India and Pakistan are poised on a knife’s edge, spewing venom across the divide as the slightest slip threatens to bring a swift death to millions. Nuclear brinksmanship is not for the fainthearted and actions will eventually follow words. The reasons for India’s anger are not incomprehensible: meretricious sympathy from Pakistan was accompanied by suggestions that the dastardly attack on the Indian Parliament was orchestrated by India itself. This was strangely reminiscent of the theory floating though the Islamic world that the horrific events of September 11th were the handiwork of the CIA, the Jews, or a combination of both. This absurd reluctance to denounce terror is hard to comprehend. Yet incomprehension does not detract from its abhorrence. By spinning spurious stories that draw life-breath from innuendo and artifice, Pakistani ingenuousness has unwittingly shown its contempt for human life.
Although conventional wisdom points to Kashmir as the source of the conflict, that is merely the superficial scapegoat. Kashmir is merely emblematic of the deeper evil: the inability of Pakistan and its rulers to accept the failure of the two-nation theory. When British India was partitioned in 1947 into India and Pakistan, the ruling premise, put forward by the Muslim poet Muhhamad Iqbal, had been that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country. So effective was this canard that Muhhamad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, elevated it to a state-art. Fifty years have flowed down the Ganges and India’s 130 million Muslims have shown that it is possible to live, and do well in India. Two of India’s most beloved cricket captains are Muslim. Bollywood, India’s perversely named Hollywood-equivalent, is dominated by Muslim heroes. Art, literature, sports, politics, and indeed every walk of human life has been enriched by India’s Muslims.
This is in large measure owed to the fact that India has influenced India’s Muslims, just as much as Islam has changed India. Their religious practices have not gone unalloyed in India’s melting pot. Hindu practices and customs have cross-pollinated Indian Islam. Radical elements have had to yield to the necessities of diurnal interaction. It would be true to say that the Indian Muslim bears no resemblance to the Muslim of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran or anywhere else, save in name.
This obviously does not rest easily on the Pakistani psyche. Confronted with the reality that Pakistan is a failed state, its raison d’etre a mere apocrypha, its rulers have honed anti-India propaganda into a mantra for survival. The vast unwashed public is fed on a daily dose of hatred and their hunger sated on bombastic words of solidarity with suffering brethren across the border, as Pakistan’s rulers continue merrily doing that which they do best: stuffing their pockets and filling their Swiss bank lockers.
Add to this the insult caused by the Indian support to the mukti bahinis who created Bangladesh out of East Pakistan in 1971, and you get the heady cocktail that clouds better judgment. Pakistan naively believes that Kashmir will become India’s Bangladesh, just as the Taliban believed that Afghanistan would be America’s Vietnam. The Taliban is being taught a lesson it won’t forget in a hurry and it is hard to escape the feeling that Pakistan’s day of judgment is nigh.
Pakistan’s folly has been aided and abetted by Indian incompetence. An absurdly patronizing attitude towards Kashmir, the retention of a constitutional provision that prevents it being integrated fully with the rest of the country, and traditionally apathetic foreign policy has helped Pakistan’s cause more than the aid it gives the jihadis across the border. There is hope yet.
Israel’s response to the spate of recent terrorist attacks should be a lesson to India. By resorting to missile attacks and escalating the tempo, Sharon has won the propaganda war, at least for now. After two months of dithering and losing its early advantage in the war on terror, Israel has reclaimed the initiative. The modus operandi is as simple as it is profound: equate the fight with that of America’s war on terror. Couched in the language that launched Operation Enduring Freedom, the American establishment has little wiggle room to denounce Israel’s actions.
Consider Sharon’s address to the nation: "Just as the United States is conducting its war against international terror, using all its might against terror, so will we too. With all the strength, determination and resources we have used until today and with resources at our disposal…our spirit of resistance is firmer than they ever could have imagined… We will pursue them until we catch them, and they will pay the price."
He drove the case home, calling "the Palestinian people … the primary victims of the current situation brought about by Arafat." Sharon’s logic is elemental- equate Arafat to bin Laden and define his war in the same terms as Bush. That requires the politically correct distinction between radical Islam and its more peaceful manifestations. Bush had declared, "The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam …the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends." This wedge is an important one. By making it extremely difficult for Islamic countries to come out openly in opposition, Israel has defined the debate as one between the forces of terror and those of peace.
That should be the essence of India’s approach. For long it has been screaming from the rooftops about violence fostered from across the border to little avail. It is time to pin responsibility where it belongs: on General Musharaff. Just as Israel has labeled the Palestine Authority a "terror-supporting entity", India should not shy away from calling Pakistan a terrorist state. That declaration will not be an empty one. With it comes the liability that attaches to Musharaff personally, for he, just like Arafat, will be equated with bin Laden. He will stand accused for every act of terror committed within India’s borders, and will have to sleep with the knowledge that the Taliban’s fate awaits him.
International relations are premised upon power. The weak can expect no respect. In its ham-handed approach to the continued loss of Indian lives, India has conveyed the unmistakable impression that it is a soft state, to be pushed around safe in the knowledge that there will be no retaliation. Its foreign policy is as weak as Prime Minister Vajpayee’s knees. Ranging from the abject capitulation seen during the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane (culminating in the release of terrorists) to the repeated release of prisoners in exchange for hostages India’s democratic polity has borne the burden of terror on bended knees.
As shown by Yasser Arafat’s moves against terrorists, strong responses yield strong results. Proof of this reality can be seen in the arrest Hamas’ leader Yassin despite 3,000 demonstrators throwing stones at police and setting a police vehicle on fire following calls on mosque loudspeakers. Arafat’s new tune claiming that he is determined to break the terror networks in the Palestinian territories would do an apostate canary proud. He virtually pleaded, "They have to cool down to give me the chance". The concomitant result has been that voices urging restraint on Israel have grown mute. The din of voices criticizing the Palestinian leadership has grown to a crescendo.
Results have been seen outside the area too. Congress urged President Bush to cut all ties with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority unless they crack down on violence by Islamic militants. In non-binding resolutions lawmakers demanded that Arafat either pursue and punish the militants behind the attacks on Israel or turn them over to the Israelis for prosecution. The resolution said that Bush should suspend relations with Arafat and his Palestinian Authority if he fails to act
The administration has not been gun-shy either. It issued an order shutting down four offices of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an organization based in Richardson, Texas. The group, registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt charity, raised $13 million last year and calls itself the largest Muslim charity in the United States.
President Bush has called Hamas "one of the deadliest terror organizations in the world today". Apart from the rhetorical value of the assertion, the assault on the finances of Arab networks reverses recent American ambivalence and is a double-whammy.
Contrast this with the traditional unwillingness of the administration to take such categorical steps against Kashmiri groups and you get a sense of the success of the Israeli strategy. It would be easy to dismiss this as but mere evidence of the strength of the Jewish lobby on the Hill. That conclusion is too simplistic. If one examines the listing of the Laskar–e-Tayyba, and the Jaish-e-Mohammed as terrorist organizations and the freezing of their assets in the last few days after Indian patience was demonstrated to be wearing thin, one comes to the conclusion that these were incidents of American back-up in the face of Indian spine. These actions have been accompanied by behind the scenes pressure on Musharraff to make arrests. Whether the arrests are real remains to be seen. Yet their symbolic value is immense. This is the first manifestation of American arm-twisting of Pakistan. It is also the first sign that terrorism is an offense in Pakistan!
Israel’s strategy of targeted assassinations and missile attacks may be in the twilight zone of legality. After the American bombardment of Afghanistan, state practice would seem to suggest that attacks on states harboring terrorists would be legal in international law. It would also seem to suggest that the head of an organization that harbors terrorists is a terrorist himself. Accordingly, it would not be incorrect to label Musharaff a terrorist.
India must act decisively. It must present a list of terrorists that are known to be in Pakistani territory and demand that they be arrested and handed over. Pakistan’s failure to do so would be tantamount to abetment. Secondly, India must isolate terrorists and keep them outside its borders by aggressive military action. Targeted assassinations of known terrorists, missile attacks, and the training of the spotlight on Musharaff will show the world that India means business. The world has finally realized that there can be no excuse for terrorism. It must also realize that Indian lives are not cheap.
The war cannot be won on the battlefield alone. Islamic terror will only be destroyed if the archaic notion of an Islamic brotherhood that transcends national borders and does not genuflect to national flags is shown to be a myth. Muslims are human beings first, with human needs that transcend their religion. They are products of their cultures more than of their religion. Just as the American Muslim cannot be the same as the Iranian Muslim, there cannot be a universal Islamic brotherhood that justifies terror committed in the name of Islam. Unless this mythical brotherhood is brought in sync with reality, the flag of Islamic terror will triumph over those of civilized nations.
(Sandeep Gopalan is a Rhodes Scholar
at Oxford. He is currently doing doctoral research at Stanford Law School.)