Defining the anti-terror agenda

THE U.S. DECISION to freeze the traceable financial assets of 27 designated terrorist leaders or groups has been generally portrayed as the first salvo in a challenging international campaign to roll back and root out the politics of terrorism around the world. However, it is of utmost importance that the anti-terror agenda be adequately and credibly defined for the purposes of a possibly long-term campaign with a globalised reach. Today, a snapshot of the various pockets of terror in the world, inclusive of Jammu and Kashmir, will surely reflect a complex minefield of diversity and not a simple matrix of uniformity. The terrorist networks are often distinguishable, one from the other, by their political goals or operational tactics or indeed both. Yet, it stands to reason that transnational political terrorism of the cognisable kind can be identified in a definitive fashion. From India's standpoint, it is just as well that the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, has already zeroed on Jammu and Kashmir while outlining a short list of conspicuous places that might actually attract America's attention during its stated campaign against international terror. Useful in this context will be a nuanced amplification of America's macro-view as spelt out by the National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, that there can be no categorisations of a good terrorist and a bad terrorist. This will be necessary for a truly concerted international drive against terrorism wherever it occurs - Jammu and Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka or West Asia and other places.

The U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, has made a telling point that the list he unveiled on Monday for a financial squeeze on specific terrorist entities and persons is the equivalent of the scrolls of wanted persons that the law enforcement agencies across the world are so used to preparing. In a sense, Washington's list for freezing funds in the U.S. does not supersede its own current scroll of designated foreign terrorist organisations. The terrorist outfits so named by the State Department, as distinct from the White House in the present case of an economic squeeze, are periodically reviewed. Of particular interest to India and its neighbourhood is the fact that the Harkatul Mujahideen, a group active in Jammu and Kashmir, figures prominently in the reckoning of both the White House and the State Department. Separately, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam remains on the State Department's list without coming under the scanner for Mr. Bush's new anti-terror economic campaign. Mutations, as distinct from static identities, pose an additional problem in monitoring the terrorist groups. Not surprisingly in the present context, a micro-level concern of the Indian authorities seems to be whether the hard core of the Harkatul Mujahideen has already mutated into some other identity.

On a different but related plane, as the U.S. intensifies its conspicuous efforts to track down Osama bin Laden in or near Afghanistan so as to avenge the recent terrorist offensive against America, India should prudently assess the short-term and long-term possibilities. Pakistan has firmly lined itself behind the U.S., and New Delhi is beginning to indicate some willingness to come to terms with this geopolitical reality. A scenario being sketched out by the U.S. is that its plan to go the whole hog in meeting the threats from Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the present case, may also extend to all collateral threats to the entire region itself. While Pakistan's stability is in India's enlightened interest, any such stabilisation of South Asia can be a plus for the international order. Appropriate definitions of international terrorism, covering such specific and larger issues of geography and politics, will doubtless enhance the overall campaign. However, a distinction must be drawn between legitimate activities of political self- expression and their terroristic pursuits.

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