Extremism & global politics

TERRORISM HAS two basic components - use of violence for a political objective and a motivation that is strong enough to keep the members of the terrorist organisation glued to the `cause'. The Pakistan proxy war anchored in cross-border terrorism aims at `liberating' Kashmir through Mujahideen thereby making India vulnerable to `balkanisation'. By carrying the slogan of `Jehad' from Afghanistan to Kashmir in 1991, Pakistan injected religious indoctrination as a new source of motivation behind the terrorist violence there. At present nearly 60 per cent of the Mujahideen in J&K are said to be of foreign origin and the Pakistan leadership does not even pretend to conceal its sponsorship of militancy in the State while claiming that these Mujahideen had a legitimate right to secure Kashmir for themselves.

The proxy war reflects not only the current political strategy of Pakistan against India but also the new mindset of the Army's top brass in Pakistan that sees nothing wrong in playing the Islamic card as a means of settling scores with India. The enlargement of the sourcing for Mujahideen as also their training in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last few years confirms this. The fact that many of the `Islamic warriors' sent into Kashmir from across the LoC may be mere mercenaries does not detract from the gravity of the new threat. The surprise is that `Jehad' should be made an instrument of foreign policy in the 21st century.

It is in this context that the reported stand of the U.S. State Department on the Pakistan inspired terrorism in South Asia deserves a close scrutiny. It is clear that with the ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the latter part of the Nineties there was a further expansion of the catchment area for the recruitment of militants in Pakistan. Many sections of the Deobandi mainstream of Sunni orthodoxy with their natural ideological affinity with the Taliban joined in the call of Jehad. As a consequence, fast growing outfits such as the Harkat- ul-Mujahideen (formerly Harkat-ul-Ansar) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (formed by Azhar Masood, the brain behind the Kandahar episode of hijacking of an IA plane) emerged on the Kashmir scene. Rooted in the Hanafi Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Islami Pakistan these two Mujahideen bodies are now matching the Maudoodian Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the Wahabi Lashkar-e-Taiba in carrying out acts of violence in J&K.

It is interesting that the Patterns of Global Terrorism report by the U.S. State Department this year focuses more on the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammad and chooses to take a comparatively moderate view of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jamaat-e-Islami's Hizb-ul- Mujahideen. The report is evidently a critique of global terrorism from the angle of U.S. strategic interests in this region. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e- Mohammad share an attitude of sympathy towards the Taliban and Osama bin-Laden. This was in evidence during the recent international Deobandi conference held near Peshawar in Pakistan.

The anti-USSR armed campaign in Afghanistan had, on the other hand, brought Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and the Saudi-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba under a common operational umbrella fostered by the U.S. The Jamaat represents the legacy of Muslim Brotherhood whose primary thrust was against communism all through the era of the Cold War. It is known that Syed Qutb, the Brotherhood leader of Egypt hanged by Nasser in the Sixties, was a protege of Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami. The Lashkar-e-Taiba with its known Saudi patronage had a similar record of alliance with the U.S. objectives in the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.

The U.S. State Department apparently continues to rely heavily on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to deal with the situation created by the Taliban and to preserve the American stakes in Central Asia. The Patterns of Global Terrorism report tends to confirm this. It may be recalled that following the ascendancy of the Taliban in Kabul towards the end of 1996, the U.S. policy makers had continued to hope that Taliban's firm control of Afghanistan would help the U.S. to achieve access to the Caspian oil through Unicol. They thought they would somehow put up with the Islamic radicalism that was rapidly unfolding itself under the Taliban regime. Possibly the Americans were led to believe that the intercession of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - through whom all the help to the Taliban had been channelised - would straighten out things for the U.S.

It is only when the Taliban began unleashing its anti-U.S. thrust and Osama bin-Laden's links with the attack on U.S. Embassies in Africa in 1998 came to light that the U.S. saw the Taliban for what it was. Bin-Laden was also found to be an admirer of Shaikh Omar Abdel Rehman, the blind cleric heading Al Gama al Islamiya of Egypt who is now in a U.S. jail for the World Trade Centre bombing.

The Bush administration disapproves of Pakistan links with the Taliban but wants to `engage' Pakistan on the plea that things might get worse if Gen. Parvez Musharraf is jettisoned. The U.S. is aware that in Central Asia the Islamic militancy is traceable to the Taliban stream with its strong anti-West agenda. The Taliban-Deobandi axis represents the legacy of revivalism that had, in the latter part of the 19th Century swept the Muslim world with a wave of militant insurrections led by the fundamentalist Ulema. The U.S. State Department would do well to take note of the fact that there are powerful sympathisers of the Taliban in the present ruling elite of Pakistan.

Useful cushion

Unfortunately for India all the armed terrorists engaged in Jehad pose the same threat regardless of the shades of fundamentalism that they individually represent. The signals from Bamiyan are a cause for concern primarily for India even if the West was also dismayed by the cultural vandalism against the Buddha statues. India inherited Sufi Islam from Central Asia and Afghanistan. This provided a useful cushion culturally in Kashmir and elsewhere against fundamentalist and exclusivist thought processes. Some of this is being destroyed. In a further display of medievalism the Taliban regime has now prescribed a separate dress code for the Hindus in Afghanistan.

India and the U.S. no doubt have a shared anxiety about the ill effects of Talibanisation in this region. What can certainly damage national interest of all entities in South Asia is the instigation of militancy in the name of religion. The support extended to the Mujahideen by Pakistan in Kashmir is fouling up international relations too and opening up potential conflicts emanating from religio-cultural divides. India has to take a strategic stand on this.

The lesson for us is that we have to formulate our own plan of action. An answer to Pakistan proxy-war lies in our capacity to demonstrate that all communities in India are wedded to living together peacefully under a common political dispensation. The responses of the international community would always be calibrated along the perceptions of the respective national interests. The U.S. State Department's report on global terrorism illustrates this. No doubt a certain degree of comfort is there for India in the U.S. stand. The report however is also a reminder that we have to fight our own battle against this new kind of terrorism.

D. C. PATHAK

Former Director, Intelligence Bureau

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