PRAHAAR underscores robust thinking and preventive action rather than solely on pre-emptive action, the policy is at least a stepping stone in providing the right guidance to India’s counter-terror response in the dangerously evolving terror landscape in the coming time.
