The jihad in “God’s Own Country”, Kerala

The jihad in “God’s Own Country”

March 9, 2008, Praveen Swami

Islamist groups are gaining both followers and influence in Kerala

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Within Kerala, politics has contributed to the empowerment of Islamists

Islamist groups able to market religious message as an answer to problems of young people

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: One morning 17 years ago, C.A.M. Basheer walked into work at Mumbai’s international airport and handed in his resignation.

Since then, he has become one of India’s most-wanted terrorists: a key figure the Islamist terror networks that have, since 2003, struck cities across southern India. Basheer’s story raises a critical question: why residents of States with no history of large-scale communal pogroms, like Kerala and Karnataka, are contributing cadre to Islamist terror groups.

Born into a middle-class family from Aluva, Basheer was an improbable Islamist. After finishing his studies at the Aeronautical Engineering College in Chalakudy, he joined a flight training institute in Bangalore. He then moved to Mumbai, and encountered the movement that would transform his life: the Students Islamic Movement of India.

In 1990, angered by the religious discrimination he encountered in Mumbai, Basheer joined SIMI full-time. A year later, he helped organise one of its largest-ever rallies, at the Bandra Reclamation grounds in Mumbai, where more than 10,000 supporters gathered. And after the demolition of the Babri Masjid 1992, Basheer joined the ranks of SIMI radicals calling for violence

After SIMI was proscribed in 2001, Basheer played a critical role in ensuring funding for the terror cells it had began to spawn, drawing on connections in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Cash channelled to an old SIMI comrade-in-arms, Saqib Nachan, is thought to have paid for the 2003 serial bombings in Mumbai.

“God’s Own Country,” as Kerala’s tourism advertisements call it, hasn’t seen a terrorist strike — an exception among the major southern States. But Islamist groups are gaining both followers and influence. Last year, the State government said SIMI now operates through twelve front organisations, mainly in the districts of Malappuram and Kondotty.

Most of these front organisations aren’t directly linked to SIMI. Groups like the Tahreeek Tahaffuz-e-Sha’aire Islam [Movement for the Protection of Islamic Symbols and Monuments], the Muslim Youth Forum or the Karuna Foundation do however help propagate chauvinist Salafi-sect ideologues who advocate violence, and provide a forum for SIMI talent-scouts.

Over the years, SIMI has had not a little success in funnelling recruits to terrorist groups, notably the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Kamakutty, a computer engineer-turned terrorist held in Bangalore last month, is known to have worked closely with Lashkar commander Muhammad Faisal Khan, a key organiser of bombings in Mumbai during 2002-2003.

Hard questions

How does one account for the growth of Islamist terror networks in Kerala? One important point is that most of SIMI’s key leaders in Kerala worked or studied elsewhere — thus encountering communal discrimination of an intensity unknown in the State itself. Highly educated, their access to the internet enables them to link local grievances to the larger, global jihadist movement.

Within Kerala itself, politics has contributed to the empowerment of Islamists. In recent years, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s traditional control of Muslim votes in north Kerala has weakened, as the Left has taken control of the region. Religious neo-conservatism has been seen by some Jamaat-e-Islami ground-level leaders as a means of fighting the secular tide.

Islamist groups have been able to market their religious message as an answer to the problems of young people, like drugs and alcoholism. Parents often welcome their operations, believing their wards’ religious interests keep them safe from modern vices. Elements of Kerala’s West Asia-based Muslim diaspora have often unwittingly funded these enterprises.

In the imagination of Kerala Islamists, SIMI-linked terrorists are inheritors of an unbroken line of Islamist resistance dating back to struggles against Portuguese imperialism. Recruits are told of Zayn-ad-Din, a Malabar coast resident who in his 1580 book, Tuhfat al-Mujahideen, called on “the Faithful to undertake a jihad against the worshippers of the Cross.”

Kerala jihadists, with their close link to the worldwide Salafi-jihadi movement, claim their struggle forms part of the same tradition. Kerala’s government is alive to the threat. Last year, clashes between Islamists and Hindu fundamentalists in Malappuram led police to make several hundred arrests. But the resilience of SIMI’s networks shows no quick-fix solution exists to the growing problem.

Correction

A sentence in “The jihad in ‘God’s Own Country’” (March 9, 2008) was “… Last year, the State government said [the Students Islamic Movement of India] SIMI now operates through twelve front organisations, mainly in the districts of Malappuram and Kondotty.” Kondotty is not a district, but a town in the Malappuram district of Kerala.

All you want to know about terrorism in India

All you want to know about terrorism in India
Dr Anil A Athale,  June 11, 2008
After the Jaipur terror attacks on May 13, we saw the routine that happens after every attack. There were VIP visits, compensation announced to the victims, politicians spoke of ‘zero tolerance’, television channels held the usual debates, the police announced imminent breakthroughs. Soon everything is forgotten, till the next terror attack. At which time, I am sure the same sequence will be repeated.
I have been a student of insurgency and terrorism for 24 years. At social gatherings when asked what I do for a living, my answer invariably provokes a flurry of questions, much to the annoyance of my better half (who glares and hints that I should stop holding forth on my pet topic and not ‘spoil’ the party). Here is my attempt to answer some of those frequently asked questions.

Why are attacks by Islamic groups called Islamist terrorism? Other terror groups like the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) or the IRA (Irish Republican Army) have Hindus or Christians but are not called Hindu or Christian terrorists?

It is undoubtedly true that there are other terrorists as well, for instance the Naxalites or Maoists. The reason why the adjective ‘Islamists’ is used is that no other terror group invokes religious sanction or quotes religious texts to justify their acts. In fact, the Tamil Tigers has Hindus as well as Christians (their spokesperson for many years was Anton Balasingham, a Christian). Neither has the IRA nor Tamil Tigers ever quoted any religious scriptures to justify their actions, the Islamists have and continue to do so. The link between religious places and schools to these acts, is also well established.

Finally, the Islamist terrorists themselves have time and again openly admitted the religious nature of their ultimate goal — Islamisation. It would be dishonest if this reality is ignored.

What about State terrorism?

It is true that the State also uses force to deal with revolts and violence and against criminals. But in a democracy with a judiciary and rule of law, the use of force by the State is accountable and has to be within the bounds of law. At times individuals do transgress those limits, but those are aberrations. Use of force by a State to enforce law cannot be equated with State terrorism, unless that State has a policy of genocide or is dictatorial like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Unfortunately social activists and champions of human rights forget that it is the legitimate function of the State to use force. If the State abdicates this responsibility then we are inviting anarchy and in words of Hobbes, a 16th century English philosopher, a situation of war of every one against every one and human life ‘nasty, brutish and short.’

You are biased, what about the terrorism of the Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal etc?

These are indeed organisations that believe in violent means and must be dealt under the law. But at worst, these are extremists and militants, like militant trade unions for example. The shallow coverage by the media has created the confusion about definition of terrorism and who is a terrorist. There is tendency to lump together terms like militants, insurgents, extremists, fundamentalists and terrorists.

While all the variety of people fighting for some cause or other may at times indulge in terrorism, a terrorist is one whose primary aim is to cause maximum destruction. In that sense strictly speaking, when a Kashmiri extremist attacks a soldier, it is wrong to call it a terrorist attack, it is part of an insurgency. We must be clear about this difference.

A terrorist is an individual who carries out a terrorist act. A terrorist act is one in which totally unconnected persons are targeted and killed. Terrorism is random violence that makes no distinction between people and promotes fear. It is no accident that in the Jaipur attack as well as elsewhere, many Muslims lost their lives.

It is a fallacy to claim that everything is fair in love and war. Even in war there are written and unwritten rules. The terrorists do not follow them. For instance in war, civilians are not deliberately targeted (they still die as collateral damage) while terrorists, for instance in Beslan in Russia [Images] chose a school or local trains in Mumbai.

While there are groups and organisations that are militant, fundamentalist and violence prone, they have not yet graduated to earn the ‘terrorist’ tag. If the State fails to curb minority terrorism then the majority may well begin to have its own terrorist organisations.

If we use violence against terrorists then are we not betraying our Gandhian legacy?

Gandhian methods of non-violent struggle were successful against the British colonialists. But the British were a civilised people. British liberals like Edmund Burke were in favour of Indian independence as early as in 1773 (Burke’s speeches in the British parliament on the Regulating Act). To assume universality of success of these methods for all times to come is false.

Did the non-violent Jews survive Hitler? Closer home, in Gandhi’s lifetime itself, in October 1947, it was force that saved the Kashmir valley from Pakistani-backed raiders. Even more telling, the same non-violent movement in the Portuguese colony of Goa [Images], failed in 1956-1957. Goa was liberated by force in 1961.

An oft quoted Gandhian phrase is that if all were to follow an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, then the world would go blind. The counter to that is that if only some follow this and others don’t then it is the non-violent who would go blind while the rogues will rule the world.

Part II: How India can win the war on terror

Colonel Dr Anil Athale (retd) is former joint director, war studies, ministry of defence, and co-ordinator of the Pune-based Initiative for Peace and Disarmament

India surrounded by failed states

“..apart from Sri Lanka, every one of India’s neighbours is a failed or failing state. Bangladesh is in a critical state at 17th place, while Pakistan is at 34th along with Nepal at 35th while Myanmar and Bhutan are at 23rd and 26th places, respectively, with Afghanistan in the dangerous category at 11th place. “

19 Aug 2005

India surrounded by ‘failed states’

NEW DELHI: Wednesday’s terror attacks in Bangladesh only reinforce one fact: India is ringed with failed states.

A recent study by Foreign Policy, journal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Fund for Peace ranked 60 states in the world that are in danger of going over the edge — apart from Sri Lanka, every one of India’s neighbours is a failed or failing state. Bangladesh is in a critical state at 17th place, while Pakistan is at 34th along with Nepal at 35th while Myanmar and Bhutan are at 23rd and 26th places, respectively, with Afghanistan in the dangerous category at 11th place.

The failed states index ranks countries on 12 economic, social and political parameters and includes demographic pressures, refugees and displaced persons, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline delegitimisation of state, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalised elites and external intervention.

Pakistan is failing on economic, political and military parameters, while Bangladesh remains well in danger levels on numerous criteria. The worry, the study says, is not about states amassing power, it’s the absence of it.

The study argues that the danger of failing or failed states is now at the centre of global politics. US’ National Security Strategy of 2002 clearly laid down where the US’ threats lay: “America is threatened less by conquering states than failing ones.”The same assessment works for India, except its reticent assessments tend to gloss over the threats that these failing states present to India’s economy and security.

Failed states export many unsavoury things, including international terrorists, large-scale immigrants, drugs, weapons, etc. In South Asia, you can see varying scenarios of this problem: a Nepal “sliding into chaos”sends in large numbers of migrants into India, fleeing either the Maoists or the state, creating economic and social pressures in India’s border states. Bangladesh sinking into Islamic fundamentalism will create the inevitable pressures in India’s fragile north-eastern states.

Instability, the study says, has many faces, while internal conflict can take virulent forms as in countries like Somalia and Ivory Coast or Afghanistan where fighting drugs, terrorism and external intervention make a deadly cocktail.

In fact, it is only episodes like the blasts in Bangladesh or LTTE’s killing of Sri Lankan minister last weekend which puts the spotlight on countries like Bangladesh, otherwise the slide into instability in countries like Saudi Arabia (45), Egypt (38) and even Russia (59) are rarely documented.