Bringing efficacy to multilateral efforts

India and the larger international community need to work together to bring more efficacy and agility to the CT multilateral landscape

The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) will meet in Mumbai and New Delhi on October 28-29, which is reportedly being described as a “tribute and statement” on the horrific 26/11 terror attacks in 2008. A derivative of the post-9/11 multilateral architecture, the UN CTC, comprising all 15 members of the Security Council, was established by Resolution 1373 (2001) on September 28, 2001 as the UNSC adopted this formative resolution.

The CTC meetings “analyse Member-States’ regular reports to the Committee, and follows up its analysis with responses that identify the areas in which States need to improve in order to achieve full implementation of the resolution.” The CTC Executive Directorate (CTED), a special political mission established by UN Security Council Resolution 1535, was established in 2004 to support the Committee in this work. This is the second occasion when the CTC is meeting outside the UN headquarters in New York. The CTC had held a special meeting in Madrid, Spain, in July 2015, focusing on foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs).

Beyond the diplomatic niceties, India, being a natural leader of the Global South, and the larger international community need to work together to bring more efficacy and agility to the CT multilateral landscape. Like with the issue of global warming, the fate of both the Global North and the Global South is inextricably linked in the realm of counterterrorism. In this context, we cannot ignore the fact that the current mandate and architecture of the various UN CT mandates are derivative of the developments in the Global North, and this creates a reality based on a skewed framing of issues. Long before the 9/11 attacks in the US, which re-defined the multilateral architecture of counterterrorism and the de facto definition of terrorism, and for long after it, India was a victim of some bone-chilling attacks. Indeed, only a few weeks after 9/11, the J&K Assembly building was attacked in Srinagar by three men of Jaish-e-Mohammad, an outfit that owes allegiance to the extreme version of Deobandi Islam that even the Taliban do. At least 32 persons were killed in the attack, including officials of the Assembly and Council.

The “soft launch” of the UN CTC event in India will take place in Mumbai, the site of the November 26, 2008, attack, which is an acknowledgment of the fact that the multilateral CT policymaking at the UNHQ and the realities in the Global South need to sync.

In counterterrorism, the response has to be grounded and swift. One of the themes in the upcoming CTC is the global misuse of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, in particular by terrorists, and developments in UAS deployment and use for law-enforcement and border security purposes. The UAS are now an integral part of nations’ war strategies as we are witnessing in the deployment of Turkish and Iranian drones by Ukraine and Russia, respectively, against each other. Drones are also used by non-State actors. The September 2019 drone attack on Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq refinery, the world’s largest oil refinery, is one example. Similarly, there were cross-border drone assaults drones on the UAE in January 2022, targeting its critical installations, including oil tanker trucks.

In the South Asian context, along the Indo-Pak International Border, particularly on the Indian side in Punjab and J&K, UAS are spotted regularly. In the last three years, large consignments of pistols have been dropped by UAS, and the direct consequence are the targeted assassinations in Kashmir Valley by ‘hybrid militants’. On June 27 last year, a drone dropped explosives on the Indian Air Force station in Jammu, causing injuries to two personnel. A number of projects, including in education, are trying to initiate a system that can detect drones.

However, the challenge is increasing as the UAS is proving to be a low-cost instrument to provide logistical support. This year alone, as on October 15, the Border Security Force (BSF) had reported 186 drone incursions in Punjab, 20 in Jammu and Rajasthan, and four in Gujarat, all spotted on the international border with Pakistan. They are being used to “drop arms, narcotics and fake Indian currency notes”, thus indicating a multi-dimensional socio-economic challenge.

Another CTC theme will be Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), including the internet and social media. There are several recent cases of the use of new encrypted communication tools by terrorists. One such instance came to light in the police investigation in a foiled bid to target Prime Minister Modi’s rally in J&K on April 24, 2022. As per the police, a truck driver had transported two terrorists after infiltration from Samba sector and another person had sheltered them. Before infiltrating, the alleged terrorists, who were killed, were in touch with their collaborators on the Indian side through a popular messaging app. The communication was intercepted and that enabled their detection before they could reach their hideout. There are numerous such examples in the ICT domain that directly relate to India’s ongoing CT challenges. In this connection, the ongoing global debate on introducing effective checks and balances to guard against invasions of privacy and the emergence of a surveillance state while effectively meeting the security challenge is meaningless without the Global South’s participation.

Linked to this is the recent statement of the UN Secretary-General, during his India visit, in which he reminded New Delhi that “India’s voice on the global stage can only gain authority and credibility from a strong commitment to inclusivity and respect for human rights at home.”

Apart from stressing on compliance with international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law in measures to combat terrorism, pillars 1 and 4 of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which is approved by the UN General Assembly every two years and which provides the overall rubric to the UN counterterrorism architecture and CT programming, stresses on addressing the internal triggers of violent extremism and the role of civil society in countering extremism. While these serve as normative guidelines, only a two-way conversation with a more contextual, grounded and informative exchange between the Global South and Global North can yield results.

(The writer previously managed a variety of counterterrorism projects at the UN.)