Decoding Terror

History reveals that spies, strategists, hired assassins and fanatics have always been used by empires to further their goals, weaken their enemies and conquer new territories. Wars have been launched to conquer holy lands and propagate their own religions. The terrorist of modern times has progressed. A suicide bomber can take the lives of thousands of people in jam packed buildings and markets. The aim is to induce an element of fear and lately also to gain publicity. If we seriously believe the cliché ‘Terrorists have no religion’, we are only fooling ourselves. It definitely is religion as understood and followed by them that terrorists get their inspiration from. As children, they are taught to hate their perceived enemies and they grow up blindly slaughter innocents. It is religion that divides and separates people who have the same ethnicity and language and eventually leads them to commit barbaric acts against their neighbors.

How are acts of terrorism justified by the perpetrators of such crimes? The irony of history is that what is seen as an act of terrorism by one section of society is hailed as liberalization movement or assertion of human rights by some other section of society. This concept is exploited by fundamentalists and organizations that create terrorists. Thus, a Muslim may incite his followers to violence, or indulge in it himself, but he still remains a pillar of the community as long as he performs ritual namaz, goes on Hajj and abstains from pork. A Hindu may do likewise, but as long as he donates to temples, goes on pilgrimage, does not eat beef and holds bovine life more sacred than human, he will pass muster. Without misinterpretation of religion, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. So after ‘Islamic terrorism’ there is now ‘Hindu terrorism’, just as we once had ‘Sikh terrorism’ and Christian terrorism in Ireland. Terror is a by-product of misinterpreted religion. This is the evil we must fight. Denial will not get us anywhere.

Strangely this same element of relativity has also been amply exploited by most of the countries that matter, to serve their imperialist and expansionist needs. Intelligence agencies of most of these countries have indulged in covert operations and clandestine warfare to destabilize their adversaries, by supporting armed rebellion and unrest in these countries. The phenomenal rise of global terrorism has been largely reactive, driven by one brutal ploy after another by the western powers, and mostly the US. The Islamic fundamentalism sponsored by the US to promote its strategic interests against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan lead to the creation of al-Qaida and Taliban which quickly turned into a Frankenstein’s monster and turned their fangs towards their creator.

Global terrorism is now a global threat and no country can fight it in isolation. Terrorism has assumed the features of a globalized criminal activity which is able to reach and hit any state and any population. Two issues which arise in the context of terrorism are the problem of definition and that of providing jurisdiction to an international tribunal to deal with such a crime. The definition of terrorism has eluded the academia in the world till date. This has been a hindrance to the formulation of specific legislation on the subject of terrorism. Nations that commonly share the threats of global terrorism should come together and eliminate terrorism through diplomatic efforts and overt military strikes, avoiding covert attacks. And this has to start with a Global Intelligence Task Force to Eliminate Terrorism.