Terrorists re motivated for reasons, which are not ‘normal’ like financial rewards, luxuries or increments.But professional give a new dimension to terrorism.
The face of terrorism is changing, but its underpinnings have remained the same. It is like cosmetic surgery, where the nose, ears and eyes become different; but the character of the person remains the same.
The motives and forces promoting terrorism are the same, while the people who are carrying out terrorist attacks are increasingly turning out to be professionals like doctors and engineers. It is a worrying factor, but that only proves that poverty is not the root cause of terrorism, as several experts and political leaders keep repeating.
The truth is that neither does prosperity necessarily remove terrorism. If poverty and unemployment were the main causes then terrorism should have occurred in the poorer parts of India like North Bihar first before it hit Punjab, the most prosperous state in India or in Jammu and Kashmir with a poverty ratio of only 3.5 against the national average of 26 per cent.
Terrorists were loners then as they are now. They are motivated for reasons which are not ‘normal’ like financial rewards, luxuries or increments. One should not differentiate between terrorists who are qualified professionals, and terrorists who are uneducated. For instance, the suspected attackers of IISc in Bangalore were qualified electrical engineers.
But the involvement of professionals in terror operations provides a far tougher challenge to the security establishment. Doctors and engineers are trained minds, people who are primed to take strategic decisions and would be very potent in their plans and theories.
Like the world economy, terrorism is also global and out-sources its operations to the developing world. One has to keep that context in mind, when a Bangalore or Hyderabad is portrayed as the new terror recruiting ground.
But there is another side to the terrorism story. Since emerging services economy cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad contribute in a big way to the country’s economy and are the face of India to the outside, they also become the prime targets of the global terrorism network.
It is also time for the policy makers not to make any distinction between Lashkar- e - Toiba, Jaish- e-Mohhamed, Harkat- ul-Mujaheedin and other Al Qaeda outfits. Most of the Islamic terror outfits today are part of the larger Al Qaeda umbrella and there should inter-governmental cooperation to combat this hydra-headed menace.
The writer is a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence agency.
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