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Monday, July 27, 2009

It is high time we shed our illusions about Pak

War on Terror
28 Jul 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

It is high time we shed our illusions about Pak

 

Islamabad has raised the ante against India in Afghanistan and we must take corrective steps

 

By Kanwal Sibal

 

THE MURDEROUS attack on our Embassy in Kabul has once again exposed our vulnerability to terrorism and our inability to find an effective national response to this menace. No doubt a determined group of terrorists, especially those ready to commit suicide, can always strike, whatever the precautions taken.

Democracies cannot become garrison states, with normal public freedoms drastically reduced in order to restrict the operational freedom of terrorists. Maintaining the balance between liberal laws and legislation curtailing civil liberties is a challenge that democratic countries like US, UK, France and Spain are facing frontally in public interest.

Victim

Not India, although it is arguably the biggest victim of externally promoted terrorist activity. Our seats of power, religious sites, commercial and scientific institutions, our trains, the streets and bazaars of our cities, have all been targeted by terrorists. Numerous innocent lives have been lost over the years. Each bloody incident is strongly condemned by government, with declarations of resolve to eradicate all extremist violence and determination not to be cowed down by it. But no decisive action to strengthen our legal apparatus is taken as a demonstration of zero tolerance of terrorism by the state.

 

Ultimately, state policy reflects the value society attaches to individual human life. If society at large is moved to its core by the loss of even a single innocent life to malignant acts of terrorism, the state will set up the mechanisms of self- protection. But if society becomes inured to periodic human loss, and there is declining expectation that the state is ready to assume its responsibilities, then public indignation passes and terrorist incidents remain a private tragedy. In India little effort to mobilise society at large to confront the terrorist affliction is visible.

 

Unless there is sufficient internal consensus on the nature, source, and cause of the terrorist challenge that we face, we cannot unitedly meet it. Such a consensus does not exist at present. The multi- religious character of our society complicates the task of combating terrorism given the reality that the terrorist threat that India along with other countries faces comes from radical Islamic elements. Our authorities play down the doctrinal source of this terrorism because of legitimate concerns about sharpening the country's communal divide by identifying one particular community with it. Because of such concerns, we have for long been reluctant to acknowledge the indigenous character of some terrorist activity in India.

 

"Misguided elements"

 

It is politically easier to accuse Pakistan of promoting religiously motivated terrorism against India, which it does. We cultivated the fiction that democratic India does not produce Islamic terrorists. Local Kashmiri ones were initially characterised as "misguided elements" exploited by Pakistan. Our democracy was supposed to be an anti-dote to any radicalism of this nature, forgetting that we have the Naxalite phenomenon despite our democratic polity offering ample room for political organisation and dissent.

For many in India a nightmare scenario is the radicalisation of sizeable parts of our Muslim population by extremist influences from outside and the emergence of terrorism of the virulent kind seen in West Asia that would fray the very fabric of our democratic society. Existence of local terrorist cells in India is therefore either explained as Pakistan's successful handiwork, or as a backlash of the violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.

Any all- out mobilisation against jihadi terrorism to be effective has to robustly involve our own Muslim community. In actual fact we play politics with the issue of terrorism and are unable to deal with it outside the calculus of electoral politics. It is claimed that existing laws are adequate to deal with terrorist depredations and that experience has shown that exceptional laws are often abused by politicians to settle scores with their opponents or are used communally to target the Muslims. An internal political consensus on the need to strengthen our anti- terrorism laws thus escapes us.

Defence

If we cannot deal politically, socially, legally and institutionally with terrorism at home where the writ of the Indian state runs, how can we expect to firmly deal with terrorism directed at us abroad? The mindset that prevents us from robust self- defence at home does not dispose us to take comprehensive measures to protect our vulnerable missions abroad. Our consciousness about security does not match the seriousness of the threat we face. We lack a "security culture" that percolates below the VVIP level. The blasting of our Kabul Embassy was an assault on the sovereignty, dignity and power of the Indian state. Despite embassies being immune from physical attack under international law, the diplomatic missions of some western countries and of those seen as allies or surrogates of the west have been targeted by radical Islamists. Any grievance they have against India could hardly be of so great a magnitude as to justify such retribution.

 

No colonial past

 

India's policies towards the Islamic world have been supportive, benign or defensive in nature. We have no colonial past, any history of occupation of Islamic land or aggression against Islamic countries; we have not sought to control their resources. Even in Afghanistan our aims are defensive — to create friendly political space for ourselves through exhibition of goodwill and implementation of development projects to benefit the population at the grassroots level — roads, transport equipment, hospitals, educational institutions, power projects etc. True, we had supported the Northern Alliance against Pakistan- supported Taliban, but much time has elapsed since then and we now extend full support to President Karzai, along with the rest of the international community.

Vigilance

The resurgence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan is being promoted from Pakistan. Even the Americans, at the level of their Defence Secretary and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, accuse Pakistani elements of complaisance or complicity. Members of the US Congress and the media are more direct in putting Pakistan in the dock. Obama has been explicit in his intention to make Pakistan more accountable in Afghanistan. Karzai has openly held the ISI responsible for the terrorist attack on our Embassy, a charge that our National Security Adviser has echoed publicly.

The Pakistan military establishment is clearly unhappy with the consolidation of India's foothold in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces are their instruments in securing Pakistan's strategic aims in Afghanistan, not only vis-à-vis India, but neighbouring Central Asia too. With the civilian leaders in power in Pakistan, and the armed forces receding into the background, the latter have more room and incentive to conduct their anti- Indian policies, both because they are not directly responsible for pursuing the dialogue with India, which required control over levels of violence against us to avoid derailing that dialogue, as also to stall any rapid improvement of ties with India under the civilian watch.

What the Pakistan military dare not have done under Musharraf without destroying his diplomatic offensive against India and damaging him personally, they have now done without direct cost to themselves. Pakistan has raised the ante for us in Afghanistan. What happened there could be a foretaste of what could happen in India too, unless our vigilance increases manifold, our determination to tackle terrorism is extricated from the morass of electoral politics and political posturing, and some illusions we nurture about friendship with Pakistan are shed.

 

Kanwal Sibal is a former Foreign Secretary (sibalkanwal@g-mail.com)

 

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