Terrorism has become a global phenomenon posing a major threat to international peace, security and stability. Access to advance technology, including cyberspace, sophisticated communications, global funding and military grade weapons has given such groups enormous strength. It is no wonder that terrorism constitutes one of the principal challenges at the global, regional and national levels and has become a key factor in national security planning.
Providing sponsorship and safe havens have further played a major role in the phenomenal growth of global terrorism. In addition, State support has granted terrorist groups access to resources, guidance and logistics, which would normally be beyond their capabilities. Any effort to counter the activities of terrorist groups carries the danger of placing the victim nation in direct confrontation with the host nation and its resources.
In recent few years, perception of ‘Global Terrorism’ has undergone a massive makeover with the rise of violent armed terror groups especially in the Middle East, South Asia and African continent. This phenomenon could be attributed to the diminishing control in the terror space of the al-Qaeda leadership, which just a decade ago was the face of terrorism. The shift of AQ Network from the Middle East to South Asia is a phenomenon, which is of serious concern to India. The Boko-Haram-IS alliance primarily seeks to enhance the idea of global jihad with an aggressive brand of terror and footprint of Caliphate into Africa, through innovative measures.
The new face of global terrorism can be most vividly seen in the dramatic change and growth in its infrastructure. Terrorism has come a long way from selective recruitment in secret cells to mass recruitment. In addition, the source of recruitment and training is no longer confined to the affected areas but spans the entire globe, with a phenomenal upgradation of weaponry. Funds and finance channels are no longer confined to resources locally mobilised through individual contributions, extortion and crime.
Radicalisation of populace, particularly youth, is another trend and one of the most challenging problems being faced the world over. Several countries in the world have identified this problem and have taken measures to check and control the process of radicalisation and India has timely busted some modules that were planning to orchestrate terrorist attacks on her soil.
State-of-the-art communication systems are available to the terrorist which is at times better than the ones being used by the counter-terrorist agencies. Access to advanced technology including cyber-space, internet, electronic mail, etc. has provided terrorist groups with a global communication system. It has also provided such groups with an immensely destructive tool which can be potentially crippling for technology based economies.
Another relatively new dimension is the networking of terrorist groups with the criminal underworld including organized crime gangs, gunrunners, smugglers, drug peddlers, with hawala and parallel banking channels being used for ensuring global flows of finance. It has enabled global terrorist groups to use the infrastructure and terrain knowledge of local outfits for launching attacks in countries, despite having no presence in the area.
India has kept a keen watch on the growth of ISIS and their ways of using social media as a key tool for ideological indoctrination, recruitment and networking by targeting a section of young generation. The potential threat posed by IS are large scale radicalisation of Muslim youth throughout the world, rise in “Lone-Wolf” and terror attacks by returnee foreign fighters to their home countries. The terror attacks in Australia and France are telling examples of such threats.
The on-going propaganda by IS has significantly altered jihadi discourse in India, which so far was rooted in grievances against the Indian state/society. Indian social fabric has not been affected by the emergence of Islamic State and this will not have any further impact in our country.
The events of September 11, 2001 marked a watershed in the march of international action against global terrorism. India has consistently taken steps to intensify and strengthen international co-operation through a variety of means. Terrorism, in all forms, including, Left Wing Extremism, Insurgency, etc., poses a challenge on national sovereignty of India and it already faces a serious challenge due to relentless efforts of Pakistan sponsored anti India Islamist groups like LeT, JeM, HUJI and Hijbul Mujahideen .
Emergence of India at the global level is also being challenged by the terrorist groups, due to its vibrant economy and plural character. Devising a strategy to counter these diverse trends is an extremely complex task. India has taken steps for setting up of Joint Working Groups (JWGs) on counter-terrorism matters with key countries. Bilateral treaties on Mutual Legal Assistance (MLATs) in criminal matters to facilitate investigation, collection of evidence, transfer of witnesses, location & action against proceeds of crime etc. have been signed with other countries.
Our Government has placed security and safety as its top priority. It has identified several key areas and allocated enough budgetary resources to address this issue. It has boosted the security-related infrastructure at the border management by launching new schemes, and has been able to successfully minimize cross-border-infiltration. Similarly, it has allocated substantial funds to the police modernisation programmes all over the country with a view to ensure quick and better response mechanisms. We have raised Regional Hubs of NSG battalions in important strategic locations, to meet any unforeseen challenges.
We have created a new division in the Home Ministry exclusively to deal with Counter Terrorism. Having realized the importance of funds for the growth of terrorist organisations and the necessity to curb its flow, this Government introduced Demonetization and got raids conducted by Security Agencies, to choke the funding patterns of various terrorists’ outfits and effectively curbed the expansionist designs of these outfits.
The Govt. of India in tandem with the State Governments, has adopted a multi-pronged approach to deal with the emerging situation. What we need is a sustained united effort, to identity the terror modules operating in the Globe and neutralise them. Only then, our dream of ‘New India’ can be realised, which aims elimination of terrorism completely.
Besides, we have taken a slew of developmental agenda to further, curb the spread of terrorism. I believe this Government has successfully delivered on this front, in the form of special projects such as Road Requirement Plan, improvement of Rail Connectivity, installation of Mobile Towers, improvement of education and health infrastructure, financial inclusion, among others. The success is visible in the sharp decline of violence, be it in J&K, North East or LWE affected areas.What we need is cooperation & coordination from all countries, to make this globe safer and secure, where every citizen is free and is able to walk with heads held high.
(This article is a summary of the inaugural address made by Shri Rajnath Singh,
Union Minister of Home Affairs, Government of India at the Counter Terrorism Conference 2018
on 14th March, 2018 at Gurugram, Haryana.)
(This article is carried in the print edition of May-June 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

The sad truth is that governments, law enforcement, security forces, intellectuals and journalists do not have an ideological response to political violence’s latest reiteration, jihadism. Moreover, the struggle against political violence, is not one that is predominantly ideological.
To add to this, mistakes are being repeated. Al-Qaeda produced the counterterrorism industry in the context of a response that was focussed on law enforcement, security and military engagement. To be sure, that has produced significant results. It has enhanced security across the globe, stopped plots before they could be executed, driven al-Qaeda into caves, and deprived the Islamic State of its territorial base.
All of that, however has not solved the problem, nor has it fundamentally reduced the attraction of religiously-cloaked extremism. No doubt, social media has provided militants with a megaphone. But let’s be clear: social media are vehicles, media channels, they are not drivers. Yet, much like the terrorism industry, the call for a counter-narrative has produced an industry of its own. Like the terrorism industry, it has vested interests of its own: its sustainability is dependent on the continued existence of perceived threats.
Further troubling the waters is the fact that the public and private anti-terrorism and counternarrative industries see human rights as second to ensuring security and safety; have little interest in addressing the problem through notions of alienation, marginalization, socio-economic disenfranchisement, youth aspirations and basic rights in which counterterrorism and counter-narratives would be embedded. Aiding and abetting the problem are the ever more evident campaigns by non-egalitarian and non-inclusive democratic societies as well as autocratic Middle Eastern and North African regimes that either have reduced interest in independent analysis and reporting, seek to restrict freedoms of expression and the press, or define any form of dissent as terrorism. The notion that one can eradicate political violence is illusionary. Political violence has been a fixture of human history since day one and is likely to remain a fact of life. Its ebbs and flows often co-relate to economic, social and political up and down turns. In other words, counterterrorism and counternarratives will only be effective if they are embedded in far broader policies that tackle root causes.
And that is where the shoe pinches. To develop policies that tackle root causes, that are inclusive and aim to ensure that at least the vast majority, if not everyone, has a stake in society, the economy and the political system involves painful decisions, revising often long-standing policies and tackling vested interests. Few politicians and bureaucrats are inclined to do so.
Starting with al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, militants have benefitted from the fact that the world was entering a cyclical period in which populations lose confidence in political systems and leaderships. The single largest success of Osama bin Laden and subsequent militants is the fact that they were able to disrupt efforts to forge inclusive, multicultural societies, nowhere more so than first in Europe, then the United States with the rise of Donald Trump, and exploit ripple effects in Asia.
The result is the rise of secular and religious nationalism, populism, greater acceptance of autocratic or illiberal rule, and the erosion of democratic values and institutions. Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of ethnic and religious prejudice that no doubt existed but lived under a cloud of primarily social taboos and have become socially acceptable and often politically convenient. Of course, the refugee crisis put oil on the fire.
Nonetheless, what makes this cycle of lack of confidence more worrisome and goes directly to the question of the ideological challenge is how it differs from the late 1960s, the last time that we witnessed a breakdown in confidence and leadership on a global scale.
The difference between then and now is that then there were all kinds of worldviews on offer: anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, socialism, communism, concepts of extra-parliamentary opposition, and in the Middle East and North Africa, Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. Today, the only thing on offer are militant interpretations of Islam and jihadism.
Human rights activist and former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki was asked in a Wall Street Journal interview why it was not only those who lacked opportunity and felt that they had no prospects and no hopes but also educated Tunisians with jobs who were joining the Islamic State. His answer was: “It’s not simply a matter of tackling socioeconomic roots. You have to go deeper and understand that these guys have a dream—and we don’t. We had a dream—our dream was called the Arab Spring. And our dream is now turning into a nightmare. But the young people need a dream, and the only dream available to them now is the caliphate.”
It is hard to build an ideological challenge or develop counter narratives without a dream. With democracy on the defense, free market enterprise having failed significant segments of the public, and newly found legitimacy for prejudice, bias and bigotry, democratic governments are incapable of credibly projecting a dream, one that is backed up by policies that hold out realistic hope of producing results.
Autocrats are in a no better situation. The mayhem in the Middle East and North Africa is not exclusively, but in many ways, due to their inability and failure to deliver public goods and services. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appeared to be holding out a dream for his kingdom. But that dream increasingly is being shattered both in Yemen and at home. Autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa are about upgrading and modernizing their regimes to ensure their survival, not about real sustainable change. Elsewhere, populists and nationalists advocating racial, ethnic and religious purity and protectionist economic policies are unlikely to fare any better.
What this means is that identifying the root causes of political violence demands self-inspection on the part of governments and societies across the globe. It is those governments and societies that are both part of the problem and part of the solution. It is those governments and elites that are at the root of loss of confidence.
Translating the need to tackle root causes into policy is proving difficult, primarily because it is based on a truth that has far-reaching consequences for every member of the international community. It involves governments putting their money where their mouth is and changing long-standing, ingrained policies at home that marginalise, exclude, stereotype and stigmatize significant segments of society; emphasize security at the expense of freedoms that encourage healthy debate; and in more autocratic states that are abetted by the West, seek to reduce citizens to obedient subjects through harsh repression and adaptations of religious and political beliefs to suit the interests of rulers.
The result is a vicious circle: government policies often clash with the state or regime’s professed values. As a result, dividing lines sharpen as already marginalised, disenfranchised or discriminated segments of society see the contradiction between policies and values as hypocritical and re-confirmation of the basis of their discontent.
Creating a policy framework that is conducive to an environment in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia that would favour pluralism and respect of human rights and counter the appeal of jihadism and emerging sectarian-based nationalism is not simply a question of encouraging and supporting voices in the region, first and foremost those of youth, or of revisiting assumptions of Western foreign policies and definitions of national security.
It involves fostering inclusive national identities that can accommodate ethnic, sectarian and tribal sub-identities as legitimate and fully accepted sub-identities in Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian, as well as in Western countries. It involves changing domestic policies towards minorities, refugees and migrants.
Inclusiveness means, that victory has to be secured as much in militant strongholds in a swath of land that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean as in the dismal banlieues, run-down, primarily minority-populated, suburbs of French cities that furnished the Islamic State with its largest contingent of European foreign fighters; in the popular neighbourhoods in Tunisia that accounted for the single largest group of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq; in Riyadh, seat of a government whose citizens accounted for the second largest number of foreign fighters and whose well-funded, decades-long effort to propagate a puritan, intolerant, interpretation of Islam has been a far more important feeding ground for jihadist thinking than the writings of militant Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb; and in Western capitals with Washington in the lead who view retrograde, repressive regimes like those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt as part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
In territorial terms, the Islamic State has been defeated but the problem remains unresolved. Al Qaeda was degraded, to use the language of the Obama administration. In the process, it weakened a jihadist force that increasingly had advocated a gradual approach to the establishment of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law in a bid to ensure public support. Instead of reducing the threat of political violence, the largely military effort to defeat al-Qaeda produced ever more virulent forms of jihadism as embodied by the Islamic State. It may be hard to imagine anything more brutal than the group, but it is a fair assumption that defeating the Islamic State without tackling root causes could lead to something that is even more violent and more vicious.
Defining repressive, autocratic rule and the Islamic State as the greatest threat to stability and security and the furthering of more liberal notions is problematic. In the case of the Islamic State, that definition elevates jihadism – the violent establishment of Pan-Islamic rule based on narrow interpretations of Islamic law and scripture – to the status of a root cause rather than a symptom and expression of a greater and more complex problem. It is an approach that focuses on the immediate nature of the threat and ways to neutralize it rather than on what sparked it. It also neglects the fact that the ideological debate in the Muslim world is to a large extent dominated by schools of thought that do not advocate more open, liberal and pluralistic interpretations of Islam.
That is where the real challenge lies. It is a challenge first and foremost to Muslims, but also to an international community that would give more liberal Muslim voices significant credibility if it puts its money where its mouth is. Support for self-serving regimes and their religious supporters, as in the case of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reduces the international community’s choices to one between bad and worse, rather than to a palate of policy options that take a stab at rooting out the problem and its underlying causes.
There are no quick solutions or short cuts and the value of partial solutions is questionable. The key is the articulation of policies that over the medium term can help generate an environment more conducive to change rather than the continuous opting for knee-jerk reactions to events and facts on the ground.
One place to look for alternative approaches is Norway. In contrast to most reactions to political violence and expression of pro-jihadist sentiment, Norway’s response to right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s traumatic attacks in 2011 that killed 77 people stands as a model for how societies can and should uphold concepts of pluralism and human rights. Norway refrained from declaring war on terror, treated Breivik as a common criminal, and refused to compromise on its democratic values. In doing so, Norway offered a successful example of refusing to stigmatise any one group in society by adopting inclusiveness rather than profiling and upholding the very values that autocrats and jihadists challenge.
The result of exclusively security-focussed approaches, coupled with the exploitation of economic opportunity by autocratic Middle Eastern and North African regimes and Western governments, is an increasingly insecure region in which the creation of pluralistic societies that honour human rights seems ever more distant. Said an Egyptian Islamist militant, whose non-violent anti-government activism is as much aimed at opposing the regime of general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as it is designed to persuade increasingly frustrated youth that there are alternatives to nihilistic violence: “The strategy of brutality, repression and restricting freedom has failed to impose subservience. It hasn’t produced solutions. Governments need to give people space. They need to prove that they can address the problems of a youth that has lost hope. We have nothing to lose if they don’t.” The Egyptian’s inclinations pointed towards peaceful protest in favour of a more liberal society, albeit bound by Islamic morality codes; his options, however, left him little choice but to drift towards jihadism.
(This article is a summary of the remarks made by Dr. James M. Dorsey,
at the Counter Terrorism Conference 2018 on 15th March, 2018 at Gurugram, Haryana.)
(This article is carried in the print edition of May-June 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

In recent years, an entire industry has evolved that is devoted to addressing the ideological challenge of terrorism. Academics and journalists, think-tanks and public relations firms, security consultancies and intelligence agencies have all been engaged in the task of understanding and countering the belief systems supposedly underpinning the terrorist phenomenon.
In relation to the Arab world, the ailment is invariably diagnosed as the intolerant interpretations of the Islamic faith espoused by militant takfiris or other groups described as terrorist. And the cure – apart from purely punitive measures – is considered to be ‘de-radicalisation’, aimed either at dissuading young people, especially, from adopting such ideas and attitudes, or persuading those who have already been lured by them of the error of their ways. In addition to various educational initiatives, this effort has taken a variety of forms in various places: from requiring school teachers in the UK to report suspected ‘terrorist’ leanings among their pupils, to widespread internet and communications surveillance worldwide, to the establishment of special centres to rehabilitate repentant jihadis in countries like Saudi Arabia.
I will not comment on the effectiveness or otherwise of these de-radicalisation measures as they apply to individuals. But taking a broad view, I would argue that an excessive focus on the ideological aspect of terrorism and the challenges it poses is misguided – both as an analytical tool and as a basis for policy making.
Terrorism is not an ideology. It is a tactic. It is political violence employed in certain ways, depending on one’s precise definition. It is also a label: a political slur that delegitimizes the perpetrators and often, by extension, their cause. It may be a cliché to say that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter, but it is no less true for that. It is also true that the label has always been applied selectively and inconsistently, in accordance with the power, politics and interests of both the labeller and the labelled.
To illustrate this from a personal perspective, as a Palestinian, all my life I have seen my people’s national struggle labelled as ‘terrorist’ by Israel and its Western backers. Initially, their analysts would depict this terrorism as a product of primitive nativism and Arab nationalist ideology. As the Cold War progressed, our terrorism became attributed to Soviet-inspired revolutionary Marxist ideology. In later decades, Islamic fundamentalism became the ideological force supposedly driving our incorrigible terrorist behaviour. I mention this to illustrate two points. First, the abuse of the ‘terrorist’ label to eclipse a political cause and reduce it to a kind of collective mental pathology. Secondly, how, over time, that political cause can change the ‘ideological’ colours in which it is expressed – in line perhaps with broader changing ideological ‘fashions’. The ‘ideology’ changes but the underlying cause remains, and continues for the same objective reasons to generate political violence.
None of this is to excuse or justify terrorist acts or their perpetrators, nor question the need for action to be taken to protect societies from them or for tolerant and pluralist values to be actively promoted in the communities that spawn them. But it is important to reiterate these basic truths, because they are increasingly being forgotten, or wilfully disregarded, in the Arab world today.
In the Arab world, the states most closely identified with the ‘war on terror’ are pursuing approaches to it that are to a great extent self-serving, short-sighted and ultimately counter-productive – if the aim is genuinely to combat the perpetrators of political violence and the ideologies that drive them.
For one thing, in the past few years, the number and range of organisations, individuals and governments they have designated as ‘terrorist’ has expanded so vastly that it has become meaningless. The clearest example of this is the ‘terrorist’ designation applied by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others to the Muslim Brotherhood movement and various of its offshoots and other non-violent Islamist political groups and figures. The reason for this is nakedly political: part of a campaign by ruling regimes to reverse the region-wide Islamist political resurgence in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 (selective thought this campaign may be: where expedient, such as in Yemen and Syria, Brotherhood-affiliated groups have remained in these countries’ good graces).
In Egypt, this ‘terrorist’ designation has been used to justify vicious repression, the killing of thousands and the jailing of tens of thousands of Brotherhood supporters and supposed sympathisers, accompanied by a wider draconian crackdown against all and any dissent or independent political action, liberals and leftists included. The Brotherhood is far from blameless, either in terms of its historical role or during its brief stint in power in Egypt. But the ferocious crackdown against it not only demonises its latter-day brand of moderate, civil-minded political Islam, but also signals to its followers that they have no prospect of promoting their convictions by democratic or peaceful means. The prisons have been filled with aggrieved activists, arbitrarily arrested and badly mistreated, while civil society as a whole has been suffocated mercilessly and public space subjected to a comprehensive shut-down. One could scarcely imagine conditions more guaranteed to fuel and encourage ‘terrorist ideology’ – all in the name of combating it.
The same can be said of the government’s approach to combating the groups already infected with the ‘terrorist’ bug, in Sinai and elsewhere. This has focused on the use of iron-fisted security measures and full-scale military force, with little regard for the marginalised local populations out of whose long-neglected socio-economic grievances these groups originally emerged, later attracting like-minded outsiders.
In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the ‘terror’ label is also increasingly being used to silence and detain other critical or independent voices – including but by no means confined to Islamists – greatly restricting the public sphere for debate or airing social, economic or political grievances and demands. This too is a perfect recipe for driving dissent underground and destroying any faith in the possibility of effecting change by peaceful means – in other words, helping to nurture ‘terrorist ideology’. Yet the governments concerned loudly trumpet their anti-terrorist, modernising and reformist credentials.
Meanwhile, these countries conveniently disregard their own roles in spawning the region’s most egregious ‘terrorist’ groups, either by directly sponsoring them to achieve political goals such as in Syria, or indirectly by supporting the US invasion of Iraq (which led to the creation of the Islamic State) or the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan (which gave birth to al-Qaeda).
Even Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, has made it onto the Saudi and allied ‘terrorist’ list, even though the kingdom was until recently on relatively good terms with the group. This designation seems related primarily to Saudi Arabia’s desire to befriend Israel, rather than Hamas’ Brotherhood affiliation as such. But it has nothing to do with actual ‘terrorist’ behaviour or ideology. Indeed, Hamas’ political platform has become strikingly moderate in the past few years, and its previous paramilitary actions were always confined to Israeli targets within historic Palestine. The ‘terrorist’ designation sends out the message that nothing is to be gained from this relative moderation and restraint, either for the group or for the besieged and embattled Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Should we be surprised if this fuels the growth of hardline jihadi groups in the Strip? Whatever its portrayal in the West, nobody in the Arab world ever used to consider Hamas to
be ‘terrorist’.
The same can be said of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, whose actions have only ever been directed at Israeli occupation forces and military targets, yet finds itself designated as ‘terrorist’ by Saudi Arabia and its allies for reasons unrelated to any ‘terrorism’ but for entirely political considerations – to do with Israel, the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, the situation in Bahrain, and the over-arching regional rivalry with Iran.
Here too, we are seeing the language of anti-terrorism used in a manner that actually fuels the ideology of terrorism. Saudi Arabia and its allies are engaged in a fierce war of words with Iran. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the two sides’ disputes, this war is being waged in increasingly sectarian terms. Official pronouncements and media coverage routinely couch the struggle against Iran as one against Shi’ism and the Shi’a and their millennial beliefs, depicting them as an ideologically-driven existential threat and as the font of global terrorism. Given the dominance of Saudi and Gulf-controlled pan-Arab media, this has contributed greatly to the alarming growth in crude sectarian attitudes and discourse in the public sphere that we have seen throughout the Arab world in recent years. But it is playing with fire to stoke anti-Shia prejudices among Sunnis (or vice-versa) as a way of rallying support against a regional rival. Ultimately, it draws on the same well of bigoted takfiri intolerance which – in other contexts – everyone now claims to be combating.
This has extended to the horrific and futile war in Yemen, which was launched virtually on a whim three years ago to burnish the new Saudi leadership’s credentials. It thought it could prevail over the lightly-armed Houthis within weeks and restore its deposed allies to power in Sanaa. But the more the Saudi-led coalition gets bogged down in the conflict, the more it depicts it as a struggle against a menacing Iranian-sponsored Shia (and terrorist, of course) threat from its impoverished neighbour. In the real world, meanwhile, one of the intervention’s main outcomes has been to strengthen the position of al-Qaeda and similar groups in the south of the country– while creating what has been described as the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet. The aim of causing all this suffering, despair and resentment, we are told, is to combat terrorism. But what could be a better incubator of ‘terrorist ideology’?
That ideology can take many forms and need not be religious: the Kurdish PKK’s avowed secularism does not prevent it from being designated as terrorist by Turkey’s NATO allies (even while they sponsor its offshoots in Syria to suit their purposes!). Ultimately, ideology is a shell. The root cause of political violence lies in tangible political, social or economic grievances, mostly related to domestic misrule and/or foreign occupation and military intervention. It has thrived above all in the ‘failed states’ produced by the combination of these two factors, such as Libya, Iraq and Syria. Terrorist ideology can take on a life of its own, of course, and induce horrific behaviour, and serious efforts are required to counter both. But that will always be a secondary factor unless and until those underlying causes are tackled.
This may sound like a statement of the obvious, but it has to be made given current circumstances and attitudes in the Arab world. Using the ‘terrorist’ label to consolidate domestic power or pursue regional rivalries may be expedient. But in the ways they are waging their supposed wars on terror, Arab governments are recreating the conditions that generated the phenomenon in the first place.
Reducing terrorism to an ideology serves to belittle, discredit or deny the root causes, and to avoid tackling or drawing attention to them. It could be concluded, therefore, that a large part of the ideological challenge in combating terrorism lies in combating the ideology that deems ‘terrorism’ to be an ‘ideology’.
(This article is a summary of the address made by Mr. Abdel Bari Atwan, Editor-in-Chief of
Rai Al-Youm and Founder and Former Editor-in-Chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Palestine at the Counter Terrorism Conference 2018 on 15th March, 2018 at Gurugram, Haryana.)
(This article is carried in the print edition of May-June 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

The topic of terrorism has been discussed ad nauseam and yet we remain distant from finding enduring solutions. Unfortunately, Afghanistan is no stranger to terrorism and has been inflicted untold suffering over the last four decades. In this paper, I will focus on our complex region. I was in the 7th grade when the then Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the country has been witnessed to many cycles of instability since then. To put it in perspective, 6% of the entire Afghan population has been killed, 10% suffer from physical disabilities, 20% fled the country, and 35 % of our population were direct subjects of four decades long conflict.
Today, Afghanistan and its region face many security challenges. I will focus on one key external factor and one key internal factor for the region. The key external factor remains Pakistan, which is a major source of instability for Afghanistan and the wider region. Internal factor is the alarming internal instability in Afghanistan.
The United States and the international community declared a Global War on Terror (GWOT) after the 9/11 attacks. Many countries and nations from around the world joined the US to fight terror and bring the al-Qaeda leadership to justice. Today, nearly 17 years have passed since the start of the war in Afghanistan. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have lost their lives and billions of dollars have been spent. Unfortunately, terrorism is not only far from being eliminated, it has instead further strengthened, and flourished into new complex shapes and forms in our societies as well as across the world. Pakistan played an important role in this catastrophic failure simply by using religious extremism and terrorism as a foreign policy tool.
Pakistan has not been a reliable ally of the international community. Its army and intelligence continue to play a double game with the international community on fighting terrorism and extremism. Their primary goal in any efforts related to terrorist networks with the international community and, in particular with the US, is manipulating the cooperation to its own regional geostrategic interests.
In terms of limiting the US presence and influence in the region, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan gains at least two major strategic objectives. First, through secretly supporting terrorist networks such as the Taliban and their Pakistani based extremist allies, it restrains the consolidation of a strong Afghan state, one that can effectively ally with the US and other regional forces. The US war in Afghanistan has been a source of revenue for Pakistan and it will remain so as long as the US remains dependent on Pakistan in the absence of a strong Afghan government. This is only possible if the conflict in Afghanistan continues endlessly.
Pakistan is not only one of nine countries with nuclear weapons. It is also a hotbed of global jihad, where the military and the intelligence services use terrorist networks to advance their regional goals. Those Pakistanis with the most knowledge of the country’s nuclear program are among the most worried. Imagine, for a moment, a nightmare scenario: a nuclear warhead explodes in New York City or Paris; a dirty bomb goes off in Washington or London. The most likely source for the deadly material that makes these attacks possible is a supposed American ally.
Pakistan also believes that if their relations with the US deteriorate to a level whereby Pakistan will have to become an open enemy, the only other alternative ally in the region will be Afghanistan from where the US can stage operations to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, the same as the Osama bin Laden raid that the US carried out from Afghanistan.
In addition, Pakistan enjoys a geographic leverage over the land locked territory of Afghanistan that depends on its sea access on either Pakistan or Iran. While knowing that Iran will also not genuinely open its sea ports to Afghanistan as long as the American’s are present in Afghanistan, Pakistan will continue to use its geographic containment of Afghanistan as a tool to influence the course of events in Afghanistan to its own regional strategic interests.
All of these factors also benefit Pakistan in terms of curbing Indian influence in Afghanistan and the region. India is keen on using Afghanistan as a route to gain access to Central Asia’s natural energy resources, something that both China and Russia have concerns about. Both countries have vested interest in aligning with Pakistan to continue doing whatever they can to minimise the US and Indian influence in Afghanistan and the wider region.
The Pakistani intermingled military and intelligence institutions, fearing a strategic encirclement by India, have been utilizing religious extremism and terrorism to fight India in Kashmir and to use the same tool to keep Afghanistan unstable or dependent on Pakistan’s political support. According to the ISI, the nightmare for any strategist is to fight an enemy on two fronts. This is the dilemma Pakistan faces on their border with India along the Kashmir region, and the other in Afghanistan.
This very shortsighted and closed belief by the Pakistani Military and ISI seeing Afghanistan only as a second Indian front against Pakistan combined with the exaggerated fear of India has been one major factor on which Pakistan has based its strategy that uses religious extremism, militancy, and terrorism as a tool to fight India. They have ignored that this could one day turn against them making Pakistan, the region and the entire world far more unstable than the pre 9/11 era.
The last 17 years, during which Afghanistan established multilateral relations with the rest of the world, has irritated the Pakistani army and intelligence. They have been trying and will continue to try hard to restore that past status-quo over Afghanistan, oblivious of the fact that those days are gone and will never return again. The strategies that they used to achieve this objective have already backfired. Instead of establishing control over Afghanistan, they are about to lose control of their own affairs and territory to rogue jihadists, extremist and separatist groups that they have created or provoked themselves.
Pakistan wants to be treated as a sovereign state, and while sovereignty confers certain privileges on states, it also confers responsibilities. Pakistan wants the world to allow it to deal with the extremists group as it sees fit, and continue with their double game. When Osama bin Laden resides in one country for years, in a military garrison town a few miles from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point, when many extremists and terror groups establish bases and operate with complete freedom of movement and have sanctuaries, and when there is ample evidence that the state, one with over a hundred nuclear weapons, is not sincere about dismantling the terror groups, then what is the US prepared to do to meet its own national security interests? If the US acts, would US allies follow if the US were to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terror?
A test of Pakistani sincerity in the War on Terror is not whether they arrest a senior member of the Afghan Taliban that they have lost control over or one that is in the of process of reaching out to the Afghan government, but instead sincerity is reflected when Pakistan reacts and acts towards individuals such as Hafiz Saeed, with a $10 million US bounty on his head, or to groups such as LeT which boasts many members who have close family members in the Pakistan army.
The recent resurrection of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of Pakistani religious oriented groups created by the Pakistani military that assisted the Taliban in early 2002 as they retreated from Afghanistan, and the attempt to mainstream Hafez Saeed by the Pakistani military shows their true intentions of deliberate support to radical and extremist groups. Yes, on occasion they may turn over a terror suspect to the US, but it is done in a retail fashion, not wholesale. They may seek to obtain recognition as a fireman with some well-timed gestures and conduct, though more often, Pakistan is the arsonist. The level of support that the many extremist groups in the Af/Pak theatre receive from the formal and informal sector in Pakistan, clearly proves the point.
An internal factor or a trend that is a cause of concern on the security front is that Afghanistan is a diverse country ethnically, geographically, and linguistically. In recent years, the adhesion throughout the country has been the commitment to inclusivity rather than exclusivity, the commitment to reaching out to other groups and segments of Afghan society and reaching a consensus on key issues, mainly social, political and security. Since 2015, however, there has been an erosion of the consensus concept, and many segments of Afghan society feel alienated by the polarising politics and policies of the Presidential Palace.
The Presidential Palace frequently pushes a platform of “reform,” yet in reality the Palace day to day actions appear more akin to purges. These actions have caused damage to the fragile consensus, painstakingly built by the Afghans and its international partners since fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. In Afghanistan, national unity via consensus is an essential, stabilising element in order for us to effectively combat terrorism and extremism in the region for the foreseeable future. A break down in the internal Afghan consensus can have a devastating effect for Afghanistan, the immediate region and its international partners.
Thus, Afghanistan’s friends in the International Community should not give the current government a free pass on policies and politics that seek to alienate many segments of Afghan society. The Palace politics must be national and inclusive instead of an exclusive approach which seeks to favor one group over other ethnic or geographic groups for shortsighted and shallow political gains that endangers national unity, stability and inclusivity; achievements that cost Afghans blood and treasure for the past several decades.
In order to have an enduring solution to the regions challenges on the security front, dismantling the infrastructures for terrorism and extremism that receive material support from the formal and informal sector in Pakistan, should be the key focus. That is the generational game changer not some type of peace deal with the Taliban. Even if somehow a peace deal is reached with the Taliban, unfortunately that will not deliver stability in Afghanistan, as other Islamist extremists groups will continue to be a proxy for Pakistan.
(This article is a summary of the remarks made by Mr. Rehmatullah Nabil, former Director,
National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan at the Counter Terrorism Conference 2018
on 14th March, 2018 at Gurugram, Haryana.)
(This article is carried in the print edition of May-June 2018 issue of India Foundation Journal.)