Author: Brahma Chellaney
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: September 11, 2003
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/2003/Sep/11/printedition/110903/detIDE01.shtml
Violence-extolling Islamists target
the US, Israel and India as their principal enemies. Yet, these three democracies
are no more secure against terrorism today than before President George
W. Bush launched his war on terror. In fact, the US, despite shared goals,
has left India in the lurch against Pakistan-directed terrorism.
The second anniversary of 9/11 is
a reminder not only of India's lonely battle against qualitatively escalating
terror but also about the way Bush's war on terrorism has enlarged rather
than diminished international challenges. Despite the post-9/11 international
consensus, it became clear before long that Bush's war on terror was not
global but selective, and that its prime aim was homeland security. No
sooner had Bush outlined the concept of 'pre-emptive strikes' at the US
Military Academy at West Point and become fixated on regime change in Baghdad
than even the selective war on terror swerved off course.
Before attaining any enduring success
in its original mission, that war has widened its thrust to take in a new
State - the once-quiet Iraq - that Bush this week called "the central front"
against terrorism. Military pre-emption failed to pre-empt chaos and terror.
Worse, as Bush's West Asia peace plan founders, the US military confronts
the menacing prospect of sinking into a double quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan,
a development that will surely spur the bloody resurgence of Islamists.
With the spreading nature of Islamic
terror underlined by the Bali, Casablanca and Jakarta bombings and Bush's
self-made problems raising the dissonant timbre of international politics,
his limited successes are becoming paler. These include the ouster of the
Taliban from Kabul and the capture of several al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan,
including Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Waleed bin Attash.
Today, the Taliban and al-Qaeda,
after being on the run, are beginning to regroup, with the help of new
volunteers from Pakistan. Critical to their revival strategy are the sanctuaries
and support they enjoy within Pakistan, where a military dictatorship propped
up by US aid has neither deracinated terrorist safe havens in the eastern
tribal belt nor dismantled its State-run terror complex against India.
The additional $ 87 billion Bush
wants for Iraq and Afghanistan is a belated recognition of the enormous
costs involved in dollar terms, not to mention human casualties. With $
58 billion already spent, the Iraq war has become the costliest in US history.
But it will require more than money to contain jehadi forces.
The challenge is also wider: the
entire expanse between the Mediterranean Sea and the Philippine Sea is
home to militant groups. While the radicalisation of many Muslims in Southeast
Asia undergirds the growing challenge, the footprint of almost every major
international attack can still be traced back to the reigning epicentre
of terror, the Pak-Afghan belt.
It is in this vast stretch known
for its sheikhdoms, military dictatorships and other types of autocracies
that Israel and India, as the two flourishing democracies under siege from
Islamic terror groups, wish to expand their modest cooperation against
terror. Just as India's security has been undermined by the jehadi forces
that the US first encouraged and now battles in Afgh-anistan, Israel may
have to bear the brunt if Iraq becomes a new base for global jehad. Indo-Israeli
cooperation, however, cannot yield lasting results without a winnable US
strategy and vision. That, in turn, demands that the US learn the lessons
from its past policies that gave rise to the Frankenstein's monsters it
now pursues, including bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein.
The first lesson - forgotten in
Iraq - is to keep the focus on longer-term goals and not be carried away
by political expediency and narrow military objectives. The US has to stop
drawing distinctions between good and bad terrorists, and between those
who threaten its security and those who threaten others. The viper reared
against one State is a viper against others.
Another lesson is not to turn the
war against terror into an ideological campaign to serve one's strategic
interests. Fighting terror has come handy to the Bush team to give vent
to its imperial ambitions. It has expanded US interests in an unparalleled
manner and positioned US forces in the largest array of nations since World
War II.
A third lesson is that the problem
and solution are linked. Terrorism not only threatens the free, secular
world but also springs from the rejection of democracy and secularism.
Terrorism-breeding swamps can never be fully drained as long as the societies
that rear or tolerate them are not de-radicalised and democratised. It
is odd that Washington oils the Pakistani dictatorship with billions of
dollars in aid and debt write-off but wants to hold elections in ravaged
Afghanistan.
The war on terror - a gruelling
long haul - can be won only by inculcating a secular and democratic ethos
in societies steeped in religious and political bigotry. Despite the daunting
challenge, the US cannot afford to lose this war. Nor can India, for the
sake of its own security, see the US lose. The Islamists would swell their
ranks by trapping the last great superpower in Iraq and Afghanistan after
having routed the Soviet Union in the latter State. Their resurgence would
bring India under greater terrorist pressure.
Yet, this does not constitute sufficient
cause for India to despatch an army division to Iraq, even if there is
the UN's imprimatur. A beleaguered India has to help itself before it helps
the US, which last year tricked New Delhi into calling off Operation Parakram
with assurances it never meant or intended to keep. The Americans released
their pet dictator in Islamabad from Indian military pressure as part of
a deal that has given their special units continuing operational freedom
within Pakistan and secured some Pakistani assistance on the Afghan front
in return for Musharraf's keeping of what he euphemist-ically calls his
'Kashmir policy'.
The latest upsurge of terrorist
attacks in J&K since August 27, when the top Indian government leadership
was in Srinagar, indicates that Pakistan, exploiting Bush's preoccupation
with Iraq, has asked its surrogates to step up attacks as a way to impose
higher costs on India for its refusal to open political dialogue with it.
So wedded is Islamabad to terror that its links with the Taliban and al-Qaeda
have been cited by the Afghan president and, as the New York Times reported
on Wednesday, by some of its own police and intelligence officials.
Bush's floundering policy in Iraq
is thus working to further undercut Indian anti- terror aims. It not only
gives Musharraf more manoeuvre room, it also strengthens the hand of his
principal benefactor, Colin Powell, and the latter's alter ego, Richard
Armitage, who played the role of trickster last year when he came claiming
to carry in his pocket Musharraf's solemn pledge to Bush to "permanently"
and "verifiably" end cross-border terrorism. Re-visiting India 11 months
later, a bald-faced Armitage dismissed that pledge as past history.
Powell last week displayed his own
bias in a terrorism-related speech at the George Washington University
that passed over the terror against India. Rather, Musharraf-like, he linked
the mid-2002 threat of an Indo-Pak war with the "dispute over Kashmir",
not with the Kaluchak terror strike. Powell's department, as critic Newt
Gingrich points out in Foreign Policy in an article titled 'Rogue State
Department', has a culture that "props up dictators" and prefers accommodation
to principles. This culture may explain why while one Saddam Hussein is
being hunted in Iraq, Powell and company are busily building another Saddam
in Pakistan - this one with detectable weapons of mass destruction.
US credibility today stands dented
in New Delhi. Washington should remember that India notionally has a better
claim to seek a US army division to assist in anti- terror operations in
J&K under Indian command than the US has to ask for an Indian army
division in Iraq. While India has not even an indirect link with the anarchy
and resistance in Iraq, the US has directly shored up Pakistan's military
regime, kept its economy afloat and condoned its export of terror.
With India unlikely to yield, the
US is not going to get enough foreign troops to reduce its burden. But
it can surely cut its losses by handing nation-building in Iraq and Afghan-istan
to the UN and focusing its efforts on battling terror. Terrorism can be
stemmed only through a sustained international campaign that targets terrorist
cells and networks wherever they exist and as long as they exist. It is
time the war on terror became global not just in name but in practice.
