Page 2 of 2 A misleading terrorism
report By Ajai Sahni
mention, but communicating little
by way of an accurate picture of the movements, or
of their intensity and dynamics. Worse, there is
evidence of some extremely crude "cut and paste"
work in CRT 2006.
Most glaring: on April
26, in part because of US evidence, a special
court in Kolkata convicted seven men for the
January 2002 attack on the American Center in the
city that left five Indian
police
officers dead and more than 20 injured. This
conviction occurred in 2005, not 2006, and the
paragraph has simply been reproduced from CRT
2005.
Again, entire paragraphs on India's
"outdated and overburdened law-enforcement and
legal systems" are simply lifted verbatim from CRT
2005, without attribution:
India's counter-terrorism efforts
are hampered by its outdated and overburdened
law-enforcement and legal systems. The Indian
court system is slow, laborious, and prone to
corruption; terrorism trials can take years to
complete. An independent Indian think-tank, for
example, assesses that the estimated 12,000
civilians killed by terrorism in Jammu and
Kashmir from 1988 to 2002 generated only 13
convictions through December 2002; most of the
convictions were for illegal border crossing or
possession of weapons or explosives.
Many of India's local police forces are
poorly staffed, trained, and equipped to combat
terrorism effectively. Despite these challenges,
India scored major successes, including numerous
arrests and the seizure of hundreds of kilos of
explosives and firearms during operations
against the briefly resurgent Sikh terrorist
group Babbar Khalsa International.
Such mechanical and unattributed
inclusions from previous reports in the body of
CRT 2006 do not contribute to the authority and
credibility of the exercise.
There are
also several errors and inaccuracies of data and
fact. For instance, the report states, "Indian
officials said that terrorist infiltration into
Jammu and Kashmir increased in 2006." India's
Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report - and a
number of other official pronouncements - however,
indicate a marginal decline in infiltration by 4%
in 2006 over 2005. CRT 2006 mentions the July 17
incident of a Naxalite attack in the Dantewada
district of Chhattisgarh, in which "at least 25
people were killed". In fact, 33 villagers were
killed in the incident.
CRT 2006 refers to
"multiple terrorist attacks" resulting in
"numerous deaths and injuries". This is
meaningless. Data for all theaters in India -
indeed, South Asia - are available in reliable
open sources. Official data are also periodically
made available for several theaters. Either of
these sources, with appropriate attribution, can
give an acceptably accurate picture of the course
of violence.
The problem of authority or
validation can be addressed, simply, by
transparency of process. If data were clearly
attributed to defined open or official sources,
their publication in a US report would not
constitute endorsement or confirmation of their
validity, but would constitute a sufficient
provisional basis for analysis of trends.
The treatment of other theaters is no
better. For instance, the perfunctory paragraphs
on Bangladesh make no mention of the alleged
"left-wing extremism" that authorities in Dhaka
consider the main problem in the country, if the
number of fatalities is an index. According to the
South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database,
compiled from open-source reports, of the total of
145 "terrorist" fatalities in Bangladesh in 2006,
139 were categorized as "left-wing" terrorists.
The credibility or otherwise of this
official campaign of annihilation, and its
reconciliation with Bangladeshi claims to vigorous
counter-terrorist action, should be a natural
element within any comprehensive assessment of
trends in terrorism and counter-terrorism in that
country.
While substantial detail relating
to various theaters is given in CRT 2006, a
selective blindness and a policy-led approach to
assessment remain in evidence regarding Pakistan.
There are numerous endorsements of Pakistan's
exemplary role in combating terrorism and of
President General Pervez Musharraf's "courageous
role" in the "global war on terrorism", but little
effort is made to reconcile this with the report's
parallel assertion that Pakistan "remains a major
source of Islamic extremism and a safe haven for
some top terrorist leaders".
The report
goes further to name a number of "Islamic groups"
that survive in Pakistan under assumed names after
they were banned under their original names, and
notes that some of them continue "to operate
openly in parts of Pakistan". CRT 2006, however,
remains noncommittal on the reasons for this
phenomenon, and the apparent state patronage such
open activities would seem to reflect.
CRT
2006 cites "credible reports" that put the
fatalities in a total of "650 terrorist attacks"
at "as many as 900 Pakistanis". SATP data suggest
a total of 1,421 fatalities in Pakistan during the
year, including 608 civilians and 325 Security
Force personnel. It is useful to note, moreover,
that Islamabad has made consistent and intense
efforts to stifle information flows from the areas
of conflict in the country, and total fatalities
may, in fact, be considerably higher.
A
clearer definition of the "credible" sources on
which the CRT relies, and greater transparency
relating to the methodology relating both to the
attribution of credibility and the extraction of
data, would go a long way in giving greater
authority to future reports.
It is not the
intention or objective here to enter a detailed
critique of CRT 2006 in each of the theaters of
conflict in South Asia. What is essential is that
this exercise needs to go a long way before it can
come anywhere close to fulfilling its mandate of
providing a "a full and complete report on
terrorism" to Congress.
The tentativeness,
anxieties and ideologically driven assessments
reflected in CRT 2006 do not sit well with the
task and responsibilities of providing an
authoritative, credible and comprehensive analysis
of international trends in terrorism. As it
stands, the annual CRT process fails to produce a
reliable resource for assessments both for
Congress as well as for policymakers, scholars and
the media everywhere.
Ajai Sahni
is editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review
and executive director of the Institute for
Conflict Management.
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