India's response to Terror a bad role model for US

[Guest guest]

India is a bad role model for the US

In its hour of need, can the world's most powerful democracy benefit by

seeking advice from the world's largest democracy?

 

 

 

India is no stranger to the present day predicament faced by the USA -- the

1993 Mumbai blasts courtesy Tiger Memon and the 1998 Coimbatore blasts.

And of course, a blast a day, a death every minute situation prevails in Jammu

and Kashmir.

 

No less an institution than The New York Times declared that India has been

the target of terrorism on a scale unimaginable in the US, this week's events

notwithstanding.

 

Obviously, the US government has a lot to learn from the Government of India

in coming to terms with the tragedy. More importantly, it should strive not to

repeat the mistakes of the GoI in reacting to terrorist attacks, sending

inappropriate messages to a dazed citizenry looking for direction and

leadership from the government.

 

The US government is level headed enough to be able to name suspects, a

direct contrast to the GoI going to great lengths to avoid naming possible

culprits notwithstanding the existence of credible evidence. Indeed, the US

did the correct thing by publicly naming Osama bin Laden within a day of the

blast as the prime suspect.

 

In 1979, Iranian students affiliated to Ayatollah Khomeini took over the

American

embassy in Tehran and held staff members hostage. Outraged by the

references to 'students,' Jimmy Carter ordered that the kidnappers be

referred to as 'kidnappers' or 'terrorists' alone, a laudable act in stark

contrast to the behaviour of the Indian government which hemmed and hawed

about the role of Islamic terrorists in the Coimbatore carnage of early 1998.

 

The scum belonging to Al-Ummah (the terrorist group responsible for the

outrages) were referred to variously as the 'alleged miscreants' or

the 'perpetrators.' Terrified as the GoI is of rubbing the sizeable Muslim

minority, we should be surprised that it desisted from referring to the those

running Al-Ummah as the 'gentlemen who have been linked to unrest in Tamil

Nadu.'

 

Praise be to the American model. This is one instance where the GoI's

political correctness (verging on idiocy) is not worth emulating.

 

Secondly, the US should not fall prey to the very Indian phenomenon of making

a few emotional speeches post-incident and then forgetting all about it a mere

three months later.

 

The Coimbatore blasts were forgotten after the Kandahar hijacking in late 1999,

which in turn became history after the umpteenth bomb blast in Kashmir in

early 2000.

 

Outrages obviously should be remembered, and apologies should be

demanded. The government of South Korea is correct in holding onto its

demands for an apology from the government of North Korea for the attempted

assassination on then president Kim Dae Jung in the early 1980s in Yangon,

Myanmar just as the Israelis held the Germans culpable for the Nazi genocide

in the 1940s and extracted an apology from them.

 

Linked to this phenomenon is the distasteful Indian tendency in desisting from

the pursuit of criminals responsible for the most heinous of crimes and

actually surrendering them upon capture. The daughter of then home minister

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was kidnapped in 1989 and exchanged for a bunch of

hardcore militants, as was the case with hostages on the kidnapped Indian

Airlines flight flown to Kandahar in December 1999.

 

The Americans have always pursued wrongdoers with great zeal and

perseverance, as would be evident of the pursuit of Eyad Ismail who was

involved in the botched bombing of the WTC in 1993. Ismail escaped to Jordan

before the Americans caught up with him and brought him back to the US to

stand trial. Ismail was sentenced to 240 years of imprisonment in 1998 and

was also ordered to pay $ 240 million as compensation.

 

However, the perseverance required in capturing bin Laden et al would

require the skill of the Israeli Mossad. Among other feats, the Mossad

successfully unmasked and captured dreaded Nazi Adolf Eichmann from

Buenos Aires in 1960. It followed this feat by bombing Yasser Arafat's home in

the 1980s and has dealt many a blow to the very kinds of terrorists holding the

US to ransom presently.

 

The US should desist from the Indian practice of recognizing the grief of the

next of kin by summoning them into the presence of an obtuse minister who

launches into a long winded speech before presenting them with Rs 100,000.

An appropriate way to recognize the grief of the next of kin would be to erect

a memorial dedicated to 'they who perished in the senseless bombings of the

11th of September 2001.' It is important the future generations not forget the

tragedy whose scope and magnitude have been aptly compared to the 1941

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

Sustained rehabilitation programs, not cheque presenting photo-ops, allow the

grief stricken to come to terms with their plight.

 

However, there is one aspect in which the US has a lot to learn and replicate

from the GoI.

 

The GoI is extremely sensitive to attacking the sensibilities of any community

within or outside the country lest it provoke communal outrages. The GoI

learnt its lesson in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi and moved

rapidly to defuse any possible atrocities on the Tamil speaking community in

New Delhi in the aftermath of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Likewise, it seems to have learnt from the 1993 riots in Mumbai and moved

rapidly to prevent a repeat after the Coimbatore blasts of 1998.

 

The 1995 bombing of the Alfred P Murrah building in Oklahoma City, (ultimately

linked to Timothy McVeigh), was blamed on Palestinian terrorists and was

followed by calls for a counter jehad from Republicans galore. Senator John

McCain, a POW from the Vietnam days seems to be baying for the blood of

Palestinians with his pronouncements. And as the calls for revenge grow

louder, the rhetoric becomes shriller, Dubya will have to act in haste just in

order to lend legitimacy to himself.

 

And this invariably targets the wrong group, as in the case of Jimmy Carter

instigating a review into the immigration status of Iranian students as a result

of

his failing to get at the government of Iran in 1978. Such precipitate action

demonstrates no skill or ability to take swift action, it merely demonstrates

impotence.

 

Barring its legendary restraint, the Government of India has precious little to

offer to the US government despite its familiarity with the nature of the

tragedy

currently plaguing the US.