Terrorism, Security and Development in South Asia

National, Regional and Global Implications

M. Raymond Izarali, Dalbir Ahlawat, M. Raymond Izarali, Dalbir Ahlawat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367358952
• eBook ISBN: 9781000376623
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

This book provides a rich analysis of the actors and organizations to reflect on the antecedents and trajectories of terrorism and insurgency in South Asia, and the different countermeasures adopted by the countries to deal with the security and developmental challenges.

South Asia is a complex geography that has been both a victim and a playing field for indigenous insurgencies, and domestic and transnational terrorist movements. The contributors to this volume explore how this situation has posed serious challenges to the sovereignty of the states, to national and human security, and to the socioeconomic fabric of the communities, and to the ethnic and religious cohesion. The book provides detailed studies of country cases on terrorism, security, and insurgencies, and it underlines the national, regional, and global implications of the threats that emanate from this region.

Presenting an opportunity to diversify away from a Western-centric focus on terrorism and security, this book will be valuable to researchers in political science, criminology, defense and security studies, and to policy makers and think tanks.

Part I

Introduction

1 Contextualizing terrorism, security, and development in South Asia

M. Raymond Izarali and Dalbir Ahlawat

Terrorism and security: Background

Terrorism seems to be quite commonplace in the present time and especially following the 9/11 tragedy. At the level of optics, this may in part be because of the ubiquitous media coverage it gets in the West, especially on 24-hour news networks. In other respects, this may in part also be because those who live in the West seem to see or learn of incidents closer to home, especially incidents driven and inspired by al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) networks (Ganguly & Al-Istrabadi, 2018, p. 14). From the stark, vivid horror of 9/11 in New York and Washington, to the London bombing, the Madrid bombing, and terrorism incidents across Europe and against Europeans and Westerners in general in global settings, the phenomenon seems both haunting and infectious (Izarali, 2018). Nevertheless, some seem to also think of it as somewhat new to the 21st century.

Terrorism, as a number of scholars have noted, is far from a new phenomenon (Nassar, 2005; Izarali, 2018; Spindlove & Simonsen, 2018; Schmid, 2004; Onwudiwe, 2007). While the concept itself is said to have had its genesis in Edmund Burke’s observation and revulsion of the bloody French Revolution and the barbaric manner in which the government’s so-called liberation of the masses from the French monarchy came to literally consume the civilian public, it would be a mistake to conflate the phenomenon itself with the birth of the lexicon (White, 2017). Arguably, there are other aspects to terrorism too whose lexicons are yet to be coined and debated – for example, aspects of violent colonial conquests and disenfranchisement of societies and peoples (Onwudiwe, 2007; Jalata, 2011).

As it stands, there is no concrete definition of the concept (Izarali, 2018; Schmid, 2004; Spindlove & Simonsen, 2018), owing to a variety of factors including the claim that what one person calls terrorism another might call liberation. The latter especially seems to be characteristic of the Israeli–Palestinian context, as some scholars note. However, in the contemporary context it is also characteristic of what has been dubbed as revolutionary terrorism when formerly colonized societies engaged in violence in seeking independence from European colonial empires during the mid-20th century. The case of the Mau Mau in Kenya is but one example. It must be recalled that the apartheid regime in South Africa that oppressed black South Africans gave rise to bitter protests and violence and the criminalization of Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. After all, it is worth bearing in mind that Gandhi’s nonviolence approach in seeking independence from Great Britain was not the trend or the bar at the time among other European or British colonies. Thus, some thinkers are of the view that labeling and the accompanying criminalization are a matter of position of power, which states or dominant groups could exploit.

Definition affects classification but, as Alex Schmid (2004) notes, there is no uniformity of classifications among the databases of national agencies. Indeed, he has shown instances of duplication of events as well as misguided classifications because of the absence of clear criteria (Schmid, 2004; Izarali, 2018). Thus, both definitions and statistical accounts of terrorism can be marred.

The impact of labeling and media recognition or media coverage should not be understated. So often there are many, even major, incidents of terrorism elsewhere in the world such as in Africa and Asia that go unreported and unnoticed in Western globalized media. Indian news media frequently feature reports of incidents of terrorism on Indian soil, for example, yet they are often not made news in much of the Western world except in instances where the victims happen to be from the West. The Mumbai bombing of 2008 is a notable example that was widely featured in the major press in the West, which was thus circulated globally through networks like CNN and the BBC. As Spindlove and Simonsen (2018, p.7) put it:

It is seldom that one hears much about the barbarous acts committed in Third World countries, such as Rwanda, Congo, Zimbabwe, Burma, and Sudan, on the evening news in other than a quick sound bite. But let a few armed attackers take over a commercial airliner from a developed country, with 150–300 or so paying passengers, and the media flocks to stand by and listen to the demands of the terrorists and broadcast them around the globe.

Consequently, exclusion or non-inclusion from view could lead Western publics into thinking that terrorism of the current times is largely something that happens to Westerners and is less an issue elsewhere in the world. Nevertheless, it could also give rise to the idea that the reportage of terrorism in the Western media and literature depends on race and ethnicity, and the part of the world one lives. In such a situation, sympathy to, or empathy with, victims of terrorism would likewise depend on color, ethnicity, and geographical coordinates – even religion. Perhaps a near equivalent in conveying the point is the scope in which philosophy is taught in a great many of the universities in the West. We portend to be teaching philosophy of the world but generally do so by only teaching Western philosophy.

Suffice it to say, terrorism remains a formidable issue that confronts us, and attention to it and the security issues it raises need to be equitable through the media and the literature, as opposed to a fixation of focus on the victimhood of Westerners or incidents in the West. Failing to broaden the scope of focus on the multiplicity of victims and perpetrators alike could potentially yield signals of neglect or lack of concern to distant strangers or transnational families and thus, in the same vein, foster vulnerability to radicalization and deepened waves of terrorism.

Our proposed focus specifically on South Asia is a conscious recognition of the opportunity that prevails to diversify away from a Western-centric focus on terrorism and security. Especially since Talibanization, radicalization, and al Qaeda coordination have played out abundantly in Pakistan because of its proximity to Afghanistan, and have had catastrophic implications on global security, the focus on South Asia allows us the opportunity to more robustly examine some of the deep roots of terrorism that trigger global insecurity in the current times (Maley, 2003).

Terrorism and security issues in South Asia: Country contexts

South Asia is comprised of eight countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It is, by any account, far from a simple region. The region is characterized by a variety of religions, ethnicities, languages, customs, histories, cultures, and a vast range of other elements characteristic of diversity. In the larger historical context, it has gone through various colonial conquests and controls, which mark different epochs in the evolution of its constitutive countries and with remnants of those epochs still very much notable. From the various kingdoms that ancestral India once was to the Mongols (or Mughals), the French, the Portuguese, and the English, much of the influence and impact from language to landmarks still remain. India itself up to the current times, from which later emerged Pakistan and Bangladesh, may be considered a world of its own. Its ability to preserve its ancient customs and religions exhibits vibrant practices of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, and Sikhism in addition to Christianity. These religious dimensions and cultural components have also been richly maintained in India’s vast diasporic transnational settings, especially Hinduism and Islam in global contexts, and Sikhism in England, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Yet, in some important respects, these religious dimensions have also been sources of varying levels of tensions that have given rise to violent extremism and terrorism. Hindu and Sikh militancy were notable in the contemporary experience – for example, in the Ayodhya violence of the 1990s over the al-Babri Masjid (Maley, 2003), and the Khalistan movement for a separate Sikh homeland that gave rise to the Air India bombing in 1985. In the case of the latter, there was also a linkage of Sikh extremism to Canada, and there were many innocent victims of that tragedy who were Canadian. In the same vein, some scholars are of the view that there was relative unity in India among the various religions before the British arrival (Murphy & Malik, 2009). The splintering of Pakistan and the continued tension over Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) carry strain and levels of political animosity between India and Pakistan (Kapur, 2008; Kapur & Ganguly, 2012; Moghaddam, 2018).

Muhammed Ali Jinnah (father of the Pakistani state) splintered Pakistan away from India, arguably because he thought the Congress Party in India at the time did not show much priority toward its Muslim constituency, and, according to some scholars, he sought an open, hospitable society of the new country of Pakistan where people of all faiths would be respected. However, there have evolved some mutations of his vision in that society (Murphy & Malik, 2009). As Murphy and Malik (2009, p. 22) said of Jinnah: “He rejected religious communalism and advocated Hindu–Muslim unity until he became disillusioned with what he saw as the growing influence of Hindu thought among the leading members of the All-Indian National Congress.” A significant spread of the more entrenched Islamization in Pakistan on the public level is said to be attributed to General Zia ul Haq, who took over the government by coup and polarized the society away from the inclusive vision of Jinnah (Murphy & Malik, 2009). The repercussions to Pakistan, the region and in some sense to the global society of the present time may not be obvious. It hardly needs to be said, of course, that in Pakistan’s evolution in the 1970s and 1980s, the nesting and usurpation of the mujahideens to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in order to stave off communist proliferation in the region were done by using Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to conduct training with funding encouraged by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia (Qadir, 2001; Murphy & Malik, 2009; White, 2017; Syed, Saeed & Martin, 2015).

The simple point is that the climate fomented especially by General Zia ul Haq was strategically used by others for Cold War interests that subsequently also resulted in the birth of al Qaeda upon conclusion of the Afghan–Soviet war. The influences of the Taliban on certain constituencies in Pakistan as especially nurtured by its proximity to neighboring Afghanistan (Maley, 2003), the network developed by rogue elements that coordinated between the geographies of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and elements nurtured by the Pakistani ISI to carry out undertakings on its behalf have resulted in colossal destruction to lives and property much beyond the region through acts of terrorism.

This situation, of course, has also affected innocent Pakistani civilians who continue to bear strains in other societies through labeling and stigma because of rogue hardline elements that operate(d) in their country of origin. As with the labeling and stigma Muslims face in global settings because of the carnage carried out by fanatic criminal zealots who present themselves as the vanguard of Islam, Pakistanis like people of Middle East ancestry endure a similar perception of prosecution and suspicion by virtue of their national identity or place of heritage. Thus, there are also more subtle but deeply affecting outcomes to people’s lives and liberties in a global context from terrorism and rogue groups in Pakistan (Maley, 2003). The exploitation of young minds and children in the hundreds of religious seminaries (also called madrassas) especially in the North Western Frontier and Baluchistan (Qadir, 2001; Basit, 2015) that function under extremists curricula of rogue administrators and the ISI has perpetuated the problem, and naturally provides a more expansive arsenal for militancy that could be channeled for the propagation of extremism and terrorism.

In the Sri Lankan context, tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamils saw decades of discontent with the rise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for an independent Tamil homeland. Various levels of terrorism on the part of both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state ensued, victimizing and displacing especially the civilian Tamil population. Here, too, the negative impact on human security was colossal. State targeting, on the one hand, and suicide bombings and other forms of destruction on the other hand carried out by the LTTE made for both a situation of carnage and vulnerability. Many Tamils in Canada and elsewhere who have fled the war and the calamities associated with it continue to be affected by the deep psychological scars from their experience. Such conditions present serious problems for human and social development, and for human security and public safety (Athukorala, 2016). While some good scholarly works have addressed these issues, there remains significant paucity of deep examination of them.

In the Maldives, the situation is delicate – both in the religiopolitical sense and the economic hardship endured by Maldivians. The struggle to meet basic human needs make for a dismal outlook of life, leaving many to find inspiration in the propagandistic lure of ISIS for what is construed to be a better life (de Quetteville, 2018). Islam is the only legally permitted religion in the Maldives. Thus, religious fervor, the political structures that enforce it, and the difficulty to live a life o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of acronyms
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Country cases of terrorism, insurgencies, and development
• PART III Issues of radicalization, extremism, and the state
• PART IV Issues of regional security and global implications
• PART V Conclusion
• Index