Untold Facts

From Marriott to Mumbai

The Nov 26 carnage at Mumbai was the most dramatic of a series of terrorist incidents in India in 2008. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon had their share of bomb blasts that resulted in hundreds of fatalities.

In Pakistan the Sept 20 bombing of the Islamabad Marriott, barely a few hours after President Asif Ali Zardari delivered his first address to the joint session of Parliament, shocked the nation. Two weeks earlier, the day the president was elected, a suicide bomber killed more than 30 people in Peshawar. Sixty-eight terrorist attacks are said to have occurred in 2008, averaging more than one every week. The bloodletting continues with unabated ferocity.

Though Pakistan and India face a common enemy, they are yet to realise that a cooperative mechanism is urgently needed to deal with terrorist violence. Both spend copiously on maintaining large standing armies and the acquisition of advanced weaponry. But the gravest threat they both encounter is from an enemy that is not susceptible to military prowess. They have still not learnt the lesson of 9/11.

President Barack Obama has recognised the need for a settlement of the Kashmir issue so that the focus in Pakistan on combating terrorism is not diluted. British foreign secretary David Miliband has also acknowledged the importance of resolving the Kashmir dispute. A graphic illustration of this dilution of focus was the redeployment of troops from FATA where the army is battling terrorist outfits to the country’s eastern frontiers because of Indian sabre-rattling after the Mumbai massacre.

Though Pakistan and India pride themselves on possessing nuclear weapons, huge segments of their populations face chronic economic deprivation. While India may well have the world’s largest middle class, it is also home to the biggest concentration of poverty and is ranked below Sudan and Somalia on the international hunger index.

The plight of Pakistan, which faces stagflation, is no better. Poverty-induced suicides recur with alarming frequency while the empty promise of roti, kapra, makan has become a hackneyed political slogan reverberating through the streets and slums of hunger-generated despair,

The symbiotic relationship between violence and poverty is obvious. While moralists may preach that man does not live by bread alone, hunger drives him towards desperate acts of violence. It is from the soul-wrenching expanse of poverty that the foot soldiers of terrorist outfits are recruited, indoctrinated and trained to kill or be killed in the name of religion. There can scarcely be a greater blasphemy.

The nexus between poverty and extremist violence also seems to have been acknowledged by the United States. As the curtain rose on the Obama presidency, the Biden-Lugar proposal for a multi-billion dollar civilian, rather than military, assistance package to Pakistan to arrest the economic nosedive into chaos needs to be quickly approved. It is much more than a mere “democracy dividend” because economic and political stability are mutually reinforcing and indispensable for combating terrorism.

Unfortunately, some Indian intellectuals, albeit a miniscule minority, think differently. For instance, R Vaidyanathan, professor of finance and control, at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, expressed the absurd view in an article that “a stable Pakistan is not in the interest of world peace, leave alone India.” He proposed measures aimed at the economic strangulation and isolation of Pakistan. Shorn of sophistry, this amounts to economy terrorism.

Both Pakistan and India have more than their share of bigoted ideologues. In a recent article, Arundhati Roy quotes Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba ranting: “There cannot be any peace till India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.” She then compares this outburst to Babu Bajrangi’s infamous boast about the 2002 Gujarat massacre: “We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire…we hacked, burned, set on fire…we believe in setting them on fire…” After the UN sanctions of Dec 21 against the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, allegedly a smokescreen for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed was put under house arrest but Babu Bajrangi is out on bail and lives in comfort in the Indian state of Gujarat.

The visionary leadership needed to tone down inflamed public reaction triggered by reprehensible incidents such as the Mumbai attack is sadly lacking in both India and Pakistan. Instead of moulding popular opinion in support of sane policies, weak governments are led by public outrage towards irrational decisions, Far from dousing the flames of the post-Mumbai tragedy, war was not ruled out as an option by New Delhi and this was reiterated by the by the Indian army chief, General Deepak Kapoor, prompting a response by his Pakistani counterpart.

Earlier, despite denials, Indian troops were mobilised, Pakistan’s airspace was deliberately violated and the untenable demand was made that Pakistanis wanted by New Delhi be handed over for trial in India although no bilateral extradition agreement exists between the two countries and neither is it a requirement under the SAARC anti-terrorism convention. .

The intoxication of populist rhetoric can cause immeasurable harm. In the perilous South Asian security environment war is no longer an option. The only reasonable course for Pakistan and India is to jointly combat terrorism, of which they are both victims.

Author: S Iftikhar Murshedi (a former ambassador of Pakistan)
Source: http://thenews.jang.com.pk/print1.asp?id=158723