Shankar Roychowdhury

Apr 26, 2010
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Shankar Roychowdhury

India’s war on terror remains a postscript

Sombre memorial services in the United States marked remembrance for 9/11 — or September 11, 2001 — the day when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed in flames and smoke after airborne suicide bombers of Al Qaeda flew two hijacked passenger aircraft into the buildings. It was a “shot heard around the world” with which the United States launched its war on terror on October 7, 2001, under President George W. Bush, directed initially at the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but expanded subsequently to the entirely unconnected requirement of invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussain.

India needs a 360° terror appraisal

The highly surcharged political drama around Anna Hazare’s fast at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi came to an end on August 28, though with what substantial results is yet to be seen. But the country needs to remember that on the midnight of 19/20 August, even as Delhi was focused on the hectic political negotiations between Team Anna and the government, young Lt. Navdeep Singh was killed and two of his soldiers injured near Bagtor village in the Gurez region of Kashmir when they intercepted a group of heavily armed militants attempting to cross the Kishenganga river in a rubber dinghy, killing 12 of them in the process.

Khaki, khadi, lathi

To the more senior citizens of London who might have lived through the Blitz, the recent scenes of fiery devastation in the capital perhaps revived childhood memories. For their contemporaries in India, some in faraway Kolkata, the images of London in flames brought back memories of Kolkata during the Great Calcutta Killing of 1946.

Mr Nice & Miss Magic

In symbolic irony, the July 27 visit to India of Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s personable and photogenic new foreign minister, was separated by only one day from the annual remembrance services of Kargil Vijay Diwas by the Indian Armed Forces (on July 26) and by a little over a week of the Kupwara intrusion (on August 5) in which three Indian soldiers were killed.

Outthink terror

Mumbai 13/7 has overtaken Mumbai 26/11 as the latest outpouring of public outrage and sheer frustration at the almost contemptuous frequency with which terrorists have targeted the Maximum City.

Ballerina in boots

The induction and build-up of the Indian Army in a 750 sq km “manoeuvre area” allotted by the Chhattisgarh government in the Naxalite-affected Abujmarh zone of Chhattisgarh, howsoever presented to the public, has long been expected. The preliminary moves commenced with the establishment of an Army sub-area headquarters in Raipur, and now an infantry brigade (5,000-7,000 troops depending on the composition) is in the process of establishing jungle-training camps

Burmese tightrope

India must look away for a moment from the turmoil in the country’s western vicinity and spare a glance eastwards towards the “other border” as well, the one which India shares with another significant neighbour, Burma.
Burma, formed part of Britain’s Indian empire till 1937 when it was declared a separate colonial entity.

For the love of terror

“There is an increasing belief that Pakistanis walk both sides of the road”.
US senate intelligence
committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, as reported in the Wall Street Journal
Rumblings of discontent in the United States are growing louder post-Osama bin Laden and Abbottabad. The US is a dissatisfied paymaster, because its huge financial investments in Pakistan by way of military

D, we won’t be coming

“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
Romans 12:19 The Holy Bible (King James Version)

Scriptural injunctions together with America’s early frontier philosophy might well have inspired the official policy which culminated in Operation Geronimo. In this, special forces of the United States Navy Seal (Sea, Air and Land) Team Six finally killed Osama bin Laden “with extreme prejudice” on May 2, 2011, in Abbottabad, deep in the heartland of Pakistan.

Hare, hound & India

“We’re telling the Americans: you have to trust the ISI or you don’t. There’s nothing in between”
— ISI to American media in Washington (New York Times, April 12, 2011)

So, did the Americans finally trust the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), at least at some level, for the coup de grace which eliminated Osama bin Laden on May 2?

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