No root causes of terrorism

Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri’s glib connection of the bombings in Mumbai last week with the ‘cause of Kashmiri self-determination’ has, rightly, come in for criticism by India. To thus contextualise, even tacitly condone, what was essentially an act of naked terror, displays a perverse mindset that gives an indication of what the Pakistani establishment thinks.

But they are not alone in coming to this conclusion. A fair amount of commentary in the western media has centred round this thesis. An editorial — an excerpt is published alongside here — in the latest issue of The Economist is a good example of this kind of thinking. The tone of some other articles has been on the same lines: make peace over Kashmir and all these troubles will subside.

Several countries in the world have bought the Pakistani propaganda that Kashmir is an unfinished business and that India’s claim on the state is tenuous. Indeed, even Pakistan’s drumbeating about self-determination has been swallowed hook, line and sinker, with hardly any one asking the self-evident question about a non-democracy declaiming the virtues of democratic rule.

Even so, linking talks on Kashmir with these bombings strains credulity. By this token, the terrorist act that took place on 9/11 when two planes flew directly into the World Trade Centre, can be traced back to America’s Middle-East policies. Ditto with the train bombings in Madrid and London, which could have been because of the support both countries gave to the US campaign in Iraq. To carry this analogy further, India would be well within its rights to foment terror in Pakistan because the latter controls a part of Kashmir that India claims to be its own.

This of course is unacceptable. The ‘root causes’ theory of terrorism suggests that it happens because of deprivation of national and civic rights and the way to end such terrorism is to redress these grievances. This is a facile argument at best. The violence perpetrated by anyone, whatever the cause, against innocent men, women and children can never be justified.

What happened in Mumbai last week was in the same sequence as what occurred in Bali, Madrid and London. The international community must realise that this is by no means the last of similar terror attacks. Invoking Kashmir will only encourage the very forces we should all be joining hands to crush.