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Euphoria on labelling JeM chief Masood misplaced

Euphoria has its own share of amnesia. It can prove crippling too, as it has an inherent tendency to hide failures of the past and challenges that the future holds.

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Arun Joshi

Euphoria has its own share of amnesia. It can prove crippling too, as it has an inherent tendency to hide failures of the past and challenges that the future holds.

The declaration of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UNSC sanctions committee 1267 on May 1, an outcome that India had waited for many years, has its dark side too. It is not about the omission of references to the Pulwama terror attack and Kashmir in the UNSC statement, but the gaps that exist in the internal system of investigations and taking the trials to their logical conclusion.

Masood Azhar, an ideologue of militant groups with pronounced Pan-Islamic orientation, had visited Kashmir to motivate youths to “fight for the liberation of Kashmir” as a religious duty. He was arrested in April 1994, and set free in December 1999 in the most humiliating circumstances for the nation. The high-profile terrorist was escorted to his destination by Indian Foreign Minister of the times Jaswant Singh.

In the celebrations over his designation as global terrorist, we are skipping the critically important questions: why the trial against Masood Azhar could not be completed for five years, and why he could not be convicted of the crime he was charged with. There was shameless lethargy that led to the freedom of Masood Azhar. His smirk at the crack of dawn on December 31, 1999, mocked at the system as neither he could be kept in jail or convicted. And Indians, we have no right to celebrate it because his group Jaish-e-Mohammad killed so many of our people and soldiers for we were the ones who pressurised the government to succumb to the pressure of the hijackers who had threatened to kill 165 passengers and crew members of IC-814 parked in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The history will not judge this bargain against the scales of our commitment to fight against terrorism in bright light.

Worse is that these fault lines have not been repaired till date. There are so many cases where the terrorists have not been convicted.

Let’s admit it that the threats that Masood Azhar, his followers and patrons pose to the national security have not diminished. Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks, is also a designated global terrorist, but the bloodletting in which he was engaged in Kashmir is continuing. And it should also be acknowledged that Masood has been designated a global terrorist because the Western powers came together to do so.

The Western countries have had their own share of tragedies inflicted by terrorists. The USA’s 21st century history is shaped by 9/11. The London bombing of July 2005 and some of the recent incidents close to Westminster have made UK’s residential enclaves a new hub of radicalisation.

France was riddled with terror attacks from Paris to Nice. They know what terrorism means, and its growth in any part of the world, howsoever, distant it may be from their own political and geographical maps, is a looming threat forever, especially in the modern-day world where social media scales boundaries with impunity.

This grim reality presents only one choice – fast-track trial of terrorists and punishing them before they become too big to be handled at our own level.

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