"To everything there is a season,
A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to love and a time to hate
A time for war
And a time for peace……………"

-Ecclesiastes

Israeli Prime Yitzhak Rabin quoted these verses during his historic handshake with President Yasser Arafat on September 13, 1993 at the White House with a gleaming President Clinton standing by. The handshake of peace was shattered by an assassin's bullet which took Rabin's life and with that the peace itself. And who was the killer? A Jewish extremist. And who killed Mahatma Gandhi? A Hindu extremist. While trying to reconcile the American people to each other, John F Kennedy and Martin Luther king were shot and killed by fellow Americans. (Paraphrase from President Clinton's lecture, 2001 on Richard Dimbleby). The US President perhaps forgot to add that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib was also murdered by a cabal of fellow Bengalis---the same people for whom he courted jail and imprisonment for over 14 years and gave them freedom, liberty and sovereign independent Bangladesh.

All these murders were committed by extremists who through their acts not only wanted to eliminate the leaders physically but also wanted to create panic and fear; terrorize the society and the country in order to reach certain narrow ends and to achieve sectarian objectives.

Thus the terrorists have various aims. While they can change the course of history, momentarily though, by one fell swoop of a bullet, they can also disturb the process of history-- in the case of Rabin derailing the whole Middle East peace process, in the case of Bangladesh distorting the true history of the War of Liberation.

It is said that wars and revolutions are the classic agents of strategic change in the balance of power or power equilibrium but the terrorists are now trying to change the course of history by acts of terror as in the case of the attack on the World Trade Centre (WTC) by OBL or the reign of terror let loose in Bangladesh in pre-October and post-October General Elections period in 2001.

Soon after the WTC attack, Le Monde wrote " We are all Americans now". The western world got together quickly and established the coalition of nearly the entire UN membership. But the 13 December, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament or the attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Parliament on October 1, 2001, allegedly by LET and JEM did not evoke the kind of response and empathy as it deserved -- may be because India is not a member of G-8! but the threat posed by those terror attacks is equally grave if not more. India as a matter of fact has been fighting against terrorism for more than a decade. Bangladesh case is even worse: we hardly get much attention or consideration, let alone any affirmative words of support excepting only diplomatic niceties. Save the Amnesty International Report against recent terror attacks in Bangladesh, not many countries expressed much concern (India's muted words barring and US Congressman Benjamin Gillman's letter to Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia MP). Little does the International Community know that (BKJ's article shows) a nation's demography is being altered, a nation's political moorings being uprooted, a nation's history being rewritten.

Islam does not allow killing of innocent civilians, men, women and children. Yet in the name of religion worst form of terrorism has been perpetrated in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh we experienced terrorism and extreme form of violence in 1971 when 3 million people were killed in the name of religion and this act of death and destruction was perpetrated by the Pakistani military junta. Bangladesh through this bloodbath became independent but our independence has been threatened time and again by the same group who pursued the road of oppression in the name of religion, who ignored human rights by taking away our right to speech, freedom and democratic values. Then again in 1975 August 15, the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was brutally murdered along with his family members by the same forces who did not believe in our legitimate right to a sovereign independent nationhood.

It is assumed that a sizable number of Taliban cadres are present in Bangladesh. Most of them are reported to have taken arms training in Afghanistan. American Counter Intelligence Agency (FBI) alerted Bangladesh about them and the visit of American President Bill Clinton was to some extent curtailed due to suspected Talibani activities.

There are many followers of Talibans or Muslim fundamentalists in Bangladesh who publicly announced their programme for the establishment of Talibani rule in Bangladesh. The organization named Movement for Islamic Rule under the leadership of Fazlul Haque Amini has declared publicly that they want to make a revolution in Bangladesh like the Talibans. The favorite slogan of this organization is "Bangla will be Afghan". Afghan Charge d' Affaires in Bangladesh Mr. Ghulam Mohammad Sukhanyar wept at these remark and said, "You don't know what they have done to my country". There is another clandestine group operating in Bangladesh is Harkatul Jihad. Several assassination attempts were made on the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, MP in which this clandestine group is the prime suspect. There are brutal murders and acts of violence and terrorism in different parts of Bangladesh. A fundamentalist group butchered a policeman entrapped inside a mosque during Hartal. There has been an attack on the Udichi cultural group, attack on the Chhayanat's Bengali new year's celebration and attack on a Church in Gopalganj.

With the WTC attack, the strategic perception of security has dramatically altered for the entire civilized world. There is a need for an appropriate response. A need for a modality on long-term basis. For Bangladesh the drama is still unfolding as Prof. B.K. Jahangir so succinctly put in his Janakanatha article, December 30, 2001, Resistance Against Fear (f‡qi wei"‡× cªwZ‡iva) -against ethnic cleansing, against political cleansing.

Quote begins: "Through ethnic cleansing the Minority Community is to be controlled numerically. Tools? Forcible occupation of property and looting of the houses, attack and raping of women, young, old and married, and thus drive them out of their motherland through fear and intimidation.

The reduced minority will be malleable so that a Bangladeshi Nationalist Hindu caucus can be created; through this process the ideological affinity with the Awami League and Left Parties will be severed: the minority communities Hindus, Buddhists and Christians are historically more progressive and affirmative. As a second step, the joint Electoral System will be eliminated and the Separate Electoral System introduced.

The aim of political cleansing is to engender fear and sense of insecurity amongst Awami League and Left Party activists and supporters and influence their ideological moorings. Towards that end Aguani village of Araihazar (Janakanatha December 22, 2001) Hanpania of chanpur (Protham Alo, December 23, 2001 and Janakanatha, December 24, 2001) were totally ravaged and destroyed.

As a part of the same strategy, Professor Gopal Krishna Muhuri was murdered in Chittagong. The BNP and Jamaat Alliance will then try to drive the country towards pre-1947 situation and encourage the Taliban spirit to flourish in the politics of Bangladesh.

This situation will be used against Democracy and Secularism as enshrined in the Constitution of Bangladesh. If Jamaat does not succeed in this approach in taking over State power, they will use the Defense forces of the country to reach their objective. For this Jamaat cadres have already infiltrated the Administration and Defense services. In that event they can easily abandon their alliance of convenience with BNP………..". End of Quote.

Secular spirit of the country is under seize. America is being called the worst terrorist State' in the world by the Khatib of Baitul Mukarram Mosque. Religious Fundamentalists want to transform Bangladesh into another Taliban Afghanistan. A brave freedom fighter journalist Shahryar Kabir is being detained. Amnesty International called him a POC, first ever in the history of Bangladesh. Hon'ble High Court has on January 12, called the detention illegal and ultravires.

Cold War Model of Defense:
The Cold War model of defense is becoming increasingly less effective. MDS also does not come to assistance- as the September 11 attack has proved. While the Cold War model was not perfect, as the CIA Agent Aldrich Ames has proved, but the model was clear and unambiguous. It may be argued that fighting traitors, spies and saboteurs is not the usual priority of defense policy. We agreed in the Oxford IISS meeting in 1998 that in the "asymptotic state, secrets are hard to define and even harder to confine ------ cyber- traitors, cyber- spies and cyber-saboteurs are very different from their Cold War counterparts."

Today terrorism is being used as a strategic weapon. Sudan's Hasan-AL-Turabi and Osama-Bin-Laden together with Ayan-Al-Zawahari collaborated to form the terrorist network world wide. There is a pattern in all these attacks from the US barracks known as Khobar Towers attack on the SS Cole and the downing of TWA800.

"Osama-Bin-Laden has earlier been linked with the bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania. He hates America & everything that America stands for. His hatred is visceral. Although he takes the name of Muslim Umma including the Palestine struggle, his focus is really neither of them. He is an anarchist and a terrorist. He must be condemned and brought to book along with other members of his organization al-Qaeda."

Misuse of the eternal message of Islam i.e PEACE:
In 1192 the Ulema (religious leadership) in Cordova, Spain publicly burned the books of the scientific library and rare study of astronomy. In 1979 Ayatullah Khomeni in Iran ordered the 'correction' of the Faculty in the Universities which resulted in the Islamization of the higher education system! Yossef Bodansky in his book Bin Laden the man who declared war on America said prophetically, "both regional and international terrorism can be used by a relentless and unscrupulous government to further strategic objectives, as Pakistan has proven with its war by proxy against India waged in Kashmir, and Iran with its campaign of pressure and coercion against the Persian Gulf States. The availability of WMD and the audacity to reach out into the heart of the United States make this trend all the more frightening".

Typology of Terrorism: brief background history:
Terrorism is not a philosophy or a political movement. It is a weapon or method, which has been used throughout history by both states and sub-state organizations for a whole variety of political purposes.

Another important distinction is between international terrorism, involving the citizens of two or more states, and domestic or internal terrorism which confines its activities within the borders of a specific state province. In most cases their leaders spend considerable effort seeking external sources of political support, cash, weapons, safe haven, and other useful assets, from friendly governments and political movements as well as form their own diasporas.

There is abundant evidence from recent history to show that terror has worked as a weapon for ruthless dictators in achieving strategic goals. For example, Stalin and his successor were able to use the Soviet apparatus of state terror to maintain themselves in power for half a century. The Serbs used mass terror with devastating effect in their campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. They succeeded in changing the entire demographic map of the region irreversibly. Had it not been for NATO's, (and US in particular) efforts, Milosevic would have been able to achieve similar results by ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

Transnational terrorism can trace its pedigree at least back to Bakunin and the 19th century Anarchism. Religious fanaticism as motivation is hardly new, and many groups in the past have maintained their campaigns without the benefit of state sponsorship. Even the idea of 'leaderless resistance', where a movement leaves it to the initiative and of its individual members to carry out attacks as and when they are able on the types of targets already designated in the pronouncements of the group is hardly new. It is significant that only two of the active major terrorist groups listed in the US State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1996 were founded in the 1990s: the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria and Haraket Ul-Ansar (HUA) in Pakistan. All of these groups have known aims, organization structures and leading activists, and various links with like-minded organization and/or states. After September 11 attacks in the US, Over 50 organizations have been identified by the US worldwide. Their assets have been frozen, bank accounts impounded and the money trail being pursued by the USG and other Coalition Governments. These organizations include LET and JEM in Pakistan, IRA of Ireland, LTTE of Sri-Lanka, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. Of course this list is topped by OBL's al Qaeda network (and Mollah Omar's Taliban's State) hitherto promoted and supported by Pakistan.

The true litmus test will be the major democracies' consistency and courage in maintaining a firm line against terrorism in all its forms. They must abhor the idea that terrorism can be tolerated as long as it is only affecting someone else's democratic rights and rule of law. They must adopt the clear principle that 'one democracy's terrorist is another democracy's terrorist as well".

It must be noted that hardline strategy of a democracy has always succeeded in containing and finally reducing terrorism. Pakistan president General Parvez Musharraf under international pressure has finally abandoned his window-dressing approach and taken certain concrete steps in Pakistan in his efforts to contain religious extremism on its soil: but his naivity in defending the terrorist's infiltration into neighboring India is totally confusing! He should remember that Pakistan trained terrorists are active from the CAS countries to Shinziang province of PRC and from Bangladesh to the islands of Mindanao in the Philippines. If he fails to contain them now, these frankensteins created by his own outfit will destroy him and his country.

Conclusion: Strategic Implications of Terrorism-Worldwide:
Terrorism will continue to haunt humanity in many forms: Nationalist, Irredentist and State sponsored ----- the last being the most difficult to combat. Small groups of individuals will continue to be around us as Timothy Mcveigh whose group destroyed the Federal office Building in Oklahoma. Such activities have normally tactical impact. But the use of al Qaeda terror-network of OBL and the possible use of WMD has transformed terrorism into a strategic phenomenon. Post-September world will not be the same again. Even the threat of use by WMD has a strategic implication: as the Pakistanis did in 1999-Kargil operation. They crossed the LOC (violating the SIMLA Agreement) but held the Indians at bay under implied threat of the use of WMD in the event the Indians crossed the LOC! Similarly, the two nuclear Scientists' now detained in Pakistan, who were reportedly assisting the OBL outfit in Afghanistan brings this possibility into sharp relief.

Bangladesh:
For Bangladesh, the terrorism let loose by organized thugs and goons widely reported to be assisted by the government agencies has long term implications for the country. Here the fear psychosis is being used, though rather crudely, with a long-term agenda in mind. Certain political parties want to transform Bangladesh into a fundamentalist state, specially using communal card. They would like this country, created on the blood of 3 million martyrs, to become a safe haven for Talibans, who are now being driven out of Afghanistan and even Pakistan.

The caveat assumes a more fearsome dimension when we read Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin's research paper in the winter issue of IISS Quarterly Survival on the TERROR:

WMD are perfectly tailored to a group that has maximal objectives and an eschatological worldview, and seeks the humiliation and annihilation of its enemies. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to long-term stability in the region is structural. Mismatched economic- and population-growth curves coupled with skewed age distribution and runaway urbanisation promise lower wages, greater unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and social dislocation on a scale that Western countries may be unable to affect.

At the same time, the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan, home to approximately half of the world's Muslims, are disengaging from the world economy. Birth rates ranging from 2-5% are obviously incompatible with high or even positive GDP growth. But the problem is not solely one of birth rates. Sociologists have shown that youth correlates with violent behaviour, and there is an enormous youth bulge within the overall tide of overpopulation. This is not just a Muslim experience. A comparable youth bulge hit the relatively prosperous US and Europe precisely in 1968, an annus horribilis in Western politics. Within the next 20 years, the bow wave of a new youth bulge will hit Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Quite unsavoury prospect indeed.

What should the Civil Society do?
President Musharraf of Pakistan has made an important statement on January 11, 2002 on terrorism. While sealing some offices of terrorist organizations in Pakistan, he has taken a more significant step: he has ordered the closure of unauthorized Madrassahs in Pakistan. The registration of Madrassahs has been made compulsory. Simultaneously all Madrassahs and religious institutions have been asked to include the carricula of the Government for education on science and technology, Law and Humanities. If he succeeds in implementing these directives, he will have rendered a yeoman's service to his country and the region. He has also put restrictions on foreign students to study in these institutions in order to avoid creation of Taliban Terrors like John Walker (US) and ADAM Reid (British)!

In Bangladesh too we must contain terrorism and terrorist activities in all its forms and manifestations. The Civil Society has to show the way, the Civil Society has to be the path-finder, the trail-blazer. With the help of international coalition, we should sit in dialogue with the politicians-both the government as well as the opposition. If we don't act now, it may be too late.

Along with affirmative action and massive countrywide advocacy, we must sensitize the whole nation about the danger of this menace. Bangladesh falls in the pathway of global strategic network for terrorist organizations- what President Musharraf is doing, under international pressure, as a last-ditch attempt to save his country¾we can do it now before the situation gets desperate.

True, it is the poor on the margin who get recruited into the Madrassah education in Bangladesh. But the poor here (like in other countries) are not really poor. If we have absorbed what the famous Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto has said in some recent writings, we will not say that again. Remember his famous sentence? "Listen to the barking dogs"-The poor of the world have $5 trillion dollars in assets in their homes but they can't be collateral for Banks. We need new laws of inclusion to bring them on board.

Let this convention be the harbinger of new ideas. Who could have conceived in the 1880s that imperialism would be dissolved in another 100 yrs? As Keynes said, "Power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared to the power of ideas". And Barbara Ward added, "we learn more from the visionaries than from the practical men of affairs."

Let this colloquium be the starting point for creating a new society, new Bangladesh, a country with peace and harmony as the founder father dreamt and as enshrined in the Constitution of Bangladesh.

References:

• Paul Wilkinson, (Terrorism and the Liberal State second edition (Basingstoke, 1986); (Part-1)
• Paul Wilkinson, "Terrorism in Michael GFoley (ed.), ideas that shape politics (Manchester, 1994), pp. 189-198.
• Paul Wilkinson, Political Terrorism, (London, 1974) (Chapter -1)
• Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman et al, Political Terrorism: A new Guide actors, authors concepts, data bases, theories and literatures (Amsterdam, 1988);
• harles Kegley Jr. (ed.) International Terrorism: Characteristics Causes, Controls (New York, 1990);
• Eugene V. Walter, Terror and Resistance (London, 1969);
• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951); Robert Conquest, The great terror (London, 1968);
• B. Levytsky, The Uses of Terror: The Soviet Secret Service, 1917-1970) (London, 1971);
• US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism (annual publication) (Washington, DC.);
• Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York, 1978)
• Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (Basingstoke, 1986) pp. 119-177.
• For perceptive insights into Bakunin and anarchism, see E.H. Carr, Michael Bakunin (London, 1961 and Michael Confino (ed.) Daughter of a Revolutionary (London, 1974)
• Yossef Bodansky- Bin Laden who declared war on America.
• Richard Dimbleby Lecture-2001 by President Bill Clinton.
• Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin IISS Winter Issue of Survival. Steve Simon, now Assistant Director and Carol Deane Senior Fellow at IISS and formerly in US National Security Council. Daniel Benjamin is Senior Fellow at Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.