US is clear: Local terror is India's fight

American President Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address before he lays down office, delivered earlier this week, was doubtless calculated to provide an upbeat account of his stewardship — some of it justifiably, especially in the area of the economy — and to set a suitably useful platform for Hillary Clinton if indeed she goes through the primaries, but it also has an emphatic message for a country like India which is in a region where fires of extremism and terrorism are burning.

The US leader was clear that Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East will remain in the grip of instability even if there was to be no threat of the Islamic State, and that these regions — and some others — are territories where new terrorist outfits can find a home in the future, presumably on account of the instability that characterises them. In Mr Obama’s reckoning Al Qaeda remains a “dangerous threat” to the United States, though not an “existential” one, and the IS a “direct threat”, although not long ago he had surmised that “core Al Qaeda” had been dealt with. These are gloomy prognostications indeed and therefore Al Qaeda and ISIS must continue to occupy Washington’s “focused” foreign policy attention, says the US President. His leading Republican opponents, who are on the campaign trail for the presidency, have sharply criticised him for not dealing with terrorism adequately.

It would thus seem that the assessment across the political spectrum in the United States is that the threat of terrorism remains a live issue. In India’s neighbourhood are countries which have given rise to international terrorism or where terrorists operate with impunity, and this includes Pakistan. The bipartisan political surmise on the terrorism question in the US can only confirm for us what we know only too well, especially after Pathankot. While it is an alluring idea that we should particularly work with other democracies to beat back the menace of terrorism, we must remain alive to the reality that principally the fight is our own. America, especially, has shown that it has a two-tone attitude to terrorism.  It doesn’t see regional or localised extremist and terrorist groups as a threat to itself or the Western nations even if these afflict countries like India. This is the reason a UN Convention on Terrorism cannot be adopted to check the spread of terrorism.

The US does not agree with the definition we hold. This leaves the Narendra Modi government justly dissatisfied, as it did its predecessor. Some leading factors that make several regions unstable, and thus potential host to terrorism, are linked to US policy, for instance the rise of ISIS and not curbing Pakistan’s aid to terror outfits. We just have to take that on board and steel ourselves.