The Hindu Business Line : Wanted, a new strategy to combat terror

That terrorists were able to attack the heart of London despite the tight security measures adopted in the UK after the Madrid blasts proves that the command control of Osama bin Laden's terror outfit is intact. A new strategy is needed to deal with the crisis. The UN should be empowered to assess the effectiveness of counter-terrorism forces in fundamentalist countries to ensure that jehadi elements operating from within their borders are rooted out, says B. S. Raghavan.

THOSE who watched the excellent coverage by the BBC News channel of the aftermath of the serial blasts in London on July 7 must have been impressed by the quiet efficiency with which the police and the personnel of the emergency services went about discharging their onerous responsibility. The average Londoner too seemed at his phlegmatic best, with the result that, except for the suspension of the Underground and the bus services in Central London, there was little sign of any widespread commotion or disturbance.

Somehow, at such times, the British grit and gumption come to the fore, redoubling their determination to grin and bear it. This was how, in the second volume of his war memoirs, Their Finest Hour, in a chapter titled "London can take it!", Winston Churchill describes the English spirit when London and several other cities were pounded, day after day, and night after night, by 200 to 800 bombers, without respite, during the Battle of Britain:

"... These were the times when the English, and particularly the Londoners, who had the place of honour, were seen at their best. Grim and gay, dogged and serviceable, with the confidence of an unconquered people in their bones, they adapted themselves to this strange new life, with all its terrors, with all its jolts and jars... London was like some huge prehistoric animal, capable of enduring terrible injuries, mangled and bleeding from many wounds, and yet preserving its life and movement... "

Awesome spectacle

The leaders of the world's eight richest and the most powerful nations and the four special invitees, including India's Dr Manmohan Singh, gathered at Gleneagles in Scotland lost no time in presenting a united and determined front before the camera, while their host, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, read out their joint statement expressing their combined resolve, the stronger for the barbaric attack, to root out the scourge of terrorism, wherever found, with all their might.

It was an awesome spectacle whose import could not have been missed by any of the blood-thirsty brutes masquerading as human beings who think nothing of perpetrating such horrors to give vent to their fanaticism.

Far and away the most impressive scene was witnessed within the House of Commons. The short factual statement by the Home Secretary, Mr Charles Clarke, was listened to in pin-drop silence, but for a spontaneous and vigorous roar of support from all parts of the House to the voicing of the Government's determination to rid the world of the evil.

It was followed by an evocative and eloquent speech by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr David Davis, who pledged his (Conservative) Party's unqualified support to the Government for all its efforts to get the better of the terrorists who had shown such "wickedness and depravity", and ended on a Churchillian note: "The British shall not be cowed. The terrorists shall not win".

There was no needling the Government with accusations of security lapses. Nor was there any strident call for the resignation of the Prime Minister.

The session was so orderly and disciplined as to seem other-worldly in the eyes of an average Indian accustomed to perpetual uproars and pandemonium in Parliament over far less momentous issues.

Command and control structure intact

The tentative conclusion, pending a fuller investigation and tracing of the culprits is that the atrocity bears all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front run by Osama bin Laden.

From the fact that within a year of the crippling of the transport system in Madrid with attendant loss of lives, the terrorists were able to mount a similar attack in the heart of London, despite the tight security measures adopted after Madrid, it is clear that the command control superstructure of whatever Osama bin Laden has put together under whatever name is intact, unaffected by the measures set in motion by the US, the UK and generally the rest of the international community to combat the murderous gangs.

And there is the rub. Terrorism, unlike a visible and concrete apparatus of state, cannot be brought within the sights of the police or the military. Terrorists merge with the surroundings and move about at will, looking like the rest of the population and are able to strike at a time and target of their choosing. This gives them an enormous advantage of surprise.

Thus, for all the ringing declarations vowing to root it out, the best that governments can do is plug all loopholes in the functioning of mechanisms for ensuring internal and external security by expanding and strengthening traditional modalities of surveillance, collection, collation and assessment of both human and technical intelligence and sharpen the reflexes and intensify the vigil of security personnel.

Even then, combating terrorism largely means reacting to actual catastrophes as and when they take place and not warding them off before they occur.

Following the unprecedented 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the US radically altered both the nature and scope of the counter-terrorism doctrine by means of pre-emptive strikes on whatever country or area within a country it considered to be terrorist stronghold, deploying the entire range of weaponry and armoury it was technologically and militarily capable of and bringing about regime changes wherever it thought the existing ones were supporting terrorism.

In doing so, it stopped short of nothing, whether in terms of violation of human rights, loss of lives, concocting alibis and bending the rules and conventions of war. In a way, the US brand of counter-terrorism in itself has begun to fan the flames of hatred and further provoke the jehadi desperadoes.

New strategy

The world, in a way, is in a Catch-22 situation. On the one hand, it has to get even with terrorism and all the havoc it is wreaking. On the other, the very methods employed seem to end up stoking it further.

Coming out of this trap will not be possible by a mere mechanistic application of outmoded techniques of police and military action, resorting to reprisals or repaying horror with horror.

Altogether, a new strategy is needed to deal with the present crisis. There should be no burking of one cardinal fact, if the new strategy is to succeed.

The persons behind the devilish acts are all fundamentalists who cannot thrive and flourish unless the governments within whose jurisdictions they are moving about are themselves conniving at their presence and their stratagems.

It is difficult to believe that they do not know their whereabouts or what they are up to. To leave the connivance or (to put it charitably) the indifference of such governments out of the reckoning and merely be countering the manifestations of terrorism is akin to leaving out the swamps in which mosquitoes are breeding and treating the outbreak of malaria by distributing quinine tablets. The role of some fundamentalist regimes cannot be ruled out. Yet, it will not be proper for any single country, even if it is a super-power, to call them to order.

The best course would be for the UN Secretary-General to act as a prime mover to persuade the Security Council to set up a body of representatives of impeccable credentials, aided by terrorism experts, a la the UN Inspectorate for Detection of Weapons of Mass Destruction, to go into the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures in force in those countries to eliminate the possibility of jehadi elements operating from within their borders.

Without some such drastic root-and-branch remedy for the dreadful disease, mere symptomatic treatment will see no end to the diabolical evil in the near future.

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