AFTER FOUR YEARS
By Sita
The question that is often being debated among the
international strategic community is how far the global war on terrorism,
conceived four years back, had managed to tame the terrorists? The events of
9/11 triggered a global awareness about radical Islamic groups posing a threat
to the civil society, as perceived by the majority, across the globe. After
9/11, majority of the countries realized that a sustained global effort is
needed to combat radical Islamic terrorism.
At one level the international community realized that concepts like low
intensity conflicts and freedom movements have to be kept aside in combating
terrorism. At another level, the US launched war on terrorism eliminated visibly
any country providing safe havens to any radical group indulging in terrorism
and violence. Even a country like Pakistan which, created Taliban and nurtured
it for almost a decade, is finding it extremely difficult to pursue old
policies. This gets clearly reflected in the sudden decrease in Pakistan
sponsored terrorist activities in places like Jammu & Kashmir in India and
Afghanistan. In the process, Pakistan decided to come to the conference table to
sort out its claims on Jammu & Kashmir with India.
In fact the same can be said about the activities of Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. They are now sitting across the table and negotiating
with Colombo. Similarly Bangladesh is under constant pressure from donor
countries not to emerge as another Pakistan or Afghanistan. This is one side of
the story.
These positive gains apart, Islamic radical movements have taken a new course.
They demonstrated their clout by demonstrating half a dozen attacks in different
parts of the world since 9/11.
It is a known fact that Islamic radical movements sustain themselves through
covert financial support from some of the Islamic countries. The increased crude
oil prices in the last two years means more money among the oil rich Islamic
countries. Their covert assistance to radical Islamic groups through economic
charities and hawala transactions are bound to increase.
At the same time the US led war on Iraq provided ammunition to the radical
Islamic groups to argue that for no rhyme or reason, an Islamic country is being
subjected to torture. The radical groups slogan "Islam is in danger" is now
widely accepted at popular level in most of the Islamic countries. With the
result we find more and more people in the Islamic countries and even muslims
living outside Islamic countries joining the radical groups. The London bomb
blasts of July 7 this year are indicative of this trend.
With this type of mindset, these new recruits seem to have concluded that the
only option left to them to defeat a technologically superior adversary is,
suicide bombing. The counter terrorism strategies have no effective answer to
neutralize suicide bombing.
At another level the elaborate structures of terrorist outfits might have been
dismantled by war on terrorism. And leaders like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Umar
were forced to live like fugitives in some obscure corner of one country or the
other. Having lost contact with their cadres on a regular basis, the
organizations like al-Qaida melted away to an extent.
But this development had its negative effect too. The failure to capture leaders
like Osama bin Laden had created an aura around them. Now the earlier sleeper
cells became small miniscule terrorist outfits claiming loyalty to al-Qaida
ideology. Such outfits surfaced everywhere across the globe. They are operating
autonomously to sort out local issues.
In addition the new recruits are technology savvy and have no necessity to get
support, either financially or materially, from outside. This proliferation of
radical groups with the intention of suicide bombings created far more
complications to be dealt with by counter terrorism squads.
These new trends in terrorism apart, on the whole the menace of terrorism and
violence has come down considerably as compared to pre 9/11 situations.
How far has South Asia benefited from this US led war on terrorism? Form the
Indian perspective, terrorism and violence is not a phenomenon that began in
2001. India has been experiencing it for more than 15 years; and up to 2001, the
Great Powers looked upon it as a local conflict between two countries, India and
Pakistan. Similar was the attitude of the Great Powers towards Sri Lanka, an
ethnic conflict, or the developments in Afghanistan.
After 9/11 it became clear to every one, about the linkages of conflicts in
South Asia with terrorism and violence in other parts of the world including the
western Hemisphere. This resulted in a sustained effort globally bringing down
all-round decline in acts of terrorism and violence.
Now the question that is being asked, is how long this campaign against
terrorism can be sustained in areas like South Asia where economic disparities
are too many. One school of thought is that with the exception of India and
Bhutan there is an all round political instability in South Asia. Therefore, if
there is a sudden regime change in countries like Pakistan or Bangladesh, and
Islamic hardliners assume power, the region may return to another upheaval.
Even if it is not the case, even the existing regimes in the region have not
completely given up terrorism and violence as instruments of foreign policy.
This means if the ruling elite in countries like Pakistan are driven to the
wall, there is every possibility of a fall back on to terrorism.
Therefore, it is too early to come to any definitive conclusion on terrorism and
violence in the emerging global order. -CNF