Asia Times: Terrorism may be India's strategic chance


	September 17, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Terrorism may be India's strategic chance
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - India is experiencing a range of emotions, much as Britain did following the only event in modern American history comparable in scale and impact to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked the American Pacific Fleet.

British columnist William Rees-Mogg recalls that his country's reaction to Pearl Harbor was one of "horror, but also a huge sense of relief that the USA was now involved in World War II".

India is similarly hoping that the US will now be involved in the war against terrorism that India has been fighting for the past two decades, first in the state of Punjab and then in Jammu and Kashmir, not to speak of the seven states in its Northeast and the communist insurgency in the eastern state of Bihar and the western state of Andhra Pradesh.

On that single day in December, writes Rees-Mogg in The Times of London, the Japanese action "started a new process of history; before it was complete, that process led to the destruction of the Japanese empire, the dropping of the first nuclear bombs, the occupation of Japan and eventually to American support for the post-war institutions of NATO, the UN and international peacekeeping".

Along the same lines, India is pleased that America is treating the latest attacks as a declaration of war by the terrorist groups, thus heralding a new phase of history in which India, it hopes, will be able to join the US and Israel in their fight against terrorism inspired by Islamic fundamentalism.

Calling for the redoubling of efforts to defeat the "great threat" of terrorism, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has written to US President George W Bush assuring him of India's full cooperation in investigations into the terrorist strikes. Condemning the events in the strongest terms, Vajpayee said, "the people of India and my government share the sense of outrage with the American people. We stand ready to cooperate with you in the investigations into this crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensure that terrorism never succeeds again," Vajpayee said.

The prime minister observed that this dark hour was a stark reminder of the power and reach of the terrorists to destroy innocent lives and challenge the civilized order in this world. "It sends a strong message to democracies to redouble our efforts to defeat this great threat to our people, our values and our way of life."

Most diplomatic and strategic commentators in India have taken up the refrain of democracies uniting to fight the terrorist threat. C Raja Mohan of the largely-circulated newspaper The Hindu, for instance, writes, "It often takes a single spectacular event to force the world to come to terms with a clear and present danger. Nations do not respond even to a well-understood threat unless it is fully demonstrated in reality. The shocking 'Super Terror Tuesday' in the United States should now force the international community to wake up to the enormity of the challenge the modern world faces from international terrorism. The world should fully recognize the kind of vulnerability it faces from the forces of international terrorism. Given the global spread of terrorist networks, there is no way of nations on an individual basis dealing with this threat. The time has come for open societies of the world to pool their resources and define a radically different strategy to counter international terrorism."

Leading strategic thinker K Subrahmanyam suggests in the Times of India, "Now the US should ally itself with other democracies and impose quarantine on states supporting jehadi terrorism. In this endeavor, the Shanghai group and Iran are valuable allies. President George Bush has talked about the solidarity of democracies against terrorism and has proposed that the US and India should host a lunch for leaders of democracies during the UN General Assembly session. This idea should be pursued. During the UN session, the UN convention on terrorism should be promulgated. The Security Council should be convened to monitor the state of international terrorism and formulate practical measures to quarantine states supporting or being permissive of terrorism. A global mechanism needs to be devised for nations to exchange information on terrorist activities. What happened in New York, Washington or Mumbai could happen elsewhere too."

The successful attack on the Pentagon may result in the triumph of jehadi terrorists with adverse consequences to other potential victims of terrorism, primarily India, says Subrahmanyam and recommends that Vajpayee's forthcoming visit to the US be utilized effectively to forge this new global alliance of democracies against terrorism. He goes on, "The main lesson from the incidents in New York and Washington is the imperative need for India to devise a whole range of measures, such as nuclear command and control, ensure the safety and security of political and military leaderships and put in place alternative command centers. Above all, professional institutionalized mechanisms to monitor the effectiveness of our intelligence must be set up. While all these steps have to be taken secretly, there must be efforts to create public confidence that these steps are being taken."

The reasons behind the huge sense of relief in India are explained in an editorial in north India's largest-circulated newspaper, the Hindustan Times. As a victim of terrorism for more than a decade, it says, India has reasons to welcome the recognition of this menace by the international community. That the acknowledgement of a peril which has long been evident in this country should have come at such a terrible cost is something to be regretted. But India, too, has paid a heavy price in the past 10 years in Kashmir, which has lost its reputation as a tourist paradise because of the insurgency, the editorial says. "Other parts of India have also borne the brunt of terrorist attacks. Both the civilians and the security forces have suffered. None of this, however, had an impact on world opinion, presumably because the terrorist outrages in Kashmir were seen as a continuation of the kind of disturbances which India has experienced in the Northeast and for a time in Punjab."

It is also possible, the Hindustan Times goes on, that since India has witnessed many other kinds of violence, such as Hindu-Muslim communal riots and cast feuds among Hindus, apart from the depredations of the Naxalite gangs, the international community was not bothered too much about what was happening in Kashmir.

"There was also a misperception about the events in Kashmir being a struggle for self-determination. It was believed that all would be well if only the Indian security forces withdrew. After what has happened in the US, however, the nature of the subversion in Kashmir should become apparent to the rest of the world. The jehadis have never made any secret of their objective, which has nothing to do with 'freedom' for the Kashmiris. Their aim is the establishment of a Taliban-style rule. The threat posed by them is manifold - to democracy, to multiculturalism and even to the concept of a 'moderate' Islamic state which Pakistan claims to represent. Now, however, India's cry in the wilderness is likely to be taken more seriously. New Delhi should seize the moment and present to the outside world the information it has about the terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the militants' modes of operation, including the support provided by the Inter-Service Intelligence. Since the menace has been identified, no effort should be spared to ensure its complete eradication."

The opportunity to snuggle up to the US may have come just in time for India to ward off a backlash that was developing in America against the present trend toward improved US-India relations. Writing in The Hindu, analyst Harold A Gould quotes a spate of recent publications that suggest such a trend, either by reflex or design. One cannot help but wonder, says Gould, if unreconstructed denizens of the fading Cold War culture may be behind it.

Examples abound. An article by Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor of the New Republic, appeared in the August 6 edition of that magazine which offered grudging praise to India for having at last seen the light and cast its strategic and economic lot with the United States. An article in the Wall Street Journal written by Kenneth Weisbrode on August 22 adopts a similar tone. As does an article by Robyn Lim in the August 16 edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review. The theme running through all of these articles is that the US may be putting its strategic eggs in a rickety basket; that when push comes to shove the Indians, who opposed American policies during the Cold War, might prove to be an unreliable strategic partner in the new global firmament now struggling to be born.

Not everybody in India, either, is happy at the burgeoning India-US relations or at the Indian attempts to become America's regional policeman. Analyst Praful Bidwai, for instance, is strident in his criticism of both the US policies and mainstream Indian strategic thinking. Nothing since the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has convulsed the world's conscience as powerfully as the butchery of innocent civilians in Tuesday's terror attacks in the US, he says. However, the shock, agony and anger produced by these acts are now giving way to calls for revenge and retribution in America, and to loose talk of a new global alliance for "freedom and democracy" against jehadi terrorism in India. American leaders insist on portraying these attacks as acts of war. Many are deploying language reminiscent of Reagan's Evil Empire, which would rationalize the unleashing of retribution with unlimited or maximum force in different parts of the world as America's self-defense.

For Bidwai, the present situation is a bizarre spectacle of a Cold War military alliance which lost its reason for existence a decade ago with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The US as the dominant partner of this far-from-democratic military coalition seems all set to repeat the 1983 invasion of Libya, when Gaddafi and Co were branded "mad dogs" and then bombarded. America today can target whomsoever it chooses, rather than admit to the fallibility of its intelligence agencies.

As it happens, Bidwai points out, that record is embarrassingly bad and profoundly undemocratic. "From Iran and Central America in the Fifties, to Brazil, Cuba and Vietnam in the Sixties, to Chile, southern Africa, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and above all, Afghanistan in the Seventies and Eighties - not to speak of Panama, Haiti and Angola, or the first Iran-Iraq war. In each case, America either snuffed out democratic or moderately nationalist regimes and sided with brutal dictators, or produced or strengthened new monsters while fighting old ones. These include Saddam Hussein (strengthened by the US tilt towards Iraq in the first Gulf War) and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, who in turn produced Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Bin Laden is in many ways an American creation. Put simply, America, which believes in its own unique manifest destiny, has never learned to moderate its overwhelming military power and use it wisely, to universal, democratic and just ends. Today, it has embarked on a purely militaristic Rambo-like strategy based upon the national-security obsession characteristic of the Republican right, to combat terrorists by 'hunting them down'."

However, such a strategy is badly fraught, says Bidwai. It will inevitably lead to severe curtailment of and attack on fundamental rights and people's freedoms. "It will create a climate of suspicion, paranoia and nationalist hysteria: already, certain religious communities are being openly maligned, and Arab-Americans are receiving threatening calls. It will give respectability to intellectually bankrupt 'theories' like the clash of civilizations, itself a pitiable attempt to invent a post-Cold War enemy for the US. Above all, a militarist approach will fail to tackle the conditions and causes of terrorism itself. Force may be necessary to fight terrorism in the short run, but it alone cannot suffice. It can quickly become counter-productive, says Bidwai.

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