There is a tendency among people to show empathy by showing themselves to be co-victims. The Munchausen syndrome is a psychiatric disorder wherein those affected feign disease, illness or psychological trauma to draw attention and sympathy. In everyday life, it is common that when we relate a bad incident the other person shows empathy by becoming a fellow victim and saying, “Listen to what happened to me”. India is having its “listen to what happened to me” moment.
Speaking to the media, Mumbai Police joint commissioner Deven Bharti said: “Prima facie, the similarity is on the involvement of multiple targets, indiscriminate firing and use of IEDs”. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn gets into the act by cleverly insinuating that Pakistan too is a fellow victim: “Like the Mumbai attacks and the Peshawar school tragedy, there are some crimes that numb the mind for their monstrousness.” They might be equally monstrous, but there is no comparison between the two.
While it might be emotionally satisfying to see similarities beyond the scale of the carnage and the manner in which it was executed, the monstrosities perpetrated in Paris and Mumbai are entirely different.
The Mumbai attacks were state-sponsored and planned and executed by a foreign intelligence agency. It was a standoff attack mounted from the comfort and security of a foreign country. The 26/11 Mumbai attacks were minutely planned after a detailed reconnaissance of the targets for maximum impact. They were monitored and micromanaged by Pakistani professional handlers from the moment it was conceived and till the last terrorist was killed.
Let’s also be certain of this: that if 166 Indians were killed in Byculla or Matunga, it would not have captured the world’s attention the way it did. 26/11 was daring in its conception and targeted to kill as many white foreigners as possible by attacking two five-star hotels, a restaurant popular with Western backpackers and a community centre of the Israeli Chabad-Lubavitch for the followers of the orthodox Jewish Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Among the dead in Mumbai were 138 Indians (including 17 policemen and NSG commandos) and 28 foreigners. In addition, nine of the 10 attackers were killed and one was captured.
This was the almost perfect “propaganda by deed” and Vera Zasulich, who in 1875 first propounded that concept, would have approved. But it was not a jihadi attack, but an attack by a rogue state that employs terrorists to carry out its political missions. The only thing these attacks have in common is that they were mounted to shock and for a searing impact on society which, beyond saying “we are here”, does not achieve very much. Countries don’t wilt because of such attacks.
To this extent, the Mumbai and Paris attacks are alike. Against 166 killed in Mumbai, 129 people died in the Paris attacks. They become more monstrous because so many white people were killed. As Jean Paul Sartre famously wrote in his preface to Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, there are people and there are natives. In the bombing of Air India 747, Kanishka, 329 persons died. The Pan Am 747 bombing over Lockerbie took 258 lives. But the survivors of the victims were compensated and the bombers were hunted down. But the two cases were very different. The Lockerbie bombing still finds resonance while the Kanishka has just faded away.
The Peshawar attack tugs at heartstrings because so many children, were killed. The Paris attack was not by foreigners. At least five were French and the rest Belgian nationals who became what they did because of their local circumstances. The only survivor from among the attackers, Abdesalam Salah, is Belgian.
The ISIS had gone on record with its intention to punish France, after it joined the Americans in their attacks on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria in September this year. In a recent statement, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the spokesman for ISIS, called on the group’s recruits and supporters to target France and its citizens to punish Paris for its air strikes against jihadist positions in Iraq. French President Francois Hollande then stated that neither would Paris give in to militants’ blackmail nor would it negotiate with them.
Over 600 young French of Arab descent are believed to be in touch with the ISIS. Of these, around 185 have actually gone to Syria and Iraq and returned to France. Some, no doubt, determined to wage war for it. That leaves us with the question as to why do young Europe-born or resident Arabs get motivated to jihadi extremism
All the 9/11 suicide attackers were educated in Europe. The mastermind, Mohammed Atta, was born in Egypt in 1968. He was the youngest son of a lawyer and raised in a middle class suburb of Cairo. He studied at Cairo University, earning his degree in 1990. Atta then studied at the Hamburg Technical University for several years, completing his education in 1999. While a student, he travelled to Afghanistan where he trained with the Al Qaeda. Unlike Atta, the rest of the group were all Saudis, but like him were from well-to-do families who could afford to educate them in Europe. All 19 attackers were selected because they were well educated, could speak English and had experience living in the West.
To understand what happens to these people who get radicalised in Europe one must turn to French scholars like Myriam Benraad, a research fellow at the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris (CERI-Sciences Po) and the Institute for Research and Studies on the Muslim and Arab World in Aix-en Provence (IREMAM). Ms Benraad concludes that many young Arabs grow up with a feeling of stigmatisation. And as organisations like Al Qaeda and the ISIS promise to avenge all the injuries of colonialism, Palestine, Iraq and other injuries of the past, they gravitate towards it.
Unlike French Arabs who may grow up with a sense of stigmatisation, the killers who entered Mumbai from Pakistan suffered from no such immediate stigma. They were lower-class youth who joined jihad for a combination of money for the families and social status. They were victims of poverty and their extreme circumstances. To that extent they were mercenaries whose economic and social condition made them easy recruits, very unlike the attackers in Paris who were motivated by their sense of alienation.
The Paris and Peshawar attacks were counter-attacks by homegrown jihadi forces because the perceived the mother country was following policies and actions aimed at marginalising or eliminating them. India, on the other hand, is not waging a war on jihadi Islamists, within or outside. In fact, India is fairly benign when it comes to dealing with jihadis. A foreign power struck the blow at India, and we must not exculpate it by seeing similarities between Mumbai with Paris or even Peshawar.
The writer, a policy analyst studying economic and security issues, held senior positions in government and industry. He also specialises in the Chinese economy.
