A military historian on how conventional war too can be terrorism
What is new though is that Carr has applied the analytical skills of a military historian and drawn on past events in military history from early Roman times till the present day as corroboration. No other writer on terrorism has attempted this earlier. Further, his suggestions for combating terrorism is based on military doctrines though his general finding that terrorism cannot be overcome by counter-terrorism has been universally accepted by informed observers.
The common definition of terrorism is, as the word itself suggests, the use of terror to force the State to concede to political demands which would not have been met except through the use of force.
Since the disaffected are not able to wage conventional war successfully, they resort to a "low cost war" where civilians are routinely targeted in the vain hope that they in turn will press the State to submit to the wishes of the terrorists. Interestingly, Carr has extended the definition of terrorism to encompass conventional warfare! One expects civilian casualties during a war and we have never clubbed such acts by enemy forces under the term ‘terrorism’. But the author does so, dubbing all attacks on non-combatants even during wars as acts of terrorism.
Taking off from that premise, he has shown how wanton targeting of civilians has always proved counter-productive. It has steeled the resolve of the targeted people to fight and actually lifted their morale instead of destroying it. Roman emperors like Julius Caesar and Augustus had evolved complementary policies like granting citizenship to conquered people and offering slaves the hope of manumission. Roman hegemony over conquered terrorists was cemented through such policies but when these were replaced by punitive wars, which involved the annihilation of entire tribes, the eventual downfall of the Roman Empire was assured.
Similar examples from history have been quoted right through the 11 chapters of the book to prove that punitive or total wars have never succeeded in their objectives. On the contrary they bred resentments, which resurrected at inconvenient times. Cromwell had raised his "New Model Army" with strict instructions not to abuse English subjects but he overlooked these sound principles when dealing with the Irish. Carr feels that Cromwell’s insensitivity to the suffering of ordinary Irish citizens was the root cause of the subsequent rise of terrorism in Ireland.
Carr’s treatise can be applied to our own experience in dealing with terrorism. There are many who believe that insurgency in the northeast has lasted for the past 50 years because our security forces were insensitive to the feelings and sufferings of the civilian populations of these states. Whereas the insurgents never targeted non-combatants, the same rule was not applied by us whenever we felt that the civilian population was harbouring or giving logistical support to the insurgents.
The people of India think, erroneously I feel, that only repressive measures succeeded in ridding Punjab of terrorism. The only real answer to terrorism is not military counter-measures alone but the winning of people’s hearts and minds. The Punjab tragedy ended only after the terrorists themselves became a bigger nuisance to the Jat Sikh farmers than the police, particularly when they began interfering with the village girls.
Carr does not talk about hearts and minds. He advocates surgical, precise, offensive action against terrorists based on the element of surprise but with an emphasis on discriminatory tactical operations. Here he draws on military science as propounded by Frederick the Great of Prussia who concentrated on the defeat of the enemy but never on the physical destruction of non-combatants. These principles should be debated by our army and paramilitary leaders now fighting Pakistan-inspired terrorism in J&K.
The author has been quite harsh on the CIA, castigating it for neglecting its assigned task of collecting and analysing intelligence and concentrating instead on covert operations of highly questionable variety and utility. He actually advocates the winding up of the organisation and parcelling of its mandate to other extant departments of the US government. He admits that the CIA sponsored the Afghan mujahideen and that bin Laden was a product of that height of CIA folly, a fact US Ambassador Blackwill does not concede.