Author: B.Raman
Publication: Seminar
on Islamic Terrorism at New Delhi
Date: November 25, 2000
(Based on a talk delivered
by the writer at a seminar on Islamic Terrorism at New Delhi on November
25,2000)
What a person thought
yesterday and expresses today, he or she may do or attempt to do it tomorrow.
By carefully monitoring and analysing the thoughts of yesterday and the
words of today, one may be able to have advance warnings of the likely
happenings of tomorrow. National, regional and international security,
therefore, demand that not only India, but also other democratic, liberal,
secular and peace-loving countries of the world carefully monitor and continuously
analyse the details of the debate involving the Islamic religious and extremist
organisations of Pakistan today.
Islam is a religion which,
like other religions, preaches the virtues of mercy and compassion.
But, the Islamists of Pakistan do not preach mercy and compassion.
They preach hatred and violence. Not only against non-Muslim "infidels",
but also against other Muslims and Islamic nations, who in their perception,
do not adhere to the precepts of Islam as interpreted by the Ulema and
do not recognise the Ulema as the ultimate repositories of wisdom, whether
it be relating to the religion, politics, economy, social welfare or statecraft.
When Pakistan became
independent in 1947, it had about half a dozen Islamic organisations, dabbling
in politics and in political crusade. Today, it has over 80.
Not all Islamic organisations of Pakistan are extremist or terrorist.
But all extremist and terrorist organisations sprouting out of Pakistan
exploit Islam and calls to Islamic solidarity as motivating factors in
their world-wide jehad.
For them, Islam is not
just a religion through whose propagation people can be made more pious
and virtuous. It is a weapon of coercion and intimidation, with which
to subjugate the "infidels" and the non-practising Muslim States and establish
the dictatorship of the Ulema.
For them, Islam is not
just a religion; it is also a political ideology, an economic theory; a
treatise on statecraft; and a training manual for the jehad.
Till the 1980s, the security
agencies of the democracies looked upon International Communism as one
of the principal threats to national security and closely monitored its
activities.
It was not because they
viewed the communist ideology as a possible threat to national security.
Quite the contrary. Marxism or communism, as an ideology, had a positive
content. The poor and developing nations of the world and the under-privileged
classes of societies were inspired by that content yesterday and many of
its aspects are valid even today.
What the security agencies
were worried about was International Communism, as preached from Moscow
and Beijing, because of three pernicious aspects.
* It encouraged extra-territorial
loyalty by holding that the requirements of loyalty to the solidarity of
the international proletariat overrode those of loyalty to the nation-State
in which a communist was resident and of which he or she was a citizen..
It was thus subversive of the traditional concept of loyalty to the State,
unless the State be Marxist.
* It emphasised the duty
of the Communists, even if they were in a minority, to seize power even
through the organised use of violence as a prelude to establishing the
dictatorship of the proletariat and making the non-believing majority come
round to the Communist point of view.
* It believed in the
unsuitability of multi-party democracy as a principle of Statecraft for
promoting and propagating Communism. And it used intimidation and
ideological and physical terror as weapons to let its will prevail.
The same pernicious concepts
are the intrinsic components of International Islamism, as propagated from
Pakistani soil today:
* International Islamism
encourages extra-territorial loyalty by holding that the requirements of
loyalty to trans-national Ummah and to Islamic solidarity override those
of loyalty to the nation-State in which a Muslim is resident and of which
he or she is a citizen. It is thus subversive of the traditional
concept of loyalty to the State, unless the State be Islamic. It
does not recognise national borders. It defends the right of the
Muslims to travel to and wage jehad anywhere to protect and help fellow-Muslims.
* It emphasises the religious
duty of the Islamic forces in a Muslim country, even if they be in a minority,
to seize power even through the organised use of violence as a prelude
to establishing the dictatorship of the Shaariat as interpreted by the
Ulema. It justifies their right to assist the Muslims in non-Muslim
States to achieve their aspirations, even through violence.
* It believes in the
unsuitability of multi-party democracy as a principle of Statecraft for
propagating and purifying Islam. It uses intimidation and ideological
and physical terror as weapons to let its will prevail.
What do these forces,
which are in the forefront of the so-called jehad in Jammu & Kashmir,
say? They propagate that:
* Jammu & Kashmir
is not their only agenda vis-à-vis India. It is only the first
item in their agenda. The other items are the "liberation" of the
Muslims in the rest of India in order to create two more "Muslim Homelands"
in South Asia--one in North India and the other in the South.
* J & K is the gateway
to India. Once they control J & K, they would use it as a rear
base for "liberating" the Muslims in the rest of India.
* After J & K, their
priorities would be Hyderabad and Junagadh. According to them, these
two areas rightly belonged to Pakistan and the Ummah; and they have a religious
duty to "liberate" them and bring them into the Ummah. Thereafter,
they would turn their attention to the rest of India.
Since the beginning of
1999, the importance of the Ummah possessing weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) for using them in their jehad against the non-Muslim "infidels" has
become an important item of their debate, whether it be in inner-party
deliberations, during religious discourses in the mosques and their madrasas
or in the conventions of their Ulema. The issue was first raised
by Osama bin Laden in two interviews and it has subsequently been picked
up by others. During this debate, they have been saying that:
* A good Muslim is not
only a pious Muslim, but is also a nuclear Muslim.
* Allah has ordained
that the Muslims should acquire whatever weapon capability they needed
for their jehad against the "infidels". It is their religious duty
to acquire WMD. Not to do so would be an act of sin and anti-Islamic.
* The nuclear and missile
capability, which Pakistan has, belongs to the Ummah and not just to the
State of Pakistan. It is the religious duty of the Pakistani leadership
to further develop and strengthen this capability and to place it at the
disposal of the Ummah.
* It would be an act
of sin and a betrayal of the Ummah for Pakistan to sign the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and adhere to the nuclear and missile export control
regimes.
* Pakistan has a religious
obligation to share its technologies with and to export them to other Muslim
countries, which may need them.
In the past, the Islamic
parties were against the popularisation of the study of science and technology,
apparently lest independently-thinking minds resulting from such studies
start questioning the logic and the validity of the teachings of the Ulema
and their interpretation of the Holy Koran. Now, in a reversal of
this policy, some of them have been calling for greater attention to a
study of Information Technology (IT) and for the development of an Islamic
IT capability in order to use it as one more weapon in their jehad world-wide.
They have been depicting
intellectual property rights as a Western conspiracy to keep the Islamic
world permanently backward in the digital world and encouraging software
piracy as another weapon in their jehad against the US and as a means of
rapidly bridging the IT divide between the Islamic and the non-Islamic
worlds and between Pakistan and India.
Practically all the Islamic
extremist and terrorist movements of today, whether they be in Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), the Chechnya and Dagestan
areas of Russia, the Xinjiang area of China, the J&K State of India
and in Southern Philippines were born out of ideas conceived in the battle-fields
of Afghanistan of the 1980s and spread from the mosques and madrasas of
Pakistan subsequently.
These movements could
not have maintained the intensity and the ruthlessness of their activities
without the support, instigation and encouragement received by them from
the soil of Pakistan and Afghanistan. And such support, instigation
and encouragement from Pakistani soil would not have been possible without
the active involvement of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment
in the case of the terrorist movements directed against India and without
its complicity or acquiescence in the case of terrorism directed against
other countries.
While one is not surprised
by its active involvement in the terrorist movements directed against India,
the tolerance by the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment of the
operations of the movements directed against the other countries---and
particularly against Saudi Arabia and China-- defies logic and understanding.
The tolerance is partly
a quid pro quo for their role in assisting the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment in its efforts to keep the Indian security forces bleeding
at no cost to Pakistan's Armed Forces and partly out of fear that any strong
action against their activities directed against other countries might
make them turn against the military-intelligence establishment.
It is mistaken to think
that the terrorist movements directed against other countries could be
attributed to the Taliban only. Today, Afghanistan is nothing but
a veritable colony of Pakistan and the Taliban, despite its retrograde
concepts in matters such as women's rights much to the embarrassment of
the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment, is nothing but an appendage
of Pakistan.
The idea for the creation
of the Taliban to use it to achieve Pakistan's strategic objectives in
Afghanistan was the brainwave of Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Baber,
the Interior Minister in the Cabinet of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, who was the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO)
under her, and Lt.Gen. Mohammad Aziz, now one of the two Corps Commanders
in Lahore, who was then the Deputy Director-General of the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and in charge of the ISI's operations in India and Afghanistan.
It suits the present
military regime in Islamabad that the international community blames the
Taliban and not Pakistan for what is happening in countries other than
India. It should not be allowed to get away with this. The
international community should hold Islamabad squarely responsible for
what has been happening elsewhere too.
The Taliban's militia
is officered, trained and guided by Pakistani ex-servicemen. The
Administration in the Taliban-controlled areas is largely run by retired
Pakistani bureaucrats. The budget of the Taliban Government, which
has no source of revenue except heroin, is heavily subsidised by the Pakistani
exchequer.
The control over Afghanistan,
through the Taliban, not only serves the strategic objectives of the Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment; it also serves to keep the Pakistani
State and economy afloat through the heroin money. Since Gen.
Musharraf seized power, there has been a dramatic decrease in the areas
under opium cultivation and in the production of heroin in Pakistani territory.
But, this has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the areas
under opium cultivation and in heroin production in the Taliban-controlled
Afghan territory.
What the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment has done is to transfer the opium-heroin assets of Pakistan
to colonised Afghanistan so that Islamabad could avoid pressure from the
US on the narcotics count while continuing to enjoy the benefit of the
heroin dollars.
The entire opium cultivation--heroin
extraction--smuggling of the product chain in Afghanistan is in Pakistani
hands. The heroin dollars constitute the life-supporting system of
the Pakistani State and economy and of the internationally-ostracised Taliban.
They add to the jehad-making potential of International Islamism.
The extent of Pakistani
involvement in the heroin trade would be evident from the following:
* The jehadists of international
Islamism spare no opportunity to organise a crusade against every social
evil (in their perception)--drinking, debauchery, adultery, the TV etc,
but they have never organised a crusade against opium cultivation and heroin
production and smuggling.
* The largest numbers
of heroin smugglers in the world come from two nations-- Nigeria and Pakistan--
with many smugglers caught, prosecuted and convicted in different countries.
Saudi Arabia executes every year over two dozen heroin smugglers of Pakistani
nationality. Most of those arrested and convicted are Pakistani nationals
coming from Pakistan or Afgfhanistan. There are very few Afghan nationals.
The solidarity of the
extremists and terrorists of International Islamism has not been matched
by a solidarity of the victim-States in confronting them effectively.
There has been a mushrooming of intelligence-sharing mechanisms in the
form of Joint Working Groups, the Shanghai Five etc. But, the ineffectiveness
of the victim-States in dealing with this menace cannot be blamed only
on inadequate intelligence.
A more important factor
has been a lack of lucid analysis of the dimensions of the menace and the
absence of a political will to strike at the source of the menace through
individual and joint operations. Any such joint operation has to
start with repeated and co-ordinated attacks on the opium fields and heroin
refineries of Afghanistan in order to deny this important source of funds
for the State of Pakistan, the Taliban and International Islamic terrorists.
Such attacks might not
mean the end of the terrorism, but could mark the beginning of the weakening
of it.
(27-11-00)
(The writer is Additional
Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently,
Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.)
