B. Raman
Seventeen ships flying the flags of different countries were in the custody of different Somali pirate groups in Somalian waters. They have been demanding payment of ransom for their release. These ships captured by the pirates have a total crew of 242, of whom 81 are reported to be Filipino nationals.
2. There was a total of 134 piracy-related incidents during 2008--- unsuccessful as well as successful attacks on commercial ships. Of these 49 were successful sea-jackings and the remaining 85 were attempted sea-jackings, which were evaded or beaten back by the crews of the ships. As against this, till May 10, 2009, there have already been 115 incidents this year. Of these, 79 were evaded or beaten back and the remaining 36 were successful sea-jackings.
3. Thus, despite the deployment of anti-piracy patrols by the navies of many countries, the Somali pirates continue to operate successfully even in seas far away from Somalia, including in the seas near Seychelles. Since most of these naval patrols are concentrated in the Gulf of Aden area, the pirates have been avoiding these areas and shifting their operations to areas beyond the quick reach of the naval ships.
4. The different groups of naval patrols operating are as follows:
The “Atlanta” group of the European Union:
Participants: Spain, Germany, France, Greece and Italy
(A total of 6 frigates and 2 support vessels plus some Orion P-3A and P-3C, Breguet-Atlantique maritime surveillance planes)
The “Allied Protector” group of the NATO:
Participants: Portugal, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and the US.
(A total of 5 frigates)
“Combined Task Force 150” (An anti-terrorism task force under Operation Enduring Freedom, but available for anti-piracy tasks too)
Participants: France, the US, the UK and Pakistan
(1 command ship, 3 frigates and 2 support vessels)
“Combined Task Force 151” (anti-piracy)
Participants: the US, Turkey, Singapore and South Korea
(1 destroyer, 1 frigate, 1 cruiser and 3 support vessels)
Others:
Participants: India, China, Malaysia, Japan, Russia, France and Seychelles.
(3 destroyers, 3 frigates, 1 patrol boat and 5 support vessels)
5. Of these, only CTF 150 has a designated, rotating common command and control. The remaining remain in communication with one another, but take orders from their respective national command.
6. According to Japan's Kyodo news agency, Japan plans to send two of its P-3C Orion patrol aircraft to help in anti-piracy patrols. They will operate from Djibouti. Yasukazu Hamada, the Japanese Defence Minister, is expected to issue the necessary orders after the plan is approved by the Japanese Cabinet. If approved, this will be the first time that Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force's P-3C aircraft would be dispatched on an overseas mission. On approval by the Cabinet, the Defense Ministry is planning to send an advance team to Djibouti before dispatching the planes towards May-end. The planes will start operating in June. The plan to be submitted to the Cabinet for approval provides for the stationing of 150 Japanese Self-Defence Force personnel at Djibouti. This will include the flying and maintenance crew plus a contingent of the Ground Self-Defence Force for physical security for the planes and the Japanese personnel at Djibouti. China did not react adversely to the earlier Japanese decision to send two destroyers to the Gulf of Aden. It remains to be seen how it will react to the deployment of the maritime patrol aircraft with such a such a large number of Japanese personnel at Djibouti. The Chinese could view it as an attempt by the Japanese, encouraged by the US, to play a more active military role in areas far away from Japan under the pretext of anti-piracy patrols.
7. During April, 2009, there were two successful commando operations mounted by the US and French Navies to rescue their nationals captured by the pirates. In one incident, a French naval commando group freed four French hostages on a yacht after killing the two pirates who had sea-jacked it. A French hostage was killed during the intervention. In the other incident, the US captain of a commercial ship (Captain Richard Phillips of US-flagged " Maersk Alabama") was rescued by a US naval commando group after killing the three Somali pirates who had held him in custody in a life-boat of the ship. Somali pirate groups had warned of retaliation against the Americans and the French, but no retaliatory attacks have so far taken place.
8. The US Navy is reported to have increased the flights of its unmanned Drone planes over Somalia----partly to monitor the ground situation which has been marked by an increase in the activities of pro-Al Qaeda elements and partly to look for the movements of pirate groups. The US Coaast Guard has also issued an advisory to all US-flagged ships moving in the areas where Somali pirates are active to carry security guards and to submit their anti-piracy security plans to the Coast Guard for approval. While the posting of security guards on board the ships has been made obligatory, it has been left to the discretion of the ship owners to decide whether the security guards would be armed or not and what arms they would carry. This has been done because many ports do not allow commercial ships with armed guards to enter them.
9. Two problems relating to anti-piracy remain unresolved. The first relates to the responsibility for the prosecution of the pirates captured by the ships of different navies. National laws in many countries do not allow for such prosecutions in respect of arrests made on the high seas. Moreover, many of the Somali pirates are minors----- hardly around 15 years of age. The European Union countries have reached an agreement with the Government of Kenya under which it has agreed to prosecute them in its courts, but it has been demanding that the expenditure incurred by it on their prosecution including the fees for the defence lawyers should be re-imbursed by the EU country which captured them.
10. The second problem relates to mounting commando action to rescue ships and crew captured by the pirates before they manage to take them to Somali waters. Most countries whose flags the sea-jacked ships fly are not prepared to give their consent for armed commando action to free the ships.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
USE OF SOFT POWER IN COUNTER-TERRORISM---WHAT I WROTE ON NOVEMBER 17,2007
B. Raman
(According to a despatch dated May 13, 2009, from Aziz Hanifa, the special correspondent of Rediff.com in Washington DC, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for the Af-Pak region, said: "Concurrent with the insurgency is an information war. We are losing that war. The Taliban has unrestricted and unchallenged access to the radio, which is the main means of communication in an area where literacy is around 10 percent for men and less than five percent for women. Radio is broadcast from the backs of pick-up trucks and motorcycles. These are low-wattage FM radio stations. We have no counter-programming efforts that existed when we took office. We don't have jamming, we don't try to override, we don't do counter-programming." In this connection, I am reproducing below an article titled "Use of Soft Power in Counter-Terrorism" written by me on November 17, 2007. This is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers25/paper2463.html and also in my book titled "Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow" published by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi (www.lancerpublishers.com) in June, 2008---B.Raman)
My Article Of November 17, 2007
Anger is a common root cause of all terrorism---ideological, ethnic, separatist, sectarian or religious. Terrorist organisations exploit the anger to motivate the members of the community from which they have arisen to support them in their acts of terrorism. Such support can be in the form of volunteers for committing acts of terrorism, contribution of funds, logistic support etc. Extreme anger in individuals can motivate them to resort to terrorism as individuals without their belonging to any organisation. Anger containment and ultimate reduction has, therefore, to be an important component of counter-terrorism.
2. Terrorists use the soft power of the media----old and new--- to keep the anger sustained and make it increase in order to maintain a high level of motivation. The role of soft power in counter-terrorism is to neutralise the motivation through anger containment and reduction. Use of disinformation is counter-productive in counter-terrorism. For effective use of soft power in counter-terrorism, the causes of anger have to be identified and those, which are capable of being removed, have to be removed. Counter-terrorism itself often adds to the prevailing anger through disproportionate use of force, serious violation of human rights etc. These are tactical causes of anger and can be easily removed through corrections in the counter-terrorism techniques.
3. It is more difficult---often impossible--- to remove strategic causes of anger. As examples of such strategic causes, one could mention Al Qaeda's anger over historic wrongs allegedly committed to the Muslims. The objective of the soft power has to be to explain to the community supporting terrorism the untenability of such causes and wean the community away from terrorism---whether by organisations or by individuals. A mix of removal of tactical causes of anger through appropriate correctives in counter-terrorism operations and explanation of the untenability of the strategic causes is required if the use of soft power is to be effective.
4. An attribute of soft power---whether in a conventional war with State adversaries or in an unconventional conflict with non-State actors--- is the ability to convey a message to a targeted audience in a convincing manner through an appropriate instrument of dissemination suited to the targeted audience.
5. All media----the print media,radio, TV, audio and video cassettes, films and the Internet--- are weapons of soft power. The handheld gun and the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are weapons of hard power. Just as weapons of hard power keep improving with the advent of new technologies, so too the weapons of soft power. The advent of the Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV and the Internet totally revolutionised the way soft power is wielded by making it possible to take a message to the targeted people in their living rooms over the heads of their rulers and censors.
6. All States use soft power---not only against State adversaries, but also against sections of their own people who take to insurgency or terrorism. Similarly, non-State actors----particularly the jihadi terrorist organisations--- too use soft power in their campaign against their state adversaries.
7. One has been seeing since 9/11 that jihadi terrorist organisations----particularly Al Qaeda and its associates--- have become more adept in their use of soft power against their State adversaries than their State adversaries in their use against the terrorists. This is one of the factors, which has contributed to the continued resilience of Al Qaeda and its associates and their ability to draw volunteers and support from the communities from which they have arisen.
8. The inability of the US-led coalition to use soft power effectively against the jihadi terrorists comes in the way of the campaign against terrorism making headway. The Western powers have had a long history of the effective use of soft power against adversaries. One would be aware of the role played by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) during the Second World War against the Nazis and the Fascists. The broadcasts of the BBC helped in two ways. They kept up the morale of the British people and rallied them to supporting the cause of the war. They weakened the credibility of the Nazis and the Fascists in the eyes of their own people.
9. Similarly, one would be aware of the role played by the use of soft power by the US during the Cold War against the USSR and other Communist States in undermining their credibility and bringing about their collapse. Among the instruments of soft power used by the US for this purpose were the Voice of America, funded by the State Department, and the Munich-based Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, allegedly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the publication and dissemination of books written by political dissidents from the Communist countries explaining why they ran away from their country. The Clinton Administration set up a Radio Free Asia to promote the cause of democracy in Asia.
10. One of the reasons the US was able to use its soft power effectively during the Cold War was the availability of a large reservoir of political dissidents from the Communist countries, who co-operated in the running of the radio stations and imparted credibility to their broadcasts.
11 Al Qaeda and its associates have shown some sophistication in their use of soft power against the US and its allies. The effectiveness of soft power depends on the contents of the message sought to be disseminated and the instruments chosen for their dissemination. The selection of the instruments depends on the audience to which the message is directed. Any research with regard to the instrument and the contents of the message to be used has to start with a research on the intended audience.
12. Any strategy for the use of soft power against Al Qaeda and its associates has to provide for two totally different kinds of audience. The first audience is the people in the spawning areas of jihadi terrorism. These are the tribal areas on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. They are semi-literate, if not illiterate. They are highly Talibanised. They look upon visuals as evils and anti-Islam. They destroy TV sets, CDs, Video cassettes and computers. Hence, the use of the print media, the TV and the Internet in their case may not work. The only instrument of dissemination with which they feel comfortable is the radio. Moreover, they are so poor that radio is the only instrument which they can afford.
13. One finds the jihadi terrorist organisations extensively using FM radio broadcasts since 2002 to reach their messages to the tribal people. FM radio broadcasts are used for preaching, mobilisation, enlistment of volunteers, collection of funds, motivation and aggravating their anger against the US. It is reported that there are nearly 30 illegal FM radio stations operating from the mosques and madrasas in the tribal areas making anti-Musharraf and anti-US broadcasts.
14. The arguments used by these broadcasts are of a tactical nature such as calls for reprisals against the Pakistan army's raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July, 2007, against Musharraf for co-operating with the US and against the US for allegedly bombing mosques and madrasas and using the Air Force against the civilian population. Their arguments have no strategic content such as their vision of the Ummah of tomorrow.
15. The broadcasts of these radio stations have been effective till now because the US-led coalition has not thought of an effective counter. Jamming them cannot be the counter. Moreover, one can jam some broadcasts for some time, but not all broadcasts for all time. Hence, a more intelligent counter would have been for the US-led coalition to have its own broadcasting capability manned by Muslims speaking the language and dialects of the area, well-versed in Islam and in the ethnic and cultural mores of the area, who can gradually wean the population away from the terrorists. Such a broadcast strategy is nowhere to be seen or felt. It is time for the soft power experts of the US to think in terms of a Radio Free Islam or just Radio Islam and Radio Harmony, if they have not already done so, in order to make an impact on the tribals.
16. The second audience is the diaspora of Muslims across the Western world. The defining characteristics of this audience totally differ from those of the tribal audience in the spawning grounds of jihadi terrorism. They are educated, radicalised, but not Talibanised, and they are capable of tactical as well as strategic thinking. Issues relating to maintaining the pristine purity of Islam do not agitate them to the same extent as issues relating to Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror as waged by the US.
17. While the second audience feels comfortable with all instruments of dissemination, it avoids the Western print media which it looks upon as controlled by Jewish money and interests. It will not be possible for it to own and operate radio and TV stations from the Western countries. It, therefore, relies almost exclusively on the Internet for its jihadi mission. Al Qaeda and its associates too use the Internet for rallying radical elements of the diaspora to their cause.
18. Internet activism is the most important component of Al Qaeda's use of soft power to win adherents to its cause from the diaspora. The Internet provides a variety of ways of reaching and influencing the targeted audience----the conventional E-mail and web sites, the chat rooms, the blogs etc. Many papers have come out on the use of the Internet by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorist organisations and angry Muslim individuals for operational purposes, meaning, commission of acts of terrorism. There is an equally urgent need for a study of the use of the Internet by the terrorists as an instrument of soft power to mould opinion in the Islamic world in their favour and against their state adversaries.
19. They use the Internet with some effectiveness for keeping the anger in the Islamic world sustained, if not enhanced, and for motivating Muslims to join the global jihad in their own way and according to their own lights. They do not ask them to join any particular organisation. They merely ask them to rise against the enemy and martyr themselves for what they project as the cause of the Muslims. Many do by joining different organisations and some in their individual capacity without joining any organisation.
20. The focus of counter-terrorism experts till now has been on countering the operational use of the Internet by the terrorists for acts of terrorism. Not adequate thought has been given to countering the use of the Internet as an instrument of soft power. How States can use the Internet to demotivate the terrorists or potential terrorists? What role the Internet can play in making the civil society think about the damage being caused by the terrorists? Just as the terrorists seek to cause and enhance anger, counter-terrorism agencies should cause and enhance disgust against the terrorists, by making effective use of truth about the real nature of terrorism instead of indulging in disinformation and spins. One can use disinformation and spins against adversary States but not against non-State actors, which often consist of one's own people.
21. Right from the days of the Vietnam War, one has been talking of the silent majority, which is not able or willing to assert itself. There is an equally strong silent majority in all civil societies, which feels disturbed by the phenomenon of jihadi terrorism----which does not spare even fellow-Muslims. This silent majority is not prepared to activate itself through conventional means such as holding processions, writing articles in the print media, addressing audiences etc It is afraid of being targeted by the terrorists and killed.
22. The Internet provides an excellent means of empowering this inarticulate majority and encouraging it to come out against religious radicalism and the resort to terror, without fearing the consequences of their Internet activism. How to promote Internet activism by enlightened sections of the Muslim civil societies and communities against radicalism and terrorism is a subject, which needs attention from policy-makers and civil society leaders.
23. Mr. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, told the House of Commons on November 14,2007, that " Britain will spend 400 million pounds abroad on fighting radicalisation. the first time, Britain would sponsor events in Pakistan to counter extremist propaganda." He did not elaborate how this money will be spent and what events will be sponsored. A better way would be to make effective use of the available instruments of soft power in more imaginative ways. The extent of the funding is only one aspect of action. Bringing to bear an imaginative approach to the problem is an equally important aspect---if not more important. Six years after 9/11, one does not find much evidence of such thinking and such an imaginative approach despite a profusion in funding.
24. In the years after the Second World War, Mr. Northcote Parkinson told the British policy-makers who assessed the effectiveness of their actions in terms of the money spent:" When funds are limitless, the only economy made is in thinking." We can update this and say in the context of today's so-called war on terrorism: "When funds are limitless, a battlefield casualty is your imagination."
25. What one needs is not just more funds, but more imagination and innovation.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
(According to a despatch dated May 13, 2009, from Aziz Hanifa, the special correspondent of Rediff.com in Washington DC, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for the Af-Pak region, said: "Concurrent with the insurgency is an information war. We are losing that war. The Taliban has unrestricted and unchallenged access to the radio, which is the main means of communication in an area where literacy is around 10 percent for men and less than five percent for women. Radio is broadcast from the backs of pick-up trucks and motorcycles. These are low-wattage FM radio stations. We have no counter-programming efforts that existed when we took office. We don't have jamming, we don't try to override, we don't do counter-programming." In this connection, I am reproducing below an article titled "Use of Soft Power in Counter-Terrorism" written by me on November 17, 2007. This is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers25/paper2463.html and also in my book titled "Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow" published by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi (www.lancerpublishers.com) in June, 2008---B.Raman)
My Article Of November 17, 2007
Anger is a common root cause of all terrorism---ideological, ethnic, separatist, sectarian or religious. Terrorist organisations exploit the anger to motivate the members of the community from which they have arisen to support them in their acts of terrorism. Such support can be in the form of volunteers for committing acts of terrorism, contribution of funds, logistic support etc. Extreme anger in individuals can motivate them to resort to terrorism as individuals without their belonging to any organisation. Anger containment and ultimate reduction has, therefore, to be an important component of counter-terrorism.
2. Terrorists use the soft power of the media----old and new--- to keep the anger sustained and make it increase in order to maintain a high level of motivation. The role of soft power in counter-terrorism is to neutralise the motivation through anger containment and reduction. Use of disinformation is counter-productive in counter-terrorism. For effective use of soft power in counter-terrorism, the causes of anger have to be identified and those, which are capable of being removed, have to be removed. Counter-terrorism itself often adds to the prevailing anger through disproportionate use of force, serious violation of human rights etc. These are tactical causes of anger and can be easily removed through corrections in the counter-terrorism techniques.
3. It is more difficult---often impossible--- to remove strategic causes of anger. As examples of such strategic causes, one could mention Al Qaeda's anger over historic wrongs allegedly committed to the Muslims. The objective of the soft power has to be to explain to the community supporting terrorism the untenability of such causes and wean the community away from terrorism---whether by organisations or by individuals. A mix of removal of tactical causes of anger through appropriate correctives in counter-terrorism operations and explanation of the untenability of the strategic causes is required if the use of soft power is to be effective.
4. An attribute of soft power---whether in a conventional war with State adversaries or in an unconventional conflict with non-State actors--- is the ability to convey a message to a targeted audience in a convincing manner through an appropriate instrument of dissemination suited to the targeted audience.
5. All media----the print media,radio, TV, audio and video cassettes, films and the Internet--- are weapons of soft power. The handheld gun and the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are weapons of hard power. Just as weapons of hard power keep improving with the advent of new technologies, so too the weapons of soft power. The advent of the Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV and the Internet totally revolutionised the way soft power is wielded by making it possible to take a message to the targeted people in their living rooms over the heads of their rulers and censors.
6. All States use soft power---not only against State adversaries, but also against sections of their own people who take to insurgency or terrorism. Similarly, non-State actors----particularly the jihadi terrorist organisations--- too use soft power in their campaign against their state adversaries.
7. One has been seeing since 9/11 that jihadi terrorist organisations----particularly Al Qaeda and its associates--- have become more adept in their use of soft power against their State adversaries than their State adversaries in their use against the terrorists. This is one of the factors, which has contributed to the continued resilience of Al Qaeda and its associates and their ability to draw volunteers and support from the communities from which they have arisen.
8. The inability of the US-led coalition to use soft power effectively against the jihadi terrorists comes in the way of the campaign against terrorism making headway. The Western powers have had a long history of the effective use of soft power against adversaries. One would be aware of the role played by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) during the Second World War against the Nazis and the Fascists. The broadcasts of the BBC helped in two ways. They kept up the morale of the British people and rallied them to supporting the cause of the war. They weakened the credibility of the Nazis and the Fascists in the eyes of their own people.
9. Similarly, one would be aware of the role played by the use of soft power by the US during the Cold War against the USSR and other Communist States in undermining their credibility and bringing about their collapse. Among the instruments of soft power used by the US for this purpose were the Voice of America, funded by the State Department, and the Munich-based Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, allegedly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the publication and dissemination of books written by political dissidents from the Communist countries explaining why they ran away from their country. The Clinton Administration set up a Radio Free Asia to promote the cause of democracy in Asia.
10. One of the reasons the US was able to use its soft power effectively during the Cold War was the availability of a large reservoir of political dissidents from the Communist countries, who co-operated in the running of the radio stations and imparted credibility to their broadcasts.
11 Al Qaeda and its associates have shown some sophistication in their use of soft power against the US and its allies. The effectiveness of soft power depends on the contents of the message sought to be disseminated and the instruments chosen for their dissemination. The selection of the instruments depends on the audience to which the message is directed. Any research with regard to the instrument and the contents of the message to be used has to start with a research on the intended audience.
12. Any strategy for the use of soft power against Al Qaeda and its associates has to provide for two totally different kinds of audience. The first audience is the people in the spawning areas of jihadi terrorism. These are the tribal areas on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. They are semi-literate, if not illiterate. They are highly Talibanised. They look upon visuals as evils and anti-Islam. They destroy TV sets, CDs, Video cassettes and computers. Hence, the use of the print media, the TV and the Internet in their case may not work. The only instrument of dissemination with which they feel comfortable is the radio. Moreover, they are so poor that radio is the only instrument which they can afford.
13. One finds the jihadi terrorist organisations extensively using FM radio broadcasts since 2002 to reach their messages to the tribal people. FM radio broadcasts are used for preaching, mobilisation, enlistment of volunteers, collection of funds, motivation and aggravating their anger against the US. It is reported that there are nearly 30 illegal FM radio stations operating from the mosques and madrasas in the tribal areas making anti-Musharraf and anti-US broadcasts.
14. The arguments used by these broadcasts are of a tactical nature such as calls for reprisals against the Pakistan army's raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July, 2007, against Musharraf for co-operating with the US and against the US for allegedly bombing mosques and madrasas and using the Air Force against the civilian population. Their arguments have no strategic content such as their vision of the Ummah of tomorrow.
15. The broadcasts of these radio stations have been effective till now because the US-led coalition has not thought of an effective counter. Jamming them cannot be the counter. Moreover, one can jam some broadcasts for some time, but not all broadcasts for all time. Hence, a more intelligent counter would have been for the US-led coalition to have its own broadcasting capability manned by Muslims speaking the language and dialects of the area, well-versed in Islam and in the ethnic and cultural mores of the area, who can gradually wean the population away from the terrorists. Such a broadcast strategy is nowhere to be seen or felt. It is time for the soft power experts of the US to think in terms of a Radio Free Islam or just Radio Islam and Radio Harmony, if they have not already done so, in order to make an impact on the tribals.
16. The second audience is the diaspora of Muslims across the Western world. The defining characteristics of this audience totally differ from those of the tribal audience in the spawning grounds of jihadi terrorism. They are educated, radicalised, but not Talibanised, and they are capable of tactical as well as strategic thinking. Issues relating to maintaining the pristine purity of Islam do not agitate them to the same extent as issues relating to Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror as waged by the US.
17. While the second audience feels comfortable with all instruments of dissemination, it avoids the Western print media which it looks upon as controlled by Jewish money and interests. It will not be possible for it to own and operate radio and TV stations from the Western countries. It, therefore, relies almost exclusively on the Internet for its jihadi mission. Al Qaeda and its associates too use the Internet for rallying radical elements of the diaspora to their cause.
18. Internet activism is the most important component of Al Qaeda's use of soft power to win adherents to its cause from the diaspora. The Internet provides a variety of ways of reaching and influencing the targeted audience----the conventional E-mail and web sites, the chat rooms, the blogs etc. Many papers have come out on the use of the Internet by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorist organisations and angry Muslim individuals for operational purposes, meaning, commission of acts of terrorism. There is an equally urgent need for a study of the use of the Internet by the terrorists as an instrument of soft power to mould opinion in the Islamic world in their favour and against their state adversaries.
19. They use the Internet with some effectiveness for keeping the anger in the Islamic world sustained, if not enhanced, and for motivating Muslims to join the global jihad in their own way and according to their own lights. They do not ask them to join any particular organisation. They merely ask them to rise against the enemy and martyr themselves for what they project as the cause of the Muslims. Many do by joining different organisations and some in their individual capacity without joining any organisation.
20. The focus of counter-terrorism experts till now has been on countering the operational use of the Internet by the terrorists for acts of terrorism. Not adequate thought has been given to countering the use of the Internet as an instrument of soft power. How States can use the Internet to demotivate the terrorists or potential terrorists? What role the Internet can play in making the civil society think about the damage being caused by the terrorists? Just as the terrorists seek to cause and enhance anger, counter-terrorism agencies should cause and enhance disgust against the terrorists, by making effective use of truth about the real nature of terrorism instead of indulging in disinformation and spins. One can use disinformation and spins against adversary States but not against non-State actors, which often consist of one's own people.
21. Right from the days of the Vietnam War, one has been talking of the silent majority, which is not able or willing to assert itself. There is an equally strong silent majority in all civil societies, which feels disturbed by the phenomenon of jihadi terrorism----which does not spare even fellow-Muslims. This silent majority is not prepared to activate itself through conventional means such as holding processions, writing articles in the print media, addressing audiences etc It is afraid of being targeted by the terrorists and killed.
22. The Internet provides an excellent means of empowering this inarticulate majority and encouraging it to come out against religious radicalism and the resort to terror, without fearing the consequences of their Internet activism. How to promote Internet activism by enlightened sections of the Muslim civil societies and communities against radicalism and terrorism is a subject, which needs attention from policy-makers and civil society leaders.
23. Mr. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, told the House of Commons on November 14,2007, that " Britain will spend 400 million pounds abroad on fighting radicalisation. the first time, Britain would sponsor events in Pakistan to counter extremist propaganda." He did not elaborate how this money will be spent and what events will be sponsored. A better way would be to make effective use of the available instruments of soft power in more imaginative ways. The extent of the funding is only one aspect of action. Bringing to bear an imaginative approach to the problem is an equally important aspect---if not more important. Six years after 9/11, one does not find much evidence of such thinking and such an imaginative approach despite a profusion in funding.
24. In the years after the Second World War, Mr. Northcote Parkinson told the British policy-makers who assessed the effectiveness of their actions in terms of the money spent:" When funds are limitless, the only economy made is in thinking." We can update this and say in the context of today's so-called war on terrorism: "When funds are limitless, a battlefield casualty is your imagination."
25. What one needs is not just more funds, but more imagination and innovation.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
THE AF-PAK SITUATION: AN UPDATE
B.RAMAN
Afghanistan has seen a third Mumbai-style commando attack by suicidal terrorists on multiple targets. The previous two had taken place in Kabul and Kandahar. The latest---the third one--- took place in Khost in Eastern Afghanistan on May 12,2009. Three groups of suicidal bombers launched commando-style attacks on the compound of the local Governor, the nearby police headquarters and a municipal building. The multiple attacks, which began at around 10 AM ended only at 5 PM after US and Afghan security forces managed to eliminate the terrorists or some of them blew themselves up. Initially, the raiding Neo Taliban terrorists took 20 hostages, but the US and Afghan troops managed to free them. A Neo Taliban spokesman has claimed that the multiple attacks were launched by 30 of their men.
2.Eleven members of the raiding parties and nine members of the Afghan security forces and civilians are reported to have been killed during the seven-hour confrontation between the security forces and the raiding parties. There are no reports of any US fatalities. Earlier on the morning of May 12, there was an attack by a US unmanned Predator plane on a suspected terrorist hide-out in the Dray Nishtar area of North Waziristan. Ten unidentified persons were killed. This was the second US Predator attack in three days. Many people were killed in a similar attack in South Waziristan on May 9. Both attacks have been described by local sources as retaliatory for attacks on US forces in Afghan territory by elements which had infiltrated into Afghanistan from the two Waziristans. The two drone attacks did not specifically target any individual. They merely targeted the buildings or hide-outs from which these elements were suspected to have infiltrated into Afghanistan.
3. In the meanwhile, Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, announced in Washington DC on May 11,2009, the replacement of Gen David McKiernan, the US Commander in Afghanistan, by Gen Stanley McChrystal, who currently serves as the Director of US Joint Chiefs of Staff,and was previously a Director of special operations forces. Gen McChrystal was in charge of Joint Special Operations in Iraq. According to a report disseminated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), his forces were involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Gates justified the replacement as necessitated by the need for new thinking on the strategy to be followed by the Army in Afghanistan.
4. Gen.McKiernan, who had also previously served in Iraq, was posted in Afghanistan for less than a year. He took over the responsibility for dealing with an unsatisfactory ground situation marked by a bleeding stalemate between the US-led NATO forces and the Neo Taliban.There was no end to this stalemate during his tenure. This stalemate saw the US-led forces and the Neo Taliban inflicting periodic casualties on each other without either of them being able to establish territorial dominance in any substantial area in Eastern and Southern Afghanistan.
5. Gen.McKiernan's strategy was more reactive than proactive----building effective defences and retaliatory capability to deny success to the Neo Taliban. It was not pro-active in the sense of the US-led forces going after the Neo Taliban and launching pre-emptive strikes before it was able to attack US and Afghan forces. A pro-active policy with emphasis on pre-emptive strikes is expected under Gen.McChrystal.The new strategy is expected to focus on "attack, disrupt and dismantle" instead of being merely content with denying success to the Neo Taliban.
6. The US faces a three-in-one security dilemma in the Af-Pak region--- counter-insurgency against the Neo Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizbe Islami in Afghan territory, counter-sanctuary operations against the safehavens enjoyed by Al Qaeda and its allies in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and by the Neo Taliban in the Quetta area of Balochistan and counter- Pakistani Taliban in the FATA and the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).While the US has to play an activist role against the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban, the operations against the Pakistani Taliban are essentially an internal security task of the Pakistani security forces and Govt. While the new strategy of Gen.McChrystal is expected to add greater thrust to the counter-insurgency operations against the Neo Taliban and the Hizbe Islami, the counter-sanctuary policy against Al Qaeda and its allies and against the Neo Taliban in Pakistani territory is in a state of confusion with the Pakistan Army unable or unwilling to deal with them and with the US not showing any signs of fresh thinking. The present policy is focussed almost exclusively on drone attacks, which are yet to make an impact. Deniable covert actions against the sanctuaries in Pakistani territory is an option which has not been given a serious try lest there be uncontrollable adverse reactions in Pakistan.
7. The Pakistan Army has been giving an impression of being serious now about its determination this time to wipe out the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its ally the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-a-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) from their hide-outs in the Swat Valley and other areas of the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The TNSM has been adopting the same tactics as it did in 2007-08 when a similar offensive was launched when Pervez Musharraf was the President. This tactics consists of avoiding frontal clashes with the security forces, stepping up suicide attacks of terrorism, splitting into small groups, withdrawing into the mountains and inveigling the security forces to raid and attack them in their mountainous hide-outs so that they could inflict heavy casualties on them. Neither the Pakistani security forces nor their US advisers have been able to think of an alternative strategy of strengthening the control of the security forces in the areas vacated by the TNSM, building up their defences and inveigling the TNSM into attacking the security forces in their strongholds.
8. The large-scale exodus of Pashtun civilians from the areas affected by the counter-Taliban operations----now estimated at 1.3 million---shows that there is not much public support for the TTP and the TNSM. Due to the weak capabilities of the security forces, the TNSM and the TTP have been able to intimidate the civilians into supporting them. Once the civilians had an opportunity to escape, they did so.
9. The protection of the civilians and humanitarian assistance to the internally displaced Pashtuns should be an important task. From the statements emanating from Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and others in Washington, it is evident that US policy-makers realise the importance of humanitarian relief to the internally displaced. The US has already made an initial contribution of about US $ five million. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has also initiated action for humanitarian assistance.There are reported promises of assistance from Saudi Arabia and China.
10. The problem is that Pakistan does not have an effective Governmental infrastructure for humanitarian relief. One saw that during the earthquake, which ravaged Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and some areas of the NWFP in 2005.The Government's response to the disaster caused by the earthquake was very unsatisfactory. It was the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the terrorist organisation, and its political wing called the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), which were in the forefront of the disaster relief work. They mobilised volunteers and funds and organised the relief work in a manner which won the gratitude of the people. They were alleged to have pocketed for their own use part of the huge flow of funds from the Pakistani diaspora abroad and Saudi Arabia for quake relief.
11. Similarly, now, in the face of the lethargic response of the Government, it is the LET and the JUD and certain other Islamic fundamentalist parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which have taken the lead in looking after the internally displaced Pashtuns with the help of money locally collected as well as flowing from the Pakistani diaspora and Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. If the Government does not effectively take over the leadership role in providing humanitarian relief to the internally displaced Pashtuns and leaves the field free to jihadi and fundamentalist organisations, part of the money flowing from the Pakistani diaspora and Saudi Arabia would be diverted to their coffers and their humanitarian work would enable them to make more recruitment for acts of insurgency and terrorism. (13-5-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Directior, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Afghanistan has seen a third Mumbai-style commando attack by suicidal terrorists on multiple targets. The previous two had taken place in Kabul and Kandahar. The latest---the third one--- took place in Khost in Eastern Afghanistan on May 12,2009. Three groups of suicidal bombers launched commando-style attacks on the compound of the local Governor, the nearby police headquarters and a municipal building. The multiple attacks, which began at around 10 AM ended only at 5 PM after US and Afghan security forces managed to eliminate the terrorists or some of them blew themselves up. Initially, the raiding Neo Taliban terrorists took 20 hostages, but the US and Afghan troops managed to free them. A Neo Taliban spokesman has claimed that the multiple attacks were launched by 30 of their men.
2.Eleven members of the raiding parties and nine members of the Afghan security forces and civilians are reported to have been killed during the seven-hour confrontation between the security forces and the raiding parties. There are no reports of any US fatalities. Earlier on the morning of May 12, there was an attack by a US unmanned Predator plane on a suspected terrorist hide-out in the Dray Nishtar area of North Waziristan. Ten unidentified persons were killed. This was the second US Predator attack in three days. Many people were killed in a similar attack in South Waziristan on May 9. Both attacks have been described by local sources as retaliatory for attacks on US forces in Afghan territory by elements which had infiltrated into Afghanistan from the two Waziristans. The two drone attacks did not specifically target any individual. They merely targeted the buildings or hide-outs from which these elements were suspected to have infiltrated into Afghanistan.
3. In the meanwhile, Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, announced in Washington DC on May 11,2009, the replacement of Gen David McKiernan, the US Commander in Afghanistan, by Gen Stanley McChrystal, who currently serves as the Director of US Joint Chiefs of Staff,and was previously a Director of special operations forces. Gen McChrystal was in charge of Joint Special Operations in Iraq. According to a report disseminated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), his forces were involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Gates justified the replacement as necessitated by the need for new thinking on the strategy to be followed by the Army in Afghanistan.
4. Gen.McKiernan, who had also previously served in Iraq, was posted in Afghanistan for less than a year. He took over the responsibility for dealing with an unsatisfactory ground situation marked by a bleeding stalemate between the US-led NATO forces and the Neo Taliban.There was no end to this stalemate during his tenure. This stalemate saw the US-led forces and the Neo Taliban inflicting periodic casualties on each other without either of them being able to establish territorial dominance in any substantial area in Eastern and Southern Afghanistan.
5. Gen.McKiernan's strategy was more reactive than proactive----building effective defences and retaliatory capability to deny success to the Neo Taliban. It was not pro-active in the sense of the US-led forces going after the Neo Taliban and launching pre-emptive strikes before it was able to attack US and Afghan forces. A pro-active policy with emphasis on pre-emptive strikes is expected under Gen.McChrystal.The new strategy is expected to focus on "attack, disrupt and dismantle" instead of being merely content with denying success to the Neo Taliban.
6. The US faces a three-in-one security dilemma in the Af-Pak region--- counter-insurgency against the Neo Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizbe Islami in Afghan territory, counter-sanctuary operations against the safehavens enjoyed by Al Qaeda and its allies in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and by the Neo Taliban in the Quetta area of Balochistan and counter- Pakistani Taliban in the FATA and the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).While the US has to play an activist role against the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban, the operations against the Pakistani Taliban are essentially an internal security task of the Pakistani security forces and Govt. While the new strategy of Gen.McChrystal is expected to add greater thrust to the counter-insurgency operations against the Neo Taliban and the Hizbe Islami, the counter-sanctuary policy against Al Qaeda and its allies and against the Neo Taliban in Pakistani territory is in a state of confusion with the Pakistan Army unable or unwilling to deal with them and with the US not showing any signs of fresh thinking. The present policy is focussed almost exclusively on drone attacks, which are yet to make an impact. Deniable covert actions against the sanctuaries in Pakistani territory is an option which has not been given a serious try lest there be uncontrollable adverse reactions in Pakistan.
7. The Pakistan Army has been giving an impression of being serious now about its determination this time to wipe out the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its ally the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-a-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) from their hide-outs in the Swat Valley and other areas of the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The TNSM has been adopting the same tactics as it did in 2007-08 when a similar offensive was launched when Pervez Musharraf was the President. This tactics consists of avoiding frontal clashes with the security forces, stepping up suicide attacks of terrorism, splitting into small groups, withdrawing into the mountains and inveigling the security forces to raid and attack them in their mountainous hide-outs so that they could inflict heavy casualties on them. Neither the Pakistani security forces nor their US advisers have been able to think of an alternative strategy of strengthening the control of the security forces in the areas vacated by the TNSM, building up their defences and inveigling the TNSM into attacking the security forces in their strongholds.
8. The large-scale exodus of Pashtun civilians from the areas affected by the counter-Taliban operations----now estimated at 1.3 million---shows that there is not much public support for the TTP and the TNSM. Due to the weak capabilities of the security forces, the TNSM and the TTP have been able to intimidate the civilians into supporting them. Once the civilians had an opportunity to escape, they did so.
9. The protection of the civilians and humanitarian assistance to the internally displaced Pashtuns should be an important task. From the statements emanating from Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and others in Washington, it is evident that US policy-makers realise the importance of humanitarian relief to the internally displaced. The US has already made an initial contribution of about US $ five million. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has also initiated action for humanitarian assistance.There are reported promises of assistance from Saudi Arabia and China.
10. The problem is that Pakistan does not have an effective Governmental infrastructure for humanitarian relief. One saw that during the earthquake, which ravaged Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and some areas of the NWFP in 2005.The Government's response to the disaster caused by the earthquake was very unsatisfactory. It was the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the terrorist organisation, and its political wing called the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), which were in the forefront of the disaster relief work. They mobilised volunteers and funds and organised the relief work in a manner which won the gratitude of the people. They were alleged to have pocketed for their own use part of the huge flow of funds from the Pakistani diaspora abroad and Saudi Arabia for quake relief.
11. Similarly, now, in the face of the lethargic response of the Government, it is the LET and the JUD and certain other Islamic fundamentalist parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which have taken the lead in looking after the internally displaced Pashtuns with the help of money locally collected as well as flowing from the Pakistani diaspora and Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. If the Government does not effectively take over the leadership role in providing humanitarian relief to the internally displaced Pashtuns and leaves the field free to jihadi and fundamentalist organisations, part of the money flowing from the Pakistani diaspora and Saudi Arabia would be diverted to their coffers and their humanitarian work would enable them to make more recruitment for acts of insurgency and terrorism. (13-5-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Directior, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Monday, May 11, 2009
US CONGRESS CONTINUES TO BACK THE TIBETAN CAUSE
B.RAMAN
The Barack Obama administration’s policy of playing down the issue of the alleged violation of the human rights of the Tibetans in China has not had any impact on the US Congress. The Tibetan cause continues to receive the same support from both Houses of the Congress, despite their being dominated by the Democratic Party, as it was receiving during the administration of George Bush. This continuing Congressional support for the Tibetan cause on the same scale as during the previous administration is reflected in the budgetary allocations for the fiscal year 2009 and in the access enjoyed by various Tibetan non-governmental organizations to leading members of the two Houses, belonging to both the Democratic and the Republican Parties.
2. The budget for fiscal 2009 has allocated US $ 17 million for various Tibetan causes. The break-ups available are as follows:
(a). Funds for educational and cultural programmes inside Tibet ---US $ 7.3 million.
(b). Funds for Tibetan language broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America---- US $ 3.3 million.
( c ).Funds for Tibetan refugee programmes such as medicare, education of Tibetan children, transit assistance etc ---- US $ 2.5 million.
(d). Funds for running the office of the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues in the US State Department---US $ one million.
(e). Funds for a Tibetan Section in the US Embassy in Beijing to monitor developments in Tibet till the US is able to establish a consulate in Lhasa---US $ one million.
(f). Funds for Fulbright scholarships for Tibetan students for their higher education ---US $ 750,000.
(g).Funds to provide academic and cultural exchange opportunities to Tibetans—US $ 650,00.
(h). Funds for the Tibetan programmes of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—US $ 250,000.
3. The Congress has presently under consideration a new project meant to protect Tibetan identity, language, culture and religion. Funding for this project has not yet been approved. (12-5-2009)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
The Barack Obama administration’s policy of playing down the issue of the alleged violation of the human rights of the Tibetans in China has not had any impact on the US Congress. The Tibetan cause continues to receive the same support from both Houses of the Congress, despite their being dominated by the Democratic Party, as it was receiving during the administration of George Bush. This continuing Congressional support for the Tibetan cause on the same scale as during the previous administration is reflected in the budgetary allocations for the fiscal year 2009 and in the access enjoyed by various Tibetan non-governmental organizations to leading members of the two Houses, belonging to both the Democratic and the Republican Parties.
2. The budget for fiscal 2009 has allocated US $ 17 million for various Tibetan causes. The break-ups available are as follows:
(a). Funds for educational and cultural programmes inside Tibet ---US $ 7.3 million.
(b). Funds for Tibetan language broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America---- US $ 3.3 million.
( c ).Funds for Tibetan refugee programmes such as medicare, education of Tibetan children, transit assistance etc ---- US $ 2.5 million.
(d). Funds for running the office of the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues in the US State Department---US $ one million.
(e). Funds for a Tibetan Section in the US Embassy in Beijing to monitor developments in Tibet till the US is able to establish a consulate in Lhasa---US $ one million.
(f). Funds for Fulbright scholarships for Tibetan students for their higher education ---US $ 750,000.
(g).Funds to provide academic and cultural exchange opportunities to Tibetans—US $ 650,00.
(h). Funds for the Tibetan programmes of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—US $ 250,000.
3. The Congress has presently under consideration a new project meant to protect Tibetan identity, language, culture and religion. Funding for this project has not yet been approved. (12-5-2009)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Sunday, May 10, 2009
ELECTORAL CROCODILE TEARS FOR SRI LANKAN TAMILS
B.RAMAN
The campaign in Tamil Nadu for the elections to the Lok Sabha, which comes to an end on May 11,2009, saw copious shedding of crocodile tears not only for the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils, but also for the cause of a separate Tamil homeland as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of M. Karunanidhi put it or for the cause of an independent Tamil Eelam as the Anna DMK of J.Jayalalitha and other Tamil parties put it.
2. Of the various parties contesting the elections, only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress (I) and the Communist Party of India (CPI), which are national and not regional parties, made a distinction between support for the plight of the Tamils and support for the cause of Tamil Eelam. They desisted from supporting the latter.
3. There has been a certain hypocrisy in the stand of both the DMK and the ADMK. The DMK, which in the past had made no secret of its sympathies for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its leader Prabakaran, had at the same time refrained from supporting the demand for a Tamil Eelam. It had always given the impression of supporting the stand of the Government of India of canvassing for the political and economic rights of the Tamils in a unified, but not unitary Sri Lanka.
4.The ADMK had in the past strongly opposed the LTTE and Prabakaran as well as their demand for an independent Tamil Eelam. Jayalalitha’s abrupt volte face on this subject during the course of the election campaign and her coming out in support of the totally unwise suggestion for sending the Indian Army to the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka for facilitating the creation of an independent Tamil Eelam came as a total surprise. Taken aback by the change in her stand, Karunanidhi, who has shown a lack of consistency and lucidity on the Tamil issue for over a year now, came out with his own support for a Tamil homeland without explaining what he meant. The Sri Lankan Tamils already have a homeland in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. The question is what should be the constitutional status of this homeland. Should it become an independent Tamil Eelam as demanded by the LTTE or should it become a largely autonomous state of a federal Sri Lanka as demanded by other Sri Lankan Tamil parties and as supported by the Government of India since the days of Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister?
5. How can Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi come out in support of an independent Tamil Eelam or a homeland for the Tamils when none of the Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka except the LTTE has supported such a demand? Even the LTTE is now a party in its death rattle. The knee-jerk reactions on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue among the regional parties of Tamil Nadu and their vying with one another in showing whose heart bleeds more for the Sri Lankan Tamils and their cause show a calculation by all these parties that in the absence of any other major political issue of interest to the nation in general and to Tamil Nadu in particular during the just-ending election campaign the exploitation of the Sri Lankan Tamil issue might provide the magic wand to electrify the voters and get their support. Whether their calculation proves right or wrong, only the results will show on May 16,2009. But one has to note that outside the screeching headlines of the Tamil media, one has not seen any major outpouring of public support for any of the Tamil parties on the Tamil Eelam issue.
6.One gets an impression that the Tamils of Tamil Nadu are more concerned about their own plight than over the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils----caused by the rotten state of the infrastructure, frequent electricity shut-downs under the pretext of maintenance pauses, an administration which activates itself only a few weeks before the elections and then forgets the voters for four years, the political dynasty syndrome and a group of DMK Ministers in the Cabinet of Dr.Manmohan Singh who conducted themselves for four years as if India is Tamil Nadu and Tamil Nadu is India and as if Tamil Nadu is DMK and DMK is Tamil Nadu. The DMK Ministers held very important portfolios in New Delhi, but how many non-Tamil citizens of India had heard of them or seen them?
7. There are three aspects to the Sri Lankan Tamil issue:
(a). The humanitarian plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil civilians in the Northern and Eastern Provinces due to the ruthless use of air strikes by the Sri Lankan Air Force in the Tamil areas for the last three years and the use of multi-barrel rockets and artillery pieces given by Pakistan and due to the recent brutal use of the Tamil civilians by the LTTE as human shields in order to ward off its final collapse and maintain its political relevance after having lost its military capabilities. The Government of Dr.Manmohan Singh and all political parties----national or regional--- failed deplorably all these months to condemn the use of air strikes and heavy artillery of Pakistani- make against the Tamil civilians. The humanitarian problem did not start yesterday. It started three years ago when the Sri Lankan Armed Forces brought their aircraft and Pakistani-origin artillery into action, but not a single political party in India thought it fit to condemn it. They have suddenly become aware of the humanitarian plight of the Tamils a few weeks before the elections. If this is not hypocrisy and political opportunism, what then is it?
(b). The cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils, who have always been the objective allies of India. The Sri Lankan Tamil cause, which has the support of all Tamil parties in Sri Lanka, relates to a modification of the present unitary state of Sri Lanka in order to make it a genuine federal State in which the equal rights and dignity of the Tamils in the federal State are guaranteed. This cause had enjoyed the active support of Rajiv Gandhi when he was the Prime Minister. Many Tamils in Tamil Nadu, including this writer, had a legitimate grievance that as Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh deviated from the traditional policy of Congress (I) and failed to articulate energetically the Government of India’s support for this. His silence and ambivalent comments----if at all when he made some rare comments on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue--- were interpreted by the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Sinhalese extremists in the Sri Lankan Armed Forces as indicating that the Government of India no longer supported the Tamil cause as strongly as it did under Rajiv Gandhi and that it could ride rough-shod over the rights of the Tamils without having to worry about any adverse reactions from New Delhi.
(C ). The cause of an independent Tamil Eelam. The LTTE is the only Tamil organization in Sri Lanka which supports it. Other Tamil parties don’t. Under Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister, the Congress (I) gave the impression of supporting it, but Rajiv Gandhi wisely removed this impression and came out against an independent Tamil Eelam and in favour of a federal Sri Lanka with the Tamils enjoying equal rights with the Sinhalese. After the expected death of the LTTE, this would have been a dead issue in Sri Lanka, but attempts are being made in Tamil Nadu to give a fresh lease of life to this issue purely out of electoral calculations and not out of any genuine interest in the future of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
8. Despite all that has happened till now, India still has many friends in Sri Lanka--- among the Sinhalese as well as the Tamils. There are many on both sides of the political spectrum in Sri Lanka who understand and do not misinterpret India’s interest in the future of the Tamils in view of the likely impact of the Sri Lankan Tamil problem on the Indian Tamils in Tamil Nadu. Based on this, the Manmohan Sigh Government could have worked out a comprehensive strategy for the future which would have convinced the Sri Lankan Tamils that India continued to care for them and would have, at the same time, reassured the Sinhalese that India did not wish ill of them and Sri Lanka.
9. The Manmohan Singh Government failed to work out such a strategy. Nobody knows what exactly is his strategy on Sri Lanka. ( 11-5-2009)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
The campaign in Tamil Nadu for the elections to the Lok Sabha, which comes to an end on May 11,2009, saw copious shedding of crocodile tears not only for the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils, but also for the cause of a separate Tamil homeland as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of M. Karunanidhi put it or for the cause of an independent Tamil Eelam as the Anna DMK of J.Jayalalitha and other Tamil parties put it.
2. Of the various parties contesting the elections, only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress (I) and the Communist Party of India (CPI), which are national and not regional parties, made a distinction between support for the plight of the Tamils and support for the cause of Tamil Eelam. They desisted from supporting the latter.
3. There has been a certain hypocrisy in the stand of both the DMK and the ADMK. The DMK, which in the past had made no secret of its sympathies for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its leader Prabakaran, had at the same time refrained from supporting the demand for a Tamil Eelam. It had always given the impression of supporting the stand of the Government of India of canvassing for the political and economic rights of the Tamils in a unified, but not unitary Sri Lanka.
4.The ADMK had in the past strongly opposed the LTTE and Prabakaran as well as their demand for an independent Tamil Eelam. Jayalalitha’s abrupt volte face on this subject during the course of the election campaign and her coming out in support of the totally unwise suggestion for sending the Indian Army to the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka for facilitating the creation of an independent Tamil Eelam came as a total surprise. Taken aback by the change in her stand, Karunanidhi, who has shown a lack of consistency and lucidity on the Tamil issue for over a year now, came out with his own support for a Tamil homeland without explaining what he meant. The Sri Lankan Tamils already have a homeland in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. The question is what should be the constitutional status of this homeland. Should it become an independent Tamil Eelam as demanded by the LTTE or should it become a largely autonomous state of a federal Sri Lanka as demanded by other Sri Lankan Tamil parties and as supported by the Government of India since the days of Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister?
5. How can Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi come out in support of an independent Tamil Eelam or a homeland for the Tamils when none of the Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka except the LTTE has supported such a demand? Even the LTTE is now a party in its death rattle. The knee-jerk reactions on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue among the regional parties of Tamil Nadu and their vying with one another in showing whose heart bleeds more for the Sri Lankan Tamils and their cause show a calculation by all these parties that in the absence of any other major political issue of interest to the nation in general and to Tamil Nadu in particular during the just-ending election campaign the exploitation of the Sri Lankan Tamil issue might provide the magic wand to electrify the voters and get their support. Whether their calculation proves right or wrong, only the results will show on May 16,2009. But one has to note that outside the screeching headlines of the Tamil media, one has not seen any major outpouring of public support for any of the Tamil parties on the Tamil Eelam issue.
6.One gets an impression that the Tamils of Tamil Nadu are more concerned about their own plight than over the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils----caused by the rotten state of the infrastructure, frequent electricity shut-downs under the pretext of maintenance pauses, an administration which activates itself only a few weeks before the elections and then forgets the voters for four years, the political dynasty syndrome and a group of DMK Ministers in the Cabinet of Dr.Manmohan Singh who conducted themselves for four years as if India is Tamil Nadu and Tamil Nadu is India and as if Tamil Nadu is DMK and DMK is Tamil Nadu. The DMK Ministers held very important portfolios in New Delhi, but how many non-Tamil citizens of India had heard of them or seen them?
7. There are three aspects to the Sri Lankan Tamil issue:
(a). The humanitarian plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil civilians in the Northern and Eastern Provinces due to the ruthless use of air strikes by the Sri Lankan Air Force in the Tamil areas for the last three years and the use of multi-barrel rockets and artillery pieces given by Pakistan and due to the recent brutal use of the Tamil civilians by the LTTE as human shields in order to ward off its final collapse and maintain its political relevance after having lost its military capabilities. The Government of Dr.Manmohan Singh and all political parties----national or regional--- failed deplorably all these months to condemn the use of air strikes and heavy artillery of Pakistani- make against the Tamil civilians. The humanitarian problem did not start yesterday. It started three years ago when the Sri Lankan Armed Forces brought their aircraft and Pakistani-origin artillery into action, but not a single political party in India thought it fit to condemn it. They have suddenly become aware of the humanitarian plight of the Tamils a few weeks before the elections. If this is not hypocrisy and political opportunism, what then is it?
(b). The cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils, who have always been the objective allies of India. The Sri Lankan Tamil cause, which has the support of all Tamil parties in Sri Lanka, relates to a modification of the present unitary state of Sri Lanka in order to make it a genuine federal State in which the equal rights and dignity of the Tamils in the federal State are guaranteed. This cause had enjoyed the active support of Rajiv Gandhi when he was the Prime Minister. Many Tamils in Tamil Nadu, including this writer, had a legitimate grievance that as Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh deviated from the traditional policy of Congress (I) and failed to articulate energetically the Government of India’s support for this. His silence and ambivalent comments----if at all when he made some rare comments on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue--- were interpreted by the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Sinhalese extremists in the Sri Lankan Armed Forces as indicating that the Government of India no longer supported the Tamil cause as strongly as it did under Rajiv Gandhi and that it could ride rough-shod over the rights of the Tamils without having to worry about any adverse reactions from New Delhi.
(C ). The cause of an independent Tamil Eelam. The LTTE is the only Tamil organization in Sri Lanka which supports it. Other Tamil parties don’t. Under Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister, the Congress (I) gave the impression of supporting it, but Rajiv Gandhi wisely removed this impression and came out against an independent Tamil Eelam and in favour of a federal Sri Lanka with the Tamils enjoying equal rights with the Sinhalese. After the expected death of the LTTE, this would have been a dead issue in Sri Lanka, but attempts are being made in Tamil Nadu to give a fresh lease of life to this issue purely out of electoral calculations and not out of any genuine interest in the future of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
8. Despite all that has happened till now, India still has many friends in Sri Lanka--- among the Sinhalese as well as the Tamils. There are many on both sides of the political spectrum in Sri Lanka who understand and do not misinterpret India’s interest in the future of the Tamils in view of the likely impact of the Sri Lankan Tamil problem on the Indian Tamils in Tamil Nadu. Based on this, the Manmohan Sigh Government could have worked out a comprehensive strategy for the future which would have convinced the Sri Lankan Tamils that India continued to care for them and would have, at the same time, reassured the Sinhalese that India did not wish ill of them and Sri Lanka.
9. The Manmohan Singh Government failed to work out such a strategy. Nobody knows what exactly is his strategy on Sri Lanka. ( 11-5-2009)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
RE-ARREST OF MAS SELAMAT OF JI: A WAKE-UP CALL FOR SINGAPORE & MALAYSIA
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.523
B.RAMAN
Mas Selamat Kastari, said to be a leader of the Singapore branch of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), who escaped from a high security detention centre of Singapore on February 27,2008, and had remained undetected since then, is reported to have been traced by the Malaysian police after he had remained in hiding for nearly 14 months and re-arrested. According to media reports quoting the authorities of Singapore and Malaysia, he was found and re-arrested on April 1,2009, in Johor Bahru in Malaysia.
2.In a statement issued on May 8,2009, Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry said: "Mas Selamat has been arrested by the Malaysian Special Branch (MSB) in a joint operation between the MSB and the Internal Security Department (ISD)." Wong Kan Seng, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, who is also in charge of Home Affairs, told the media that the news of the arrest was not announced earlier in the interest of operational secrecy.
3. The Malaysian authorities apparently took the precaution of not announcing his re-arrest in order not to alert other members of the JI,who are still in hiding and for whom they are searching. Moreover, a premature announcement of the arrest might have enabled the JI to destroy evidence relating to the movements and activities of Mas Selamat Kastari since his escape from detention.
4. According to Wong as quoted in the local media, Mas Selamat had swam across the Straits of Johor using an improvised flotation device to escape from the north shore of Singapore after he escaped from the detention centre last year. According to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, information about the re-arrest of Mas Selamat on April 1 was first conveyed by the Malaysian authorities to Wong and then he himself was informed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on April 11,2009, when the two met at Pattaya in Thailand prior to the abandoned ASEAN summit. The summit was abandoned due to disturbances caused by the supporters of former Thai Prime MinisterThaksin Shinawatra.Prime Minister Lee said that the Singapore authorities had honoured a Malaysian request to keep the information a secret, but the decision to announce it was made after the "Straits Times" had come to know of the re-arrest and started making enquiries about it on May 7.
5. The Malaysian authorities have not announced how and where they managed to trace him and the circumstances under which he was re-arrested. All that is certain till now is that he is still under the custody of the Malaysian Police who are still interrogating him. It is evident from the available details that his re-arrest was made possible by human intelligence derived from the interrogation of some other suspected JI members arrested recently and not from technical intelligence.He was apparently observing communications security.It is reasonable to presume that the Singapore authorities would also be involved in the interrogation. The involvement could be either by deputing a Singapore officer to personally participate in the interrogation or by sending a list of questions of interest to the Singapore authorities for being used by the Malaysian team interrogating him.
6. However close counter-terrorism co-operation between two countries may be, they do not immediately allow officers of another country to join in the interrogation. They prefer to get a questionnaire from the interested State and elicit answers to those questions. When the Americans arrested Hambali of the JI in Ayuthya in Thailand in August 2003, they did not allow the Indonesian police to join in the interrogation for a long time. Similarly, in the interrogation of arrested Al Qaeda suspects having knowledge of the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in December,1999, the Americans avoided associating an Indian officer with the interrogation.
7. Such interrogation of a freshly-arrested or re-arrested terrorist suspect is generally done in three phases.The immediate first phase is devoted to finding out whether the arrested person had any knowledge of impending and imminent terrorist strikes and the identities of those involved in the planning for the strikes so that they could be arrested and the planned terrorist strike thwarted. The fact that there have been no subsequet arrests of a significant nature shows that Mas Selamat was apparently not aware of any impending and imminent strike.
8. The second phase will be devoted to re-tracing his movements and activities since the moment he escaped from the Singapore detention centre. This would help in establishing the identities of those who had helped him in escaping and crossing over and in protecting him after he crossed over. Terrorist organisations usually have two types of sleeper cells---- the operational cells which plan and carry out a terrorist strike and logistics cells which provide the back-up in the form of safe sanctuaries, collection of funds and materials required for the operation etc. The escape of Mas Selamat, his crossing over to Johore Baru and his remaining untraced for 14 months show clearly the presence of a trans-ASEAN network of JI logistics cells, which have not been unearthed by the local authorities so far. Was he remaining in Johore Baru all the time or was he travelling in the region? That should be a question of crucial interest.
9. The third phase will be devoted to establishing in detail how he escaped and remained undetected in order to identify security deficiencies in Singapore and Malaysia, which he exploited to escape and remain underground for 14 months. Two security deficiencies are obvious. The first deficiency arises from the fact that despite the security alert ordered by the Singapore Police he managed to swim across to Johore Baru. How did he get hold of his floatation device? Did he swim across immediately after his escape or did he remain in hiding with a sympathiser in Singapore for some days and cross over after the Police had reduced their alert? This is an important question. Answers to this would show whether there are still untraced logistics cells of the JI in Singapore.
10. The second deficiency arises from the fact that after crossing over he remained undetected by the Malaysian Police for 14 months.Malaysian media reports have alleged that he was arrested in a small Chinese majority town called Skudai in the Johore Baru area. How his arrival and presence there did not raise any suspicion for 14 months? In India, we have the system of village chowkidars (guards) started by the British Police before 1947. An important task of the chowkidar is to alert the police about the arrival of any suspicious person not belonging to the village. Does Malaysia have such a system since it was also under the British? If so, why this system failed?
11. The location and re-arrest of Mas Selamat speaks well of the efficiency and professionalism of the Internal Security Department of Singapore and of the Special Branch of the Malaysian Police. It also speaks disconcertingly of deficiencies in their security procedures of which the JI is aware and which Mas Selamat was able to exploit. (10-5-2009)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
Mas Selamat Kastari, said to be a leader of the Singapore branch of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), who escaped from a high security detention centre of Singapore on February 27,2008, and had remained undetected since then, is reported to have been traced by the Malaysian police after he had remained in hiding for nearly 14 months and re-arrested. According to media reports quoting the authorities of Singapore and Malaysia, he was found and re-arrested on April 1,2009, in Johor Bahru in Malaysia.
2.In a statement issued on May 8,2009, Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry said: "Mas Selamat has been arrested by the Malaysian Special Branch (MSB) in a joint operation between the MSB and the Internal Security Department (ISD)." Wong Kan Seng, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, who is also in charge of Home Affairs, told the media that the news of the arrest was not announced earlier in the interest of operational secrecy.
3. The Malaysian authorities apparently took the precaution of not announcing his re-arrest in order not to alert other members of the JI,who are still in hiding and for whom they are searching. Moreover, a premature announcement of the arrest might have enabled the JI to destroy evidence relating to the movements and activities of Mas Selamat Kastari since his escape from detention.
4. According to Wong as quoted in the local media, Mas Selamat had swam across the Straits of Johor using an improvised flotation device to escape from the north shore of Singapore after he escaped from the detention centre last year. According to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, information about the re-arrest of Mas Selamat on April 1 was first conveyed by the Malaysian authorities to Wong and then he himself was informed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on April 11,2009, when the two met at Pattaya in Thailand prior to the abandoned ASEAN summit. The summit was abandoned due to disturbances caused by the supporters of former Thai Prime MinisterThaksin Shinawatra.Prime Minister Lee said that the Singapore authorities had honoured a Malaysian request to keep the information a secret, but the decision to announce it was made after the "Straits Times" had come to know of the re-arrest and started making enquiries about it on May 7.
5. The Malaysian authorities have not announced how and where they managed to trace him and the circumstances under which he was re-arrested. All that is certain till now is that he is still under the custody of the Malaysian Police who are still interrogating him. It is evident from the available details that his re-arrest was made possible by human intelligence derived from the interrogation of some other suspected JI members arrested recently and not from technical intelligence.He was apparently observing communications security.It is reasonable to presume that the Singapore authorities would also be involved in the interrogation. The involvement could be either by deputing a Singapore officer to personally participate in the interrogation or by sending a list of questions of interest to the Singapore authorities for being used by the Malaysian team interrogating him.
6. However close counter-terrorism co-operation between two countries may be, they do not immediately allow officers of another country to join in the interrogation. They prefer to get a questionnaire from the interested State and elicit answers to those questions. When the Americans arrested Hambali of the JI in Ayuthya in Thailand in August 2003, they did not allow the Indonesian police to join in the interrogation for a long time. Similarly, in the interrogation of arrested Al Qaeda suspects having knowledge of the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in December,1999, the Americans avoided associating an Indian officer with the interrogation.
7. Such interrogation of a freshly-arrested or re-arrested terrorist suspect is generally done in three phases.The immediate first phase is devoted to finding out whether the arrested person had any knowledge of impending and imminent terrorist strikes and the identities of those involved in the planning for the strikes so that they could be arrested and the planned terrorist strike thwarted. The fact that there have been no subsequet arrests of a significant nature shows that Mas Selamat was apparently not aware of any impending and imminent strike.
8. The second phase will be devoted to re-tracing his movements and activities since the moment he escaped from the Singapore detention centre. This would help in establishing the identities of those who had helped him in escaping and crossing over and in protecting him after he crossed over. Terrorist organisations usually have two types of sleeper cells---- the operational cells which plan and carry out a terrorist strike and logistics cells which provide the back-up in the form of safe sanctuaries, collection of funds and materials required for the operation etc. The escape of Mas Selamat, his crossing over to Johore Baru and his remaining untraced for 14 months show clearly the presence of a trans-ASEAN network of JI logistics cells, which have not been unearthed by the local authorities so far. Was he remaining in Johore Baru all the time or was he travelling in the region? That should be a question of crucial interest.
9. The third phase will be devoted to establishing in detail how he escaped and remained undetected in order to identify security deficiencies in Singapore and Malaysia, which he exploited to escape and remain underground for 14 months. Two security deficiencies are obvious. The first deficiency arises from the fact that despite the security alert ordered by the Singapore Police he managed to swim across to Johore Baru. How did he get hold of his floatation device? Did he swim across immediately after his escape or did he remain in hiding with a sympathiser in Singapore for some days and cross over after the Police had reduced their alert? This is an important question. Answers to this would show whether there are still untraced logistics cells of the JI in Singapore.
10. The second deficiency arises from the fact that after crossing over he remained undetected by the Malaysian Police for 14 months.Malaysian media reports have alleged that he was arrested in a small Chinese majority town called Skudai in the Johore Baru area. How his arrival and presence there did not raise any suspicion for 14 months? In India, we have the system of village chowkidars (guards) started by the British Police before 1947. An important task of the chowkidar is to alert the police about the arrival of any suspicious person not belonging to the village. Does Malaysia have such a system since it was also under the British? If so, why this system failed?
11. The location and re-arrest of Mas Selamat speaks well of the efficiency and professionalism of the Internal Security Department of Singapore and of the Special Branch of the Malaysian Police. It also speaks disconcertingly of deficiencies in their security procedures of which the JI is aware and which Mas Selamat was able to exploit. (10-5-2009)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
PAKISTAN'S INTERNAL SECURITY
B.Raman
Mizoram in India's North-East is a peaceful and prosperous State. It has a total area of about 21087 sq.kms with 21 major hill ranges or peaks. A very difficult terrain for an army to carry out a successful counter-insurgency operation. Its population was estimated at 8,91,058 in 2001.
2.Mizoram was not a peaceful region before 1986. It was one of the most troubled regions of India. In February,1966, an ethnic separatist organisation called the Mizo National Front (MNF) overran the entire State in a series of simultaneous and surprise attacks and captured even Aizawl, its capital. The Indian Government and its security forces lost control of Mizoram almost as completely as the Pakistani security forces have now lost control of Swat, which has an area of only 1772 Sq.Kms with a population estimated at 1.5 million in 1998.
3. It took the Government of India and its security forces 20 years to reestablish the Government's writ over the State by making it clear to the MNF that violence would not pay and by reaching a political solution on the future of the Mizo people, which would enable them to remain a part of India with considerable political and economic rights.
4.The counter-insurgency operations carried out by the Indian security forces in Mizoram are considered a model for others to learn from and emulate. It has today India's leading counter-insurgency school and even the US sends its military officers to the school to learn from India's success in dealing with the insurgency.
5. The Swat District of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan came under the virtual total control of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in 2007. The hilly terrain in Swat is somewhat similar to that in Mizoram The area affected by the TNSM insurgency is much smaller than the affected area in Mizoram.
6. The MNF movement was an ethnic separatist movement. The TNSM movement is a religious fundamentalist movement. Apart from this, there was another major difference between Mizoram and Swat. The Mizos constituted a small number of people confined to Mizoram. They had to fight against the Indian security forces unaided by other non-Mizo tribal groups in the region. The tribals of Swat are part of the Pashtun tribe, which is spread over a vast area in the Pashtun belt across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. They are not fighting alone against the Pakistani security forces. They are supported by the Pashtuns in the surrounding areas.
7. It should not, therefore, be a matter of surprise that the Pakistani security forces have been facing considerable difficulties in countering their activities.The dimensions of the Mizo insurgency were much smaller as compared to the dimensions of the problem caused for the Pakistani security forces by the Pakistani Taliban called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), of which the TNSM is a part. Morewover, there was no sympathy for the Mizos in the Indian security forces fighting against them. There is considerable sympathy for the TNSM and the TTP among the Pakistani para-military forces.
8. Despite the much less serious dimensions of the Mizo insurgency, we took 20 years to prevail over it. It would be unreasonable to expect the Pakistani security forces to prevail over the TNSM and the TTP in a matter of months. The counter-insurgency operations---even if they are carried out sincerely by the Pakistani security forces--- are going to take a long time and there is no point for the international community in being impatient with Pakistan. The important point is the sincerity of the Pakistani security forces in wanting to defeat the Taliban and not the time taken by them for doing so. The international community is worried not by the time taken by the Pakistani security forces, but by the evidence of their insincerity. It finds it difficult to avoid the impression that the counter-insurgency operations against the the TNSM and the TTP are more shadow-boxing than real and that the heart of the Pakistani security forces is not in it.
9. At the time we carried out our counter-insurgency operations in Mizoram the international community was hardly interested in it. No nuclear factor was involved. There was no trans-national dimension of the problem except the Pakistani assistance to the MNF. There was no Al Qaeda waiting to exploit the situation to further its own agenda. We had a two-point strategy--- a campaign of attrition against the MNF and removing the MNF sanctuaries in the then East Pakistan by supporting the movement for an independent Bangladesh. The insurgency in Mizoram is a telling example of how an insurgent or terrorist movement withers away when it no longer has external sanctuaries and the covert support of intelligence organisations.
10. The circumstances in Pakistan today are totally different. The nuclear factor due to Pakistan having a nuclear capability of uncertain safety, the trans-national dimension of the Taliban phenomenon and its linkages with Al Qaeda have made the counter-insurgency operations against the TNSM and the TTP a matter of serious concern to the entire international community.
11. The perceived lack of seriousness and sincerity in the political and military leaderships of Pakistan in dealing with this problem have given rise to apocalyptic fears of what could happen in the coming months. These fears are natural, even if they ultimately turn out to be exaggerated as asserted by the Pakistani authorities.
12.It is important for the imternational community---particularly for the US which has a greater presence and influence in Pakistan than any other Western country--- to closely monitor the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan against the TTP, the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and other Punjabi terrorist organisations in order to ensure that Pakistan does what is expected of it by the international community.
13. How to monitor continuously without giving the impression that the US is interfering in Pakistan's internal security management and thereby adding to the anti-US anger in Pakistan? Spectacular shows, rich in photo opprtunities,such as the recent Zardari-Karzai-Obama summit are not the way. Such shows only add to the suspicions of Pakistanis and Afghans not well disposed to the US that the US is imposing on the Pakistani leadership counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism strategies designed to servre US and not Pakistani interests.
14. Officials of the Obama Administration have claimed that they have been able to convince the Pakistani leadership that it is the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which pose the threat to Pakistan and not India. They are hoping that as a result Pakistan will divert some of its forces from the Indian border to the Taliban-infected areas. This is good, if it turns out to be true, though I have my skepticism. Even if this comes about, that alone is not going to lead to more successful counter-insurgency operations.
15.Since the two countries became independent in 1947, the Indian Army has evolved into a multi-terrain, multi-target, multi-role army. The Pakistan Army has remained static in a single-terrain, single-target, single-role model. The Indian Army can fight against the Pakistan Army in the plains of Punjab and in the glaciers of Siachen, against the Chinese Army in the forbidding heights of the Himalayas and against insurgents and terrorists in the hills as well as the plains. The Pakistan Army feels comfortable only in the plains of Punjab. Outside the plains of Punjab, it feels like a fish out of water. It is unable to perceive the threats that could arise from insurgents, terrorists and other non-State actors with the same seriousness as India, the US and other countries do because the insurgents and terrorists have been its live-in companions.
16.To enable the Pakistani security forces acquire a multi-terrain, multi-target, multi-role capability is going to take years.There is going to be no quick end to the internal security problems faced by Pakistan.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Mizoram in India's North-East is a peaceful and prosperous State. It has a total area of about 21087 sq.kms with 21 major hill ranges or peaks. A very difficult terrain for an army to carry out a successful counter-insurgency operation. Its population was estimated at 8,91,058 in 2001.
2.Mizoram was not a peaceful region before 1986. It was one of the most troubled regions of India. In February,1966, an ethnic separatist organisation called the Mizo National Front (MNF) overran the entire State in a series of simultaneous and surprise attacks and captured even Aizawl, its capital. The Indian Government and its security forces lost control of Mizoram almost as completely as the Pakistani security forces have now lost control of Swat, which has an area of only 1772 Sq.Kms with a population estimated at 1.5 million in 1998.
3. It took the Government of India and its security forces 20 years to reestablish the Government's writ over the State by making it clear to the MNF that violence would not pay and by reaching a political solution on the future of the Mizo people, which would enable them to remain a part of India with considerable political and economic rights.
4.The counter-insurgency operations carried out by the Indian security forces in Mizoram are considered a model for others to learn from and emulate. It has today India's leading counter-insurgency school and even the US sends its military officers to the school to learn from India's success in dealing with the insurgency.
5. The Swat District of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan came under the virtual total control of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in 2007. The hilly terrain in Swat is somewhat similar to that in Mizoram The area affected by the TNSM insurgency is much smaller than the affected area in Mizoram.
6. The MNF movement was an ethnic separatist movement. The TNSM movement is a religious fundamentalist movement. Apart from this, there was another major difference between Mizoram and Swat. The Mizos constituted a small number of people confined to Mizoram. They had to fight against the Indian security forces unaided by other non-Mizo tribal groups in the region. The tribals of Swat are part of the Pashtun tribe, which is spread over a vast area in the Pashtun belt across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. They are not fighting alone against the Pakistani security forces. They are supported by the Pashtuns in the surrounding areas.
7. It should not, therefore, be a matter of surprise that the Pakistani security forces have been facing considerable difficulties in countering their activities.The dimensions of the Mizo insurgency were much smaller as compared to the dimensions of the problem caused for the Pakistani security forces by the Pakistani Taliban called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), of which the TNSM is a part. Morewover, there was no sympathy for the Mizos in the Indian security forces fighting against them. There is considerable sympathy for the TNSM and the TTP among the Pakistani para-military forces.
8. Despite the much less serious dimensions of the Mizo insurgency, we took 20 years to prevail over it. It would be unreasonable to expect the Pakistani security forces to prevail over the TNSM and the TTP in a matter of months. The counter-insurgency operations---even if they are carried out sincerely by the Pakistani security forces--- are going to take a long time and there is no point for the international community in being impatient with Pakistan. The important point is the sincerity of the Pakistani security forces in wanting to defeat the Taliban and not the time taken by them for doing so. The international community is worried not by the time taken by the Pakistani security forces, but by the evidence of their insincerity. It finds it difficult to avoid the impression that the counter-insurgency operations against the the TNSM and the TTP are more shadow-boxing than real and that the heart of the Pakistani security forces is not in it.
9. At the time we carried out our counter-insurgency operations in Mizoram the international community was hardly interested in it. No nuclear factor was involved. There was no trans-national dimension of the problem except the Pakistani assistance to the MNF. There was no Al Qaeda waiting to exploit the situation to further its own agenda. We had a two-point strategy--- a campaign of attrition against the MNF and removing the MNF sanctuaries in the then East Pakistan by supporting the movement for an independent Bangladesh. The insurgency in Mizoram is a telling example of how an insurgent or terrorist movement withers away when it no longer has external sanctuaries and the covert support of intelligence organisations.
10. The circumstances in Pakistan today are totally different. The nuclear factor due to Pakistan having a nuclear capability of uncertain safety, the trans-national dimension of the Taliban phenomenon and its linkages with Al Qaeda have made the counter-insurgency operations against the TNSM and the TTP a matter of serious concern to the entire international community.
11. The perceived lack of seriousness and sincerity in the political and military leaderships of Pakistan in dealing with this problem have given rise to apocalyptic fears of what could happen in the coming months. These fears are natural, even if they ultimately turn out to be exaggerated as asserted by the Pakistani authorities.
12.It is important for the imternational community---particularly for the US which has a greater presence and influence in Pakistan than any other Western country--- to closely monitor the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan against the TTP, the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and other Punjabi terrorist organisations in order to ensure that Pakistan does what is expected of it by the international community.
13. How to monitor continuously without giving the impression that the US is interfering in Pakistan's internal security management and thereby adding to the anti-US anger in Pakistan? Spectacular shows, rich in photo opprtunities,such as the recent Zardari-Karzai-Obama summit are not the way. Such shows only add to the suspicions of Pakistanis and Afghans not well disposed to the US that the US is imposing on the Pakistani leadership counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism strategies designed to servre US and not Pakistani interests.
14. Officials of the Obama Administration have claimed that they have been able to convince the Pakistani leadership that it is the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which pose the threat to Pakistan and not India. They are hoping that as a result Pakistan will divert some of its forces from the Indian border to the Taliban-infected areas. This is good, if it turns out to be true, though I have my skepticism. Even if this comes about, that alone is not going to lead to more successful counter-insurgency operations.
15.Since the two countries became independent in 1947, the Indian Army has evolved into a multi-terrain, multi-target, multi-role army. The Pakistan Army has remained static in a single-terrain, single-target, single-role model. The Indian Army can fight against the Pakistan Army in the plains of Punjab and in the glaciers of Siachen, against the Chinese Army in the forbidding heights of the Himalayas and against insurgents and terrorists in the hills as well as the plains. The Pakistan Army feels comfortable only in the plains of Punjab. Outside the plains of Punjab, it feels like a fish out of water. It is unable to perceive the threats that could arise from insurgents, terrorists and other non-State actors with the same seriousness as India, the US and other countries do because the insurgents and terrorists have been its live-in companions.
16.To enable the Pakistani security forces acquire a multi-terrain, multi-target, multi-role capability is going to take years.There is going to be no quick end to the internal security problems faced by Pakistan.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
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