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Tue, Dec 23rd 2008, 12:53

Member deleted

One can understand K. Subrahmanyam's eagerness to have NATO fight the war on terror on behalf of India. However, the fight on terror is not equal to the fight against Pakistan. The war against terrorism is barely as simple a thing as rhetorical polemics that have populist import - within any one particular state's 'nationalist' agenda.
While it is correct that the war against terror should be and is an on-going global war - it has dimensions that would make the Indian state agree to a common purview and agree to a common set of prescriptions that one can have for Pakistan, including nearly every state that postulates 'terrorism' as a problem. NATO's agenda is less a war against terror, per se but rather more to the re-building of Afghanistan where its populace can live with certain basic freedoms that are considered non-negotiable in most NATO states, including the United States of America.
The global war against terror is not a geo-political decision within the realm of classic real politik. Nor is terrorism, though elevated, equal to the 'compulsions' of the 'Cold War' between the erstwhile superpower blocs, when India alongwith many other states preferred and chose the Non-Aligned Movement to state their differences and their preferred neutrality from the then ongoing 'Cold War'.
Neither does Mr. K. Subramanyam's appeal to Obama, as the President-Elect of the United States, make much sense except be seen as a speech-act within a regional security complex. The war on terrorism, as an avowed global agenda by most democracies and NATO members, are separate issues and form a separate realm, than being and/or becoming a willy-nilly partner in a regional security complex or a regional war. However, Mr. K. Subrahmanyam's views would make more sense to NATO as well as the United States of America if India agrees adhere to the basic parameters that any strategic and any meaningful war on terror entails. Just like the Non-Proliferation Treaty, India's task would be made much easier - in this present exhortion - if it agrees to become a party to a set of principles and prescriptions that are necessary for either the NATO or the United States to take this exortion seriously. Just like the issue of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, peace in South Asia is held a hostage to a regional security complex that should have been long foregone via these two states' mutual membership of the SAARC or the South Asian Association for Regional Co-Operation.
Should India take the initiative, it would become much easier for the United States to not only effectively persuade Pakistan, but also its NATO allies, for certain measures that can perhaps help South Asia not merely 'fight' terrorism, but also ensure a certain regional stability.

Fri, Dec 26th 2008, 12:10

Member deleted

One cannot resist the temptation to try and understand certain exortions to external powers by the author, who one discovers has much to do with the Indian state's agency for National Security! Hence a few observations that contain some questions in themselves!

The issue of terrorism occupies and yet does not occupy the Indian elites. It occupies as far as possible electoral capital can be made from that. It does not as far any effective steps and/or capacity can be taken by the Indian state to combat, in any meaningful sense, terrorism. A casual look at the few ‘terror’ attacks on Mumbai – long sought to hailed as India’s financial hub – show the same patterns and same set of operators: allegedly the Mafiosi. A simple search through the internet throws up what comes across as the romanticization of terror in the attempts at drawing parallels with the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Tower, in the stylization by the Indian media of the 26th November attacks as 26/11. there are no parallels, though what it does throw up is somewhat a devastating indictment upon the Indian state’s capacity to combat terrorism or perhaps its intent. One look at some figures gleaned from the internet point out at glaring problems that the Indian state faces, for ostensible reasons best known to itself, over the issue of combating terrorism. All these figures pertain to Mumbai alone. Their alleged source remains the Mafiosi throughout.

12 March 1993: serial blasts, casualty 247 (source PTI/HT).
11 July 2006: serial blasts, casualty 150 (source TNN/TOI).
26 November 2008: Terror attack, casualty 170 (source PTI/TOI).

What we do find here are interesting faults of the Indian state, in not only the repetition of terror attacks, but also their source that continues to remain the same throughout. What would be the compulsions for the Indian state that not enables a repetition of attacks, but also that they all ostensibly emanate from the same source? The answers to such state compulsions and/or failures, while the present author, as someone whose indirect trials and tribulations in India began after his academic specialization in the said topic – but of International Terrorism – point out at something being terribly rotten with the state of "India", to paraphrase the old saying!
What it is and what it can be - is for the common Indian citizen and the Indian elites to find out, and delve into and correct – before one can begin to take seriously the Indian state’s “resolve” to combat terrorism and save its populace from an additional threat. What does come across as repetitive, apart from the routine platitudes from its political elites of ‘fighting’ and ‘eradicating’ terrorism – is the act of terrorism itself. Quite simply, the Mafiosi is not the only source of terror or threat to the Indian state. Yet, quite simply – the Mafiosi in India seems to be getting away with routinely blasting Mumbai and in effect reinforcing the old claims of the crime-terror nexus at work - in amnners that are quite astounding. That this nexus is a threat to the International Community is a fact. That this nexus may be the Indian state’s Achilles’ Heels, as far as its capacity to effectively safeguard the lives of its populace is concerned, makes it uncertain and does throw doubts over both the Indian state’s resolve as well as its capacity to combat the crime-terror nexus. A nexus that seems, just in Mumbai alone, to be extracting quite a few lives – quite regularly.