India’s enemies are not ours, says defence expert Ivan Eland

NEW YORK: A Washington think-tank published a report this week saying that the Bush administration was fuelling Islamic jihadist anger by including anti-India militant groups like the Jamaat ud Dawa which has no direct link with Al Qaeda, but plagues Indian authorities in Kashmir, on the US state department terror list.

The Independent Institute said that in the frenzy surrounding the exposed plot to simultaneously blow up ten planes flying from Britain to the US, “one line of inquiry being pursued by investigators should make the Bush administration very nervous.”

“British and Pakistani law enforcement officials are examining whether the British plotters of Pakistani descent received money from an Islamic charity, Jamaat ud Dawa.
The charity has been used as a front for a militant group fighting for the separation of the Muslim province of Kashmir from India,” said the report published by the think-tank. 

Ivan Eland, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, who has written the report, told DNA on Thursday that the Jamaat ud Dawa had protested against being labelled a terrorist organisation by the Bush administration in May this year. “The US put the Jamaat on the terrorism list three months ago and investigations now show they could be somehow involved in the bomb plot. You have to ask whether this labelling motivated the plot in the first place,” defence expert Eland, who has written several books including the bestselling The Empire has no Clothes told DNA.

“Most of the groups on the state department terrorism list don’t really attack the US, some of them do. The US should try and discriminate which of these groups hit US targets and which don’t because even though we are a super power the US cannot fight everyone’s battles.” 

The defence expert pointed out that other countries were making the mistake of emulating the way the US and Israel fought terror. “What you need to do is quietly in the shadows use intelligence, law enforcement and all the other last resort, limited military secret special force strikes to actually apprehend or kill terrorists,” said Eland.
“If you go on a very public war on terror it does not help. Frankly, I think the US is dredging up jihadists in Iraq or because of Iraq. I am not sure India is better off, Israel is better off, I am not sure anybody is better off for us having gone into Iraq or increasing the size of out state department terror list.”

“It is having an opposite effect and blowing back into the US.”  Eland said the “very public war on terror” was certainly backfiring on the US. “It is not really doing India any good. Of course, the US is trying to improve relations with India so one of the symbolic things it can do is put regional groups like this on the list; whether it actually helps India in a practical sense is another matter.”

The Washington think-tank’s conclusions will irk Indian authorities who have been pressing the US to add more Pakistan-based Islamic jihad groups active in Kashmir to its list of foreign terrorist groups. The designation means it is illegal for anyone in the US, or under US jurisdiction, to provide material support to the dissident group. It also means US financial institutions must freeze the group's assets and it allows the State Department to deny visas to its members.