Modern governments are vast bureaucracies engaged in an infinity of complex tasks, most of which are routinized to ensure continuity, standards and a necessary modicum of efficiency. The flip side is that established routines often lapse into mechanical responses, mere reflexes that have little contact with the original intent for which they were initiated.
The US State Department’s annual ritual of publishing what are now called the Country Reports on Terrorism (CRT) unfortunately appears to have slipped into the character of just such a habitual response, an embarrassing nervous tick that does little to enhance the appearance or reputation of those it afflicts, and that appears to fulfill no significant purpose. This is the regrettable conclusion that arises out of a close reading of the sections dealing with South Asia in CRT 2006 (the present assessment does not attempt to deal with or evaluate any other elements of the Report).
The CRT is a modestly rechristened version of the more ambitious Patterns of Global Terrorism (PGT), which was abruptly discontinued after a particularly disastrous edition in 2004 (PGT 2003) under the stewardship of the then US Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Cofer Black [A Tale Told by an Idiot; Flogging a Dead Horse]. The CRT is published (as was its predecessor) under a legislative mandate to provide the US Congress "a full and complete report on terrorism" each year with regard to countries that meet the criteria of the legislation, and in this CRT 2006 certainly falls short in its narrative on South Asia. CRT 2006 does not, of course, fall prey to the extreme perversity and errors that marked PGT 2003, and, if a brief overview of trends was all that was mandated, it would, perhaps and with some qualifications, suffice. As a "full and complete report on terrorism", one that would satisfy legitimate information needs of US Congress, however, it falls woefully short.
The experience with the appalling PGT 2003 obviously took a toll on the confidence levels of the counterterrorism establishment at Washington. In replacing the PGT reports with the CRT, responsibilities for the compilation and analysis of data were transferred to a newly created National Counterterrorism Centre (NCT), and were delinked from the CRT. Such compartmentalization has adversely affected the contents of the CRT and, in place of the detailed – albeit inaccurate – listings of terrorist incidents and the and aggregation of data in the PGT, CRT cherry picks a handful of significant incidents in each country in the region, and overwhelmingly relies on categories such as ‘hundreds’, ‘several’, ‘numerous’, and other approximations, in its assessments of the volume of terrorist activities in various theatres.
Within South Asia, CRT 2005 had given some reason for heightened expectations, particularly in its treatment of terrorism in India, going into surprising details, not only of terrorist operations and linkages, but also of administrative culture and the infirmities of the justice system. Indeed, this treatment gave cause for a hope that this approach would be deepened over time and that other theatres in the South Asian region would also be treated with a comparable thoroughness and realism – though the treatment of the Indian neighborhood remained politically coloured and inadequate even in CRT 2005.
Regrettably, this promise has not been fulfilled in CRT 2006, and there appears to be a slide back even in the quality and content of the treatment of terrorism within India. In reporting on Islamist terrorism outside Jammu & Kashmir, CRT 2006 quite naturally lists three major incidents, the July 11 train blasts in Mumbai, the second most devastating terrorist attack in the country’s history; the multiple blasts at Malegaon in Maharashtra on September 8, which saw 40 killed; and the March 7 multiple blasts in the temple city of Varanasi, which left 21 dead. Altogether surprisingly, it sees fit to mention, alongside these, the arrest of two suspected terrorists from the Al Badr on October 27, apparently on a mission to "establish a base in southern India" to "facilitate terrorist on economic and government targets". It is useful to note that 2006 also saw a number of other significant Islamist terrorist operations across India at various locations outside J&K, as well as a multiplicity of arrests of terrorists in several locations, including several in the Southern States of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh. If the obscure arrest of two ‘suspected terrorists’ merits mention in CRT 2006, these – and indeed many other – incidents can hardly be rightly ignored. If these arrests were thought to be unique evidence of efforts to "establish a base in southern India", this is misleading. There have been dozens of earlier arrests [ Islamist Terrorist Modules Disrupted] which give overwhelming evidence of a an effort, sustained over decades, to establish and execute operations in ‘southern India’, and these have already manifested themselves in numerous terrorist attacks in the region.
The analysis of terrorism in other theatres across India is, at best, cursory, once again randomly picking out some incidents for mention, but communicating little by way of an accurate picture of the movements, or of their intensity and dynamics.
Worse, there is evidence of some extremely crude ‘cut and paste’ work in CRT 2006, most glaringly:
On April 26, in part due to US evidence, a special court in Kolkata convicted seven men for the January 2002 attack on the American Center in Kolkata that lef five Indian police officers dead and over 20 injured.
This conviction occurred in 2005, and not 2006, and the paragraph has simply been reproduced from CRT 2005.
Again, entire paragraphs on India’s "outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems" are simply lifted verbatim from CRT 2005, without attribution:
India’s counterterrorism efforts are hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems. The Indian court system is slow, laborious, and prone to corruption; terrorism trials can take years to complete. An independent Indian think tank, for example, assesses that the estimated 12,000 civilians killed by terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir from 1988 to 2002 generated only 13 convictions through December 2002; most of the convictions were for illegal border crossing or possession of weapons or explosives.
Many of India’s local police forces are poorly staffed, trained, and equipped to combat terrorism effectively. Despite these challenges, India scored major successes, including numerous arrests and the seizure of hundreds of kilos of explosives and firearms during operations against the briefly resurgent Sikh terrorist group Babbar Khalsa International.
Such mechanical and un-attributed inclusions from previous reports in the body of CRT 2006 do not contribute to the authority and credibility of the exercise.
There are also several errors and inaccuracies of data and fact. For instance, the report states, "Indian officials said that terrorist infiltration into Jamu and Kashmir increased in 2006." India’s Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report – and a number of other official pronouncements – however, indicate a marginal decline in infiltration by four per cent in 2006 over 2005. CRT 2006 mentions the July 17 incident of a Naxalite attack in the Dantewada Distrcit of Chhattisgarh, in which "at least 25 people were killed". In fact, 33 villagers were killed in the incident. CRT 2006 refers to "multiple terrorist attacks" resulting in "numerous deaths and injuries". This is meaningless. Data for all theatres in India – indeed, South Asia – is available in reliable open sources. Official data is also periodically made available for several theatres. Either of these sources, with appropriate attribution, can give an acceptably accurate picture of the course of violence. The problem of authority or validation can be addressed, simply, by transparency of process. If data is clearly attributed to defined open or official sources, its publication in a US report would not constitute endorsement or confirmation of its validity, but would constitute a sufficient provisional basis for analysis of trends.
Treatment of other theatres is no better. For instance, the perfunctory paragraphs on Bangladesh make no mention of the alleged ‘Left Wing Extremism’ that authorities in Dhaka consider the main problem in the country, if data on fatalities is an index. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, compiled from open source reports, of the total of 145 ‘terrorist’ fatalities in Bangladesh in 2006, 139 were categorized as ‘Left Wing’ terrorists. The credibility or otherwise of this official campaign of annihilation, and its reconciliation with Bangladeshi claims to vigorous counterterrorism action, should be a natural element within any comprehensive assessment of trends in terrorism and counterterrorism in that country.
On Pakistan, while substantial detail relating to various theatres is given in CRT 2006, a selective blindness and a policy-led approach to assessment, remains in evidence. There are numerous endorsements of Pakistan’s exemplary role in combating terrorism and of President Musharraf’s ‘courageous role’ in the global war on terrorism, but little effort is made to reconcile this with the Report’s parallel assertion that Pakistan "remains a major source of Islamic extremism and a safe haven for some top terrorist leaders". The Report goes further to name a number of ‘Islamic groups’ that survive in Pakistan under assumed names after they were banned under their original names, and notes for at least some of these that they continue "to operate openly in parts of Pakistan". CRT 2006, however, remains noncommittal on the reasons for this phenomenon, and the apparent state patronage such open activities would seem to reflect.
On data, again, CRT 2006 cites ‘credible reports’ that put the fatalities in a total of "650 terrorist attacks" at "as many as 900 Pakistanis". SATP data suggests a total of 1,421 fatalities in Pakistan during the year, including 608 civilians and 325 Security Force (SF) personnel. It is useful to note, moreover, that Islamabad has made consistent and intense efforts to stifle information flows from the areas of conflict in the country, and total fatalities may, in fact, be considerably higher. A clearer definition of the ‘credible’ sources on which the CRT relies, and greater transparency relating to the methodology relating both to the attribution of credibility and the extraction of data would go a long way in giving greater authority to future reports.
It is not the intention or objective, here, to enter into a detailed critique of CRT 2006 in each of the theatres of conflict in South Asia. What is essential is that this exercise needs to go a long way before it can come anywhere close to fulfilling its mandate of providing a "a full and complete report on terrorism" to the US Congress; and that the tentativeness, anxieties and ideologically driven assessments reflected in CRT 2006 do not sit well with the task and responsibilities of providing an authoritative, credible and comprehensive analysis of international trends in terrorism. As it stands, the annual CRT process fails to produce a reliable resource for assessments both for the US Congress as well as for policy makers, scholars and the media everywhere.
The writer is the Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi, India
Courtesy : South Asia Terrorism Portal
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