The trend towards violence and extremism in South Asia moved inexorably upwards in 2009. Afghanistan and Pakistan experienced major increases in terrorist incidents, often involving suicide bombings against high-profile urban targets including hotels frequented by foreign nationals and installations belonging to the security forces.
Although India did not have to endure a repeat of the November 2008 Mumbai attack, at least six major terrorist plots by Islamist extremist groups were thwarted by the Indian security authorities, probably with assistance from the United States. Meanwhile the Maoist Naxalite movement continued to consolidate its grip on the area of northeastern India that has become known as the ‘red corridor’. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil separatist movement Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was defeated by military force, though it remains to be seen whether the underlying grievances which gave rise to the long-running conflict can be resolved politically.
The only South Asian countries not to experience terrorist violence during 2009 were Nepal and Bangladesh. In Nepal, the likelihood of a return to violence by the Maoists remains low. But in Bangladesh, security officials acknowledge that extremist groups which had lain low during the two-year period of military rule from early 2007 to early 2009 have begun to regroup following the re-establishment of civilian government. With little chance of resolving the underlying causes of these various forms of political violence, the prospects for a less conflicted 2010 in South Asia are slight.
Pakistan: epicentre of global jihadism
By far the largest increase in terrorist violence within the past year has taken place in Pakistan, where a complex array of factors has created a situation of unprecedented lethality which increasingly challenges the authority and competence of the Pakistani state. The statistics are telling: in 2001, Pakistani casualties from terrorist attacks numbered 189. In 2009, there were 3,300 deaths. This exceeded the 2,412 killed in Afghanistan in 2009, two-thirds of whom were victims of Afghan Taliban terrorist violence. The Pakistani casualties included members of the security forces, government officials, tribal elders in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and ordinary citizens. The proximate cause of this increase has been the Pakistani Army’s move against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a loose federation of Pashtun tribal groups based in the FATA, ideologically affiliated both to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Antagonised by a Pakistani army presence in the FATA, which was itself a response to US pressure on Pakistan to do more against the al-Qaeda leadership based in that region, the various Pashtun tribal militia groups which in late 2008 coalesced into the TTP broke the terms of successive peace deals designed to restore stability and expel foreign fighters, and then in spring 2009 the TTP orchestrated a takeover of the Swat valley. The Pakistani Army drove the TTP out of Swat in a campaign which produced large numbers of internally displaced persons and resulted in large-scale damage to property in the region. This action did, however, enjoy the support of a population which had been comprehensively alienated by the extremism and brutality of the TTP. This popular mandate has been seen by many commentators as a turning point in a country where many were in denial about Islamist extremism and saw counter-terrorism activity as Pakistan fighting America’s war.
Following the action in Swat, the Pakistani Army initiated a campaign in South Waziristan aimed at annihilating the TTP leadership and restoring order to an area no longer under Pakistani government control. So far this campaign has seen the death of TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud – killed by a US drone strike –and the capture of the main TTP strongholds in South Waziristan. But the TTP appears to have offered little direct resistance and has in time-honoured fashion melted away in the face of the Pakistani Army’s advance. Meanwhile, it has trained large numbers of young Pashtun men as suicide bombers, enabling it to unleash a barrage of suicide and other terrorist attacks in the settled areas of Pakistan, focusing on military and intelligence installations. These attacks have increasingly been orchestrated with Pakistani sectarian groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT), sometimes collectively referred to as the ‘Punjabi Taliban’, whose origins date back to the period when the Pakistani state sought to exploit a jihadist culture left over from the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad as an asymmetric weapon against India in Kashmir. As the al-Qaeda leadership in the FATA has over the past year suffered significant attrition as a result of US drone attacks, it has increasingly sought to gain leverage by acting as an ideological mentor and force-multiplier for such groups, forging tactical alliances between them and with the Afghan Taliban. In June 2009 the Pakistani authorities disrupted a plot to assassinate President Asif Ali Zardari and other senior officials which had been put together by a group comprising the TTP, LeT and al-Qaeda. And in a recent statement al-Qaeda chief ideologue Abu Yahya al-Libi indicated that the distinction between near and far enemies was no longer relevant, suggesting that in future al-Qaeda may focus its efforts on the sub-continent where operating conditions are arguably more favourable than in the West.
While most Pakistani groups are capable only of operating inside Pakistan, LeT has evolved into a sophisticated organisation with extensive transnational networks focused primarily, though not exclusively, against India. The extent of its operational sophistication can be seen from the November 2008 Mumbai attack, for which the group appeared to have undertaken a two-year period of planning and reconnaissance. Opinion differs as to whether Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) (Pakistan’s main intelligence service), which originally trained and equipped LeT via a department comprised solely of retired military officers, was complicit in the Mumbai attack. The consensus of Western intelligence opinion is that it was probably not, at least at a command level. However, in spite of Pakistan’s decision to try seven members of the LeT leadership for their involvement in Mumbai, India’s security authorities view the LeT as a monster that the Pakistani authorities are no longer able to control.
A major complicating factor is the continuing determination of the Pakistani military to differentiate between jihadist groups, despite recent statements by Pakistani civilian leaders suggesting that such differentiation may no longer be tenable. Though willing to take action against the TTP and al-Qaeda, both of which it recognises as an existential threat to Pakistan, the Pakistani army has resisted pressure from the US and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to take action against the Afghan Taliban whose leadership remains predominantly situated in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, and related groups such as the Haqqani and Hekmatyar organisations.
The official Pakistani response to such requests is that this is a problem of sequencing: with limited resources and capabilities, Pakistan must first deal with the most immediate threats. But in private, senior Pakistani military officers admit that the Pakistani military has no intention of moving against the Afghan Taliban and its allies at a time when Western resolve to stay the course in Afghanistan is seen to be waning and talk of a political settlement growing. Pakistan’s main concern is to hedge against an outcome which leaves Afghanistan under the political influence of India with the perceived risk this carries of strategic encirclement.
Undeclared intelligence war
A major contributory factor to the high incidence of extremist violence in South Asia has been a long-running undeclared war between the intelligence services of India and Pakistan which appears largely impervious to fluctuations in political relations between the two countries. Third countries have been drawn into this confrontation, with Bangladesh in particular having played involuntary host to a range of covert operatives and groups in ways which have impacted adversely on its own problems with Islamist extremism.
Since the 1990s, the ISI has promoted jihadism in the disputed territory of Kashmir and developed contacts with separatist movements along India’s northern and eastern borders. And the LeT has engaged in extensive terrorist attacks and sabotage in India, either directly or via indigenous groups such as Indian Mujahideen. Until recently, there had been no evidence of LeT or related groups seeking to make common cause with India’s other main terrorist threat, the Naxalites. But in June 2009 a LeT operative arrested in India did admit to seeking to establish such contact. And Indian security officials believe that the attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul which have taken place over the past two years were carried out by the Haqqani group with the knowledge of ISI. Meanwhile, the ISI claims that India’s intelligence service, known as the ‘Research and Analysis Wing’ (RAW), is running two training camps in Afghanistan for separatists from Pakistan’s south-western province of Baluchistan. The ISI has also alleged that RAW has been providing funding to the TTP. Kashmir itself has, however, witnessed relatively little violence over the past year. Whether this relative calm can be sustained in the absence of a political agreement between India and Pakistan is at best uncertain.
Institutional responses
In institutional terms, the most substantial changes have probably taken place within India, a country whose authorities have arguably been in denial about the gravity of the terror threat. Following the Mumbai attack, Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram began to establish national agencies to overcome the problems caused by the disaggregated nature of India’s counter-terrorism response, which formally falls under the remit of individual states with great disparities in resources and capabilities. The first step has been the creation in early 2009 of a National Investigation Agency with a remit to investigate terrorist incidents across India. More recently, Chidambaram has announced his intention to establish by the end of 2010 a national counter-terrorism centre with the aims of coordinating the activities of numerous agencies and police forces with no previous culture of cooperation; establishing a single national-intelligence database; and expanding significantly what is currently a substantially under-strength police force. These measures, combined with much-enhanced intelligence cooperation with the US, will undoubtedly enable the Indian authorities to deal more effectively with some aspects of their terrorism problem, in particular that originating from outside the country. But there is still no sign of any inclination to deal with the main indigenous threat from the Naxalites other than through the exercise of hard power, ignoring the social and economic disparities which have fuelled this conflict.
Bangladesh has meanwhile begun to civilianise its counter-terrorism effort through the establishment of a national security intelligence organisation. It is hoped that the newly created National Committee to Combat Terrorism, comprising representatives of 17 government departments and with a remit to engage in outreach with the academic and religious communities, will foster a cross-governmental approach to terrorism. A further positive development has been a marked improvement in border security and intelligence cooperation with India.
Pakistan too has established the basis of a more coordinated approach to counter-terrorism through the creation in early 2009 of a National Counter-Terrorism Authority. It remains to be seen whether the new authority will be able to secure the support of ISI, though its senior officers maintain that they are committed to cooperation. Less positively, intelligence cooperation between Pakistan and India remains minimal and pro forma, conducted primarily through the respective interior ministries. Nor is the situation notably better in respect of intelligence cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Countering the radical message
Radicalisation is a continuing problem in all South Asian countries with the exception of Sri Lanka. Its origins are both indigenous and external. In Pakistan, while most of the population follows the moderate Barelvi interpretation of Islam, more fundamentalist interpretations of Deobandism and Ahl-e-Hadith have been gaining ground, a process further enhanced by large-scale Salafist proselytism undertaken by Saudi Arabia to a degree that has led some Pakistanis to talk about the ‘Arabisation’ of Pakistan. None of these ideologies condones jihadist activity, but it has proven easy for extremists to distort these fundamentalist interpretations of Islam in ways so as to argue that violence is justifiable.
Similar processes have taken place in India and Bangladesh with many expatriate workers returning from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states having imbibed a radical ideology. To date, little progress has been made in addressing the radicalisation process. In Pakistan, an attempt to regulate the country’s numerous madrassas has stalled and little progress has been made in providing an alternative state education imparting skills which equip students for employment in the modern economy. Meanwhile, no South Asian government has been able successfully to address the influence of religious proselytism by the Saudi state, nor has it proven possible to stem the flow of money from individuals and private groups based in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states which goes to fund both extremist ideologies and terrorist groups.
In the absence of solutions to the long-term geopolitical conflicts which feed the regional extremist narrative – Afghanistan and Kashmir – it is hard to envisage any quick resolution to the problem of extremism in South Asia. Governments have begun to take small practical steps to manage the problem more effectively. But these are unlikely to have much impact in the short term. The likelihood of continuing high levels of violent extremism in 2010 remains high.
