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Ravinder Kaur
The assimilation of India's urban terror attacks into a global narrative of Islamist violence carries the danger that their domestic social and historical roots will be missed, says Ravinder Kaur.
17 - 09 - 2008
The five bomb-blasts on 13 September 2008 in New Delhi represent the latest in a series of such attacks in the country's main cities. The police and political experts described the bombs, which killed twenty-five people and injured at least ninety within a span of forty-five minutes, as "low-intensity" devices aimed less at inflicting maximum casualties and more at creating maximum terror at the heart of India's capital city.Ravinder Kaur teaches at the University of Roskilde, Denmark. She is the editor of Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia (Sage, 2005) and author of Since 1947: Partition Narratives among Punjabi Migrants of Delhi (Oxford University Press, 2007)Also by Ravinder Kaur in openDemocracy:"India and Pakistan: partition lessons" (16 August 2007)Indeed, what makes the Delhi blasts particularly disturbing is their place in a pattern of similar assaults where bombs are placed in close proximity to one another and timed to explode in sequence across crowded market-places and office-complexes across a given city. Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad have been among the recent targets, with over 160 deaths in these cities since May 2008. Now it is Delhi's turn, and there is every prospect that others will follow (see Ajai Sahni, "India after Ahmedabad's bombs", 29 July 2008).
Another familiar part of the pattern is that the Delhi blasts were accompanied by almost simultaneous emails sent to national news organisations purporting to be from the "Indian Mujaheedin" (IM). Some analysts connected the IM - which had not been heard of before the Jaipur bombs - to banned organisations such as the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi); others made connections with Pakistan's official Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that is often seen within the Indian establishment as a cheerful promoter or architect of anti-India attacks, such as the bombing of India's Kabul embassy on 7 July 2008 (see Kanchan Lakshman, "India in Afghanistan: a presence under pressure", 11 July 2008).The rushed linkThe loss and destruction of life in these vicious attacks is deeply disturbing. It is clearly important to understand why they are happening in order to formulate the most effective response. In this respect it is notable that the most prominent current way of interpreting these events - by, for example, India's main opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - is to see them as part of "India's war on terror".The logic of this approach is plain, to align India with a global struggle against Islamist violence of which the Indian "theatre" is but one local manifestation. The attractions of the approach too are plain, especially as it provides a convenient way to filter the pattern of attacks through comforting, polarising dichotomies: Islam vs the west, religious fundamentalism vs secularism, tradition vs modernity, authoritarianism vs democracy.Also on India's insecurity in openDemocracy:Rajeev Bhargava, "Words save lives: India, the BJP and the Constitution" (2 October 2002)Rajeev Bhargava, "The political psychology of Hindu nationalism" (5 November 2003)Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr, "Delhi's bombs: landscape of jihad in south Asia" (2 November 2005)Ajai Sahni, "Massacre in Mumbai: the Pakistan connection" (12 July 2006)Ajai Sahni, "India under assault" (20 February 2007)Ajai Sahni, "India and its Maoists: failure and success" (20 March 2007)Suhas Chakma, "India's war with itself" (2 April 2007)Animesh Roul, "Al-Qaida in India" (15 August 2007)Ajai Sahni, "India: states of insecurity" (28 November 2007)Meenakshi Ganguly, "India and Burma: time to choose" (14 January 2008)Manjushree Thapa, "India in its Nepali backyard" (2 May 2008)Kanchan Lakshman, "India in Afghanistan: a presence under pressure" (11 July 2008)Ajai Sahni, "India after Ahmedabad's bombs" (29 July 2008)Jacob Ignatius, "India's Christians: politics of violence in Orissa" (1 September 2008) But the danger of the rush to make India an example of something global is, precisely, that India itself goes missing along the way. More precisely, the history and roots of terror and violence in India tends to be forgotten as the new wave of attacks is instantly linked to global processes (and possible linkages with al-Qaida, Hamas and the Iraq war). The result is a failure to see the local dimension in the Delhi and other operations.The flawed logicA quick look at India's sixty years of independent history reveals that organised violence has been inextricable from questions of identity- and nation-making. The armed struggles in Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Bihar and West Bengal are a case in point. Before 9/11, such violence - conducted by Kashmiri Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, Assamese separatists, Naxalites and other Maoist groups - was variously termed "insurgency", "militancy" or "subversion"; since 9/11, the term "terrorism" has become more frequent. The category of "terrorist" overlapped and interchanged with the other regional identities, carrying the implicit understanding that the grievances of these groups were located within the fissures of the Indian nation-state.From time to time, the idea that aid originating in countries hostile to India was being used to foment trouble in the country was mooted as part of the argument that transnational, subversive networks were responsible for this violence. The prime minister Indira Gandhi famously used the euphemism "foreign hand" (meaning Pakistan) to emphasise the external linkages of what were nonetheless considered internal problems. Such a view can be seen as auguring the more fixed, hardened and bounded employed under the "war on terror", where categories of good/evil, enemy/friend and insider/outsider become increasingly absolute and non-negotiable.The logic of "India's war on terror" can be understood at two levels. First, the emergence of the Muslim "other" neatly fits the pre-existing Hindu nationalist discourse which historically locates Muslims as the "enemy within". This narrative views Muslims primarily as invaders from west-central Asia who subjugated Hindu India; it may be factually dubious and contested but it is used frequently to tarnish Muslims as permanent outsiders whose allegiance to the nation is suspect. The logic can be extended to encompass Indian Christians as well as Muslims (see Jacob Ignatius, "India's Christians: politics of violence in Orissa", 1 September 2008); both are seen as converts disloyal to their "original" and native religion. This feeds the aggressive pursuit of "reconversion" to Hinduism in the form of ghar vapasi (homecoming).Second, this logic moves transports the violence from a local to a global level where India is seen as one among many democratic societies battling Islamist terrorism. The implication is that the violence is disconnected both from India's dysfunctional socio-political developments and its own historicity. Yet these factors are important: Indian Muslims constitute 13.8% of the total population (around 140 million), and rank low on almost every socio-economic measure in India. The official Rajinder Sachar commission report, for example, showed that Muslim representation in the public sector is 3%-7% even in states where Muslims compose nearly a third of the population. In the booming economy of "new' India, Muslims hardly figure because much of the growth is in high-skilled sectors that few are trained for.The skewed opticThe socio-economic marginalisation of Indian Muslims does not in itself explain the current wave of attacks. But alongside the modern history of violence in India - including anti-Muslim violence - it does help to put the phenomenon in context.The most notorious incident was in 1992, when a 15th-century mosque in Ayodhya, central India - the Babri masjid - was demolished by Hindu nationalists in the face of peaceful Muslim protests. This instantly became a symbol of Hindu nationalist victory and Muslim humiliation (see Vidya Subrahmaniam, "Ayodhya: India's endless curse", 6 November 2003). A makeshift temple was quietly (and in violation of a court order) erected to consolidate the gain. The mosque demolition was followed by anti-Muslim violence in different parts of India. In 2002, an anti-Muslim pogrom in the western state of Gujarat took around 2,000 lives over several days, and thousands more were displaced from their homes and livelihoods (see Rajeev Bhargava, "Gujarat: shades of black", 17 December 2002).The connections between this anti-Muslim violence and the more recent terror attacks have seldom been explored properly. In fact, the email sent from the Indian Mujaheedin minutes after the Delhi blasts invoked the mosque demolition as well as the Gujarat pogrom as a motivation. This again suggests that despite the much-vaunted linkages with al-Qaida and Hamas, it is the local roots of terror that emerge more sharply even as the global optics bypass them.Indeed, a comparative Indian dimension further illustrates the flaw in the globalising perspective. In the mid-1980s Delhi was terrorised by serial bomb-blasts in innocuous places - buses, teashops, marketplaces. The threat became known as the "transistor-radio bombs", after the use of these devices in such low-intensity attacks. The assailants then were Sikh militants demanding a separate state of Khalistan; their ranks had spectacularly swelled when, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984, an anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi claimed at least 3,500 innocent lives and an Indian army assault had desecrated the Sikhs' "golden-temple" shrine in Amritsar.At the time, it was not unusual to see "wanted" posters around Delhi featuring glowering, bearded Sikh militants. People in the city were familiarised with police instructions to report suspicious objects and persons; the instinct to "see", detect and report fearful things was already being honed. In the early 1990s, violent Sikh militancy was quelled, in part through concerted police action that had transformed Punjab into a state of exception. However, the return to peace was made possible not through violence but by addressing the widespread sense of alienation among Sikhs.Now India reels under a new generation of terrorist attacks. This time it is Muslim terrorists who are the agents of violence, and Indian Muslims are the target of Hindu nationalist anathema as their Sikh compatriots were in the 1980s. The social and historical parallels between these two periods are a further caution against the instant recourse to the global. The new Indian discourse on the "war on terror" is unhistorical and distractive. India must look within - in search not of enemies but of causes, solutions, and alliances for peaceful change.
(Source: Open Democracy)
Pakistan: the new frontline:
Washington's military strategy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region is expanding its range of enemies.
18 - 09 - 2008
By the end of August 2008 it was clear that Afghanistan was becoming the principal focus of the George W Bush administration's war on terror. Iraq was believed to be making a transition to some sort of peace after more than five years of war; but as the violence there at last showed some signs of diminishing, so the problems in Afghanistan were escalating.
Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001They still are: almost three weeks later it is clear that much of Afghanistan has become steadily more violent, continuing a trend that has marked the year as whole. The United Nations reports that in January-August 2008, 1,445 civilians were killed - an increase of 39% on the same period in 2007 (see "Afghan civilian casualties soar", BBC, 16 September 2008). In addition, a Human Rights Watch report highlights a substantial increase in civilian casualties caused by Nato air strikes (see Ali Gharib, "US/NATO Airstrikes Bring Higher Civilian Toll", IPS/Terra Viva, 9 September 2008).
Moreover, insurgent attacks continue on a daily basis. For example, the governor of Logar province was assassinated on 13 September in an explosion near his home outside Kabul.
To add to the country's problems, food shortages affecting 9 million people are likely during the coming winter (see Carlotta Gall, "9 million Afghans facing acute food shortages soon", International Herald Tribune, 18 September 2008). A combination of harsh weather in winter 2007-08, a subsequent drought, deteriorating security and world food-price increases guarantee that much of central and northern Afghanistan will be deeply affected (see "Afghan Weekly Expects Further Food Price Hikes", RedOrbit, 14 September 2008)
Meanwhile, there are concerns that the situation in Iraq is far less peaceful than many around the Bush administration have claimed. A rash of suicide- bomb attacks, a resurgence of paramilitary power in Mosul, continuing US casualties (including seven American soldiers killed in a helicopter crash near Basra on 18 September), and political difficulties (especially with the Kurds in the northeast) all mean that US military commanders are notably reluctant to talk about substantial troop withdrawals - notwithstanding that the George W Bush administration's narrative of victory demands just this. There will be some modest reductions, in part because made necessary to allow an increase in forces in Afghanistan, but many circles in the Pentagon regard even these as risky.
A new adversary
In Afghanistan itself, what has become even more evident than just a few weeks ago is that much of the focus of attention has shifted strongly towards Pakistan. This now extends to Washington's direct military engagement in Pakistan - which pays little heed to the wishes of or the response from the Islamabad government, the Pakistani army and, above all, the Pakistani people. More and more evidence is emerging that United States operations across the border have escalated rapidly, and that this may well become the dominant theme of the coming months.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click herePaul Rogers's most recent book is Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) - an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is neededA single incident on the night of 14-15 September 2008 provides a marker for what might be the outcome of that major shift in policy. A BBC news item reports that two Chinook troop-carrying helicopters landed on the Afghan side of the border, supported by seven helicopter-gunships. As the US troops moved to cross the border into Pakistan they were met with gunfire aimed over their heads from Pakistani troops; in response they withdrew to the Afghan side (see "Pakistan soldiers ‘confront US'", BBC News, 15 September 2008).
The Reuters and McClatchy news agencies carried broadly similar reports (although there were variations in the suggested length of the engagement, between a few minutes and several hours). It was suggested that a Pakistani army unit even fired warning artillery-shots, but army sources denied any involvement and claimed that it was local paramilitaries that were responsible for the gunfire. Wherever the truth lies, it seems highly likely that a US cross-border operation was attempted but was subsequently abandoned.
This is the latest of several US attacks within Pakistan, all of them allowable following a confidential order from President Bush in July 2008 (Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, "Bush Said To Give Orders Allowing Raids In Pakistan", New York Times, 11 September 2008). In early September, one of the first attacks permitted by the new policy evidently went badly wrong when fifteen people - mostly women and children were killed. This caused anger across Pakistan and may do much to explain the actions of Pakistani soldiers in firing at US troops this week.
A nerve-end deployment
This will have little effect on US military planning and it is clear that a wide range of operations is under consideration. The use of Predator armed drones has already increased substantially, with many of the planes being brought from other regions to patrol key districts of western Pakistan (see Greg Miller & Julian E Barnes, "Higher-Tech Predators Targeting Pakistan", Los Angeles Times, 12 September 2008). The intention is also to increase intelligence activities, undertake special-forces raids to kill or capture al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and even use the massively powerful AC-130 gunships inside Pakistani territory.
There is currently a specific hope that these increased activities will lead to the death or capture of al-Qaida's chief strategist Ayman al-Zawahiri, or even Osama bin Laden himself; preferably just before the US presidential election on 4 November 2008, so that the candidacy of John McCain will be given a late boost.
The problem is that all of the operations face the same difficulty (see "Afghanistan: on the cliff-edge", 28 August 2008). If the "safe havens" in Pakistan took the form of static training-camps, arms-dumps, barracks, motor-pools and other obvious targets - as would be the case with conventional armies - then the massive firepower available to the US military would make it a relatively straightforward task to disrupt or even destroy them. The Pakistani government might protest loudly but the demonstrable military results of such attacks would outweigh this.
The reality is very different. For an entire generation, since the early 1980s, the Taliban and other paramilitary groups have become deeply embedded in the communities of western Pakistan. This is also true of many of the foreign fighters - from Chechnya, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere - who have often married into these local communities (see "Pakistan's tribal areas", Economist, 18 September 2008).
The consequence, for a US special-forces raid for example, is complication. An operation aimed at a small town where al-Qaida or Taliban operatives are known to be based faces the task not of attacking a specific compound but of becoming involved in house-to-house searches of fifty or more buildings - where paramilitaries, adult villagers and children are all integrated into a single community. A careful and effective search may take hours, and be conducted in the knowledge that at any moment the searchers may be attacked. In such circumstances, they may be quick to use force and civilian casualties are almost unavoidable.
If armed drones are used, then "collateral damage" is well-nigh certain (see Yochi J Dreazen, "U.S. to Expand Drone Use, Other Surveillance in Afghanistan", Wall Street Journal, 18 September 2008). The Taliban, al-Qaida and other militias are not structured as freestanding units in their own narrowly defined localities - they form part of much larger affective networks. It might have been possible to use hundreds of troops to "take apart" a village in Iraq - even if the results there were frequently to increase an anti-American mood - but in Pakistan this is simply impossible without a major and permanent US military presence within the country.
This is politically impracticable at present and for the foreseeable future, yet the Pentagon sees no option but to acquire the means to pursue the paramilitary groups. The visit of the US defence secretary Robert M Gates to Kabul and Jalalabad on 17 September featured an expression of regret for the many civilian casualties inflicted by coalition air-raids, but no shift in policy: the pledge of "additional forces" in 2009 was repeated, amid caution among military commanders about the progress of the US strategy (see Al Pessin, "U.S. Faces Challenges in Afghanistan", Voice of America, 18 September 2008). The likely order of the day is extensive special-forces operations, the widespread use of Predator drones and even conventional air-power.
A deeper engagement
The US military intends to increase operations on both sides of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border during the normally quiet winter months (see Jason Straziuso, "U.S. Troops In Afghanistan Preparing Winter Offensive", Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 September 2008). It expects to be able to do this with the acquiescence of the government in Islamabad. The George W Bush administration believes this is possible because the dire state of the Pakistani economy is such that the government is increasingly relying on US financial assistance.
But this makes no allowance for Pakistani public opinion, nor for the views of the army. Indeed, it may be that the reaction of the Pakistani army will prove pivotal in all this (see Zahid Hussain, "Pakistan Issues Threat Over U.S. Incursions", Wall Street Journal, 17 September 2008). It is relevant here that many officers and troops engaged in the border areas are Pashtuns who have close affinities with their fellow Pashtuns in Afghanistan; and that elements in the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency have long had close connections with the Taliban.
Moreover, the Pakistani army as a whole may be deeply antagonistic to the United States extending its war into Pakistan and affronted by what is seen as an assault on its position within Pakistani society. That is a recipe for disaster, yet it appears beyond the understanding of the Pentagon and even much of the US state department. The consequences could be both violent and unpredictable.
(Source:Open Democracy)
