The Island Editorial

‘Motherships of terrorism’

18 October 2016

 

Time was when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would go out of his way, adopting as he did some unconventional methods, to mend fences with Pakistan. He even paid his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif a surprise visit in Lahore last December. The latter gave the former a warm hug on the tarmac and they powwowed for a couple of hours. That unexpected stopover warmed the cockles of many a heart and some observers claimed that it marked a thaw in the relations between the two nuclear capable neighbours. How naive they were!

Less than a year on, India and Pakistan are trading fire in border areas and a hawkish Modi is making bellicose declarations. He now rarely misses an opportunity to condemn Pakistan, which he has, in his address at the BRICS summit, referred to as a ‘mothership of terror’, which poses a threat to India’s economy among other things. Modi’s consternation is understandable. However, India is not free from blame though it pretends to be an innocent victim of cross border terrorism.

Some of the terrorist outfits troubling Pakistan are offshoots of the anti-Soviet combatants the US created, armed and funded to rid Afghanistan of Russians. Had the US cared to help develop that country after achieving its goal, the Taliban, which emerged, promising to bring order out of chaos and sponsored al-Qaeda, would not have come into being; the Americans could have saved billions of dollars spent on fighting an elusive enemy. Why India is not faulting the US, its newfound ally, for having paved the way for the destabilisation of the region by promoting terrorism, is the question. It is ironical that the US, which defended Pakistan to the hilt during the Cold War era, has now forged strong ties with former Russian ally, India so much so that if Obama catches a cold in Washington Modi sneezes in New Delhi.

Each and every global power has a history of using terrorism as a weapon against other countries to advance its agenda. Some powerful nations have gone so far as to harbour the perpetrators of terrorism plaguing the nations considered hostile to them.

PM Modi has, in his BRICS address, also called for action against terrorism and an early adoption of CCIT (Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism). About three decades ago, whoever would have thought India would one day call for an end to terrorism? It won’t be able to live down its past when it, as a strategic partner of Soviet Union, in a bid to tame Sri Lanka, which switched its allegiance to the US during the JRJ government, created, trained, armed and funded terrorist groups here. If it had not resorted to coercive action to frighten the JRJ government into submission and rescue Prabhakaran, who was about to be either captured or killed by the Sri Lankan forces way back in 1987, the war would not have dragged on until 2009 and tens of thousands of lives and properties worth billions could have been saved. Moreover, about 1,400 Indian soldiers would not have perished at the hands of the LTTE combatants. Rajiv paid with his dear life for the sinful act of coddling Sri Lanka’s terrorists and ‘all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten’ the hands of other Indians responsible for creating terrorism here.

That the US and its western allies created or backed terrorist groups in Latin America, Africa and Asia is only too well known. Would they also be called ‘motherships of terrorism’?

At least now, the powerful nations ought to realise that using terrorism as an instrument to achieve their politico-military goals is counterproductive. Most of them have been hoist with their own petard.  They sowed the wind and now they are reaping the whirlwind.

What we are witnessing is a case of sinners casting stones at one another. They are lucky that the victims of their terrorism are too weak to stone them for having made the world so dangerous a place.