SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 45, May 26, 2003

USA	SOUTH ASIA

Reassessing the War on Terror
K.P.S. Gill
President, Institute for Conflict Management

The 'Global Village' has moved much closer from rhetoric to reality: a terrorist attack in forgotten Morocco or insular Saudi Arabia now echoes instantly across the Americas, Europe and every corner of Asia, among peoples who had little awareness even of the existence of these distant places some years ago. It is useful to hear and understand these echoes, and place them in an objective context - separating their emotive and partisan content from the realities of the ground.

The dominant theme that reverberates after every major incident of international terrorism in the age after 9/11 - and which resonated clearly after both the Riyadh and Casablanca attacks - is an almost celebratory chorus, virtually a gleeful claim of vindication, among those who have been asserting that US-coalition interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 'global war against terror', would result in a groundswell of 'Muslim rage' and necessary and virulent retaliation. Interestingly, while this is an argument that is certainly articulated by many in the 'Muslim world', its most passionate advocates are numbered among those who consider themselves liberal democrats, and who are currently engaged in constructing the thesis of American neo-conservative Imperialism. Whether this is intended or not, these arguments - irrespective of their source - provide some of the most powerful justifications and, indeed, advocacy of Islamist extremist terrorism and constitute critical inputs in the dangerous intensification of the propaganda war against the US-led war on terror. A significant and persistent undercurrent in this campaign of misinformation is the reflection of a near-total denial of Islamist terrorism and its virulent ideological underpinnings. This broad campaign - intentionally in some cases, inadvertently in others - has a direct impact on the US will and commitment to fight terrorism in the world, wherever it is to be found. It is, consequently, useful to determine its match with the realities of the world today.

• The first and most significant point to note is that it cannot conceivably be anybody's case that, had the US not gone into Afghanistan after 9/11, or subsequently into Iraq, Islamist terrorists would simply have abandoned their campaign against the US and the 'decadent West'. Indeed, the dangers of a far more violent campaign would have been infinitely greater in the wake of any evidence of weakness or conciliation on the part, particularly, of the US, but generally of all existing and potential targets of terrorism.

• An objective assessment of the course of terrorism would bear out the fact that - while the risk of random incidents against soft targets cannot, and should not be expected to, be eliminated - the impetus of terror has, indeed, weakened as a result of Afghanistan and Iraq, and this development needs further consolidation rather than any dilution of the war against terrorism and the campaign against political extremism, authoritarianism and rogue states in different parts of the world. America's withdrawal into an isolationist, inward-looking defensive posture is very certainly no longer an option. Fighting and defeating terrorism is not a 'policy choice' for the civilized world; it is a survival goal.

• At a tactical level, it is useful to note that the attacks in Riyadh and Casablanca reflected very poor economies of scale from the terrorists' perspective. It took at least nine suicide cadres in Riyadh to inflict 25 civilian casualties. Ten suicide bombers in Casablanca killed 29 civilians. This kind of rate of attrition for low priority targets is neither sustainable nor can it be projected for long as a 'great victory' for the 'cause'.

• These two attacks have also done irreparable damage to the Islamist terrorist movement. The countries where these attacks were mounted have now been lost as secure bases for the terrorists, as their Governments abandon their past postures of ambivalence and tacit support to the Islamist extremist factions. This is crucial. For all their defects as authoritarian oligarchies, these countries - with their scant regard for human rights and judicial processes, as well as the barbaric punishments they inflict - are far better equipped to neutralize terrorists once they decide to do so, than democratic nation-states ever will be.

• The terrorists' apologists have consistently sought to undermine effective counter-terrorism initiatives on the argument that these would provoke 'retaliation' of a greater virulence against soft targets. But not only do these views falsify the ground reality of declining trends in terrorism, these views also fail to correctly reflect the mood among the vast majority of the people. Among Muslims - and certainly in South Asia - 9/11 and the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq may have aroused a measure of resentment in limited segments of the population, but they have equally provoked unprecedented introspection and the open questioning of the fundamentalist-extremist leadership's goals, methods and authority. Indeed, a close reading of the pronouncements even of the Islamist extremist leadership in South Asia demonstrates that they now increasingly acknowledge the dangers of the pathways they have adopted over the past decades. These views tend largely to be ignored by the outside (Western) observers, especially here their experience is confined to the urban and metropolitan centres, where opinions are strongly ideologically slanted and often contra-factual. Delhi and Islamabad are cases in point where small groups of isolated 'intellectuals', policy- and opinion-makers engage in an unending and incestuous discourse that fails entirely to accommodate an objective assessment of realities on the ground - and it is this discourse that is picked up by Western diplomats, journalists and other observers, who seldom have access to a wider sample of public opinion. Even among populations where some sympathies for the Islamist extremist cause may have existed in the past, the majority view in South Asia today - cutting across religious and political affiliations - is swinging away from continued support to the terrorists.

• Pakistan has, by no means, remained unaffected by these trends, despite its persistent duplicity in the war against terrorism. This response is, moreover, compounded by a rising dread of the Talibanisation of the country. There are, of course, some dangers that arise out of the 'Islamisation' of some sections of the Army that have given rise to speculation of a coup by this extremist element against General Musharraf. These threats are, however, vastly exaggerated - though they may constitute a possibility for Musharraf or a successor military regime several years hence. Within the proximate future, however, there is little danger of a military revolt. The fact is that, though the Pakistan Army has been responsible for several coups against civilian Governments, the Force has never broken internal discipline and has remained constant and loyal to its military commander. Musharraf is, consequently, under no extraordinary or imminent risk of an internal coup from within the Army and will, when international pressures mount beyond a particular level, be able to contain and neutralize radicalised elements within the Army and the Inter Services Intelligence, as well as the Al Qaeda linked terrorist organisations that were created by and affiliated to these institutions in the past.

• The 'peace process' between India and Pakistan has been spurred by these transformations in the international and domestic context, and, while it is not a 'brokered' process, it has certainly been pushed forward by US pressure. Unfortunately, any peace that may result can only be temporary under present circumstances, where the entire infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan remains virtually intact, and where the agencies of the State continue to support - albeit selectively - a large number of virulent Islamist terrorist groups and their ideological and political affiliates, and as long as the structure of power in the country remains bound to the revanchist military-jehadi-feudal complex that has dominated its politics since Independence.

The combined force of these facts must lead to the conclusion that the shared, eventual and unvarying goal of the civilised world must remain the destruction of the terrorists' assets and ideologies, and, while a wide range of political, social and ideological initiatives are needed in the comprehensive strategy of the global war against terror, such initiatives do not undermine or dilute the enormous need for a continued and focused military response to the immediate dangers of global terrorism.

INDIA

Manipur: Surrogate Wars
Guest Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam
Editor, Imphal Free Press

For almost a week last fortnight, after clashes between two underground militant organizations, the United Kuki Liberation Front (UKLF) and the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) in the Chakpikarong sub-division of the Chandel district, in Manipur, residents of a number of villages were subject to widespread fear, forcing many to flee their homes. Although the exact numbers are not known or disclosed, both the underground organizations acknowledged having suffered casualties. Clashes between underground organizations are not altogether new in this area, but the tragedy has been not so much theirs, as it has been for the unarmed and hapless public, most often impoverished villagers in sparsely populated peripheries of the State.

But the Chakpikarong clashes have other very strong undercurrents of old tensions running below the obvious surface. Although the physical clashes were between the UKLF and the UNLF, in spirit it was between two old time antagonists, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim - Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) and the UNLF. The latter, drawing its strongest support from amongst the Meitei community in the Imphal Valley, is the only Meitei militant organization that has come out openly to challenge the NSCN-IM's demand for a 'Greater Nagaland', which the Naga militants aspire to create by splintering Manipur and other neighbouring States. Others too are opposed to the move, but none of them have demonstrated their opposition publicly, unwilling to risk their relationship with the NSCN-IM - by far the most well-armed and powerful insurgent organization in the region. Most Kuki underground organizations, particularly the Kuki National Front (KNF), and the Kuki National Army (KNA), are also opposed to the NSCN-IM's vision of an integrated Naga homeland carved out of land that is also home to the Kukis. It is to the credit of the military strategists of the NSCN-IM that, amidst this open and emotive opposition to their homeland move, they have been able to set up their own satellites deep within communities that are hostile to its political ambitions. The UKLF, a relatively new Kuki militant group in the Chandel district bordering Myanmar, is one such, and came into being not long after the bloody Kuki-Naga feud in the mid 1990s. The NSCN-IM has also set up another Kuki extremist group, the Kuki Revolutionary Army (KRA) in another Kuki stronghold - the Sadar Hills Autonomous District Council (ADC), in the Senapati district in the north of the State - and likewise has also been patronizing similar organizations among other communities, both in the Manipur Hills and the Meitei dominated Valley.

The recent Chakpikarong clashes must be seen against this background. The Chandel district is within the areas that the NSCN-IM considers as Naga contiguous territories, and hence part of its vision of the contentious Greater Nagaland. In reality, it is a mixed-population district, with many small communities, most of them now politically aligned to the Naga identity, although many among them share close ethnic affinity with the Kukis, their immediate neighbours in the district. Much to the chagrin of the Nagas, Kuki intellectuals refer to the Naga tribes in this district as 'Old Kukis' who have switched identity affiliation. This dichotomy between political and ethnic identities throws up a number of obvious social tensions and it is no coincidence that some of the worst clashes between the Kukis and Nagas during the feud in the 1990s occurred in the Chandel district. Further, valley based underground organizations, particularly the UNLF have been making deep inroads into the Kuki inhabited areas of the district, a fact viewed with resentment and suspicion by the NSCN-IM. Before the Naga ceasefire, clashes in the area used to be directly between the NSCN-IM and the UNLF - NSCN-K (the rival Khaplang faction of the NSCN) combine. Ever since the Naga ceasefire in 1997, however, the NSCN-IN can no longer risk open encounters, as these would violate the 'Ground Rules' of their agreement with the Union Government. Its satellite organizations are, consequently, pressed into action under direct or indirect goading. In the present instance, the UKLF became the instrument in an attempt to neutralize the presence of the UNLF in the Chakpikarong area. What is unfolding is thus a war for the control of territory and, in a distant way, one prompted by the unresolved and explosive question of the NSCN-IM's Greater Nagaland dream - a war in which one of the parties is fighting by proxy.

The proxy war aside, one other player is conspicuous by its absence - the law. The entire Chakpikarong area, as in much of the rest of Chandel district, as well as the adjoining Sugnu subdivision of the valley district of Thoubal, have become virtually a 'liberated zone', where the writs of many different rebel organizations are the only law. At present, unless overwhelming numbers of Central Forces are brought in, it is difficult for the Government to bring the situation under control. It is not very far from here, in the Sajik Tampak, that underground forces of the UNLF repelled advancing Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers after a pitched three-day battle in January 2003. In these areas, the Government has, as a policy, even disarmed its police forces, since it had become routine for police stations, most of them under-manned and ill-equipped, to be overpowered and robbed of weapons by militants who were vastly superior in numbers and armament. Thus, the Chakpikarong police station, for instance, has only about three unarmed policemen. Three times the number of unarmed policemen is present at the Sugnu police station, and they - for obvious reasons - have not been able to make a difference in the situation. Not only are the law enforcement agencies absent, there are also no signs of direct government presence. The fair-weather roads in the area remain in a pathetic state of disrepair for years together; the public health centers are without doctors; the sub-divisional offices are without officers; general scarcities are endemic, and the only things not in short supply are diseases and epidemics of malaria, cholera and dysentery. In such a vacuum, it is only natural for parallel structures of government to sprout up and assert themselves. It is a situation, as T.S. Chonghring, an Anal tribal chief in Chakpikarong, told Imphal Free Press, a case of the government abandoning the people, driving them into the hands of laws and forces other than the Government's own.