NEW DELHI: Policy Perspectives Foundation (PPF), a Delhi based think-tank, organized a two-day international seminar on “Indo-UAE Cooperation against Radicalization and Terrorism: Addressing Root Causes and Providing Security” at India International Centre, New Delhi on December 6-7, 2018.
Radicalization and terrorism – whether religious, political or ethnic – its violent legacy is taking a heavy toll on humanity and poses one of the biggest challenges to an orderly and civilized society. States across the globe (developed or underdeveloped, religious or secular, democratic or non-democratic) are responding to this challenge in a multitude of ways but with limited strategic success so far.
The overall approach has been on destroying the ‘hard aspect’ of ‘selective’ terrorist organization such as ISIS and Al-Qaida. Over the years, the effort did result in weakening the logistical support including leadership and choking of their financial sources but without eradicating the ideological sources of such terrorist organization. The strategic thinking of counter- terror and counter-radicalization and praxis has not moved beyond the paradigm of ‘Good Muslim vs Bad Muslim’ or ‘Good Taliban vs Bad Taliban’, considering the fact Muslims are currently at the centre of radicalization. This approach has its limitation in addressing and thus eradicating the complexity of radicalization and terrorism.
The two-day international seminar explored India’s and UAE’s understanding of the process of phenomenon of radicalization and terrorism with a view to see whether they offer a new perspective with possible solution to these interlinked issues. UAE has contributed immensely to counter terrorism through the creation of HEDAYAH, a Global Counter Terrorism Forum, and in the activities of the Sawab Centre.
Both the UAE and India have been fortunate in not having its citizens being active participants in global terrorism. Thus, from this point of view, one aspect of this seminar was to explore the ‘mode of governance’ of the UAE and India that has contributed to ensuring citizens do not feel alienated or marginalized – often the root cause of development of radicalization and terrorism.
Radicalization and terrorism begets with the development of a ‘politicized other’, applicable to both State actor and non-State actor. Therefore, any ideological State inherently contains the seed of the radicalization and terrorism and also influences the non-State actor in the same direction.
Both India and UAE shares neighborhood that has ideological State. Therefore, both India and UAE should forge strong political-bilateral relations and act together at global level in isolating such ideological States. A second focus of this seminar was, therefore, to identify policy measures and steps that strengthen the relationship between India and UAE and help them together in isolating such ideological State.
India has been victims of terrorism, often in the form of cross border terrorism and also due to low scale home grown terrorism. The UAE has so far escaped any major terrorist attack, even though it faces high risk of terrorism from surrounding neighborhood. The UAE is the second largest trading partner of India and a major source of investment and remittances for India. UAE is the top most country in conceding India’s request to extradite the listed potential terrorists. Both have a vital role and stake in maintaining each other stability and growth. From this point of view, the seminar also explored the various facet of co-operation between India and UAE in the field of counter radicalization and counter terrorism.
Various sessions of the seminar was chaired by Asif Ibrahim (Former Spl Envoy of GoI for Counter Terrorism), Prof. Ebtesam Al Ketbi, Shahjahan Madampatt and Amb. Rajiv Dogra. Noted speakers included Prof. Sophia Pandya (Chair, Religious Studies, California University), Anju Gupta (Addl. DG Police UP), Dr. Shanthie D’Souza (President, Mantraya, Goa), Prof Anwar Alam (PPF), Dr. Sanjay Baru (Former Media Advisor to Prime Minister of India),K P Nayar (Commentator on Strategic Affairs), Sanjeev Tripathi (Former Secretary, Govt. of India), Maya Mirchandani (Analyst) and Qamar Agha (Journalist and Analyst).
