Terrorism and pseudo-terrorism senselessly fill the media and clutter our minds, bemoans Gamal Nkrumah Twenty-two year-old Mohamed Ajmal Amir Qassab, the sole surviving gunman in the 26 November 2008 bombings in the Indian metropolis of Mumbai that claimed the lives of 174 people, was this week pronounced guilty by an Indian court. The announcement curiously coincided with the revelation that the United States arrested Faisal Shahzad, accused in the failed Times Square bombing in New York, as he was about to board a plane at John F Kennedy International Airport destined for Dubai. Both Shahzad and Qassab, of course, happen to be Pakistani nationals. Some pundits openly blame Western politicians' pink cheeks on this pertinent question for any fitness to fight a so- called war against international terrorism, one in which the media stars people of colour. Washington and its allies have made no decisive breakthrough in their much- touted war on terrorism and are now mired deeply in Pakistan and Afghanistan, not to speak of Iraq. Muslims, by and large, throughout the Muslim world feel no warmth towards Washington and its lackeys. There is the prevailing disbelief that Washington is capable of delivering the decisive blow to Islamist terrorism, in particular. For more than six decades, India has been at the nexus of the anti-imperialist Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Then Islamist militancy threw down a gauntlet to India and by implication the NAM it once helped to nurture. Militant Islamism has been as virulently anti-imperialist as NAM, if not more determinedly so. There should be common cause somewhere here for farsighted politicians. But many Indians still regard the presence of a large Muslim minority in India's midst as more of a threat than an opportunity to reach out to the Muslim world. It is time for a more positive approach. Too often, Pakistan has been painted as sulking impotently at the sidelines. Yet Pakistan has long been a thorn in the flesh of the Indian body politic. India's credibility has foundered through all this, but the political damage to the country's durable democracy has paled in comparison with Pakistan's poor performance. India understands the sense of impotence that frustrates so many Pakistani politicians, a frustration that feeds Pakistani cynicism about the war on terror. The terrorists in the Mumbai bombing displayed remarkable nerve. Moreover, the victims are demanding harsher sentences. "People are angry. They want Qassab to be hanged," conceded Archana Kapoor, president of the Indian chapter of the Sisters Against Violent Extremism (SAVE). "I can understand the sentiment, but hanging him will not solve anything. It will not make us safe, will it?" she added. Kapoor's confession draws attention to the futility of fighting terrorism by severely punishing the terrorists without resorting to uprooting the underlying causes of the proliferation of international terrorism in Pakistan and abroad. India, however, is not restricting its suspicions to Pakistani nationals. India and Pakistan are engaged in high-level talks that have been marred by the spy scandal involving Madhuri Gupta, second secretary at the Indian Embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Gupta and others are being questioned for passing secret information to Pakistan's dreaded secret agency ISI. Indian prime minister and his Pakistani counterpart Youssef Raza Gilani pledged to iron out differences. "India needs to accept that peace in South Asia will not be possible until the legitimate and genuine issues of concern to Pakistan are resolved to the satisfaction of both sides," warned the Pakistani daily The Dawn. "Like it or not, there are fundamental issues between the two countries that have to be resolved, but by holding everything hostage to the terrorism issue, India may have in fact given the terrorists a perverse incentive to try harder the next time," the Pakistani paper ominously concluded. The Hindustani Times urged the Indian authorities to proceed "expeditiously" with the trial of the 26/11 "Pakistani suspects". The paper also called for the amicable conclusion of this "ugly chapter" in bilateral relations between India and Pakistan. The tenor of the Indian media has been to downplay the acrimonious nature of the relationship between the two countries. "India has 'unjustifiably' named Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leaders Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi in the Mumbai terror attack case," noted the Times of India. But the legacy of the Mumbai bombings has been to leave India at sea, unsure of how to confront its own homegrown terrorism. Pakistan has not been getting as good a press as India. While Pakistani militants indeed were involved in the Mumbai attacks, the arrest of a Pakistani in the farcical bomb plot in New York last week wreaks of false flag. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) supposedly took credit through its 28-year-old mouthpiece Hakimullah Mahsud, but this, according to professor of history at the University of Michigan Juan Cole, is at best "grandstanding", like a previous claim surrounding plans to bomb the Barcelona underground in 2008. The car crammed amateurishly with petrol, propane and fireworks would at best have resulted in a "significant fireball" according to the New York City police commissioner. And it is now so easy to hack a website, or even create a false flag one, that such attribution, like the Delphic Osama bin Laden regularly delivered to incredulous world audiences, has very, very little credibility. What we suspect is that the US has been cranking up its drone bombings of precisely the homeland of the Mahsud tribe, traditionally the most fiercely independent of the Waziri tribes, of northwestern Pakistan and that they are brutally governed by the central government in Islamabad with generous American help, that their markets have been burnt to the ground and thousands left homeless, as the US pushes on with its ruthless, senseless policy of state terror in that part of the world. What better and less costly way to deflect criticism for this outrage than to spin a few Internet prevarications and conveniently catch a hapless Pakistani, with no harm done and plenty of proficient propaganda generated, as the US-led disintegration of Pakistan continues apace? The Indians have long doubted the Pakistanis could ever escape from the pit they had dug themselves into, with the presumably altruistic help of "Uncle Sam". Confidence in America's international standing has been shaken and this week's "terrorism" media hype serves it well. India and poor Pakistan much less so.
