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| Terror Networks |
| An example of successfully dealing with terrorists |
| 2003-08-24 |
| The war on terror is now the lens through which America's foreign, and sometimes domestic, policy is seen. The debate rages on about the best way to tackle this. The ACLU accuses Ashcroft of trampling on our liberties, and Ashcroft accuses the ACLU of "weakening our resolve and aiding our enemies". Unfortunately, much of the debate is drowned by spin on both sides. Complicating the situation is the feeling that this is a completely new problem, and history doesn't seem to have anything to say about what course worked (or didn't work) in the past. I want to draw attention to one example of successfully squashing terrorists. Back in the eighties and nineties, there emerged a separatist movement in the state of Punjab in India. A radical faction of Sikhs wanted independence from India to establish their own Sikh state called Khalistan. Khalistan would be ruled according to the law laid down in Sikh scriptures. The Indian administration did not acquiesce to their demands and the separatists resorted to violent means to go about establishing their state. It was widely believed that they received covert support - training, arms, and ammunition - fro Pakistan. Their militancy grew until the entire prosperous state of Punjab was brought to its knees. The separatists didn't particularly care about their targets, and many of them were Sikhs themselves. It wasn't safe to travel through Punjab after dark anymore. One of the most common kinds of attacks (I remember seeing this on the news almost every other day) was when a few militants would stop a bus full of travelers and simply gun them down - all of them. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was probably the first to take a hard-line approach toward the problem. She appointed K.P.S. Gill the top cop in Punjab. He had a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense cop. To this day, he is seen as the one man who essentially single-handedly rooted out militancy from Punjab. At the time, there was a huge outcry against his no-mercy, hardline stance toward militants, about how he circumvented due process and violated the human rights of alleged terrorists. Thankfully, he had the sanction of Mrs. Gandhi herself, and was virtually untouchable - he continued doing his job as he saw fit. Things came to a head in 1984, when the top brass of the separatist movement, with the army hot on their heels, ran and hid in the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple, in Amritsar, the capital of Punjab, is Sikhism's holiest shrine. Mrs. Gandhi gave the go-ahead for Operation Blue Star, during which the Indian army sieged the Temple, and after a bitter fight with many casualties, rooted out the hiding militants. The operation had been described by various parties as a massacre by the army, and by others as a necessary, tough choice forced upon the army by the course the militants took. The militants had hoped that the untouchability of the shrine would protect them. They were wrong - the general who commanded the operation, and a good fraction of the soldiers who were part of it, were Sikhs. Perhaps those events can only be judged in hindsight, today. Today, Punjab is prosperous and peaceful. Nobody is scared of traveling at night. Most people now look back on militancy in Punjab as a bad nightmare, firmly in the past, and unlikely to repeat itself. The Punjab problem was localized to a particular region, and it was nowhere close to the scale of the assault mounted by today's terrorists. But there are clear parallels. There is also a lesson to be learned about how to deal with terrorists. |
| Posted by:Vivek |
| #6 One would also point out that PM. Ghandi paid with her life for her actions. Hardly the ultimate recommendation. |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-8-24 9:46:37 PM |
| #5 The Sikh problem is nothing like what we face today. The total Sikh population is in the tens of millions vs 1 billion Muslims. Sikhs are a generally peaceful people not given to nihilistic violence or forcible conversions of unbelievers. They did not have dozens of Sikh countries supporting their separatist campaign. Sikhs did not carry out mass killings against civilians in the way that Muslims have done - most of their attacks were against Indian officials and members of the Indian security establishment. Operationally, the Sikh movement was headquartered within India itself, which made their suppression relatively easy, from a logistical standpoint. Islamist terror is funded by private donations at Muslim mosques all over the world, as well as by surreptitious contributions from various Muslim donor countries, as well as Christian charities that provide aid on an ecumenical basis to Muslim charities. (Background: Sikh separatism is the result of British decisions where, instead of partitioning India across religious and ethnic lines, colonial administrators chose to bequeath Britain's South Asian empire to a Hindi-speaking elite. India and China are the last empires still in existence - the difference is that much of China was actually a unitary state for thousands of years, whereas India in its present form is essentially a British creation. One can understand the reasoning - with Iran to the west, Russia to the north and China to the east, only a unitary Indian state could avoid being nibbled away to death by the major regional powers. However, for the nationalists among the major ethnic groups in India, no amount of geostrategic reasoning will make up for the fact that their national aspirations were thwarted by the decisions of British colonial administrators. The self-rule achieved by nationalists in many of today's European countries never became a reality for India's many nationalities. And the thwarting of this dream is why some of them continue to fight the Indian government even to this day. * Which is how the British found the region - a mishmash of nations that they incorporated into a single administrative entity) |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-8-24 1:02:22 PM |
| #4 http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn24.html |
| Posted by: Matt 2003-8-24 1:02:17 PM |
| #3 Re: Pershing & Gill... I always though they were just being cute, but mebbe this is what the wymyns mean when they turn the old saying on its head: "A hard man is good to find!" 8^) |
| Posted by: .com 2003-8-24 11:29:54 AM |
| #2 When General Black Jack Pershing was stationed in the Phillipines his troops were being attacked by Islamic Moro tribesmen.After capturing 6 of these Moro's,he tied them to steaks,dug a pit in front of them.He then slaughtered a couple of pigs as the blood pooled in the bottom of the pit Pershing had members of a Firing Squad dip thier bullets in the pigs blood.After executeing the Islamists he threw the bodies in the pit,threw the pig carcass'on top of the bodies and buried them.There were no more attacks for 30-40 years. Think ole'Black Jack may have been on to something? |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-8-24 8:56:06 AM |
| #1 Hunt them down and kill them,no mercy.Sounds reasonable to me. |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-8-24 7:26:41 AM |