America's Misleading Terrorism Report

By Ajai Sahni
May 9, 2007
ATimes

Modern governments are vast bureaucracies engaged in an infinity of complex tasks, most of which are turned into routines to ensure continuity, standards and a necessary modicum of efficiency. The flip side is that established routines often lapse into mechanical responses, mere reflexes that have little contact with the original intent for which they were initiated.

The US State Department's annual ritual of publishing what are now called the Country Reports on Terrorism (CRT) unfortunately appears to have slipped into the character of just such a habitual response, an embarrassing nervous tic that does little to enhance the appearance or reputation of those it afflicts, and that appears to fulfill no significant purpose. This is the regrettable conclusion that arises out of a close reading of the sections dealing with South Asia in CRT 2006.

The CRT is a modestly rechristened version of the more ambitious Patterns of Global Terrorism (PGT), which was abruptly discontinued after a particularly disastrous edition in 2004 (PGT 2003) under the stewardship of the State Department's then coordinator for counter-terrorism, Cofer Black. The CRT is published (as was its predecessor) under a legislative mandate to provide the US Congress "a full and complete report on terrorism" each year with regard to countries that meet the criteria of the legislation, and in this CRT 2006 certainly falls short in its narrative on South Asia.

...The analysis of terrorism in other theaters across India is, at best, cursory, once again randomly picking out some incidents for mention, but communicating little by way of an accurate picture of the movements, or of their intensity and dynamics. Worse, there is evidence of some extremely crude "cut and paste" work in CRT 2006.

Most glaring: on April 26, in part because of US evidence, a special court in Kolkata convicted seven men for the January 2002 attack on the American Center in the city that left five Indian

police officers dead and more than 20 injured. This conviction occurred in 2005, not 2006, and the paragraph has simply been reproduced from CRT 2005.

Again, entire paragraphs on India's "outdated and overburdened law-enforcement and legal systems" are simply lifted verbatim from CRT 2005, without attribution:

India's counter-terrorism efforts are hampered by its outdated and overburdened law-enforcement and legal systems. The Indian court system is slow, laborious, and prone to corruption; terrorism trials can take years to complete. An independent Indian think-tank, for example, assesses that the estimated 12,000 civilians killed by terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir from 1988 to 2002 generated only 13 convictions through December 2002; most of the convictions were for illegal border crossing or possession of weapons or explosives.

Many of India's local police forces are poorly staffed, trained, and equipped to combat terrorism effectively. Despite these challenges, India scored major successes, including numerous arrests and the seizure of hundreds of kilos of explosives and firearms during operations against the briefly resurgent Sikh terrorist group Babbar Khalsa International.

Such mechanical and unattributed inclusions from previous reports in the body of CRT 2006 do not contribute to the authority and credibility of the exercise.

There are also several errors and inaccuracies of data and fact. For instance, the report states, "Indian officials said that terrorist infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir increased in 2006." India's Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report - and a number of other official pronouncements - however, indicate a marginal decline in infiltration by 4% in 2006 over 2005. CRT 2006 mentions the July 17 incident of a Naxalite attack in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, in which "at least 25 people were killed". In fact, 33 villagers were killed in the incident.

CRT 2006 refers to "multiple terrorist attacks" resulting in "numerous deaths and injuries". This is meaningless. Data for all theaters in India - indeed, South Asia - are available in reliable open sources. Official data are also periodically made available for several theaters. Either of these sources, with appropriate attribution, can give an acceptably accurate picture of the course of violence.

The problem of authority or validation can be addressed, simply, by transparency of process. If data were clearly attributed to defined open or official sources, their publication in a US report would not constitute endorsement or confirmation of their validity, but would constitute a sufficient provisional basis for analysis of trends.

The treatment of other theaters is no better. For instance, the perfunctory paragraphs on Bangladesh make no mention of the alleged "left-wing extremism" that authorities in Dhaka consider the main problem in the country, if the number of fatalities is an index. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, compiled from open-source reports, of the total of 145 "terrorist" fatalities in Bangladesh in 2006, 139 were categorized as "left-wing" terrorists.

The credibility or otherwise of this official campaign of annihilation, and its reconciliation with Bangladeshi claims to vigorous counter-terrorist action, should be a natural element within any comprehensive assessment of trends in terrorism and counter-terrorism in that country.

It is not the intention or objective here to enter a detailed critique of CRT 2006 in each of the theaters of conflict in South Asia. What is essential is that this exercise needs to go a long way before it can come anywhere close to fulfilling its mandate of providing a "a full and complete report on terrorism" to Congress.

The tentativeness, anxieties and ideologically driven assessments reflected in CRT 2006 do not sit well with the task and responsibilities of providing an authoritative, credible and comprehensive analysis of international trends in terrorism. As it stands, the annual CRT process fails to produce a reliable resource for assessments both for Congress as well as for policymakers, scholars and the media everywhere.

(Note: To read the complete report, kindly click on the "ATimes" link, above)

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Ajai Sahni is editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review and executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management.

Published with permission from the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal