Breaking the terror cycle: Tackle causes, not symptoms

In Hiroshima, a single Bomb killed 140,000 people in unspeakably gruesome ways -- a number that is 40 times higher than the total killed on 9/11. A qualitatively new weapon was demonstrated on August 6, 1945, which spews out a unique poison, radiation, and has the capacity to snuff out all life itself. Seen in perspective, 9/11 was the worst attack on the US, but not the world. Yet, President Bush's first response was to declare an open-ended, all-out, unending war against "global terrorism". Only something ambitiously global could challenge the world's Hyperpower! The "war on terror" would encompass 60 or more countries; America would not rest until it had wiped out the menace of global terrorism.

Two years, and two wars later, the world has become more skewed, more restless, more disorderly, and more vulnerable to terrorism. The US and its allies swiftly defeated the Taliban militarily. But more than two-thirds of its key leaders and sources of inspiration, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar remain at large. Al-Qaeda is furiously regrouping. Afghanistan remains hopelessly ungovernable. Mr Hamid Karzai has been called the Mayor of Kabul -- not inaccurately. Afghanistan's sole state-level military force remains under the control of the Panjshiris, while warlords rule its remaining territory. The US has failed to make the minimal financial or political-military commitment necessary to stabilise Afghanistan's society and state. Instability in Afghanistan has only strengthened anti-US forces in a huge new Arc of Crisis extending from the Middle East to South and Southeast Asia, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

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In Iraq, the US waged an unjust war based on fabricated and "sexed up" evidence about weapons of mass destruction. It took over a country that was patently not a terrorist threat (however repulsive its regime might have been) and turned it into one -- witness the numerous suicide bombings, above all, on the UN. The war pitted America against countless nations, including its strategic allies, and more crucially, against the world's Second Superpower -- global public opinion. The multiple layers of deception and overwhelming military force, on which Washington has relied, with all its arrogance, has antagonised Muslims everywhere, who see anti-Islamic prejudice at work in American plans.

This has further fuelled the forces of Islamic extremism. The US military machine, although gigantic, is ill-equipped to vanquish this dispersed, decentralised, "amorphous" enemy. In any case, as Gabriel Kolko, one of the world's greatest historians of war and diplomacy, argues, "military success bears scant relationship to political solutions that end wars and greatly reduce the risk of their recurring. But this dichotomy between military power and political success has existed for most of the past century. The US has always been ready to use its superior military strength even though employing that power often creates many more problems than it solves".

America's celebration of military solutions to political problems has become pathological. One of the most unpopular examples of this is its coddling of Israel under an extreme-right leadership which hysterically opposes a just solution to the Palestinian question, and which practises barbaric extra-judicial assassination and torture against Palestinian civilians. The festering of the Palestinian question, and Israel's continuing repressive occupation of its territories, are a potent source of global Muslim discontent which has all but scuppered America's plans for the Middle East.

America's obsession with security, now bordering on paranoia, is leading to draconian domestic restrictions on civil liberties, and the stereotyping of its ethnic minorities. The US is setting an extremely negative example. It is this very example that the Indian government wishes to emulate -- and not merely to curry favour with the US and build a "strategic partnership" with it at Pakistan's expense. Our official thinking is increasingly skewed in favour of purely military approaches to terrorism. This is reflected in the perverse solidarity demonstrated by the government with Mr Ariel Sharon as he scales up his insanely repressive methods and says Hamas leaders are now "marked for death". India's struggle against terrorism has nothing in common with Mr Sharon's colonial-militarist fight against Palestine's liberation, including its terrorist confront. Yet, the militarist approach was explicitly commended by National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra during his infamous July speech to the American Jewish Committee in Washington. He dismissed as "nonsense" the view that one must address the root-causes of terrorism to combat it effectively; militaristic approaches alone will work.

Today, growing numbers of Indian politicians and policemen too exhibit the same impatience with the task of understanding that the roots of terrorism lie in cesspools of injustice and grievance, and of appreciating the importance of minimising hurt to innocent people in anti-terrorist operations, besides painstakingly gathering evidence before damming specific groups. The worst irresponsibility in this regard is found in two of our most tragic recent incidents, each with over 30 people dead: Akshardham in Gujarat last September, and the August 25 Mumbai blasts. Last fortnight, Ahmedabad Police Commissioner K.R. Kaushik said the Akshardham attack was planned in Saudi Arabia to avenge the post-Godhra violence; Jaish-e-Mohammad played a key role in it, with inspiration from Pakistan's ISI. He said three terrorists came from Pakistan a week before the attack.

However, the Kashmir police have an altogether different story. They have arrested Chand Khan, a car mechanic, who says he was ordered by the Lashkar to purchase an Ambassador car for use in a suicide-squad mission and to transport two terrorists to Gujarat. Their target of choice was a Gaurav Yatra planned by Mr Narendra Modi. On learning that the yatra won't be held, they decided to attack Akshardham. The Gujarat police have also interrogated Chand Khan and corroborated the details he cited of his own activities in Gujarat. Their arrests of five Gujarati Muslims thus seem based on concocted evidence.

In the Mumbai case, the authorities have given out four mutually incompatible versions of who was behind the explosions: Jaish-e-Mohammed; Students' Islamic Movement of India and Lashkar-a-Tayyaba (L.K. Advani); the Dukhtaran-e-Millat women's group from Kashmir; and finally, Ahle-Hadees, a religious organisation with "no known history of terrorist violence". These contradictory accounts seriously weaken the government's credibility and cast doubt upon its sincerity in investigating, leave alone fighting, terrorism. They betray reckless disregard for accuracy and caution in dealing with life-and-death issues. The official haste to claim success, score points, and rush to judgment can only distract from the struggle against terrorism, and make us blind to its causes.

Yet, we should know that terrorism cannot possibly thrive in a minimally just and participatory society. It wins popular approval -- so essential for it -- only when certain groups are systematically marginalised, excluded, brutalised or subjected to pain, insult and humiliation, and when avenues for redressing their grievances close down, and when even elementary fairness, leave alone justice, seems impossible. Terrorism's ranks swell when innocent people are harassed and their spirit is crushed. The lesson is stark: Terror begets terror. State terrorism eventually fuels militant-group terrorism.

A truly viable, practical, solution to terrorism must simultaneously use humane policing, accurate intelligence, and political approaches that will let people vent their grievances and which will reform justice delivery and public institutions so they become responsive to the marginalised. Many among India's ethnic-religious minorities feel discriminated against, but have consciously chosen not to use violent methods. Until recently, our Muslims kept out of entanglement with global jehadi "causes". Not a single Indian Muslim joined Al-Qaeda or other jehadi forces, even in Kashmir.

Then came Gujarat. Last year's barbaric violence produced a new kind of despair, anger and humiliation. With the Best Bakery judgment, it became apparent that the possibility of bringing the guilty to account could be non-existent. Regrettably, extreme despair is driving some educated Muslim youths to extremism. This is alarming. It speaks of a grave failure of our political system and its inability to induce security and a sense of belonging among our citizens. The turn to terrorism will be horrendously counter-productive, indeed suicidal, for all concerned. Indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians will not bring justice. It will only invite ferocious state repression. All citizens then will live in greater fear and insecurity. We cannot break out of this vicious cycle of terror-counter-terror unless we deal with its root-causes, not just symptoms.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.