Sunanda K Datta-Ray
If Pakistanis suspect India's RAW in Baluchistan, Indians are convinced the troubles in Jammu and Kashmir are the handiwork of Pakistan's ISI. The “Foreign Hand” the phrase Indira Gandhi made notorious — is everywhere.
The United States and Qatar have now signed an agreement to suppress terrorism. Earlier, it was claimed that the many agreements that Narendra Modi reached with Benjamin Netanyahu during his three-day visit to Israel were not for weapons or economic assistance but to form a bulwark against terrorism. But terrorism is different to different people, and it was rightly said in the 1960s, the great age of decolonisation, that one man's freedom fighter was another man's terrorist. That duality had earlier produced the possibly apocryphal story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt declaring in 1939 that Nicaragua's ruthless dictator Anastasio Somoza “may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch!”
The US Code of Federal Regulations defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” That could have applied to the Zionists who created Israel. It can apply to the Palestinians in the embattled West Bank and Gaza. The US regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Qatar reportedly helps the Muslim Brotherhood which is terrorist in Saudi Arabian eyes. The Kashmiri Muslims who recently launched their first attack on pilgrims to Amarnath (killing seven of them) in 17 years are undoubtedly terrorists in Indian eyes and have been strongly denounced by separatist leaders like S.A.S. Geelani of the Hurriyat and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik. But other Kashmiri Muslims who observed the anniversary or Burhan Wani's death certainly look on them, too, as freedom fighters.
Modi and – more recently – Sushma Swaraj demand early finalisation of the United Nations Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism that was drafted as long ago as 2002. As the victim of repeated attacks, India is understandably anxious for a global arrangement to criminalise all forms of international terrorism and deny terrorists, their financiers and supporters access to funds, arms, safe havens and political patronage. But Nawaz Sharif also recalled that 1960s contradiction. Despite claiming to suffer terrorist attacks, Pakistan's prime minister left no one in doubt that he regards people who kill, bomb, maim and destroy in Jammu and Kashmir as freedom fighters.
Hyperbole enjoys a hallowed tradition. Britain exalted terrorism to an instrument of state policy during World War I, thereby setting a global precedent. The British Foreign Office's Arab Bureau employed T. E. Lawrence to instigate and lead a secessionist revolt against the Ottoman empire under cover of archaeological excavations. Lawrence's guerrillas harried the Turkish army, sabotaged the strategic Hejaz railway Ottoman troops used to control rebellious Arabs, captured Aqaba port and attacked Damascus and other Turkish garrisons.
Israelis boast that the Balfour Declaration committing Britain to a Jewish homeland would have achieved nothing if militant Zionist groups like the Irgun Zvati Leumi (National Military Organisation), Lehi (popularly known as the Stern Gang) and Haganah hadn't fought British and Arabs alike. The Polish-born Begin was Irgun's leader with a £10,000 price on his head. About 120 Irgun and Lehi fighters attacked the 600 men, women and children of the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem in 1948. Women were raped and civilians decapitated or disembowelled. Prisoners were paraded through Jerusalem's Jewish quarter before being murdered. It was a forerunner of the even more gruesome 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres of Arab refugees by Lebanon's Christian Falange militia under Israeli military supervision. On July 22, 1946 Jewish freedom fighters (terrorists?) blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where he stayed, killing 91 people. Disguised as Arab workmen and waiters, Irgun guerrillas planted bombs in the basement of the hotel which housed British administrative and military offices. Weeping heavily, Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, boasted, “I can't help feeling proud of our boys. If only it had been a German headquarters, they would have gotten the Victoria Cross.”
Whatever pieties politicians of many hues might mouth in many tongues, no government will surrender the right to mount similar campaigns against perceived adversaries. Indian allegations of Chinese abetment of Naga rebels were matched by China's charges of Indian complicity in American-sponsored operations in Tibet. If Pakistanis suspect India's RAW in Baluchistan, Indians are convinced the troubles in Jammu and Kashmir are the handiwork of Pakistan's ISI. The “Foreign Hand” – the phrase Indira Gandhi made notorious – is everywhere.
That's why UN members can't easily agree on a blanket ban on terrorism. They have agreed to measures to protect diplomats, prevent hostage-taking, curb financing and to a raft of laws regarding terrorism in the air, at airports, at sea and even continental shelves. Groups of countries like SAARC, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organisation of American States, the Islamic Conference, European Union, Arab League and Organisation of African Unity have taken protective steps. But talks on the comprehensive convention Modi wants remain deadlocked because no one can or will spell out what distinguishes a “terrorist organisation” from a “liberation movement”.
There are other complications. Chhatisgarh demonstrated how gory internal terrorism can be. Critics of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act accuse the Indian army of terrorism in Manipur. British forces were similarly blamed in Northern Ireland, as American troops were at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Some speak of “state terrorism”. Carlos Diaz-Paniagua, UN coordinator of negotiations on the proposed convention, says an instrument of criminal law cannot permit any ambiguities. It must respect “legal precision, certainty, and fair-labelling of the criminal conduct – all which emanate from the basic human rights obligation to observe due process.”
This isn't the only will o' the wisp India is chasing. Manmohan Singh once recalled at the UN that earlier Rajiv Gandhi had denounced nuclear deterrence as the “ultimate expression of the philosophy of terrorism, holding humanity hostage to the presumed security needs of a few”. He then proposed a three-stage process of total disarmament to create a nuclear-free world under a universal non-discriminatory regime. It would have been heresy to repeat in India the whispers abroad that Gandhi might not have championed the ideal of disarmament so fervently if the existing nuclear regime hadn't been discriminatory.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee remedied that in 1998 but governments like people need ideals to follow. Leaders must also inspire domestic constituencies and earn the world's admiration. Those twin obligations demand rhetorical flourishes in the pursuit of unattainable goals. So far as protection against terrorism goes, the answer lies less in unenforceable pacts and conventions than in practical vigilance. Israel – hardly a model member of the global community – gloats that self-help is the best help. A country under constant threat cannot be squeamish. It can survive only by taking the law into its own hands. One man's terrorist will always remain another man's freedom fighter.
The writer is the author of several books and a regular media columnist
