When the Cold War ended, many people thought this would be the beginning of perpetual peace. There was talk of a Peace Dividend. But almost as soon as one war ended, another began. This was the War on Terror. Cynics said the US always had to have an enemy so it invented this new war. But the cynics had not read their history properly. The most recent decapitating of a British soldier on the streets of London has brought home the lessons of history. The War on Terror is not a new war. To understand it, we need to go back a hundred years.
One way to understand the history of the 20th century is to see it as unwinding the problems created by the First World War, which ended 94 years ago. First, the German problem occupied Europe which took us to the Second World War. But also during the First World War, the Easter Uprising had taken place in Dublin which inaugurated the break-up of the British Empire. The next 30 years saw the end of the British Empire in India.
But it was the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after 1918 which we have still not resolved. During the War itself, the British and French Foreign Offices signed a secret treaty, the Sykes-Picot Pact, which partitioned the Ottoman Empire into 'nations' which then went under the tutelage of Britain or France. Jerusalem went for the first time under non-Muslim occupation. Syria and Lebanon were created under French supervision. Jordan and Iraq were British inventions. Palestine became a British responsibility.
India was affected by this as Gandhiji launched the Khilafat movement. For the first and only time, Hindus and Muslims got together to fight the British for a cause not at home but in Istanbul. Alas, the movement was suspended after Chauri Chaura and the Khilafat itself was abolished—not by the British as Gandhiji feared, but by Kemal Ataturk. The unity between Hindus and Muslims broke and was never restored. Partition was one consequence since the Muslims became conscious of their position as a 'nation' thanks to the Khilafat movement. They also saw themselves as part of the territory stretching back to Istanbul. Pakistan is in some ways not just a part of South Asia but also the eastern boundary of West Asia/Middle East.
The War on Terror has its roots in this division of the Middle East. The Palestine-Israel dispute is one aspect of this which Muslims blame on the British and, by implication, the Americans. There were secular, even socialist, regimes in the Middle East after 1945 but after defeats in three wars with Israel, the Arabs turned away from secular ideology and reverted to their old faith. Wahhabism revived thanks to the surplus money Saudi Arabia had from the oil shock and it spread across the Muslim nations of West Asia. Now was the time for revenge.
Osama bin Laden was clear about this. He saw his jehad as a response to the break-up of the Khilafat and the desecration of Jerusalem. He was also upset by the US army in Saudi Arabia, where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are. The incursion of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan gave the Taliban and al-Qaeda the chance to prosper with American resources. When that episode was over and the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, attention turned to the US and its allies. India is considered to be a part of the US-allied team and hence it is a victim of terrorism. As is the UK.
For the last 20-odd years, there has been a War on Terror. It began in the 1990s with the first aborted attack on the World Trade Centre, the attack on the USS Cole and the bombings in Kenya. Surplus mujahideen came across the Kashmir border to attack India, armed and trained by Islamists. We had 9/11 in USA and 7/7 in London plus bombings in Madrid, Bali and elsewhere. Parliament was attacked in Delhi and then we had 26/11 in Mumbai. The latest killing in London is just another short chapter in this saga.
This war will not end anytime soon. India is as much a part of this as is the UK or US.
Courtesy : “The Sunday Express”, 26 May 2013
