People's Democracy

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11 have been the most important event of the year so far, and have jolted the conscience of the international community. People are still engaged in discussing its pros and cons for world peace, and their apprehensions about international terrorism and its likely consequences are genuine.

According to the US administration, all the indications available so far point to the role of Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden in masterminding these attacks. Bin Laden is the top leader of a terrorist outfit called Al Qaida that has its men in various parts of the world. He is currently lodged in a safe hideout somewhere in Afghanistan, and the Taliban rulers of the country have so far refused to hand him over to the US as the latter is demanding. The same man had been accused of organising the bombing on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earlier, and the attack on a US naval ship some time ago when it was harboured in Aden. After its embassies were bombed, the US bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and some targets in Afghanistan in the name of annihilating bin Laden’s hideouts.

After the September 11 attacks, the US again moved into action, trying to cobble up a war alliance against Afghanistan. For the first time since the NATO’s formation, article 5 of its charter was invoked; the article says that any attack on a member country would be considered an attack on all NATO members. It is another thing that some NATO members began to have second thoughts about committing themselves for a war against Afghanistan.

The US also pressurised Pakistan into giving it the air passage facility for launching a war against Afghanistan. The US put its demand in a peculiar way, saying that giving or not giving the US the required passage would amount to a test of Pakistan’s sincerity in fighting international terrorism.

It is also apparent that, in the name of punishing bin Laden, the US in fact wants to have a government of its own choice there. We shall return to this aspect later.

The first thing to remember in this context is that the Taliban did not come as a bolt from the blue. Like several other terrorist groups active in various parts of the world, they are in fact the creation of the same US imperialists who are today fulminating against them. This is something like an old tale retold --- that you open the bottle and free the genie, and the genie becomes a menace for you.

As is known to the whole world, it was the US imperialism that propped up a number of Mujahideen groups to fight against the PDPA government of Afghanistan that came into existence after the Saur Revolution in 1979. All the sophisticated weapons the Taliban have today, ranging from AK series rifles to rocket launchers to tanks and aircraft, were supplied to them by the US imperialists through Pakistan. These groups were provided arms training as well as generous amounts of money by the US in a bid to overthrow the PDPA regime in Afghanistan. Just like the USA helped, armed and trained the Contra terrorists of Nicaragua, the fundamentalist groups in Sudan, Algeria and several other countries, the killer mercenaries in almost every country of Latin America, and the Florida based anti-Cuba terrorist groups. Many of the terrorist groups operating in Kashmir and north-east India, and in Punjab earlier, are/were getting funding and arms from the same source.

This reliance of US imperialism on terrorism as an extra-legal arm of its over-aggressive foreign policy has been known to the world during the last 56 years since the end of the second world war. It is no secret that the CIA had been instrumental in planning and executing the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Bandarnaike (Sri Lanka), Mosaddiq (Iran), Salvador Allende (Chile), Mujibur-Rahman (Bangladesh) and a host of other political leaders across the globe. Even today, before our own eyes, the Americans are backing the mass murder of Palestinians by the same Zionists who perpetrated the Shabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, killing more than 17,500 Palestinians.

By a strange irony of fate, Allende was murdered on September 11 in 1973, the same date on which the US itself faced terrorist attacks this year.

As for Afghanistan, US imperialists have been eyeing it ever since the end of the second world war when they emerged as a superpower. The very position of the country in the centre of the Old World gives it a unique importance in the US geo-political strategy that is aimed at establishing its unchallenged dominance over the world. Afghanistan had been at the core of British diplomacy when India was a British colony, and the British rulers fought two Afghan wars in order to have their hegemony in Kabul. The US policy towards Afghanistan is a continuation of the same British colonial drive in a different situation. Be it the Zaheer Shah regime, the Dawood government or later, the US always tried to have a foothold in the country, as the existence of a puppet government in Kabul will tremendously help it establish its hegemony over the region.

It is in this context that the US claim to fight international terrorism has to be viewed. There is no gainsaying that terrorism has become a severe menace for world peace today; its links with and reliance on narcotics trade are also well known. The whole world has therefore to rise in unison in order to fight and destroy this menace once and for all. But this requires such sincerity of purpose as is beyond reproach. Propping up and funding terrorist groups today, fulminating against them tomorrow and propping up such groups again the next day cannot be helpful in fighting the menace. This is the lesson the US has to draw from the recent terrorist attacks, and the sooner it learns this lesson, the better. In fact, the US has first to prove its own sincerity before asking others to rise against terrorism.

Countries like Pakistan have also to draw a lesson from these attacks. For years, the rulers of Pakistan have been funding, training and arming the terrorist groups as part of their proxy war against India. Earlier, they served as agents of the US in the region, in the latter’s bid to overthrow the PDPA government of Afghanistan. But what happened ultimately was that these very Afghan Mujahideen and refugees became a grave threat to the internal peace and security in Pakistan. Karachi became the centre of drug and arms trade involving these Mujahideen and refugees, and a city where exchange of gunfire in broad daylight became a routine affair. The life of peace-loving citizens of Karachi and some other cities became extremely insecure.

Moreover, while the Pakistani rulers seek to glorify terrorism in Kashmir as a holy war, though in vain, Pakistan-based terrorist groups have become a "state within a state" and no mainstream party is in a position to challenge their hold on the country’s politics. Both Ms Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had had to play the same tune, which was in fact the tune set by the top brass of the army and the ISI, and each of the latter has a vested interest in the continuation of terrorism in the region. General Musharraf was therefore in a truly unenviable plight when the US put its demand for air passage facility in a rigid yes/no format. Only three weeks ago he had vowed to fight against terrorism, the Sind government had imposed a ban on fund collection for terrorist purposes, and had coyly withdrawn it after only two days.

But no less reprehensible has been the BJP-led government’s position in this duration. Two deplorable reactions came to the fore in this period. A section of the media sought to equate terrorism with Islam and Muslims in general, and this attitude needs to be condemned in as strong terms as possible. At the same time, acting in a "more loyal than the king" fashion, the BJP government offered all its services to the US against Afghanistan and, by implication, Pakistan as the backer of the Taliban. The BJP government made this offer without the US asking for it; in fact the US has not asked India for any such assistance to date.

This is by no means an innocuous position. Many countries of the world, including the Security Council members like Russia and China, have said that perpetrators of the September 11 crime must be unmistakably identified before any action is taken and, secondly, such an action must be taken under the UN auspices. But these genuine points have as if no value for the Vajpayee government whose foreign minister had only one concern during the last eight days --- to assure Collin Powel and Dick Cheney of this government’s faithfulness to the US. For the Vajpayee government, it is as if the UN does not exist at all!

This posture of the Vajpayee regime has compromised the position of India that had been playing a seminal role in the world arena and the non-aligned movement. Today, when the developing countries of the world are looking towards India in their quest to defend their interests and sovereignty, India under Vajpayee has taken a stand vis-à-vis the US that can only be called capitulationist. This is particularly sad at a time when India, the second most populous country, can play a big role in ending the present-day unipolarity by cooperating with Russia, China and other countries.

During the last eight days, the Vajpayee government again demonstrated its proclivity to equate terrorism with Islam and Muslims. Is it this approach with which it hopes to root out terrorism from Kashmir?

After the all-party meeting that the government called on September 15, it claimed to have evolved a "consensus" on the country’s response to the recent attacks. This was a lie. At the meeting, the Left made it clear that it was unequivocally against terrorism. In fact, in Kashmir and Tripura and in Punjab earlier, it was the Left parties whose cadres fought against terrorism and made tremendous sacrifices. Many of our cadres were martyred in this struggle. But the Left was not agreeable to the method the BJP government proposed to fight terrorism. The Left parties were against offering the US logistical support in its war against Afghanistan. (See the Polit Bureau statement elsewhere in this issue.) Second, when I raise the issue of the government’s plan as well as perspective about fighting terrorism, a reply to my question was avoided. Naturally, there was no consensus on the issue at the all-party meet. Nor could there be, in view of the fact that what the government was proposing was not real partnership against terrorism but a capitulation before the US. This is certainly not the way to fight terrorism.