Tehelka
September 16, 2006
How Not to Fight Terrorism
India’s security agencies and Indians should comprehend the difference between terrorists and Muslims. Not all Muslims are jehadis and cannot be treated as such
By Praful Bidwai
The false alarm over a “terrorist” threat aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, leading to the harassment and humiliation of 12 Indian citizens, has provoked revulsion and anger across this country. Most Indians are disgusted at the growing incidence of racial profiling and spread of religious-ethnic prejudice in the West, which lay at the roots of the airline crew’s total misperception of the 12 men’s actions and the plane’s return to Schiphol airport.
The episode caps a series of incidents involving discrimination against people of Asian origin in Europe. Mid-August alone witnessed two such. On August 16, two British Muslim students of Asian origin were ejected from a flight from Malaga in Spain to Manchester after fellow passengers complained that they were acting “suspiciously” and speaking a “strange” language (Urdu), which they mistook for Arabic. A few days later, Amar Ashraf, a British-born US-based airline pilot of Pakistani Muslim extraction, was taken off a Continental Airlines flight leaving London — primarily because he has a “Muslim-sounding name”.
The Amsterdam incident cuts even closer to the bone. The 12 men were Indian citizens living in Mumbai. The scale of humiliation was much greater. And so was the dramatic demonstration effect produced by two F-16 warplanes escorting the aircraft back to Schiphol.
As the unpleasant meaning of “travelling whilst Asian” sinks in, there is growing sentiment among the public that the Indian government must secure an unambiguous apology and adequate compensation for the Amsterdam victims from the Dutch government and Northwest Airlines.
This demand is wholly legitimate. Indeed, there is no reason why India should not tell the Dutch government that refusal to apologise could lead to penalties or litigation in the International Court of Justice. But the government needs to do more. It must express solidarity with the victims in an exemplary fashion and vocally stress its empathy for them. There could be no better way of reaching out to the broader Indian Muslim community when it’s in the grip of insecurity following the Mumbai blasts and the attempt to impose Vande Mataram on it as a crude loyalty test.
Under watch: At an annual congregation of a Sunni organisation in Mumbai
We are witnessing an explosion of anti-Muslim bias. This has intruded into India’s official policy discourse
However, even such gestures, while necessary, are not enough. The United Progressive Alliance government would be failing its own citizens unless it draws lessons from Amsterdam and its own handling of terrorism and corrects its counter-terrorism strategy.
So far, India’s strategy has largely tailed or imitated the West’s, including its characterisation of the principal terrorist threat as “Islamic”, its emphasis on military means of tackling it, and its preference for technology-intensive methods of tracking and screening suspects. For instance, following the August 10 allegedly foiled “Heathrow plot”, India imposed the same drastic
hand-baggage restrictions as did Britain, although there was no specific threat emanating domestically. India continues with those restrictions on all passengers travelling abroad, not just to Britain.
The Western, or rather, Anglo-American, approach has resoundingly failed to contain terrorism. Five years after the Global War on Terrorism (GWoT) was launched, violence inspired by political motives continues to take a high toll of the lives of non-combatant civilians in many countries.
Even as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remain at large, new groups have mushroomed which are viscerally hostile to the West for a variety of reasons — related to the secular resistance to Iraq’s occupation (where the daily death-toll now exceeds 100), the horrors visited upon the Palestinian people, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, or more generally, to Western policy.
Both George W. Bush and Tony Blair fail to understand the diverse, secular and religion-related, location-specific sources of grievances that underlie the violence. By mindlessly lumping them together under hold-all terms like “Islamic fascism” (Bush), or “values” alien and inimical to the West (Blair), they further confuse issues.
Iraq’s occupation has considerably aggravated Muslim alienation everywhere. In Britain, nearly twice as many Muslims today justify violence as did in 2003. In turn, Muslims face growing prejudice in the West. Thirty-nine percent of respondents in a recent poll sampling 1,007 Americans said they felt at least some prejudice against Muslims. The same percentage favoured requiring all Muslims to carry a special identity document “as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in the US”. One-third said US Muslims are sympathetic to Al Qaeda, and 22 percent said they wouldn’t want Muslims as neighbours.
Not only has the Western counter-terrorism strategy failed to deliver results. There is disturbing evidence that it has aggravated racism, xenophobia and far-right extremism in Europe. A comprehensive survey released a month ago by the European Network against Racism (ENAR) says that Muslims face mounting discrimination in all 20 countries analysed in 2005 across the European Union, and that the reaction to terrorist attacks has made life more difficult for ethnic minorities.
The report systematically documents “an increase in manifestations of racism and a notable increase in far-right and extremist expressions of racism.” It says Europe witnessed “increased tolerance for discriminatory behaviour particularly against immigrants and Muslims.” New, tougher immigration laws and anti-terrorism security measures, including stop-and-search practices, have helped create conditions in which racism flourishes.
Campaigns systematically maligning “asylum-seekers” have resulted in the revocation of refugee claims. Last year in Germany, asylum claims of almost 15,000 refugees were revoked, compared to 577 in 1998. Anti-terror “crackdowns” have resulted in racial profiling. The stereotypes such profiling promotes demonise whole ethnic groups. The Netherlands comes in for uncomplimentary mention for growing racial profiling and anti-Muslim prejudice evident in the police demand for proof of identity under new rules implemented since January 2005.
The ENAR report says: “The rise of intolerance and discrimination towards Muslims has risen… and the underlying tones of Islamophobia have infiltrated all forms of public and private lives for Muslims in Europe.” On Britain, it quotes a study by the Institute of Race Relations, which says the anti-terrorism statutes have been used overwhelmingly against Muslims.
The report notes the remarkably low rate of convictions in anti-terrorism cases and notes: “The increase in the number of Asians stopped and searched has also been disproportionately high at 28 percent in England and Wales. In London, there was a massive 40 percent increase in Asians stopped and searched — the largest increase ever recorded in a single year for any group. Nationally, Asians are now 2.5 times more likely to be stopped and searched than Whites.” As if that were not bad enough, “up to a third of (British) Muslims say they or their family members have been victims of hostility. Assaults, arson and other violence seem to have been highest immediately after the (July 7) attacks, but have stayed high since.”
These findings are confirmed by a recent YouGov survey published in The Daily Telegraph, which says that 53 percent of Britons believe Islam poses “a threat to Western liberal democracy”. Immediately after 9/11, less than a third of all Britons believed this. The currency that such views have acquired is revealed in recent comments in right-wing newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, one of which reads: “We simply do not know… how to deal with the fact that we are threatened by a vast fifth column…”
In India, similar prejudice is growing against Muslims. Substitute “Islam” for “racism” and “xenophobia” in reports like ENAR’s, and you have an equally distressing picture. A Hindu-cnn-ibn-csds poll published a few days after the Mumbai blasts shows that 35 percent of Indians (38 percent of Hindus) believe terrorism gets “support from the Muslim community within the country”, and 33 percent (35 percent of Hindus) answer, “can’t say”.
This appears, unfortunately, to be related to the perception, held by 54 percent, that Pakistan is “the real force behind terrorist activities in India”. Fifty-nine percent of those who blame Pakistan believe India should attack terrorist bases there or pursue other “pressure tactics”; only 31 percent recommend negotiations.
Clearly, what we are witnessing is an explosion of anti-Muslim prejudice. Alarmingly, this has intruded into the official policy discourse. Take the thoroughly irresponsible statements of National Security Adviser MK Narayanan who at the drop of a hat blames the “Islamic” Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad for all kinds of terrorist attacks.
Narayanan made a deplorably communal speech tracing the “Islamic” roots of contemporary terrorism in 2001 (Frontline, September 8), which he concluded with the Gayatri Mantra. He recently announced that Al Qaeda has “arrived” in India because LeT has joined it — without adducing an iota of evidence.
The worst sites of anti-Muslim prejudice are indisputably our security agencies, including the Research & Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau, National Security Guard, etc. Of the hundred-plus ips officers in the Central intelligence agencies, only two are Muslims. And raw and spg don’t have a single Muslim in their ranks. This is a disgraceful state of affairs. The underlying presumption, that Muslims cannot be trusted with national security, is so despicably communal as to warrant doubts about the integrity of these agencies.
Our counter-terrorism efforts cannot possibly succeed unless we make these agencies truly inclusive, greatly increase the proportion of Muslims in the police, have sensitisation programmes on religious-ethnic issues and secularism for all security forces, and promote greater trust and confidence in the Muslim community.
The sense among a particular group that it’s being excluded and victimised is a dangerous ingredient of the deadly cocktail of resentments that ultimately result in violence. We cannot defeat terrorism unless we fight communalism upfront.
Bidwai is a Delhi-based journalist