 The Revenge Of The Near The 11/26 attack on India was no 9/11—and India's reaction must also be different from America's. Sunil Khilnani From the magazine issue dated Feb 9, 2009 Urban Indians love the idea of a global, borderless world, where flows of trade and services trace virtual geographies. Who can blame them? Colonial mapmaking left India broken and flanked by two unviable, antagonistic states: Pakistan and Bangladesh. Also in the neighborhood are despotic Burma, precarious Afghanistan and war-torn Sri Lanka. It's enough to make anyone search for an escape. Before the Mumbai attacks, that escape seemed possible. India's elites believed that free-market economics and an international outlook would let them transcend location, poverty and intractable politics. In recent years, India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had made this approach the core of his policies. The Singh doctrine, as it might be called, was one of nonconfrontational economic diplomacy, seeking to expand India's global connections in order to spur growth and personal affluence, which in turn would defuse internal and external conflicts. The effort seemed to work, at least for a time. After charting around 8 percent annual growth for the last five years, last fall India became the first postcolonial state to successfully complete a moon mission. And in October, after signing an agreement with Washington, New Delhi gained admission into the world's most powerful club: that of legitimate nuclear powers. Then came the terrorist attack that began in Mumbai on the night of Nov. 26, literally and metaphorically targeting the five-star oases where the rich network and relax. The men who arrived in India's most global city from Pakistan aboard rubber boats represented, among other things, a revenge of the near. Within hours, they revealed that India's dream of escape might be a delusion. Actual location, it turns out, still matters more than the virtual one. There are limits to economic diplomacy—and India's security will depend on recognizing them. Halfway through the siege of the Taj and Oberoi hotels and of the Jewish Centre at Nariman House, one major TV station began headlining its reports with the phrase "India's 9/11." But the analogy didn't hold. There were some similarities—the targets were iconic buildings and the attacks captivated world attention—but the comparison oversimplified a situation whose implications are potentially much more threatening for India than those faced by the United States. September 11 was an attack by men from afar, whose message had little resonance with Americans. The Mumbai attackers came from next door, the world's largest Islamic republic and the chief global exporter of radical Islam, and they arrived in a country with just as many Muslims of its own.. The Mumbai attacks were less like 9/11 than like a man-made Katrina: a calamity preceded by many warnings (among them bombings last year in several cities) and followed by government bungling. At the time of the attacks, many Mumbai police were armed only with bamboo sticks. Of those who had guns, many didn't know how to fire them. Commandos had to be called in from the north, since none were stationed in India's financial capital. The failure of so many public-sector agencies provoked little surprise in Mumbai's poorer quarters, where residents are well acquainted with government shortcomings. But urban elites sputtered with outrage. Though some of this was directed toward Pakistan, most of it was aimed inward. Imagine if after 9/11, New Yorkers had taken to the streets to protest against firefighters and Rudy Giuliani, and you get a sense of what this felt like. Suddenly a class that preferred to pursue its interests through connections and money, that relied on private security and electrical generators, was reminded of the need for government and the role of the state. These protesting elites have shaken India's leaders. Singh has finally rid himself of his inane home minister and replaced him with the respected P. Chidambaram, a former finance minister, who has begun to address the disarray in India's security apparatus. He has streamlined the jumble of intelligence agencies, which report to different authorities and which proved unable to coordinate or correctly interpret intelligence in the weeks before the attacks. New Delhi has established a new National Intelligence Agency focused exclusively on terrorism, and Chidambaram plans to visit Washington to study U.S. counterterrorism strategy. A new antiterrorism law has also been passed that allows detainees to be held for up to six months without trial, denies bail to non-Indian subjects and invokes a sweeping definition of terrorism. But the task of truly reforming India's security system is too large to be accomplished before the next national election, which must be held by May. India still desperately needs improved coordination between New Delhi and the state governments and wholesale reform of its corrupt and dysfunctional police. Another urgent step has barely been discussed: the need to ensure that the motivating rage of the Pakistani attackers does not come to be widely shared by India's own Muslims. This won't be easy, for India's Muslims have reason to feel aggrieved.. The terrorists at the Taj claimed to be motivated by Kashmir and the government-linked violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, when several thousand died. More than six years later, the perpetrators still roam free; many of the accused even hold office. This has weakened Muslims' faith in India's commitment to the rule of law. Addressing these flash points quickly is crucial. But addressing symbolic wrongs won't be enough. As a government commission documented in 2006, the conditions of India's Muslims are dire. Although they represent 13.4 percent of the population, they make up only 4 percent of its undergraduates, 5 percent of government employees and 7 percent of legislators. Nearly 40 percent of urban Muslims live in poverty, a larger number than even the worst-off Hindu castes. Improving their prospects must begin with early intervention: helping more Muslim children, especially girls, attend school. And it must extend to policies that seek to link them to India's growing economy—by granting them easier access to credit, for example. Yet even if India were able to resolve these internal issues, it's still unlikely terrorism would cease. That's because India's largest problem lies just beyond its threshold—in Pakistan. Pakistan today vexes much of the world, but it most endangers both India's immediate security and its future development. To many of Pakistan's radicals, India is even more threatening than America, the Great Satan. India is democratic, secular, culturally similar to Pakistan—and right next door. It is also an easier target than the United States. Despite these many dangers, so far India has refused to respond to 11/26 with a wave of militarism—another contrast with America after 9/11. While the Indian home minister has given Islamabad and Washington a dossier cataloging Pakistani links to the attackers, the war spirit in India has thus far been relatively muted. This speaks less to India's national temperament than to a paucity of options. Indians are generally unwilling to address the problem of Pakistan head on, preferring to leave their nemesis to its chief paymaster and handler, Washington. This approach has generally suited the United States, since it has a major stake in restraining India's responses. Indian diplomats have tried to mobilize international pressure on Pakistan and asked for the extradition of 20 suspects. Yet more than two months after the attacks, these efforts have produced little. Still, there's plenty more India could and should do; it has far more options besides all-out military action or the continuation of a rather fruitless dialogue with successive Pakistani governments.. India needs to develop a richer repertoire of policies. And building that repertoire must start from the premise that it is increasingly implausible to treat Pakistan as a sovereign state. If there ever was such a unified entity, it no longer exists. Pakistan is in multiple wars with itself, fractured between its civilian government, its powerful military, the intelligence services and a proliferating array of armed extremist groups. Pakistan's leaders have thrived by two basic tactics: threatening that all will go to the dogs if they are ousted (Musharraf reaped rich rewards from the United States with this line) and pleading that the government is new and fragile and must be given a chance to get on course (the current line of President Asif Ali Zardari). But in more than 60 years, Pakistan has never been able to establish a normal pattern of governance or to assert sovereignty over its own territory. India's most urgent task will thus be to minimize the degree to which Pakistan can pose threats—to its neighbors, to Europe and the United States and, finally, to itself. That will require India to work more assertively with the West, and to work both with and—where necessary—against Pakistan. It will also require the United States to pay greater heed to India's interests. Investing in the fragile Zardari regime is probably futile. The military dominates Pakistan, and it is the generals whom India must convince to stop supporting terrorism. Compared with the United States after 9/11, India has reacted to the Mumbai attacks with restraint. But if 11/26 inspires reform only to India's security infrastructure, an important lesson will have been missed. The siege of Mumbai revealed serious deficits in India's political judgment—in the nation's treatment of its Muslims and its relations with the region. If India hopes to protect itself in the days ahead and to continue its economic ascent, a stiff dose of realism will be needed. Succeeding in a globalized world is a lofty aspiration. But India still lives in the gritty here and now, a fact its governments and citizens cannot wish away. Khilnani is the author of "The Idea of India" and director of South Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. http://www.newsweek.com/id/182538 __._,_.___ [Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.] To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___ Blog Archive
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
[ALOCHONA] The 11/26 attack on India was no 9/11—and India's reaction must also be different from America's.
| The Revenge Of The Near The 11/26 attack on India was no 9/11—and India's reaction must also be different from America's. From the magazine issue dated Feb 9, 2009 Urban Indians love the idea of a global, borderless world, where flows of trade and services trace virtual geographies. Who can blame them? Colonial mapmaking left India broken and flanked by two unviable, antagonistic states: Pakistan and Bangladesh. Also in the neighborhood are despotic Burma, precarious Afghanistan and war-torn Sri Lanka. It's enough to make anyone search for an escape. Before the Mumbai attacks, that escape seemed possible. India's elites believed that free-market economics and an international outlook would let them transcend location, poverty and intractable politics. In recent years, India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had made this approach the core of his policies. The Singh doctrine, as it might be called, was one of nonconfrontational economic diplomacy, seeking to expand India's global connections in order to spur growth and personal affluence, which in turn would defuse internal and external conflicts. The effort seemed to work, at least for a time. After charting around 8 percent annual growth for the last five years, last fall India became the first postcolonial state to successfully complete a moon mission. And in October, after signing an agreement with Washington, New Delhi gained admission into the world's most powerful club: that of legitimate nuclear powers. Then came the terrorist attack that began in Mumbai on the night of Nov. 26, literally and metaphorically targeting the five-star oases where the rich network and relax. The men who arrived in India's most global city from Pakistan aboard rubber boats represented, among other things, a revenge of the near. Within hours, they revealed that India's dream of escape might be a delusion. Actual location, it turns out, still matters more than the virtual one. There are limits to economic diplomacy—and India's security will depend on recognizing them. Halfway through the siege of the Taj and Oberoi hotels and of the Jewish Centre at Nariman House, one major TV station began headlining its reports with the phrase "India's 9/11." But the analogy didn't hold. There were some similarities—the targets were iconic buildings and the attacks captivated world attention—but the comparison oversimplified a situation whose implications are potentially much more threatening for India than those faced by the United States. September 11 was an attack by men from afar, whose message had little resonance with Americans. The Mumbai attackers came from next door, the world's largest Islamic republic and the chief global exporter of radical Islam, and they arrived in a country with just as many Muslims of its own.. The Mumbai attacks were less like 9/11 than like a man-made Katrina: a calamity preceded by many warnings (among them bombings last year in several cities) and followed by government bungling. At the time of the attacks, many Mumbai police were armed only with bamboo sticks. Of those who had guns, many didn't know how to fire them. Commandos had to be called in from the north, since none were stationed in India's financial capital. The failure of so many public-sector agencies provoked little surprise in Mumbai's poorer quarters, where residents are well acquainted with government shortcomings. But urban elites sputtered with outrage. Though some of this was directed toward Pakistan, most of it was aimed inward. Imagine if after 9/11, New Yorkers had taken to the streets to protest against firefighters and Rudy Giuliani, and you get a sense of what this felt like. Suddenly a class that preferred to pursue its interests through connections and money, that relied on private security and electrical generators, was reminded of the need for government and the role of the state. These protesting elites have shaken India's leaders. Singh has finally rid himself of his inane home minister and replaced him with the respected P. Chidambaram, a former finance minister, who has begun to address the disarray in India's security apparatus. He has streamlined the jumble of intelligence agencies, which report to different authorities and which proved unable to coordinate or correctly interpret intelligence in the weeks before the attacks. New Delhi has established a new National Intelligence Agency focused exclusively on terrorism, and Chidambaram plans to visit Washington to study U.S. counterterrorism strategy. A new antiterrorism law has also been passed that allows detainees to be held for up to six months without trial, denies bail to non-Indian subjects and invokes a sweeping definition of terrorism. But the task of truly reforming India's security system is too large to be accomplished before the next national election, which must be held by May. India still desperately needs improved coordination between New Delhi and the state governments and wholesale reform of its corrupt and dysfunctional police. Another urgent step has barely been discussed: the need to ensure that the motivating rage of the Pakistani attackers does not come to be widely shared by India's own Muslims. This won't be easy, for India's Muslims have reason to feel aggrieved.. The terrorists at the Taj claimed to be motivated by Kashmir and the government-linked violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, when several thousand died. More than six years later, the perpetrators still roam free; many of the accused even hold office. This has weakened Muslims' faith in India's commitment to the rule of law. Addressing these flash points quickly is crucial. But addressing symbolic wrongs won't be enough. As a government commission documented in 2006, the conditions of India's Muslims are dire. Although they represent 13.4 percent of the population, they make up only 4 percent of its undergraduates, 5 percent of government employees and 7 percent of legislators. Nearly 40 percent of urban Muslims live in poverty, a larger number than even the worst-off Hindu castes. Improving their prospects must begin with early intervention: helping more Muslim children, especially girls, attend school. And it must extend to policies that seek to link them to India's growing economy—by granting them easier access to credit, for example. Yet even if India were able to resolve these internal issues, it's still unlikely terrorism would cease. That's because India's largest problem lies just beyond its threshold—in Pakistan. Pakistan today vexes much of the world, but it most endangers both India's immediate security and its future development. To many of Pakistan's radicals, India is even more threatening than America, the Great Satan. India is democratic, secular, culturally similar to Pakistan—and right next door. It is also an easier target than the United States. Despite these many dangers, so far India has refused to respond to 11/26 with a wave of militarism—another contrast with America after 9/11. While the Indian home minister has given Islamabad and Washington a dossier cataloging Pakistani links to the attackers, the war spirit in India has thus far been relatively muted. This speaks less to India's national temperament than to a paucity of options. Indians are generally unwilling to address the problem of Pakistan head on, preferring to leave their nemesis to its chief paymaster and handler, Washington. This approach has generally suited the United States, since it has a major stake in restraining India's responses. Indian diplomats have tried to mobilize international pressure on Pakistan and asked for the extradition of 20 suspects. Yet more than two months after the attacks, these efforts have produced little. Still, there's plenty more India could and should do; it has far more options besides all-out military action or the continuation of a rather fruitless dialogue with successive Pakistani governments.. India needs to develop a richer repertoire of policies. And building that repertoire must start from the premise that it is increasingly implausible to treat Pakistan as a sovereign state. If there ever was such a unified entity, it no longer exists. Pakistan is in multiple wars with itself, fractured between its civilian government, its powerful military, the intelligence services and a proliferating array of armed extremist groups. Pakistan's leaders have thrived by two basic tactics: threatening that all will go to the dogs if they are ousted (Musharraf reaped rich rewards from the United States with this line) and pleading that the government is new and fragile and must be given a chance to get on course (the current line of President Asif Ali Zardari). But in more than 60 years, Pakistan has never been able to establish a normal pattern of governance or to assert sovereignty over its own territory. India's most urgent task will thus be to minimize the degree to which Pakistan can pose threats—to its neighbors, to Europe and the United States and, finally, to itself. That will require India to work more assertively with the West, and to work both with and—where necessary—against Pakistan. It will also require the United States to pay greater heed to India's interests. Investing in the fragile Zardari regime is probably futile. The military dominates Pakistan, and it is the generals whom India must convince to stop supporting terrorism. Compared with the United States after 9/11, India has reacted to the Mumbai attacks with restraint. But if 11/26 inspires reform only to India's security infrastructure, an important lesson will have been missed. The siege of Mumbai revealed serious deficits in India's political judgment—in the nation's treatment of its Muslims and its relations with the region. If India hopes to protect itself in the days ahead and to continue its economic ascent, a stiff dose of realism will be needed. Succeeding in a globalized world is a lofty aspiration. But India still lives in the gritty here and now, a fact its governments and citizens cannot wish away. Khilnani is the author of "The Idea of India" and director of South Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. http://www.newsweek.com/id/182538 __._,_.___ [Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.] To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___ |