The recent London terror attack on the Westminster Bridge in the vicinity of the British Parliament by a standalone terrorist, Khalid Masood, a former English teacher at the Saudi Embassy, clearly shows potency of the modern terrorist variants.
The attack killed five persons and injured several pedestrians, including visiting French schoolchildren. Largely premised on conducting ‘surprise strikes’ in the heart of major world cities where the targets are mostly innocent civilians, similar strikes were witnessed in 2016 as well in Belgium, France and Turkey.
The gruesome attack on the Atatürk Airport, Istanbul, on June 28, 2016, killed over 40 persons and injured over 240, mainly Turkish nationals. In its coverage, TIME magazine writing on the Istanbul attack had quoted Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim saying, “The evidence points to Daesh”, that is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (IS).
The latent danger for the world today lies embodied in the reality that IS as an operating module has largely shadowy contours as a terrorist organisation, besides a non-distinct leadership hierarchy.
The group, to use a Mao Zedong quote, operates much like a “black cat in a dark room” in the world of today, whereby many minor or major episodes of terrorism tend to get attributed to IS even without a thorough preliminary investigation.
The IS appears to be wrapped in layers of mysteries. Who are the real financiers of this world-wide group with such high potency in its ranks and a strategic capacity to strike at will? Who sets the IS agenda for action and where were its ‘failsafe’ cadres so professionally trained to secure such high success rates in their intended operations, as witnessed recently in Europe and elsewhere?
The fact that the US-led coalition strikes in Iraq and Syria looking for IS capacities and cadres killed over 300 civilians substantiates the utter lack of intelligence about this shadowy group. They mean business in their sudden yet concerted, well-chosen attacks on cities sporting a cultural leaning towards cosmopolitanism.
Yildirim’s accusatory finger at the IS for the Istanbul airport attack has a degree of relevance arising out of Turkey’s geo-political positioning over Iraq and Syria. But Indian authorities should hold sufficient evidence about the IS involvement in the coffers of their charge-sheets before doing or committing so.
Notably, the UN Resolution 1535, which had established the Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) in March 2004, should also concentrate on such ground issues to sound more real and genuine in pursuit of global terror by setting new templates for terror investigations.
Mere broadsheets of intent by the CTED would otherwise have little or no impact on the efforts of member-states in countering terror more systematically than they had been doing till now. By now, the CTED should ideally have collated the results of recent attacks to bolster or question the IS involvement.
At least some light could have been thrown on the IS “terror interconnections and terror financing modules” in Europe and beyond. Once financing modules get known, the insidious IS hierarchy could be exposed to the world for a reality check which could possibly help countries such as India, a known victim of cross-border terror.
The UN Charter of June 1945 mandates that in order “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” nations must “practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours”.
Ideally, cross-border terrorism should be deemed as an international crime of serious proportions, and by now there ought to have been UN provisions to “name UN member-states for aiding, facilitating or abetting terrorism” against neighbours or even non-neighbours. This would have acted as a deterrent to possible acts of crime by the UN members.
In fact, the UN governance style needs to be moderated in doses for an eventual overhaul of sorts for arresting global terror and attaining peace in the world. The progress over Resolution 1566, passed in October 2004, to get a principled definition of ‘terrorism’ acceptable to all has been abysmally slow to the point of virtually countermanding that critical resolution itself.
Even the UN’s apex body, UNSC Permanent Five (P5), had been lackadaisical in dealing with the scourge of terrorism. Accordingly, P5 has seemingly assumed a role of mostly being a “fiefdom of mere privilege” to protect the interests of their own and allies rather than consciously taking action against terrorism.
When a proposal to name a Pakistani fount head called Masood Azhar as a UN-designated terrorist was moved twice by India and supported by 14 Members of the UN Security Council, including Saudi Arabia, China as P5 Member exercised its unitary negating veto, in the process actually controverting powers of the UN universe itself.
Is the UN empowered at all to deal effectively against the curse called terrorism, remains therefore, a menacing question. mdmenonconsulting@gmail.com