Strategic catastrophic events that surprise states and have a geopolitical impact have increased over the past few years. Be it the current phase of the War in Ukraine which commenced on February 24, 2022, the wave of terrorist attacks by the Hamas on October 07 last year or the March 22 Crocus city hall terrorist attack in Moscow, the world at large was taken by surprise.
Indeed, the precursors of these events were evident much before occurrence. For Ukraine the war with Russia started on 20 February 2014. Israel’s approach to the Palestine issue and sustained capability building of the Hamas combined with a decline in the usually high vigil adopted by Tel Aviv implied that an escalation was inevitable it is only the form that it took that wasn’t.
The Moscow terrorist attack was also anticipated by all but the Russian security authorities who ignored the warnings internal and external such as by the United States as political messaging and strangely even by a key strategic partner Iran.
Indeed, the roots of each of these incidents go deeper denoting a strange level of strategic negligence by global as well as national intelligence committees. Focusing on the most recent strategic surprise event – the Crocus Hall terrorist attack roots of which are many but at the strategic level - the basic geopolitical divide in arriving at a common definition of terrorism – with “one man’s terrorists being another man’s freedom fighter,” as a famous saying goes is fundamental.
Thus, the august apex international organisation the United Nations has not been able to reach a consensus on definition of terrorism.
The Hamas which much of the Western world regard as a terrorist organisation is seen as a savoir of the Palestinian cause by Iran which fetes the leaders of the group as late as the last week of March this year. Inability of states to find the least common denominator for a terrorist organisation due to their national interests is providing a fillip to such groups in this age and times.
Ideological divide – religious, national, ethnic, separatist is another factor driving terrorism providing disaffected individuals a cause for waging a war on societies. The millenarian terrorist such as the Islamic State too has such a raison d’etre for causing harm to fellow humans on the specious grounds that permeate even sects within Islam what to talk of people of other faiths. The Islamic State of Khorasan [ISK] which is seen as the perpetrator of the Crocus City Hall attack even though Russia has claimed that it is Ukraine that is the sponsor has carried out a series of deadly terrorist attacks in the recent past from Kerman in Iran to Russia and Pakistan. The victims of the attack range in nationality as well as religion and sects. Indeed, the record of the outfit marks it as having the potential to launch strikes in Eurasia and South Asia if not globally.
The above factors have also led to inability of states to pursue a strategy to end terrorist movements such as the Afghan Taliban, the al Qaeda and the Islamic State even though these have been purged from time to time.
The case of the Afghan Taliban is the most illustrative as having evicted the group from Afghanistan in 2001, a return has been facilitated in two decades of one of the most expensive counter terrorist ‘war,’ waged by the US and NATO by lack of unified approach thus Pakistan facilitated the Taliban to regroup and return to power in Kabul two decades later.
Ironically Islamabad is today rueing the return with the proverbial ‘snake in the pit,’ having turned against the master as Pakistan faces a dangerous spike in terrorism in the country ironically due to facilitation by the Taliban.
However dangerously return of the Taliban is a green signal to others of its ilk especially as the ultra-conservative leadership while maintaining the façade of being against terrorist groups has provided a facilitating environment for the growth of the ISK, the al Qaeda and the Tehreek Taliban Pakistan [TTP] amongst others.
To believe that an organisation that has risen from doom on the ideology of terror to wield unrestricted power will curb the same denotes the naivete of geopolitics where perfidy of the opponent is ignored to achieve narrow national goals as is evident from the farce of the Doha Agreement between the United States and Taliban of February 2020.
The longevity of terrorist organisations as the al Qaeda and the Islamic State is evident in more ways than one. While the Islamic State was evicted from Iraq as well as much of Syria in 2019, the IS has only spawned acolytes as the Islamic State of the Khorasan and other such branches.
Indeed, the Crocus City Hall attack is a warning that global terrorism is back and we have been warned.
While the World is possibly engaged in challenges which are seen to be far more significant than that posed by the groups as the Islamic State, there is an urgent need for reinvestment globally in countering terrorism avoiding the on again, off again approach globally.
Will this happen, only time will tell, for in the hyper crisis driven world of today, as one catastrophic incident follows another management is seen as more significant than mitigation.