A Mid-Course Correction?

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This view of the head of the CIA was a significant departure from the past perceptions of the agency, which tended to look upon Al Qaeda as the whole evil confronting the international community. It is now admitted that it is only a part of the whole, the whole being the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, which consists of jihadi terrorist organisations of many countries. They all had common pan-Islamic objectives, but not common roots. Mr.Goss, however, did not mention the IIF by name, but it was apparent he must havehad that in mind when he spoke of a "broader Sunni jihadist movement".

Disappointingly, he did not proceed further from this statement to underline that unless and until each component of this broader Sunni jihadist movement is neutralised effectively, the world will not be free of this evil. This is what India has been saying, namely, that focussing exclusively on Al Qaeda without paying equal attention to other organisations would not serve our purpose.

Mr.Goss, more or less, repeated his views before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March17, 2005. During the discussions that followed in both the committees, he said:

Al Qaeda is intent on finding ways to circumvent US security enhancements to attack the US homeland again.
It may be only a matter of time before Al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use WMD.
The intelligence community has yet to get to the end of the trail of the nuclear black market run by A.Q.Khan. He would not rule out the possibility that organisations, rather than States, could obtain WMD. He called "potential Khans" a worry.

In a testimony before a sub-committee of the House International Relations Committee on September29, 2005, Dr. Bruce Hoffman, the eminent terrorism analyst of the Rand Corporation of the US, said:

What the various jihadists have in common is a deep commitment to Islam, admiration for bin Laden for organising the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland, hatred of the US and the West, and a profoundly shared sense of alienation from their host countries.
Al Qaeda's operational durability and malleable resiliency mean it cannot be destroyed or defeated by the exclusive application of conventional military forces and fire power.
Whatever the outcome of the present conflict in Iraq, its consequences are likely to be felt for years. In contrast to the Mujahideen who returned home from Afghanistan, who were mostly trained in rural guerilla warfare, this new generation of jihadists would have acquired in Iraq invaluable first-hand experience in urban guerilla warfare. The application of the newly-learned capabilities to urban centres in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere could result in a precipitous escalation of bloodshed and destruction, reaching into countries and regions that hitherto have experienced little , if any, organised jihadist violence.
Winning the war against terrorism will take decades and not years to accomplish. There is a need for a dynamic and adaptive counter-terrorism policy. Effectively countering terrorism is not exclusively a military endeavour , but also involves fundamental parallel political, social, economic and ideological activities.
We must create a more positive image of the US in the Muslim world. The damage already done would take years to repair.

After highlighting the successes scored by the US in its fight against Al Qaeda led/inspired international terrorism, he emphasised that victory against terrorism was not for tomorrow and called for a more nuanced strategy, which would not totally rely on an exclusively military approach. India's counter-terrorism strategy, which is a mix of the political, economic, social, police and military approaches, acquires added relevance in the US search for a new approach.

The search for such a new approach is not yet in evidence in the US policy-making circles. However, efforts to improve the image of the US in the Islamic world are already underway. The high-profile US participation in the Tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia and in the quake relief operations in Pakistan is part of this new approach to project a more caring image of the US.

Any overall assessment of the state of the so-called war against international terrorism has to take into account the ground situation in Iraq as well as Afghanistan, the role of the State-sponsors of international terrorism, namely, Pakistan, Iran and Syria and the worrisome indicators from Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan,Bangladesh and southern Thailand. Unless one does so, one's assessment and follow-up would be fractional and not holistic, episodic and not integrated and sustained.

Statistically, Iraq continues to be the most disturbed and disturbing country, when we analyse indicators relating to the continuing flow of Iraqi and foreign volunteers for suicide terrorism, the number of successful acts of suicide and non-suicide terrorism and the mounting casualties of the American and Iraqi forces and the civilian population. But, analysis of these factors alone would give a distorted picture of the situation, giving rise to a defeatist mentality and thereby playing into the hands of the terrorists.

There are positive factors, which should also figure in any analysis. Amongst these positive factors, one could mention the three elections held in the face of brutal terrorism in the course of one year, the large Shia and Kurdish participation in the elections, signs of introspection among at least some sections of the Arab (Iraqi) Sunnis over the lack of wisdom of their action in having boycotted the first two elections, their consequent participation in the third election to the Parliament, the fact that the newly-raised Iraqi army and police have not withered away in the face of repeated brutal onslaughts by the terrorists directed against them etc.

Mixed with these positive factors are some with potential negative implications such as the Shia-Kurdish domination of the new administration, the armed forces, the police and the intelligence agencies and the dangers of Iran exploiting the situation to its benefit if and when the foreign forces led by the US withdraw.

It is in the interest of the international community as a whole that the US-led coalition wins the war against terrorism in Iraq and that the political dispensation left behind by the coalition after its withdrawal does not come under the hegemony of Iran. There are already reports of the US making overtures to former Baathists in order to wean them away from the Al Qaeda led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Another equally important issue, which needs urgent attention, is how to improve the induction of Arab (Iraqi) Sunnis into the administration, the security forces and the intelligence agencies and give them decision-making roles. Iraq also needs an international police force to work jointly with the newly-raised local police and help to improve their morale and competence in the field of law enforcement.

The almost exclusively military face of the present coalition has to be diluted by the induction of a team of police officers and other civil administrators to tone up governance in general and law enforcement and policing in particular. If this is not done and if the coalition leaves a vacuum in professionalism, Iran will be tempted to fill it up.

The ground situation in Iraq is increasingly acquiring sectarian undertones. The terrorists, almost totally Arab (Iraqi) Sunnis, are brutally going after the Shias and the Kurds and the Shia members of the security forces have been retaliating, not infrequently with equal brutality, against the Arab Sunni civilians, driving many of them into the arms of the foreign terrorists.

When the insurgency started, the overwhelming majority of the terrorists were foreigners----nearly two-thirds of them Saudis. In recent months, the proportion of Iraqis taking toterrorism--even suicide terrorism---has been increasing. To a considerable extent, this is attributable to the excesses committed by the newly-recruited Shia and Kurdish members of the security forces against the Arab (Iraqi) Sunni civilians.

Unless and until this is stopped effectively and the security forces are made to function in accordance with the law and humanitarian conventions, the flow of Iraqi Sunni volunteers for suicide and other acts of terrorism will continue.

If the US fails to prevail over the Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists in Iraq, its immediate impact is likely to be felt in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Afghanistan. Despite the repeated claims of success by the Saudi authorities in their operations against the local members of the Al Qaeda, there is a seemingly inexhaustible flow of Saudi volunteers forterrorism--in Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia. The majority of the Saudi volunteers are presently in Iraq. If the US does not prevail over them and fails to weaken, if not neutralise, them before it withdraws, they would swell the ranks of those operating inside Saudi Arabia, thereby aggravating the threats to the energy supplies to many countries, including India and China.

If Al Qaeda one day captures power in Saudi Arabia-- this is not a fancifulscenario--that will be the end of the hopes of India and China of emerging as the leading economic powers of Asia. Considerations of realpolitik will prevent India from openly assisting the US in its counter-terrorism operations in Iraq, but there ought to be other ways of India facilitating the counter-terrorism tasks of the US.

Surprisingly, there is an absence of concern in the Congressional testimonies mentioned above over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan since the beginning of last year. The successful holding of elections to the presidency and the Parliament should not blind us to the fact that the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which made a tactical withdrawal into the tribal areas of Pakistan in 2001-02 to avoid a frontal confrontation with the US forces, have re-grouped and re-armed themselves from their new sanctuaries, set up a web of sleeper cells in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan and stepped up acts of terrorism, including suicide terrorism, against the American forces and the newly-raised Afghan police and security forces.

Statistically, 2005 was the worst year since the US intervention in Afghanistan in200--with 85 American personnel and over 1,000 Afghans--public servants andcivilians--killed by the terrorists operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan, without being hindered by the Pakistani authorities, who are turning a benevolent eye to the resurrection of jihadi terrorism in Afghanistan.

As in Iraq, so too in Afghanistan, one has been seeing instances of the terrorists having excellent sources of intelligence in the newly-raised security forces. The recent incident in which information of a secret visit of the US Ambassador to an outlying area leaked out to the Taliban, thereby enabling it to mount a suicide operation is a disturbing case in point. The suicide attack killed 10 Afghans, but the Ambassador escaped and returned unharmed to Kabul.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda are determined to kill President Hamid Karzai through an act of suicide terrorism. If they succeed, that will be a major set-back to the war against terrorism in this region.

Neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan nor in India can there be a decisive victory over jihadi terrorism without putting an end to the sponsorship enjoyed by the terrorists from Iran, Syria and Pakistan. Pakistan and Iran have two things incommon--their readiness to use terrorism as a weapon to achieve their strategicobjective--Pakistan against India and Iran against Israel-- and their military nuclear ambitions. Boththink a military nuclear capability gives them a protective cover from behind which they can continue to sponsor terrorism against their adversaries.

While the US has shown a willingness to act against Iran and Syria if the worst comes to the worst, its attitude to Pakistan continues to be marked by unwarranted and unwise benevolence. By cleverly and cunningly fostering in the minds of US policy-makers fears of "after me, the jihadi deluge", Gen.Pervez Musharraf has successfully managed to avoid any punitive consequences for failing to deal effectively with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and anti-India terrorists operating from his country. Unless his continued sponsorship of terrorism is firmly stopped by the international community under the leadership of the US, a decisive victory over terrorism emanating from the Pakistan-Afghan region would remain elusive.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) continues to be alive and active from the South Waziristan area of Pakistan. It has joined hands with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the one side and with the Hizbut-Tehrir on the other. The training infrastructure in the South Waziristan area, which is turning out terrorists for operations in Uzbekistan itself as well as in India, Bangladesh and Southern Thailand, is run by it. The Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Pakistan and Bangladesh has outsourced the training job to the IMU. More Salafis from Bangladesh and southern Thailand were trained by the IMU in its South Waziristan camps last year than during the previous four years put together.

The government of Begum Khalida Zia in Dhaka moved in 2005 from its traditional denial mode to one of tacit admission. Faced with a threat from the European Union to stop economic assistance if it did not act against the terrorists in its territory, who were threatening foreign NGOs, it started acting against them in February last. It banned three of the organisations and made a large number of arrests, particularly after the nearly 450 orchestrated explosions of August17, 2005, organised by the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JUM) and its introduction of suicide terrorism into the country.

But, its actions have been half-hearted and reminiscent of the actions taken by Musharraf after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament inDecember, 2001. Under international pressure, he banned the organisations involved in terrorism and arrested, with great fanfare, their leaders and cadres. After the pressure eased, he quietly released them and allowed the organisations to function again under different names.

Since Begum Khalida Zia came to power, there has hardly been any instance of successful prosecution of any terrorist. Moreover, even while making arrests, she has refrained from any action against their training camps and the madrasas run by the terroristorganisations.

Southern Thailand is the most worrisome place in South-East Asia today--more worrisome than southern Philippines and Indonesia. Salafi ideology and Salafi thinking of a medieval kind are slowly seeping into the villages of southern Thailand from the madrasas and training camps of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Unlike the terrorists of the Jemaah Islamiya and the Abu Sayyaf, whose terrorist activities have been more sporadic than sustained, the jihadi terrorists of Southern Thailand have shown a disturbing tenacity of purpose and a capability for sustained action, similar to the Pakistan and Bangladesh sponsored terrorists operating in Indian territory. To continue to view what has been happening in Southern Thailand as purely local terrorism with no external linkages would be a serious mistake.