LT. GEN. BIPIN RAWAT: A CHANGE IN ASIA’S NUCLEAR PARADIGM?

Yashaswi Bagga

On the seventeenth of December, 2016, the Indian government designated Lt. Gen. Bipin Rawat as the new Chief of Army Staff, the most senior position in the Indian Army. The appointment itself was controversial, and since it was announced Lt. Gen. Rawat has already made a series of pronouncements which are of immense interest. One of the most important of these was the first official recognition of the existence of the Cold Start doctrine which is a strategy regarding rapid and small-scale war with Pakistan that has been more-or-less accepted to exist for over a decade. 

While it may have been drowned out by the noise over Trump’s inauguration and the surrounding protests, not to mention the Syrian conflict and the associated refugee crisis, this was a significant appointment, not just for India, but also for Asia as a whole. It may have significant consequences for Sino-Indian and India-Pakistan relations and hence on the stability of the Asian Subcontinent. The importance of the appointment stems from three reasons.

The first is that this appointment offers a unique opportunity to understand the approach of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to India’s often conflict-ridden civil and military relations with India and China. A primer to these:

 The BJP, whose electoral appeal and ideology are centred to large extents around a more aggressive nationalism, is known for its relatively hardline stance on these conflicts, especially on ending Pakistani state-sponsored terrorism. One of the justifications given for the recent withdrawal of high-value notes was that these were faked and put into circulation from Pakistan in order to weaken the Indian economy, and to fund terrorism.

Initially, after coming to power in 2014, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi made several efforts to improve relations with Pakistan, including a highly publicized visit to the his opposing number on the Pakistani side, Nawaz Sharif, on his birthday. However, there were several terrorist attacks in 2016, including the Pathankot attack in January and the Uri attack in September, both on military bases. The latter was especially significant, being on a base that is placed within the controversial territory of Jammu and Kashmir, contested territory (including Chinese claims to some parts) since the two countries attained Independence in 1947. After this, relations fell apart, as they have rather depressingly tended to. This tendency was enhanced by the BJP’s more aggressive ideology itself, and political and electoral compulsions to keep its core demographic happy. In his speech on August 15th, India’s Independence Day, PM Modi upped the ante by indirectly thanking the people of Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for their support. Balochistan is a region in Pakistan, which has long had movements for autonomy and even Independence. This statement was widely seen as support for these independence movements, and elicited angry reactions from Pakistan, which described them as evidence that India had been supporting these movements in order to weaken Pakistan. Pakistan has since responded by increasing their statements in condemnation of Indian actions in Kashmir.

After the Uri attack in September, India launched a cross-border strike on terrorist camps based in Pakistan. These camps were considered to be staging camps for militant preparing to infiltrate India, and to exist with the complicity, if not support, of the Pakistani authorities. The strikes were seen as a departure from a usually more cautious approach to the use of direct military action, which resulted from hesitance to escalate conflict between two nuclear powers. It was also often considered that this reluctance used to use force was seen as a carte blanche by the considerably more aggressive, impulsive, and military-dominated Pakistani establishment.  The so-called ‘surgical strikes’ were greeted with considerable enthusiasm by the Indian public.

However, this was all only a direct function of the politicians heading the government. The opportunity to appoint a new Army Chief after the scheduled retirement of the previous one gave the BJP a chance to directly influence the military through its choice.

Secondly, the controversy surrounding the appointment also holds valuable information. In the Indian military, such appointments are done on the basis of seniority, i.e. length of service. However, in this case, two senior personnel were superseded. This is a rarity; the last time it happened was in 1983. The appointment of the new Chief of Air Staff followed this principle. This led to protests by opposition parties, who accused the government of politicizing the military. Due to the government’s willingness to weather this opprobrium, which they surely knew had to come, we have reason to believe that the government specifically wanted Lt. Gen. Rawat, and nobody else. This indicates that this appointment is not a mere formality, and will have tangible effects.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the statements made by Lt. Gen. Rawat give us reason to pay attention to him.

Immediately after his appointment, he said that the Army would not "shy away from flexing its muscles, if the need be", indicating the possibility of a more proactive army. While this could be passed off as a rather generic statement holding no new information, it was the Chief’s comments regarding Cold Start doctrine that are the most significant, and may mark a shift in Indian attitudes to both, preventing and engaging in conflict, along with a willingness on the part of the government to square up to both, Pakistan, and the flipside of the coin, a possible increase in the likelihood of nuclear war. He said in an interview with India Today, that ‘’The Cold Start doctrine exists for conventional military operations.’’

What is the Cold Start doctrine? It originated in 2001, when the Indian Parliament was attacked by Islamist terrorists, from groups believed to be supported, if not funded, by Pakistan. India initiated a full mobilization along the border. However, this mobilization took a whole month, and illustrated the weakness of India’s strategic practices, which were obsolete and based around the concept of large 'holding corps', intended to halt hostile advances. It was slow and insufficient for offensive purposes, especially because the possibility of nuclear retaliation necessitated speed. The slowness of Indian action allowed Pakistan time to counter-mobilize, the international community to intervene, and allowed Pakistan to make public statements against terrorism, thus reducing Indian justification for military action. As such, India did not attack, and withdrew after a lengthy standoff. It was unable to prove to Pakistan that it was both capable and willing to resort to war.

After this strategic failure, India initiated a reformulation of battle plans. Instead of three large strike corps located in the centre of India in many individual blocks reminiscent of German Blitzkrieg tactics and with their own associated air support and artillery they were to be placed at the border itself. No doubt  with the aim of decreasing Pakistani confidence that India couldn’t respond. The fact that this change made ‘small-scale’ war a prospect effectively reduced the threshold for India military action to begin, with the intention that Pakistani confidence in its ability to engage in asymmetric warfare be reduced. The overall goal is to ‘inflict significant harm on the Pakistan Army before the international community could intercede, and at the same time, pursue narrow enough aims to deny Islamabad a justification to escalate the clash to the nuclear level.’

Pakistani military personnel and politicians have responded by claiming to have reduced their own threshold, or ‘red line’ for the use of nuclear weapons, making repeated statements about their willingness to initiate nuclear war. This has led to an atmosphere of reduced stability.

However, despite the fact that the Cold Start doctrine is well-known, it’s existence has never been officially admitted- until now. In fact, it has been denied by a former Defence Minister and by a sitting army chief (who now happens to be Minister of state for defence, a role somewhat like an assistant Defence Minister). This was led perhaps by 'Indian security managers who might have believed that the ambiguity surrounding the concept’s status and the Indian Army’s ability to implement it had generated enough uncertainty in the mind of Pakistani decision-makers to deter their support for militant attacks within India', according to an article in The Hindu by Vipin Narang and Walter C. Ladwig. It is also quite possible that they did so to limit the risk of Pakistan lowering its nuclear threshold.

Coming back to the present, Lt. Gen. Bipin Rawat’s open acceptance of the existence of such a doctrine seems to indicate a recognition of the fact that the above hypothesis seems not to hold in the face of brazen attacks from Pakistani territory, and a de facto refusal by the Pakistani government to eliminate terrorists conspiring against within its borders. This is likely also a product of the aforementioned aggression of the current government. As such, this represents a momentous shift in the dynamic of India-Pakistan relations, with consequences for the whole world, by having effects on the prevalence of Islamic terrorism and risking the first use of nuclear weapons since the Second World War. What exactly these consequences will be, only time will tell.

Your Protest Means Nothing

Emily Roper

Protests and rallies are no rarity to this world. Consider the protests in Colombia against the barbarity of bull fighting, calling for the constitutional court to make the practise illegal. Think of the protest marches in Venezuela against a government whose rule has seen severe economic decline in the country, or the protests this month against the continued presence of a US military base in northern Italy.

But your protest means nothing. A protest is meaningless in itself, made completely redundant in isolation. Your protest means nothing unless something happens next. A protest is a mechanism for change. It’s a catalyst for action. It’s a trigger for reform. Your protest means nothing and it’s what follows that makes it count.

January 21st 2017 was the day of the Women’s March, and the world witnessed an outstanding turnout in solidarity with America. Many were protesting against Donald Trump and his divisive rhetoric throughout the US presidential campaign, and many were highlighting the persistent issues of gender rights that have come to the fore throughout said campaign. It was a day filled with witty placards and cutting comments, many using humour to cut to the core of a patriarchal mindset and advocate women’s rights as human rights. An estimated 2.5 million individuals stood with America across the globe, and, quite honestly, if you weren’t there then you suffered from some serious FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out, for those who are out of the loop). Topics of misogyny, the treatment of refugees, and healthcare were raised in rhyming chants and the sound of marching feet. These protests managed to demonstrate that we are still in dire need of feminism, that there are still issues ingrained in even those societies considered developed, and that persistence in pursuit of equality is still relevant. This cannot be action which stops at January 21st 2017.

The facts are inescapable: on Saturday 21st January we marched for gender equality and women’s rights globally. On Monday 23rd January, President Trump was pictured signing a policy to prevent all NGOs funded by the US federal government from carrying out abortion services across the world, forcing NGOs to either forego a major source of funding, or to stop providing a choice for women who feel they need the second chance that abortion offers. Whilst abortion is a controversial topic, the picture of Trump signing this policy betrays the heart of the problems that the Women’s March attempted to address: Trump, signing these documents, surrounded by seven other men. Alarm bells ringing yet? Two days after the world stood up and stood together for equal gender rights, that protest was already being concealed by legislation. The reproductive rights of women globally have been altered in an action that was overseen by a group of men. Whatever your standpoint on the issue of abortion, this imbalance cannot go unnoticed. Of course, men can sympathise with issues that affect the lives of women, and the simple fact that they were involved in these decisions does not make them misogynistic demons. But unless you have experienced living as someone not endowed with male privilege, should you really be the ones exclusively making those decisions? The proximity of this moment to the Women’s March demonstrates that such huge problems cannot be solved in the adrenaline of a one day protest – the fight goes on.

Organisers of the Women’s March are encouraging people to write to their senators, or Members of Parliament, and to articulate their voice to the people who make the decisions. Hold them accountable, and make them aware that there is a demand for equal gender rights. To share support on social media keeps the dialogue active, and to remain aware of changes in governmental policy keeps parliament accountable. Whether it is a march against governmental decisions to remove pro-democracy lawyers from practise in Hong Kong, or to raise awareness of the conditions and pay issues that caused nurses in France to strike towards the end of 2016, any ultimately successful campaign must be sustained. Your protest means nothing unless it lasts beyond the march.

A protest is not enough. Yes, there is a power in joining your voice with thousands of others, but history is not written by protests alone. Background noise will not protect your rights, and a series of rhyming chants will not drown out inequality. There was an absolute buzz on the day of the Women’s March, even amongst those who weren’t there. But where is the point in marching with 100,000 people in Trafalgar Square, if every other day of the year there is a woman being denied her rights to equal pay and no voice stands up for her? Where is the point in chanting in the streets, if on the other side of the road someone who identifies as non-binary is being harassed and no one steps in? Where is the point in raising your voice, if, behind closed doors, a child is being taught that it’s okay to ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ when you’re famous, and no other voice is telling him that respect for others is the most important virtue of all?

In all honesty, I thought twice about writing an article on the Women’s March. I thought about it more than twice. It felt over-done, over-analysed, and I was convinced that people would read it with a sigh: ‘not the Women’s March again’. Globally, the struggle for equal gender rights has been ongoing for years: the first country to allow women the vote was New Zealand in 1893, leading the way in an equal and representative democracy. We’re not there yet. It’s been a slog, and we’re still going to have to keep walking that walk. Yes, gender rights get talked about a lot. Yes, the Women’s March received a lot of publicity. Despite this, we need to continue to give it our attention. It is relevant, and it is pertinent, and it is of imminent concern. This affects you. We need this discourse to still be alive, and we need to keep this conversation open.

If this march is to have a legacy, don’t let it be the piles of discarded protest signs at the end of the day that are waiting to be recycled. If our voice is to have traction, we cannot let it be silenced by time and inaction. A protest is a powerful thing until it no longer exists. Your protest means nothing until it changes something. Don’t let your chant stop here.

Reviewing Graeme Wood’s 'The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with Islamic State'

Ruari Clark

Graeme Wood’s book The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with Islamic State has not yet been received with much fanfare on this side of the Atlantic. Which is odd, because reading it one has the sense that it is a book that ought to be essential reading. It is the latest book which attempts to enter the mind of the Islamic State and should be read by anybody with an interest in Middle Eastern politics. Moments of high drama are interceded with bizarre encounters with strange individuals who nevertheless pose a considerable threat to European and international security. It is the kind of book you imagine being approvingly shared between journalists, knowingly passed around Whitehall corridors, and helpfully given to government ministers. Described as ‘indispensable and gripping’ by Niall Ferguson and positively reviewed by David Aaronovitch, Way of the Strangers should be receiving a lot of attention. It is therefore surprising that it was only recently that Wood was interviewed by The Times.

Any delayed reaction to the book’s publication is probably due to Brexit and Trump dominating the vast majority of media attention. Despite occasional newsflashes from Syria and rather hysterical warnings about the Russian ‘threat’, British Middle Eastern policy is no longer an active concern for most people. This means that a book about ISIS, even one as good as this, will have to be lucky if it is to gain wide media attention. To see how luck can play a part in the success of books one merely has to look at J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which was published at the same time as Trump’s rise to power and so has become the book commentators use to explain that rise.

But it also might be something to do with the book’s central message. Which is this: that, contrary to much of what is publicly said by politicians, the Islamic State is Islamic. This sounds simple enough, and it probably is, but it doesn’t sit well with much received opinion, David Cameron and Barack Obama have both claimed that ISIS is not Islamic. Similar statements have been made by almost all politicians in the Western world. This is understandable, since politicians do not, of course, want to appear to be attacking all Muslims. But, as Wood forcibly points out, it is not true. Indeed, as Way of the Strangers makes clear, there is a grim and hard to deny Islamic logic in much ISIS propaganda and violence. As Wood has said in an interview with NPR, “ISIS has looked into Islamic history with historical accuracy, with intellectual rigour.” This is difficulty for moderate Muslims to accept, and Wood’s work has tended to receive much criticism from those Muslims who are attempting to challenge the theological justifications used by ISIS, but it doesn’t make it any less true.  

It is Wood’s ability to engage seriously with the ideology of the Islamic State that is the most valuable part of the book. Like his original Atlantic piece on which Way of the Strangers is based, Wood has gone around the globe interviewing various supporters of ISIS. From Egypt, to Australia, America and then to London, he is on the trail of those who advocate the creation of a Caliphate through violence. Engaging in conversations with figures like Musa Cerantonio, an Australian supporter of ISIS. In the West ISIS has been able to find a significant number of such converts. Why young men from respectable families (like the American son of a retired soldier) should want to join ISIS is only hinted at by Wood. Though it seems to me that behind many scholarly defences of ISIS is a narcissism and the arrogance of stilted youth. Certain statements bring to mind the kind of teenager who enjoys getting into arcane arguments on the internet (where much of this kind of debate does take place).

Just as interesting – though less bizarre and more frightening – is what Wood reveals about the real players within the Islamic State. Men like al-Zarqawi and al-Baghdadi. These are thinkers who are part of a tradition which in its modern incarnation dates back since the middle of the century. But which is inspired by Wahhabi variants of Islam and has been compared to other sects from as far back as the 8th century. That such a variety of sources and traditions are used by supporters of ISIS demonstrates the difficulty moderate Muslims will have when denying the Islamic nature of their ideology. Their ideology of violence is well thought out and, some say, must be continually carried out if the leaders of the Caliphate are not to remove themselves from their own version of Islam.

Yet most importantly Wood argues that mistaking the Islamic nature of the Islamic State might also be dangerous, since by misunderstanding the nature of ISIS we are unable to find solutions. He writes that ‘pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.’ It is hard to look at such violence without merely recoiling, or denying the nature of its existence, but it is not helpful. Perhaps disappointingly, though perhaps inevitably, Wood himself does not offer any hard and fast policy prescriptions. However, he does say that a military defeat of ISIS would perhaps be a fatal undermining of its necessary claim to statehood, which suggests that a military solution is necessary. Though of course this would not ‘drain the swamp’ completely. This means that Wood is able to avoid the mistake made by many foreign policy commentators of providing ‘solutions’ to various Middle Eastern ‘problems’ which often reveal little more than the ignorance of the commentator.

At the beginning of this review I said it felt like the kind of book that might find its way around various corridors of power and influence. The problem, of course, is that such books do not appear to be required reading amongst those who direct foreign policy. Or, if they are, the perceived requirements of a narrowly defined domestic policy trumps all other considerations, leading politicians to make bland statements which fail to capture the truth. Way of the Strangers at least allows the proper questions to be asked and the most fruitful conversations to be had. Until these things are done, then no serious solutions to the threat of ISIS will be found.  

Narendra Modi and the BJP: Hindutva on the march

Fergus Peace

There was a time in early 2014 when Western media was greatly preoccupied by the rise of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Narendra Modi. Many column inches were spent worrying about the implications of a newly ascendant Hindu nationalism, and telling the world about the darkest moments of Modi’s time as Chief Minister in Gujarat. But since the BJP won (as expected) an electoral landslide in May of that year, Indian politics has largely slipped off the radar again.

If we were expecting the worst – a repeat of the large-scale anti-Muslim violence that wracked Gujarat in 2002, with Modi complicit at the very least through complicity – then the lack of attention is perfectly justified.

But the more likely scenario was always a more subtle and pervasive extension of the BJP’s Hindutva ideology throughout Indian life. The BJP’s rapid political growth since the early 1990s has centred on an awkward coalition of traditionalist Hindu organisations and a growing, globally-oriented upper-middle class. The glue that keeps these elements together is a vision to remake India as a strong, muscular nation, with a powerful economy and military built on the power of cultural unity.

This ambition manifests itself in three policy agendas: a pursuit of rapid, disruptive economic modernisation, military and political escalation against Pakistan, and the depiction of Hinduism as essential to Indian identity. As Modi’s government draws to the end of its third year in office, all three have been proceeding apace.

On the economic front, the government has finally succeeded in pushing through a national Goods and Services Tax, meant to come into force in April and replace a range of state and federal sales taxes. No doubt a sensible reform, it was heralded by Modi as putting an end to ‘tax terrorism’. The same kind of overheated rhetoric has surrounded the even more controversial ‘demonetisation’ policy, Modi’s bolt-from-the-blue announcement that 500 and 1000 rupee notes would no longer be legal tender. The chaotically implemented move appears to be aimed at jolting Indians to keep more money in banks and use electronic payments rather than cash, in order to modernise the country’s economy by increasing financialisation. But government figures have defended the policy – and the immense pain it’s inflicted, particularly on the poor and those in rural areas – as part of a national campaign against corrupt, ‘anti-national’ elements. Demonetisation is increasingly referred to as ‘note bandhi’, recalling the similarly disruptive (though much more violent) ‘nas bandhi’ policy of forced sterilisation implemented in the 1970s. In the week after announcing demonetisation, Modi gave a speech darkly commenting that “the forces up against me … may not let me live”. Nobody knows quite what he was referring to – certainly there hasn’t been any attempt on his life – but the language fits perfectly into what is, across the world, a common nationalist theme: that the country needs to be restored to its past glory by a period of shared sacrifice to fight a common enemy.

The most obvious enemy for Hindutva, of course, is Muslim Pakistan. The BJP is yet to follow through on its election promise to review India’s no-first-use nuclear policy, aimed at deterring Pakistan fromsparking a conventional conflict. But there has been escalation by other means. After a September terrorist attack along the de facto border in Kashmir, the PM gave a speech in which he claimed to be ‘reaching out’ to Pakistani citizens. In reality, Modi’s words – “Pakistan, ask your leaders that both the nations became independent at the same time, but why is that India exports software while Pakistan exports terrorism?” – were aimed at the old Hindu nationalist goal of portraying Pakistan as a constant menace to Indian security, to unite Indians against it. A few days later, the Indian Army launched a military operation inside the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, widely feted as a ‘surgical strike’ by BJP politicians. Firing across the border has occurred at an increased rate ever since; in the aftermath the Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association has banned Pakistanis from working in Bollywood and a number of sporting associations have cut off bilateral ties.

And demonising Pakistan as an object of national anger is a short step from the continuing Hinduisation of Indian life. When Modi announced a crackdown on irregular migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh, he made an exception: Hindu and Buddhist migrants would be allowed to stay, but not others – that is, Muslims – who he accused of having ‘political purposes’, leaving implicit what those nefarious purposes might be. By and large, the government itself has been cautious around religious issues, but the broader family of Hindu nationalist organisations – the Sangh parivar, of which the BJP is one part – has stepped up its activity. The Bajrang Dal, a youth Hindu organisation, has engaged in vigilantism to enforce a ban on cow slaughter. The RSS and VHP have organised a series of mass conversions to Hinduism, often under a cloud of coercion when people were brought to ceremonies on the pretence of signing up to receive government benefits. Revealingly, the campaign is titled ‘Ghar Wapsi’ – Hindi for “homecoming”, reflecting nationalists’ view that all Indians are Hindu by rights and that conversion to Hinduism isn’t conversion at all, just a return to your origins. Modi himself maintains silence on most of these issues, but a number of other BJP politicians have been enthusiastic supporters of ‘reconversion’ and bans on cow slaughter. The Hindutva goal of fusing Hindu religiosity with India’s national identity has not been so far advanced since the demolition of a major mosque in 1992.

Nationalist victory, that is to say, has not plunged India into theocratic authoritarianism. But it has caused a steady advance of a militarised, aggressive idea of Indian nationhood and the increasing marginalisation of those outside the religious majority. It may be a worrying sign for the rest of the world 2017 that the West’s fear of the worst can seemingly blind us to a less extreme but still deeply troubling reality.

Western Media and ISIS Terror Attacks

Emily Dillistone

Charlie Hebdo, a controversial French magazine that publishes satirical cartoons, was never considered particularly heroic before the 2015 ISIS attack that killed 12 in their headquarters. The reporting on this event, along with the numerous fatal attacks that have occurred over the past few years, forms a powerful and essential part of terrorism’s tyranny over people’s psychology across the world. The current attacks hark back to 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 when the Western World was shaken by a foreign and terrifying force. Since these traumatic events, the West, and increasingly the whole world, has begun to live in fear of attacks. These past few years have seen a multitude of terrorist attacks across Europe and central Asia. To put it in context, while the Global Terrorism Database recorded 1,395 attacks in 1998, in 2012 this figure reached a record high of 8,441. Likewise, the total number of casualties from terrorist attacks in the past 15 years has soared from 3,387 to 15,396.

Since Bin Laden’s attack on the Twin Towers, the world has witnessed an increasing hostility towards Muslims, with islamophobia forming the backbone of the rhetoric propounded by Trump’s Presidential Campaign, Britain’s UKIP, France’s Front National, and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. Fear and anger, along with resentment of the establishment, have propelled Europeans towards a far-right extremist politics with a keenness to ‘protect their own’ from foreign terrors. Extremism and extremist politics seem to be on the rise, not just in Europe, but globally.

Terror attacks are unique in their kind due to several factors: the organization required for them to take place, and the visibility they reach in the media. Media threats are reported, no matter whether they are small or large. Michael Jetter, an academic researcher in Germany and the US, analysed more than 60,000 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2012 and found that terrorist attacks drew a disproportionate amount of media attention. He discovered that 42 people die every day from terrorist attacks, compared with 7,123 children who die from hunger-related causes, yet the former receives far more attention.

In the early 2000s, terrorist organizations relied on pamphlets and video cassettes while media appearances were seldom, so the few pieces of propaganda that were released tended to hit big. In 2004, Zarqawi, a formerly unknown ex-convict, became a world-famous Islamic militant when his video of the execution of a young American contractor called Nicholas Berg was downloaded half a million times in 24 hours. In 2006, the 3-minute video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging was leaked and viewed by millions around the world. Even more so today, groups such as ISIS manipulate the media and new technology to their advantage. Many of the attacks in Paris were reported using photos and videos taken by passers-by and people targeted by the attacks. ISIS no longer needs to equip its killers with cameras because the public will publicize the event for them. And this soon becomes a vicious cycle: research shows that sensationalist media coverage of terrorist acts results in further acts of terrorism.

Terrorism is commonly defined as criminal acts intended to create a state of terror among a group of people deemed by the terrorists to be ‘morally objectionable’. But here is where one must be careful with terminology. A key component to terrorism is that it is a foreign threat, and therefore terrorism is and by nature subjective and situational. During the Indian struggle for independence, for example, those who fought in the resistance were a kind of ‘terrorist’ to British soldiers, but for the people of India they represented freedom.

In the West, ISIS’ brand has more than tainted the image of the supposed Religion of Peace. Muslims have become an all too easy target for racial abuse and many Western newspapers pounce on any new opportunity to exacerbate the already well-embedded islamophobia prejudices that exist in Europe and the United States. A key example of this is the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice earlier this year on 14 July 2016. A man drove a lorry down the Promenade des Anglais, killing 84 people. The Telegraph’s headline read “Nice terror attack: 'soldier of Islam' Bouhlel 'took drugs and used dating sites to pick up men and women'”. Newspapers were determined to depict the attacker as a sleazy ISIS-supporter, despite the lack of hard evidence to link his attack to the terrorist organisation.

Reporting on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris was similarly misleading. In the immediate aftermath of the attack the journalism firm was masqueraded as the modern proponent of free speech. Facebook even enabled its users to change their profile picture to a French flag to ‘stand in solidarity’ with the people of France. The reaction to the attack was so far-flung that when Ankara was attacked a few months later on 10 October, many people on social media asked why there was no such public outcry in response to the attack. With 103 dead and 400 injured on 10 October, later 13 dead and 125 injured at the bus stop bombing on 13 March 2016, and on 17 February 2016 29 dead and 60 injured left by the military convoy attack, Ankara is the city that has suffered some of the greatest losses of any ISIS attack. So where is the hashtag #benakarayim?”

Of course, from the UK’s perspective, the Paris attacks are more alarming due to the city’s geographical proximity: Ankara is almost 3000km further away from London than Paris is. However, this is not simply an issue of geography. Facebook’s headquarters are in the United States, yet while on 13 November 2015 people in France could mark themselves “safe” to reassure their friends and family, no such function was provided to the survivors of attacks in Ankara. This is not for lack of Facebook users in Turkey; according to Reuters, in 2011 Turkey already had 30 million Facebook accounts, making it the fourth largest country of Facebook users in the world. Numerous other attacks have occurred in the East, such as the June 2015 Dayarbakiir rally bombings, in which four were killed and 400 were injured, and the suicide bombings in Istanbul and Bursa, which also had high death tolls. Yet none were reported with as much fervour and panic as were the attacks on the West. Between 2015 and 2016, the attacks that made headline news were the attack in Brussels, the Russian plane attack, the Paris attack, and the San Bernardino attack. It is worth noting that the lattermost attack was the smallest of the major ISIS attacks. The issue cannot be ignored: the Western media overwhelmingly opts to report on white deaths and casualties comparatively to deaths and causalities in countries where white is not the dominant race.

The discrepancy is evident still in issues extending beyond race. In January 2015 Paris witnessed several attacks, but the attacks on Jewish supermarkets seemed to almost pass the international news stations by. On 9 January French police were called in to deal with two hostage-taking situations taking place in Jewish supermarkets in Paris, yet this was not deemed altogether that newsworthy. By contrast, the attack of the high-speed Thalys train on 21 August 2015 made international news, though, likewise, there were no fatal casualties. A notable difference: the involvement of three US citizens, two of whom were soldiers.

Many will remember the tragic case of Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 276 girls in Nigeria in April 2014. The group have since kidnapped over 2,000 girls. The hashtag #bringbackourdaughters reached Michelle Obama, but the case still did not receive even half as much attention as the abduction of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann in 2007, despite the fact that this is a time when social media and online reporting were not half as developed as they are now. The truth is, the abduction and rape of hundreds of black women is not half as appealing to a Western audience as the disappearance of a cute little American white girl.

This August the suicide bombing of a hospital in Quetta yet again brought to the fore the double standard the West manifests in its news reporting. The bombing left at least 70 dead and more than 100 wounded, making the attack one of the most fatal to have been carried out in Pakistan. Survivors of attacks in the East are rightfully outraged by the comparative lack of coverage and recognition of their suffering in the rest of their world. So what is to be done? The French media has stated that it will not show pictures of terrorists, but one could argue that the damage of racial profiling has already been done: the ‘Muslim’ and ‘terrorist’ stereotypes are so regularly conflated and misrepresented that the two have become virtually indistinguishable in the mind of the Western citizen. Moreover, it is somewhat difficult to support the notion that France is successfully dealing with its prejudices given Marine le Pen’s standing in the presidential polls. It seems evident after this discussion that the most proactive way forward is to cease using the term ‘terrorism’ to describe attacks, as it seems to obscure the crime. Moreover, naming the perpetrator of a crime a ‘terrorist’ can sometimes afford the killer more attention than necessary. So is it the fault of the media? I believe that news sites do have a responsibility, though not a mandate, to be objective, and to report news fairly and without bias. Efforts to be disinterested when it comes to reporting attacks is yet to manifest itself in many Western newspapers, and it seems to me that this is the main factor fuelling racial hatred and prejudice in the Western world in 2016.