Terrorism in its modern form has been with us for decades, at least since the late 1960s, and has continuously expanded its sphere of influence and operation. Yet it never fails to take its victim societies by surprise when it is applied in a new theatre, however gradual or deliberate its march. This is why it has been possible to speak of the greatest single terrorist outrage in human history – the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US – as ‘terror in very slow motion,’ a catastrophe that, at least in its broad contours, should have been anticipated, and that lay squarely "along an uninterrupted continuum that extended several years into the past."1 Victim societies have, without exception, been shocked into an utter confusion of responses in the wake of each such expansion, and there is little evidence that the experience of other nations or communities has ever been absorbed into the policies and strategic perspectives of those nations who have not themselves experienced terrorism.
The problem is not just one between nations, but within nations as well. To take the Indian case, we discover that, despite decades of experience with terrorist movements, each new manifestation takes State governments and police forces by surprise. After over 10 years of terrorism in Punjab, for instance, the wave of terrorist actions commencing in the end-1980s in Jammu and Kashmir were greeted with panic and confusion that was reminiscent of the reaction to the emergence of terror in Punjab in the end-1970s. Similarly, the first major act of terrorism in Gujarat – at the Akshardham Temple2 – once again demonstrated high levels of uncertainty and disorder in the state’s responses. The general bewilderment extends into the popular discourse on terrorism, and few who are located outside the areas worst afflicted by the scourge demonstrate any sensitivity toward, or understanding of, the issues and the enormity of the challenge involved. Despite a multiplicity of enduring terrorist movements in different parts of the country, moreover, India is still to define a coherent policy of response or official doctrine on terrorism, and many of the state’s initiatives in this context tend to be contradictory and counter-productive.
When the attack on a nightclub frequented by Western tourists occurred at Bali, the same patterns of shock and disorientation were in evidence in Indonesia’s – and indeed in all of South East Asia’s – reactions. The bombing in Bali "shocked the world, not only because it is considered a follow-up to a series of terrorist acts which included Sept. 11, 2001 in the U.S., but also because it occurred on Indonesia’s tourist island, one of our few remaining safe havens."3 This theme of a ‘paradise lost’ was often repeated in the media coverage of the blasts,4 but the truth is, "nowhere was safe in Indonesia,"5 and there was ample evidence that the country had "become a hotbed for Islamic militants."6 Yet, the leadership responses displayed an unwillingness to accept the magnitude of the challenge and the pervasiveness of the threat. The US had been "warning for weeks of a ‘specific and credible’ attack being mounted..."7 But the Indonesian leaders continued to act "like parents trying to hide the fact that their children are chronic drug addicts despite what their friends and neighbours know."8 Indonesia had long been plagued by Islamist extremism and terrorism in wide areas of its sprawling territory, and though Bali had remained ‘safe’ before the October 12 attack, a look at the incidence of terrorist activities and concentration of militant groups on the map would have demonstrated the enveloping pattern of the violence. Any objective assessment on the basis of such an analysis would have acknowledged the inevitability of an eventual attack on the ‘soft target’ that Bali was, even in the absence of any specific intelligence. But, as Jakarta Post asserted, "Indonesia was in denial."9
These patterns of conflict and disorientation in the face of terror are virtually the norm and extend well into the strategic community. The sheer enormity of the transformations that terrorism has wrought in the nature of warfare is yet to penetrate the discourse on the subject, and is only rarely reflected in the works of scholars and specialists on the subject – and is rarer still in the public pronouncements of policy makers. In one of the few examples of such understanding, Dave McIntyre, writing in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist outrage in the US, comments:
In the early months after 9/11, there was a brief crystallisation of the international will against terrorism that created the transient illusion of a wider and deeper understanding of the mounting danger. The contours of a coherent and uniform international policy against terrorism were outlined in a succession of UN Resolutions,… it is fair to ask, before we proceed, "what happened to the concept of the RMA?" The surprising answer is that an RMA has occurred – but we did not recognize it, because we got the definition wrong. After a decade of study and coaxing by military scholars (and apathy or hostility by non-military scholars), a Revolution in Military Affairs has arrived. Except we did not do it to "them" – "they" did it to us.11 which rejected the prevailing moral ambivalence on terrorism and declared unambiguously that no moral and political justification could be accepted for acts of terror. These were reinforced by strong and sustained rhetoric from the international leadership, as President George W. Bush spoke of "a world where freedom itself is under attack" and promised, "Our war on terror… will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."… it is fair to ask, before we proceed, "what happened to the concept of the RMA?" The surprising answer is that an RMA has occurred – but we did not recognize it, because we got the definition wrong. After a decade of study and coaxing by military scholars (and apathy or hostility by non-military scholars), a Revolution in Military Affairs has arrived. Except we did not do it to "them" – "they" did it to us.12
A little over a year after the catastrophic attacks of September 11, ambivalence and vacillation are, once again, the dominant feature of our responses against terrorism, and there is increasing evidence and mounting apprehension of a loss of direction. As Fareed Zakaria notes in the context of America’s abrupt shift of emphasis, from the slow and frustrating war against terrorism to the apparently more winnable – and hence potentially more satisfying – engagement with Iraq, "A year ago people around the world were holding candle light vigils for the United States. Today the easiest way to get people cheering on the streets is to denounce US policies."13 And again, echoing rising concerns across the world, Harvey Feldman notes:
The absence or loss of clarity is pervasive, as the consensus on the ‘global coalition for the war against terror’ increasingly becomes a thing of the past. Indeed, the meandering course of the war against terrorism over the past months led the Indian Prime Minister to lament: "It appears that the world is not yet prepared to fight terrorism."15
But this should not have been unexpected. It is, in fact, just one of the symptoms of the still limited accommodation of the nature of terrorism within our strategic perspectives, and of the sheer and enveloping scope of the transformations in the scenario of human security and war that this phenomenon has wrought.
Locating the Enemy
The central thesis of this paper is that the idea of a ‘locus of terrorism’ is one among the conceptual barriers to an effective understanding of, and response to, the unstructured threat of contemporary terrorism; and that this notion is, indeed, a remnant of traditional approaches to conventional warfare, and has tended, in some measure, to distort the character and direction of the global war against terrorism.
The idea of a ‘shift in the locus of terror’ was first proposed in the US State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism Report, 1999, and in all fairness, referred explicitly to the ‘locus of terrorism directed against the United States’ in its initial conception.16 But even as it was articulated, the phrase took on a life of its own, and rapidly assumed a universality that may have been absent in its original intent, but that is now part of established theory in terrorism research, analysis and policy projection. Indeed, even as it was projected by the US State Department leadership to the Press, the qualifying clause ‘against the United States’ had a perplexing tendency – perhaps located in superpower hubris – to disappear, and the idea advanced was of a generic "geographical shift of the locus of terror from the Middle East to South Asia,"17 with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir identified as the new loci and primary sources of extremist Islamic militancy. It was this notion that proliferated with a rapidity that imitates the fecundity of terrorism itself, and each afflicted community in widely dispersed regions of the world – though particularly in South, South East and West Asia – claims title to the ‘locus of terrorism’, or seeks to project the current location of its own tormentors as the ‘centre of gravity’ of terrorism. Thus, India’s Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, recently argued that, "the epicentre of global terrorism had shifted to Pakistan after the fall of Taliban in Afghanistan."18 These tendencies have been progressively reinforced by a multiplicity of events in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the campaign in Afghanistan, and the progressive detection of the global network of Islamist terrorism.
The idea of a ‘locus of terror’ is, at least in part, an operational necessity for those who are planning a strategy of response – an allocation of resources is required to cope with the most urgent challenges, and, naturally, the most visible convergence of the ‘enemy forces’ must be located and neutralised. Among the primary challenges of strategic planning in the theory of conventional warfare is the location of the ‘decisive areas’ of the enemy’s concentration, and their domination through an allocation of sufficient, if not overwhelming, force. This approach relies heavily on concepts of depth and mass to secure the ends of policy that war is intended to serve, and is what was witnessed in the US campaigns in Afghanistan after the catastrophic terrorist attacks in the US. Simply put, the enemy must be identified and a location defined if a military campaign is to be planned and executed. Regrettably, while these tactics may remain necessary as a part of the counter-terrorism response, they cannot provide an effective or ample strategy for the defeat of terrorism as, indeed, the Afghan campaign itself demonstrated. It is, consequently, useful to assess some of the difficulties inherent in this notion and the approaches it dictates.
Israel is significant on another count. Throughout 1999 and well into 2000, there was a rising rhetoric of ‘permanent peace’ under the Oslo Process, and it was this illusion building27 that had created the context of the ‘shift of the locus of terrorism’ thesis. Yet, within five months of the public articulation of this thesis, the Al Aqsa Intifada carried the Israel–Palestine conflict into a crescendo of violence that still continues.28 Nothing had ‘shifted out’ of West Asia, though there had been a temporary lull in violence. Indeed, in the many examples we mention, what we are speaking of appears more to be a shift in the focus of our (more appropriately, American) attention than a shift in the locus of terrorism.
Anti-terrorist experts see the real enemy well beyond the dusty Afghan camps targeted by American firepower. They see the planners of international havoc, dressed in suits, going to work each day in office buildings in Baghdad, Damascus, Teheran and even Beirut. U.S. intelligence sources have located the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Germany as sites for planning the Sept. 11 attack. Hamburg is a special locus for terrorism.32
Many Western Scholars have pointed their accusing fingers at some of the … verses in the Qur’an to be able to contend that world of Islam is in a state of perpetual struggle against the non-Muslims. As to them it is sufficient answer to make, if one were to point out, that the defiance of God’s authority by one who is His slave exposes that slave to the risk of being held guilty of treason and such a one, in the perspective of Islamic law, is indeed to be treated as a sort of that cancerous growth on that organism of humanity, which has been created "Kanafsin Wahidatin" that is, like one, single, indivisible self. It thus becomes necessary to remove the cancerous malformation even if it be by surgical means (if it would not respond to other treatment), in order to save the rest of Humanity… The idea of Ummah of Mohammad, the Prophet of Islam, is incapable of being realised within the framework of territorial states much less made an enduring basis of viewing the world as having been polarised between the world of Islam and the world of war. Islam, in my understanding, does not subscribe to the concept of the territorial state…35
The ‘surgical’ removal of the ‘cancerous malformation’ that is the non-Islamic world is what the Islamist terrorists believe they are engaged in.
If the warhawks disregard the opposition of the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Countries) and the WAT (War against Terrorism) coalition and invade Iraq on the pretext of keeping the nukes Saddam doesn’t have out of the hands of Islamic terrorists who aren’t in Iraq, the chances of those Islamic nukes that really are in Pakistan falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists that really are in Pakistan will go way up. So will your chances of getting nuked in your jammies.38
Stated simply, there is a danger, where the enemy is difficult to locate – as is often, if not invariably the case with terrorism –, to invent his location. The initial phases of the US campaign in Afghanistan were deceptively easy, and this was the result of a strategic miscalculation on the part of the Al Qaeda–Taliban combine that allowed the confrontation to assume the character of a conventional war between two considerably unequal forces. This was an aberration in the character of fundamentally terrorist organisations, and where it generated euphoria in the initial phases, it has resulted in deep frustrations subsequently. It is substantially these frustrations that are now triggering a search for an apparently easy and demonstrable victory in Iraq.
None of the preceding arguments is intended to suggest that actions against identified concentrations of terrorists, or of prominent groupings of terrorists, are futile, or to be diluted in any way. We will have to continue to fight terrorism wherever we find it. At a tactical level, the identification and neutralisation of all manifestations and concentrations of terrorist activity and force must remain a military, policing and intelligence priority. Nor, indeed, is it my argument that all other aspects of, and trends in, terrorism have been excluded from the concerns of the global war against terrorism. What is suggested, rather, is that the fitfulness and increasing incoherence of the global response to terrorism is, at least in part, a consequence of an inappropriate context of assessment. On the other hand, we find that the enemy’s orientation is immensely more focused and functional. It is, consequently, necessary to fight, not where we see a tangible enemy and a high probability of victory, but wherever the imperatives of the war and the nature of the enemy require us to fight for a more palpable and decisive victory.
Defeating the Enemy
It must be amply evident that there can be no simple formulae for a quick fix to the enormity of what terrorism has brought upon us. There can be no easy search for solutions, and if this war is to be won, it will have to be fought through a succession of approximations. The most important criterion in our choice of responses will have to be their internal coherence and their consistency with a broad and clearly defined strategic framework based on an accurate assessment of the nature of the enemy and the character of the conflict. This could well require a ‘Napoleonic reorganisation’ of our strategic perspectives, if we are to bring some order into the theatre of sub-conventional terrorist warfare. In this context, it is necessary to note that, even at a tactical level, the success of an engagement depends overwhelmingly on clearly defining the commander’s objectives and intent. And such intent must be firmly rooted in a larger plan and a coherent global strategy. In the absence of such a strategic context, it is impossible for counter-terrorism planners and forces to define and pursue the requisite end state of the ‘war against terror’, and, while many visible victories may be scored against terrorists, a victory against terrorism would prove elusive. It is, consequently, necessary to define, in concrete terms and not as generalised slogans, the end state we seek to secure in the conflict.
The present and brief study cannot pretend to provide, or even to outline, any such strategic perspective. It is possible, however, to attempt to identify at least some of the elements or considerations that must be accommodated within a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy for the present war against terrorism.
It is now necessary to radically alter the liberal discourse on terrorism, and to recognise the enormity of the threat that contemporary extremist movements pose, not only to specific regimes or nation states, but to the very possibility of the liberal democratic order, and to human civilisation itself. The ‘self-evident truths’ of the ‘rights of man’ are not self-promoting or self-perpetuating. There is a ‘myth of democracy achieved’ that manifests itself in, as Harry Eckstein expresses it, "the bare belief that democracy need only exist to succeed,"41 but it is necessary to constantly remind ourselves that, "Unless freedoms are extended, they are whittled away."42 It is important, equally, to recognise that this will require an extraordinary effort, that "Truth does not triumph; unless it has champions to propound it, unless it has armies to defend it."43
The various streams of terrorism today, with their roots in substantially contrived religious and ethnic identities, do not propose ‘solutions’ on the basis of a constructive vision of an alternative future, but instead seek escape in a fictional past. While they are manifestly capable of inflicting substantial harm and suffering on their target societies, they lack the strategies and means to transform and empower their own people. This is precisely because the alternative societies they seek to create are incapable of generating the intellectual, material, social and political resources for the tasks of modern state-building or social reconstruction. Thus,
Freedom, interpreted to mean national independence, was seen as the great talisman that would bring all other benefits. The overwhelming majority of Muslims now live in independent states, but this has brought no solutions to their problems.52
The fact is, the patterns of economic activity and growth that underpin all power in the modern – and increasingly globalised – world, cannot be sustained by groupings that seek "smaller worlds within borders that will seal them off from modernity."53 The inexorable truth is that contemporary technological imperatives and the corresponding intellectual demands they impose on dynamic societies – and not just ‘US hegemony’, though the hegemon is an inescapable fact of our age – have imposed very high levels of integration and interdependence on the international order; and systems and societies that seek to insulate themselves from this trend eventually and inevitably disempower themselves. It is "not possible to simultaneously sustain a thrust towards international globalisation and regional or local ‘ghettoisation’."54
Significantly, as Olivier Roy correctly notes, the apparently ‘anti-modern’ Islamist networks are inevitably linked up with the globalised world – irrespective of their ideological predilections and antipathies:
Even in a traditional society such as Afghanistan, the network that develops around a smalltime local commander, himself plugged into an "international" network for the circulation of goods (arms, and sometimes drugs), is no longer the clan that existed before, but a recomposition of the traditional segmentation around a new political elite and the globalised flow of wealth.55
The liberal democratic world, consequently, with all its imperfections, retains the greater power to resolve the deficiencies of the emerging world order. This power is compounded with the passage of time, and the world has seen a continuous trend over the past decades, to the progressive weakening and marginalisation of authoritarian and extremist cultures. This latter progression, of course, creates its own impulses to violence and disruption, but this is the reaction of the disadvantaged – those who are excluded to suffer "the frustration inherent in an unattainable consumerist world"56 – not the initiative of those who possess the means for transformation.57
Finally, when we draft our strategy to defeat the "prairie fire of jihadi terrorism spreading across the world,"58 we must explicitly confront the rather obvious reality that the essence of terrorism is terror. Terrorists exploit our inordinate fears of what they can do in order to paralyse our responses and sow confusion in our minds; they encourage our mistaken belief that if we do not respond, or if we conciliate, appease, enter into ‘rational engagement’,59 the terror will de-escalate; the belief that we can somehow bribe this relentless and utterly ruthless enemy to stop murdering our women and children. But the one principle that stands out clearly is that there can be no compromise with terrorists; all such compromises reward terrorism. Fitful policies seeking negotiations with terrorists, with their front organisations and their sponsoring states, have only helped entrench these groups, creating an alternative sphere of a violent, murderous politics that is fundamentally a negation of democracy and the principles that sustain the international community. An extraordinary and unwavering determination in the leadership of the world is now necessary in order to defeat terrorism, and the time available to build the international consensus that must underlie such determination is severely limited.
Ajai Sahni, "South Asia: Extremist Islamist Terror & Subversion," in K P S Gill and Ajai Sahni, eds., The Global Threat of Terror: Ideological, Material and Political Linkages, New Delhi: Bulwark Books – ICM, 2002, pp. 181-83.
"…on September 24, 2002, two terrorists launched an attack in the Akshardham Temple of the Swaminarayan sect of Hindus, one of the most hallowed temples in the western Indian State of Gujarat. They first lobbed grenades and opened indiscriminate fire on the devotees in the crowded hour of the evening aarti (prayer), and then, as darkness fell, entered into a protracted exchange of fire with security forces that lasted through the night. They were eventually killed at dawn by a crack team of the National Security Guard, but only after they had taken the lives of 32 persons, including 16 women and four children, and injured at least another 74. With this outrage, militant Islamists opened up one more theatre of terrorism on Indian soil." K.P.S. Gill, "Gujarat: New Theatre of Islamist Terror", South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) Volume 1 No. 11, September 30, 2002, http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/1_11.htm#assessment1.
Imanuddin, "Intelligence capability and the Bali blasts," The Jakarta Post, October 29, 2002, http://www.thejakartapost.com/Archives/ArchivesDet2.asp?FileID=20021029.E02. [Emphasis added].
"Paradise Lost," Channel NewsAsia, October 16, 2002.
"Britain Embassy warns ‘nowhere safe’ in Indonesia," Jakarta Post, October 26, 2002, http://www.thejakartapost.com/Archives/ArchivesDet2.asp?FileID=20021026.B01.
"Lessons from the Bali blast", Jakarta Post, October 16, 2002, http://www.thejakartapost.com/Archives/ArchivesDet2.asp?FileID=20021016.E03.
Ewen MacAskill and John Aglionby "Suspicion Turns on Indonesia’s Islamist Militants," The Guardian, London, October 14, 2002, www.guardian.co.uk/indonesia/Story/0,2763,811368,00.html.
Kornelius Purba, "Stop pretending that we are safe," Jakarta Post, October 18, 2002, www.thejakartapost.com/Archives/ArchivesDet2.asp?FileID=20021018.E03.
"National tragedy", Jakarta Post, October 14, 2002, http://www.thejakartapost.com/Archives/ArchivesDet2.asp?FileID=20021014.E01.
Dave McIntyre, "We need to Study War Some More," Journal of International Security Affairs, Washington, D.C., Summer 2002, pp. 11-12 and 3.
Most prominently, Resolutions 1368 and 1373.
Address to Joint Session of Congress & the American People, November 21, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html
Fareed Zakaria, "Stop the Babel Over Babylon", Newsweek, New York, September 16-23, 2002.
Harvey Feldman, "Editor’s Introduction", The Journal of International Security Affairs, Number 3, Summer 2002, p. 1.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at New York, September 14, 2002, reported on STAR News, September 15, 2002.
The Report was first released in April 2000, and stated: "In 1999 the locus of terrorism directed against the United States continued to shift from the Middle East to South Asia." See http://www.usis.usemb.se/terror/rpt1999/asia.html.
Ambassador Michael A. Sheehan, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, US Department of State, Statement for the Record Before the House International Relations Committee July 12, 2000, http://www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/00071702.htm. Ambassador Sheehan was echoing Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s earlier statement (of May 1, 2000) that there had been an "eastward shift in terrorism's center of gravity" towards South Asia. See "US says terrorism threat has shifted from Middle East to South Asia", CNN.com, May 1, 2000, http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/05/01/terrorism.report.02/.
"Pak is epicentre of terror: Advani", The Statesman, New Delhi, October 2, 2002.
Total Fatalities: 1990 – 1177; 1991 – 1393; 1992 – 1909; 1993 – 2567; 1994 – 2899; 1995 – 2795; 1996 – 2903; 1997 – 2372; 1998 – 2261; 1999 – 2538; 2000 – 3288; 2001 – 4507; 2002 – 2683 (till November 18). Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal, http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/data_sheets/annual_casualties.htm
Zachary Abuza, "Tentacles of Terror: Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian Linkages", paper presented at the Conference on Transnational Violence and Seams of Lawlessness in the Asia Pacific: Linkages to Global Terrorism, at the Asia Pacific Centre for Strategic Studies, February 19-21, 2002.
Interview with Lally Weymouth, Newsweek, February 2002.
"South Asia Intelligence Review," vol. 1, no. 8, September 9, 2002, South Asia Terrorism Portal, http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/1_8.htm#table.
"South Asia Intelligence Review," vol. 1, no. 16, November 4, 2002. South Asia Terrorism Portal, www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/1.16.htm#table.
South Asia Intelligence Review, vol. 1, no. 4, August 12, 2002, South Asia Terrorism Portal, www.satp.org. http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/1_4.htm#table
Compiled from data on the South Asia Terrorism Portal, www.satp.org.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0i5d0.
See K.P.S. Gill and Ajai Sahni, "The J&K ‘Peace Process’: Chasing the Chimera," Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution, New Delhi, vol. 8, April 2001, esp. pp. 3-6. Also available at http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlines/volume8/Article1.htm.
The ‘shift’ thesis had been published by the US State Department on May 1, 2000. The Al Aqsa Intifada commenced after Ariel Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount on September 28, 2000.
K.P.S. Gill, "Endgame in Punjab: 1988-1993," Faultlines: Writings on Conflict and Resolution, New Delhi, vol. 1, no. 1, May 2000, esp. pp. 51-52. Also at http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlines/volume1/Fault1-kpstext.htm.
Mao Zedong, cited in General Tao Hanzhang, Sun Tzu: The Art of War, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Reference, 1993, p. 56. Emphasis added.
This point was made earlier in Ajai Sahni, "South Asia: Extremist Islamist Terror and Subversion," in Gill and Sahni, The Global Threat of Terror, p. 184.
Robert Novak, "After Afghanistan, Iraq?" October 9, 2001, townhall.com, http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20011009.shtml. Emphasis added.
This point was made earlier in Ajai Sahni, "South Asia: Extremist Islamist Terror and Subversion," in Gill and Sahni, The Global Threat of Terror, pp. 184-85.
Altaf Gauhar, The Challenge of Islam, London: Islamic Council of Europe, 1978, p. 309.
Allah Buksh K. Brohi, "Preface", in Brigadier S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, New Delhi: Himalayan Books, 1986, pp. xix-xx.
Selig S. Harrison, "To get at the Taleban, apply pressure on Pakistan," The International Herald Tribune, Paris, March 8, 2001.
Colin Soloway, "‘Yelled at Them to Stop’", Newsweek, October 7, 2002, pp. 20-22. Also, "Newsweek: U.S. Special Forces, Witnesses in Eastern Afghanistan Say Operation Mountain Sweep was a Disaster," September 29, 2002, http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020929/nysu009a_1.html.
James Gordon Prather, "Supercritical Thoughts: It’s Pakistan, Stupid", World Net Daily, August 31, 2002, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28793
K.P.S. Gill, "Approach Paper: Managing Internal Security Threats in India’s Northeast," 2002, unpublished.
Mark Steyn, "Dust bin," The Spectator, London, June 29, 2002, http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2002-06-29&id=1999.
Harry Eckstein, "Lessons for the ‘Third Wave’ from the First: An Essay on Democratisation," www.democ.uci.edu/democ/papers/lessons.htm.
Paul Goodman, "Anarchism and Revolution", The Great Ideas Today – 1970, Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler, eds., Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1970, p. 46.
K.P.S. Gill, Knights of Falsehood, New Delhi: Har Anand, 1997, p. 26.
"Dancing with Dictators," New York Times, September 1, 2002.
John R. MacArthur, "The Ugly American Mindset," Toronto Globe and Mail, November 6, 2001, reproduced at Common Dreams News Center, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1106-01.htm.
Time, September 16, 2002, p. 38.
K.P.S. Gill, "Statement on the Launch of the South Asia Terrorism Portal," March 11, 2000, New Delhi, www.satp.org/satporgtp/kpsgill/terrorism/Mar11.htm.
MacIntyre, "We need to study war some more," "We need to Study War Some More," Journal of International Security Affairs, Summer 2002, p. 7.
Robin Wright, Sacred Rage, New York: Touchstone, 2001, p. 13.
Stuart R. Schram (Trans.), Mao Tse-Tung: Basic Tactics, London: Pall Mall Press, 1966, p. 53.
Robin Wright, Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam, New York: Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, 1985, p. 289.
Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong?" The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, January 2002, http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/01/lewis.htm.
Benjamin R. Barber, "Jihad vs. McWorld", Atlantic Monthly, March 1992, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/barberf.htm.
Ajai Sahni, "Gujarat: Communal Ghetto or Global Enterprise?", in M.L. Sondhi and Apratim Mukarji, eds., The Black Book of Gujarat, Delhi: Manak Publications, p. 65.
Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999, p. 19.
Ibid, p. 4.
These themes have been explored in greater detail in Ajai Sahni, Democracy, Violence & Transformation: Exploring the Limits, [forthcoming title]; and also, with particular reference to Islamist extremism, in Ajai Sahni, "Al Qaeda’s Strategic Reach in India," Paper presented at the International Conference on "Transnational Violence and Seams of Lawlessness in the Asia-Pacific", organised by the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, US DoD, Honolulu, February 19-21, 2002, [forthcoming publication].
B. Raman, "The Prairie Fire of Jehadi Terrorism," South Asia Analysis Group, Paper No. 538, 24.10.2002, http://www.saag.org/papers6/paper538.html.
Steve Coll, "Mr. Armitage, as they say here: Your’re most welcome," LA Times-Washington Post, reproduced in The Indian Express, New Delhi, May 29, 2002.