Pranab's caution in battle against terror

On a day when Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Muslim clerics to urge them to play a greater role to prevent radicalisation of the youth, President Pranab Mukherjee made an appeal for steps to prevent fragmentation of society to fight terrorism.

Mukherjee, who inaugurated a counter terrorism conference in Jaipur, said while “counter terrorism” is generally considered to be about tactics, weapons, force levels and intelligence gathering, “We cannot also forget the fact that civil society is both the frontier and the battleground which has to be protected and saved.”

Fragmentation of civil society, rather than its consolidation, is not a wise strategy, he said. “The former course leads to radicalisation, which thereafter leads to competitive violence. Think tanks and civil society organisations have a larger role to play in this process of social integration,” the President said.

Mukherjee, who spoke in the presence of Afghan Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, said an important aspect of counter-terrorism strategy is capacity building to prevent attacks through intelligence collection and collation, development of technological capabilities, raising of Special Forces and enactment of special laws.