the 'neglect' of Asian 'terrorism'

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

< http://www.satp.org/faultlines/Faultlines9/Article5.htm >

[snip]
Of the several specialised journals focusing on terrorism and low
intensity warfare published in English, there had only been an
occasional paper that referred to or focused on terrorism in India
during this period. Relatively minor movements in Africa and the
Middle East received far greater attention, and, of course, any
terrorist movement or action that had an impact on Europe or the
United States receives overwhelming attention.

The situation has changed radically over the past two years, and a
substantial volume of literature on conflict in this region has
subsequently burgeoned, particularly after India and Pakistan were
imprinted on Western consciousness, by the Pokhran and Chagai blasts
in 1998, as the new theatres of a possible nuclear confrontation. The
trend intensified even further after the US State Department declared
in 2000 - with little startling or new evidence - that there had been
a "geographical shift of the locus of terror from the Middle East to
South Asia."3 On May 1, 2000, the then Secretary of State, Madeline
Albright had also noted a sudden "eastward shift in terrorism's center
of gravity" towards South Asia. It is unsurprising, consequently, that
this idea of a 'geographical shift' is now being increasingly and
vigorously propounded, identifying Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir
as the new loci and primary sources of extremist Islamic militancy.
There are, however, some difficulties with this notion. The first and
more obvious is the fact that there is no evidence of any sudden or
abrupt 'shift', or a radical discontinuity in the situation at or
around the time this thesis was propounded - Afghanistan's spiral into
chaos has been an inexorable fact for over a decade, as has Pakistan's
complicity in the activities of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist
groups, and the steady decline of its polity; even a cursory glance at
fatalities in Kashmir would confirm, moreover, that terrorism has been
at comparable levels in this theatre for over a decade.4

To those familiar with the course of terrorist movements in the
region, there was no radical discontinuity between the situation at
any time in 1999-2000, and it is interesting to see how an arbitrary
shift in American perceptions (or perhaps the US agenda) has dramatic
reverberations throughout the intellectual community across the world.

The surfeit of literature on 'Islam as a threat' that currently
abounds in Western academia - characteristically dominated by the
American paradigm - misses a crucial point. It is hazardous to focus
inordinately on the transient geographical location or concentrations
of terrorist activity, to the exclusion of its ideological moorings
and state sponsors, or their intended targets and proclaimed goals.
The error here is the belief that the threat of Islamic terrorism is
contained within the regions of its most visible manifestation. But
extremist Islam must be recognized for its essential character as an
ideology and terrorism as a method that it accepts and justifies. A
method will be adopted wherever it is perceived to have acceptable
probabilities of success. An ideology extends wherever it has
believers. These are the actual limits or 'foci' of extremist Islamic
terrorism.

The upswing in scholarship on the 'Islamic threat' needs to be
assessed within the context of the influence of the American research
paradigm on security studies across the world. It is a shift in
geographical loci of perceived US 'strategic interests' that has
substantially created the impetus for much of this research. Within
the context of a fundamentally altered international polity, the
unipolar 'New World Order', this is an expected development. However,
South Asia, and indeed India, are presently uniquely placed, and would
need to challenge such exclusive and dominating frames of reference. A
plurality of approaches towards terrorism and internal conflict,
dictated by hard data on the ground situation, and not by an
externally imposed 'dominant paradigm', is necessary to produce a
valid, efficacious and practical understanding of the complex threat
in this region. The totalizing Western framework needs to be
questioned, and research priorities must increasingly be focused on
the study of the actual theatres of conflict.
[snip]