The politics of war

AS this might be the last Christmas of peace and goodwill on our benighted subcontinent, before we go hurtling down to the disaster which overcame Europe through the first half of the last century, I have brought with me here to Goa for holiday reading Rajmohan Gandhi’s biography of his grandfather and Dennis Dalton’s Gandhi Power: Nonviolence in Action. They seem a useful antidote to Vajpayee and Advani.

However much the NDA might deny it, the terrorist attack on Parliament was a monumental failure of intelligence and a massive failure of security. Times out of number, driving into Parliament House, it has struck me how easy it would be to mount an assault on the citadel of our democracy. That December 13 did not end in disaster has much to do with the amateurishness of the terrorists. Had they driven into the porch outside Gate 1, instead of bang into the wall which divides Gate 11 from Gate 12, we would have been under siege for days as George Speight showed how in the Fijian parliament.

The treasury benches refused to even consider these issues. All the way down from the home minister to flotsam and jetsam like Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Kharbela Swain, even asking about security and intelligence was equated with a want of patriotism. Look at the Americans, we were told, uniting behind their president, not asking inconvenient questions, not raising controversy, just concentrating on the enemy. Well, the US Congress has just appointed a bipartisan commission to investigate the security and intelligence lacunae that led to WTC and the Pentagon. The initiative comes from John MacCain, Republican challenger to George W. Bush for the nomination, and Joe Lieberman, Democrat running mate to Al Gore. So, does it not follow that we too should be asking what went wrong?

Instead, the dogs of war are being readied to be unleashed. What has US action in Afghanistan achieved? One, the world’s mightiest military machine has smashed the world’s weakest military machine. So, what’s new, pussycat? Al-Qaeda still survives in all 64 of the 64 countries identified by US intelligence. The US remains as vulnerable to terrorist attack as it was — unless the bipartisan panel plugs the intelligence and security loopholes. Second, Osama bin Laden, for aught one knows, is setting up a barber’s shop in Pennsylvania. President Musharraf has tried to get himself off the hook by suggesting that bin Laden (and Mullah Omar?) lie buried beneath the rubble of Tora Bora. That would be the perfect decoy for diverting attention from bin Laden hiding out in Muridke. Third, the Brits are the real winners — they now have that military presence in Afghanistan which they failed to secure through the First, Second and Third Afghan Wars. But what will their poor force do when the warlords decide it is time to settle scores?

Outside Afghanistan, the simmering anger which fuels terrorism continues on the boil. As Israeli aircraft do to Palestinian symbols of authority what Mohammed Atta and his men did to the WTC, the double standards of the ‘‘global war’’ on ‘‘global terrorism’’ stand nakedly — and unashamedly —exposed. Whatever the mealy-mouthed rhetoric post-September 11, the world still remains divided between ‘‘our terrorists’’ and ‘‘their terrorists’’. That is why the complete lack of restraint on the part of the US translates into counsels of restraint when it comes to others. Which is also, of course, why we cannot go to the UN Security Council to seek the protection and support of the resolutions we — and everyone else — endorsed last September/October. That was to give cover to the American bombing of Afghanistan; the lesser breed are not included in this American version of colonialism’s mission civilisatrice. Pak-based terrorism, we are helpfully informed, is ‘‘stateless’’. The domestic consequence of this international humbug is that it throws our government into ever greater disarray. While the external affairs minister assiduously pursues his subsidiary alliance with Washingt- on, the home minister dolefully recognises that in our fight against terrorism we are today, as we were before 9/11, entirely on our own.

So what should we do now that we have discovered how alone we are? Terrorism has two faces: domestic and cross-border. Since Kargil, the government has discovered the trick of obscuring its failures in tackling domestic terrorism by concentrating its oratorical fire exclusively on ‘‘cross-border’’ terrorism. (This is best illustrated by the pre-Kargil Lahore Declaration, which omitted any reference to ‘‘cross-border terrorism’’ while the same two words were the nub of the breakdown at Agra.) There has been no progress at all towards a political settlement in J&K. Nor in pacification through police action. That is what renders J&K such fertile ground for cross-border attentions. After all, we saw in Punjab that it was domestic ferment which enabled Pakistan to poke its ladle into the cauldron; address domestic terrorism, as K.P.S. Gill and his political mentors did, and cross-border terrorism loses its will and purpose.

At the same time, the root cause of our troubles must be addressed — our relationship with Pakistan. What has been the record of India-Pakistan relations in the nearly four years of Vajpayee at the helm? First, enabling Pakistan to become an overt nuclear power, thus wiping out our edge in conventional warfare. Second, in consequence, restoring Kashmir, for the first time in 33 years, to the live agenda of the UN Security Council. Third, ignoring the repeated intelligence warnings on the Pakistani build-up in the Kargil sector while preparing for the Lahore summit — 17 separate indictments detailed in the Subrahmanyam Committee report. Fourth, the pathetic naivete of Lahore. Fifth, kafan-chori at Kargil. Sixth, failure to intercept the hijacked Indian Airlines plane at Amritsar. Seventh, the national shame of the external affairs minister escorting hardcore terrorists to Kandahar, from whence they have returned to mount the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. Eighth, blacklisting, then backtracking on Musharraf to give him the opening to blacken our face. Tenth, failure to erode Pakistan’s credibility as the principal ally of the US/UN in the so-called global war on global terrorism. And, eleventh, failing to persuade the international community of the Pak government’s involvement in the terrorist attack of December 13.

It is inconsistency and ineptitude of this order that we should be tackling, not sounding the alarms of war. There is no military solution to terrorism, domestic or cross-border. Root causes require political treatment, diplomatic treatment. State violence can only be an adjunct to non-violent action. For, above all, as Mahatma Gandhi cautioned us in 1934: ‘‘We must have more faith in our non-violence than the terrorist has in his violence.’’

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