COUNTER TERROR DIPLOMACY – INTERNATIONAL

COUNTER TERROR DIPLOMACY – INTERNATIONAL

News: ‘No consensus’ is derailing counter-terror diplomacy

Context of the Editorial:

UNSC- Counter-Terrorism Committee (Delhi Declaration):

●       Adopted the Delhi Declarationon countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes.

Three themes:

●       Continue working on recommendations on the three themes of the Special meeting.

a.       Terrorism financing

b.      Cyberthreats

c.       Use of drones. 

Non-binding principles:

●       Develop a set of non-binding guiding principles to assist member states to counter the threat posed by the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes. 

Aim:

●       Cover the main concerns surrounding the abuse of drones, social media platforms, and crowdfunding.

●       Create guidelines that will help to tackle the growing issue.

Challenges:

Challenges in front of India regarding the creation of consensus among the nations against the terrorism.

1) Narrow down of Global war on terrorism:

●       Global War On Terrorism (GWOT), as it was conceived by a post-9/11 United States is over with the last chapter written last year, as the United States negotiated with the Taliban, and then withdrew from Afghanistan.

2) Geopolitical issues ended in non- cooperative action against terrorism:

●       China is using it's veto power in designation of terrorists. For example, the UNSC designations of those who threatened India the most, including Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed.

3) Syndrome of "another country's problem":

●       The weak international reaction to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, and its persecution of women and minorities in the country, demonstrate rising fatigue levels in dealing with “another country’s problems”.

4) Lack of consensus in the definition of terrorism:

  1. The growing global polarisation over the Russia-Ukraine war is not only shifting the focus from terrorism but is also blurring the lines on what constitutes terrorism. The CTC meeting in Delhi, for example, was disrupted over Russia’s claims that the U.K. helped Ukraine launch drone attacks on Russia’s naval fleet in Sevastopol. The question remains: if drone attacks by Yemeni Houthis on the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure were condemned as terrorist attacks, why was the line drawn for drone attacks on Russian ships in a port used for loading grain, or a bridge bombing that put so many civilian lives at risk?
  2. The implications of the absence of a universal definition of terrorism for legal purposes are wide-ranging. One is that the lack of a definition may faciliate the politicization and misuse of the term "terrorism" to curb non-terrorist (or sometimes even non-criminal) activities. In turn, this can result in States, e.g., violating the rights of their own or other States' citizens, such as those of international human rights law, in the course of their counter-terrorism efforts.

5) Emerging technology strengthens terrorism:

      Emerging technologies and the weaponisation of a number of different mechanisms for terrorism purposes.

  1. Drones are already being used to deliver funds, drugs, weapons, ammunition and even improvised explosive devices.
  2. After the COVID-19 pandemic, worries have grown about the use of biowarfare, and Gain-of-Function (GoF) research to mutate viruses and vectors which could be released into targeted populations.
  3. In a future that is already here, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and robotic soldiers makes it even easier to perpetrate mass attacks while maintaining anonymity.
  4. Terror financing uses bitcoins and cryptocurrency.
  5. Terror communications and propagation of ideologies, to radicalize people across the world, use social media, the dark web and even gaming centers. Examples of lone-wolf attacks in European countries showed the seriousness of this phenomenon.

WAY FORWARD:

●       Consensus on defining terrorism: Without some consensus on what constitutes terror, no war on terrorism can be truly global.

●       The need to move forward on India’s proposal, of 1996, of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT).

●       India, as host of these counter-terrorism events, and of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the next G-20, must stop fighting the “last war” on terrorism, and steer the global narrative towards preparing for the next ones.