Published in Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol XXIV, No.2, Winter 2004.
Terrorism and Governance in Kashmir
Sunil Sondhi
Maharaja Agrasen college
Terrorism and Governance in Kashmir
Sunil Sondhi
Maharaja Agrasen college
University of Delhi
Abstract
The world community has confronted the threat posed by global terrorism with an unprecedented worldwide coalition that is employing every tool of national and international power at its command: diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence, financial investigation, military action, and humanitarian aid.
Just as terrorism constitutes a fluid, elusive enemy, so the new anti-terror alliance has assumed new and flexible forms in which different countries assume different levels of action and responsibility. (1) Nations have brought their own experiences, concerns, and even policy differences to this war against terrorism. That was inevitable, and in many ways positive; the diversity and flexible nature of this unprecedented coalition is one of its strengths. However, that also meant that the impact of war against terrorism would not be similar in different regions and countries.
India has been at war against terrorism in Kashmir for much longer than the United States or United Nations. That war has vital military and operational components, which will proceed in different ways for months and probably years to come. But force alone cannot win this war. Victory requires a longer-term, political strategy as well. It is more than clear that one of the main factors that have helped in the spread of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir has been chronically bad governance in that state. The campaign against terrorism in Kashmir can thus be characterized as a strategy for victory that requires the creation of institutions and norms that can achieve the goals of freedom and development.
War against Terrorism
Since September 11, the United States and its allies have been at war against an elusive enemy. The Cold War was an entirely different experience, yet it is not without lessons for the war against terrorism. (2) Already the war against global terrorism has achieved important successes. On the diplomatic front, for example, a UN Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously, obligates all 189 members to end all terrorist activity and support, and to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice.
In its unanimous adoption of resolution 1373 (2001) on 28 September 2001, the Security Council for the first time imposed measures not against a State, its leaders, nationals or commodities, but against acts of terrorism throughout the world and the terrorists themselves. It is one of the most expansive resolutions in the history of the Council, with a focus on ensuring that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts, or who supports terrorist acts, is brought to justice, and that such acts are established as serious criminal offences in domestic law and regulation with punishments that duly reflect their seriousness.
The Council called upon States to submit to the Counter-Terrorism Committee reports on their implementation of the resolution. The Committee has established subcommittees to review those reports, with the assistance of experts in relevant fields, and it conducts each review in partnership with the State that submitted the report. That partnership may lead the Committee, United Nations agencies and/or certain other States to provide a substantial degree of technical assistance and cooperation to facilitate the implementation of resolution 1373 (2001).
Investigators throughout the world have arrested hundreds of individuals with possible ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. The threat of future attacks remains, but the sustained pressure of police work and intelligence gathering, coupled with military operations in Afghanistan, means that al Qaeda is on the run and its network is being dismantled cell by cell, cave by cave.
Drying up the financial sources of terror is vital to end the terrorist threat. In fact, financial support has been crucial to the recent spread of terrorist activities across the continents.(3) Following the UN Security Council initiatives more than 112 nations have issued blocking orders and frozen assets used to finance terrorism, which have been found everywhere from bank accounts in the United States to relief organizations in Europe and chains of honey shops in the Middle East (4). The 29-nation Financial Action Task Force has played a particularly active role in coordinating efforts to identify and stop financial flows to terrorist organizations.
Diverse Impact in South Asia
In the South Asian region perhaps the most positive impact of the war on terrorism could be seen in Sri Lanka which has witnessed significant easing of tensions since September 11. There is a clear shift in the LTTEs position on a separate country (Eelam) with its chief, V. Prabhakaran, declaring that his organisation was neither for separatism nor terrorism. He also indicated that the LTTE would agree to a political solution within an integrated Sri Lanka, but would be forced to opt for secession if the conflict was not solved through peaceful means.
Some countries among the international community had imposed restrictions on the LTTE after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The US attacks, while unrelated to the LTTE, strengthened the then Sri Lankan governments campaign for a global ban on the LTTE. Australia, in December 2001, placed the LTTE on its list of terrorist organisation in pursuance of its obligations under UN Resolution 1373 on the suppression of the financing of terror. On November 8, 2001, following a relentless effort by the Sri Lankan government, Canada also named the LTTE as a terrorist outfit and the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada, issued a new list that included, for the first time, the LTTE. The LTTEs front organisations have a formidable presence in Canada and the Tamil expatriate community there is considered to be a major source of funds for the LTTE. Earlier, on February 28, 2001 the British government had proscribed the LTTE under its new Terrorism Act 2000.
In Bangladesh, a number of transnational Islamist terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda, had established a presence in alliance with various militant fundamentalist organisations there. (Levitt) (Investigations into the January 22, 2002, terrorist attacks on the American Centre in India’s Kolkata, brought these linkages to the fore. The self-styled Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF), which claimed responsibility for the January 22 attack, is essentially a criminal group allied to the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-BD). The HuJI-BD has very close links with Pakistan’s external intelligence agency the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The arrest of Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, the prime accused in the American Centre attack, led to further disclosures regarding the international linkages between the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and HuJI based in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ansari is reportedly linked to the ISI and to Omar Shiekh, a prominent leader of the JeM and prime accused in the abduction and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. These investigations and disclosures have put the Bangladesh government on alert and it has agreed to cooperate with other countries in checking terrorist operation from its soil.
In Nepal, insurgency reached unprecedented levels during late 2001. At that time, the Maoists jettisoned the four month-old cease-fire that they had announced on July 23, 2001, and had launched co-ordinated countrywide strikes on the night of November 23, 2001. The worst among the attacks was the massacre at the Army barracks in Ghorai in which 14 troops were killed and another 30 injured. The Leftwing extremists also looted 99 self-loading rifles (SLRs). Besides, the insurgents have also declared the formation of a ‘Central People’s Government’, implying that they have formed a national-level parallel government. The insurgents were also running a state within a state in their strongholds, including in Rolpa, Rukum, Jajarkot and Salyan districts. It was in these districts that the insurgency began in 1996.
Faced with an unenviable crisis, the Nepalese government declared a nation-wide ‘state of Emergency’ on November 26 and deployed the Royal Nepal Army to counter the insurgents. The Emergency was then extended for another three months, with Parliamentary approval on February 21, 2002. Nepal has received unqualified support from India in its counter-insurgency measures and so far it has been able to contain the threat to its nascent parliamentary democracy.
More of the same in Kashmir
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, links between Al Qaeda, the Taliban and terrorists active in Jammu & Kashmir have increasingly been recognised by the global community. It is now being accepted that transnational networks of terrorist groups are operating as autonomous entities quite independent of particular national situations. (5) Outfits such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, JeM and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which have lately been very active in Kashmir, had direct links with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda. After September 11 a large number of members of the Islamist terrorist network are suspected to have crossed over to Kashmir.
Osama bin Laden’s covert support to terrorist organizations in Kashmir became
overt when he threatened the US with more deaths after 11 September if it continued to support India. Osama included India in the category of Russia, Serbia, and Israel as ‘enemies of Islam’. This statement came close on the heels of a similarly worded threat to India from Jaish-e-Mohammed. Maulana Masood Azhar, the JEM chief, bristled at the freezing of his organisation’s assets by the USA on 11th October 2001.and said, ‘We warn them (Indians) to beware of the mujahideen. We will soon deal them a smashing blow to assert our authority. We will continue the struggle.’
In this context, it bears mention that the objectives of the World Islamic Front for
Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, established by Osama bin Laden in 1998, are far reaching and these include:
* liberation of the Middle East from the ‘clutches’ of Israel;
* ejection of the USA from the Holy Land of Sudi Arabia;
* overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and other corrupt Muslim governments, and ;
* uniting of all Muslim under the umbrella of the Ummah to transcend national borders and establish a ‘Caliphate-style’ government. (6)
After September 11 India tried to convince the US administration, that the former was being targeted by the same terror network which inflicted the September 11 attacks on the US, and this common threat emanated from the same Islamist extremist sources supported by common allies, Pakistan, the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. This threat, consequently, required a common response. While this principle has gained wide acceptance, a degree of ambivalence has persisted in the US responses, as it has sought to manage Pakistan in an unlikely role as a frontline state against terrorism. (7)
Even before the September 11 attacks, Western focus had been shifting, howsoever inadequately, towards the burgeoning danger of international extremist Islamist terrorism located in the Pakistan-Afghanistan axis. It is partially this concern that was reflected in the US State Department's assertion, in mid-2000, that the locus of terrorism has shifted from West Asia to South Asia. (8)
The increased US attention on the sub-continent in the aftermath of September 11, revived calls from separatist forces within J&K and Pakistan for US mediation in the conflict. The US has consistently rejected the idea of mediation unless asked for by all parties involved in the conflict (9). The US administration under President George W. Bush endorsed India’s stance that terrorism was being perpetrated in the State under the façade of a freedom struggle and went a step ahead by declaring outfits manned by Pakistani and other foreign mercenaries, such as the LeT, JeM and HuM, as Foreign Terrorist Organisations. The UK too has banned these organisations.
Following intense international pressure, Pakistan has been taking nominal steps against terrorist outfits based in its territory and operating in J&K. This was more so after the US, on December 26, 2001, termed the LeT and the JeM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO). In the aftermath of September 11, the US woke up to the fact that the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA), an outfit it termed as an FTO in 1997 for its links with bin Laden, was operating in Pakistan under the name of HuM after the proscription. The HuM was termed as an FTO in October 2001. Following this US categorisation, Pakistan proceeded to arrest the top leadership of the JeM and the LeT even while permitting the second line of command to operate freely. JeM chief, Maulana Massod Azhar was first detained for a few hours on December 26, 2001 and then arrested again on December 29, 2001. The former LeT chief, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed was arrested on December 30, 2001. These face saving measures were intended to keep the dollars coming from the US rather than checking cross-border terrorism against India. (10)
Since the insurgency in J&K began in 1988, India has been consistently indicating that the state was a theatre for Pakistan's proxy war. It was only after the December 13, 2001, terrorist attack on Parliament, that the government decided that this proxy war required the threat of a military response and military deployment along the border with Pakistan was built-up.
The consequent face-off between Indian and Pakistani forces strengthened Western perceptions of the Kashmir issue as a potential flash-point for a future nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, and the international community has been urging India to avoid an armed conflict with Pakistan and to give President Musharraf more time to curb the activities of terrorist groups based in his country. (11)
India’s and Pakistan’s oft-stated positions on Kashmir were vigorously projected in the context of the September 11 attacks. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, while going public on his support to the US in its global campaign against bin Laden and the Taliban, claimed that this course was being adopted to prevent harm to Pakistan’s "Kashmir cause". In an interview on October 2, 2001, where he was asked about the changing focus of terrorism to Kashmir, he stated that this would be the most contentious issue and "it will not be accepted at all" in Pakistan.
The cosmetic changes within Pakistan in the post-9/11 phase failed to impress the jehadi groups, and there was a continuous succession of attacks in India. In the December 13 attack on India’s Parliament, four fidayeen (suicide) terrorists of the JeM, drove an explosives laden car into the Parliament compound and opened fire. Their entry into Parliament building was prevented by the security personnel. Although one of the fidayeen blew himself up, this failed to cause any major casualties. Eight security personnel and a member of the parliament staff were killed along with the fidayeen. India has stated that the JeM, in collusion with the LeT, had carried out the attack.
In its October 1 attack on the Srinagar Legislature complex, a JeM fidayeen exploded an explosives laden car outside the complex gate. In the ensuing confusion, three JeM fidayeen entered the complex and fortified themselves within. They fired indiscriminately until they were killed by security forces. 38 persons, including the four fidayeen, were killed in this attack.
Fractured Peace Initiatives
Despite peace initiatives and international pressure on Pakistan to abjure terrorism as a foreign policy instrument, terrorist violence has been on the rise in J&K in recent years. As a result, 1067 civilians, 590 security personnel and 2850 terrorists were killed in 2001. This was only a continuation of the escalating trends in year 2000, when peace initiatives failed to check the levels of violence. (12)
Several peace initiatives were undertaken in 2001 and 2002 to address the Kashmir issue. Through an official statement on April 5, 2001, the Indian government invited all Kashmiri groups to participate in negotiations to end the crisis. Two days prior to this, Union Home Minister L.K. Advani announced the nomination of K.C. Pant, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, as the government's nominee for the proposed talks. Initially displaying confusion, the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) failed to issue an official reaction to the government's invitation for talks, and eventually, on April 28, rejected the government’s offer for talks.
This stand was an endorsement of the views expressed by several Hurriyat leaders, including its Chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat (who were speaking for selves) rejecting the invitation for two reasons: First, the government had failed to permit a proposed APHC delegation visit to Pakistan to confer with terrorist groups based in that country; and second, that the invitation was open to all Kashmiri bodies, which meant that the government was not willing to endorse the Hurriyats self-proclaimed mandate as the 'sole genuine representative' of the State's people. The Hurriyat's official rejection stated: "We are ready to enter into a dialogue with the Centre provided we are allowed to go to Pakistan, and New Delhi accepts Hurriyat Conference as the only representative body in Jammu and Kashmir." Stressing the second point, the statement added that the alliance "...is not ready to join the crowded train which goes nowhere.”
Abandoning moves to involve the Hurriyat in negotiations, the government decided to respond to the series of signals emanating from Islamabad, which said that the Pakistan government wanted a summit level meeting on Kashmir. The Indian government announcement, which ended the Ramadan cease-fire, also invited Pakistans Chief Executive and thereafter President, Pervez Musharraf, to visit India for a composite dialogue, including the Kashmir issue. Responding to this invitation, Pervez Musharraf, who assumed his country’s Presidency on June 20, 2001, visited India in July 2001. The ensuing summit was variously interpreted as being either inconclusive or a failure.
These trends were only a continuation of the scenario in year 2000 which showed that peace initiatives do not necessarily imply a respite from violence. Casualties in 2001, both among security forces and terrorists, were well above the figures for 2000. The increase in civilian casualties, however, was marginal, and there was also a decline in the total number of incidents recorded. But total casualties were significantly higher, testimony to the increased focus and lethality of violence in the State. The casualties suffered by the security forces showed the most dramatic increase followed by terrorist casualties. The year 2001 had repeatedly seen hopes of peace destroyed by arbitrary acts of violence. (13)
The pattern continued in 2002 with terrorist violence erupting whenever peace moves were initiated. While 44% of the voters turned out to vote during the State Assembly election in October 2002, the state’s cleanest elections were also its bloodiest. In 45 days of campaigning, 46 political activists were killed. Most of them, including a state minister, belonged to the ruling National Conference party. The 1996 elections had witnessed skeletal turnout with 13 political workers getting assassinated.
The new Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, took two steps soon after coming to power - a freeze on Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act and release of militants. These are the cornerstones of his much-vaunted policy of “healing touch”. The tactic was to first to put down “the internal fire of discontent and alienation” in Kashmir, a significant break from the security-centric approach of the past.
However, these initiatives met with immediate response from the terrorists. It began with a suicide attack on a CRPF camp in Srinagar on November 22. The next day the militants blew up an army bus and on November 24 terrorists wreaked havoc on the historic Raghunath temple in Jammu, the state’s winter capital. Together, they accounted for 34 lost lives. What followed was an acrimonious controversy over the state Government’s decision to release 24 jailed militants. There are strong indications that the setbacks on the security front may force the chief minister to abandon plans to free more militants. (14)
Meanwhile, over 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits, out of an original population in the Kashmir Valley of 425,000 prior to 1989 continue to be displaced. Official records indicate that some 216,820 of them live as migrants in makeshift camps at Jammu, another 143,000 at Delhi and thousands of others are now dispersed across the country. Many of those registered at the camps have also been dispersed according to the exigencies of employment and opportunities for education, trade or business. There has been little effort to facilitate their return to the Valley over the past year (2002), as earlier attempts were neutralised by brutal campaigns of selective murder, including the killing of seven Pandits at Sangrama in Budgam district in March 1997, three at Gul in Udhampur district in June 1997, 26 in the massacre at Wandhama in Srinagar district in January 1998, and 26 at Prankote in Udhampur district in April 1998.
The possibility of reversing the terrorists ethnic cleansing of the Valley remains remote, and there are now reports of a hidden migration from some of the border areas in the Jammu region where the Hindus are a minority. This exodus has gained momentum after the gruesome killing of another 24 Kashmiri Pandits in March 2003. These people, including 11 women and 2 children, were brutally massacred at Nadimarg village in south Kashmir on the night of March 24, 2003, pushing the valley back onto a path of blood and violence. Perhaps the most distressing part of this incident was that it all happened in the compound of a police post set up for the protection of the minority Hindu community. Of the nine policemen supposed to guard the Hindus, three were absent. Others were asleep. (15) The Governance Imperative One of the reasons why terrorist and subversive groups have managed a foot hold in Kashmir is that the people are fed up with the inequity, poverty, and extravagant corruption in which the state has been mired. Disgusted with the governments and despairing of the prospect for peaceful and incremental change within the existing order, the people are looking for an explanation of their personal suffering and societal degradation. There is little doubt that with force, vigilance and some luck, India will be able to substantially destroy and disrupt the existing cross-border network of terrorism operating in Kashmir. But no amount of military force, territorial vigilance and operational genius can contain a group of suicide attackers that stretches endlessly across borders and over time. India must ultimately undermine their capacity to recruit and indoctrinate new true believers. That requires getting at the factors that help in spreading terrorism. And one of the principal factors is chronically bad governance. The plain and even brutal fact is that the political and administrative system in Jammu and Kashmir, like several other states in India, has been a miserable failure. Political parties in Kashmir use any means and break any rules in the quest for power and wealth. Ministers worry first about the money they can collect and only second about whether their decisions have any value for the public. Legislators are known to collect bribes to vote for bills. Even military officers allegedly order weapons on the basis of how large the kickback will be. There are instances where soldiers and policemen extort rather than defend the public. In Kashmir, the line between the police and the criminals is a thin one, and at times may not exist at all. In the domestic context, therefore, it is evident that the Indian government is yet to put in place a coherent political strategy of response to terrorism. (16) Indeed, most institutions of civil governance in the state have suffered a complete breakdown in the face of the terrorist onslaught. This includes the state’s prosecution department & judiciary, which, after nearly than fourteen years of terrorist strife, 11,850 civilians and 3,460 security force personnel killed and thousands others injured in the State as a result of terrorist activities till the end of the year 2001, has just 303 under trials and has pronounced only 13 convictions in cases related to terrorism. Only five of these convictions relate to serious offences, while the others are all for relatively minor offences such as illegal possession of arms and illegal border crossing. In fact, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir several government institutions are a façade. The police do not enforce the law. Judges do not decide the law. Customs officials do not inspect the goods. Manufacturers do not produce, bankers do not invest, borrowers do not repay, and contracts do not get enforced. Most transactions are twisted to take immediate advantage. Time horizons are extremely short because no one has any confidence in the collectivity and its future. This is pure opportunism: get what you can now. Government does not seem like a public enterprise but a criminal conspiracy, and organized crime heavily penetrates politics and government. In this context, neither democracy nor development can be sustained. It is, then, no coincidence that ethnic violence, religious bloodletting and civil unrest are tightly entwined with the corruption of cynical leaders. The incapacitated state in Kashmir cannot sustain democracy, for sustainable democracy requires constitutionalism and respect for law. Nor can it generate sustainable economic growth, for that requires people with financial capital to invest it in productive activity. In this state of disorder, private companies do not get rich through productive activity and honest enterprise. They get rich by manipulating power and privilege, by stealing from the state, exploiting the weak and shirking the law. Thus it is no wonder that such a weak, and porous state has not been very successful in combating terrorism. (17) Bringing the State back in It is difficult to resist the temptation to think that the problem is rooted in the culture of this state, or perhaps of the nation, and that there is not much we can do about it. It is true that the state will neither develop its economy nor consolidate its democratic system until its culture changes, but it is wrong to presume that cultural change must lead the way out of the predatory trap. Cultures change only slowly, but institutions can be changed fairly rapidly. And cultures will adapt to new institutional incentives if the institutions work effectively to generate new expectations and norms. Through civic education and organizational efforts new, more civic norms can be generated. But these will be sustainable only if the institutions of a civic community come into place. (18) The state of Jammu and Kashmir needs to be completely overhauled institutionally. These are the institutions that generate a rule of law and a climate of peace, predictability and order: An independent and professional judicial system; ·a transparent and efficient banking system (including an independent central bank); ·effective rules, regulations and oversight agencies governing banking, capital markets and commerce (including contract and bankruptcy laws and business codes of conduct); rules and institutions to restrain corruption by monitoring and when necessary punishing the conduct of public officials;· a system of domestic policing that enables people to invest, produce and exchange free of extortion from the state or criminals; and· a tax system that collects sufficient revenue to finance these and other public goods. (19) In his seminal book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman calls these institutions the "software" that accompanies a country's basic "hardware" and its "operating system". (20) In the context of this discussion, we can call this software institutional resource in that it facilitates the creation and efficient application of all other forms of resources. A crucial place to begin is with the institutions of "horizontal accountability." This is the process by which some state actors hold other state actors accountable to the law, the constitution and norms of good governance. Some of the key institutions in this regard are the judiciary, the central bank and related oversight institutions, and the electoral commission. These institutions must be resourceful, professionally led and staffed, and independent of political manipulation and control if they are to function effectively. The most urgently important institutions of horizontal accountability are the ones directly charged with controlling political and bureaucratic corruption. Corruption is the core phenomenon of the failed administration in Jammu and Kashmir, as indeed in other states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. It is the principal means by which state officials extract wealth from the society, deter productive activity and thereby reproduce poverty and dependency. Apart from the government officials, landed elites, corporate and political leaders and organized criminal gangs use corruption to purchase access to resources and immunity from the law. Politicians use corruption to barricade themselves in power. Patrons distribute the crumbs of corruption to maintain their client groups. Corruption is to the weak state what the blood supply is to a malignant tumor. Cut it off and the tumor will shrink and die. Cutting it off will be a long, contested process. But powerful, well-designed institutions can make a difference. What is needed most of all is an independent anti-corruption agency. The commission would receive declarations of assets by all significant public officials on a regular basis; and have the staffing, technology and political will to monitor those declarations and prosecute cases of corrupt accumulation and concealment of wealth before an independent tribunal. Such a commission must vigorously monitor the conduct of public officials in every respect, backed up by a state audit commission to audit all public accounts and an Ombudsman's commission to receive and investigate public complaints. It must have the authority and resources to prosecute all types of bribery, embezzlement and violation of the public trust. If corruption is really to be deterred and controlled, convictions must bring serious penalties including forfeiture of corrupt assets and of the right to hold public office; and for the most serious offenses, jail. Again, this requires independent and resourceful courts and prosecutors as well. The institutions of horizontal accountability form a self-reinforcing web. An anti-corruption commission must rely in part on the audit agency to uncover theft and misuse of public resources, and on the ombudsman to invite and investigate public complaints. Reduction and deterrence of corruption will be reinforced if an electoral commission can produce sufficiently clean elections to enable citizens to turn out of office the most corrupt public officials. It is a mistake to think that the impoverished masses at the bottom of the corrupted system are so fragmented and hoodwinked that they will happily settle for whatever crumbs of corrupt patronage that are dropped their way. (21) People do learn over time that the system is exploiting them, and information about corruption and injustice does move around rapidly. Or at least it can move around if there is some freedom of information in terms of a pluralistic press and free access to the electronic media. The importance of free and fair elections and free mass media underscores a fundamental point about controlling corruption and exploitation. In Kashmir, accountability cannot succeed if the initiative for it comes only from within the state sector. Horizontal accountability must be reinforced by vertical accountability. In addition to competitive elections and the mass media, NGOs have to play a crucial role in monitoring the conduct of public officials and holding them accountable for their performance in office. No infusion of economic resources, no matter how massive and sustained, will in itself generate development in Kashmir because the problem is not simply a lack of resources or functioning infrastructure. The problem is a more fundamental shortage: of the institutions and norms of democracy and good governance. Unless the state of Jammu and Kashmir is helped to develop institutions that collect taxes, limit corruption, control crime, enforce laws, secure property rights, provide education, attract investment and answer to their own people, the state will not develop and the flow of terrorists from across the border will not subside. This is why the government must not only substantially increase the development budget, but also devote a much larger portion of that budget to democracy and good-governance programs (while deploying more career aid officials with expertise in these fields). The global war on terrorism has won a victory in freeing the people of Afghanistan from the medieval tyranny of the Taliban. The United Nations has certainly degraded and disrupted the terrorist infrastructure of al Qaeda. Other military and intelligence challenges lie ahead. But the challenge India faces is as much political as military. In Kashmir it lies in the daunting task of helping to reconstruct a failed state and to construct for the first time a system of government for that state that is decent, responsible, consensual and ultimately democratic. The war on terrorism cannot stop at military victories. India must help and induce predatory and messy administration in Jammu and Kashmir to develop civic institutions and norms. Only then will the state be able to sustain good governance and development progress, and thereby regain the confidence of the people. Only then can India achieve a lasting victory in the war against terrorism.
References 1. For the history and recent trends in international terrorism see: Walter Lacqueur. A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 2002); Paul Wilkinson. Terrorism Versus Democracy (London: Frank Cass, 2000); Christopher Harmon. Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000). 2. Anatol Liven. Fighting Terrorism: Lessons from the Cold War. Carnegie Policy Brief No. 7, October 2001. 3. Richard Labeviere. Dollars For Terror: The US and Islam (New York: Algora, 2000). 4. Matthew A. Levitt. “The Political Economy of Middle East Terrorism” Middle East Academy of International Affairs Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 4 (December 2002). 5 Chris Hill. “A Herculean Task: The Myth and Reality of Arab Terrorism”, in The Age of Terror: America and the World after September 11, edited by Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda (Basic Books, 2001). 6. Bassam Tibi. The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) 7 Hussain Haqqani America’s New Alliance with Pakistan: Avoiding the Traps of the Past. Carnegie Policy Brief, No. 19, October 2002. 8. Ajai Sahni. “The Locus of Error: Has the Gravity pf Terrorism ‘Shifted in’ Asia”. www.satp.org. 9. Stephen P. Cohen. A Distant Region Takes Counter Stage: Pulling up the roots of terrorism in South Asia, www.brookings.org. 10. Peter Chalk, and Chris Fair. “Pakistan, Kashmir and the US War on Terrorism: The need to square the circle”. www.satp.org. 11. Stephen P. Cohen, op.cit. 12. KPS Gill and Ajai Sahni. “The J&K Peace Process: Chasing the Chimera”, Faultlines, April 2001. 13. Ramesh Vinayak, “Mufti in a Cleft Stick”, India Today, December 9, 2002. 14. Praveen Swami, “Jammu and Kashmir After 9/11: More of the same”, www.satp.org 15. Rashid Ahmad. “When terrorists kill even babies”, Hindustan Times 24 March 2003. 16. Kanti Bajpai. Roots of Terrorism (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2002). 17. Robert D. Putnam. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 18. Ibid.. 19. Larry Diamond. “Winning the New Cold War on Terrorism: The Democratic Governance Imperative”, www.efroyable-imposture.net 20. Thomas L. Friedman. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Anchor Books, 2000, paperback edition). 21. Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds. The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999).
Abstract
The world community has confronted the threat posed by global terrorism with an unprecedented worldwide coalition that is employing every tool of national and international power at its command: diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence, financial investigation, military action, and humanitarian aid.
Just as terrorism constitutes a fluid, elusive enemy, so the new anti-terror alliance has assumed new and flexible forms in which different countries assume different levels of action and responsibility. (1) Nations have brought their own experiences, concerns, and even policy differences to this war against terrorism. That was inevitable, and in many ways positive; the diversity and flexible nature of this unprecedented coalition is one of its strengths. However, that also meant that the impact of war against terrorism would not be similar in different regions and countries.
India has been at war against terrorism in Kashmir for much longer than the United States or United Nations. That war has vital military and operational components, which will proceed in different ways for months and probably years to come. But force alone cannot win this war. Victory requires a longer-term, political strategy as well. It is more than clear that one of the main factors that have helped in the spread of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir has been chronically bad governance in that state. The campaign against terrorism in Kashmir can thus be characterized as a strategy for victory that requires the creation of institutions and norms that can achieve the goals of freedom and development.
War against Terrorism
Since September 11, the United States and its allies have been at war against an elusive enemy. The Cold War was an entirely different experience, yet it is not without lessons for the war against terrorism. (2) Already the war against global terrorism has achieved important successes. On the diplomatic front, for example, a UN Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously, obligates all 189 members to end all terrorist activity and support, and to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice.
In its unanimous adoption of resolution 1373 (2001) on 28 September 2001, the Security Council for the first time imposed measures not against a State, its leaders, nationals or commodities, but against acts of terrorism throughout the world and the terrorists themselves. It is one of the most expansive resolutions in the history of the Council, with a focus on ensuring that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts, or who supports terrorist acts, is brought to justice, and that such acts are established as serious criminal offences in domestic law and regulation with punishments that duly reflect their seriousness.
The Council called upon States to submit to the Counter-Terrorism Committee reports on their implementation of the resolution. The Committee has established subcommittees to review those reports, with the assistance of experts in relevant fields, and it conducts each review in partnership with the State that submitted the report. That partnership may lead the Committee, United Nations agencies and/or certain other States to provide a substantial degree of technical assistance and cooperation to facilitate the implementation of resolution 1373 (2001).
Investigators throughout the world have arrested hundreds of individuals with possible ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. The threat of future attacks remains, but the sustained pressure of police work and intelligence gathering, coupled with military operations in Afghanistan, means that al Qaeda is on the run and its network is being dismantled cell by cell, cave by cave.
Drying up the financial sources of terror is vital to end the terrorist threat. In fact, financial support has been crucial to the recent spread of terrorist activities across the continents.(3) Following the UN Security Council initiatives more than 112 nations have issued blocking orders and frozen assets used to finance terrorism, which have been found everywhere from bank accounts in the United States to relief organizations in Europe and chains of honey shops in the Middle East (4). The 29-nation Financial Action Task Force has played a particularly active role in coordinating efforts to identify and stop financial flows to terrorist organizations.
Diverse Impact in South Asia
In the South Asian region perhaps the most positive impact of the war on terrorism could be seen in Sri Lanka which has witnessed significant easing of tensions since September 11. There is a clear shift in the LTTEs position on a separate country (Eelam) with its chief, V. Prabhakaran, declaring that his organisation was neither for separatism nor terrorism. He also indicated that the LTTE would agree to a political solution within an integrated Sri Lanka, but would be forced to opt for secession if the conflict was not solved through peaceful means.
Some countries among the international community had imposed restrictions on the LTTE after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The US attacks, while unrelated to the LTTE, strengthened the then Sri Lankan governments campaign for a global ban on the LTTE. Australia, in December 2001, placed the LTTE on its list of terrorist organisation in pursuance of its obligations under UN Resolution 1373 on the suppression of the financing of terror. On November 8, 2001, following a relentless effort by the Sri Lankan government, Canada also named the LTTE as a terrorist outfit and the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada, issued a new list that included, for the first time, the LTTE. The LTTEs front organisations have a formidable presence in Canada and the Tamil expatriate community there is considered to be a major source of funds for the LTTE. Earlier, on February 28, 2001 the British government had proscribed the LTTE under its new Terrorism Act 2000.
In Bangladesh, a number of transnational Islamist terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda, had established a presence in alliance with various militant fundamentalist organisations there. (Levitt) (Investigations into the January 22, 2002, terrorist attacks on the American Centre in India’s Kolkata, brought these linkages to the fore. The self-styled Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF), which claimed responsibility for the January 22 attack, is essentially a criminal group allied to the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-BD). The HuJI-BD has very close links with Pakistan’s external intelligence agency the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The arrest of Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, the prime accused in the American Centre attack, led to further disclosures regarding the international linkages between the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and HuJI based in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ansari is reportedly linked to the ISI and to Omar Shiekh, a prominent leader of the JeM and prime accused in the abduction and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. These investigations and disclosures have put the Bangladesh government on alert and it has agreed to cooperate with other countries in checking terrorist operation from its soil.
In Nepal, insurgency reached unprecedented levels during late 2001. At that time, the Maoists jettisoned the four month-old cease-fire that they had announced on July 23, 2001, and had launched co-ordinated countrywide strikes on the night of November 23, 2001. The worst among the attacks was the massacre at the Army barracks in Ghorai in which 14 troops were killed and another 30 injured. The Leftwing extremists also looted 99 self-loading rifles (SLRs). Besides, the insurgents have also declared the formation of a ‘Central People’s Government’, implying that they have formed a national-level parallel government. The insurgents were also running a state within a state in their strongholds, including in Rolpa, Rukum, Jajarkot and Salyan districts. It was in these districts that the insurgency began in 1996.
Faced with an unenviable crisis, the Nepalese government declared a nation-wide ‘state of Emergency’ on November 26 and deployed the Royal Nepal Army to counter the insurgents. The Emergency was then extended for another three months, with Parliamentary approval on February 21, 2002. Nepal has received unqualified support from India in its counter-insurgency measures and so far it has been able to contain the threat to its nascent parliamentary democracy.
More of the same in Kashmir
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, links between Al Qaeda, the Taliban and terrorists active in Jammu & Kashmir have increasingly been recognised by the global community. It is now being accepted that transnational networks of terrorist groups are operating as autonomous entities quite independent of particular national situations. (5) Outfits such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, JeM and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which have lately been very active in Kashmir, had direct links with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda. After September 11 a large number of members of the Islamist terrorist network are suspected to have crossed over to Kashmir.
Osama bin Laden’s covert support to terrorist organizations in Kashmir became
overt when he threatened the US with more deaths after 11 September if it continued to support India. Osama included India in the category of Russia, Serbia, and Israel as ‘enemies of Islam’. This statement came close on the heels of a similarly worded threat to India from Jaish-e-Mohammed. Maulana Masood Azhar, the JEM chief, bristled at the freezing of his organisation’s assets by the USA on 11th October 2001.and said, ‘We warn them (Indians) to beware of the mujahideen. We will soon deal them a smashing blow to assert our authority. We will continue the struggle.’
In this context, it bears mention that the objectives of the World Islamic Front for
Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, established by Osama bin Laden in 1998, are far reaching and these include:
* liberation of the Middle East from the ‘clutches’ of Israel;
* ejection of the USA from the Holy Land of Sudi Arabia;
* overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and other corrupt Muslim governments, and ;
* uniting of all Muslim under the umbrella of the Ummah to transcend national borders and establish a ‘Caliphate-style’ government. (6)
After September 11 India tried to convince the US administration, that the former was being targeted by the same terror network which inflicted the September 11 attacks on the US, and this common threat emanated from the same Islamist extremist sources supported by common allies, Pakistan, the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden. This threat, consequently, required a common response. While this principle has gained wide acceptance, a degree of ambivalence has persisted in the US responses, as it has sought to manage Pakistan in an unlikely role as a frontline state against terrorism. (7)
Even before the September 11 attacks, Western focus had been shifting, howsoever inadequately, towards the burgeoning danger of international extremist Islamist terrorism located in the Pakistan-Afghanistan axis. It is partially this concern that was reflected in the US State Department's assertion, in mid-2000, that the locus of terrorism has shifted from West Asia to South Asia. (8)
The increased US attention on the sub-continent in the aftermath of September 11, revived calls from separatist forces within J&K and Pakistan for US mediation in the conflict. The US has consistently rejected the idea of mediation unless asked for by all parties involved in the conflict (9). The US administration under President George W. Bush endorsed India’s stance that terrorism was being perpetrated in the State under the façade of a freedom struggle and went a step ahead by declaring outfits manned by Pakistani and other foreign mercenaries, such as the LeT, JeM and HuM, as Foreign Terrorist Organisations. The UK too has banned these organisations.
Following intense international pressure, Pakistan has been taking nominal steps against terrorist outfits based in its territory and operating in J&K. This was more so after the US, on December 26, 2001, termed the LeT and the JeM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO). In the aftermath of September 11, the US woke up to the fact that the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA), an outfit it termed as an FTO in 1997 for its links with bin Laden, was operating in Pakistan under the name of HuM after the proscription. The HuM was termed as an FTO in October 2001. Following this US categorisation, Pakistan proceeded to arrest the top leadership of the JeM and the LeT even while permitting the second line of command to operate freely. JeM chief, Maulana Massod Azhar was first detained for a few hours on December 26, 2001 and then arrested again on December 29, 2001. The former LeT chief, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed was arrested on December 30, 2001. These face saving measures were intended to keep the dollars coming from the US rather than checking cross-border terrorism against India. (10)
Since the insurgency in J&K began in 1988, India has been consistently indicating that the state was a theatre for Pakistan's proxy war. It was only after the December 13, 2001, terrorist attack on Parliament, that the government decided that this proxy war required the threat of a military response and military deployment along the border with Pakistan was built-up.
The consequent face-off between Indian and Pakistani forces strengthened Western perceptions of the Kashmir issue as a potential flash-point for a future nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, and the international community has been urging India to avoid an armed conflict with Pakistan and to give President Musharraf more time to curb the activities of terrorist groups based in his country. (11)
India’s and Pakistan’s oft-stated positions on Kashmir were vigorously projected in the context of the September 11 attacks. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, while going public on his support to the US in its global campaign against bin Laden and the Taliban, claimed that this course was being adopted to prevent harm to Pakistan’s "Kashmir cause". In an interview on October 2, 2001, where he was asked about the changing focus of terrorism to Kashmir, he stated that this would be the most contentious issue and "it will not be accepted at all" in Pakistan.
The cosmetic changes within Pakistan in the post-9/11 phase failed to impress the jehadi groups, and there was a continuous succession of attacks in India. In the December 13 attack on India’s Parliament, four fidayeen (suicide) terrorists of the JeM, drove an explosives laden car into the Parliament compound and opened fire. Their entry into Parliament building was prevented by the security personnel. Although one of the fidayeen blew himself up, this failed to cause any major casualties. Eight security personnel and a member of the parliament staff were killed along with the fidayeen. India has stated that the JeM, in collusion with the LeT, had carried out the attack.
In its October 1 attack on the Srinagar Legislature complex, a JeM fidayeen exploded an explosives laden car outside the complex gate. In the ensuing confusion, three JeM fidayeen entered the complex and fortified themselves within. They fired indiscriminately until they were killed by security forces. 38 persons, including the four fidayeen, were killed in this attack.
Fractured Peace Initiatives
Despite peace initiatives and international pressure on Pakistan to abjure terrorism as a foreign policy instrument, terrorist violence has been on the rise in J&K in recent years. As a result, 1067 civilians, 590 security personnel and 2850 terrorists were killed in 2001. This was only a continuation of the escalating trends in year 2000, when peace initiatives failed to check the levels of violence. (12)
Several peace initiatives were undertaken in 2001 and 2002 to address the Kashmir issue. Through an official statement on April 5, 2001, the Indian government invited all Kashmiri groups to participate in negotiations to end the crisis. Two days prior to this, Union Home Minister L.K. Advani announced the nomination of K.C. Pant, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, as the government's nominee for the proposed talks. Initially displaying confusion, the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) failed to issue an official reaction to the government's invitation for talks, and eventually, on April 28, rejected the government’s offer for talks.
This stand was an endorsement of the views expressed by several Hurriyat leaders, including its Chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat (who were speaking for selves) rejecting the invitation for two reasons: First, the government had failed to permit a proposed APHC delegation visit to Pakistan to confer with terrorist groups based in that country; and second, that the invitation was open to all Kashmiri bodies, which meant that the government was not willing to endorse the Hurriyats self-proclaimed mandate as the 'sole genuine representative' of the State's people. The Hurriyat's official rejection stated: "We are ready to enter into a dialogue with the Centre provided we are allowed to go to Pakistan, and New Delhi accepts Hurriyat Conference as the only representative body in Jammu and Kashmir." Stressing the second point, the statement added that the alliance "...is not ready to join the crowded train which goes nowhere.”
Abandoning moves to involve the Hurriyat in negotiations, the government decided to respond to the series of signals emanating from Islamabad, which said that the Pakistan government wanted a summit level meeting on Kashmir. The Indian government announcement, which ended the Ramadan cease-fire, also invited Pakistans Chief Executive and thereafter President, Pervez Musharraf, to visit India for a composite dialogue, including the Kashmir issue. Responding to this invitation, Pervez Musharraf, who assumed his country’s Presidency on June 20, 2001, visited India in July 2001. The ensuing summit was variously interpreted as being either inconclusive or a failure.
These trends were only a continuation of the scenario in year 2000 which showed that peace initiatives do not necessarily imply a respite from violence. Casualties in 2001, both among security forces and terrorists, were well above the figures for 2000. The increase in civilian casualties, however, was marginal, and there was also a decline in the total number of incidents recorded. But total casualties were significantly higher, testimony to the increased focus and lethality of violence in the State. The casualties suffered by the security forces showed the most dramatic increase followed by terrorist casualties. The year 2001 had repeatedly seen hopes of peace destroyed by arbitrary acts of violence. (13)
The pattern continued in 2002 with terrorist violence erupting whenever peace moves were initiated. While 44% of the voters turned out to vote during the State Assembly election in October 2002, the state’s cleanest elections were also its bloodiest. In 45 days of campaigning, 46 political activists were killed. Most of them, including a state minister, belonged to the ruling National Conference party. The 1996 elections had witnessed skeletal turnout with 13 political workers getting assassinated.
The new Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, took two steps soon after coming to power - a freeze on Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act and release of militants. These are the cornerstones of his much-vaunted policy of “healing touch”. The tactic was to first to put down “the internal fire of discontent and alienation” in Kashmir, a significant break from the security-centric approach of the past.
However, these initiatives met with immediate response from the terrorists. It began with a suicide attack on a CRPF camp in Srinagar on November 22. The next day the militants blew up an army bus and on November 24 terrorists wreaked havoc on the historic Raghunath temple in Jammu, the state’s winter capital. Together, they accounted for 34 lost lives. What followed was an acrimonious controversy over the state Government’s decision to release 24 jailed militants. There are strong indications that the setbacks on the security front may force the chief minister to abandon plans to free more militants. (14)
Meanwhile, over 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits, out of an original population in the Kashmir Valley of 425,000 prior to 1989 continue to be displaced. Official records indicate that some 216,820 of them live as migrants in makeshift camps at Jammu, another 143,000 at Delhi and thousands of others are now dispersed across the country. Many of those registered at the camps have also been dispersed according to the exigencies of employment and opportunities for education, trade or business. There has been little effort to facilitate their return to the Valley over the past year (2002), as earlier attempts were neutralised by brutal campaigns of selective murder, including the killing of seven Pandits at Sangrama in Budgam district in March 1997, three at Gul in Udhampur district in June 1997, 26 in the massacre at Wandhama in Srinagar district in January 1998, and 26 at Prankote in Udhampur district in April 1998.
The possibility of reversing the terrorists ethnic cleansing of the Valley remains remote, and there are now reports of a hidden migration from some of the border areas in the Jammu region where the Hindus are a minority. This exodus has gained momentum after the gruesome killing of another 24 Kashmiri Pandits in March 2003. These people, including 11 women and 2 children, were brutally massacred at Nadimarg village in south Kashmir on the night of March 24, 2003, pushing the valley back onto a path of blood and violence. Perhaps the most distressing part of this incident was that it all happened in the compound of a police post set up for the protection of the minority Hindu community. Of the nine policemen supposed to guard the Hindus, three were absent. Others were asleep. (15) The Governance Imperative One of the reasons why terrorist and subversive groups have managed a foot hold in Kashmir is that the people are fed up with the inequity, poverty, and extravagant corruption in which the state has been mired. Disgusted with the governments and despairing of the prospect for peaceful and incremental change within the existing order, the people are looking for an explanation of their personal suffering and societal degradation. There is little doubt that with force, vigilance and some luck, India will be able to substantially destroy and disrupt the existing cross-border network of terrorism operating in Kashmir. But no amount of military force, territorial vigilance and operational genius can contain a group of suicide attackers that stretches endlessly across borders and over time. India must ultimately undermine their capacity to recruit and indoctrinate new true believers. That requires getting at the factors that help in spreading terrorism. And one of the principal factors is chronically bad governance. The plain and even brutal fact is that the political and administrative system in Jammu and Kashmir, like several other states in India, has been a miserable failure. Political parties in Kashmir use any means and break any rules in the quest for power and wealth. Ministers worry first about the money they can collect and only second about whether their decisions have any value for the public. Legislators are known to collect bribes to vote for bills. Even military officers allegedly order weapons on the basis of how large the kickback will be. There are instances where soldiers and policemen extort rather than defend the public. In Kashmir, the line between the police and the criminals is a thin one, and at times may not exist at all. In the domestic context, therefore, it is evident that the Indian government is yet to put in place a coherent political strategy of response to terrorism. (16) Indeed, most institutions of civil governance in the state have suffered a complete breakdown in the face of the terrorist onslaught. This includes the state’s prosecution department & judiciary, which, after nearly than fourteen years of terrorist strife, 11,850 civilians and 3,460 security force personnel killed and thousands others injured in the State as a result of terrorist activities till the end of the year 2001, has just 303 under trials and has pronounced only 13 convictions in cases related to terrorism. Only five of these convictions relate to serious offences, while the others are all for relatively minor offences such as illegal possession of arms and illegal border crossing. In fact, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir several government institutions are a façade. The police do not enforce the law. Judges do not decide the law. Customs officials do not inspect the goods. Manufacturers do not produce, bankers do not invest, borrowers do not repay, and contracts do not get enforced. Most transactions are twisted to take immediate advantage. Time horizons are extremely short because no one has any confidence in the collectivity and its future. This is pure opportunism: get what you can now. Government does not seem like a public enterprise but a criminal conspiracy, and organized crime heavily penetrates politics and government. In this context, neither democracy nor development can be sustained. It is, then, no coincidence that ethnic violence, religious bloodletting and civil unrest are tightly entwined with the corruption of cynical leaders. The incapacitated state in Kashmir cannot sustain democracy, for sustainable democracy requires constitutionalism and respect for law. Nor can it generate sustainable economic growth, for that requires people with financial capital to invest it in productive activity. In this state of disorder, private companies do not get rich through productive activity and honest enterprise. They get rich by manipulating power and privilege, by stealing from the state, exploiting the weak and shirking the law. Thus it is no wonder that such a weak, and porous state has not been very successful in combating terrorism. (17) Bringing the State back in It is difficult to resist the temptation to think that the problem is rooted in the culture of this state, or perhaps of the nation, and that there is not much we can do about it. It is true that the state will neither develop its economy nor consolidate its democratic system until its culture changes, but it is wrong to presume that cultural change must lead the way out of the predatory trap. Cultures change only slowly, but institutions can be changed fairly rapidly. And cultures will adapt to new institutional incentives if the institutions work effectively to generate new expectations and norms. Through civic education and organizational efforts new, more civic norms can be generated. But these will be sustainable only if the institutions of a civic community come into place. (18) The state of Jammu and Kashmir needs to be completely overhauled institutionally. These are the institutions that generate a rule of law and a climate of peace, predictability and order: An independent and professional judicial system; ·a transparent and efficient banking system (including an independent central bank); ·effective rules, regulations and oversight agencies governing banking, capital markets and commerce (including contract and bankruptcy laws and business codes of conduct); rules and institutions to restrain corruption by monitoring and when necessary punishing the conduct of public officials;· a system of domestic policing that enables people to invest, produce and exchange free of extortion from the state or criminals; and· a tax system that collects sufficient revenue to finance these and other public goods. (19) In his seminal book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman calls these institutions the "software" that accompanies a country's basic "hardware" and its "operating system". (20) In the context of this discussion, we can call this software institutional resource in that it facilitates the creation and efficient application of all other forms of resources. A crucial place to begin is with the institutions of "horizontal accountability." This is the process by which some state actors hold other state actors accountable to the law, the constitution and norms of good governance. Some of the key institutions in this regard are the judiciary, the central bank and related oversight institutions, and the electoral commission. These institutions must be resourceful, professionally led and staffed, and independent of political manipulation and control if they are to function effectively. The most urgently important institutions of horizontal accountability are the ones directly charged with controlling political and bureaucratic corruption. Corruption is the core phenomenon of the failed administration in Jammu and Kashmir, as indeed in other states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. It is the principal means by which state officials extract wealth from the society, deter productive activity and thereby reproduce poverty and dependency. Apart from the government officials, landed elites, corporate and political leaders and organized criminal gangs use corruption to purchase access to resources and immunity from the law. Politicians use corruption to barricade themselves in power. Patrons distribute the crumbs of corruption to maintain their client groups. Corruption is to the weak state what the blood supply is to a malignant tumor. Cut it off and the tumor will shrink and die. Cutting it off will be a long, contested process. But powerful, well-designed institutions can make a difference. What is needed most of all is an independent anti-corruption agency. The commission would receive declarations of assets by all significant public officials on a regular basis; and have the staffing, technology and political will to monitor those declarations and prosecute cases of corrupt accumulation and concealment of wealth before an independent tribunal. Such a commission must vigorously monitor the conduct of public officials in every respect, backed up by a state audit commission to audit all public accounts and an Ombudsman's commission to receive and investigate public complaints. It must have the authority and resources to prosecute all types of bribery, embezzlement and violation of the public trust. If corruption is really to be deterred and controlled, convictions must bring serious penalties including forfeiture of corrupt assets and of the right to hold public office; and for the most serious offenses, jail. Again, this requires independent and resourceful courts and prosecutors as well. The institutions of horizontal accountability form a self-reinforcing web. An anti-corruption commission must rely in part on the audit agency to uncover theft and misuse of public resources, and on the ombudsman to invite and investigate public complaints. Reduction and deterrence of corruption will be reinforced if an electoral commission can produce sufficiently clean elections to enable citizens to turn out of office the most corrupt public officials. It is a mistake to think that the impoverished masses at the bottom of the corrupted system are so fragmented and hoodwinked that they will happily settle for whatever crumbs of corrupt patronage that are dropped their way. (21) People do learn over time that the system is exploiting them, and information about corruption and injustice does move around rapidly. Or at least it can move around if there is some freedom of information in terms of a pluralistic press and free access to the electronic media. The importance of free and fair elections and free mass media underscores a fundamental point about controlling corruption and exploitation. In Kashmir, accountability cannot succeed if the initiative for it comes only from within the state sector. Horizontal accountability must be reinforced by vertical accountability. In addition to competitive elections and the mass media, NGOs have to play a crucial role in monitoring the conduct of public officials and holding them accountable for their performance in office. No infusion of economic resources, no matter how massive and sustained, will in itself generate development in Kashmir because the problem is not simply a lack of resources or functioning infrastructure. The problem is a more fundamental shortage: of the institutions and norms of democracy and good governance. Unless the state of Jammu and Kashmir is helped to develop institutions that collect taxes, limit corruption, control crime, enforce laws, secure property rights, provide education, attract investment and answer to their own people, the state will not develop and the flow of terrorists from across the border will not subside. This is why the government must not only substantially increase the development budget, but also devote a much larger portion of that budget to democracy and good-governance programs (while deploying more career aid officials with expertise in these fields). The global war on terrorism has won a victory in freeing the people of Afghanistan from the medieval tyranny of the Taliban. The United Nations has certainly degraded and disrupted the terrorist infrastructure of al Qaeda. Other military and intelligence challenges lie ahead. But the challenge India faces is as much political as military. In Kashmir it lies in the daunting task of helping to reconstruct a failed state and to construct for the first time a system of government for that state that is decent, responsible, consensual and ultimately democratic. The war on terrorism cannot stop at military victories. India must help and induce predatory and messy administration in Jammu and Kashmir to develop civic institutions and norms. Only then will the state be able to sustain good governance and development progress, and thereby regain the confidence of the people. Only then can India achieve a lasting victory in the war against terrorism.
References 1. For the history and recent trends in international terrorism see: Walter Lacqueur. A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 2002); Paul Wilkinson. Terrorism Versus Democracy (London: Frank Cass, 2000); Christopher Harmon. Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000). 2. Anatol Liven. Fighting Terrorism: Lessons from the Cold War. Carnegie Policy Brief No. 7, October 2001. 3. Richard Labeviere. Dollars For Terror: The US and Islam (New York: Algora, 2000). 4. Matthew A. Levitt. “The Political Economy of Middle East Terrorism” Middle East Academy of International Affairs Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 4 (December 2002). 5 Chris Hill. “A Herculean Task: The Myth and Reality of Arab Terrorism”, in The Age of Terror: America and the World after September 11, edited by Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda (Basic Books, 2001). 6. Bassam Tibi. The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) 7 Hussain Haqqani America’s New Alliance with Pakistan: Avoiding the Traps of the Past. Carnegie Policy Brief, No. 19, October 2002. 8. Ajai Sahni. “The Locus of Error: Has the Gravity pf Terrorism ‘Shifted in’ Asia”. www.satp.org. 9. Stephen P. Cohen. A Distant Region Takes Counter Stage: Pulling up the roots of terrorism in South Asia, www.brookings.org. 10. Peter Chalk, and Chris Fair. “Pakistan, Kashmir and the US War on Terrorism: The need to square the circle”. www.satp.org. 11. Stephen P. Cohen, op.cit. 12. KPS Gill and Ajai Sahni. “The J&K Peace Process: Chasing the Chimera”, Faultlines, April 2001. 13. Ramesh Vinayak, “Mufti in a Cleft Stick”, India Today, December 9, 2002. 14. Praveen Swami, “Jammu and Kashmir After 9/11: More of the same”, www.satp.org 15. Rashid Ahmad. “When terrorists kill even babies”, Hindustan Times 24 March 2003. 16. Kanti Bajpai. Roots of Terrorism (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2002). 17. Robert D. Putnam. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 18. Ibid.. 19. Larry Diamond. “Winning the New Cold War on Terrorism: The Democratic Governance Imperative”, www.efroyable-imposture.net 20. Thomas L. Friedman. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Anchor Books, 2000, paperback edition). 21. Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds. The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999).
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