Opinion: Time to have effective intel

There are now a plethora of activities to hunt down the violent extremists. From small neighbourhood raids to broader combing operations in remote parts of the country that we saw yesterday in Bogra. 

However, for all these efforts to be effective the precondition is to have a solid intel which is at the heart of all anti-militant operation.
It is now clear that the Holey Artisan attack could have been prevented if the intelligence had been better.

And yesterday, the whole country glued their eyes to the screen to see the outcome as some 450 law enforcers including police, Rab and BGB conducted a combing operation in Bogra chars. The pinpointing of the chars was interesting as they were so remote that everyone thought the militants must have set up their training camps there.

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In the end, the outcome was far from satisfactory with the recovery of nine Jihadi books and six sharp weapons, which once again raised the issue of proper intel.

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Such a massive raid must have had a lot of preparation but as the outcome showed was not adequately supported by solid intelligence. 

All this now raises the questions of how to get effective intelligence. 

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Our home minister himself has said prior to the Gulshan café attack the government had received information about a possible attack in the area. Yet the attack could not be thwarted for lack of effective intelligence. The lead that was given to us could not be worked out. 

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We have also seen very conflicting police claims about militants. Once it was claimed that the backbone of JMB has been broken. And now we find the police boss claim that Gulshan attack and also that of Sholakia were carried out by JMB. So which version do we believe? Or both the versions are correct?

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After the Gulshan attack, we suddenly see reports of youths being missing for months and presumably in the fold of Islamic State. Why did our intelligence fail to know about these missing youths including Nibras and et al who carried out the Gulshan attack? Parents of many of these missing youths had reported to the police stations about their missing sons. Why such information was ignored? 

We know it is a tedious and tremendous job to track every movement of the militants. It is also not fully possible to intercept every move the militants make. This is why the job of the intelligence agencies is so difficult and important. Even US agencies fail to capture every move of the militants. 

This is why we have every sympathy for our intelligence agencies and yet we need to attend the questions raised above to secure our land from the clutch of the militants.