De-fanging Pakistan for world peace

Why doesn’t India take terrorism seriously?

The Statesman/CYBER AGE/ND BATRA

The heart-wrenching picture of Manisha and Anisha, daughters of the slain Indian engineer K Suryanarayana, wailing beside their father’s body at the time of his cremation, “Shattered Dreams,” as The Statesman captioned it, should open our eyes to the fact that war against terrorism will never ~ ever ~ be over.
Some analysts and commentators have been dumping Islamic terrorism with Maoist insurgency and incidents of communal violence, as if they were a continuation of the same problem. It is just like a quack telling you that cancer and malaria are the same disease because both kill their victims, much like traffic accidents kill people, which is no way of facing the horrific realities of international terrorism.
The modus operandi of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan or Iraq is no different from that in Kashmir where in April 32 innocent people, Hindus only, were dragged from their homes and killed in Doda and Udhampur; or Varanasi where in a temple attack 30 people were killed in early March. You see the monstrous face of Islamic jihadism: death and destruction multiplied thousand times by an endless cycle of television images, disembodied end-of-the world sounds and images of scarred and mutilated humans and buildings, fear magnified and mirrored on hundreds of ghostly faces everyday.
Fighting terrorism is not a gentleman’s game. It consumes a politician, as President George Bush knows. Superb intelligence gathering, preemptive and preventive measures and anticipatory disaster plans could go a long way in minimising the damages, if India would take terrorism as seriously as the United States of America does, and politicians are prepared to pay the price in terms of popularity. President Bush’s popularity is down in the drains but he keeps fighting terrorism. Since September 11, 2001, there has been no terrorist attack in the USA. When would one say that about India?
Eradicating terrorism is not a simple matter of bringing one evil man to his heels; or killing a militant here and a militant there. Although its origin lies in religious fanaticism and a blind hatred of non-believes, at an organisational level terrorism must be considered as an enterprise that manufactures dread, customised for each political and cultural market. The response of each country, therefore, has to be different. Though the USA cannot directly help India fight terrorism, working together on a long-term basis, especially in Afghanistan, would strengthen both countries’ efforts in fighting terror.
Osama bin Laden alive and kicking in Pakistan is not alone. Nor could he plan and execute bloody carnages in so many places without the brainpower and resources of a multitude of strategists and financiers living in sanctuaries in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Arab world. Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford University and former EU commissioner for external relations, last week wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal holding Pakistan singularly responsible for the prevailing instability in Afghanistan, and asserting that the nation’s primary export to Afghanistan today is terrorism.
“Every few days,” wrote Lord Patten, “the resurgent Taliban carry out another deadly attack on school children, aid workers, or local and international security forces... On the most basic level, attacks in Afghanistan, including suicide bombings, are often planned and prepared at Taliban training camps across the border.”
And Pakistan has done nothing to stop them in spite of President Pervez Musharraf’s protestations to the contrary. Lord Patten, former governor of Hong Kong, knows what he is talking about. So should US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, though for diplomatic reasons she may not be able to speak up as frankly as Lord Patten has done regarding runaway radicalism in Pakistan: “Demilitarising and de-radicalising Pakistan is truly the key to bringing about stability in Afghanistan and the wider region.”
The killing of Suryanarayana should be seen in the light that the Government of India or any other government wouldn’t be able to assure anyone’s safety unless terrorism is rooted out at its source, which according to Lord Patten flourishes in India’s neighbourhood. But the terrorists also flourish in open and secular societies in Western Europe, Canada, the United States of America; only more so in India. That’s what complicates the matter.
How do we recognise the enemy who may be also amidst us without violating the values of the open society that we are trying to protect? It is puzzling that the global financial system is very much intact and the confidence of the investor remains unabated, but wails of mourners continue.
Attacks against ethnic minorities adversely affect civil liberties, which are already under threat. In the USA, law enforcement authorities have been given expanded powers of surveillance including wire-tapping and e-mail scrutiny. Last week’s Washington Post-ABC News poll indicated that 63 per cent of Americans approve President Bush’s domestic surveillance practices to fight terrorism, though his overall approval rating has sunk very low.
Open societies face a serious dilemma. As law enforcement authorities try to locate and destroy international terrorist cells functioning openly or clandestinely in their own backyards, they need to do so with minimum loss of civil liberties and without endangering the security of ethnic and religious minorities.
Whatever happens in Kashmir should have no repercussion in the streets of Ahmedabad.The struggle against international jihadist terrorism is going to be a relentless, long drawn out global campaign from which India cannot escape. India has no choice but to keep fighting.