Terrorism Round-up
This is a compilation of recently published articles dealing with terrorism in India.Please read the articles and write to us as what you think is the root cause and solution of this problem. Send your responses to info@youthforequality.com
The Unseemly Politics of Terrorism in India : by K. Subrahmanyam
Following the Jaipur terror blasts resulting in over 60 deaths, there is an intense debate in the country on how to deal with terrorism. As is very characteristic of the political culture of this country, this outrage, instead of bringing our political parties together in a united effort to fight terrorism, has led to mutual recrimination. This would give a great deal of comfort and encouragement to the trans-national and intra-national terrorist organizations that target this country.
The debate is about the policies towards terrorists advocated by different parties, the laws available to counter them, the jurisdiction of various central and state agencies, adequacies and capabilities of organizations at centre and states etc. All these are very legitimate issues needing to be debated constructively. Instead of using those arguments to score points against political rivals there is an imperative need for political parties to get into a meaningful dialogue among themselves.
Contrast the behavior of Indian political parties with that of parties in other mature democracies such as the US, Britain and European Union countries. In no other country claiming to be a democracy do we see as much acrimony in facing what is recognized as a national threat. This is the situation in a country that has been engaged in fighting terrorism for well over a quarter of a century.
This calls for a serious introspection among our people, academia, media and politicians on the basic features of our society and political culture that makes this country so vulnerable to terrorism and so difficult to unify in countering it.
Though the UN may not have succeeded in formulating an agreed definition of terrorism, there is commonly accepted definition largely acceptable to the social scientists. Terrorism is the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against people or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies often to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives.
While explosions like those in Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Malegaon, Bangalore and Varanasi are recognized as terrorist acts, the killing of people during the election violence (as in West Bengal recently) has been happening routinely and is not considered as terrorism for some inexplicable reasons. Similarly, when civilians are killed in ‘bandhs’ called by political parties, they are also not described as terrorism.
But since terrorism is violence or threatened violence against people and property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological purposes, in fact all such violence should be treated as terrorism. Further, when the presiding officer of a legislature is prevented from discharging his legal duties by members storming into the Well of the house or through various moves such as shouting, that too amounts to violence to intimidate the presiding officer to achieve political objectives.
In other words, the behavior of legislators amount to terrorism. One does not see such behavior of parliamentary terrorism, bandh terrorism and electoral terrorism in other mature democracies. It is submitted here that all these categories of terrorism form a continuum and to arrive at the place and role of religious extremist terrorism, one must look at the whole spectrum of terrorism.
When parliamentary terrorism, bandh terrorism and electoral terrorism are tolerated by the majority in the country, that too often in the name of democracy, freedom, right to protest — all of which are permissible only if violence is scrupulously avoided — then some others push the envelope further and resort to political, religious and ideological terrorism.
It must also be clear that violence does not necessarily mean inflicting bodily harm to another person. It also means preventing and intimidating the other person’s legitimate freedom of action or legal functions. Preventing the presiding officer from discharging his legitimate duties by slogan shouting and storming the Well of the house are clear cases of violence. Stopping traffic on roads and compelling shopkeepers to shut down through intimidation are also acts of violence. They are being undertaken for political, ideological or religious purposes. Therefore they are all acts of terrorism.
While in some other parts of the world it has been argued that one man’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter, it would appear in India that one man’s terrorism is projected as another person’s legitimate democratic political activity: Often it becomes a matter of double standard that one’s own terrorism is permissible political activity the other person’s is not.
Which decent democracy will need hundreds and thousands of police and paramilitary personnel will be required to guard the elementary right in democracy — voting in the election — to be exercised? We take pride that the country has held successive free and fair elections under such conditions of strict policing to avoid large-scale political terrorism being resorted to by our political parties. Our Election Commission is not in a position to assure our people that they will be in a position to hold a one-day poll all over the country without terrorist violence resorted to by political parties. There is yet no sense of shame or remorse among our political parties on this kind of political culture nurtured in this democracy.
In other genuine democratic countries, it is easier for security services to gather intelligence about preparations to resort to terrorism from the common citizen since such activities involving potential violence will be an aberration in the society. In India there is no rapport between the common citizen and the police force as the latter has been politicized and made an instrumentality of the ruling party.
Secondly, given the Indian political culture where local dons turn into ‘netas’ and often enjoy political power and patronage, the common citizen is not willing to take the risk of communicating to the police or security services such aberrant activities.
The politicians themselves have denigrated the reputation of the police and security services with their charges that all cases against political persons are foisted ones at the instigation of the parties in power. We have situations in which political dons are able to run their criminal empires dealing with extortion (which invariably involves terrorism) from jail cells.
While terrorism is a specific threat in other democracies, in India it is part of our present political culture. In these circumstances it is difficult to expect terrorism of the Jaipur, Bombay, Hyderabad type to be overcome before the country is able to cleanse our parliament of the scourge and to a significant extent our electoral process. But there is not even adequate awareness in the country about the nature of terrorism that is afflicting the country.
It is extremely unlikely the present generation of senior political leaders can be expected to be de-conditioned from their mindsets that accept terrorism of certain categories as part of politics. It is now up to the civil society to bring about a basic change in the perception of our politicians.
(K. Subrahmanyam is India’s pre-eminent analyst on strategic and international affairs. He can be contacted at ksubrahmanyam51@gmail.com)
May 25, 2008
http://www.boloji.com/opinion/0569.htm
Muslims Must Come Out Openly Against Terrorists : by Firoz Bakht Ahmed
Today, Islam is under scanner owing to so many voices stating that the religion advocates violence. Not all of them can be wrong as people judge by what they see and today these terrorists speak and act violently in the name of Islam.
Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad like many others are global cities and the terrorism that struck here, too, is a global phenomenon. As a human being and an Indian Muslim, I literally wept over the needless deaths of those who died or were maimed while shopping during the beginning of the summer break.
Kafeel in Glasgow, Mumbai blasts by Memons and others in India, the jehadis in Kashmir, 9/11, 7/7 (London), 13/12 (Delhi), 29/10 (Delhi) and the Al-Qaeda at a global level – all these make my head go down in shame as a Muslim.
Muslims must come out openly against terrorist outfits like Hu-JI (Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam), Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al-Qaeda, Harkat-ul-Ansar, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Sipah-e-Sahaba and others – all committed to desecrate peaceful coexistence and harmony.
The jehadis have been slaughtering innocent lives at railway stations, bus stops, trains, airplanes, temples and markets. The ideologically networked jehadis kill without mercy, specialize in suicide attacks and when cornered fight to the finish. They derive their strength from Al- Qaeda.
These radical jehadis are part of an intricate web of nationalist insurgent groups that act autonomously and are difficult to track down. From 9/11 US to 29/10 and 13/12 Delhi, theirs is a bloody tale of hate and kill.
Many of the terrorists acting in the name of Islam cite Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan to justify the killing of innocent lives. They have lost their moral compass. For them, anyone who does not agree with their point of view is an infidel and should be eliminated.
They are able to misinterpret verses from the Quran to justify their heinous designs. Muslims must separate themselves from ‘Muslim’ terrorism.
The word jehad comes from its Arabic root ‘jahada’ meaning ‘to struggle’. The word jehad has been so badly misused both by some wayward Muslim terrorists and Islam-baiters that it has completely lost its meaning.
Jehad is essentially a struggle against evil, both within and beyond us. Jehad-e-Akbar (The Greater Jehad) is a complete surrender to the Will of Allah. It calls for a total subjugation of ego and anger.
The SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India), the rhetoric of Shahi Imam Bukhari, fanatics in Coimbatore and Maharashtra, the calls for jehad and the distribution of inflammatory posters have enraged middle class Hindus.
Minor issues like a few Muslim leaders opposing the singing of the national song “Vande Mataram” on national occasions add fuel to the fire increasing animosity between the two communities in India.
Those who kill innocents have nothing to do with Islam. Sura Al-Baqr (Verse: 114) in the Quran states that Allah dislikes those who indulge in arson, loot and killings. Sura Al-Kafirun (Chapter: 30) mentions “Lakum dinokum waley yadeen” (You follow your religion; let them follow theirs).
Islam rejects violence in all its forms, but the jehadis take the terror path without bothering about the impact it can have on a common Muslim by making him the usual suspect. They don’t read those verses that declare that taking the life of even one innocent individual means killing whole humanity.
The jehadis use those verses from the Quran that are ‘contextual’ and by twisting and bending them they act self-deceivingly as human bombs. Islam has no room for suicide. There are many verses in the Quran that are ‘contextual’, in the sense that they are the verses used during a war and are not of a general nature.
Take for example the verse, “Slay the pagans wherever you find them, seize them, beleaguer them, lie in wait for them with every stratagem” (Chapter: 9, Verse: 5).
No doubt these verses call upon the believers to fight with determination against perpetrators and all odds, and these are not necessarily against non-Muslims. If taken out of context, they might appear to advocate violence; misguided Muslims are doing exactly that.
According to the Khwaja Iftekhar Ahmed, an Islamic scholar and president Inter Faith harmony Foundation of India, what is so abominable is that the extremists select these (some 20) verses only to express ‘righteousness’ to act ‘righteously’. Frankly speaking, to a common Muslim, it is abhorrent to attach such acts to the teachings of Prophet Mohammed, who is known to be merciful not only to Muslims but the whole humanity.
The so-called jehadis have no right to misinterpret the verses to suit their dastardly machinations.
Jaipurites with characteristic calm have got on with life despite the blasts on Tuesday evening at Manak Chowk, Sanganeri Gate Hanuman Mandir, Jauhri Bazaar, Tripoliya, Chhoti Chaupar and Chandpole Hanuman Mandir. Curfew was clamped. Fortunately, there was no backlash. Muslims are at a crucial point. It has been observed that ordinary Muslims in many countries have turned away from militancy after they witnessed what was done in their name and what it did in turn to their communities.
We have seen this in Egypt and in Algeria. The need of the hour in cities like Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai is that the moment the community observes any suspicious people living in their neighborhood, they must, without delay, inform the police.
Muslim voices of sanity are not heard loudly. Even the London Muslims while condemning the July 7 killings added a ‘but’ (root cause) to it, as if they were justifying the murders.
We have to agree in principle that killing of innocents cannot be justified irrespective of race, religion, place or ethnicity. Many are also guilty of not speaking out against the unjust acts of Muslims against non-Muslims.
These jehadis prefer the Muslim ghettos as nobody is bothered as to what activities are going on. Besides, in Muslim ‘mohallas’, these jehadis offer a handsome rent and the landlord falls for the bait realizing the truth only when anti-terrorist squads surround his house. These neighborhoods serve jehadis as water to the fish. It is also important that the Muslim community itself develops a broad range of tactics from traditional counter-terrorists methods to softer more sophisticated strategies to destroy this jehadi trend.
A liberal Muslim must check a communalist Muslim and a communal Hindu be checked by a liberal Hindu. Muslim voices of sanity aren’t loudly heard. There shouldn’t be “ifs” and “buts” while condemning terror acts. We have to agree to the principle that killings of innocents cannot be justified irrespective of race, religion, place or ethnicity.
(Firoz Bakht Ahmed is a commentator on social and educational issues. He can be contacted at firozbakhtahmed07@gmail.com)
http://www.boloji.com/opinion/0564.htm
SC stand against terror often negated by govt
4 Aug 2008, Dhananjay Mahapatra,TNN
Every single death sentence awarded by Supreme Court makes news. The extreme penalty is handed down only in rarest of rare cases relating to heinous crimes which reflect the nadir of human depravity and senselessness.
Death penalty is awarded after careful scrutiny of evidence by all three courts — subordinate, high court and Supreme Court. But, that is not the end of the road for a condemned convict.
He could still send mercy pleas to the President or the governor, as the case may be, and bide his time during its pendency. In the courts presided over by terrorists, however, legal procedures are redundant. Death sentences get awarded to unknown number of innocents the moment they assemble a bomb and plant it in crowded places. The dance of death unfolds in public at the press of a remote. For, the extreme law followed by terrorists has no chapter on mercy jurisprudence.
Every blast leaves children orphaned, women widowed and parents to grieve a lifetime over their lost children. Communal harmony gets ruptured. A community gets slandered. Translated in the law of the land, this denotes mass murder, treason and spreading disharmony in society, all of which under Indian Penal Code are categorised as heinous crimes.
What should, then, be the punishment for terrorists indulging in these acts simultaneously? Since 1987, the Supreme Court has made a strong pitch for adequate punishment for terrorists. In the Mahesh vs State of MP [1987 (2) SCR 710] case, it had refused to reduce the accused’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
It said, “It will be a mockery of justice to permit the accused to escape the extreme penalty of law when faced with such evidence and such cruel acts. To give lesser punishment for the accused would be to render the justice system of the country suspect. The common man will lose faith in the courts. In such cases, he understands and appreciates the language of deterrence more than the reformative jargon.”
This paragraph is quoted in another oft-referred judgment — Sevaka Perumal vs State of Tamil Nadu [1991 SCC (3) 471]. The latter is a reference point for many a judgment of the Supreme Court, right upto this year. In Perumal case, the apex court said a murder committed due to deep seated personal rivalry may not call for death penalty. “But, an organised crime or mass murder of innocent people would call for imposition of death sentence as deterrence,” it had said.
Undue sympathy and imposing inadequate sentence would do more harm to the justice system, which would lead to loss of public confidence in the efficacy of law, the court had said. “It is the duty of every court to award proper sentence having regard to the nature of the offence and the manner in which it was executed or committed,” it had said.
The courts may have eschewed “undue sympathy” in awarding death sentence to terrorists — be it Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar in the Maninderjit Singh Bitta bomb attack case or Mohd Afzal in the Parliament attack incident. But, when it comes to executing the death penalties, the government, irrespective of the party in power, invariably develops cold feet.
This political cold feet appears to have erased the deterrent element that the apex court stressed so strongly, time and again, while making it a point to award adequate punishment for crimes. This dithering on government’s part, as India gets increasingly targeted by terrorists, could have a disastrous impact on the nation.
The SC had said, “Security of persons and property of the people is an essential function of the State. It could be achieved through instrumentality of criminal law. Undoubtedly, there is a cross cultural conflict where living law must find answer to the new challenges and the courts are required to mould the sentencing system to meet the challenges.”
Terrorism and bomb blasts have posed a grave new challenge to criminal law administrators — the government and the courts. The courts appear to be on course correction mode by applying deterrence jurisprudence. Will the governments follow suit?
dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com
Roots of terrorism : V SUNDARAM
Terrorism is simply the name of a technique:
I understand that a ‘Symposium on Roots of Terrorism’ was held in Washington DC on 28-29 April. It was sponsored and organized by America Truth Forum. A large number of prominent and highly-placed intellectuals and experts on Islamic studies attended the symposium. Many of them were celebrities and known personalities on national TV and radio stations. A forceful Indian and Hindu view point was presented by Dr Babu Suseelan, a psychologist and Director of Addiction Research Institute, Pennsylvania and board member of Indian American Intellectuals Forum (IAIF) on that occasion.
What is very gratifying to note is that more than 375 intellectuals and US opinion makers, many of them Jewish and Christian Americans, took an active part in the Symposium. To quote the words of Narain Kataria in this context: ‘This was a rare occasion for IAIF members to interact with American mainstream personalities and exchange the Indian viewpoint openly on the menace of terrorism. It was, probably, for the first time that the presence and scholarship of Hindu Americans was recognized and appreciated by renowned global experts on counter-terrorism’.
Dr Babu Suseelan insisted that it was absolutely essential for the world to understand the deadly ideology that successfully transforms the simple human beings into deadly suicide bombers and terrorists. He said that we cannot deal with the problem of terrorism until and unless we completely comprehend the ideology which extols the virtues of killing and preaches hate, incites violence and enjoins on its followers to instill terror in the hearts of those who do not believe in Allah (8:12); insists on its followers to make a war on unbelievers who dwell around them (9:123); compels its followers to be harsh to unbelievers; tells them that ultimate abode of infidels is Hell, directs them to lay hold on infidels; bind them; burn them in the fire of Hell, then, fasten them with a chain seventy cubits long. The only fault of infidel was that he did not believe in Allah, the Most High.
Jihad, fundamentally, is a do or die doctrine of permanent warfare. Jihad, Holy War and Terrorism are all interchangeable words in all contexts and all situations relating to so called infidels or non-believers or what Islam calls Kafirs. He pointed out that Muslims have been in a state of perpetual war wherever they live, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, Chechnya or Sudan, Kashmir or Thailand, Indonesia or Bangladesh, Philippine or Spain, USA, UK, or India. Dr Prithipal, Professor of Comparative Religion, University of Alberta, Canada has categorically observed: ‘Muslims will only live as an oppressive majority and in turbulent minority’. This is because of the supremacy and paramountcy of the Islamic Jihad.
Surveying the History of India, Dr Suseelan pointed out that the Afghanistan was once Hindu and a part of the original India of that time. In 1947, Pakistan too was forcibly carved out of the Indian Territory by Islamists. Now, feverish efforts are on by all Islamic nations to wrest the Indian Kashmir from the Hindu India. Threats of violence, loot, murder and rape of Hindu people all familiar tools of terrorism have become a routine thing in the Indian Kashmir today.
Many people are under the mistaken impression that terrorism in the world began on 11 September, 2001. This assumption is based on total ignorance of the known facts of history. Dr Suseelan added: ‘India has been experiencing terrorism for hundreds of years. Even the so-called Moghul King Akbar-the-Great had killed 30,000 to 40,000 innocent Hindus in one day’. He then referred to 14,000 young Hindu girls who had to immolate themselves in fire in a city named Chittor in Rajasthan in India when Hindu soldiers were not able to defend the honour of their womenfolk against the barbarian Islamic forces. 1,00,000 Hindu prisoners in one day were put to death by Timur-the-Terrible.
The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels of India ever since the Arab conquest of Sind in 712 AD.
To quote Dr Suseelan in this context: ‘The whole world knows that six million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis. It is also known that 1.2 million Armenians were butchered by Turkish Muslims. But nobody knows about the Hindu Holocaust. There are various estimates on how many million Hindus have been slaughtered by Islamic invaders inspired by holy Quran. Prof Bill French of the Centre for the Study of Political Islam, Tennessee, who has conducted an in-depth research on the subject, told me that Muslims have killed 120 million human beings around the globe (including 40 million Hindus in India alone). Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch says that in sheer numbers, no group of people has suffered from Islam like the Hindus. He further said that it is amazing how few Americans and British of Indian origin seem to know the history of their own ancestors. Prof K S Lal writes that 60 to 70 million Hindus were murdered by Muslim rulers’.
In conclusion, Dr Suseelan said that Hindus and Hinduism are under siege in India. At present the Muslim population in India is rising by leaps and bounds. There are 162 million Muslims living in Pakistan. There are approximately 150 to 160 million Muslims in India; Bangladesh has another 147 million Muslims. Roughly one-third of the world Muslim population lives in the Indian sub-continent. This is a very frightening scenario for India. Enlightened members of the audience in the high-profile Symposium were horrified and shocked by the detailed and documented information provided by Dr Suseelan.
Returning to the Indian context, since 1989, more than 13500 civilians and 5300 security personnel have been killed by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. By contrast, over the same period, till December 2004, just 62 persons have been indicted for terrorism in the State. Our Courts of Law don’t and won’t deliver. When someone at the greatest risk to his life acts to save the country, a shriek is sent up, Human Rights Violation.
During the last 20 years about 64,000 have been killed in terrorist related violence within the territory of India. By the end of 2004, 220 districts, covering 40 to 45 per cent of the country’s territory had come to be affected by insurgencies of one kind or another. K.P.S. Gill has given three reasons for these killings: i) Islamic fundamentalism; ii) Left wing extremism; and iii) Ethnic Fundamentalisms in the North East. Arun Shourie has rightly observed that it is more or less taboo to talk about the first. The second is explained away in fashionable circles as the counter to State-terrorism as a direct consequence of Land Reforms not having been implemented. The third is lauded as ‘The rise of consciousness among indigenous people’.
India is a State in denial, a State which has withered away for good or for evil.
Against this crumbling edifice of national security situation, it is shocking to see our pusillanimous Prime Minister offering on bended knees with supplication an offer of a new deal to the terrorists and quislings of Kashmir today. The same Prime Minister treats the striking students of IITs and Medical Colleges as quislings, ably assisted by the Human Resources Destruction (HRD) Minister and a known page boy of the Nehru family. The Hindu victims of Islamic terrorism in Kashmir are being treated like disposable consumables in the crucible of an artificially sponsored peace process founded on a superstructure of sanctimonious humbug. We have a weak government; we have a weaker economy; we have puny men at the highest levels of governance with contempt for our own nation and her people. Is this a sign of our tolerant culture? Is it a sign of our being a democracy? Is it a sign of confidence and strength? Or is it a sign of our being confused, of our having been fed guilt, and of our having internalised it?
It is in this context I am reminded of the strong stand taken by Deng Xiaoping, President of China when the Western nations spoke about violation of human rights in China, after the suppression of the riots in Tiananmen. Deng Xiaoping said that the troubles had been executed by ‘so called democrats’ who were in fact the scum of the Chinese nation. Deng Xiaoping gave a warning as follows: This turmoil has been a lesson for us. We are more keenly aware that first priority should always be given to national sovereignty and security. Some Western countries, on the pretext that China has an unsatisfactory human rights record and an irrational and illegitimate socialist system, attempt to jeopardize our national sovereignty. Countries that play power politics are not qualified to talk about human rights. How many people’s human rights have they violated throughout the world!… They are not the United Nations. What grounds have they for interfering in the internal affairs of China? Who gave them power to do that? The Chinese people will never accept any action that violates norms of international relations, and they will never yield to outside pressure.
One million of our so-called Nethas cannot equal one Deng Xiaoping. When are we going to get tall leaders with judgement, courage, vision and above all political integrity?
http://pseudosecularism.blogspot.com/2006/05/roots-of-terrorism.html
Dealing with terror strategies : Namrata Goswami
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After Ahmedabad blasts, certain Indian politicians have evoked a ‘war on terror,’ similar to Bush Administration’s post-9/11 war, as India’s policy response to terror acts. Such policies create misunderstandings about concepts of “war” and “terror.”
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India is faced with increasing terrorist threats, as the events of the last few months have indicated. The Ahmedabad terrorist bombings of July 26 killed nearly 45 civilians and wounded 160, while the Bangalore bombs the previous day killed one person and wounded six. These were preceded by the May 13 Jaipur terrorist bombings, which killed 80 civilians and injured more than 200.
Incidentally, on July 28, two terrorist bombs killed 16 civilians and wounded nearly 150 others in a crowded pedestrian area of Istanbul, Turkey. The same day, three suicide terrorist bombers killed 61 civilians and wounded 238 in Baghdad and Kirkuk in Iraq. Though the motives for these attacks were different, the deadly common factor was overwhelming civilian deaths.
According to the U.N. Humanitarian Affairs chief, John Holmes, 700 Afghan civilians have been killed in 2008 in terrorist attacks. The Brookings Institution estimates that between May 2003 and February 2008, a staggering 104,317 Iraqi civilians died in terrorist attacks.
India has lost nearly 500 civilians to terror attacks in 2008. According to the South Asia Intelligence Review, the number of civilians killed in India in 2007 was 957. In 2001 it was 1,067. The “University of Uppsala Conflict Data Set” and the “Minorities at Risk Project” at Maryland University suggest that more than 1,000 deaths a year in internal conflict situations constitute high-intensity violence. By that measure, India has been facing high-intensity violence, with civilian deaths constituting the highest number of those killed in terror attacks.
Interestingly, certain Indian politicians have evoked a “war on terror,” similar to the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 war, after the recent Ahmedabad blasts as India’s policy response to terror acts. Such policies, however, simply create misunderstandings about concepts like “war” and “terror,” resulting in ill-advised policy responses.
By definition, war is “violent engagement between two legitimate political entities.” “War” cannot be waged with an activity like “terror” or with illegitimate entities like terrorist groups. The right concept to fight terror is perhaps “counter-terrorism.” Also, war is historically grounded on rules to be followed by both parties in a conflict.
Amongst the existing traditions on rules of war, the Western Just War tradition as propounded by Saint Augustine, Hugo Grotius and others over the centuries, and at present by Michael Walzer, are perhaps the most explicit. This tradition expounds two sections: jus ad bellum (Right Recourse to War) and jus in bello (Right Conduct in War).
Jus ad bellum has six principles. The first principle is “just cause,” indicating that war could be waged between two legitimate political entities either for self-defence or the protection of human rights. Second, the authority that declares war must be a legitimate entity within the comity of nations. Third, war must be guided by “right intentions,” and not by any hidden intent of self- aggrandisement by an individual or a state. Fourth, it must be the last resort. Fifth, it must have a high “probability of success” for the wager state. Sixth, the end result should culminate in positive benefits for the target state (read Afghanistan and Iraq in the case of the U.S. “war on terror”).
Jus in bello is based on two principles: “proportionality of means,” indicating that the “means” employed must not negate the good that war brings about in the target state. The last criterion is non-combatant immunity: civilians cannot be targeted in a war.
Significantly, terrorism by definition is “the use of violence against civilians by non-state actors to attain political objectives.” Hence, while states are constrained by the principle of non-combatant immunity, terrorists are not. Moreover, the ambiguous nature of terrorists guarantees them immunity, unlike states, from the rules of war as none can be held accountable. For instance, the “Indian Mujahideen” that has claimed responsibility via e-mail for the recent bombs in Jaipur and Ahmedabad, is an unknown entity. Though speculation is adrift that it is linked to the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), there is little evidence to prove it conclusively.
To have an effective counter-terrorism strategy in place instead of a general war is, however, not an easy task. It demands a deep understanding of the strategies and goals of terrorist outfits.
In an interesting study on strategies of terrorism in international security in 2006, Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walters indicates that terrorist outfits mostly engage in “costly signalling” — violent signals of resolve meant to provide concrete evidence about their ability to enact “acts of terror” to achieve their goals. Take the al- Qaeda. Had it informed the U.S. in advance that it planned to kill around 3,000 Americans on September 11 unless it withdrew its forces from West Asia, people would have disbelieved its intentions. Therefore, weak actors like terrorists establish their “terrible” credibility by means of a public display of violence.
Kydd and Walters cite five strategic logics and goals of terrorist outfits. The strategic logics include attrition, intimidation, provocation, spoiling and outbidding. Terrorists utilising attrition advertise to their adversary their ability to impose considerable costs on the target population over a period of time; intimidation is mainly aimed to coerce the target population to support the terrorists’ cause; provocation attempts to induce the adversary to respond to terrorist acts with indiscriminate counterforce, resulting in enormous hardship for people. Consequently, the population ends up supporting the terrorist outfits.
Spoiling includes attempts by terrorist outfits to undermine any move against terror by moderates amongst the target population. Outbidding aims at convincing the target population that one terror outfit is more credible than others.
Five principal goals are meant to be achieved by these strategic logics: regime change, policy change, territorial change, social control of the population, and status quo maintenance of an existing regime or territorial arrangement. Amongst these goals, the 9/11 attacks were primarily waged by al-Qaeda to engineer U.S. policy change in West Asia, especially in regard to U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.
The recent terror bombings in India are meant either for “territorial change” or “social control.” If the LeT was indeed involved in these, its goal was territorial change in Kashmir, to incorporate it with Pakistan. SIMI and the Indian Mujahideen are more geared towards social control as they want to strengthen their own status among their present recruits as well as the target population. The Indian Mujahideen sent an e-mail stating that it was a terrorist group, in order to indicate its violent nature to the target population. It also openly requested the LeT not to claim responsibility for the attacks so that its own distinctive terrible credibility would be established beyond doubt.
Social control over the target population is also secured by discrediting the state’s capability to secure its citizens from terror attacks. We have witnessed aggressive verbal attacks (spoiler tactics) by terror outfits against moderate Muslims defying terror.
In order to counter such logics and strategies, India’s counter-terrorism strategy requires well-coordinated specialised units with superior intelligence-gathering and assessment skills. The government must urgently activate effective countermeasures such as law enforcement, covert operations based on sound intelligence against terror networks, and efficient bureaucratic coordination.
Finally, the greatest successes against terror are achieved when state forces are able to avert planned attacks. This needs greater media coverage so that a sense of security is instilled amongst citizens. Such preventive successes against terror deprive the terrorists of their most vital weapons: civilian deaths and the fear psychosis that spreads in society thereafter.
(Dr. Namrata Goswami is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. E-mail: namygoswami@gmail.com)
http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/05/stories/2008080554540900.htm
Reforming the guards : Yoginder K. Alagh
August 05, 2008 , Indian Express
Terror threats make administrative reform more urgent
The spotlight, immediately after incidents such as those that occurred in Mumbai, Varanasi, Jaipur, Bangalore and now Ahmedabad, is on our leaders. The brave face, the sympathy, the novice blaming directly, the sophisticated insinuating are all to be expected. The real issue, the effectiveness of the administrative response, gets swept under the carpet. When it succeeds in averting a disaster it is not reported or ignored. When it fails, it hides behind the spotlight.
The horrific incidents in different cities persisted and were nauseatingly repetitive and yet were not stopped. Elsewhere, fast security reactions are seen. The Israelis, for example, responded to a plane hijack in another country with astonishing speed. The Japanese claim that, within half an hour of a high-intensity incident centred in a metropolis, they would have contacted almost everybody even if conventional communications broke down. But in our case it goes on for two hours: one blast, three blasts, six, eight and so on. Only a day later bombs are defused. Then there is mud-slinging and innuendo, and the failure of administration forgotten.
Fortunately, much is known about necessary systemic reforms to administrative response systems; unfortunately, not much is done. To be fair to the UPA government, the higher civil services have been on its agenda. For example, a life-time training system has been implemented. It mimics what successful organisations worldwide do; at least one committee which I chaired consulted the HR brass of such organisations. Our civil servants enter through an intensely competitive process, and when you take a few hundred in an open and transparent manner from a large field, you get extraordinary talent. They are well- trained at induction, and now some of the best institutions at home and abroad train them further after 10, 17 and 25 years.
The real issue is the management of the civil service. Here, political leaders say all the right things and do the opposite, without a whimper from the media. The relationship between the political leadership and the civil service is a complex and difficult issue in a parliamentary democracy for the elected leader is responsible for outcomes. Many years ago, Krishna Menon laid out in a report to Parliament the principle of an “arms-length relationship” between the two. It was fully accepted and so never implemented. The idea is that the political leader lays down the objectives and lets the civil servant do the job. Nobody seriously expects that to happen. As a minister, I was the butt of derision arguing that, under normal circumstances, tender files should not come to a minister’s office since tenders have to be dealt with in a very straightforward manner. Also, appointments should be made with expert advice since the most venal of pressures exist even at the highest levels. The prime minister advocated creating a rule that if a civil servant is transferred in haste the minister should place on record the public interest requiring it. But, on the same day, a state which was then under president’s rule transferred two of the best collectors. Fortunately for us, the government has persisted and we are told, for example, that many states have set up independent bodies for promotions and transfers, say for the police. Where such systems are not set up, they must be. Where they are, they must be made more effective.
These have to become public issues. For people at large, these have now literally become issues of life and death. Ministers and chief ministers think it is their right to appoint their favourites for personal reasons or ideological closeness. At one level, ideology in society is about ideals. At another, it is the first refuge of a scoundrel. This business has to stop and has to be made the issue of the day.
Some systemic changes for security have been asked for, are needed and will come. But those who corrupt the system have to be dealt with severely, politically and by the courts. The bureaucracy is obliged to follow and implement larger political ideals, but it has to be under the rule of law and its first duty is to the victims of tyranny, of force and the ravages of exploitation. We have to build firewalls to protect the guardians who do their duty. Who will guard the guards, as the Latin proverb asks? We recruit and train the best. When young, they are idealistic and on the go. Those who would corrupt them and abuse the best must face that ultimate ignominy: the contempt of the people of India.
The writer, a former Union minister, is chairman, Institute of Rural Management, Anand express@expressindia.com
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