Farooq Ganderbali
The multiple terrorist attacks on Paris on November 13 was one of the most serious terrorist attacks since the one on Mumbai in November 2008. The similarity is not only in the month of its occurrence and the number of casualty but also more importantly in the modus operandi and the impact it has on France and the world in general. This is not the first Mumbai clone attack since November 2008. There have been several, some in Pakistan from where the Mumbai attack was launched. The possibility of similar attacks happening elsewhere in Europe and other parts of the world cannot be discounted.
Although the global terrorist group, Islamic State (IS), has claimed responsibility for the attack, it does not require rocket science to realise that the handful of terrorists and their handlers who masterminded the Paris attack was greatly influenced by the Mumbai attacks. This raises two disturbing questions—one that the international community, especially the US, had the knowledge and wherewithal to prevent the Mumbai attacks but it did not and second that if Pakistan was censured, and LeT and other groups punished severely for the attacks, it would have acted as a disincentive for other groups to follow the same path.
It is a fact that the international community did not punish Pakistan and its various agencies for the attack. Instead, Pakistan was hailed as a strategic ally in the “war against terror“ and beefed up with funds and arms. Nothing would have been more unjust and wrong as this criminal indulgence of a state sponsoring terror.
It is not an afterthought or a wishful thinking that if terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and al Qaeda were dismantled, as the US promised in September 2001, there would have been no Paris or Mumbai or Madrid or Bali attacks. It is now public knowledge that both the groups, and many more, had the patronage and protection of Pakistan. Despite al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden discovered living quite safely and well in a military garrison town in Pakistan, the US did not impose any sanctions on the country which hosted its most wanted enemy since 2001. Neither was there any action against LeT despite mounting evidence of the expansion of its terror capabilities.
If timely actions were taken against Pakistan and its terror proxies, it can be said with certainty that there would have been no Mumbai attacks and there would have been no Indian Mujahideen, a terror outfit created by Pakistan to target India. Similarly, if the world had leaned on Pakistan for hosting Dawood Ibrahim, the crime syndicate don who funded and masterminded one of the most dastardly attack on India in 1993 that killed more than Paris attacks, there would have been less of terrorists for us to worry about.
The Paris attack, and similar other attacks in the recent past in different parts of the world, tell us that you cannot adopt a duplicitous approach to terrorism; you need a unified stand and strategy. It is all very well to say at global fora, as many leaders are saying post-Paris, that the world must unite against terrorist groups like Islamic State. The real war against terrorism will begin only when the international community stop making distinctions between terrorist groups and terrorist sponsors. The US and other western countries were quick to sanction Iran for supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East but no action was taken against Pakistan for doing the same. Saudi Arabia whose role in 9/11 remains a controversial issue has also remained untouched.
Even today, Saudi Arabia leads a coalition of nations against the Islamic State but it also accommodates several extremist and terrorist groups in different parts of the world, including Pakistan by donating generous amount of money in the name of religious charity. In fact, the coalition partners include countries like the US, UK, Israel and even France. The same coalition also to dismantle the regime of Syrian President Bashr al Assad had created a cocktail of terrorist and extremist groups under the umbrella of Free Syrian Army.
The same coalition also let al Qaeda re-emerge with renewed vigour in the Middle East. The group had lost its legitimacy and strength in the region after the systematic military campaign launched by the US after the September 2001 attacks. This time around, the enemy became a useful tool to intimidate another `enemy` Assad except that the latter remained a hard nut to crack despite the coalition throwing everything at him and his troops for several years now. In the process, the coalition and other neighbouring countries helped prop up IS and al Qaeda which, some thought, quite foolishly, that would fight among themselves and neutralise each other. But they have not done so far and are not likely to do so. Both groups seem to have reached an understanding and seem to have worked out an operational strategy not to get into each other’s hair. This seems to be working well. In any case, al Qaeda, despite the messaging done by its weak leadership, is an emaciated self of its earlier prowess.
One lesson that the world needs to draw from the dastardly Paris attacks is that all terrorists are the same and they have to be dealt with the same hand. Likewise, the state sponsoring terrorist groups have to be dealt with equally strong. Or else, there would be no end to the attack of these groups, be it LeT or IS or al Qaeda, in different parts of the world.
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