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Raj Chengappa

21 UP
A Tonic Against Terror

In the armada of cold war phrases, the word 'strategic' in diplomacy was mainly used to refer to nuclear concerns. Occasionally for economic interests such as energy. But in the new millennium, with the iron curtain all but vanishing, it has taken on a completely different hue. So last week, when President Vladimir Putin came visiting, while the nuclear issue was discussed in a muted fashion, the real convergence on the 'strategic partnership' was in combating terrorism, especially the kind of Islamic fundamentalism that Taliban is exporting. It was most unusual to find Putin in his address to the joint session of Indian Parliament sharing information produced by Russian intelligence agencies that identified the fountainhead of terrorism from Kashmir to Chechnya as the Taliban. Given his KGB past, everyone took him seriously on the subject. At the end of the visit, among the major agreements that India signed with Russia was one to jointly counter international terrorism, a euphemism for Islamic fundamentalism.

Just a week before, the US top honcho on counter-terrorism, Michael Sheehan, was in Delhi to attend a meeting of the Indo-US joint working group on precisely this subject. Though it was the second such occasion, the US had already opened an office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation so that the process of intelligence sharing and pooling could be smoother. Sheehan's recent report to the US Congress pointed out that the centre of gravity of international terrorism had now moved to South Asia and much of it was in Afghanistan. Though the US concedes that the Taliban has made some effort to reduce tension between them, it hasn't really had too much effect on the ground. The Afghan rulers continue to frustrate the UN Security Council's resolve to put an end to such terrorism. And they are yet to hand over Osama Bin Laden, now the world's most wanted terrorist.

Significantly, during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's official visit to the US last month, the joint working group's ambit was expanded to include narco-terrorism. That's because the link between opium sales and funding of terrorism has grown to mammoth proportions. Much of the money now comes from drug trafficking with some amount from extortion and the rest from rich supporters. In recent times, not only has the spectre of hostages being held in embassies come back to haunt the US, but also the world is being threatened by the new weapons of choice: RDX for explosions and AK-47s to gun down targets. Though there was a crude attempt to employ weapons of mass destruction such as the chemical gas used by Japanese terrorists, none of the groups fortunately has got its hands on nuclear material so far. But with so many loose nukes around after the break-up of the Soviet Union, one is never too sure when that will happen.

The meeting of the defence ministers of the so-called Shanghai Five (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgysztan and Tajikstan) at Astana, the Kazhak capital, was equally important. Each facing varying degrees of threat from Islamic revivalism, the member nations called the meeting essentially to discuss joint schemes on stemming the flow of arms and narcotics to the Mujahideen from various countries in the region. With other nations such as Israel, the UK and Canada joining hands to combat terrorism as well, it appears that the world is making a determined effort to root out a rapidly growing menace.

For India, all this is good news because it can fight some of its battles from over other shoulders. Apart from that, it is clear that without international co-operation, there is no way that the steady flow of foreign mercenaries into Kashmir can be checked.

(Raj Chengappa is Deputy Editor, INDIA TODAY and author of Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India's Quest to be a Nuclear Power.) He is based in Delhi. Write to Raj Chengappa.)

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