Ultimate solution through dialogue

Young Bites. Dated: 9/19/2017 11:24:56 AM

India is convinced that terrorism can be rolled back only through “comprehensive, coordinated international cooperation combined with a strengthened, enforceable international legal regime. Several measures have been initiated to prevent the spread of extremist ideology, plug financing routes, build domestically a counter narrative to radicalisation, strengthen laws to prosecute terrorists and forge a network of international partnerships for threat assessment and operational cooperation. Global community needs to agree to a legal framework for diminishing and eventually defeating the scourge of terrorism. To be fair, the Narendra Modi Government has been working extremely hard on building infrastructure — from roads and power lines to schools and healthcare — in remote areas where Left-wing extremists operate. They have also been working with organisations to ensure tribal children are given opportunities in urban areas. Even though the previous Government put several poison pills in place to try and ensure the Modi Government stumbled, Modi and his Cabinet have worked extremely hard to ensure that benefits reach everyone. The attack in Sukma was extremely unfortunate, and from an enforcement point of view, the police forces in the area must go after the extremists hard and cut off the head of the snake by capturing the leadership. An Army is meant to be used against an external Army of an adversarial State and not against non-State insurgent and terrorist groups, except in exceptional circumstances where the police and the para-military forces are not able to deal with them. In the past, the Army had played an important role in maintaining internal security in India’s North-east. It even now plays an important role in J&K. However, its role is more as a counter-infiltration force to prevent the infiltration of terrorists and the smuggling of arms and ammunition from neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh and not as a counter-terrorism force, which role continues to be performed by the Police, with the assistance of the para-military forces. The counter-terrorist policy of weakening domestic terrorists provides for an ultimate solution through dialogue. That of neutralising foreign terrorists does not provide for a dialogue since they have no locus stand in India. It also holds that the responsibility for the prevention of the spread of terrorism is not that of the intelligence agencies and the police only. It is equally that of the political leadership and the civilian administration, who have to ensure that unnoticed pockets of anger do not arise and that unattended and unredressed grievances of a reasonable and negotiable nature do not build up resulting in resort to terrorism by the aggrieved. India adopts a comprehensive approach to terrorism, which makes a clear distinction between domestic and international terrorism and between indigenous and foreign terrorists and believes that counter-terrorism can be effective only if there is a multi-pronged approach based on a national consensus. Healthy, well-functioning democracy, good governance, a secular and liberal mind-set, which makes no distinction between the majority and the minority and treats both as equal in the eyes of the law and the political leadership, an administration, which has attentive eyes and ears for the grievances and feelings of the people and the required sensitivity to redress the reasonable grievances instead of letting them fester and a determination to deal firmly with those who take to terrorism, when their unreasonable grievances are not accepted, are essential pre-requisites for a successful counter-terrorism policy.

 

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