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Terrorism in India: An Uncertain Relief
While India’s relations with most of
her neighbours remain fraught with tensions, her most urgent security
crises remain overwhelmingly internal. Indeed, even international friction
increasingly articulates itself through sub-conventional and terrorist
wars that are predominantly internal, in that they manifest themselves
principally on Indian soil. Islamist extremist terrorism sourced from
Pakistan and, over the past few years, increasingly from Bangladesh,
falls into this category.
A relief, in numbers
The recent trajectory of internal conflicts
in India has been mixed. Overall, fatalities connected with terrorism
and insurgency declined marginally from 2,765 in 2006 to 2,598 in 2007
(Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal), and dramatically, from their
peak at 5,839 in 2001.
In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), for
over a decade and a half the bloodiest theatre of terrorism in the country,
there was strong relief, with terrorism-related fatalities – at 777
– falling below the ‘high intensity conflict’ mark of a thousand deaths
for the first time since 1990. At peak in 2001, fatalities in J&K
had risen to 4,507. Clearly, 2007 brought tremendous relief to the people
of the state, but a great deal remains to be achieved before normalcy
is restored.
In India’s troubled Northeast, wracked
by multiple insurgencies, the situation worsened considerably, with
fatalities more than doubling, from 427 in 2006 to 1,019 in 2007, principally
because of a dramatic escalation in terrorist activities in Assam and
Manipur.
Effects of the war on terror
The numbers alone, however, do not give
a clear picture of the magnitude of the challenges confronting New Delhi.
Indeed, the sheer spread of Islamist terrorist incidents across India
– linked to groups that originally operated exclusively within J&K
– is now astonishing, with incidents having been engineered in widely
dispersed theatres virtually across the country.
The trend in J&K has little correlation
with specific changes in operational strategies or tactics, or with
the range of ‘peace initiatives’ the Government has undertaken domestically
and with Pakistan. This is demonstrated by the fact that the downward
trend in violence has been consistently sustained since 2001, irrespective
of the transient character of relationships between India and Pakistan,
or any escalation or decline of operations within J&K, and has been
maintained even through periods of escalating tension and provocative
political rhetoric. This trend commenced immediately after the 9/11
attacks in the US and the subsequent threat by the US for Pakistan to
"be prepared to be bombed back into the Stone Age."
It was this threat, a steady build-up
of international pressure, and intense international media focus on
Pakistan’s role in the sponsorship of terrorism, which combined to force
Pakistan to execute a U-turn in its policy on Afghanistan, and dilute
visible support to terrorism in J&K. Thereafter, the unrelenting
succession of crises in Pakistan have undermined the country’s capacities
to sustain past levels of terrorism in J&K – particularly since
a large proportion of troops had to be pulled back from the Line of
Control and International Border for deployment in increasingly violent
theatres in Balochistan, NWFP and the FATA areas. Pakistan’s creeping
implosion has undermined the establishment’s capacities to sustain the
‘proxy war’ against India at earlier levels.
Regrettably, if Western attention is
diverted from the region, or if the Islamists in Pakistan are able to
carve out autonomous capacities and regions, free of their dependence
on the state’s covert agencies, or if there is a radical escalation
in the ‘global jihad’ in the wake of the proposed US withdrawal from
Iraq in the foreseeable future, the ‘jihad’ in Kashmir and across India
could, once again, intensify dramatically.
Bad governance and marginalization
Similarly, there is overwhelming evidence
that the limited ‘gains’ in terms of declining Maoist violence outside
Andhra Pradesh, are the result, not of any significant initiatives on
the part of the state’s agencies, but rather, of a Maoist decision to
focus on political and mass mobilisation in order to "intensify
the people’s war throughout the country, intending to cumulatively cover
virtually the length and breadth of India.
Far from confronting this subversive
onslaught, the incompetence of Governments – most dramatically the West
Bengal Government and its actions in Nandigram, but less visibly in
several other States – has presented the Maoists with proliferating
opportunities to deepen subversive mobilization and recruitment.
Despite the dramatic macroeconomic growth
experienced over the past decade and a half, vast populations have remained
outside the scope of minimal standards on a wide range of developmental
indices. Indeed, the processes of ‘development’ have themselves been
severely disruptive; what we are witnessing today is at once a process
of globalisation and marginalisation; the rise of oppressed castes through
political processes, and parallel increases in the intensity of oppression;
unimagined wealth and distressing poverty.
Need stronger political mandate
Nevertheless, in at least two major
theatres of insurgency, Tripura in the Northeast and Andhra Pradesh
in the South, local administrations have backed the police to execute
extraordinarily successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Clearly, where
the will and the vision exist, the Indian state has the capacity to
combat violence and terrorism.
Unfortunately, a widening crisis of
governance afflicts much of India today, with a continuous erosion of
administrative capacities across wide areas. There is, moreover, an
insufficient understanding within the security establishment of the
details of insurgent strategy and tactics, and the imperatives of the
character of response. The deficiencies of perspective and design are
visible in the fact that no comprehensive strategy has yet been articulated
to deal with insurgency and terrorism. The security forces have, at
great cost in lives, made dramatic gains from time to time, but there
have been continuous reverses, usually as a result of repeated political
miscalculations and the refusal to provide the necessary mandate to
the forces operating against the extremists.
(Published in The
Progressive Bangladesh, March 21, 2008)
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