Despite the continued activities of some Marxist and Maoist
groups in India, Nepal, the Philippines, Japan and some countries of Latin America,
terrorism inspired by ideology is on the decline after the collapse of the communist state
in the erstwhile USSR and other countries of East Europe.
The major ideological terrorist groups of West Europe such as the
Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army faction of the former West Germany, the Red Brigade of
Italy, the Action Directe of France and the Revolutionary Communist Cells of Belgium have
practically ceased to operate.
In West Asia, the remnants of the multilateral terrorist network
led by Carlos alias Michel have disappeared without a trace after the arrest in Sudan of
Carlos and his detention in France and after the surrender to the German authorities of
Carlos' No.2, the German Yohannes Weinrach alias Peter. Nothing is known of the
Palestinian Ali (full name not known), who used to act as the No.3 of this network.
Religion and ethnicity based terrorist groups, however, continue
to be active. Their terrorism is not motivated by ideology. It is more an expression of
anger over perceived injustices to minority religious and ethnic communities by the
majority communities and a symbol of assertion of the feelings of separateness of the
aggrieved communities.
The expression of anger and the assertion of feelings of
separateness have been motivated by various factors—the perceived neglect of the
political and economic aspirations of the minorities, feelings of injustice by the
majority communities and fears of danger to their culture from external influences.
Amongst other causes, particularly in the case of trans-national
Islamic terrorist groups, one could cite feelings of continued injustice towards the
Palestinians, the outrage over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the
large-scale induction of Western troops—which are mainly projected as Christian
troops—into the Gulf—particularly into Saudi Arabia where the holiest of the
holy places of Islam are located--- during and after the Gulf war of 1991.
The trans-national Islamic terrorists of today see no difference
between the induction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in the 1980s and of American
troops into the Gulf in the 1990s. They view both as external interference to preserve the
political and economic interests of external powers by preventing the weakening of the
hold of the Soviet (in the case of Afghanistan) and Western-influenced/controlled local
political and social elite.
It is the feeling of Islam being in danger from the Soviet troops
which galvanised the Mujahideen of Afghanistan and their external Islamic supporters such
as the Arab mercenaries of Osama alias Osman Bin Laden. It is a similar feeling of Islam
being in danger from the US troops in this region which is presently galvanising the
Islamic extremist groups in various countries of the region and their external Islamic
supporters such as Bin Laden.
The apparent US hopes that its vigorous intervention in support
of the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo would dilute the anger of the Muslims in the rest of
the world—particularly in West Asia—are being belied. Islamic extremists of West
Asia view the US intervention as an attempt to divert attention from what they perceive as
its machinations in West Asia.
Of all the religion-based groups, those based in Islam have thus
been the most active and have shown a capability for sustained, spectacular actions not
only inside the territory of the country in which they were born, but also outside. The
networking and solidarity amongst the various Islamic extremist/terrorist groups continue
to be strong and the various Afghan Mujahideen groups and their Arab fellow-fighters are
still their major sources of inspiration and support.
A new phenomenon of the 1980s and the 1990s was the appearance
and aggravation of sectarian terrorism (the Sunni majority vs the Shia minority) in Islam
in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Denominational terrorism within the same religious group (the
Catholics vs the Protestants) was previously confined to Christianity in Northern Ireland.
It has now afflicted Islam too—mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In both these
countries, it is the majority group (the Sunnis ) which took to terrorism against the
minority group (the Shias), provoking the latter to retaliate in kind.
The terrorism of the majority sect was provoked not by any
political, economic, social or religious grievances, but by a determination to force the
minority sect to accept the majority sect's interpretation of the religion's teachings and
practices. This sectarian terrorism of the majority against the minority sect of the same
religion has been even more ruthless than the terrorism of Islamic groups against
Christians, Hindus and the Jewish people. While the number of successful international
terrorist incidents has declined during this decade, the average number of casualties per
successful incident has increased.
While the decline in the number of incidents is due to the better
training and capability of the counter-terrorism agencies and increased international
co-operation against terrorism, the increase in the number of victims per incident could
be attributed to the better training, expertise and weapons which had become available to
terrorist groups from various States such as the US during the Afghan war, Iran, Iraq,
Syria, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan which had not hesitated to use them to achieve
their own national geo-political objectives.
Despite international condemnation of State-sponsorship of
terrorism, official agencies of Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to assist
various Muslim extremist groups—each for its own reason. While they have assisted
other States in acting against ideological terrorist groups as seen from the Sudan's
assistance to France in the arrest and deportation of Carlos, they have been chary of
similarly acting against Islamic terrorists.
The only exceptions to this were the assistance extended by the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan to the FBI of the US in the arrest and
deportation of Ramzi Yousuf, wanted in the New York World Trade Centre bombing case, Mir
Aimal Kansi, wanted for the assassination of two CIA officers, and some suspects in the
recent bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzaniya.
Another phenomenon of the 1990s has been the private sponsorship
of terrorist groups by rich individuals (Example :Bin Laden) and private organisations in
order to achieve their own agenda and the use by the State of such private organisations
to help terrorist activities in other States without getting directly involved. A typical
example is the Pakistani use of the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad (the Centre For Preaching) and
its armed wing the Lashkar-e-Toiba (the Army of the Pure) in Kashmir and other parts of
India.
In addition to classical terrorist groups, irrational individuals
or groups of individuals have shown a tendency to take to terrorism to give vent to their
anger against the society or the Government. Typical examples would be the Aum Shinrikyo
sect of Japan, which killed a number of innocent civilians through the use of the Sarin
gas in March,1995, and the two US citizens, disgruntled against the Federal Government,
who bombed the building housing the Federal offices in Oklahoma in April,1995.
The terrorist groups of today have been able to constantly have
the quality of their weapons and means of communication upgraded with the help of
contributions from the prosperous members of their communities all over the world and
their earnings from the narcotics trade. While counter-terrorism agencies have scored many
spectacular successes in their ground action against terrorists, they have not had similar
success in stopping the flow of funds to terrorists and in effectively controlling the use
of narcotics to keep terrorism sustained.
The Internet is proving to be a double-edged weapon. It has
revolutionised means of communications and spread of knowledge. At the same time, the
rapid spread of Internet even before the intelligence and other security agencies and
their political masters have had time to understand the security implications of it and to
equip themselves to deal with those implications has made the tasks of counter-terrorism
agencies more difficult than in the past.
Modern means of communications such as mobile telephones, the FAX
instrument , the satellite telephone and the Internet, the mushrooming of public telephone
booths and cyber cafes, the availability of mobile telephones for temporary hiring and the
commercialisation of cryptography (the science of coding and decoding) have given the
terrorists hitherto unimaginable scope for operational flexibility.
A similar flexibility continues to be denied to intelligence and
counter-terrorism agencies by outmoded laws regulating communications interception and the
reluctance of society and the State, often under pressure from human rights groups, to
update these laws to empower the agencies to deal more effectively with high-tech
terrorism. The State and society unfairly expect high-tech terrorism to be tackled by
low-tech counter-terrorism methods.
The widespread dissemination by irrational elements through the
Internet of details regarding the making of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has placed
at the disposal of terrorist and terrorism-prone irrational elements knowledge of such
techniques.
And the collapse of the USSR, the floating around without jobs of
a large number of ex-Soviet scientists and the erosion of security measures in the WMD
establishments of the former States of the USSR have given rise to fears of terrorist and
irrational elements graduating one day to the use of WMD to intimidate States, Governments
and societies. The use of the Sarin gas by the Aum Shinrikiyo of Japan and Bin Laden's
justification, in his interview to the "Time" magazine ( January 13), of his
search for WMD show that such a scenario can no longer be dismissed as far-fetched.
How to equip the counter-terrorism agencies with the capability
to deal with such an eventuality without its resulting in an excessive increase in
counter-terrorism budgets and without creating an atmosphere of paranoia in civilian
society is a question to which adequate attention has not been paid outside the US and
Japan.
The networking of the financial, economic, military, scientific
and technological infrastructures of the world through computers has placed at the hands
of computer-literate terrorists the means of causing considerable economic damage without
having to penetrate the physical security infrastructure of establishments.
This is called cyber-terrorism. The cyber-terrorists have a new
class of high-tech mercenaries at their disposal. The mercenaries of the pre-cyber age
came from other countries crossing international borders to wield arms on behalf of the
terrorists for a monetary consideration. The hackers, the mercenaries of the cyber age,
would be able to assist terrorists hiring their services for the disruption of the data,
communication and public utility services networks of States without ever having to leave
the territory of their country.
International counter-terrorism co-operation has increased during
this decade, but this has been mainly in the form of sharing of intelligence and aids in
the investigation and prosecution of terrorist incidents. International co-operation
through the pooling of operational expertise and resources for joint operations to
penetrate terrorist networks is, however, lacking either due to political reasons or due
to fears of one's own operational secrecy being compromised or both.
Such co-operation is not easy to achieve. Intelligence and
counter-terrorism agencies of the same State are often reluctant to co-operate with each
other and to co-ordinate their operations. Any such co-operation at the international
level is not for tomorrow. Till such co-operation is achieved, counter-terrorism efforts
would continue to be stymied.
B.Raman
6-1-99
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat Govt. of India, and presently Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai)
