Gwynne Dyer: Terrorists are marginal; keep them that way

[daftandbarmy]

Gwynne Dyer: Terrorists are marginal; keep them that way
By Gwynne Dyer

http://www.straight.com/article-173074/gwynne-dyer-terrorists-are-marginal-keep-them-way?#

The U.S. National Intelligence Council’s report on global trends, published this month, predicts that the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda “may decay sooner” than many experts expect because of its “unachievable strategic objectives, inability to attract broad-based support, and self-destructive actions.” Hot on the report’s heels come the terrorist attacks in Bombay (Mumbai) last week, which killed at least a hundred people. Is the National Intelligence Council wrong?
Not at all. There is no evidence that al-Qaeda had anything to do with the attacks in India’s financial capital, nor does it seem very likely. Besides, this event will be forgotten within a year by everyone who was not actually there—as it should be.
Fifteen years ago, there was a much worse attack in Bombay. Thirteen bombs exploded all across the city, killing 257 people and injuring 713 others. Although the 9/11 atrocity in the United States in 2001 has come to overshadow all other terrorist attacks in terms of loss of life, the Bombay bombings of 1993 remain the third-worst incident in the history of terrorism. Yet who remembers them today?
I do, because I was in Bombay with a film crew at the time, and they barely escaped with their lives. The Stock Exchange was bombed only twenty minutes after they finished filming there. For hours afterwards the centre-city streets were full of people who had evacuated their offices for fear of more bombs, and I still recall how calm and disciplined they were.
I was in central London during the 2005 bombings that killed 52 people, and the mood was the same. Given a story like this, the media will always try to depict it as the apocalypse on roller blades, but the general public didn’t buy it. The attacks were a tragedy for a few hundred people and an enormous nuisance for hundreds of thousands of others, but they didn’t change anything important. How could they?
Terrorism is only as important as you let it be. The people who do it, whatever their goals, are by definition few, weak and marginal. If they were many, strong and central, then they would be a major political movement or a government, and they wouldn’t feel the need to resort to terrorism. Since they are not, the wisest course is to treat them as common criminals.
All good anti-terrorist strategies deny the terrorists the status of a legitimate enemy. Maybe you have to get the army’s help occasionally when the police are overstretched, but dealing with terrorists should remain primarily the job of the police and the ordinary courts. Don’t pass any special laws, and never set up special courts and detainment camps. The terrorists are marginal; keep them that way.
Germany wisely followed these rules in the 1970s, at the time of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Spain observes the same rules against ETA. Britain did less well in Northern Ireland, detaining hundreds of innocent people and implicitly granting the IRA the status of a liberation army. Russia broke all the rules in Chechnya, although it finally managed to smother the insurgency through sheer weight of numbers and firepower.
India, which for the past two decades has suffered from worse terrorist attacks than any other independent country, handles them very well: it does not let them grow into a national emergency requiring extreme measures. That is why the latest atrocity in Bombay, like the 1993 one, will soon be forgotten. It is tragic and wicked, but it is a relatively small event in the life of a nation.
The response of the Bush administration to the 9/11 attacks, by contrast, provides a horrible example of the cost of over-reaction. Two invasions, two lengthy military occupations by American troops, and two major guerrilla wars against the occupations. A huge rise in the reputation of al-Qaeda, and the radicalisation of political opinion throughout the Muslim world. Torture abroad, and a major assault on American civil liberties at home.
For seven years, George W. Bush served as al-Qaeda’s most valuable (though unwitting) ally. The fact that the terrorist organisation is still in decline despite having such a useful idiot in charge of American foreign policy is proof of what a marginal outfit it is. As the National Intelligence Council said, its strategic goals are unrealistic, and its actions are so brutal that they alienate most of the people whose support it wants.
Al-Qaeda has little influence on what happens in India. While the terrorists there may copy some of its tactics, they do not need direction from a bunch of aging Arab terrorists. Nor will they make significant progress so long as the Indian state does not panic.
Most people assume that the long American panic is now coming to an end. If Barack Obama’s talk about winning the war in Afghanistan and violating Pakistani territory in pursuit of Osama bin Laden is just a smoke-screen to avoid public controversy until he is ready to walk away from the “war on terror,” then all may yet be well.
But it is also possible that Obama really believes in waging a war against terror, in which case the nightmare will continue.

 

[Weinie]

  That's right Gwynne. Ignore them and they will go away.

 

[2 Cdo]

I would argue that Gwynne Dyer is marginal, and has no problem staying that way. :

 

[Kilo_302]

I've heard Mr. Dyer speak several times, and I must say he is quite convincing. Osama couldn't have hoped for anything better for his organization than the invasion of Iraq.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

I've heard Mr. Dyer speak several times, and I must say he is quite convincing.

Big difference between "convincing" and being right.

Personally, after reading the way that article trivializes the dead he should be required to make the choice between a punch to the stomach or the face.
Stooge.

 

[Huzzah]

If we ignore Gwynne Dyer,will he go away too?Here's hoping...

 

[leroi]

According to this blogger the Laskar-e-Tayyeba is well connected to al-qaeda and has historically enjoyed Pakistan's support. I like the fact that the author, Wilson John, backs up his claims with footnotes at the bottom of his commentary. Maybe Mr. Dyer would be more inclined to take  LeT seriously if he actually lived in India as opposed to just visiting.

All you wanted to know about Lashkar-e-Tayyeba

http://india-alert.blogspot.com/2008/12/all-you-wanted-to-know-about-lashkar-e.html

Wilson John
02 December 2008

Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), or the Army of Pure, is the only Islamic terrorist group in Asia with links to al Qaida, which has not only survived the global sanctions but, has also managed to expand its network across the world in the last six years with generous funds from the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, and the support of the Pakistan Army and its intelligence wing, the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) directorate. LeT is suspected to have masterminded the Mumbai terror attacks.

These are not the only reasons why LeT could emerge as a serious threat to peace in Asia and other parts of the world. There is a distinct possibility of the group, in the next few years, emerging as part of the religious-political alliance in Pakistan, a step closer to the group’s objective in creating a pan-Islamic front against those who are opposed to Islam, especially the western nations, and to establish the Caliphate

This objective was articulated by its Amir or leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, in an interview given to a respected and widely circulated Pakistani English monthly, Herald1. Many Muslim organisations are preaching and working on the missionary level inside and outside Pakistan,” it read, “but they have given up the path of jihad altogether. The need for jihad has always existed and the present conditions demand it more than ever”.

Lashkar-e-Tayyeba is just one of the 58 religious political parties and 24 armed jihadi groups that have been in existence at various phases of Pakistan’s six-decade long history. The Pakistan Army and ISI created many of these groups, as covert instruments of State policy to create and quell internal sectarian conflicts, intimidate opponents of the regime, ethnic separatists and moderate political parties. In the late ’80s, during the Afghan jihad, the Army realised that these groups could also deployed to manage regional interests—to ensure Pakistan’s objective of maintaining its strategic depth in Afghanistan and keeping India tied up in Kashmir through a proxy war.

Thus aided and supported by the State, these groups, over the years, more so during the regime of President Pervez Musharraf, have successfully managed to lay the ground work for an extensive terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan which includes newspapers and magazines, charitable trusts and madrasas (religious schools) to funnel funds and enlist and indoctrinate new recruits, new training facilities across the country and sleeper cells in the US, India, Australia, Iraq, Spain and Britain2.

Evolution of Lashkar

It is important to study the group’s evolution over the years to understand the potential threat it poses in the future. LeT was born as an armed wing of Markaz Dawat-ul Irshad (MDI), Centre for Proselytisation and Preaching, which was set up in 1987 by three Islamic scholars, Hafiz Saeed and Zafar Iqbal of the Engineering University, Lahore, and Abdullah Azzam of the International Islamic University, Islamabad. Azzam was the ideologue for the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas, besides being a religious and political mentor of bin Laden. Seed money of $200,000 for the group was given by Osama bin Laden’s Afghan Service Bureau to set up its headquarters at Muridke, 30 kms from Lahore, capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province.

LeT’s armed operations began at terrorist training camps in the eastern Afghanistan provinces of Kuntar and Pakhtia in 1987-88. But since the “jihad” in Afghan was on the wane by that time, the group turned its attention towards India in 19933. Saeed directed his group to concentrate first on the Indian administered Kashmir before taking up the cause of liberating Junagarh (a tiny enclave in the Indian State of Gujarat) and Hyderabad (at present the capital of the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh but was a Muslim-ruled princely state before Partition). This focus has now expanded beyond India. Inspired by al Qaeda in large measure, LeT today sees itself as a saviour of Islam.

Within a decade of its existence, LeT expanded rapidly in Pakistan, setting up a sprawling headquarters in Muridke, and about 2,200 offices across the country. Even after the global ban, Muridke remains the nerve centre of the organisation where all its organisational, jihadi and educational activities are planned and carried out. The centre houses a madrasa, a hospital, a market, a large residential area for the scholars and faculty members, a fish farm and agricultural tracts that are cultivated year round. The centre is heavily guarded with gunmen patrolling entry points round the clock4. The MDI runs 200 secondary schools called al Dawa Schools, 11 madrasas (seminaries), two science colleges, an ambulance service, mobile clinics and blood banks5 , besides a charity organisation called Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (People’s Services Administration) which played an important role in funelling funds for the group in the name of earthquake relief after the October 2005 quake that destroyed large parts of Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK).

The educational curriculum of these schools and colleges are guided by Hafiz Saeed’s philosophy that to achieve jihad, his students must not only imbibe the great values of Islamic principles but also should be adept in science and technology. These views are propagated, with no less clarity and effect, through scores of the group’s publications, including a multi-lingual (Urdu, Persian and English) website - accessible at www.jamatuddawa.org and www.jamatdawa.org , an Urdu monthly journal, Al Dawa, which has a circulation of 80,000, an Urdu weekly, Gazwa, a children’s monthly, Nanhe Mujahid and an English monthly, Voice of Islam.

Well-known Pakistan commentators6 have documented how Saeed and his group managed to outwit the sanctions despite Pakistan’s commitment towards the US-led War on Terrorism. The group’s posters were seen in urban and rural areas of Pakistan’s Punjab urging young men to join jihad. The posters carried the telephone numbers of the group’s scores of offices. Jihadi publications reported that between January and June in 2003, groups like LeT and Jaish recruited more than 7,000 youngsters aged 18-25 from various parts of Pakistan. LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), in particular, claimed to have recruited more than 3,350 and 2,235 boys, respectively. At one point of time, the LeT website claimed that around 800 youngsters had embraced “martyrdom” while fighting the Indian army in 2002. One recent indication of the state patronage groups like LeT enjoy is the ISI decision to offer severance pay to Hafiz Saeed at a time when the peace process with India was taking shape7.

Political strategy

Since 2005, the group rechristened as Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD), persuaded by the authorities under pressure from the US, has been openly moving into the political space left unoccupied by the absence of a legitimate political process in Pakistan. This was a strategic move considering the impending general elections in 2007 and the tacit support the group enjoys from the Pakistan establishment, i.e., the Army and the ISI, and its growing acceptance in the civil society, particularly after the widely publicised relief and rehabilitation activities the group carried out in the quake-devastated Pakistan administered Kashmir.

These activities helped the group to project itself as a charitable non-governmental organisation, a move which was helped in great measure by the establishment. Some of the ministers in President Musharraf’s government were unequivocal in their praise of the organisation. For instance, Federal Minister Zubaida Jalal accompanied UNICEF officials to the JuD hospital on October 17, 2005 and held meetings with Hafiz Saeed. Saeed reportedly demanded helicopters to ferry relief materials and the injured. Within a week, the JuD-run hospital was visited by Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat. The minister praised JuD and its leader Hafiz Saeed profusely for the relief and rehabilitation work.

A fact that clearly indicates the growing clout of Saeed’s terrorist group in Islamabad is the freedom with which he leads Friday prayers at a Lahore mosque where he exhorts his followers to take up the path of jihad against India and the US with renewed vigour. He hosts parties for political leaders8. His group freely distributes jihadi literature in government offices where they have a sizeable readership among senior officials9.

The most worrying aspects of the LeT today are its growing strength and an expanding base in Pakistan, India and elsewhere in the world10, besides a marked willingness to enter into politics as well as alliances with other terrorist and extremist groups in different parts of the continent. Saeed, revealed his expanded vision in an interview to a Urdu daily, Khabrain, on July 20, 2005, where he said that his group “would extend support to the organisations active in jihad anywhere in the world11.

It is equally undeniable that since the beginning of the War on Terror, Pakistan has been finely balancing its need for the ``reserve capability`` of jehadi groups with its strategic compulsion to be part of the US-led Global War on Terrorism12. This reworking of the strategy is reflected in the fact that terrorist recruitment and training have become ``more covert`` and ``Pakistan can reverse course at its discretion13.

While Muridke, near Lahore, which was the hub of LeT’s terrorist activities till 2002, (and has since been widely documented), the terrorist group moved its operations to several other camps, located in PoK, NWFP and Sindh. Of these, least known but a highly structured extensive training facility is the one called Markaz Mohammad bin Qasim, set up near Shehdadopur, near Hyderabad city in Sindh. LeT also runs similar training camps in Balochistan14. LeT provincial chief Saeed Athar, in fact, camped in Quetta for six years to oversee the training. The Quetta camp used to dispatch a group of 10 or more jehadis every Thursday to the group’s six training camps in PoK before they were sent to Indian Kashmir. The group began exploring the possibility of expanding its network in NWFP as far back as in 2004 when al Qaida and the Taliban militants were creating a terror sanctuary in the tribal areas.

The terrorist training camps run by LeT today are manufacturing a new, 21st Century brand of jehadis, for whom fighting the kafirs or infidels is just the battle, not the war. They see themselves as the warriors in a global war to establish the supremacy of Islam over the world. These men, as they train, are patiently biding their time to replace the conventional institutions that support and sustain the Pakistani State – the pillars that have been crumbling rapidly due to avarice and apathy of the political leadership. As an English monthly pointed out, “these men are like misguided missiles15 waiting to be recruited by al Qaida.

Conclusion

By all available evidence, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba is at present the most organised terrorist group in Pakistan which not only enjoys the support of the religious groups and the military but also a considerable section of the population in Punjab and Pakistan administered Kashmir. Already successful in creating a perfect cover of a charity organisation called Jamaat-ud dawa (JuD), the group might exploit the present crises in Pakistan to increase its political clout and align with the Army to achieve the traditional objectives of keeping India, and the world, engaged in a conflict without an end. On October 13, 2008, the LeT chief, Hafiz Saeed, told his followers in Lahore that "India understands only one language i.e. the language of jihad16.

Wilson John is a Senior Fellow with Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
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[NL_engineer]

  That's right Gwynne. Ignore them and they will go away.

No its the other way, 'Ignore Gwynne, and HE will go away'; but only till he sticks his misinformed head into something else  :