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ENDURING FREEDOM: One year
on
Myth and mystique
B
Raman
One year after the launch of Operation
Enduring Freedom, there is still no clear understanding,
either in the United States or in Southeast Asia, of the
nature and modus operandi of the dual set-up
headed by Osama bin Laden.
Before September 11,
2001, it was bin Laden's al-Qaeda, an exclusively Arab
organization with a small strength, which organized
practically all the terrorist strikes directed against
the US, whether in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen or
the US homeland. Since September 11, 2001, however, the
strikes have been largely carried out by non-al-Qaeda
and non-Taliban components of bin Laden's International
Islamic Front (IIF), which was formed in 1998 and
subsequently expanded.
The IIF is a much, much
larger organization than al-Qaeda proper, and while
there was involvement of Arab elements of al-Qaeda in
the post-September 11 terrorist incidents in Tunisia,
Yemen and Kuwait, the incidents in Pakistan and
Southeast Asia were largely the work of Pakistani and
the Southeast Asian members of the IIF. There was
involvement of Yemeni-Balochi members (born of mixed
Yemeni-Balochi parentage) of the Pakistani components of
the IIF in the incidents in Karachi, particularly in the
kidnapping and execution of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
Also, there was possibly some involvement of
longstanding Arab residents of Southeast Asia in the
incidents in the Philippines and in the Bali explosion
in Indonesia. But they did not play a leadership role;
the initiative for these incidents came from the
indigenous cadres of the IIF in Pakistan and Southeast
Asia.
An outcome of the failure to make this
distinction when analyzing and assessing the activities
of bin Laden-inspired terrorists is that practically all
pan-Islamic terrorist incidents are being attributed to
al-Qaeda and bin Laden, which thereby gives them a
larger-than-life image in the eyes of the impressionable
youth of the region's Muslim communities. Thus it is
government and media in the US, the UK, Australia and
Southeast Asia that is unwittingly giving bin Laden the
status and image of a superstar valiantly countering the
sole post-1991 superpower.
There are three -
each equally important - components to any
counter-terrorism operation: the political, the
operational and the psychological. While there is
adequate understanding of and emphasis on the political
and operational aspects, the understanding of the
psychological component is surprisingly inadequate. When
bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the IIF periodically use Al
Jazeera and the Internet for disseminating their
statements, they are using psychological warfare
techniques, first to rally their actual and potential
supporters, and second to project themselves to the
general public, supporters and non-supporters alike, as
invincible and capable of confronting the US and other
nations fighting against them.
It is important
that the US and other members of the international
coalition do not unconsciously play into their hands by
giving publicity to such statements and through
knee-jerk reactions to them. Similarly, it is important
for states countering terrorism to portray it in its
true light - as a phenomenon and a scourge - by focusing
on the human tragedies and the large civilian casualties
perpetrated by the terrorists. Such a focus will help to
create feelings of revulsion and even a guilt complex in
the minds of the members of the ethnic or religious
community or ideological group from which the terrorists
arose. They should avoid undue focus on terrorist
leaders as individuals and sensationalized projections
of their capabilities and powers of networking and
co-ordination.
Instead of doing so, Western -
particularly US, Australian and Southeast Asian -
counter-terrorism experts and analysts have been
focusing on the capabilities and the prowess of
terrorist leaders such as bin Laden, Hambali, etc,
thereby unwittingly contributing to the creation of
icon-like images of these leaders in the eyes of their
communities and of organizational personalities for
their set-ups which make such non-state actors appear as
equals or formidable adversaries of the states
confronting them.
This contributes to the
creation of the feeling of pride in the communities to
which the terrorists belong. Instead of making the
terrorist leaders appear to the public mind as worthy of
contempt, they are made to appear as worthy of
emulation.
A
privately produced television documentary on the Bali explosion that I
saw during my visit to Southeast Asia was an example of
how not to project such terrorist incidents
and the organizations behind them. In the incident,
up to 87 Australians and 100 others were reportedly
killed. But there must have been fatal casualties
and serious burn and other physical injuries amongst
local Indonesians too. The brutalities inflicted by the
terrorists - all of them reportedly Indonesians inspired
by bin Laden - on Indonesian civilians at Bali (as well
as previous terrorist strikes within the archipelago)
were hardly brought out to shock the common Indonesian
people. Instead, the focus was almost entirely on the
brutalities suffered by white-skinned people. Since
there is already considerable anger in the Islamic world
against the US, the UK and Australia, visuals of their
nationals suffering brutalities at the hands of the
terrorists would not have created feelings of revulsion
in their community. Instead, the most likely result is
the widespread production of a feeling of malign glee
accompanied by a reaction probably best summed up by the
phrase: "Serves them right."
In India and Sri
Lanka, we similarly contributed in the past to the folly
of creating icon-like images of Sant Bhindranwale in the
eyes of some Sikhs and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
leader Velupillai Prabakaran in the eyes of some Tamils.
We paid a heavy price for our folly. We have learnt the
right lessons since then and are more sophisticated now
in our counter psy-war techniques. We keep the focus on
the scourge of terrorism and on Pakistan's state
sponsorship of terrorism and away from individual
terrorist leaders. We take them seriously in private,
but feign to ignore them with contempt in public. Our
projections always try to highlight the fact of
Pakistani terrorists killing Kashmiris, Kashmiri
terrorists themselves killing Kashmiris, and Muslims
killing Muslims in the name of jihad. The theme of
Indonesians killing Indonesians, Filipinos killing
Filipinos and Malaysians, and Singaporeans and Thais
seeking to kill their compatriots in the name of jihad
has not been adequately brought out at all. Unless and
until this counter psy-war aspect is effectively
handled, one would find the various extremist and
terrorist organizations gathering strength and
following.
The seething anti-Western anger in
the Islamic world in general and in West Asia and
Southeast Asia in particular shows no signs of abating.
On the other hand, it has become even more intense as
one saw during the recent elections in Pakistan on
October 10, where a coalition of pro-Taliban and
pro-al-Qaeda Islamic fundamentalist organizations scored
impressive victories in the sensitive tribal regions
bordering Afghanistan. When bin Laden formed the IIF in
1998, it viewed the US and Israel as the principal
enemies of Islam. Since then, it has started viewing the
UK and Australia, too, as enemies of Islam.
The
anger against the UK is largely Iraq-related. In the
case of Australia, the anger likely relates to
Australia's role in East Timor and its increasingly high
profile stance in Southeast Asia in the war against
terrorism. The Australian government is accused of
entering into a conspiracy with Christian missionary
organizations to snatch East Timor away from the Islamic
ummah and have it occupied by the "crusaders". Then,
there is also the role of Richard Butler, the Australian
national who headed the UN inspection team in Iraq in
the late 1990s. Butler is being accused of acting in the
past as the stooge of the USA's Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) by providing the US and the UK with
pretexts for bombing Iraq and causing the deaths of
hundreds of innocent civilians.
For the past
year, there has been severe criticism of Australia in
the mosques and madrassas (religious schools) of
Pakistan, particularly in the Binori madrassa in
Karachi and the Akora Khattak madrassa near
Peshawar, where Southeast Asian students are learning to
characterize Australians as the "Ugly Australian", which
is a throwback to the characterization of Americans as
the "Ugly American" during the Vietnam War. There is a
likelihood that some Indonesians and other Southeast
Asians trained in Pakistani madrassas have been
infiltrated into Australia for organizing terrorist
strikes. Though there is as yet no credible evidence to
show that the Bali explosion was specifically directed
at Australians, the possibility of terrorist strikes
against Australian nationals and interests in areas
outside Australia is rated high.
The latest Al
Jazeera broadcast purportedly by bin Laden warns the UK,
France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Australia against
cooperating with the US in its war against terrorism. Of
these, only the UK and Australia are viewed by the IIF
as enemies of Islam, though they are not described so in
the broadcast, while no such criticism has been directed
against France, Italy, Germany and Canada.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; member
of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also
head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research
& Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence
agency, from 1988 to August, 1994.
(©2002
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