A conference organized by India Times and Jang Group at New Delhi 10-12 January 2010 has churned up significant responses. Aman ki Asha (desire for peace) is patently south Asia phenomenon while terrorism that infects the region is transcontinental. To believe that terrorism in the region has provenance there only is not helpful in resolving any issue, least of all, bilateral. 26/11 happened not on account of Siachen valley or Kashmir dispute. If terrorism in the subcontinent were just confined to it the two sides would have openly and sincerely undertaken the task of jointly investigating the terror attacks instead of leveling charges against each other or talking tongue in cheek.
Believing in the role of local facilitators in it smacks of sophomoric grasp of terrorism. A Narendra Modi or Aitzaz Ahsan will keep harping on it as is their wont, hardcore communalist or the chicane liberal. It would nevertheless be disingenuous to say as did President Asif Zardari that non state actors were involved in 26/11 attacks. His country is already reeling under the relentless almost daily terrorist attacks. India is temporarily enjoying a respite from it. However, the global ambition of one and the daze of the other do not make either exonerated from the moral responsibility they owe to their citizens if they really want to live in peace.
It is alleged by a colleague of Lt Col. Prasad Purohit, Captain Nitin Joshi, that Purohit had told him about pilfering RDX from the military stock(Purohit told me about pilfering RDX:Army Capt, TOI Nov 18,2008). Is this involvement of the army an extension of religious extremism that threatens the country or a part of the army chore of anti terror and counterinsurgency operation as Purohit was working for Military Intelligence in the capacity of a liaison officer coordinating fight against terrorism? In Pakistan also there are people who are extremists and most of them are the byproduct of the US policy. In the case of India the extremism verges on India’s strategic relations with Israel formally as far as the government is concerned and with Abhinav Bharat unofficially, nay clandestinely. Thus religious extremism is fuelling terrorism on both the sides.
In the Kabul attack on Monday Januay18, 2010 again atmosphere of suspicion is aroused which is not conducive for peace because the other side is pointing an accusing finger not to the Taliban or LeT but to India. This is the result of the visit to Kabul of MI chief Lieutenant General RK Loomba just before the latest attack.(http://dailymailnews.com/0110/19/FrontPage/FrontPage1.htm )India has its military trainers there. Its stake in Afghanistan is high and of strategic nature vis-à-vis Pakistan. Call it ambition or what it is irretrievably enmeshed there. Hence, the chances of peace are like chimera.
This ongoing war on terrorism has disastrous collateral damage inflicted on the civilians. Leave alone the dead and injured, people incarcerated on flimsy ground are in thousands. They languish in prisons across the country. Haj house Imam Ghulam Ilahi Yahya Baksh in Mumbai would casually talk to a Kashmiri hawker of fruits, Haji Mohammad Ramzan, who also prayed in the mosque. Even for this so casual contact the police accused him of complicity in terrorism and arrested him. For four years he was unnecessarily kept behind the bars. Only this week he was released by the court in Mumbai because there was no proof against him. The same is the case with Maulana Naseerudin of Hyderabad who spent six years in prison on terrorism charges. He was absolved of the charges and released last week.
If this makes the extremists among Hindus elated it should be all the more a cause of concern for fellow Indians who still have some sanity and can see through the charade practiced in the name of fight against terrorism. David Headley’s role in 26/11 has shown that even with the best intention in the world your fight against terrorism may run against the interest of Uncle Sam. As the Americans propped the jihadists against the Russians, they could very well try the same trick with others. There is nothing like permanent in foreign policy so we must keep our house safe. Pakistan is going through the baptism of hellfire over this.
From across several oceans and continents the Americans have a different perspective which we have still not comprehended well. They gathered intelligence by relegating Headley to snoop on terror threat emanating from the subcontinent that might endanger their interest and pass on to us selectively what might be of interest in such a way that their nationals are not prosecuted in a foreign county or by the International Criminal Court. They are now planning to reach understanding with the Taliban and even with Mullah Mohammad Umar. They want to remove terrorist tag against him so that they have no problems at the UN Security Council. There is a bathetic low in it as you can see how the FBI transmogrified the face of a Spanish Member of Parliament Mr Gasper Llamazares into what Osama bin Laden might look today. How would Umar’s face look, may be like Obama in turban as in the New Yorker cartoon during the presidential electioneering.
But the opposite of bathos is pathos. Last time when Robert Gates visited India, Mirwas Moulvi Farooq was brutally murdered on May 21, 1990 ala the massacre of 36 Sikhs in Chittisingpora on the eve of President Clinton’s visit on March 20, 2000. Gates wanted to discuss the Kashmir issue with New Delhi. In the present case India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told on the eve of the Kabul attack on January 18, 2010 that President Barack Obama would not have any negotiation on the Kashmir dispute. Subsequently Gates arrived in Delhi. This kind vicious stimulus and response involving terrorism does not bode well for peace prospect in the subcontinent.
In Hamid Karzai India has a friend while Pakistan, a bête noir. In 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul national security advisor MK Narayanan blamed Pakistan for it and remarked “We not only suspect but we have a fair amount of intelligence (on the involvement of Pakistan). He denied that this was insinuation. “I think we need to pay back in the same coin. We are quite clear in our mind.”
For sometimes now we may not have peace in the subcontinent because of this switchback of terrorism.
tags:Indo Pak relation, peace, terrorism
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