Days after the easing of hostilities with Pakistan following a terror attack that led several dead in India, the former has been appointed as chair of the UN Security Council Committee which oversees the implementation of the sanctions measures on the Taliban, and the vice-chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee.
Unjust as it may seem to those in India and elsewhere, suffering from terror attacks, the UN system operates on consensus. This requires members seeking to isolate an erring predator country, like Pakistan, to expend significant political and diplomatic capital, over a sustained period, to convince a large enough cohort of influential members to withdraw their support for such appointments where there is a clear conflict of interest, even though these appointments are just for one year.
Pakistan is at once both a predator and a victim of terror attacks recently in Balochistan. It ranks 2nd on the Global Terrorism Index 2024 with a score of 8.4 out of 10, after Burkina Faso which tops the list as the worst affected. The Index is published annually since 2007, by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace. India ranks 14th, Australia ranks 46th and China 49th with an enviable score of 1.9. India is not proud to rank 14th out of 163 countries with a score of 6.4.
The Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, publishes this index annually since 2007. The score for each country is a weighted average of fatalities, terror incidents, injuries suffered, and hostages taken. Higher scores and rank imply higher terror impact.
Three United Nations Security Council conventions for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings (1997), Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999) and Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (2005) are the only available global guideposts. In 1996, India proposed to the UN Security Council a universal legal framework to counter-terrorism. Sadly, it remains bogged down by disagreements over definitions: Should violent movements for national liberation be included? Should State-sponsored terrorist activities be included?
Cross-border Terror Attacks in India
On an average, India has suffered about 1,000 terror related incidents and slightly less than 2,000 fatalities annually, since 2000. The most horrific incidents were in Mumbai (1993), an attack on the Indian Parliament (2001), a second attack on Mumbai (2008) and an attack on a security convoy at Pulwama (Kashmir) in 2019.
Whilst isolated terror incidents have occurred in several states, Kashmir remains central since it shares a border with the perpetrator Pakistan, which is a nuclear-armed country.
The terror attack on 22 April this year is a body blow for tourism, as it was probably intended.
India’s Military Restraint
Despite the extreme provocation, India's first choice was diplomatic measures to bring Pakistan to the negotiating table, like revoking the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty for sharing of downstream, cross border river waters. India’s airborne attacks initially only targeted known terrorist camps in Pakistan. Air defences foiled generalised airborne attacks by Pakistan on Indian civilian locations. India’s airborne attacks disabled Pakistan’s military establishments originating air borne attacks.
Shashi Tharoor, an Opposition Member of Parliament from Kerala, was the leader of one of the seven committees of Parliamentarians and politicians which engaged with foreign governments to share India’s perspective on the recent conflict with Pakistan.
His assessment is that India neither has the intent nor the mind space to engage in war like activities, except those necessary to deter aggression against India. We are focused instead on enhancing growth, investment and trade while maintaining ample deterrent capability, as demonstrated by the carefully targeted, successful air attacks by India.
Pakistan has succumbed to military dictatorship four times since its independence in 1947, side lining democracy for about one half of the time.
This trivialises its democratic trappings and undermines the use of its fiscal resources for development. It is the only South Asian country in the “low development” category of the Human Development Index (HDI). Both Bangladesh and India are on the cusp of attaining high human development levels. Ironically, the HDI was championed by a prominent Pakistani economist, the late Mahbub Ul Haq, during its inception by UNDP in 1990.
Global Coalitions Against Terror Need of the Hour
India consistently promotes international consensus against terror. It has no animus against the people of Pakistan, as evidenced by it exercising care to avoid civilian casualties even during conflict. Its tabled opposition to further aid for Pakistan, sans tighter fiscal oversight over the fungibility and use of such funds, rests on the apprehension that Pakistan’s government is serving its military-industrial complex and not the people of Pakistan.
The Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Stand-By Arrangements (SBA) of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank's Development Policy Finance provide budget support to governments for policy and institutional reforms.
The underlying performance targets are not linked to specific expenditure items, thereby artificially boosting fiscal capacity for general purpose and military expenditure. For India to succeed in blocking the flow of such fungible aid, it must follow an indivisible anti-terror policy stance over a longer period, combined with the necessary bilateral give and take. Aligning domestic policy similarly will be key for credibility.
It is no coincidence that 10 of the 14 countries most afflicted with terror, are also identified as “fragile or conflict-ridden countries” by the World Bank because state capacity to serve citizens is inadequate and income levels low.
The use of terror as an instrument of the State violates both civil liberties and development but global unwillingness for explicit anti-terror compacts persists even to distinguish systematic cross border terrorism from the two extremes of “war” on the one hand and “lone actors attacks” by radicalised youth.
Sped up development can defuse local alienation and create a vested interest in maintaining peace. It is in the interest of global development—particularly in the Global South—to stamp out this ambiguity about launching a war of attrition by other means. Or staying invested in low-state capacity to allow extra-legal activities to proliferate, including “false flag terror operations” and the debilitating trade in drugs and weapons made easier by the dark web and cryptocurrency.
(Sanjeev Ahluwalia is a distinguished fellow at the Chintan Research Foundation and was previously in the IAS and World Bank. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)