(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. E-Mail:
corde@vsnl.com
)
