Friendly Neighbourhood Terrorism

The Lalgarh operation against Maoist extremism in West Bengal exposed the weaknesses of our fight against non state actors. The ruling CPM coalition in West Bengal did not want to 'ban' the ultra Left Maoists, but expected the Union government to send paramilitary forces to fight them. But more disturbing is the growing nexus of corrupt politicians-bureaucrats and criminal gangs in diluting state action against trans-border crimes including gun running and human trafficking. This is abetting extremists gaining access to weapons. In addition to this, for a number of years Indian insurgents have been operating from hideouts and bases in India's neighbourhood - notoriously Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar - often with the connivance of the government of the country. Here is my article 'Spreding Out of Control' on the subject for your reading. It was published in GFiles magazine, July 2009 issue. Copyright: GFiles magazine

SPREADING OUT OF CONTROL
Local militancy going global in our neighbourhood has a deadly impact on national security

by COL R HARIHARAN GFiles, Vol 3 Issue 4 July 2009

TWO former chiefs of Bangladesh’s espionage agency – the National Security Intelligence (NSI) – Major General Rezakul Haider Chowdhury and Brigadier General Abdur Rahim, were recently arrested in Dhaka in the infamous arms smuggling case of Chittagong on April 2, 2004. They are being prosecuted for landing a shipload of Chinese arms in Chittagong destined for the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which is based in Bangladesh and waging an insurgency war in Assam.

It was not a small smuggling operation. According to the Bangladeshi media, police recovered from the 10- truckload consignment a wide range of sophisticated firearms, including 27,020 grenades, 840 rocket launchers, 300 accessories of rocket launchers, 2000 grenade-launching tubes, 6392 magazines and 1,140,520 bullets. The Aga Rahman Yousuf Group, a Dubaibased business conglomerate, had sent the arms and ammunitions from China to Bangladesh for ULFA’s use.

This is one of many instances of local militancy and insurgencies going global in India’s neighbourhood with a deadly impact on India’s national security. Their symbiotic growth with a host of other criminal activities ranging from trafficking in weapons, drugs, and women and children to smuggling, forgery, and money laundering. They have also corrupted the law enforcing agencies and helped the growth of the political- criminal nexus. South Asia is geographically located between two of the biggest sources of the illegal drug trade in opium and heroin – Afghanistan in the west and Myanmar in the east. Drug trafficking generates a number of other criminal activities, including money laundering, illegal arms trade, and human trafficking. The drug trade is a huge money spinner and it is not accidental that a number of insurgency movements have close links with the drug trade in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Pakistan.

Traditionally, the growth of militancy and other forms of extremist insurgency is attributed to socio-economic reasons, lack of proper governance and rule of law, religious fundamentalism, or aberrations of caste, creed, and linguistic differences. While these factors do provide a fertile ground for growth of militancy, the easy availability of illegal arms encourages escalation of political conflicts into extremism.

So South Asia has also become the heartland of the illegal trade in light weapons. Thanks to technological advances, they are no more light in their performance. The generally accepted 1977 UN definition of light weapons includes: MANPADS (man-portable air defence systems), ATGWs (anti-tank guided weapons), heavy machine guns (including anti-aircraft guns), antimaterial rifles, recoilless rifles and guns, grenade launchers, unguided anti-tank rocket launchers, and mortars. The disturbing aspect is that all these weapons of modern armies have been in use among terrorist and militant groups operating in South Asia.

Formidable network of terror
EVEN without taking into account Afghanistan, which has been the focus of the US-led global war on terror since 2001, three South Asian countries – India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – have so far given birth to 249 anti-state entities that took up arms to achieve their goals, according to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) data. Fortunately, only 91 of them, including 15 transnational ones, are functional today.

India has the largest number of terrorist and extremist organizations – 69 (including four transnational ones) still operating in its midst. Pakistan, the unrecognized homeland of Jihadi terrorism, has 22 extremist organizations (11 domestic and 11 transnational ones). It is in a gridlock with terrorists, fighting for its survival as a democratic nation.

Sri Lanka produced 37 insurgent bodies of various hues when the Tamil minority’s political quest for equal rights failed to produce results. However, recently the Sri Lanka military succeeded in crushing the only surviving Tamil insurgent group – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The only Sinhala insurgent group, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) turned into a Left-leaning political party two decades ago, after much bloodshed. And the country now hopes to have some respite from active insurgency.

Though Bangladesh has only five extremist organizations of the extreme leftist and Islamic fundamentalist varieties, they have continued to be a powerful destabilizing factor in the country’s politics. Nepal had been more fortunate. Its only insurgent body – the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) – managed to convert itself into a political party after the end of monarchy. It has not given up arms yet and that can spell potential trouble for Nepal’s nascent democracy.

Bhutan and the Maldives, having no major extremist entity in their midst, are the most fortunate.

The growth of terrorism in India has been encouraged by the availability of sanctuaries for terrorists and insurgents in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. (India had also offered sanctuary to Sri Lanka Tamil extremists for nearly a decade in the 1990s). Unfortunately, both Pakistan and Bangladesh have been using Indian insurgent groups in their midst to indirectly assert their power against India. In the case of Myanmar, the military regime had not been able to curb Indian insurgents operating from its soil due to their links with local insurgency groups.

Unless these countries deny sanctuary to Indian insurgent groups, India’s counterinsurgency operations will be only partially successful.

Given this setting, under the garb of protection, flaunting of weapons has become a status symbol in many of our states. As a corollary, indiscriminate issue of weapon licences has armed entire communities in many parts of India. The increasing social tolerance of the gun culture is symbolized by the replacement of the traditional soft image of Bollywood heroes with guntoting honchos sporting six packs.

It is not surprising that small arms are increasingly used to gain coercive power in public life. Poor governance and weaknesses in the criminal justice system have increased the clout of power brokers supported by armed gangs. Unfortunately, with criminals gaining more political influence, the gun culture has become a part of political life not only in India but other South Asian states as well. This has vitiated the effectiveness of existing gun control laws.

Between 1994 and 2008, about 60,000 people lost their lives in armed violence in India. Small arms were used to cause most of these deaths. These shocking figures give an idea of the price the nation is paying due to uncontrolled spread of illegal arms and the ever-increasing fire power of militancy.

So any grand strategy to curb insurgency and terrorism should address the larger social issues relating to the gun culture and easy access to illegal weapons. Existing laws on gun control need updating and enforcement needs to be tightened even for licensed guns. The growing nexus between politician bureaucrat- criminal gangs is the hothouse for insurgents to gain access to weapons. Unless this is broken through effective governance, lasting success in curbing terrorism and insurgency cannot be achieved.

Courtesy:http://gfilesindia.com/title.aspx?title_id=13