Indian Assets Abroad More Vulnerable to Terror Attacks: NSG Chief

The chief of the National Security Force (NSG) has said that India’s overseas assets are soft targets of terror attacks, reported Indian Express.

“Political, diplomatic and operational responses to the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks ensured that 2009 was free of major terror attacks. The inability to execute terror attack within the country may turn the masterminds of the terror organisations to look towards our assets abroad,” NSG’s Director General N P S Aulakh was quoted a saying.

He made the remarks on Wednesday while speaking at the inauguration of the 10th International National Bomb Data Centre (NBDC) Seminar at the NSG garrison in Manesar.

“Two decades of economic reforms and globalisation have made India a trillion-dollar economy. Our corporate houses are acquiring iconic commercial entity and economically significant assets abroad. In addition, we have vast exclusive economic zones and numerous economically sensitive offshore assets. All these assets are vulnerable soft targets of terror attacks. We, therefore, have to create structures and capabilities to ensure protection of our national assets everywhere,” Aulakh was quoted as saying.

He said that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed the greatest potential threat to global stability and security and that ‘proliferation of advanced weapons and technologies threaten to provide terrorist and international crime organisations with the means to inflict terrible damage’, said report.

Aulakh noted that ‘over seven years of operations by the international forces, diplomatic parleys and the AfPak policy have not significantly impacted the security environment of the region’ and that the ‘arrests of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana indicate that it is not merely logistics that have been decentralised by terrorist organisations but also the operational planning’, said report.