Friday, February 08, 2008

The Blame Game

Sadanand Dhume wrote that "An increasingly radicalized neighborhood, fragmented domestic politics and a curiously timid mainstream discourse on Islam add up to hobble India's response to radical Islamic intimidation."

Here are two examples how fragmented domestic politics hobbles India's effectiveness in fighting terrorism:

From Naxal Terror Watch, which in turn found this article through Offstumped, comes this commentary Make Terror Victims the face of Anti-Terrorism Campaign, which criticizes the efforts of Congress and the BJP to prove that the other party has the worse record on fighting terrorism. The article argues:

By making the voice of the Terror Victims and the voice of those brave women and men in uniform who shed their lives fighting terrorism the Anti-Terrorism Campaign will not just have tremendous credibility but it would frame the public debate in the right terms.

This article Maya’s Intelligence Quotient from Hard News indicates that while there was advance knowledge of the terrorist attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur, the Uttar Pradesh government headed by Chief Minister Mayawati claimed that it had not received intelligence from the Centre. It also reveals other gaps in the state intelligence network. The article closes with this question:

If [terrorists] can attack a CRPF camp and get away, what is the fate of ordinary people?

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