V. Balachandran
Feb 16, 2015
There has been no universally acceptable definition of terrorism because of Cold War polemics that blurred the differences between freedom fighters, insurgents, guerrillas and terrorists. But this is more apparent in the US, which has three official definitions on terrorism.
For the first time since the beginning of the Afghan Taliban war in 2001, Kabul officially admitted, in March 2014, that 13,700 of its security personnel were killed. Unofficial sources said that 3,420 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) forces including 2,315 US military personnel were also killed. United Nations statistics revealed that the Afghan Taliban had executed 15,000 civilians since 2007. Yet, the US government surprised everybody recently by stating that they did not treat the Afghan Taliban as a “terrorist outfit” but only as an “armed insurgent group”.
The White House’s response came in the wake of a report that Amman was considering the release of Sajida al-Rishawi, a female-jihadi, in exchange for their pilot Maaz al-Kassabeh, captured by the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq. Later reports indicated that Kassabeh was brutally executed while the swap was being considered. A spokesperson said that the US would not negotiate with terrorist groups like the ISIS. American media said that the US had negotiated with the Afghan Taliban since it was an insurgent group. Some Guantanamo Bay prisoners were released in May 2014 in exchange for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was in Taliban custody since 2009.
This would surprise those who had read the bunch of George Washington University’s declassified documents in the National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No: 358 dated October 16, 2001, (released on September 11, 2011) on the Afghan Taliban threats to the US and its allies. This would be all the more surprising as this organisation is the inspiration for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that had indulged in several brutal killings including that of a 100 schoolchildren in Peshawar in December 2014. The TTP was declared a foreign terrorist organisation in January 2010, whereas the Taliban was not.
This bizarre official explanation would surprise everybody, but not those like me, who had dealt with the US government on the subject of terrorism. It is true that at different periods of history, people held dissimilar views on what constituted terrorism. In 1795, Edmund Burke defined the word “terrorist” while describing the atrocities in France during “The Terror” (1793-94) as ‘‘Those hell-hounds called terrorists… are let loose on the people.” In 2001, the late William Safire, a New York Times columnist, traced the origin of the word “terrorist” to the Latin term “terrere” which meant “to frighten”. (Words on the War on Terror, September 23, 2001). It may be of interest to know that in 1922, Annie Besant had used the word “terrorism” in her book The Future of Indian Politics while describing the activities of Gandhiji’s followers in preventing elections under British rule, which she had supported. It is also true that there has been no universally acceptable definition of terrorism mainly because of strident Cold War polemics that blurred the differences between freedom fighters, insurgents, guerrillas and terrorists.
This difference in perception is more apparent in the US, which is, perhaps, the only country to have three official definitions on terrorism resulting in legal hair-splitting. The US state department defines it basing on the US Code title 22, Section 2656(F) as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents usually intended to influence an audience”. This narrow definition precludes attacks on Border Security Force or Central Reserve Police Force camps by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba from being officially considered by US as terrorism.
The state department defines “insurgency” as “the organised use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify or challenge political control of a region. As such, it is primarily a political struggle, in which both sides use armed force to create space for their political, economic and influence activities to be effective”.
However, America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation follows the Code of Federal Regulations (28 CFR Section 0.85), which defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”. At the same time US defence department follows a simpler definition in their Dictionary of Military & Associated terms updated in December 2014 as “the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence, often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs, to instil fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually political”.
Title 22 of the US Code lays down the rules on foreign relations by the state department. Section 2656(F) is for preparing annual country reports on terrorism. As against this, 28 CFR Section 0.85, followed by the FBI is issued by the justice department as rules of criminal justice policy coordination which lists the FBI’s director’s charter. Section 0.85(L) gives the definition of terrorism which is followed by the FBI.
All these have even made the US media wonder as to how America would evolve successful counter-terrorist policies amidst such conflicting official semantics. Wall Street Journal said on January 28: “The United States does not list the Taliban on the foreign terrorist organisation list run by the state department, but it has listed the group on a separate, specially designated, global terrorist list since 2002. And the National Counterterrorism Centre lists the ‘Taliban presence in Afghanistan’ on a map of global terrorism presences.”
These different perceptions of terrorism by US agencies were definitely a stumbling block in the early 1990s when I led our team, for two successive years, at the annual inter-agency dialogue between our countries on terrorism. Sometimes it was quite difficult to convince them that some of the Pakistan-based terrorist groups were indulging in terrorism against India. Some of them viewed this as a human rights problem. Others like Robert Gates who was then director, CIA, administered a mild pedagogic admonition to us on December 14, 1992, saying that they were hearing similar complaints against us from Islamabad as we were making against them. It needed 9/11 and 26/11 to make them realise the significance of what we were saying in the early 1990s. These procedural impediments would certainly affect our intelligence dialogue even with the much-hyped “hotlines” if our basic appraisals on terrorism do not converged. As of now there is no such indication, except jazzed up diplomatic claims.
The writer is a former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and member of the 26/11 enquiry committee
No comments:
Post a Comment