CONCLUDING REMARKS
THE INDIAN CONTEXT
Addressing a few Basic Issues at the Outset
These can be tabulated as under:
- Democracy, with all its noise,
chaos and attendant ills, remains dear to the people of India.
The armed forces of India are guarantors of the
Indian Constitution.
For them it is sacrosanct and inviolable.
- All criticism of the functioning
of the governing polity and other entities at the helm of
affairs is in the form of a critique of the type
that is carried
out after a war game to improve functioning for the future. It should
be taken in that light by all concerned. The criticism is not necessarily
directed at
any particular government. Various governments up to the present have
shown similar pusillanimity in the face of grave threats to the country.
- It should be eminently clear that
religious polarization is taking place across the globe at
a frightening pace. Societies that were accommodating
and tolerant
have changed their outlook. The change is self-evident.
- The religious
polarization that is taking place has not yet peaked. Each new terrorist
attack, regardless of the motivation, exacerbates
the divide.
- The polarization on the world canvas
is generally between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and
not so much between other denominations. Different
countries
may have ethnic or religious strife of equal or even greater intensity,
but the term 'global terrorism' in today's setting is confined to Islamic
jihad, which
has acquired a global reach at par with the global reach of the superpower,
though it cannot match the superpower's military or economic resources
- at least not
in the near future.
- By present indications, the invasiveness and global reach of Islamic
jihad is increasing by the day, at a pace faster than the ability of
their opponents
to contain or quell it.
- India cannot exercise the very
hard options open to countries like the USA, Russia, China
and a few other countries to indulge in punitive
strikes across
borders.
-
Nor is a full-fledged conventional war - regardless of
whether it leads to a
nuclear confrontation
or not - an option for India. As mentioned
in an earlier
book: "Another war between India and Pakistan would be tantamount to: " a
physical suicide for Pakistan, economic suicide for India and
a catastrophe for the subcontinent."
- India has, however, several other
options, not necessarily counter terror strikes, to bring
neighbours to their senses in fairly quick time.
These options had never
been exercised before for several reasons, that included, inter alia:
pusillanimity of the governments; crippling of India's external capability
by one or more Prime
Ministers of the day for values based on cherished traditions or in
the mistaken belief that India being the bigger country,
it could withstand
repeated transgressions
from neighbours and that forbearance on its part would sooner or later
bring them to their senses.
- India does not have to indulge
in foreign policy flip-flops due to pressures put on the
government of the day by the minority community
or the Left parties.
The government has to shed its tentativeness and diffidence. It represents,
or should represent the national interest of India. The majority community
constitutes
over 80 percent of the population of the country. If national security
demands that the country improve its relations with Israel or the USA,
the government
does not have to be apologetic about it. For over 50 years the Indian
government did not open diplomatic relations with Israel and went out
of its way to condemn
Israel and USA in every forum, irrespective whether its opinion was
sought or not. The majority community, although it may have
felt otherwise,
went along
with that decision in the national interest. The needs of national
security or the sentiments of the majority cannot be indefinitely
put on hold
for the sake
of vote bank politics or pressures brought to bear by less than 20
percent of the electorate. That way could lead to national
disaster. (It would
have been
an altogether different matter had India remained non-aligned in the
true sense of the word).
- Whatever other alignments or shifts
in foreign policy that might take place in the coming decades
India's strategic relationship with Russia
remains inviolable.
It is non-negotiable. Both countries have arrived at a comfortable
understanding whereby each country pursues its own interest
without allowing the strategic
relationship to be impaired or eroded.
In the light of the foregoing unless
countries like India, that are the most threatened by the
scourge of Islamic jehad, start confronting the
stark reality
squarely and stop playing the vote bank card, they will undermine the
efforts of the instrumentalities of the state designed to deal with
the threat. For India
this threat at the present juncture is greater than any external threat.
There is a growing feeling in many circles that the government might
have tied itself
in knots by being held hostage to forces hostile to India. What else
could explain the government's inexplicable action of bringing back
the IMDT through the backdoor
in the form of the amended Foreigner's Act merely to neutralize the
effect of the Supreme Court's striking down the IMDT. The
result is there for
all to see.
There has been deportation of only one Bangladeshi infiltrator in Assam
after the Supreme Court struck down the controversial Illegal Migrants
Determination
by Tribunals Act a year ago.
It is indeed a very serious matter
that the political class - or substantial elements thereof
- appear, on the face of it, to be deliberately undermining
national security. One cannot think of any other country where the
nation's
highest court gives direction for retrieving a dangerous national security
drift to have
it so brazenly undermined by the political class. The government's
step was taken in the face of the Governor and security agencies
bringing
to the notice
of the
government that infiltrators in large numbers were crossing over daily
from across the border. Should this trend continue, many people in
the country
and friends
of India would be compelled to start wondering whether the governing
process - or a part of it - had fallen into the hands of interests
that were bent
upon undermining the country's security.
Neither
the misgivings of the President of India on national matters
nor
the decisions of the Supreme
Court to strengthen
good governance and national security seem to have any effect
on the political class. According to a well-known editor
of a national daily, "The blundering
policy of cosying up to Naxalites was followed by a most shockingly cynical approach
to negotiations that brought back to life a near-dead ULFA in Assam where, it
seemed sometimes, the line between political and national interest had been washed
away in a Brahmaputra flood". (Shekhar Gupta in The
Indian Express, July 15, 2006).
That is not all. Just three days
after the Bombay blasts a dawn-to-dusk general strike in
Assam to protest the killing of six ULFA militants
by security forces
brought normal life to a halt. (The Pioneer,July 15, 2006). Who exactly
is calling the shots in Assam? The government or interests across the
border?
The people of India would then be impelled to pose the question:
"Does the Constitution of the country stand hijacked"?
Having seen the cavalier manner in which security of the nation is being
handled - or mishandled - by the ruling dispensations it would be worthwhile
taking a
look at whether other countries are also taking threats to their national
security as lightly. Since long the UK was in the forefront of condoning
the activities
of Islamists in UK and worldwide. It continued to harbour - even nurture
- many of the radical Islamic organizations in its bosom; several of
them had their
headquarters in the UK. Yet after the London bombings the government
lost no time in banning even those organizations that merely glorify
terrorism. Recently
it has banned organizations like Al Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect. In India,
on the other hand, jehad is permitted to be glorified from any number
of mosques
and in numberless madrassas, even though the country has been at the
receiving end of terror through this route for over two decades. That
is why terrorists
are now using youngsters by hiring them for Rs. 200 to 500 to throw grenades.
This was stated by no less a person than the Director General, CRPF in
an interview to a defence journal. (FORCE, Volume 3, No. 11, July 2006,
Page no. 32).
THE DANGEROUS DRIFT
The myth of Indian syncretism stands exploded. It remains a figment of
the imagination of daydreamers. What is being talked about is the actual
state of affairs and
not what the desired state should be. The paper began with the suggestion
of a vacuum being created. In this country the Hindu-Muslim divide was
brought about
by the political class in state after state and by the government's inability
to act firmly and, in time, when the first signs of the reinforcement
of orthodox ideology by outsiders became apparent. Even today the government
policies tend
to push the Muslims towards orthodoxy when it is seen to be giving in
to elements that are the fountainhead of such orthodoxy, thus strengthening
their position
at the cost of segments opposed to them. In sum, Islamic orthodoxy in
India is being reinforced as much by the policies or infirmities of the
governments at
the Centre and the States as by forces of radical Islam.
Even Islamic countries like Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, having realized
the potential of radical elements to disrupt
the normal flow
of life have now taken recourse to bolder steps to prevent further
inroads by these orthodox groupings than is the case in India.
The government
at the Centre
is itself so mired in vote bank politics that Chief Ministers of States
are actually able to undermine the Centre's attempts to limit further
damage by banning organizations
like SIMI (Student Islamic Movement of India). It has emboldened the
radicals to the extent that a Muslim leader in one of the provinces
actually gave a call
- later denied - for the setting up a Muslim Pradesh in Western UP.
Such talk would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Here
a caveat would
be in order:
The policies followed by the right wing Hindu parties are not the answer
to India's problems.
There is a paradox working here.
India is one of the countries most threatened by terrorism.
Yet it has one of the weakest laws in the world to deal
with the menace. It is a sobering - and frightening - thought that
the great country
India,
potentially a world power, has allowed itself to sink in a political
quagmire whereby a person suspected to have links with forces inimical
to the well being
of the country can hypothetically become the home or defence minister
of the country or a chief minister of a state. Going by present trends,
soon it might
even be possible for a person with dubious credentials to become the
Prime Minister. There do not seem to be foolproof mechanisms in place
to counter
this trend.
Even a constitution bench of the Supreme Court has been constrained
to point out to the government the limit to which this process
can be carried
to undermine
the sanctity of the country.
The Hon'ble Court would like to know
from the government that since the government has appointed
ministers with
criminal
cases against
them to take charge of important ministries would it then go on to
appoint the Election Commissioners and even judges with similar
backgrounds?
The implication being that they can be blackmailed by elements inimical
to India; some might
even have been financed by such elements. There is a deafening silence
from the
government on this issue of paramount importance to national security.
The line taken by the Supreme Court is meant to serve as a wake up
call for India.
Unfortunately,
few people seem to have taken note of the gravity of the situation.
It explains why the government is not able to act decisively
against entities
hostile to
India, to the extent that it ignores and often goes against the advice of its own armed forces and intelligence agencies.
Therefore, if one
takes the line
of thinking opened up by the Honorable Supreme Court to its logical
conclusion one comes up with the dreadful deduction that
today the biggest threat
to the security of India might be the political class, full 20 percent
of whose members
happen to have criminal cases registered against them. If the percentage
as given out by the Election Commission is right then the criminal
class that
has entered
Parliament is perhaps one of the single largest blocks, although
affiliated to political parties across the political divide.
As to why this should
be the case
is to an extent explained by the excerpt that follows. It relates
to the Battle of Somme that took place in France and Flanders
eighty years
ago. On that first
day on the Somme, 30 British officers of the rank of lieutenant colonel
or above were killed. The excerpt below is from an international
publication:
"Equality of sacrifice" is
sometimes a convenient phrase, but no one could deny it
then. When the war began, the prime minister was the Liberal,
H.H. Asquith, and the Tory leader of the opposition was Andrew
Bonar Law.
Both would
lose sons in action. Lord Salisbury was an earlier prime
minister; five of his grandsons were killed. And several
younger Members of Parliament, including
William
Gladstone, grandson of one more prime minister, joined up and
were killed.
All that is a sharp contrast with
a Blair government, not one of whom has ever performed any
kind of military service, and a Bush administration
whose senior
members have never been much burdened by any sense of private honor
incurred by privilege. (Emphasis added). (Honor and Carnage,
Battle of the Somme
by Geoffrey Wheatcroft International Herald Tribune, Saturday-Sunday,
July 1-2, 2006).
What applies to the Blair and Bush
governments in the excerpt above can be easily applied across
the board to the political class in India with
just the odd, very
rare exception. Not only that, it is likely to continue to apply to
the political class in the future as well. Their sons and
daughters have
better things to do
than to volunteer for the Indian armed forces. Amongst other vocations
they would like to legislate for the security of the country without
having the faintest
idea as to what security is all about. Leaving the rest of the country
to fend for itself the political class cocoons itself in the security
provided by gun-toting
bodyguards paid for by the exchequer, irrespective of whether the persons
so protected have a number of murder, dacoity or rape cases pending
against them.
Indian democracy is definitely on the march, in all its glory. The
march is toward the abyss.
In all other countries the political
class comes together in the face of national emergencies.
In India they come together to undermine the
decisions of the highest
judicial bodies in the country. In no other country in the world are
the decisions of the Supreme Court - the final arbiter - overturned
or thwarted as summarily
as is presently happening in India. One has only to study the behaviour
of the politicians after the Bombay blasts of 11 July 2006. Instead
of uniting to face
a common foe, they are busy hurling missiles at each other, going for
each other's jugular. Meanwhile, their priority in the weeks immediately
following the blasts
would be to yet again come together to fight the Supreme Court rather
than the terror engulfing the land. How can the country effectively
fight against the
threat of terrorism with the type of behaviour that politicians at
the helm of affairs are manifesting?
THE PSYCHIC DIMENSION OF INDIA'S DILEMMA
This
aspect is best expressed by reproducing a comment from a
French translator
of this writer's pieces:
"What
you write about the India-Pakistan situation reminds me
very much
of the asymmetric structure of the East-West confrontation
during the cold war: a continental ideological power obliging
the West to be on the defensive
on all
the continents. At that time, even at the end of the 80s,
it was generally accepted that the international system
was working to USSR's advantage:
the
consequences of colonial wars, imperialism, the repressive action
of the USA on all the
fronts,
would always create more resentment and push entire peoples
into the Soviet camp, the communist superpower just had
to pluck the ripened fruit when
it
was ready.
And there was no symmetry, for the West couldn't have access
to the communist societies. It seemed there was no way
for the USA to take the initiative
and reverse the way the system was functioning. Yet, USSR collapsed
suddenly. Analysing
this abrupt and unpredicted turn of events, I found that
the main factor of durable power between the two systems,
occidental and Sovietic, was not
ideological, nor geopolitical, nor economic, but systemic: it lay
in the capacity to fight
systemic disorder, entropia, that all systems know, by a
superior capacity to
create innovation, knowledge, enthusiasm, neguentropia. Let
us note that this
is just a modern way of saying that dharma builds up, while
adharma destroys. USSR was a system of growing entropia,
the West a system where neguentropia
was (and still is) always stronger than all the internal disorders
generated by its
own functioning.
I find the same analysis applies to the Indian subcontinent:
in terms of capacity to create disorder, Pakistan and Bangladesh
are superior
to India, but while
they do that, they don't develop their internal capacities
for social innovation, they don't dream their future, they
don't create neguentropia.
Their system becomes
less and less able to perform within while India's becomes
more and more (so). But still, couldn't India develop a strategy
more offensive
than
the defensive
one she has until now adopted? Here too, the American response
to the ideological power of USSR is indicative: Z. Brezinsky
under President
Carter's administration
was the first to make of the Human Rights an ideological
weapon to be turned against the communist regimes in all
the international forums
and within the
Soviet camp. This policy has developed more and more, and
we can see it in Central Asia today, technicians of Revolution
trained and financed
by American foundations
working out democratic changes of regime in the ex-USSR Republics!
The
question then would be: does India have an ideological weapon
of her own (that) she could
turn against her (radical) Islamic enemies? It is here that
I find she conceals in her own culture a treasure that has
not yet begun to
be used.
Maybe the time
has come when India can require her neighbours to respect
the law of tolerant diversity and an all-inclusive philosophy.
After all, she
doesn't need territories
but she needs to live in a world where her values are respected,
for they are universal and peace oriented.
For
all these reasons, I feel a little frustrated that the
strategic thought in
India doesn't seem
to go further than asserting that "we are a gentle
people surrounded by nasty people, therefore we have a problem".
If India cannot develop her own vision of what South Asia and
the International System
should be, and be determined to organize her surroundings according
to that vision, it is natural that she attracts the hostility
the weak ones
always
awaken in
the aggressive ones. Her mission is naturally to restore a
dharmic order in the Asiatic space where her spiritual and
cultural influence had so
strongly shaped
societies around the highest ideals of Hinduism and Buddhism.
Even her Islamism was more enlightened than that in the rest
of the Muslim world.
If the language
needs not be one of the past, the spirit is the same: the world
has to be governed
by a principle that allows each country, each group and each
individual to follow one's path of self-discovery and self-perfection,
svadharma,
for this
is the
very aim of human life to be offered to all men of all creed,
equally. India is asserting herself in economy, science and
technology; a luminous
head
needs to be added on this growing body of power. And from the
greatness of the message
would come out the greatness of India's action and position
in the international system.
All
this seemed to me to be implicitly contained in your paper,
as I often
find it in Indians who
have served in the army: inwardly they know
what
they fight
for, but it doesn't come out explicitly, maybe because it is
the responsibility of the intellectuals and the political
leaders to show the way and
they don't. But don't you have a feeling that now
the time has come? And could
not something
of it appear in your paper"? (Emphasis in the original)
- Jean-Yves Lung
Well the time has come.
SOME OF THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL WAR AGAINST TERRORISM IN INDIA
India is facing many types of insurgencies of differing magnitudes. This
discussion is Islamic jihad specific for the simple reason that the country's
ambivalence
in taking a tough stand against this threat on its own soil stems from
the size of the Muslim population on the subcontinent, an indeterminate
portion of which,
going by present trends, could fall under the sway of sophisticated hostile
propaganda. In the case of Pakistan the vast majority of the people of
that country would
definitely be happy to see India go under. To a lesser extent something
similar could be happening in Bangladesh. Both these countries are able
to ferment trouble
in India, putting the Government of India on the defensive due to the
enormously large Muslim population in India - approximating 150 million
or more, which would
make it not very much below half the size of the existing population
of the European Union and anywhere up to 50 percent of the population
of the United States.
It
is more important to state, however, that had the Indian
governments, since
Islamic jihad first
reared its ugly head nearly two decades ago,
dealt firmly
with this menace ab initio well over 99 percent of the Muslim
population would have had no difficulty in resisting Pakistani
machinations on
their own. They
had shown their mettle as well as any other Indian in all the
threats that India faced up till the new century. Things
took a turn for the
worse after
9/11 and
on account of the wishy-washy policies of the government since
then. Today Hindus feel threatened by Islamic jihad. In
actual fact, the
Muslim community
is more
threatened - because they are threatened - and abused -both
psychologically and physically. They have watched with
dismay the government's inability
to ward
off the sub rosa threat from Pakistan, and now Bangladesh as
well. Within the country they see the leaders across the
political
spectrum meekly
succumbing to the harangues of the very elements that are keeping
the Muslim community
backward and pushing them towards Islamic orthodoxy. It can
be stated with near certainty
that had the government or its agencies demonstrated the ability
to protect the Hurriyat leaders from blackmail and threats
from
across the border
quite a few
of them would have been singing a different tune. The guilt
complex in the Muslim community is engendered by the inability
of
the Government
of India
to weed out
the elements that have undermined the security of India and
the well being of the Muslim community. Whether the Act
called POTA should be
restored
or not is
an unending controversy. The irrefutable fact is that, "the most threatened
country in the world has the least effective counter terrorist regulations".
CLEAR
ENUNCIATION OF A NO-NONSENSE POLICY TO DEAL WITH THE THREAT
The
only constant in India's fight against global terrorism so
far has been the urge to run to outsiders to urge them to
condemn its neighbour
for carrying out dastardly acts against India. In the absence
of a clear
articulation of its own policy no outsider can help India.
It has to fight the internal menace
resolutely and ruthlessly, irrespective of who or what sustains
it from across the border. Lack of clear articulation of
its policies confuses,
in the first
instance, its own agencies that have to fight the terror.
After decades of being exposed to terror the talk is still
mainly about coordination
committees and
the like between states and so on. Elementary mechanisms
that should have been put in place ages
ago have still not gotten off the ground.
Before going any further, the first
act of the government after the recent Bombay blasts should
have been to remove the single biggest impediment
that had prevented
the government from dealing firmly with the perpetrators of terror.
Once again, India is perhaps the only country where law and
order is a state
subject. There
is no Union List of federal crimes with inter-state or even international
ramifications. That is why State governments either resist the Centre's
mandates or drag their
feet in implementing them, the effect in both cases being the same.
Therefore, in the current session of Parliament the government
should have given
overriding priority to drawing up a list of federal crimes and bringing
in an enactment
to put these on the Concurrent List, if not exclusively on the Union
List. For it to happen, the two leading parties in the country will
have to overcome their
differences and personal prejudices in the national interest to ensure
smooth passage of an enabling legislation. In this context letter dated
18 February
2006 to all concerned by the author in his capacity as Convener MRGG
(Movement for Restoration of Good Government) is reproduced below:
"The
case relating to (name suppressed), the UP Minister who was
caught in a sting operation, promising
to carry drugs in his official car for
a price cannot be construed as a mere law and order problem for the
State of Uttar
Pradesh. No doubt law and order is a state subject. In this particular
case, and many
others that did not receive national media attention, the ramifications
for national security go far deeper. What was previously restricted
generally to
the northeast
up to about the 1980s has now spread to many parts of India,
most noticeably UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. Other states are
fast catching up. The Intelligence
agencies have been fully alive to this nefarious activity.
Political considerations at the Centre and the concerned
states as well as lack of a
central enabling
legislation have allowed the country's security to be severely
compromised. It is not only narcotics. Gunrunning across
borders with neighbouring
countries has also been facilitated by several political
dons who have remained
above the
law for decades on end, even after several criminal cases had
been filed against
them. The filing of cases at the state level hardly affected
the activities of these political heavyweights.
In the present case the Chief Minister would have been
most reluctant to take follow up action had it not
been for the media glare at the national level. Even
if the concerned minister had been immediately sacked the national
security concern
of the country would have remained un-addressed. The national leaderships
of political parties as also the central government
have been well aware of these
national security vulnerabilities because the concerned agencies have
been constantly highlighting them.
We
are now writing to you to please give serious thought to
this unacceptable
vulnerability in
our national defence, whereby while the frontiers
are generally secure in the conventional military sense the
nation is being
hollowed by
termites from within. The Centre, security agencies, armed
forces and even the judiciary
watch the decline with helplessness and dismay. The time
has come, before it is too late, to enact an enabling legislation
for the Centre
to take
appropriate action in all cases that have national security,
interstate or extra-territorial
ramifications. India is perhaps the only country in the world
that has such a constitutional infirmity. Moreover, it
has done nothing
for nearly
60 years
to
overcome this lacuna. The matter is extremely urgent and
needs to be remedied at the earliest. It is in the interest
of both
the central
parties, the
Congress and the BJP to come together to set matters right
in this regard, while they
have the combined parliamentary strength to do so and before
legislators with
criminal backgrounds or criminal associations are still not
in the majority in the parliament. Bickering and opposed
ideologies can
continue between
the two
parties. They must, however, come together for this single
piece of legislation in the supreme national interest".
UNQUOTE
THE
INDIAN ARMY AND TERRORISM
There
has been a growing tendency in the media to level unfounded
charges against
the Indian Army or to overplay the alleged violation. Human
rights should be
the concern of every right thinking person. It is certainly
a concern
of the Indian Army at the highest levels and at the operating
levels as well. In spite
of that individual aberrations are bound to occur in such
a large-sized force. While most people in the country may
not know it many other
armies are studying
the more humane fighting methods of the Indian Army, which
has been continuously exposed to terrorist-type violence
of one type or another
for several decades
running. Terrorism in India commenced well before the West
and Russia, amongst many other countries, understood what
being exposed to terrorism
was all about.
As to how most armies across the world deal with opponents
or terrorists is well known. The American, Russian and
Chinese forces have used extreme
ruthlessness.
The Pakistan Army raped half a million women and killed
over a million Bengalis in Pakistan's East Bengal province
in 1970-71, while it was
still a part of that
country. The same army has indulged in large-scale butchery
in the restive provinces of Balochistan and Baltistan.
Aircraft and helicopter
gunships supplied to it
for operations against al Qaeda have been diverted by the
Pakistan Army for massacring its opponents within Pakistan,
most recently in
Baluchistan. One of the biggest
land grabs in contemporary history is taking place in that
hapless province. Baluchis are being deprived of their
land and assets to allow
for the Pakistan
Army, Chinese interests, and the overpopulated Punjabi
heartland to expand into Baluch areas.
The way in which the Indian Army
has dealt with its opponents can be deemed to be exemplary
by most humanitarian standards. So great is
the care taken to avoid
collateral damage that a very high number of young officers, sub-unit
and even unit commanders lose their lives leading their forces against
terrorists holed
up in civilian areas. Even the Indian Courts seem to have gone to
extremes in putting limits on the Indian Army. In one case,
the Courts had decreed
that hot
food be provided to terrorists that had been surrounded in a mosque
by the security forces, while they were negotiating their surrender.
That is not all. The Indian Army
had captured nearly one hundred thousand Pakistani Army prisoners
after the fall of Dhaka in 1971 as a consequence
of the surrender
by General Niazi. During their incarceration in PW camps in India
there was not a single case of brutality - even mistreatment
for that matter
- reported by
the returned prisoners. This was in spite of the fact that Pakistanis
brutally torture and kill Indians taken prisoners. Perhaps the finest
example of model
conduct by any army was that of the Indian Army while liberating
East Bengal in 1971 to form the independent country of Bangladesh.
Throughout
that operation
and till the Indian Army withdrew from Bangladesh not a single case
of rape was reported from anywhere in the country. Such restraint
by a liberating army is
without parallel in world history. To this day, the most respected
peacekeeping force, anywhere in the world, remains the Indian Army.
Hence, if the vicious
cycle of violence in the treatment of captives has to be broken armies
around the world, as a start, could make the Indian Army tactics
in dealing with terrorists
in built up or civilian pockets a case study. (Extracts from a speech
read out by the author at a Law Seminar organized by ARTRAC in Bangalore
in April 2006,
followed by a keynote presentation at the Technical University of
Eindhoven, The Netherlands on 25 April 2006).
THE GLOBAL CONTEXT
It is both fashionable, and facile, to attribute rising
Islamic radicalisation to marginalisation. While marginalisation
might be an exacerbating factor it should not be allowed
to become the justification for
terrorism. There are other marginalized, downtrodden, and
more destitute communities around the world who have not
indulged in global terrorism of the Islamic Jihad
variety. What is more, with the rapid demographic increase,
continuing globalisation, and market economy calling the
shots, marginalisation is likely to increase -
within states and between states. Should Islamic Jihad not
back off and continue on its violent path one of two outcomes
are possible: Either it will succeed
in seriously weakening the western economies, thereby bringing
in a major power-shift toward Asia or it will end up by
destroying Islam, by shaking it to its very
foundations.
According to Amartya Sen, " the politicization of Islam has become a shared
thing for both Al Qaeda and for those who say it must be a religion of peace.
Both try to give religion a bigger role than it need have".
(The Economic Times, 27 March 2006, Amartya Sen)
That
could be one of the reasons why suicide bombing has gone
transnational,
often involving
well-educated individuals who are motivated to respond
not to their known immediate circumstances but to the wider
circumstances of
co-religionists. They are aided by the huge increase in information
now available through satellite
TV news channels and the internet. They may be prepared to
travel substantial distances to undertake their actions.
Dalai Lama,
the 71-year-old spiritual
leader
believes that modern terrorism was born out of jealousy of
Western lifestyles. "This
new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy
and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful
on television", he observed in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The Dalai Lama told the paper "fundamentalism is terrifying because it is
based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence…it prevents followers
from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world." (The
Sunday Tribune, April 2, 2006)
THE
DEMOGRAPHICS OF GLOBAL TERRORISM
The
single biggest factor sustaining Islamic jehad is the runaway
population
growth in Muslim
societies, creating its own problems in the social
domain for host countries and wherever else an expatriate
base has been
established.
It
is again a vast field, to which justice cannot be done in
a single session. It has been addressed in the chapter
on 'Demographic
Dynamics of the
21st Century' in the author's book "Global Security
Paradoxes: 2000-2020" (ISBN
817049194-0). A few aspects that need to be urgently highlighted
are:
- Going by current trends Israel
will cease to exist as a Jewish state well before 2050. The
fertility rate for Palestinian women in Gaza
is about 7.3, for the
Arab Israelis in Israel it would not be much less, whereas for the
Jews it would hardly ever exceed half that at the best of times.
- When an Israeli soldier gets killed
or a soldier from the coalition forces in Afghanistan gets
killed the chances are that he or she would
be a single child
or one of two children. In the case of their opponents several other
siblings would be around to ensure that the parents are not left
totally bereft. This
is the stark reality, limited manpower supply on one side, inexhaustible
supply on the other. No family, irrespective of denomination, would
allow its children
to go for jehad type of activities if the family size remained small
as is fast becoming the norm for educated middle classes the world
over.
- Presently Europe has about 15 million
Muslims. By about 2050, if not before, the figure is likely
to exceed 50 million. At that stage,
even without the accession
of Turkey, the Muslim population of Europe would have become large
enough to face intractable existential problems.
- India and the UN agencies must
undertake an investigation on the missing mass of Hindus
in Pakistan, whose population has declined drastically
from about 25
percent at the time of partition to just between one or two percent.
The population of Pakistan at the time of partition was 30 million.
It has increased five-fold
since then to a current population of 150 million or so. So has the
Muslim population of India increased manifold since partition to
the present number. In like manner
the Hindu population of Pakistan should have totaled 35 to 40 million
by now. It is only about 1 to 2 million today. What became of the
tens of millions of
Hindus? Did they vanish into thin air? Besides large-scale killings
and conversions such decline would be physically impossible unless
Hindu girls were being routinely
kidnapped in large numbers and forced to don the veil and be married
off to Muslims. The practice continues to prevail. Something similar
could be taking place in
Bangladesh. Contrast this with the increase of the Muslim population
in India since partition. The statistics speak for themselves.
THE US RESPONSE TO GLOBAL TERRORISM
The
US has been roundly and soundly criticized by practically
the whole world in the pattern of
its response to global
terrorism. The subject
has been covered extensively, including by this author in
several books. Here only one aspect is being highlighted, and
that is, that while
the criticism of
the USA - both within the US and across the globe - may have
been well-founded, there is no escaping the fact that should
America choose to opt out
of this fight at any stage and go into its shell in Fortress
America the world would have to
pay dearly for that seclusion; more so in Europe, India and
Southeast Asia. With measures that could be even tougher than
they are at the
present, the USA has
the ability and the wherewithal to make North America a Muslim
exclusion zone to a large extent and then go about taking even
harsher measures
to deal with
elements that threaten it from within the existing population.
Europe and the other countries just mentioned have no such
option available
to them. Furthermore,
without the US global reach and deployment Europe, Asia and
parts of Africa have scant ability to deal with the growing
threat. Take the
example of just one country,
Afghanistan. Should the US walk out of Afghanistan today,
neither NATO nor any other group of countries would be able
to prevent a resurgent
Taliban from overrunning
Afghanistan within weeks, if not days. So, while criticism of
the US may be justified in some quarters, the ground reality
as it exists
in many parts of the world
should
not be lost sight of while criticizing the superpower.
India must quickly and efficiently
put its house in order while the US is sitting on Pakistan's
head, ensuring by its very presence that
adventurism from that
side does not get out of hand. Having said that, India should be
prepared for any eventuality in spite of growing level of
comfort in US- India
relations.
Should it come to a crunch the US could, under given circumstances,
barter away India's interest in Kashmir, without batting an eyelid,
in a trade off with Pakistan
on other counts.
REVISITING
AFGHANISTAN
First, the ground reality. Northern Alliance, even the term itself,
stands consigned to the dustbin of history as became apparent from
the author's visit to Afghanistan
last August (2005). Not only that, the components of the former Northern
Alliance, including the late Ahmed Shah Masood's Panjshiris have been
broken up as well.
The result is that the only viable Afghan force capable of taking on
the Taliban has ceased to be on account of coalition strategies of
the earlier years, mainly
to accommodate Pakistani concerns. ISAF and NATO must be ruing the
day.
Just
as it is abetting cross border terrorism in India, Pakistan
is fuelling
the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is time
for NATO and the US to heed Hamid Karzai's warning. He
knows what
he is talking
about. According
to a recent statement by him, "the world must find a better way to tackle
the terrorism afflicting Afghanistan or the West will suffer again…. The
US-led "war on terror" launched after the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda
attacks in the United States has largely been limited to Afghan soil but should
be extended to the sources of terrorism. The international community needs to
reassess the manner in which the war on terror is conducted. We can't tolerate
it forever… in the past three weeks five, six hundred people have died
in the country. We want an end to this, a basic end to this." (Excerpts
from The Times of India, June 24, 2006).
Many years earlier a similar warning had been given by people within
the CIA. The extract that follows is from a book by a well-known
American author:
" The bin Laden unit's leader, an analyst known to his colleagues as Mike,
argued with rising emotion that the CIA and the White House had become prisoners
of
their alliances with ………………Pakistani
intelligence. America was in a war against a dangerous
terrorist network. As it waged that
war, it was placing far too much faith in unreliable allies.
The CIA needed to break out of its lazy dependence on liaisons
with corrupt,
Islamist-riddled
intelligence
services such as the ISI. If it did not, he insisted, the
CIA and the United States would pay a price. (Emphasis
added). (The Kingdom's Interests,
Page
no. 415, Ghost Wars by Steve Coll).
Then
again: "His
enemies remained formidable, especially the suicide platoons
of al Qaeda and the seemingly
inexhaustible waves of Pakistani volunteers
bused from madrassas to the northern battlefields. (Emphasis added).
(Ibid, Page 519)
The same inexhaustible supplies from
across the border are confronting ISAF/NATO
forces in southern Afghanistan, clinching the argument put forward
by the Afghan President that unless they decide to strike across the border
at their bases,
the Taliban will simply keep coming, an inexhaustible supply of suicide
bombers and fighters, fresh out of Pak madrassas.
WAITING FOR THE US TO RESTRAIN PAKISTAN OR WAITING FOR
THE COWS TO COME HOME
Pervez Musharraf and the US establishment are on the
same side. Although there is hardly any love lost between
them, neither side is in a position to walk away from the
other. They are too closely linked by
their activities in the past. A few more actors of yesteryear
will have to fade away in the USA before matters are brought
back on an even keel. The Pakistan
government, through its embassy in Washington, reportedly
paid several million dollars to Washington lobbyists to
ensure that the role of Pakistan was kept
out of the 9/11 Commission findings. The lobbyists were evidently
successful. It should be possible for the Indian government
to pay ten times that amount,
if required, to bring the suppressed evidence to light. India
has many other options that have not yet been exercised,
because none of the Indian prime Ministers
knew how to play hardball. Not even Indira Gandhi, the toughest
of India's prime ministers, who after having masterminded
a great victory in 1971threw away the
advantages with Pakistan - as well as in
Bangladesh.
REAPPRAISING
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
The Pakistan President has stretched out his
innings for six long years and more on the plea - now sounding
increasingly specious
- that he was the best bet for the West, failing which all
sorts of disasters could befall Pakistan and the world.
Implicit in this plea
was the acceptance
that Pakistan continues to be the epicenter for global terrorism
and the biggest proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
The West,
especially the USA took
him at face value, even if his word did not count for much
and bailed out Pakistan, which was fast becoming a basket
case financially, and
in the process strengthened
Musharraf at the cost of the democratic parties that potentially
were the only entities that could
stave off the final cataclysm for Pakistan.
Musharraf continues with the same
refrain. The West is no longer willing to put all eggs in
the Musharraf basket. There are growing indications
that people have
started hedging their bets. Not so India. This could be a grave mistake.
Musharraf had pledged to rein in the terrorist tanzeems and so much
else in public broadcasts
designed more to impress his Western supporters than the cynical
Pakistani citizens, who had had experience of many military
dictators before
Musharraf. Unfortunately,
India too fell for the rhetoric. Seven years is a long time for any
government to show results. If anything, the militant groups are
stronger today than before,
the madrassas are growing in numbers and the students professing
jehadi sentiments multiplying as never before. On the face
of it he has deployed
the Pakistan Army
against the insurgents in FATA. However, the helicopter gunships
and aircraft provisioned by the Americans have been diverted
elsewhere.
They are not deployed
against Al Qaeda. They are busy killing the Baluchis, perhaps the
only secular elements in the region. Yet Musharraf calls
himself an enlightened
moderate.
If, as he states, chaos would fall
his removal from office it would be better to call his bluff
and face the consequences now rather than
a few years down
the line. Going by present trends a few years more of Musharraf would
actually have served to entrench the Islamists far more deeply than
is the case at the
present. Today, the two main political parties have been pushed to
the sidelines of the political arena. They have not yet been emasculated.
In a free and fair
election supervised under foreign or UN dispensation they would still
win over the Islamists, if not hands down, sufficiently handsomely
to reverse the negative
trend started by Musharraf. A few years later they would not be able
to do so. The stakes for India and the world for the full restoration
of democracy are
much too high to fall under the sway of Musharraf doublespeak any
longer. India has to be wary of a dialogue with a military
dictator whose past
history shows
that he has reneged on practically every count, more importantly,
with his own people - on solemn pledges made before national
and global
audiences.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The contours of the Islamic super state, re-forming
from the struggle against the civilization-defiling West
- this being their perception
- can be clearly discerned through the fog of global terror
let loose by Islamic Jihad and the global war on terror
unleashed against them.
The fact is that wherever
there are Muslim populations in sizeable numbers subterranean
currents are now carrying them in the direction of the
global Muslim ummat.
There is a seeming
inevitability about it, from the enlarging Muslim pockets
in Europe to the Middle East, Central and South Asia. It
is the Salafi orthodoxy
and not modernism that
is gaining ground day by day in the Muslim street, practically
everywhere in these countries,
including Turkey.
The difference in outlook emerges
from the furore over the Danish cartoons. Even after several
world leaders, including Presidents Bush and Putin
had condemned
the publishing of the controversial cartoons the Muslim clergy-inspired
mob fury continued unabated in many countries. One of the reasons
was that they had smelled
blood. They realized that Denmark was wilting and many in Europe
were frightened of a heightened backlash. Were that not the
case mass hysteria
on a global scale
across the Muslim world could not have been sustained for so long.
The righteousness of the anger professed was also questionable, if
not untenable. It may be recalled
that just a few years ago a far worse sacrilege was carried out in
the Muslim world. On a scale of 0 to 9 if the offense given by the
cartoons is put at 4
or 5 the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas tips the scale well beyond
the maximum 9 on any comparative basis - not that outrages can be
compared or quantified.
Yet no Budhhist asked for the head of the perpetrators, nor was any
Muslim property burned anywhere in the world. No Muslim was harmed.
What is more, no Muslim even
felt afraid of a backlash from any quarter.
The announcement that the Bamian
Buddhas would be destroyed was made several days before the
threat was carried out. Pakistan, where the
riots were spreading
faster than elsewhere, had the capacity to intervene decisively to
prevent the most abominable desecration that the world has witnessed
in modern times. It
did not intervene. Nor did Saudi Arabia or the OIC. The ulema in
India put the highest price on the cartoonists' heads. Their
protests spread
to other cities
in India. None of these worthies asked for the head of the Taliban
leadership of the time. There was not a single riot after the destruction
of the Bamian
Buddhas.
The Muslim world should have realised
that the anguish and gloom caused to the Buddhists in every
corner of the globe, including the Koreas,
Japan, China, Mongolia,
Thailand and several other countries would have been infinitely more
deep than that caused by the offensive cartoons. There are many denominations
whose followers
across the world number in the hundreds of millions or more than
a billion. They feel sacrileges, slights and threats to kill
(the infidels)
as keenly as do Muslims.
If they do not react in the fashion of the Muslims it is because
they might have actually moved up civilisation's ladder.
Their religions
teach them that every
life, regardless of whether it is that of a believer or non-believer,
is sacred. The Buddhists who must have been knocked senseless by
the sheer magnitude of
their loss internalised their suffering and prayed for forgiveness
to the perpetrators. There is a lesson in this for Muslims if they
would still like to call Islam
a religion of peace. Meanwhile the world cannot allow itself to be
boxed in by a regressive interpretation of the theology of a single
denomination just because
it has demonstrated a capacity to activate mass hysteria supra-nationally
for a well thought out long-term geopolitical quest.
India is not intrinsically weak.
It is a strong country with an amazing will to succeed, if
properly led. The country will soon have to exercise
several hard
options, once the realization takes hold that a bad situation cannot
be wished away. The more the government tarries, the more difficult
will the task become.
Options that were available to India in the 1990s to deal with the
situation are not available today. Similarly, options available in
2006 will almost certainly
not be available much beyond 2010. The government will have to shed
its indecisiveness sooner rather than later.