People's Democracy

End State Terrorism to Fight Jehadi Terrorism

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on May 3, 2011.

OSAMA Bin Laden has been killed in Pakistan by the US special forces. This, however, does not mean an end to the problem of terrorism, which has many dimensions.

The death of Osama Bin Laden, while being a setback for the Al Qaeda, will not result in an end to the extremist violence spawned by fundamentalism. At the same time, the methods used by the United States to fight the so-called global “war on terror,” have only worsened the situation. In the name of fighting the Al Qaeda, the US devastated Afghanistan and Iraq. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives in these wars of aggression.

The fact that Bin Laden could live in Pakistan for so many years points to the linkage between the security establishment and some of the extremist groups operating there. The US had enlisted Pakistan to fight the Afghanistan government backed by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The Pentagon and CIA had equipped and financed through the ISI, people like Osama, thus fuelling the later day Taliban and Jehadi fundamentalists.

The recent military intervention in Libya and the continuing war in Afghanistan, show that the United States has learnt no lessons from the past. State terrorism and fundamentalist terrorism feed each other. Unless the United States changes its approach of resorting to military force and state terrorism, the problem of terrorism cannot be tackled successfully.