The puppet and the puppeteer

The 10th anniversary of the 9/11 felling of the World Trade Centre (WTC) towers has come and gone leaving behind some heart-wrenching images — a father on one knee hugging the parapet of the water body boundary of the tower memorial, on which was etched the name of his son. Was this the end or still the middle of what that monstrous act represented? The WTC was first attacked in 1993, causing limited damage.

The first attack on India also occurred the same year, in retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Masjid, when Dawood Ibrahim’s gang blew up the business district around the Bombay Stock Exchange. He fled to Dubai and then Karachi, mutating from a don to a terrorist. But India and the US’ destinies were conjoined, except in India a nexus between Pakistani sponsorship, crime syndicates and, more recently, local recruits has been a recurring theme.
Even in 2001, three months after 9/11, the Indian Parliament was attacked by fidayeen threatening to eliminate the Indian political elite. The intention was to draw the Pakistani security forces away from sealing the Durand Line, across which the Taliban and Al Qaeda were fleeing into the Pakistani tribal areas. Whether the ISI orchestrated it remains the Indian dilemma in dealing with Pakistan as the actions of the puppets and the intentions of the puppeteer are difficult to prove.
On the day the twin towers fell I was the Indian ambassador to UAE. Interestingly, of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudis, one even from the northern emirates of the UAE, but all from Arab countries closely aligned to the US. In UAE there was little mention of their national, though quiet action was undertaken. At any majlis, of the ruling family or top local businessmen, the issue was not discussed. However, behind our backs flew conspiracy theories of a Jewish hand. The narratives continue to differ 10 years later.
India hoped that finally the US and the West would espouse comprehensive counter-terrorism and compel Pakistan to either reform or perish. The Faustian bargain with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the then President and Army chief, was hypocritical. The US really wanted Al Qaeda’s demise while loudly proclaiming a “global war on terror”. Pakistan wanted a selective battle preserving their Taliban allies and favoured terror outfits, bred for proxy war against India, while publicly joining the US in their crusade. The lie lay exposed on May 2, 2011 in the manner of Osama bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad. Actually the logic of events since the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack had been leading in this direction, particularly since the David Headley confessions.
Two recent books have exposed how this duplicity imploded. Syed Saleem Shahzad, who lost his life for defying the ISI, in Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Stephen Tankel in Storming the World Stage, sketch the journey of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) from its anti-India fixation, while being a handmaiden of the ISI, to its role from 2001, but certainly about 2005, as Tankel calls it “A Training Provider and Gateway Organisation”. A French judge exposed the role of the LeT in the training of Willie Brigitte, arrested in Australia in 2003 to commit acts of terror. Tankel writes that “Lashkar’s fidayeen assault in Mumbai integrated the Indian and global loci.” While largely the LeT has not attacked Pakistan, it is difficult today to say with certainty which operative is doing what with whom.
Syed Saleem Shahzad takes the narrative further, arguing that Al Qaeda and Taliban, despite the loss of Bin Laden, are working to a plan, inspired by Prophet Mohammad’s prophecy that ancient Khurasan, comprising eastern Iran, Afghanistan etc, will be the theatre for the “End of Time” battles. To this is added Ghazwe-e-Hind, or the battle for India, and then the conquest of holy Jerusalem. Radical narrative originates with Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century, following the Mongols’ sack of Baghdad, and then from the works of Syed Qutb, an Egyptian who inspired the Muslim Brotherhood, and Syed Maududi, a South Asian. Three events in 1979 gave it a fillip — the Iranian Islamic Revolution ousting the Shah, the siege of the Mecca Masjid and then Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
Ten years after 9/11 the debit account for the US is dismal. The financial tally of the war on terror is $3.3 trillion (as per the New York Times). It is militarily exhausted, financially stretched and economically beleaguered. It confronts an assertive and risen China and a depleted Eurozone. India confronts a survivor terrorism network in Pakistan, mostly out of Pakistan’s control. The LeT has mutated and built up Indian surrogates like Indian Mujahideen, slowly recruited through SIMI and finally surfacing on November 23, 2007. The result is Indian intelligence flying blind and the Indian home minister developing a peculiar doctrine that there is no intelligence failure when there is no information.
India, however, occupies a vital space, with its third-largest Muslim population between forces of radical Islam spilling across the Indus towards India and the potential forces of moderation streaming across the Tahrir Squares of the Arab world, popularly dubbed the Arab Spring. India cannot languish waiting for the next attack and debate a Communal Violence Bill and sit on the fence at the UN Security Council. While the WTC came down in the second attack, Mumbai has borne three more since 1993. While the US was wrong merely fighting the militant and feeding his narrative through Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, India must find a middle path between chief minister Narendra Modi’s recalcitrance and Digvijay Singh’s naivety. India cannot escape South Asia, nor should the US abandon it. The jihad must be ended in Khurasan and not allowed to reach Jerusalem, otherwise it will not stop there.

K.C. Singh is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry