The Taliban tangle

By P. Radhakrishnan

THAT THE terrorist attacks on the U.S. should not have happened, and reprisal is awaiting those who are suspected to have aided, abetted, and perpetrated them might be stating the obvious. What may not be so obvious is that the attacks and strategies to avert them in future have not been in perspective.

In terms of their execution, the attacks remain at the level of terrorism and not an ``act of war'' as made out by the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, inasmuch as no country has declared a war on the U.S. , and no country has claimed involvement in the attacks. Obviously, the U.S. President has given a twist to the meaning of war apparently to overcome his mortification that the world's ``superpower'' which he heads has also been at the receiving end, to appease the angry and anguished Americans, and to justify the much-touted U.S. ``retaliatory strikes''.

Stretching the U.S. President's claim to our own traumatic experience, would India have termed Rajiv Gandhi's assassination an act of war by the LTTE and attacked at least the LTTE-occupied areas of Sri Lanka? If an LTTE suicide squad were to smash the Mumbai Stock Exchange building or Parliament House, could India have seen it as an act of war and launched retaliatory strikes? As India is not the U.S., it could not have done these. In any case, if India were to attack Sri Lanka, as the global policeman would the U.S. have remained a silent spectator? It has one kind of moralism for itself in its self-interest and other kinds of moralism for developing countries.

If the fast-approaching retaliatory strikes by the U.S. are not a ``clash of civilisations'', as the U.S. President has claimed, there is every likelihood that these strikes will generate a series of such clashes. For, it is commonsense that virtually all the countries that the U.S. has bombed, devastated, and tried to strangulate through economic sanctions and whatnot have been Islamic.

This is a very important fact which the U.S. and other countries on its side ought to remember. In this context, it is important to keep in mind at least three issues.

One, as the Western countries have been acting in tandem with the U.S. on matters concerning the developing countries, especially military action and blockade, whether they are justified or not, and this has been made easier by the break-up of the Soviet Union which again was the working out of the tandem strategies of these countries (what Sartre characterised as the Master World) the divide between them and the developing countries, no matter to which religion and to which civilisation stage they belong, is too wide, which is intensely and intrinsically used by the Master World to its own gains. So, and given the elusive nature of the enemy, it will be naive to assume that the terrorists who attacked the U.S. are Taliban and Taliban alone and that as the Taliban is in Afghanistan, it, and those who support it should be exterminated.

Two, the overzealous overture of India's ruling class (read BJP politicians) in offering support to the U.S. (call it turning adversity into opportunity, fishing in troubled waters, and what have you), is ominous. For one thing, while the U.S. may devastate Afghanistan through retaliatory strikes, by allowing the U.S. to use Indian space for its military operations, India will be allowing the U.S. to have a permanent U.S. ``Panoptican'' in India through which it can have surveillance on all regions in this part of the world.

For another, as Generals may come and go and Pakistan will continue to remain India's immediate neighbour, considering that the BJP is Hindutva's political outfit whose rabid religious chauvinism is only too well known, any involvement by India in the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, which by all available indications would be deplored and even resisted by the Islamic world, will make Pakistan a still more aggressive enemy of India, and Kashmir a still more dangerous problem.

Three, if the claim or evidence that Osama bin Laden is the man behind the ``WTC mission'' is already clinched and all that the U.S. President wants is Osama bin Laden's head on his breakfast table, and if Afghanistan is bound to be devastated by the U.S. even after handing over Osama bin Laden (which is most unlikely), it is naive on the part of the U.S. to assume that the Mullahs and clerics are so muddle-headed as to lose both head and tail.

If the purpose is to ferret out the terrorists and put an end to their sprouting through a ``global assault on terrorism'', it has larger ramifications and moral and ethical dimensions concerning deprived groups who have no alternative but to take on heavily armed insensate states through violence and weaponry.

Closely related to this is the question of differentiating between terrorism and terrorism. For example, the LTTE is distinctly terrorist, fighting for what many would consider legitimate political demands. Contrast this with the BJP, which is a political outfit of the Sangh Parivar - a heterogeneous ensemble of fundamentalist organisations. Are we not justified in drawing the inference that a mafia is ruling us? How are we to judge whether the demands of the pressure groups are legitimate or not? What alternatives can there be for such groups to transform their demands into reality? Will stripping them of what they consider their only source to take on the state not amount to silencing them through state terrorism. Stated differently, the strategies for a ``global assault on terrorism'' are fraught with dangers, paradoxes and contradictions, and in the ultimate analysis, the states themselves are the worst terrorists.

To conclude, there is much to be said in favour of Noam Chomsky's following observations on the attack: ``The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of the project of ``missile defence''. ... But today's events will, very likely, be exploited to increase the pressure to develop these systems and put them into place. ``Defence'' is a thin cover for plans for militarisation of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public. In short, the crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains. That is even putting aside the likely U.S. actions, and what they will trigger - possibly more attacks like this one, or worse. The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be before the latest atrocities. As to how to react, we have a choice. We can express justified horror; we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators.''

(The writer is Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.)

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : Retribution, not revenge
Next     : Defining moment