Stop Pakistan to stop terrorism

Terror is back with a bang in England. It has hit a bit too soon after US President Donald Trump’s warning to the Muslim leaders the other day and calling upon them to “join hands with America to root out the evil of terrorism.”

The Manchester concert attack, killing 22 persons, is perhaps a terrorists’ way to say hello to Trump and let him know that they are in fine fettle despite their retreat in Mosul, Iraq—the headquarters of ISIS.

The Manchester attack once again seemed to be the handiwork of the ISIS, which had launched similar attack in concerts, pubs and restaurants in such as the Istanbul nightclub shooting earlier this year and near home, the Dhaka attack last year.

Manchester bombing is, indeed, a highly disturbing event as it comes in the wake of the Mosul siege where the ISIS is not only retreating but is on the verge of liquidation.

It clearly is the signal to the civilised world that the threat of terrorism could not be eliminated by only liquidating a terror outfit like ISIS. It is evident from the case of al Qaeda, which is now almost defunct and its founder Osama bin Laden dead.

Osama was replaced by a new terror pope, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who from a pulpit of a Mosul mosque in June 2014 announced the formation of an Islamic Caliphate which very soon terrorised the world with its heinous terror crimes unheard of in modern times.

Baghdadi’s Caliphate was the first such Islamic entity after the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate in the wake of the First World War sometimes in the early 1920s. Muslim Caliphates, during the medieval era, were somewhat great centres of Muslim power and pelf.

Damascus, Baghdad, Istanbul—all of them capitals of various Muslim Caliphates at various point of time during medieval times—were great centres of civilisation and power. They were somewhat like what Washington, London, Tokyo et el are to the modern world. Besides, the first Caliphates played a key role in fighting the rise of Christian power during the Crusades in the medieval period.

So, the revival of the very term Caliphate by al-Baghdadi evoked not just nostalgia of the golden gone era of Muslim peak but also its association with crusades seemed to have inspired anti-Western youth who flock to Mosul from across the world at al-Baghdadi’s appeal and turned foot soldiers of the worst kind of terrorism that the modern world has witnessed so far.

Somehow, the major powers along with the West Asian countries like Saudi Arabia forming an anti-terrorist alliance to contain ISIS.

American forces are currently busy supervising operations going on in Mosul, Iraq, where ISIS is now virtually lost out to Iraqi forces.

Yet, the terrorists managed to do what they are the best at doing, killing 22 young persons at a time when they were busy enjoying a music concert at Manchester. It is once again the act of ISIS or their sympathisers.

Here lies the danger underlining the fact that military actions like the one going on against ISIS inside Iraq alone is no solution to the problem of terrorism.

Terrorism is a ‘’gift’’ of Pakistan to humanity which in the early 1980s trained Afghan mujahedeen with American backing to trap the now liquidated Soviet Union inside Afghanistan—that the Soviets had attacked in 1980.

Once the Soviets walked out of Afghanistan, Pakistan adopted terrorism as its state policy and to this day continues to support outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hezbollah Mujahideen, Harkat-ul- Mujahideen and Jama'at-ud-Da'wah—and men like Hafiz Saeed as their proxy to export terror to India, especially Kashmir where it is even now playing havoc.

In the late 1990s, Pakistan trained Osama bin Laden and he launched his own terrorist outfit al Qaeda, which engineered the 9/11 attacks inside the US stunning the world with its global reach. Since then, terrorism is a global problem taking up ever new shapes and coming from different outfits.

Osama was killed inside Pakistan by American marines in a daring operation. But, his legacy lives on and Pakistan continues to be a haven for terrorists like Saeed and many others.

Secondly, it is internationally a known secret that outfits like al Qaeda and ISIS had their sympathisers based inside oil rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia. Rich sheikhs are said to be the financiers of even ISIS.

The long and short of the terror business is that unless these two menaces—Pakistan as the source of training centres and oil money as the financiers of terrorism—are taken to task, even military operation like the one underway in Mosul will not contain the threat of terrorism.

Americans have looked the other way so far both in the case of Pakistan as well as terror financing from the Gulf. It is time now for India to build international consensus on dealing with the two major sources of terrorism, Pakistan and terror financing. If we do not do it now, Delhi could be another Manchester any day.