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COMMENTARY
Reassessing the 'war on
terror'
By K P S Gill
The Global Village has moved away from rhetoric and closer
to reality: terrorist attacks in forgotten Morocco or
insular Saudi Arabia now echo instantly across the
Americas, Europe and every corner of Asia, among peoples
who previously had little awareness - even of the
existence - of these distant places some years ago. It
is useful to hear and understand these echoes, and place
them in an objective context - separating their emotive
and partisan content from the realities on the ground.
The dominant theme that reverberates after every
major incident of international terrorism in the age
after September 11, 2001 - and which resonated clearly
after both the Riyadh and Casablanca attacks - is an
almost celebratory chorus, virtually a gleeful claim of
vindication, among those who have been asserting that
US-coalition interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
the "global war against terror" would result in a
groundswell of "Muslim rage" and necessary and virulent
retaliation.
Interestingly, while this is an
argument that is certainly articulated by many in the
Muslim world, its most passionate advocates are numbered
among those who consider themselves liberal democrats,
and who are currently engaged in constructing the thesis
of American neo-conservative imperialism. Whether this
is intended or not, these arguments - irrespective of
their source - provide some of the most powerful
justifications and, indeed, advocacy of Islamist
extremist terrorism and constitute critical inputs in
the dangerous intensification of the propaganda war
against the US-led "war on terror".
A
significant and persistent undercurrent in this campaign
of misinformation is the reflection of a near-total
denial of Islamist terrorism and its virulent
ideological underpinnings. This broad campaign -
intentionally in some cases, inadvertently in others -
has a direct impact on the US will and commitment to
fight terrorism in the world, wherever it is to be
found.
The first and most significant point to
note is that it cannot conceivably be anybody's case
that, had the US not gone into Afghanistan after
September 11, or subsequently into Iraq, Islamist
terrorists would simply have abandoned their campaign
against the US and the "decadent West". Indeed, the
dangers of a far more violent campaign would have been
infinitely greater in the wake of any evidence of
weakness or conciliation on the part, particularly, of
the US, but generally of all existing and potential
targets of terrorism.
An objective assessment of
the course of terrorism would bear out the fact that -
while the risk of random incidents against soft targets
cannot, and should not be expected to, be eliminated -
the impetus of terror has, indeed, weakened as a result
of Afghanistan and Iraq, and this development needs
further consolidation rather than any dilution of the
war against terrorism and the campaign against political
extremism, authoritarianism and rogue states in
different parts of the world. America's withdrawal into
an isolationist, inward-looking defensive posture is
very certainly no longer an option. Fighting and
defeating terrorism is not a "policy choice" for the
civilized world; it is a survival goal.
At a
tactical level, it is useful to note that the attacks in
Riyadh and Casablanca reflected very poor economies of
scale from the terrorists' perspective. It took at least
nine suicide cadres in Riyadh to inflict 25 civilian
casualties. Ten suicide bombers in Casablanca killed 29
civilians. This kind of rate of attrition for low
priority targets is neither sustainable nor can it be
projected for long as a "great victory" for the "cause".
These two attacks have also done irreparable
damage to the Islamist terrorist movement. The countries
where these attacks were mounted have now been lost as
secure bases for the terrorists as their governments
abandon their past postures of ambivalence and tacit
support to the Islamist extremist factions. This is
crucial. For all their defects as authoritarian
oligarchies, these countries - with their scant regard
for human rights and judicial processes, as well as the
barbaric punishments they inflict - are far better
equipped to neutralize terrorists once they decide to do
so, than democratic nation-states ever will be.
The terrorists' apologists have consistently
sought to undermine effective counter-terrorism
initiatives on the argument that these would provoke
"retaliation" of a greater virulence against soft
targets. But not only do these views falsify the ground
reality of declining trends in terrorism, these views
also fail to correctly reflect the mood among the vast
majority of the people.
Among Muslims - and
certainly in South Asia - September 11 and the campaigns
in Afghanistan and Iraq may have aroused a measure of
resentment in limited segments of the population, but
they have equally provoked unprecedented introspection
and the open questioning of the fundamentalist-extremist
leadership's goals, methods and authority.
Indeed, a close reading of the pronouncements,
even of the Islamist extremist leadership in South Asia,
demonstrates that they now increasingly acknowledge the
dangers of the pathways they have adopted over the past
decades. These views tend largely to be ignored by the
outside (Western) observers, especially where their
experience is confined to the urban and metropolitan
centers, where opinions are strongly ideologically
slanted and often contra-factual. Delhi and Islamabad
are cases in point where small groups of isolated
"intellectuals", policy and opinion-makers engage in an
unending and incestuous discourse that fails entirely to
accommodate an objective assessment of realities on the
ground - and it is this discourse that is picked up by
Western diplomats, journalists and other observers who
seldom have access to a wider sample of public opinion.
Even among populations where some sympathies for the
Islamist extremist cause may have existed in the past,
the majority view in South Asia today - cutting across
religious and political affiliations - is swinging away
from continued support to the terrorists.
Pakistan has, by no means, remained unaffected
by these trends, despite its persistent duplicity in the
war against terrorism. This response is, moreover,
compounded by a rising dread of the Talibanization of
the country. There are, of course, some dangers that
arise out of the "Islamization" of some sections of the
army that have given rise to speculation of a coup by
this extremist element against President General Pervez
Musharraf. These threats are, however, vastly
exaggerated - though they may constitute a possibility
for Musharraf or a successor military regime several
years hence.
Within the proximate future,
however, there is little danger of a military revolt.
The fact is that, though the Pakistan army has been
responsible for several coups against civilian
governments, the force has never broken internal
discipline and has remained constant and loyal to its
military commander. Musharraf is, consequently, under no
extraordinary or imminent risk of an internal coup from
within the army and will, when international pressures
mount beyond a particular level, be able to contain and
neutralize radicalized elements within the army and the
Inter-Services Intelligence, as well as the
al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organizations that were
created by and affiliated to these institutions in the
past.
The "peace process" between India and
Pakistan has been spurred by these transformations in
the international and domestic context, and, while it is
not a "brokered" process, it has certainly been pushed
forward by US pressure. Unfortunately, any peace that
may result can only be temporary under present
circumstances where the entire infrastructure of
terrorism in Pakistan remains virtually intact, and
where the agencies of the state continue to support -
albeit selectively - a large number of virulent Islamist
terrorist groups and their ideological and political
affiliates, and as long as the structure of power in the
country remains bound to the revanchist
military-jihadi-feudal complex that has dominated its
politics since independence in 1947.
The
combined force of these facts must lead to the
conclusion that the shared, eventual and unvarying goal
of the civilized world must remain the destruction of
the terrorists' assets and ideologies, and, while a wide
range of political, social and ideological initiatives
are needed in the comprehensive strategy of the global
"war against terror", such initiatives do not undermine
or dilute the enormous need for a continued and focused
military response to the immediate dangers of global
terrorism.
K P S Gill, president,
Institute for Conflict Management, a non-profit society
set up in 1997 in New Delhi committed to the evaluation
and resolution of problems of internal security in South
Asia.
Published with permission from the
South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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