The Hindu : Anatomy of terrorism in South Asia

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Wednesday, Jan 01, 2003

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Anatomy of terrorism in South Asia — I

By Muchkund Dubey

Terrorism has had an adverse impact on domestic political structures in South Asia. It has encouraged militarism, chauvinism and a distinct lurch towards right-wing extremism.

THE REGIONAL Centre for Strategic Studies located in Colombo recently organised a Symposium on the Impact of Terrorism on Development and Democratic Process in South Asia. Significant conclusions were reached at the symposium on the distinguishing features and implications of terrorism in South Asia.

Terrorism has been a ubiquitous phenomenon in South Asian countries much before it hit the United States in a grievous and dramatic fashion on September 11, 2001. These countries have been the victims of one or more of the following forms of terrorism: as a part of the Al-Qaeda network; arising out of religious fundamentalism; brought about by structural factors such as extreme and large scale poverty, glaring inequality, prolonged and gross forms of injustice; and as a result of the general collapse of law and order.

There is no agreed definition of terrorism internationally. But after September 11, there is a consensus that this should not be allowed to come in the way of confronting terrorist groups on the basis of a working definition. Terrorism is now taken to be any premeditated and unlawful act of violence against innocent people or non-combatants, irrespective of its cause or motive. There are problems with this definition from the South Asian perspective. Going by the South Asian tradition and present practice, some acts of violence cannot be bracketed with terrorism. For example, people in South Asian countries have generally endorsed violence used during their independence movement. Similarly, it will be counter-productive to treat as terrorists the Maoist elements in Nepal who are using violence to bring about structural changes in the polity.

Besides, the use of the term "unlawful" seems to be designed to exclude state terrorism on the ground that whatever the state does must be construed as lawful. However, in the South Asian context, political violence or structural violence perpetrated by the state against its own people cannot be exonerated. Safeguards against such violence in democracies have not proved very effective and there are no safeguards in authoritarian regimes. Regarding violence by the state as lawful leads to the bizarre situation where outside powers can, by invoking the so-called doctrine of intervention on humanitarian grounds, act against the state while its own people cannot rise in rebellion against it. Moreover, in South Asia, states have lost their monopoly over violence mainly because of the rise of non-state perpetrators of violence. Having failed to control these forces, the states have co-opted them, and even aided and abetted them, for suppressing democracy within and unleashing terrorism against neighbours.

It will be a travesty to define the term "combatant" too widely or extend its scope too far. In any case, it cannot be allowed to include innocent wives and children of combatants or persons who happen to belong to a particular nationality (American or Israeli) or the followers of a particular religion (e.g. Pandits of Kashmir).

There is hardly any cause of terrorism which is uniformly applicable to all South Asian countries. The causes are country-specific. Since it is not possible within the space constraint to go into all the causes, some critical variables can be identified. These include persistence of extreme poverty and accompanying deprivations such as unemployment, low levels of literacy and limited access to health services; non-functioning or mal-functioning of democracy; years of misgovernance which have made violence the only means of bringing about a change; brutal suppression of human rights over an extended period of time; and the alienation of whole cultural or ethnic groups brought about by threat to life by frequent communal violence, destruction of means of livelihood, historical humiliation, and continuing de facto discrimination in jobs and opportunities. Another important factor is the narrowing of the mind brought about by fundamentalist indoctrination.

External factors have played a very important role in the rise of terrorism in South Asia. Foreign powers, particularly the U.S., have supported dictatorial regimes, particularly those pursuing fundamentalist agenda (like that of Zia-ul-Haq). This withheld democracy for a prolonged period and helped in creating widespread infrastructure for the spread of fundamentalism with its accompanying terrorist potential. U.S. assistance thus opened up space for establishing a political constituency for a theocratic form of military dictatorship. Non-state actors of the fundamentalist variety have been harnessed by foreign powers for pursuing their global strategic interest in countries adjoining the region (as in Afghanistan). Thus religious fundamentalism was unabashedly pitted against fundamentalism of the secular variety i.e. communism. Foreign support has also contributed to the heightening of the salience of national security concerns, aggressive nationalism and militarism in the region.

South Asian countries have themselves spawned, encouraged, aided and abetted terrorism in neighbouring countries. That is why border areas have become the familiar arena of terrorism in most of these countries and terrorist groups operating in a particular country have links with ideologically similar groups active in the neighbouring country.

Different forms of terrorism followed in the region have different impacts. The poor are the principal victims of terrorism perpetrated as a consequence of the breakdown of law and order or general collapse of governance. In such situations the elites generally have a nexus with the terrorists. However, the elites suffer in terrorist violence the main purpose of which is to send out messages. For, the bigger the catch, the stronger is the message and hence greater the chance of its reaching the destination. No attempt has so far been made to draw up a sociological profile of terrorists in South Asia. However, one can safely assume that the poor are the foot-soldiers of terrorism mounted as a rebellion against injustice and deprivation.

Terrorism has had an adverse impact on domestic political structures in South Asia. It has encouraged militarism, chauvinism and a distinct lurch towards right-wing extremism. It has been used as an excuse for undermining democracy, e.g. the adoption of emergency and virtual collapse of representative government in Nepal and adoption of POTA by India. It has also led to an increasing communalisation of society, as in India and Pakistan.

Terrorism has adversely affected development and imposed heavy economic costs on most of the South Asian countries. Direct costs are in the nature of the destruction of infrastructure, factories and standing crops and stoppage of economic activities. Indirect costs are varied and arise out of general loss of confidence in the economy and the consequent inability to attract foreign investment, brain drain, enhanced military expenditure, high transaction costs and various kinds of economic distortions. Though various quantitative estimates have been attempted of the economic costs of terrorism, these exercises have suffered from serious limitations due to the problem of double counting and of isolating the terrorist factor from other relevant factors. However, it is important to continue making such estimates on the basis of refined and improved methodologies in order to drive home the immense costs of terrorism, which South Asian countries can ill afford. Calculations of the impact at the micro-sectoral level, such as that on tourism, and production and export of products particularly vulnerable to terrorist activities, are far more reliable and useful than the calculation of their impact on such macro-variables as growth in GNP, balance-of-payment position, level of foreign exchange reserves, FDI flows, export growth or fiscal deficit.

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