Addressing a gathering of Indian-Americans at San Jose’s SAP Center during his recent visit to America, Indian Premier Narendra Modi criticized the United Nations (UN) for failing to define terrorism.
“If defining it takes so much time, then how many years will it take to tackle terrorism” lamented Modi, adding “at a time when we are observing the 70th anniversary of the UN, it is the world body’s responsibility to come out in clear terms who it considers a terrorist and who is on the side of humanity.”
Modi’s grandstanding on American soil prompted this author to find out whether India’s secretive training centers, meant to impart skills in deceptive subversion to foreign assets, are still functioning?
“Surely they continue to exist, but the locations always changes for obvious reasons. Without them stage-managing events in our extended peripheral neighborhood for gaining strategic advantage is virtually impossible” confirmed a strategic intelligence source, who was involved in conducting rigorous training sessions discreetly where strategic assets of non-Indian nationalities learned the nitty-gritty of coercive-destabilization, calibrated violence and sabotage.
So why is Modi taking a high moral ground when it is an open secret, despite contrary official narratives, that there has been clandestine interaction of state instruments with terror actors? However, it is also an undeniable fact that this phenomenon is not unique to India.
An honest analysis of the background and linkages of all functioning terror groups on earth will inevitably bring to fore the extremely messy and murky reality of intelligence services of all hues having co-opted these “bad guys” to play a wide range of strategic operational games at one time or another.
Terrorism, indeed, is more complicated and nuanced than what armchair experts or even political executives like Modi would like the common man to believe.
One needs to realize unambiguously that there can be no black and white definition of terrorism, especially because intelligence agencies have also created terror fronts to be used as strategic tools for effectively countering the hydra-headed and hideous terror-monsters, born out of the bitter Cold War conflict.
And that precisely is the reason why the description of terrorist motivations lies at the root of the fundamental disagreement between nation-states when it comes to the question of evolving an acceptable definition of terror acts.
No wonder why one man’s terrorist has always been another man’s freedom fighter and vice versa in a world where the powers that be have jostled to gain a strategic upper hand, even at the cost of misinterpreting and deliberately desecrating hallowed religious concepts.
Truly intriguing it is that in his desperation to try and nudge the UN to assign a comprehensive definition to terrorism, Modi somehow showed a deliberate unwillingness to recognize the importance of intelligence services’ discreet influence on terror groups and actors.
In fact, India’s national security adviser Ajit Doval himself is a master in manipulating extremist groups, known for indulging in indiscriminate killings of innocents and destruction of government properties, for furthering India’s strategic goals.
“Ajit has been a critical component of India’s secretive blue missions in the region and beyond” confirmed a strategic intelligence source with in-depth knowledge about Doval’s aptitude in asset nurturing within terror organizations, inimical to New Delhi’s security interests. And the same source shared some explosive details of Doval being instrumental in placing and developing assets within the dreaded Islamic State (IS) too. While, blaming the UN indirectly for failing to tackle terrorism effectively, how could Modi forget the surreptitious trip of his “Man Friday” Doval to Daesh fiefdom in Syria and Iraq not so long ago for strategic reasons? Surely, Modi, being the head of government, cannot be oblivious of the fact that India’s security establishment, commanded by Doval, is desperately seeking a solid foothold in MENA region in partnership with Israel’s strategic intelligence setup.
And nothing can be better than being part of a dreaded shadow war when it is virtually impossible for New Delhi to openly poke its long nose in a critical geostrategic realm where India has very little leverage.
Going by a top security source’s asseveration, “India’s strategic intelligence is busy weaving a spooky and tangled web across a large stretch of area — ranging from the Qinghai Tibetan plateau to the disturbed zone in Middle-East and North Africa in the west and South China Sea and beyond in the far east — while bolstering the capability to execute strategic subversion in this extended area of influence simultaneously.”
Against this backdrop, can India really dispense her holier-than-thou brand of puritanism to the world without a finger being pointed at her for nurturing extremist elements?
While trying to arrive at an agreed definition of terrorism, there is an urgent need to correlate terrorism with socio-economic deprivation, coercive majoritarianism and other forms of political violence.
Valid questions will also be raised about the exact nature of relationship between guerilla warfare and terrorism and whether terrorism can be treated as a sub-category of violent coercion or a surreptitious instrument for wielding political power and influence globally? And there will be inevitable confusion in distinguishing acts of terrorism with those of national liberation, though a genuine freedom fighter is never expected to cause any harm to innocent civilians.
If motivated attacks on non-combatant targets are ultimately recognized as terrorism universally, Modi will be compelled to acknowledge that Hindutva radicals’ murderous assault on helpless Indian minorities perfectly fits into this terror definition, a no-win situation for Modi’s India indeed.
