NEWSLINKS US EDITION SOUTH ASIA COLUMNISTS DIARY SPECIALS INTERVIEWS CAPITAL BUZZ REDIFF POLL THE STATES ELECTIONS ARCHIVES US ARCHIVES SEARCH REDIFF
Ramesh Menon in New Delhi
Well known jurist Dr L M Singhvi said on Monday evening that many defended terrorism thinking it arose out of human rights violations.
"But now, they have come to realise that terrorism itself was the greatest human right violation. It is time we restore the rationality in the discourse of terrorism. Human right activists must now learn to reach a balance between civil liberties and rule of law on one hand and battle against terrorism on the other," he said.
He was speaking at an international seminar on The Global Threat of Terror-Ideological, Material and Political Linkages organised by the Institute for Conflict Management.
The institute researches and compiles data on terrorism and low intensity warfare in South Asia.
Dr Singhvi said it was not possible to reason with a terrorist because he was a person who had lost faith in every system of conflict resolution.
"It was not guns and bombs alone, but the supporting ideologies that constituted the greatest threat of terrorism and one had to look at the breeding grounds of these ideologies. However, such analysis should never be allowed to become the condonation of terror or an excuse for terrorism," he felt.
He said the idea of a 'moderate Taleban' propounded by Pakistan and the United States was ridiculous and a contradiction in terms.
"The battle for freedom was the battle against terrorism. As an ideology, terrorism challenged the ideology of freedom," he added.
Dr William Maley, a senior lecturer at the school of politics, in the University of New South Wales, Australia, pointed out that despite a large number of people involved in the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks, there was no leakage of their operation plans.
Bonds of fraternity within terrorist groups were deliberately kept at high levels of intimacy to ensure their success, he said.
Discussing the Taleban regime, Dr Maley said, the notion of State power was itself elusive, as the State in Afghanistan at the moment was just a set of symbols rather than an administrative apparatus.
Therefore, religion became an indispensable device for symbolic legitimisation of power.
Dr Maley observed that the Indian political system had proved exceedingly vigorous, and survived the emergency primarily due to the considerable power of socialisation.
Pakistan, by contrast, he said, had considerable difficulty in this sphere, partly because of tensions over the substance of national identity, and partly because of the weakness of the education system and mass media, which have provided opportunities for sectarianism to develop.
Dr Reuven Paz, academic director of the Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, pointed out two reasons for Islamic radicalism -- The globalisation of the Islamic struggle and the emergence of a 'Non-Territorial Islamic State'.
Dr Paz said a significant example of this was the spread of suicide terrorism in recent years from Lebanon to the Palestinian arena, to east Africa, Kashmir, Chechnya, the Yemen, and the United States.
Dr Paz pointed out that in many cases, Islamist activists were able to influence those Muslims whose religious knowledge was poor.
"The radical perception of basic jihad as ordered by the Prophet is therefore more attractive and appealing to many of them," he said.
The Egyptian Ambassador Gehad Madi said terrorism in West Asia commenced in the 1940's with Jewish terrorism. Occupation was the worst form of terrorism. To deal with cycles of violence and counter-violence, one had to address the issue of Israeli occupation, he said.
Madi blamed the increase in suicide terrorism attacks by Palestinians as the desperation that arose out of the overwhelming use of force by the militarily strong Israel.
Mahmoud Mourad, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram, Egypt's leading Arabic Newspaper, said in his presentation that that Osama bin Laden had a special status among the mujahideen in Afghanistan and they considered him a leader.
He pointed out that Osama bin Laden had earlier co-operated with American intelligence agencies and had received large quantities of modern weapons from them.
B Raman, former additional secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, said the larger than life images of the Taleban and Mullah Omar could be debated.
He said that little of their actual war against the Russians had been documented, as the efforts of other mujahideen groups in Afghanistan had been.
"Very little was also known about Mullah Omar and it was not clear whether he had actually said what was attributed to him. There was a brain trust manufacturing and projecting these false images. This had created a synthetic charismatic leadership that had nothing to do with the real activities and capabilities of these individuals. It was futile to target Mullah Omar and the Taleban without locating and acting against this brain trust," he said.
Raman said that terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan could not be compared with the rest of the world, as terrorism in these two countries is linked to the drug trade and also with the state apparatus.
Back to top
Tell us what you think of this report
