[Reader-list] After Mumbai: Terrorism And Recession

[Pawan Durani]

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/12/10/kepel-terrorism-mumbai-markets-face-cx_ll_1210markets21.html

Q&A
After Mumbai: Terrorism And Recession
Lionel Laurent, 12.10.08, 10:06 PM EST
Social unrest and violence could be on the menu as the world economy slows.

Gilles Kepel
The coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November left nearly
200 people dead and exposed the vulnerability of India's financial
capital. Although India is no stranger to terrorism, the scale of the
violence and the targets selected for attack--including five-star
hotels and a Jewish religious center--cast a shadow over India's image
as a vibrant, emerging economic heavyweight. (See "Mumbai Will Rise
Again.")

And even though the American-led "War On Terror'" may be in its
twilight, as the Bush era gives way to the Obama administration, the
global economic slump may expose fractures in society and potentially
spread violent unrest across the world.

Yahoo! BuzzForbes.com asked Middle East expert Gilles Kepel--whose new
book, Beyond Terror And Martyrdom, examines the future of relations
between Islam and the West--about the attacks on Mumbai and what to
expect from the economic crisis.

Forbes.com:Who do you think was behind the Mumbai attacks?

Gilles Kepel: My feeling is that the attack was performed by
Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group, because it resembled their modus
operandi. They do not do suicide bombings because they feel that if
they press the button on the suicide belt, they commit a grave sin
against Allah's will. For them, Allah is the one who decides when he
should take back the life that he has given. And in committing
suicide, even if it's for the sake of jihad, a Muslim goes to hell. So
in order to be martyred in the region of Kashmir, the terrorists
usually come with heavy weaponry and go on a shooting spree and kill
as many Hindus as possible, until finally they are killed because they
are overcome in numbers.

What about the timing of the attack?

I believe that there is mounting pressure on the Afghan-Pakistan
border against the Taliban and al-Qaida groups, and that predator
drones are killing scores of terrorist leaders and operators.
[Pakistani president] Asif Ali Zardari is engaging in military action
against jihadi militants, which has chagrined a number of people in
the [Pakistani intelligence service] ISI who are supporters of the
Taliban. By ratcheting up the tension and bringing India into the
battlefield, the attackers aimed to turn Pakistan away from the
Taliban and focus on tension with India. This would then alleviate
pressure on the militants.


Is there an economic story behind the Mumbai attacks? Were the
terrorists targeting Mumbai's stature as a financial capital?


The attacks exposed the weakness of the so-called Indian economic
takeoff. India may be a 'BRIC' country, along with Brazil, Russia and
China, but the almost double-digit growth in these countries is based
on a predicament; that is to say, that most of the population lives in
sheer poverty. In India, you have approximately 150-200 million people
who live by European standards and 1 billion who live in sheer
poverty. Not to say that Muslims are necessarily poor, just as there
are poor Hindus also, but this exposes a number of fault-lines behind
the Indian miracle. The aim of the attack was mainly political, but
the economic dimension is still visible.


In China, there are two kinds of Muslims. On the one hand, there are
the Chinese Muslims known as the Hui, who are the Chinese who
converted to Islam. They do not pose a problem tantamount to the one
posed by the Uigurs, who are a Turkic people annexed by China. They,
to a large extent like the Tibetans, have a strong national identity
issue, which they then clothe with an Islamic garb. But the Uigurs are
far away from the prosperous areas of China, they are in the
mountains.

As far as Russia is concerned, apart from the Muslims who are in
Moscow, most of the Muslim population is concentrated in Central Asia
or the Caucasus. That led to the insurgency in Chechnya and problems
in Dagestan. For the time being, Chechnya's issue has been dealt with
through strong, brutal repression. But now the pro-Russian forces are
using Islamization as a means to fulfil their power. This resembles
what happened in former authoritarian socialist regimes in Egypt and
Algeria, when a weak power courted Islam as a means of social control.

Meanwhile, in Dubai, and the Emirates, we have not seen a terrorist
threat emerge yet. Why is that?


Because that would be detrimental to the terrorists' own interests.
The Gulf countries have financial establishments, they have booming
economies and terrorists need financial services. If they attack Gulf
states, it will make it more difficult for them to organize their
networks. Not that those states are complacent about it, but it means
they are not pointed to as a land of jihad.

Do you think there is a connection between terrorism and economic crisis?

Mass revolt and mobilization of the population are definitely linked
with economic conditions, as we saw in Algeria in the 1980s. Back
then, the Algerian state could not buy social peace anymore because it
had no oil revenues coming in. But the capacity of terrorist groups to
develop is not directly linked to the price of a barrel of oil.

But do terrorist groups flourish in times of domestic economic crisis?



It helps. But a number of terrorist leaders have no economic problems.
Many of the leaders of the Islamist movements are sons of good
families. Like [al-Qaida's second-in-command] Ayman al-Zawahiri, who
is just an aristocrat, or Osama bin Laden, who is from one of the most
wealthy families in Saudi Arabia.

What motivates these middle-class rebels?


A large number of prominent middle-class terrorists belong to a strand
of society that does not have access to power. Power there is
confiscated by the ruling dynasties. It's a case of the pious middle
class.