Earlier
this month, Radio Free Asia revealed that nearly 80 people were killed
by Uighur separatists in a September attack in a coalmine in the
Xinjiang province of China.Beijing has yet to officially acknowledge the attack, which was carried out by terrorists armed with knives.
There
have been similar attacks linked to Uighurs in recent years. On June
18, people had died in a similar attack with knives and bombs at a
traffic checkpoint in the city of Kashgar. In March 2014, an attack at the railway station of Kunming left 29 people and 4 attackers dead.
Knife attacks
In recent months, the trend has manifested itself in similar Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Given
the strict policing, in China and Israel, the Uighurs and Palestinians
have no access to either bomb-making material or guns, and so the use of
primitive weapons like knives has become the weapon of choice.
The
knife may be primitive, but it is deadly. However, its use does require
a certain nerve, physical strength and training on the part of the
attacker. In comparison, a suicide bomber merely has to approach the
target and pull a trigger to cause mayhem.
There
have been instances of suicide squads and attacks through history in
almost all cultures in the military sphere. But something as primal as a
knife has emerged as a new terrorist tactic which has rapidly spread in
today’s wired world, just as suicide bombing did in the 1980s.
It became a tactic of choice in Lebanon, compelling the US to pull out from Lebanon. In
a parallel, the LTTE perfected the cult of suicide as it became
prominent in the Sri Lankan civil war. Among the prominent targets of
the LTTE were former prime minister of India Rajiv Gandhi and a slew of
top Sri Lankan politicians, including president R Premadasa.
The
key role in suicide attacks is played by motivators - mainly seasoned
political operatives and in the case of Muslims, mullahs who use
precepts of Islam to persuade young and impressionable people to go
through the horror of a suicide attack. They create an ethos where the attacker is hailed as a martyr and his/her family is raised in status among its peers.
Acts of terror
Attacks
on non-combatants, regardless of motive, are acts of terrorism and
deserve the highest condemnation. But attacks that target troops and
police personnel of countries who are involved in military operations in
the attackers’ country or region are different.
There
is a species of analysis which argues that there can be no ‘root cause’
of terrorism. Regardless of what a perpetrator does, retaliation using
terrorist tactics is condemnable.
This
does not quite work in the real world, where unresolved grievances are
often the template on which terrorist attacks are built. As a first step
towards countering terrorism, an effort must be made to understand this
and tackle grievances relating to political and human rights in places
like Xinjiang, Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka
and Kashmir.
In
many cases, the issue is related to fears of a minority community that
it will be swamped by the majority. Beliefs, often in
economically-backward regions, that modernisation itself is an
existential threat, cannot be tackled through military campaigns.
What
the knifing campaign brings out is that harsh counter-terrorist tactics
and total and intrusive surveillance cannot by themselves put an end to
terrorist attacks.
Israel’s
dilemma is the most manifest on this score. Relentless ferocity against
Palestinian violence has not brought Israel the peace it has been
looking for and is unlikely to do so.
In
contrast, look at India. Some Muslims have a sense of deep grievance
against the state on account of communal violence, in Jammu &
Kashmir, many are motivated by separatism. Yet, India has not seen the
kind of suicide bombing and desperate knife attacks that have motivated
Muslim radicals elsewhere.
Terrorist
violence that has rocked the country has often been motivated, directed
and perpetrated by Pakistan. In any case, it peaked in 2008 and for the
present it is at a low ebb, whether in Jammu & Kashmir, or
elsewhere.
Alienation
The
reason is that Indian Muslims have a strong sense of Indian identity.
In both their grievances and aspirations they think like their fellow
Indian citizens, rather through any religious or sectarian prism.
That
critical point of alienation which separates them from the mainstream
and persuades them to wield a knife or a bomb has not been reached. At
least, not as of now.
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