The right response to Mumba: Beyond the anguish of the present tragedy and beyond the shared humanitarian grief is the undiminished responsibility to address the tangled problems. Hard as it may sound the process has to be sustained despite the occa- sional setback of the kind that we have just witnessed in Mumbai. The moral of the grisly tale is to redouble the effort to make the cur- rent dialogue more productive. By Tanvir Ahmad Khan AS the death toll in the latest terrorist atrocity in Mumbai rises to almost equal the number of victims in an earlier terrorist attack on the city in March 1993, speculation about the identity and motives of the perpetrators of the outrage also multiplies. In the absence of a definitive opinion from the investigating and law enforcement agencies (other than the names of two suspects), initial comments reveal a tendency to use a great human tragedy to reinforce existing biases. While it is entirely possible that this preconceived global explanation of violence gets substantiated by subsequent findings in Mumbai’s case, there is also a clear danger that it would blur an equally important focus on specific factors that are increasingly threatening the states and societies of South Asia, factors that urgently demand a collective approach by them. The generalisation that clouds the horizon most is that of a global war on terrorism which in practice closely follows the contours of the construct known as the clash of civilisations. The enemy is the shadowy jihadist drawing inspiration and resources from an elusive organisation called Al Qaeda. In a media driven world, he provides the instant focus for every act of wanton terror anywhere in the world. He is the perfect reason to see a Manichean divide across the entire globe. He is also the alibi for an honest and intensive analysis of a particular situation. Trying to cope with a heart-rending event that has taken more than 200 innocent lives in Mumbai, India showed restraint in attributing it to any specific organisation without further proof. But within minutes of the deadly explosions, major international media outlets were trying to link them to global Islamic militancy and, in particular, to Lashkar-i-Taiba which in turn was traced to Pakistan. When the Lashkar and Hizbul Mujahideen issued a firm denial, the allegation was implicitly sustained by pointing out that they never accept responsibility for terrorist acts. It was repeatedly argued that the bombing was carried out with an efficiency that could come only from a well established network of terror or a foreign intelligence service. The royalist Iranian emigre, Amir Taheri, who is part of a prolific group engaged by the pro-conservative Benador Associates to conduct polemics against what he calls “the Islamist international of terror” rushed to the press to surmise amongst other things that the Mumbai mayhem might have been timed to coincide with this weekend’s G-8 summit in St. Petersburg where India would be a guest. A particularly wild stream-of-consciousness kind of analysis that washes away all canons of rigorous intellect is often used in the hope that it would help President Bush maintain his crusade in the midst of plummeting approval rates in the United States and justify the staggering simplicities of the terror war. Notwithstanding the categorical condemnation by the highest leaders of Pakistan of the murderous assault on Mumbai, a major theme has been whether the Indian government would be able to continue the ongoing dialogue with Pakistan. At a time when the so called composite dialogue is already losing momentum, it is being suggested that the meeting of the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan scheduled for July 22 may be a casualty of the Mumbai tragedy. That this meeting becomes all the more necessary if there are any misgivings about the international links of the Mumbai miscreants is hardly being mentioned. If there are rogue elements out to wreck the IndiaPakistan peace process, the two governments clearly need to identify them for a well-coordinated response. There would not be a better gift for these elements than putting bilateral consultations on hold. It is as difficult to rule out an “Islamist” connection at the moment as it is to assume it uncritically and with nothing better than vague circumstantial evidence. Dragging the Indian Muslims, who would be taking the same trains of Mumbai’s western line as the followers of other faiths, into the fray was particularly sinister as the communal situation in this part of India has not exactly returned to normal after the Gujrat killings. The allegations in the past against the Students Islamic Movement have been intangible and inconclusive and a knee jerk effort to weave a story that knits it, the Lashkar and Pakistan together is a cause of concern. Not very long ago I wrote about the growing incidence of political violence in South Asia in this column. Islam certainly did not provide a common matrix for this disturbing trend noticeable in virtually every regional state. Sri Lanka, India, Nepal and Pakistan were the obvious cases where one would have to go far beyond America’s war on terrorism to understand the stresses and strains exploding into insurgencies of one kind or another. Obviously, the nation-building processes of the last 60 years have had some inherent flaws that fuel these fires. Then there is the inevitable cost of opening up to the global economy to achieve and sustain high growth rates — the infamous downside of globalisation; all over South Asia an under class is seething with anger at the widening social disparities. The situation demands honest introspection as well as a closer democratic interaction between the people and the ruling elites. Insofar as the infrastructure of violence seems to acquire a general trans-national South Asian operational capability, the states of the region will have to develop a much higher degree of mutual trust and cooperation than available at the moment. The Indian foreign office reacted sharply to Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s first comment on the Mumbai tragedy. Some outside commentators also found the reference to a settlement of the Kashmir dispute “distasteful”. Perhaps Mr Kasuri should have shown greater tact. He might have forgotten for a moment that it is an unwritten convention of the present war on terror that the barbarity of the day be detached from its historical context. The images of horror that go round the globe in real time are supposed to align public outrage with purely militaristic solutions now underway and not invite attention to a chain of causes and effects. The militants in Palestine or Iraq attack “liberty” and “our way of life” as President Bush would immediately proclaim; they blow themselves and others up as they are driven by primeval evil and not by the desire to shake off foreign occupation. For once the very fashionable Mr Kasuri was being unfashionable; he referred to the underlying causes of the malaise in our region. The sanctity and sensitivity of the occasion apart, India like neighbouring states has serious problems to resolve. Though more successful than in other South Asian states, federalism in India has yet to find a satisfactory solution of the northeastern provinces. Significantly, different rates of growth between clusters of states and growing inequalities even within the same state enable Indian Maoists to commit acts of lawlessness in more than one hundred districts of India. Despite noticeable improvement on yesteryear, communalism still ranks among the causes of violence and discrimination in Indian society. When it comes to Kashmir, the Indian state is no more imaginative today than it was a decade ago. None of this should bring any joy to a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi. For their future progress and prosperity, the states of South Asia are more interdependent than they care to admit. Not all of Pakistan’s current troubles are the consequence of exposure to Al Qaeda though there is little doubt that an excessive use of force to satisfy the insatiable demand from Washington to produce better statistics has exacerbated the situation. Be that as it may, there are explo sive ethnic and tribal issues that get aggravated because of an imbalance between the military policy and corrective action in the political and economic domain. There is also widespread fear in Pakistan that India is creating an infrastructure of terror in Afghanistan to squeeze Pakistan in the transIndus provinces. Sri Lanka went through a period of negative attention from Tamil Nadu and New Delhi. The effects were so devastating that long after that interventionist policy was replaced with a more benign interest in the island, there is no clear roadmap to stability. Nepal has gone through a revolutionary shift of power but it still faces the daunting task of writing a constitution that would bring the youthful Maoists into mainstream politics for all times to come. Pakistan wants to be a frontline state in the war against terrorism. India is keen to be a partner of the United States in managing the world. Part of the price the two countries pay is to accept a facile explanation of our time of troubles against our better knowledge of the real dynamics at work. India and Pakistan must act as the vanguard of a South Asian march to genuine regionalism. There has to be a consensus on the causes of instability, be it religious bigotry, ethnicity or the hitherto intractable issues left behind by the withdrawal of paramount alien powers nearly six decades ago. Beyond the anguish of the present tragedy and beyond the shared humanitarian grief is the undiminished responsibility to address these tangled problems. Hard as it may sound the process has to be sustained despite the occasional setback of the kind that we have just witnessed in Mumbai. The moral of the grisly tale is to redouble the effort to make the current dialogue more productive. The modest gains made so far should not be lost in mutual recriminations but should become the cornerstone of an imposing edifice of regional cooperation. The writer is a former foreign secretary. Effects of 9/11 on Pakistan By Javed Rana
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 01:22:50 +0000
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