I have been asked several times over recent days what I think about the events in Mumbai. I was slow to post on it, in part for the reasons I explained in yesterday's post, but actually also because I have been out a lot since the horror story began to unfold on Wednesday.
Very simply, to hear the stories that are now emerging from Mumbai inspires terror. And that is the knub of the issue. Terrorism is successful for the simple fact that it inspires terror. And terror is a very powerful thing.
For the group who have a cause, but no conventional powerbase, terror provides them with power. They may have a cause, but no national government to give a seat at the diplomatic table. They may be a nation or territory seeking justice but with no army and few weapons. They usually represent a radical cause that comparatively few will give the time of day to, but that inspires fervent devotion in those who believe. These are the groups who resort to terror.
Terror has become a regular part of our vocabulary over the past 7 years. And yet for all our familiarity with it, some are saying that Mumbai was a new form of terror.
Anand Giridharadas in the New York Times puts it this way: The Special Sting of Personal Terrorism
This was not terror — not as Indians understood it. This was war. The killers stormed the streets of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, with machine guns and bags of grenades. They did not strike with the terrorist’s fleeting anonymity. Their work was fastidiously deliberate. It went into a second day, then a third. They took time to ask your nationality and vocation. Then they spared you, or herded you elsewhere, or shot you in the back of your skull.
But of course it was terrorism. If anything the terror was more cold and more calculated as it played out over longer time.
In Time The Mumbai Attacks: Terror's Tactical Shift a quote from French terrorism specialist Roland Jacquard drew out the distinctives:
"This didn't involve suicide bombers and booby-trapped cars that we commonly see in Islamist terror attacks — ones which usually end with the explosion-deaths of the kamikazes carrying them out. This is essentially a small army sent into the heart of society with orders kill and keep killing as long as possible. And they're technically capable of creating a lot of damage and death before they can be killed. So this is more like terrorism fused with insurgency and guerilla warfare."
Of course when we think terror nowadays the usual suspect is Al Quaeda. In this case the new tactics mean that the jury is still out on who did it. Amir Taheri, the Iranian conservative journalist, who writes much on terrorism, has no doubts. Writing in the Telegraph Mumbai attacks: Jihadists see "invasion" as a triumph he sees the attack in Mumbai as a new stage in Al Quaeda operations and specifically proof that: "Islamic terror is capable of organising military-style operations against major urban centres in "infidel territory"." He cites the writings of theoretician of Jihad, Sheikh Abu-Bakr Naji in his book 'Edarat al-Wahsh' (Governance in the Wilderness).
The idea is to render places not under "proper Islamic rule" into wildernesses in which no one is safe. The "infidel" and the "impious Muslim", leaving their homes every morning, should be unsure whether they would return in the evening. Naji recommends kidnappings, the holding of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, exhibition beheadings, suicide bombings and countless gestures that make normal life impossible for the "infidel" and "impious Muslims".
Set against this as the ideal terror operation for today, the Mumbai event was almost text book.
So if we can still call it terror, what is the response? Therein lies the challenge. The nature of the attack, whether on September 11th 2001 in the USA, July 7th 2005 in London, or now 26th November 2008 in Mumbai, makes a whole-hearted condemnation of the action inescapable. Moreover a response is right - however it must be considered and measured, and avoid the irrationality that terror seeks to provoke. As an Indian friend said to me earlier, "India has the right and the responsibility to respond."
The problem lies in two things. First the nature of terrorism is that it is what is termed assymetrical warfare. The assymetry is expressed in all sorts of ways. The response cannot be one of terror, and as a consequence its impact is often merely symbolic; to get to the perpetrators seems more often to be luck rather than judgement, and many die who shouldn't have to, so-called collateral damage. And sadly in this case the action often alienates the people who you most desperately need on side, in this case by the incursion into Pakistan.
Perhaps more importantly the response, with its imprecise targeting, is exactly what the terrorists wanted to provoke. For it promotes their cause, radicalising some who were previously upset but not radicals or "terrorists".
The last thing one wants to do with a terrorist is to grant him or her the dignity of listening to them. But that is what we must do. We must allow them to tell us why they are so angry. And we must listen and engage with their story. And in this case two stories need to be told in particular.
Time on Thursday told of the lots of India's Muslim community: India's Muslims in Crisis.
And in the Guardian today, William Dalrymple notes that Mumbai atrocities highlight need for solution in Kashmir.
I will not seek to sum up either story. Each needs to be heard in its entirity. And ideally from the lips of those who bear the pain of exile, injustice, oppression. But so now does the pain of Indians whose lives were traumatised by the events of the last few days.
Therein lies the tragedy, that to use terror is to perpetrate the cycle of violence and evil. And at this point as a peacemaker I say, "give me a chance." Give me a chance to create a place that allows people to hear each other, and break the cycle.
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