Foreword

A wide constellation of forces and events in South Asia appear to be positioned, at once, for an escalation of terrorist violence in the region, and for the emergence of some avenues of resolution. The hijack of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 last Christmas Eve, and the controversial resolution of the crisis in Taliban territory at Kandahar Airport, brought international attention to bear on the context of strife in this region. If anything, the subsequent hijack of the Afghan Ariana Airways Boeing 727 to UK from the same Airport, reiterated the fundamental dangers flowing from these sources, even as it demonstrated that, in the contemporary Global Village, the West is not impervious to disturbances emanating in regions that appear to be located at a ‘safe distance’ from its settled and complacent affluence.

The fig leaf of Pakistan’s pretence that it has nothing to do with terrorism in India has also been stripped by the presence and highly inflammatory activities in Pakistan, of Maulana Azhar Masood, one of the terrorists released from an Indian prison as part of the IC 814 hijack deal.

These events will certainly reinforce the international mandate for strong action against terrorism everywhere in the world, though it will take some time before this mandate is translated into co-operation between nations and an effective counter-terrorism programme. This mandate has, in the recent months, been considerably strengthened within the victim societies as well. In India, where a vacillating and weak-kneed approach to terrorism has characterised policies, practices and prevailing intellectual fashions, there is a growing consensus that a stronger response is now overdue. That such a response is still far from being realised is a consequence only of obdurate and alienated bureaucracies and great political incompetence. The Indian people today, for all their anarchic indiscipline, want an end to the rising tide of violence, and any government that can secure this objective will earn their gratitude in perpetuity.

In the interim, unfortunately, an increasing eagerness on the part of the US to intervene in the Indo-Pakistan conflict is visible. This has been, in some measure, triggered by the international attention attracted by the hijacking crisis in December 1999. Another element is the increasingly visible activities of Islamic fundamentalists in and from Pakistan. These factors reinforce concerns that were aroused when both nations decided to go nuclear in 1998. The significant motive is also President Clinton’s personal striving to project himself as an ‘international statesman’ in his final year in Office. It is this last consideration that brings the US President to South Asia, and underlines his eagerness not to miss out on a stopover at Pakistan, despite declared US opposition to military rule in that state and a professed concern for its sponsorship of terrorist activities.

These incipient interventions, of course, bring with them the prospects of greater international pressure to end terrorism. There is, however, also the attendant risk of aggravating the enormous harm that ill-conceived and insensitive US meddling in the region has done in the past. US Administrations – and their infamous ‘tilt’ – moreover, have frequently shown themselves to be easily satisfied with a little tokenism on Pakistan’s part (such as the recent arrest of Maulana Masood Azhar) and to studiously ignore that nation’s role in the massive and malignant destabilisation of the region through covert and low intensity warfare.

The American efforts to increase their role in the region, moreover, must be evaluated against the backdrop of the US global agenda. Whether India likes it or not, the fact remains that the US perceives Pakistan as an important outpost in this part of the world. Against all evidence, it continues to believe that, by continuing support to Pakistan, they can stem the rising tide of Islamic militancy. More significantly, however, they see Pakistan as a forward base for operations and interventions in Central Asia where oil reserves are valued at over a trillion dollars. The US interest in South Asia is overwhelmingly defined by their evaluation of potential and future resource conflicts.

It is clear, furthermore, that the US, as a society and a nation, has yet to acquire the maturity or the sensitivity to deal with a major power in this region. Superpower hubris and a trace of racism are, and will long remain, integral to American initiatives in South Asia. Consequently, while rising American and international concern has put counter-terrorism on the US agenda, it is certainly far from becoming their foremost priority. The ascription of an extraordinary measure of good faith to the US initiatives, in the present context, would consequently be grossly misplaced.

These conflicting trends notwithstanding, it remains a fact that the responsibility for countering the activities of the terrorists on the ground will have to be shouldered by the governments of states within this region. Most of these governments have tended to be somewhat sluggish and clumsy in their response to the challenge – and this is certainly the case with the Indian government and its agencies. There is grave and urgent need, consequently, to reorient these responses in order to place them on a far more scientific and systematic footing.

The papers in the present volume were not written to a plan. And yet, if there is a visible integrating theme, it is precisely the effort to create the context for such a reorientation of counter-terrorism policy and practice. This is perhaps a measure of the sheer urgency of the need to evolve immediate and effective remedies to the heightening epidemic of terror. A wide spectrum of policies, strategic alternatives and institutional reforms have been explored and evaluated in these papers with the manifest objective of defining internally consistent, flexible and effective mechanisms to combat the dangers of a virulent and unconstrained method of war that recognises no bounds of morality or of law, and threatens all norms and institutions of civilisation itself.

K.P.S. Gill

New Delhi

February 10, 2000