Monday

08


August , 2016
WE CAN’T HAVE A COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICY, WHICH WILL ELIMINATE ONLY A FEW TERRORISTS BUT NOT DEAL WITH T HE CAUSES THAT PRODUCE THEM
00:00 am

B.E. Bureau


Dr. Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Professor of International Relations at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. In 2013-14, he was the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut. He has authored over seventeen books including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (2013), and The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (2016). He regularly writes for the Frontline, The Hindu, and several media publications usually on West Asian politics, development economics, North-South relations, and current events. He is also the Chief Editor of the New Delhi-based publisher, LeftWord Books. In an exclusive and open-ended interview with BE, Dr. Prashad provides insights into the global threat of terrorism, the growth of the Daesh/ Islamic State, citizen journalism and crisis reporting, and the growth of independent think tanks in India.

Q. Could you please provide the context of your major works ?

A. I have mostly written about the politics of West Asia. I have been interested in how the politics of the region has developed, especially after the Iraq War. The Iraq War had a domino effect that impacted the world. With the ouster of Saddam Hussain, the leader of the Ba’ath Party and the President of Iraq by the US and its allies, a pro-Iranian government took his place. The exiles from Syria and Iran started coming to Baghdad. Iran started to have a friendly government in Baghdad and Beirut, a semi-friendly government in Syria, and an ally in Hezbollah. So, Iran, which was previously isolated, now has a line of friends in West Asia. Americans also overthrew the Taliban government from Afghanistan. This has had an enormous impact on Central and South East Asia. When it comes to India, the country got a huge window of opportunity to enhance its ties with Afghanistan, which put pressure on Pakistan. For obvious reasons, Pakistan does not want India to have access to Afghanistan. India wants to sandwich Pakistan from both sides. What the Iraq War exmplifies is that one event can have multiple consequences. I am following these multiple stories as they are still being written.

Q. While there is a lot of focus on non-state actors as agents of terror, the phenomenon of state terror, which has resulted in a huge loss of life and property, is being mostly ignored. Don’t all states use terror as a matter of policy while they might shy from using the term “terrorism” when it comes to their own acts?

A. The state encourages something of this sort sometimes. It’s like an accepted policy, which later turns against the state. For example, who helped the LTTE (Liberation of the Tamil Tigers of Elam)? Was it for someone’s gain? There are many questions on the different aspects of state terror, which need to be asked and answered for any headway to be made in countering international terrorism.

Q. At present, one finds Islamist (the term is used to differentiate it from the religion of Islam) terrorism, a term often attributed to the acts of the Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Daesh, and similar such entities, viewed as a global threat. There must have been some trigger cause or event for the origin and growth of Islamist terror groups across continents, most of which surfaced in the 1980s. What could have been this tipping point?

A. We have to go back to the arrival of Nasserism in Egypt and West Asia. Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser (who came to power by overthrowing the monarchy in 1952 and instituted far-reaching reforms in the country till his death in 1970) was not a friend of the Left or of the Right. His was a form of third world nationalism that combined pan-Arabism and socialism and had a wide range. It was against the idea of monarchical rule. The Saudis feared the lack of legitimacy of the Saudi King according to Nasserism. The Saudis felt that they needed a king. Democracy was not the way for them. At that point of time, a most neglected organization was the World Muslim League, which started to counter secular nationalists. They created propaganda materials in Arabic, Russian, etc. which reached a huge number of people. They also created their interpretation of the Quran. They promoted their view against the Left. They also pursued the angle that Muslims can’t be secular. They have to have a king. It was the foundation of what we see now in many West Asian and Gulf countries. Here we need to differentiate between Salafis and Islamists. There can be many Salafis who don’t believe in violence. Salaf means ‘the way of living’. They cannot be viewed as terrorists. Some people think that Islam is the problem but it is actually the Islamist groups like the Al Qaeda’s and the Daesh’s interpretation of Islam that is the problem. Liberal thinking says there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, but actually the political history of the affected region is the problem.

Q. So what sparked this form of Islamist terrorism?

A. The general fear of the Saudis might have started this. Nasser in Tehran was greeted well whereas the Saudi King did not receive this kind of welcome. The Saudi rulers found Nasser to be popular. To counter him, an alternative ideology was promoted by them, which was grounded in Islamist ideology or Wahabism. Then came the Iranian revolution, which  was the obvious trigger. It was a profound revolution where the assertion of religious identity and the use of religious terminology and practices became the instruments of protest and a substitute for the existing form of what was deemed as immoral and corrupt governance. Ali Shariati, a prominent idealogue of the Iranian revolution, felt a major lesson could be drawn from Marxism. In the 1950s, Marxism was popular in the Arab world. The Today Party was very popular among the youth. The space for monarchy was over in the minds of the population. The meaning of sovereign had transformed from meaning the king to meaning the people. Popular discourse was that the rule of the king is not needed, not even for the Muslims. Now there was a Muslim dispensation. Countries like Saudi Arabia were actually called Islamic republic not Islamic monachy, which became a challenge for the Saudis who are Sunnis. Shia population has a majority in Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. They were predominantly the working class and the most oppressed. It is actually the Saudi interpretation of events which the world media accepts. It is more complicated than the interpretation of sectarianism. It’s not just about religion but about oppression and the lack of socio-economic justice. For many years, the Shias and the Sunnis lived in great proximity. The Saudi king and the Iranian king were friends. We forget all these and we start to accept the Saudi interpretation of how things unfolded. Once terrorism gets equated with Islam and Muslims, we don’t try to think about anything else? This is lazy thinking.Q. The concept of “state”, a modern, secular concept, is rejected in Islam and yet we find the Daesh, which bases its credibility on being the “true practitioners of Islam”, calling itself the “Islamic State”. Isn’t this contradictory and what does this appropriation of the term “state” by an Islamist terror group indicate?

A. The idea is more about the very old West Asian idea of being the land of Islam or Dar ul Islam. In 2006, Al Qaida came to Iran and planted this idea. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the head of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, was a very dangerous and sectarian man. Even Osama bin Laden was less sectarian than the Saudis. According to him, his main enemy was the “far enemy” ( the US, Israel, etc.) and then the apostate regimes in West Asia, and not Muslims belonging to other sects. The idea of the Islamic State in Iraq was aligned with the idea of a collapsed state, the destruction of Iraq by the US. The war between the US and Iraq in 2003 left the government of Iraq in the hands of the Shias. This was another trigger that created Islamic State to counter this.

Q. Technology seems to have changed the nature of warfare. The terrorist and the counter-terrorist organisations both use technology in the battle-field. By this, both sides can be aware of what the other is doing. Even citizens and journalists use socia media and technology to relay real time images and reports. Is a wired battlefield good or bad?

A. War is boring. Just imagine, Kurdish troops sitting in an almost destroyed building, watching videos. It’s very surreal. Soldiers are able to connect with their family by at least looking at their family pictures or communicating with them through emails and social media.  Only wired battlefield can provide us with live feed. Visuals might be decontextualized. Viewers might not get any history of the context, so prejudices might come in. Through live feeds, attention of the viewer is fixed on the content only.

Q. So how would citizen journalism work here? Won’t a lack of professionalism in reporting facts on the ground and filtering the feed create problems?

A. This is the age of a lack of editors. When you put someone on a story, they watch videos on YouTube and that starts shaping the story. Journalists should check with different sources, the government’s and the opposition’s views, check history, verify all the facts, and then make the story. For example, the BBC once did a story on the Azadi movement of Kashmir and the Indian government. An image used during the coverage, which showed battle tanks, seemed wrong to me. I asked the BBC for the tape and found that the image was taken from Kosovo. This was sloppy journalism. Even professionals can slip up. In the case of citizen journalist, while it’s good one is getting reports from the site, the professional news networks need to be careful about fact-checking such reports.

Q) To deal with transnational terrorism and such security threats, there are many think tanks in the US starting from ones hosted by its universities. But many seem to focus on quantitative methods of threat analysis. In India, it is felt that the few think tanks that are there seem to mostly follow the government line. Their research is predominantly based on literature-review and what is presented by American researchers. What is your view about India getting more independent think tanks to provide policy suggestions based on both quantitative and qualitative research, keeping in mind the specific needs of the country, to the government, and giving a more objective view to deal with threats like terrorism?

A. India will hopefully get such think tanks shortly. What the country needs is more independent think tanks that get support for research. When it comes to terrorism, it is very important to trace its root causes. In Iraq and Syria, there have been immense contradictions in the society, economy, and polity that produced the Daesh. Yanks came in and cut down agricultural subsidy after the war. This made the farmers angry. What if the Left was strong in the country? The Daesh wouldn’t have got any chance to get hold of the ideas of the population. The counter-terrorism studies and policies done by the US do not see this contradiction as central to an understanding of the threat. The symptom is always left out from their understanding. Terrorism is dealt with like pre-modern medicine. Syria said they were happy with the Daesh as it brought stability, like Taliban brought stability in Afghanistan; at least the war had stopped. The Yanks’ bombing of the region is not the answer. Even in the US, several think tanks are blind to all this.  We are in an intellectual gutter. It will create intellectual inferiority in the universities as people, especially the media, will always go to the think tanks for information and analysis as they get it fast from there. The intellectual academia will lose their importance because of such think tanks.

Q. Covering such a sensitive topic as religion and terrorism can be difficult for the media, especially in democracies where editors are the gatekeepers. How far can we push the envelope when it comes to getting at the truth behind terrorism?

A. Everyone has their red lines, even the US.  Even magazines like the Caravan go soft on a few cover stories. In the US, the red lines are clear. The main red line is on American benevolence- no paper can undermine this narrative. When it comes to India, how can you understand the Kashmir problem if you take the view that the Indian government is there to help Kashmir blindly?

Q. What exacerbated the situation in Kashmir?

A. South Asia is a multinational zone. Monarchs here were different from whom they ruled. For example, in Kashmir, a Hindu king ruled a population which was predominantly Muslim. The unsettled history of partition continues to create problems in Kashmir. Communal identity plays a massive role in Kashmir. The imrpisonment of  Sheikh Abdullah, one of the closest comrades of Nehru was another issue. This made the people more alienated. Nehru was suspicious of Abdullah. He did not like powerful people who could surpass him like Sardar Patel, Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, etc. No one was left to counter Nehru. The infiltration attacks never appeared long before our age. It is rather late in the game. It has more to do with the Indo-Pak problem and it also relates to Afghanistan. It’s a policy of destabilization by the ISI and it got full support from the time of General Zia. But our enemies did not cross our borders. They crept through our weaknesses. It’s not only Pakistan who came and attacked the country but India also created its weak spots politically.

Q. What’s a good starting point to deal with this problem?

A.  We need to raise questions. We all grew up in some stable place. Maybe we were lucky to have everything. But on our way to school, we saw violence against the poor. Nobody said anything. In hearts, we have bled. If in a society there is no trade union movement, no one is there to take up your issue. That is why we have anarchic violence. What did the Daesh and other such organizations do? They started talking about atrocities and inequalities,  and about issues that  relayed to the oppressed masses. They spoke to the educated and the uneducated alike and started filling their minds with their own vested agenda. Their ideology of violence was grounded on the grievances of the marginalised. We are not justifying this but to deal with this, we need to find the root causes of terrorism. In India, it is strange but we do not see much violence counter widespread oppression.  In the US, socio-economic contradictions produce such violence. We can’t have a counter- terrorism policy, which will eliminate only a few terrorists but not deal with the causes that produce them.

Q. As contexts of terrorism are different, can there be a universal counter-terrorism guideline?

A. Terrorism is a strategy and not ideology. It is mostly context-driven. Even terrorists don’t say they are terrorists. Violence is used out of necessity. No one liked violence for itself, whether it was Maximilian Robespierre or Osama bin Laden.

Q. So can one differentiate between acts of terrorism and war theory (often used by terrorists to gain legitimacy) by stressing the means of war being as legitimate as the goals of war?

A. There are ways of war that have been unjust but have been claimed to be just. The just war theory is flawed. Look at America. They killed many native people to have their own “living space”. But we focus only on Adolf Hitler’s Lebensraum ( living space) policy. Hitler, who believed in the racial purity and superiority of the Aryan race, killed Jews for this space. It was industrial scale violence. Even the greatest villain felt his war was just. Just war theory is weak because of this. In India, Kautilya also spoke about just war. But in counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency, just war cannot be homeopathic bombing, it cannot just entail force based measures. We need to target the cause, not the symptom, and treat the disease. But to do so, we need to start discussing the causes and not get blinded by uncritical nationalist sentiments or deterred by fear of reprisal.

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