GLC Policy Conclave
Session 2: Contemporary Trends in Global Terrorism
Anupam Dasgupta (AD): Terrorism as we all know is criminal violence and a lot more. Is it just criminal violence or is it somewhat different from murder and assault as we all know? So that’s a political dimension to terrorism, which makes it stand out and which makes it all the more different from other kinds of violence the criminal elements generally resort to. Terrorism is essentially political- inherently political and political terrorists resort to violence to attract attention and to communicate demands. This is what political terrorists aim at today. They try and attract attention to what they have been doing on the ground, at least by that I mean killing civilians, and trying and communicating a message to whosoever is really the target audience. And at the same time, they use violence as communication. So terrorism is violence as communication as well. Which is why it’s so complex to understand.
So let’s go to the subject and let’s start- let’s begin with Dr. Mandhyan. Mr. Mandhyan has been on the ground in the Balkans, in the Middle East. He’s had huge experience. As we were discussing before this session, he will be giving us an insight into how things happen on the ground when these guys, the so-called criminal guys unleash violence on civilians, when populations are displaced from one part of the country to the other. He has served in the Balkans, one of the perennially troubled regions on the face of the Earth, as well as in the Middle East. He has served in Iraq. So Sir if I may ask you, please share with us a bit of what you had been going through all the while you have been on the ground in the Balkans, in the Middle East, especially Iraq- what had gone so wrong in the Balkans?
Kishore Mandhyan (KD): First of all I would like to thank Gateway House for this wonderful seminar in my former college. I’ll tell you this was not a possibility in such a professional manner in the time I was here. So I think in many ways, although we see the English channels in the evening, which give us a sense of pessimism, the world moves forward, you are moving forward, India is moving forward. So thank you very much. The last time I was in this hall was in 1969. It was an inter-collegiate debate, I was representing Jai Hind College. Guess who was one of the debators here- he is no more, a wonderful man, Goolam Vahanvati. So we remember him, and salute to him- a wonderful lawyer, from this city, and a wonderful alumnus of the university.
Now, the question that you have asked me, is broadly about violence and particularly about terrorism. When people ask me why did you join the United Nations, and after having served in it for 20 years, and been a student of physics, the social sciences and the humanities, I must say that dealing with the physics of violence was far more difficult than dealing with the physics of particles. We have to recognise that. Because the discreet particles are measurable to a large extent- unless you think of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. But the atoms of society, human beings, are uncertain, unpredictable, volatile. And therefore the engineering of society is perhaps more difficult than rocket science. That’s one thing you begin to hear. Second, I was in the ex-Yugoslavia in the 90s where warfare was conventional, then I was subsequently in the Middle East, and certain parts of Africa- Somalia, and then to Iraq, where the violence had transformed into asymmetric violence through the role of non-state actors. So there’s been a tremendous change in the work which the UN does, between that time, in the short span of about 15-20 years and the challenges are very different.
Now, it’s quite interesting, and it will take a long time to explain what went wrong in the former Yugoslavia. But it was complex- about four or five factors, which are relevant in any conflict. Politics, a declining economy, lack of institutions, an environment which suddenly becomes unfavorable, for example the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the de-legitimisation of socialist agendas. And so, when you put all of that together, and then a predatory environment, you have a situation in which certain powers can take advantage. And certain internal forces, which have been repressed, can also take advantage. Now it was mainly conventional warfare, but one of the things- because I was in charge of all the four protected areas, which fell under UN governance in the ex-Yugoslavia in the early 90s. And I noticed that while one community was flushing out another community, whether it was Bosniac Muslims or whether it was Serbs, Orthodox Christians, or whether it was Catholics, the Croats- one thing that has not happened there which was beginning to happen in other parts of the world, despite the fact that they moved very short distances and they can see their houses which they left behind. They can see the places of massacre which they left behind. But there’s not been a single terrorist incident, and you have to ask why. I don’t have an answer. But this is something which sociologists, anthropologists will have to look at in the coming years.
Now, in other places- yesterday is milling history today. The legacy of the past is the burden of the present. And that is the case in Iraq. In Iraq what you have seen is essentially a society, which has been traumatised for 30-35 years. Starting with a coup d’état which brought Saddam to power, the tribalisation of power moving from party institutions of the Ba’ath party to the personalisation of power and the brutal repression of dissent. You then had a 10 year Iran-Iraq war, which created 1 million widows. A result of that was that a lot of young men and women grew up without fathers in extreme poverty conditions. This was followed by the First Gulf War, which shattered Iraq, and led to Sunni-Shi’a competition and number two, the repression of the Shi’as in Iraq in the Southern parts of the country. Subsequently you have the UN Oil for Food Program in which there were sanctions against Iraq to limit the reach of Saddam Hussein. And what that created was an extremely poor society. It had terrible collateral effects on young children, who are today young men and women. And that itself created an environment of alienation and subjugation and a political terrain, and an economic terrain and a human terrain to be exploited by predators from outside. So as a consequence of that, when you had a situation- when the weapons of mass destruction issue came up in 2001, and you had the bombing of Iraq, and you had a situation in which there was a pulverisation of society which was already pulverised- you had that terrain ready to be exploited.
And it is in that context that the United Nations went in to deal with militancy, which ranged from what we can call conventional warfare, to an insurgency and then to asymmetric warfare. Who were part of these is a very interesting issue. One of the first things that Saddam did just before falling- he had released 10,000 prisoners and gave them arms. Hardened criminals from the prisons of Iraq. The second thing that happened is that a lot of dissatisfied elements of the Ba’ath party who are Saddamists, former Generals, former Ba’ath party members, were given arms. And they disappeared because they expected the Shi’a regime protected by the West to be anti-Sunni. Number three is 10,000 detainees were taken into custody under equivalent regulations or worse regulations than the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in India or the MISA. And they were held in prison for a long time. You all have heard the word Abu Ghraib and that itself created an environment that was very atmospheric. Then you went to the issue of basically compounding all of this, by the first administration under conflict of the United States with the multinational brigades. And what they did was they dissolved the Iraqi army. They dissolved the command structures and as a result, you had the dissipation of whatever control you had. When you add all of this up, you had the basis for terror. And particularly in the Sunni areas of Al Anbar, Nineveh Province and Saladin Province in the North, and Western parts of Iraq which adjoined Syria and parts of Northern Kyrgystan, Kurdistan, you have for example the first template before the Syrian drama begins. And that’s what led to it. I’ll stop there and then we can take questions later.
AD: Right. Before I switch to Sameer, let me quickly make a few points here. Terrorism is a very evolved threat as it stands today. And terrorist groups per say are very clear cut entities. They have a clear-cut composition, structure, they have an ideological problem and they have very defined leadership. So as Dr. Mandhyan was saying, for some mysterious reason whatsoever, the Balkans did not yield or export terrorism, which eventually the Middle East did. The Middle East still remains the largest exporter of hardcore terrorist incidents- intra-region and outside of the region. So let me now quickly switch to Sameer. Sameer, if I may ask you a bit about what we mean essentially when we say sources for terrorist groups. The sources of funding- as we know, some of these organisations are acting through corporate houses, corporate business houses etc. So where exactly do we stand when we talk about how do these entities generate funds and keep the midnight oil burning?
Sameer Patil (SP): Before I dwell on that subject, I just want to talk about two broad trends in global terrorism today. One is – there has been an evolution of terrorist violence from the organised groups to what we call as rogue groups. They are also called freelance terrorists or ‘do-it-yourself’ terrorists, DIY jihadis. And these are the people who are self radicalised – they watch videos on YouTube and the internet, radicalise themselves and then decide to carry out violent acts. And these are the people who pose the biggest challenge now to security agencies, because unlike the organised terror group, they don’t have that much external support and therefore they want to remain discreet in their activities. Which means that the security agencies have difficulties in tracking them and tracing them.
The other broad trend that I’d like to talk about is the extensive use of the internet and social media. Now we know that most of the terrorist groups today are internet savvy. In fact, gone are those days when a typical terrorist would be a person going to a religious *unclear*. In fact now most of today’s terrorists come from at least some background in information technology. And we have seen quite a few instances where the internet has been used in terms of recruiting new people, as we have seen in some examples, in Jammu and Kashmir. And also in terms of collecting and sending information on possible targets and carrying out the attacks. In fact one of the key directives of the Al Qaeda to new recruits is that 80-90% of the information pertaining to the planning of the attack can be done on the internet. And it’s only 20% of the information which really requires to have a physical presence near the target and that kind of thing. Of course, as I said, Islamic State uses its Twitter and Facebook as well as Youtube, for spreading its message. Because publicity acts as a kind of oxygen for the terrorist groups.
Now coming to this question of terror financing. These are the sources which actually differ from for instance the groups which are operating in South America. Drug smuggling constitutes the biggest source of funding for these groups. So is the case for groups operating in the Pakistan, Afghanistan area. But over the Middle East, for the terrorist groups, religious charity donations and in fact collections, which are done after the Friday prayers, constitute the biggest source in terms of the funding. In fact we have quite a few instances where Pakistan based terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, using functions like post Friday prayers or at least Eid to gather the funds. *unclear* We’ve also seen some instances in the case of the Pakistani Taliban, where they engage in illegal activities- smuggling of timber, say, and they get funding from there. And as you said, the Northeast. Extortion constitutes the biggest source of funding for these groups. In fact they have established a parallel taxation structure to the government. And of course – the Islamic State. There are multiple reports which do suggest that the Islamic State is in fact using the oil from the oil pits in the territory that it controls in Iraq and Syria, to fund its activities. And in fact there is also a report from the BBC, which says that at least $2 billion are in the kitty of the Islamic State, which it has collected from the sale of oil in the black market. So those are the given sources of funding for the terrorists.
AD: Thank you Sameer, for enlightening us on the sources of funding for terror groups. Let me ask Dr. Mandhyan, if we go to the next issue at hand, the issue of the media coverage. Brian Jenkins had long back, quite famously said that the terrorists do not want many dead, but they want many watching. So this is where we stand today. I myself had been on the ground during the 26/11 attacks, outside the Taj, stationed for all three days at a stretch. So it was a spectacle right before our eyes. It was there for all of us to see- the enormity of it, the scope of the attack, the audacity of the attack, and what the terrorists eventually ended up communicating in terms of their demands and objectives. So if I may ask Dr. Mandhyan- you have been in the Balkans, you have been in the Middle East. How different are they? How different is the European media, or the media elsewhere when it comes to covering a particular terrorist incident? It may not be of the scope and enormity of 26/11, but nonetheless, a hardcore, classic act of terror.
KM: I think when you look at media, you don’t have to look at it as a monolith today. Media is a system. It can manufacture consent, it can manufacture dissent. And if you have a very pluralistic media, depending upon how educated your population is, and how educated your journalists are, and how open or closed your system is, you will get a particular perception of any event – whether it’s terrorism, an institution or a process. No doubt we live in a sensationalist world, where most media have one common denominator. That is, they try to raise their TRPs. We also have concentration of media sources. Actually 90% of the news that you get- print, radio and television, comes from 3 sources – Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press. And then depends on who picks it up, it’s given a different spin. That depends on what kind of education both your audience and journalists have. Do they do a 360? Are they educated in a multi-disciplinary way? Do they have enough on the ground? Is there a critical discourse? Is there an alternative narrative and paradigm? And I must say that today, most societies lack it. Ours is one of the worst, despite the fact that we have the best resources and the best minds.
However, having said that, when we look, for example, at alternatives in Europe. You have Euro News which is much more modest, but it’s not that watched. You have, for example, the International Herald Tribune which carries perspectives from the Le Monde, the New York Times, and then it provides its own particular perspective. You have the National Public Radio, although it is funded by the public, taking very alternative positions in the United States of America. So there is an alternative perspective. But yet in America, you can get a Donald Trump. But at the same time while you’re getting a Donald Trump, you’re getting a Bernie Sanders. So that is a very interesting situation. How is it that a man who is a socialist, comes from a small state, Vermont in the North, and who is virtually anti-establishment but a longstanding senator, is able to beat Hilary Clinton, who has had more exposure, and is a person in a world which is looking for a feminist president? So I think the answer is quite complex. Noam Chomsky has written a lot on this but I think it’s a bit one-sided. And I think we really have to think about it.
Now for example, in the country in which I was, Iraq, the Arabic press inside the country was pretty much controlled by the dispensation which came to power. The Arabic press outside the country, for example Al Hayat, or the Daily Star in Lebanon, or the Gulf newspapers, Al Khaleej and others – these were to some extent quite balanced, but they are also controlled by Sunni forces. So it’s not so much depending upon how the news is covered but how it is read. And that is the greatest challenge that you have as students. How do you do a 360? And you can go into great detail of this, but I think what the United Nations tries to do- and even to deal- to sensitise my own officers. My Arab officers would be *unclear*- if he or she was a Sunni, to report from a Sunni perspective. The Shi’a officer would report from a Shi’a perspective. Everybody would remember their history, even though they had PHDs from Stanford and Harvard or wherever it might be. So it takes a tremendous sense of reflection to empty your cup, make yourself a zero, so you can be at infinity and look at the world like a judge should, like Solomon. So I’ll stop there.
AD: Right, wonderfully explained. My experience tells me that it’s quite a tough task – covering or reporting a live terrorist attack- which eventually we were exposed to during the 26/11 attacks. There are certain issues, which Dr. Mandhyan was referring to, which journalists need to tackle with a lot of sensitivity. There were instances during 26/11 when certain sections of the media ended up revealing the strategies of our own special forces, which eventually ended up aiding our enemies – Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists – which were on the ground. They were controlled by their handlers sitting miles away in Karachi, in Pakistan. So there are several lines here which we need to not cross and which we would rather refrain from crossing. But again, at the end of the day, it’s the media resonance which these criminal, terrorist elements – the fundamentalist jihadis- seek and often end up exploiting. Because killing is just- the physical results are just one part and parcel of the total gain. What they end up doing is they skillfully work up dread and instill and exploit fear to their own advantages. And by that they end up targeting the government issue.
If I may ask Sameer to comment a bit on this issue of the sensationalist coverage of the media. Because the media has often been accused of sensationalism, which often is a euphemism for revealing what your own special forces are up to when it comes to catching criminal elements on the ground, which is precisely what had happened during 26/11.
SP: I think that as Mandhyan sir said, the media is a double edged sword. On the one hand, if it gives too much information to the terrorist groups, that works as a disadvantage. But in a sense the media is also necessary to project the kind of image that you want to project. Therefore it’s necessary that the government at least – if not restrict their coverage, then at least issue proper guidelines. That’s I think what exactly happened in 26/11, when they were asked to delay the live feed so as to not pass on the latest information into the hands of the terrorists who are monitoring each and every move of the security forces.
KM: I think in India, there is a new form of journalism emerging slowly. When you look at the magazine Caravan, you look at some of the weekly magazines and you look at some of the coverages on the Op-Ed pages, they have become increasingly pluralistic. But there is another very interesting dimension, which is logistical in covering it. Which most journalists, particularly the hardships that they face on the ground, have to be brought into consideration on what scope they have to cover the real thing. Now for example, I had bodyguards, helicopters, armored vehicles to carry out the negotiations, to determine the facts etc. which most journalists don’t get. That is a genuine constraint. They don’t know who you represent. The United Nations goes under a banner of impartiality under a Security Council resolution. But even it has become a target. When we got blown up in Iraq, we’ve got blown up elsewhere. You can imagine what the journalist profession faces to get the facts right on the ground. But let me give you one or two very quick examples of the restrictions that coverage faces. For example, we were cloistered in the green zone in Iraq, in the area where Saddam’s palaces were. To go out and negotiate meant that somebody had to go and do a recce for 2 days, ensure that every road was cleared and there were helicopters hovering over us, tanks around us. But if you go and negotiate like that, who will trust you when you go there. So that’s a very fundamental issue. So the restriction of movement itself creates its own problems. The second is that in these kind of situations, the elite changes very fast. The decision makers are not visible, so you never know who are you really talking to. And I can give you some very interesting stories if we have time, but there are some real logistical constraints as to the kind of information you get, the kind of decision makers you meet, both within and outside the government, the spin which different states from embassies are giving on the ground. Is this a rumour, is this a report, is this news item 0% muscle, 20% cartilage and 80% fat? It’s very difficult, in real time, to analyse that. And so you have to have very sharp analysts, who are multidisciplinary- I come back to the whole thing, and try to put this together.
AD: The oxygen of publicity is what Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, had famously said, of course in a different context. But this is exactly what the terrorists end up exploiting. The oxygen of publicity. They cannot survive and thrive without the media. And also the media takes great pride in covering or reporting on a live incident. It may not be live all the while, but nonetheless, terrorist attacks.
Now, let’s move on to the business of terrorism. Terrorism is a business like any other business for that matter. Every terrorist group is a business enterprise. So how do they eventually end up running their businesses? So they do it with the help of a lot of tools at their disposal. One such tool is the darknet, where you tweak with algorithms and you eventually disappear. You ensure that you are not noticed because secrecy is something which these groups and the terrorist criminals cannot afford to sacrifice.
SP: It is a very interesting phenomenon – what is the darknet, what is also called the deep web. So there are certain technologies which are out there in the market today which allow you to hide the IP address of your computer. Imagine if you can hide your IP address and be anonymous on the internet, what will you do? So the terrorist groups basically misuse this technology to carry out their activities. That’s why it’s also called the underworld of the cyber-world. In fact there is one estimate which says that the internet that we see is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s just 10% of the whole internet traffic. 90% of the internet traffic is what we don’t see at all. And that’s what we mean by the darknet or the deep web. Some data which is associated with this – in 2001, one of the studies in the United States had said that around 7500 terabytes of information was in the domain of the darknet, whereas only 90 terabytes of information was there on the surface internet – what we see as Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. And that was in 2001. So you can imagine, what is the percentage in terms of the data.
So you need a special software to access some of these sites on the deep web. But the deep web is basically used to sell a lot of goods and services which otherwise you would not be able to get in the physical market. So for instance – stolen personal data, credit card information, viruses and malicious softwares, weapons as well as drugs which you cannot buy in the physical black market. And in fact, what makes darknet even more interesting is the services that it offers. Services like drug peddling, money laundering and also contract killing are all services which are sold openly on the darknet. So for any terrorist group which is always looking at newer and newer technologies to support their activities, the darknet is really the fundamental means by which they can expand their activities. We have already seen some instances of- for instance the Islamic State trying to use bitcoins, which is the currency you use in the darknet, to support their terrorist activities.
AD: Quick supplementary question, if I may ask Sameer. Sameer, you have been a part of the National Security bureaucracy, you have been a member of the National Security Council Secretariat. So how effectively do you think we can, at this point in time tackle online threats and how could we ensure virtual policing is adequately carried out?
SP: Most of you are law students, so you will understand that when it comes to regulating the online area, what concerns most of the people or the users, is the issue of privacy. And India does not have a complex privacy legislation. What it does have is a combination of laws dating back from the 19th century, to the IT ACT which they submitted in 2008. So that’s one of the biggest handicaps when it comes to regulating the online area and social media and all that.
But going beyond that, some of the security agencies have put in place systems to monitor the social media space – what we call as a social media labs which have been set up by the police departments. Also the government has brought in the national cyber security policy. The problem, apart from not having a comprehensive legislation is that most of the policymakers are not digital savvy. So they really don’t understand these intricate issues related to the cyber world. They can operate computers, but then that’s the most in terms of their digital literacy. It really requires technical people and the legal professionals to make sense of what is happening in the cyber world and then allow that understanding to percolate to the policymakers. So we are taking certain steps in countering these supposed threats, but we have to really get our act together because the terrorist groups are always one step ahead of us.
AD: Right, understanding your enemy. Understanding it better. Mr. Mandhyan?
KM: Yes, I think if I can bring two or three interesting examples from the ground to your attention. I think they will illustrate the complexities on the ground. Say for example, in Somalia, the United Nations is delivering humanitarian assistance to the World Food Program, to the areas which are under the control of the Al Shabaab. There is always a debate that delivery of humanitarian assistance to those who are in need is fundamental regardless whether it is going in areas controlled by terrorists or not. Well the political side of the house will say it should not, because it would be abused, it would be misused. And this is an ongoing debate. Why is it so? Because very often the assistance is appropriated and sold and used and leveraged to control the local population. So that is one.
The second is there is a debate whether the UN Political Office, in any mission dealing with asymmetrical violence, should be given money to buy off people on the ground. A special hidden budget. And obviously a formal institution cannot do it. But if you look at the Brahimi report, and the more recent high level panel report looking at these issues in light of the UN support of a logistical mission in Mali, which is fighting Al Qaeda and a forced intervention brigade in the Eastern Congo, which is supporting actions against the rape of women and young girls, against the entering via militia from Rwanda in the Congo borders. I think these are issues which will have to come up, whether the UN, which has not been associated with intelligence, should begin to be associated with intelligence on the ground or not.
AD: Very strong point. Coming to the last leg of our discussion. We talk a bit about the involvement of the state sponsors. Terrorism is sub-state as well as it entails the hardcore involvement of countries. The countries who are sponsors of terrorist groups, of incidents, because behind every terrorist incident, there is a huge amount of planning. And when we talk of planning, we come to the involvement of countries – we can end up talking about regions. So if I may again quickly switch to Sameer and ask him – we often blame Pakistan for all that’s happening inside our country. We say Indian Mujahideen is drawing sustenance from Pakistan. The Lashkar-e-Taiba is your group. The Hizbul Mujahideen, although a domestic organisation, looks to Pakistan when it comes to eliciting support. Jaish-e-Mohammed is again your child. So whenever we have a blast here, we shift our attention to Pakistan and say you are squarely to blame. So where do we stand? Is it just this random blaming? And how effective could a proper dialogue mechanism be? We talk of track II, we talk of an effective dialogue- the National Security Advisor level talks fell through because of the mutual blame game as we call it. So where do we stand? How do we take this forward?
SP: I would like to disagree in terms of whether it is random blaming. It’s not, because over the years we have gathered quite credible evidence in terms of Pakistan’s involvement. When I was in the National Security Council I used to personally track, as a part of my job duties, in what manner Pakistan’s involvement is affecting the terrorist activities. And the second thing that I would like to state here is that in Jammu and Kashmir, where we often see, in terms of the encounters of the army on the border, in terms of the militants crossing the border and coming into the Kashmir valley – there are quite a few instances where I have seen the Pakistani army unit across the border, guiding the militant groups, coming into the Indian territory, saying if you go five feet ahead, there is an Indian army force, so you should avoid that and take an alternative route. There have also been instances of covering fire for these militant groups when they are crossing. And plus, in particular there have been- when they cross the border, there have been feeding in their phones *unclear* of where to go, so as not to get lost in the Kashmir Valley.
So there have been quite a few instances where we have seen that kind of involvement. So that’s very credible evidence. When for instance, Pakistan accuses us of fomenting instability or terrorist activities in India, India’s first reaction has most of the time been denial. But now that response has matured and we have said that just as the way we have presented evidence, please present us the evidence in what manner India is responsible. And on that front Pakistan has failed. Because Pakistan has not been able to give that credible evidence. When I say credible evidence I mean it can withstand the scrutiny in any international court or in the domestic judicial institutions. So it’s not just random blaming.
AD: Lovely, very well put Sameer. If I may quickly switch to Dr. Mandhyan – beyond security cooperation between countries, beyond the initial framework of counterterrorism cooperation, how do we best respond to the current terrorist threat?
KM: I think that’s the fundamental question. That is the fundamental question. We have 194 states- out of that there are only 25 real states. The rest of the states in the world are not sovereign in a real sense of the term. They are only nominally sovereign. And in many states you will see state collapse and state failure during your lifetime. Those states become recipes for the export of terrorism. Global unemployment and of course, human rights violations and lack of expression in the non-democratic societies will contribute to the supply of alienation. So creating stability on the ground, creating pluralistic societies, ensuring freedom of expression will restrict that. Now to pre-empt that export, what has increasingly begun to happen is that there are two programs the United Nations, which it was traditionally not supposed to actually make part of its program, are being increasingly incorporated into- but very carefully incorporated into Security Council mandates everywhere. One is trafficking, second is organised crime, the third is drugs. Because those are the mechanisms through which, or instruments through which the funding takes place, which sustains this. So both the supply, the constraint, and then the potential demand for them by trying to create societies which are stable through international multilateral action, and also other forms, is the way out. And increasingly, Security Council mandates are trying to incorporate them.
But I think in bilateral relationships, for example in the question of Pakistan, I think our long term objective should be- while they are dealing with the tactics of tit for tat as they go on- is the normalisation of relations, a prosperous, stable, democratic, broad-based, de-centralised, or however they want it, a federal Pakistan is to the advantage of the region, it is to the advantage of India, and it is to the advantage of basically peace and security in the world.
AD: Thank you Mr. Mandhyan, very valid points. With that we come to the end of our discussion.
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