Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, India,
Israel, Southeast Asia, Russia and the United States
will be the main theaters of jihadi terrorism of a
strategic nature during the year 2005. There could be
sporadic incidents of jihadi terrorism in other parts of
the world - such as Western Europe and the Central Asian
republics - but they would be more tactical than
strategic in nature. Terrorism of a strategic nature has
an enduring impact - short-, medium- or long-term - while
terrorism of a tactical nature has only an ephemeral
effect.
The US-led coalition in Iraq has not yet
found the right answer to counter the steadily growing
strength, solidarity and motivation of the foreign
terrorist and Iraqi resistance groups operating there
with increasing lethality and operational efficiency.
The performance of the US intelligence agencies
continues to be inadequate and the psychological warfare
(psywar) campaign of the US security forces
unsatisfactory.
The fact that the resistance
fighters seem to have better intelligence than the US
agencies should not be a matter for surprise. After all,
the resistance fighters operate in their homeland and
feelings of Islamic solidarity help the insurgents, even
if they are from other countries. As an occupying power,
the US operates in hostile territory, which limits the
prospects for success of its intelligence agencies.
Despite the recently initiated reform of the US
intelligence community, the performance of the US
intelligence agencies in Iraq can be expected to
continue to be poor during 2005.
The newly
raised Iraqi army and police will continue to
belie expectations of better performance in ensuring
internal security. Desertions and the danger of many of
them facilitating the penetration of the security setup
by insurgents will continue to remain high. The US finds
itself in a dilemma of its own creation with regard to
the elections for a provisional parliament, due at the
end of January. Having invested much of its prestige in
its plans to hold the elections as scheduled, it cannot
afford to postpone them, as that would provide another
morale-booster to the insurgency.
It is not
without significance that almost all countries - even
those which were critical of the US-led intervention in
Iraq - have been in favor of going ahead with the
elections as planned, however unsatisfactory they may
turn out to be. The holding of the elections will not
turn out to be the end of - or even the beginning of the
end - of jihadi activities, but it will demonstrate to
the jihadis the determination of the international
community not to let jihadi terrorism succeed.
Such a demonstration is necessary, whatever the
cost of it. It needs to be recalled how India's
determination to hold periodic elections in Jammu &
Kashmir in the face of an escalation of terrorist
violence by Pakistan-supported jihadi terrorist
organizations ultimately broke their morale and made
Pakistan amenable to reason.
There are no grounds to doubt the
successful conduct of the elections in the Shi'ite- and
Kurdish-majority areas. It seems almost certain that the
terrorists and resistance fighters will be able to
disrupt the elections in the Sunni triangle. The
likelihood of this should not prevent the US-led
coalition from going ahead with the elections in the
Shi'ite-majority and Kurdish areas. Ways have to be
found for constituting the provisional parliament -
either with the seats in the Sunni-majority areas held
vacant or filled with nominees willing to serve
temporarily until by-elections could be held.
The other option is to hold the elections in
two stages, as we do in India in areas affected by
internal security problems. The US-led coalition and the
interim Iraqi government could hold the elections in the
Shi'ite-majority and Kurdish areas at the end of January as
scheduled and those in the Sunni triangle in two stages
some weeks later, with the provisional parliament being
constituted only after the elections have been held in
the entire country.
In any situation of the kind prevalent
in Iraq, intelligently conceived and executed
psywar operations would play an important role in
countering the insurgents. The US and its intelligence
agencies, which were so successful in their psywar
operations against international communism, have been
fumbling in their operations against international
jihadi Islamism in Iraq. "Muslims killing Muslims in the
name of Islam", "Iraqis killing Iraqis in the name of
Iraq", "non-Iraqi Muslims (Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi of the so-called al-Qaeda of Iraq,
Abu-Abdullah al-Hassan bin-Mahmud of the Jaish Ansar
al-Sunnah) lording it over Iraqi Muslims in the name of
Islamic solidarity", "threats to Iraq's traditions of
secularism", "dangers of the talibanization of Iraq",
etc, are some of the features of the
terrorist-resistance fighters combine over which many
Iraqis would be concerned, even though they may not
express their concern openly due to their feelings of
humiliation at the hands of the US.
The Central
Intelligence Agency's psywar operations were effective
against international communism because the US was not
the occupying power anywhere in the world during the
Cold War, but are so ineffective in Iraq because it is
the occupying power. The words of an occupying power do
not carry weight, particularly if it is as ruthless as
the terrorists in the way it operates. Faced with what
they perceive as the marauding actions of the US troops
on the one side and those of the insurgents and
resistance fighters on the other, it should not be a
surprise if the Iraqis accommodate themselves to the
latter in order to get rid of the former.
Nearly two
years after its occupation of Iraq, the US has not been
able to encourage the formation of even a small hard
core of patriotic moderates in the Sunni community
because of its dependence on a group of political exiles
who were practically carried to Iraq in the haversacks of
the marines and placed in power. It is not surprising
that their words carry even less weight than those of
the occupying forces. The over-demonization of Saddam
Hussein and his secular Ba'ath Party in the months
preceding the invasion and the inability of the Bush
administration to admit and correct its policy errors
are standing in the way of letting bygones be bygones
and calling on Saddam and his Ba'athist colleagues to
join the international community in defeating the
jihadis.
Defeated they should be, and in
Iraq. This would be possible only with the cooperation of
the Ba'athists. Not otherwise. If they are not defeated,
and if events in Iraq result in a denouement similar to
what happened in Afghanistan when the Soviet troops
were forced by the mujahideen to withdraw
unceremoniously, the consequences for those such as India and
the countries of Southeast Asia that are confronted with
jihadi terrorism would be unpredictable. There would be
a real danger of the Iraqi terrorist alumni replacing
the Afghan terrorist alumni of the 1990s vintage in the
vanguard of jihadi terrorism.
The success of
the jihadis in last month, such as the incidents
in Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Mosul in Iraq,
and the high-profile role once again being played by bin
Laden, show that the command and control of al-Qaeda and
the International Islamic Front (IIF), which had been
disrupted, has been revamped and is functioning again
with some efficiency.
The ground situation in
Saudi Arabia is far from satisfactory and should be a
cause for concern to the international community,
including India. The situation in the Saudi Arabia-Iraq
region is comparable to the situation which prevailed in
the Pakistan-Afghanistan region pre-September 11, 2001,
and which continues to prevail to some extent even today
- with the situation in one country feeding terrorism in
the other and vice versa and with the suspected
complicity of some sections of the military-intelligence
establishment in Saudi Arabia apparently providing
oxygen to the terrorists.
The ultimate success
of the terrorists in Saudi Arabia, whether in
overthrowing the regime or in disrupting the flow of oil
to the outside world, could be a major blow, if not
catastrophic, to the economies of many countries,
including India. The increasing jihadi terrorism in
Saudi Arabia has to be confronted with determination and
effectively by the Saudi authorities. There is a very
small role that the outside world, including even the
US, can play in the matter - except to share
intelligence and counter-terrorism expertise.
It would
be wishful thinking to believe that accelerated
political reforms in Saudi Arabia, however necessary and
desirable in the medium and long terms, would bring
about an end of jihadi terrorism of the al-Qaeda kind.
It would not. Only effective counter-terrorism
strategies in the region as a whole would help. That
means, particularly, effective counter-terrorism
operations in Iraq and Pakistan. The decapitation of the
al-Zarqawi-bin Mahmud combine in Iraq and of the bin
Laden-al-Zawahiri duo in the Pakistan-Afghanistan
region, if it could be brought about, could disrupt
seriously the re-established command and control of
al-Qaeda. It would not be the end of jihadi terrorism,
but could mark the beginning of it, if the sequel is
handled intelligently.
The events of
December and the increasing audibility and authority of bin
Laden show once again that the general headquarters of
international jihadi terrorism continues to function
from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. The so-called
anti-al-Qaeda operations of President General Pervez
Musharraf in the South Waziristan area have proved to be
a farce.
The greatest beneficiary of the
continued activity of bin Laden and the IIF has been
Musharraf. Under the pretext of helping the US in its
operations against al-Qaeda and bin Laden, he has been
able to get out of it one package after another -
economic and military. The end of al-Qaeda and bin Laden
would reduce his importance in the eyes of the US and
the rest of the international community. The US policy
of carrots all the way with no sticks has failed so far
to pressurize and motivate Pakistan to be more serious
in the hunt for bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. It is time
for a mid-course correction in policy.
As I keep
pointing out time and again, there is no such thing as a
definitive moment of victory over terrorism. It can only
be made to wither away over the course of time by a
well-considered and well-executed counter-terrorism
policy. One had seen many terrorist groups, which were
once considered formidable, wither away without any
trace of some of them now. Examples: the Baader-Meinhof,
the Red Army Faction and the Action Directe of Western
Europe, Carlos' group, the al Gama al Islamiya in Egypt
and the Sikh terrorist groups in Punjab. When the Sikh
terrorists stopped operating in Punjab in 1995 as a
result of sustained counter-terrorism pressure by the
Punjab police, aided by other agencies, we did not
realize that the terrorism has ended. Only much later we
realized that it has withered away, thanks to our
security forces - the low profile heroes of our campaign
against terrorism in Punjab. But it took them 14 years
of intelligent and sustained campaigns to bring about
this happy result.
Al-Qaeda and the IIF are much
stronger organizations than those of Punjab. The kind of
funds, technical expertise and transnational networking
they have at their disposal none of the terrorist
organizations of Punjab ever had. It should not,
therefore, be surprising that the fight against al-Qaeda
and the IIF is proving to be more difficult than any
other counter-terrorism campaign in the world, except
Israel's against jihadi terrorism. But I am confident
they can be made to wither away if we are relentless in
our campaign against them and against states such as
Pakistan, which are beneficiaries of their activities.
Can India play a role in the campaign
against jihadi terrorism at the international level,
including in Iraq? India, which has successfully kept al-Qaeda
out of its territory so far, and whose Muslim
population, the second-largest in the world after Indonesia's,
continues to treat al-Qaeda with disdain, can and should
play a low-profile, discreet and behind-the-scenes role
in helping the US, provided the US genuinely wants to be
helped and accords greater importance to the views and
concerns of India than it has been doing hitherto. It
has to be a partnership against pan-Islamic jihadi
terrorism on an equal basis, between the two greatest
democracies of this world. However, such a partnership
will not work if Washington keeps looking over its
shoulder all the time to see what its effect on Pakistan
could be. The need of the hour is an international
democratic and secular front against the international
jihadi terrorist front of bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, bin
Mahmud and their Pakistani jihadi cohorts. India and the
US need to be ready for such a partnership.
B Raman is additional secretary
(retired), cabinet secretariat, government of India, New
Delhi, and currently director, Institute for Topical
Studies, Chennai, and distinguished fellow and convener,
Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.
E-mail:corde@vsnl.com .
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