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The 13th anniversary of 9/11 on Thursday this year is characterized by a sense of deja vu. In September 2001, the enormity and audacity of the terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington were enveloped in a degree of surprise that left the US in a state of total shock and bewilderment.
At the time the US had no well-crafted national security policy or strategy to deal with a faceless non-state adversary and it took some time for the White House, led by then US president George Bush, to take stock and embark on a military offensive when it attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan – and ‘bombed it back to the Stone Age’. Progressively the US outlined its GWOT (global war on terror) strategy that targeted the Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, and the Abbotabad operation marked a kind of closure.
Thirteen years later, current White House incumbent Barack Obama was as stunned by the horrifying image of a US citizen being beheaded in late August by the Islamic State (also referred to as the ISIS – Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and his initial admission that the US had no strategy reflected the predicament of the White House. The first beheading was followed by a gruesome second one and the IS has now morphed into a challenge that is perceived to be even more dangerous than what the Al Qaeda had represented.
The collective sentiment in a war-weary US that had earlier applauded the Obama decision to bring the troops home from Afghanistan is now demanding a firm response, and President Obama outlined his strategy in a major speech on Wednesday night – a day before the 9/11 anniversary.
President Obama announced the authorization of air strikes in Syria in his speech. Ten Arab countries have backed the coalition to fight the Islamic State.
What does emerge is that after the shock of 9/11 and considerable loss of blood and treasure over the last 13 years – the US-led effort has been far from successful in quarantining the ideology that motivated the perpetrators who brought down the Twin Towers. Instead, the ill-advised war against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq sowed the seeds for a bitter sectarian divide which is now manifest as the IS that pursues the non-Sunni as legitimate targets for killing.
How successful the US-led effort will be in ‘degrading’ the IS – a commitment made by President Obama is moot. The appeal of the IS crosses many boundaries and continents and the British accent of the terrorist who beheaded the two American citizens has drawn attention to the many young UK citizens who are joining this virulent group. The fact that some young British girls of the Islamic faith who were training for medical and other professional courses have also voluntarily joined the IS to become suicide bombers is causing both dismay and deep anxiety to security officials in London.
How and why such hate-filled ideology is gaining more converts across the world is in many ways the complex dilemma for both state and civil society. The composite strategy that will be evolved to deal with and contain the software of the IS, the Al-Qaeda and its affiliates such the Lashkar-e-Taiba and other such groups will have to be region specific even if the initial motivation may have been the post 9/11 angst and fervour in many parts of the Islamic world.
The IS cannot be viewed as a threat only to the US, since two of its citizens were beheaded. The symbolism of the beheading and the manner in which the video was transmitted across the world has a sub text of Guantanamo Bay and the post 9/11 incarceration of many Muslim suspects. The personal challenge to President Obama is part of the visibility that the IS is seeking to market the supra-national caliphate that it has accorded unto itself.
To his credit, despite the most harsh criticism that has been levelled against Obama for his perceived lack of ‘spine’, he has not made any impulsive moves and this prudence is appropriate. The complex geopolitics from Syria to Iran and the tangle of West Asian politics and the deep Sunni-Shia divide fanned by the aftermath of the Arab Spring have only made the policy options that much more difficult for the White House.
For India, the run up to the 9/11 anniversary was punctuated by the Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri exhorting the ‘faithful’ to join the cause and his specific reference to India and Kashmir have been reported in detail. Suffice it to note that for India the challenge of radical jihadi ideologies and state sponsored terrorism precedes 9/11 by a good decade. The summer of 1990 and the post-Babri Masjid 1993 terror attack in Mumbai mark the beginning of a tragic experience that includes the ignominy of Kandahar (hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814) in December 1999, the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and the November 2008 terror attack on Mumbai.
And it merits recall that India also had no effective strategy against the Taliban when the world was ushering in the new millennium. The Indian government led by then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was forced to trade terrorists for its hijacked citizens. The US-led military action of October 2001 served an immediate Indian security interest at the time, though later events including the indulgence shown to Pakistan’s perfidy, continues to extract a heavy price.
Containing the malignant virus that the IS represents is a collective global responsibility for the group poses a challenge to the prevailing international system and the norms that underpin it – even if these have been breached on occasion by the major powers. In this situation it is instructive that Beijing and Moscow have been relatively muted in their responses to the IS – and it will be a poor reflection of the collective identity of a globalized world if countries respond only when their citizens are beheaded.
The tragic anniversary of 9/11 has many dimensions, perspectives and narratives to it. For India the two-decade old proxy war wherein internal and external security are now inextricably inter-woven and a virulent jihadi ideology is spreading in the extended neighbourhood will test the perspicacity of the Narendra Modi government.
By Special Arrangement with : South Asia Monitor (http://www.southasiamonitor.org)