The London Bombings are a success story in the Jehadi lexicon
The latest blasts paralysing London, remarkably similar to the ones in Madrid last year, are another reminder to the world that the war against international terror is far from over, that the terrorists have the reach, access, ability and the will. This was probably not the first attempt that was made in London and there have been several terror warnings, but success came because the attacks were obviously better rehearsed and meticulously planned. Just as the September 11 attacks and the Madrid attacks, the explosions were at morning peak hours and intended to inflict maximum damage and to attract maximum attention with the G-8 Summit in Gleneagles.
It may be early days but it appears that the terrorists used timer devices and not suicide bombers. The loss in human lives and injuries would be immense; the loss to property and business would run into millions of pounds over time; and the damage to race relations difficult to measure. A success story in the jehadi lexicon.
On the morning of July 7, there was apparently an unhurried but professional energy in action on the streets in London and as in New York in 2001, the TV did not show any scenes of panic, dead bodies or any gruesome scene; there were no wailing crowds to be seen on the box - the sort of thing that is oxygen to terrorists. Everything was about self-censorship and there were no allegations of intelligence failure and no political blame game. Here in India it is invariably the other way round. Some of us even described the Ayodhya terrorists as militants, which is giving respectability in a way to them, just as the word fidayeen gives to suicide bombers
Islamic terror continues to unfold itself in sporadic bursts in different places from New York to Bali to Akshardham to Ayodhya and has not unfolded itself in its full fury. Since Sep 11 2001, there have been attacks in 2002 at an Islamabad church (March), Karachi (May), US Consulate, Karachi (June), the notorious Bali bombing (October); Casablanca, Istanbul, Riyadh were some of the targets in 2003 and Madrid, Tashkent, Djakarta and Sinai in Egypt followed in 2004. Throughout this period, terrorist attacks in India continued but that attracted very little international attention.
This terrorism is not simply about opposing democracy or freedoms or a way of life. It is about US policies in the region. It is, as writers like John Gray (Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern) have said, as much about an Islamic rage arising from the rapid globalisation and modernisation and of years of exploitation by external powers helped their own rulers perceived to be lackeys of foreign powers. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s warning last November, that America must be forced to submit to what is right through violence, applies to US and its friends.
USA’s selective response of tilting at windmills and sheltering other friends is not the best response to terror that is bound to grow. The frightening aspect of this rather pointless and very brutal war in Iraq (Islam’s second holiest place) and, earlier in Afghanistan, is that it has created hatred and terrorists where there were none. The entire exercise is seen increasingly as more an opportunity for projection of power and not as war on terror.
As US casualties mount, costs increase (nearing the cost of the Cold War) and there is more strident domestic criticism of the war in Iraq, it is possible that the US leadership will find the political cost of continuation of this war becoming increasingly unbearable. The world cannot afford to see US lose yet cannot also afford to see US fight this war in the manner it is doing. Unfortunately, at present there is little likelihood that the US will change its policies of establishing a New American Century and the war in Iraq will not only continue but may even extend in some form to Iran.
The problem is, there will surely come a time, (there are increasing references in USA to Vietnam) when the US chooses to withdraw into fortress America and glower angrily at those outside leaving them to fend for themselves. The price the rest of the world, especially those seen as partners of the US, will have to pay will be enormous. US withdrawal now from Iraq would be seen by the terrorists as the first significant victory in their campaign of driving US out of the Islamic world especially on the Palestine issue. The next steps would be to purify the Saudi soil by getting rid of the present regime and similar action in other parts of the Islamic world to get rid of the pro-American ruling elite. And having convinced themselves that it was jehad that won them victory in Afghanistan against the Soviets, the present jehadis will claim victory against the other, remaining Super power. This would be the New World Order; Colour Green. Now that India has signed a Defence Pact with the US, it is going to be in much sharper focus on the jehadi radar for India increasingly falls in the category of ‘my enemy’s friend is my enemy’.
Perhaps no other country has faced unending and varied terrorism as we in India
As London, Madrid and the innumerable bomb blasts in India as well as the daily tally in Baghdad has shown, the modern weapon of the terrorist is a truck, a car or a human being laden with bombs. Precision bombs will eliminate leading terrorists but not terrorism. Daisy cutters and cluster bombs will only add to what is described with considerable insensitivity --collateral damage – killing of innocent civilians. For the world has yet to find a way of killing a man or a woman who is willing to die, because that does not kill the mindset. The world is not fighting an American war against terror aimed at American targets only. Global reach should really mean global reach, and not just anti-US.
Perhaps no other country has faced unending and varied terrorism as we in India have over the last 57 years. Indians have weathered the storms but not overcome them yet. The experience of the Indian counter-terrorist is possibly the widest in the world. Yet this will not prevent more attacks. The fear today is that since the terrorist infrastructures exist in the neighbourhood and cells exist in India, the kind of terrorist action in Ayodhya can be repeated. So far we have been lucky – each time the security forces were equal to the task; but as they say in this game, the State has to be lucky all the time, the terrorist has to be lucky only once. It takes little imagination to work out what could have happened in India had these six men got through the various security cordons in Ayodhya. And how many places of worship and for how long will the State have to protect them.
The range and timing of the attacks over the last few years indicates that terrorists went global quite some time ago. The funding is global, the weapons’ acquisition is global, the foot soldiers are re-deployable at will and the targets are global. Unless the counter-terrorist goes global we will never, ever, succeed. And a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist; not my terrorist and your terrorist or my terrorist first and then yours.
Source : hindustan times 10th July 2005
The latest blasts paralysing London, remarkably similar to the ones in Madrid last year, are another reminder to the world that the war against international terror is far from over, that the terrorists have the reach, access, ability and the will. This was probably not the first attempt that was made in London and there have been several terror warnings, but success came because the attacks were obviously better rehearsed and meticulously planned. Just as the September 11 attacks and the Madrid attacks, the explosions were at morning peak hours and intended to inflict maximum damage and to attract maximum attention with the G-8 Summit in Gleneagles.
It may be early days but it appears that the terrorists used timer devices and not suicide bombers. The loss in human lives and injuries would be immense; the loss to property and business would run into millions of pounds over time; and the damage to race relations difficult to measure. A success story in the jehadi lexicon.
On the morning of July 7, there was apparently an unhurried but professional energy in action on the streets in London and as in New York in 2001, the TV did not show any scenes of panic, dead bodies or any gruesome scene; there were no wailing crowds to be seen on the box - the sort of thing that is oxygen to terrorists. Everything was about self-censorship and there were no allegations of intelligence failure and no political blame game. Here in India it is invariably the other way round. Some of us even described the Ayodhya terrorists as militants, which is giving respectability in a way to them, just as the word fidayeen gives to suicide bombers
Islamic terror continues to unfold itself in sporadic bursts in different places from New York to Bali to Akshardham to Ayodhya and has not unfolded itself in its full fury. Since Sep 11 2001, there have been attacks in 2002 at an Islamabad church (March), Karachi (May), US Consulate, Karachi (June), the notorious Bali bombing (October); Casablanca, Istanbul, Riyadh were some of the targets in 2003 and Madrid, Tashkent, Djakarta and Sinai in Egypt followed in 2004. Throughout this period, terrorist attacks in India continued but that attracted very little international attention.
This terrorism is not simply about opposing democracy or freedoms or a way of life. It is about US policies in the region. It is, as writers like John Gray (Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern) have said, as much about an Islamic rage arising from the rapid globalisation and modernisation and of years of exploitation by external powers helped their own rulers perceived to be lackeys of foreign powers. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s warning last November, that America must be forced to submit to what is right through violence, applies to US and its friends.
USA’s selective response of tilting at windmills and sheltering other friends is not the best response to terror that is bound to grow. The frightening aspect of this rather pointless and very brutal war in Iraq (Islam’s second holiest place) and, earlier in Afghanistan, is that it has created hatred and terrorists where there were none. The entire exercise is seen increasingly as more an opportunity for projection of power and not as war on terror.
As US casualties mount, costs increase (nearing the cost of the Cold War) and there is more strident domestic criticism of the war in Iraq, it is possible that the US leadership will find the political cost of continuation of this war becoming increasingly unbearable. The world cannot afford to see US lose yet cannot also afford to see US fight this war in the manner it is doing. Unfortunately, at present there is little likelihood that the US will change its policies of establishing a New American Century and the war in Iraq will not only continue but may even extend in some form to Iran.
The problem is, there will surely come a time, (there are increasing references in USA to Vietnam) when the US chooses to withdraw into fortress America and glower angrily at those outside leaving them to fend for themselves. The price the rest of the world, especially those seen as partners of the US, will have to pay will be enormous. US withdrawal now from Iraq would be seen by the terrorists as the first significant victory in their campaign of driving US out of the Islamic world especially on the Palestine issue. The next steps would be to purify the Saudi soil by getting rid of the present regime and similar action in other parts of the Islamic world to get rid of the pro-American ruling elite. And having convinced themselves that it was jehad that won them victory in Afghanistan against the Soviets, the present jehadis will claim victory against the other, remaining Super power. This would be the New World Order; Colour Green. Now that India has signed a Defence Pact with the US, it is going to be in much sharper focus on the jehadi radar for India increasingly falls in the category of ‘my enemy’s friend is my enemy’.
Perhaps no other country has faced unending and varied terrorism as we in India
As London, Madrid and the innumerable bomb blasts in India as well as the daily tally in Baghdad has shown, the modern weapon of the terrorist is a truck, a car or a human being laden with bombs. Precision bombs will eliminate leading terrorists but not terrorism. Daisy cutters and cluster bombs will only add to what is described with considerable insensitivity --collateral damage – killing of innocent civilians. For the world has yet to find a way of killing a man or a woman who is willing to die, because that does not kill the mindset. The world is not fighting an American war against terror aimed at American targets only. Global reach should really mean global reach, and not just anti-US.
Perhaps no other country has faced unending and varied terrorism as we in India have over the last 57 years. Indians have weathered the storms but not overcome them yet. The experience of the Indian counter-terrorist is possibly the widest in the world. Yet this will not prevent more attacks. The fear today is that since the terrorist infrastructures exist in the neighbourhood and cells exist in India, the kind of terrorist action in Ayodhya can be repeated. So far we have been lucky – each time the security forces were equal to the task; but as they say in this game, the State has to be lucky all the time, the terrorist has to be lucky only once. It takes little imagination to work out what could have happened in India had these six men got through the various security cordons in Ayodhya. And how many places of worship and for how long will the State have to protect them.
The range and timing of the attacks over the last few years indicates that terrorists went global quite some time ago. The funding is global, the weapons’ acquisition is global, the foot soldiers are re-deployable at will and the targets are global. Unless the counter-terrorist goes global we will never, ever, succeed. And a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist; not my terrorist and your terrorist or my terrorist first and then yours.
Source : hindustan times 10th July 2005
