Author: Ramesh Menon
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: October 31, 2001
Union Divestment Minister Arun Shourie
on Wednesday warned that the fight against terrorism should also take into
account chemical and biological warfare.
Any attack against terrorism, he
said, would have to be multi-faceted, hitting out at those who harbour,
train and finance terrorists.
He was talking at the concluding
session of an international seminar on The Global Threat of Terror --Ideological,
Material and Political Linkages organised by the Institute of Conflict
Management.
Shourie pointed out that the attacks
on the United States would live on in terrorist mythology for over a hundred
years as an example of "success". Such "successes" might breed thousands
of new terrorists.
He said war was a bloody business
and there was no humane way to conduct it. "No war could be won by minimum
force."
The minister pointed out that intelligence
agencies like the Inter-Services Intelligence, which was spawning terrorism
in India, would further co-ordinate terrorist groups.
India must learn that compromises
or slackness won't help, he said. He used the example of the Assam government,
which was giving compensation to the United Liberation Front of Assam cadres
who had surrendered.
The contours of terrorism would
now change rapidly, with terrorised groups co-ordinating with each other,
he said.
In the changed circumstances, there
was a cost to pay, but that was a cost everyone would now have to pay to
stay alive, he added.
Shourie said that terrorists would
use the instruments of democracy to destroy countries like India.
The difficulty in fighting it, he
pointed out, was compounded by the fact that human rights activists were
not seeing the issue in its totality and were being caught in webs of political
correctness and intellectually fashionable statemen tellectual chatterati
in India, he added.
Even though the Bombay blasts took
place eight years ago, none of the accused had been brought to book, Shourie
said.
Drawing attention to the state's
failure to contain terrorism, and to the low conviction rates of terrorists
and criminals in the country, Shourie said that the "the worst factor was
the weak and flabby condition of the state itself".
Citing the example of the Bombay
blasts case, he said the pathetic condition of the institutions of governance
were responsible.
"The flabby condition of the Indian
state was a principle opportunity for terrorists. They often used defunct
politicians like Jaffer Sharif to oppose laws like the Terrorists and Disruptive
Activities (Prevention) Act and float the myth that it was being used only
against Muslims," Shourie said.
It was not poverty or unemployment
that leads to terrorism. Terrorists see any opportunity and grab it," he
said.
Commenting on the new Prevention
of Terrorism Ordinance, the minister said that the data on the abuse of
the earlier TADA against the minority community was completely false. The
same logic was being used in the debate on POTO.
Shourie stated that if the potential
for abuse could be an argument against a law, then one would have to do
away with the CrPc and IPC also.
He said that the international community,
especially the West, had adopted hypocritical and double standards over
the issue of terrorism.
Though 53,000 people had been killed
in terrorist conflicts in the country over just the last decade, delegation
after delegation of foreign dignitaries visiting India had asked for evidence,
he said .
"There are states which will see
terrorism as a cheap way of disrupting other states. India with a hostile
neighbour must be alert. We have to wake up to the danger of terrorism
because we are truly at the edge of an abyss we do not know," Shourie said.
While fighting terrorism, the minister
said, we must not forget those who fought for us. The former dire Gill,
and other policemen who fought terrorism in Punjab were today facing 1500
writs from those who wanted to rekindle terrorism again.
It was a crying shame for a government
to have a situation where it did not defend those who fought to clean its
state from the danger of terrorism, he said.
