Indian Council of World Affairs

Unidentified Speaker: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. May I request you all to kindly put your phones in silent mode, please, thank you. On behalf of the Indian Council of World Affairs, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to the discussion on the theme, Evolving Geographies of Terror, Regional Shifts, Hybrid Threats and the Rise of Tech-Enabled Warfare, with our panel of very eminent scholars.

 

The program of the evening is as follows, the discussion will be chaired and moderated by Major General BK Sharma, former Director General, United Service Institution of India and our distinguished panelist, Professor Rohan Gunaratna, Professor of Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

 

Who is most graciously joining us online, Dr. Adil Rasheed, Research Fellow and Coordinator, Counter-Terrorism Centre, Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, Professor Ajay Darshan Behra, Director, MMAJ Academy of International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia and Dr. Soumya Awasthi, Fellow, Centre for Security Strategy and Technology, Observer Research Foundation, ORF New Delhi.

 

The discussion will be followed by a question and answer session, which will be moderated by the Chair. May I now request the Chair to make his opening remarks and conduct the proceedings? Thank you.

 

BK Sharma: Good afternoon, and thank you for this kind invitation. It is always good to be at the ICWA. Are you already familiar with the theme of today's discussion? And I would like to just begin with a simple and explicit observation that terrorism today persists not because of a single ideology, religion or grievance. I would like to frame it in the form of three interacting factors. That is, one is the push factor, second is the bridge factor and third is the pull factor.

 

Now, how people are pushed into terrorism is essentially because of the perceived sense of deprivation due to variety of factors and the bridge network is a network of people, technologies, enablers, they all put together, provide that bridge and the pull factor is always you have certain ideologues, your peers, your batch mates, your class fellows, all that who are actually endowed to a certain ideology, a certain way of thinking, they are the ones who are actually pulling you in that direction.

 

Now, this is, unless we understand this and contextualize this to different entities and different geographies, we will always be looking at things in a piecemeal manner, probably looking at the offshoots more than the structural causes of terrorism and this is something extremely important. Now, today as we know that the global terrorism is manifesting in four physical and one digital geographies and these geographies are at the very top today is the African arc.

 

We know what is happening in Sahil, Chad Basin, Horn of Africa. This has today become the most lethal frontier as far as terrorism is concerned. In fact, 60% of the terrorist related fatalities are in this part of the world and there we have a sort of a set of organization like you have ISIS operating, Al-Qaida linked ecosystem, deeply embedded in local grievances and illicit networks, porous borders and whatnot all kinds of the fertilities are available there. So, I'm sure that we will have some of our panelists speaking on the characteristics and the kind of terrorism which is thriving in that region.

 

Second is West Asia and North Africa where typical, the large-scale control over the territory has ceded after hosting of ISIS there which was an experiment by itself. Now, the region remains an ideological, operational and inspirational reservoir, what I can call is ideological center of gravity of jihadi terrorism all over the world. So, while the things might have subsided there, but all the factors are available for the eruption or rejuvenation of this terrorism in different avatars. So, we have to look at that.

 

The third is your APAC region. I would even extend it to the larger Eurasia wherein you have the problem between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the new groups are coming up. You see the kind of relationship there between Taliban, Pakistan and also IS there and IS, Islamic State of Khorasan province and then you have number of groups which are like Islamic Jihad Council, you have Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

 

You had once upon a time when I was in Central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir was actually the fountainhead of all the ideology, indoctrination in that part. But those cells are very much still there and it can even extend to it has certain relationship with Xinjiang, what are the whole East Turkistan Movement there. So, it's totally linked.

 

Then is the fourth is your Southeast Asia where there are these IS inspired of cells operating there like this you have in Aceh at one point in time, Aceh had become almost a liberated zone till that tsunami came and it was totally, it got totally damaged and that also put an end to this thing, to the terrorism there.

 

Fifth is the digital geography now which is an ignored factor and this is cutting across all these five geographies I talked about. Today, we have these encrypted platforms, you have online subcultures, you have diaspora echo chambers, you have virtual communities, deepfake, metaverse and what not. So, geography today, therefore, is as much cognitive and virtual as it is physical and this is one area that we need to look at. In all this today, technology has become a bridge accelerator. It's a force multiplier as far as terrorism is concerned.

 

Technology has not created terrorism but it has changed its scale, speed and reach today. You can be in any part of the world and yet you can be sort of a jihadist. It has accelerated the bridge layer by enabling radicalization without physical contact, coordination without proximity, financing without normal Hawala network that we have been used to, you have the digital currencies, you have the cryptocurrencies and what not and influence without territorial control. What we saw, what Taliban were doing or what ISIS were doing.

 

Now, what we are now seeing in all this is the encryption, new methods of encryption, drones, digital finance, AI enabled propaganda, synthetic media enabled small groups to generate outside psychological and political effects. So, battleground has therefore expanded beyond the terrain to encompass information, perception, the very public trust.

 

So, this is the strategic context in which we would like to conduct this panel discussion and the key issues that I request my co-panelists to address whenever they are addressing their particular region or particular sub-theme of this that why the center of gravity has shifted towards Africa. How ISIS and Al-Qaeda linked ecosystems are adapting to different regions particularly Sahel corridor and in Africa where crime terror convergence is most pronounced today.

 

This crime is very much part of the entire ecosystem. How cognitive battle space should be protected, especially during crisis when manufactured narratives can trigger violence. You can have virtual rallies, you can have virtual communal riots, you can proliferate the whole net and this will actually create a very big divide even though on in kinetic domain it may not be at that scale.

 

So, you can create a fear psychosis and therefore at the end of the day we need to have a hard look. Are our counter-terrorism doctrine, strategies, structures, systems, skills in sync with what the new challenges are? What are the gaps that exist? What we should do to address this these gaps adopting not only a whole of government approach but a whole of nation approach. So, with these may I now request the panelists to begin with and I think the first panelist we have Professor Gunaratna from Sri Lanka. Singapore, you're presently teaching at Singapore.

 

He is presently in the School of International Study, Nanyang Technological University, what you call the NTU Singapore. So, over to you professor.

 

Rohan Gunaratna: Thank you, General Sharma, for that very quick but effective introduction on the global landscape of terror. I'm very delighted to share a panel with my colleagues, especially I recognize Dr. Adil Rasheed and also Dr. Ajay and I'm going to focus on three things. One is the shift in the global epicenter of international terrorism with the decline of ISIS or the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria from 2017 and to the dismantling of the physical Islamic state in 2019, January, February. We saw that the center of gravity of terrorism started to shift from the Middle East, from the Levant to Africa.

 

In Africa, it is the central Sahel that became the most important theater of operations. Two groups became very active. One is Al-Qaida affiliated JNIM and the other is ISWA or the Islamic state West Africa Province. I myself traveled extensively in Africa and with 26 African experts, we compiled a book titled The Handbook of Terrorism in Africa published by Paul Greve Macmillan.

 

In that book, we came up with three very important conclusions. One is the African governments are not prepared to fight the threat of terrorism. Africa as the general mentioned is already the most important theater for global terrorism and it is going to grow because African leaders have not come together to fight this challenge. So, there are two vectors.

 

One is we have seen a shift from Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt cascading from the Maghreb to the Sahel, Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania going further to West Africa. Another line of effort we have seen where the threat is moving from the horn of Africa, mostly from Somalia to Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and going up to the Mozambique. And of course, the Central African region itself DRC becoming affected.

 

The second conclusion we came across is that Africa had quite a good capability that was being built by the Americans and by the French. But the African leaders themselves did not understand the importance of this engagement because the Americans and the Europeans are 10 to 20 years ahead of other countries in the fight against terrorism.

 

They know how to develop intelligence and they know how to catch or kill the terrorist very effective and other countries have to learn from them because they had a lot of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Probably the only country that has a better capability to fight terrorism is Israel because the Israelis have been fighting all their life against terrorism.

 

Now, so the third most important development is that the sharing of information and intelligence within Africa. They have African Union Intelligence Committee, but unfortunately, there is no will to share intelligence. If you don't share intelligence you will never fight because you will be blind and we have seen even in the most developed countries when intelligence was not shared, there were major attacks. For example, 9/11 attack the FBI and the CIA didn't share intelligence of the first intelligence that they received from the Malaysian special branch in January of 2000 of the entry of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to the United States. So, 9/11 occurred.

 

So, unless they get into the habit of sharing addressing terrorism as a common threat the theater of terrorism will remain very much focused on Africa. The center of gravity of terrorism shifted in two directions. One in Africa which is the main epicenter, second center is Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghan Taliban is today hosting about 20 different terrorist groups including the group called the TTP, the Tariqat Taliban Pakistan and the TTP accounted for 3,967 deaths, 1,709 attacks in 2025.

 

This year the number of attacks, number of deaths are going to be more because the Tariqat Taliban Afghanistan or the Afghan Taliban that is the ruling party of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan regard the TTP as an extension and they are hosting them and supporting them and in fact what we have seen is other than TTP the eastern Turkestan Islamic movement now known as the Turkestan Islamic party and a number of other groups are operating in in Afghanistan.

 

So, Afghanistan Pakistan region is the second most important theater of terrorism and will remain so in the foreseeable future. Let me make a few concluding observations that may be of importance to all of you. One is that terrorism will remain a persistent global threat, but terrorism has changed very significantly.

 

Terrorism no longer is a phenomenon largely spearheaded by Muslim groups. We have seen the rise of the far right in the western world and in the coming months and coming years we will see more attacks by the far right in the western countries North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand very similar to the Brenton attack in Christchurch. So, far right terrorism will be a phenomenon that is going to grow because far right political parties have come to power and this ideology is on the ascent because ideology is the main drive of terrorism no one can dispute it.

 

The third main factor that I want to share with you is that we will also have terrorism and violence by other groups, not only by the Muslims, not only by the Christians, but also by the Hindus, by the Buddhists, by the Sikhs and by other faiths. So, what is important is for us to regulate the religious space very tightly so that religion is not misinterpreted and misrepresented and we always ensure that religious leaders promote moderation, toleration and coexistence. They ensure that they protect the religious grounds.

 

Let me just make one final observation for all of you. The general mentioned the digital space. Today 90% of the terrorist attacks we are able to detect them because of our surveillance of the digital space. This has become the most important space more than the physical space. So, Singapore itself has created a digital intelligence service. I would ask all governments today to enhance your capacities and capabilities to operate effectively in the digital space so that you can detect attacks when the threat is in a very early stage.

 

What is called when there is prejudice, when there's suspicion, when there's resentment, when there is anger, when there is hate, so that we can manage the threat of terrorism and reduce acts of terrorism and acts of violence before they manifest in the physical space. I thank you very much.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you, professor, that very sort of a insightful exposition. I would just like to for the sake of our subsequent question-answer discussion, flag three or four very briefly points which the professor has raised. One is this rise of right-wing ideology in the west. Particularly, this is very important in the light of the migrations which are taking place today in some of the European countries and even our own diaspora becomes very, very vulnerable, that's a thing. The very gun culture which is spreading in United States of America. It's also a form of terrorism. You're killing your own people.

 

Second is about that multi-ethnic society that India is with full of internal fault line. This indicator that he's talked about Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and many other groups. I think we have to be extremely watchful about these fault lines. And third thing which is said about which is a very, very factor or a domain which is being ignored is the digital space in which the global terrorism can thrive. Maybe more of this we can discuss in the question-answer session.

 

Now, I'll start from the right and request Dr. Adil Rasheed to just, 10 minutes is the time. Thank you. Over to you, Adil.

 

Adil Rasheed: Hello. It's a real privilege for me. It is my first time here at ICWA. I will always wonder to be in these hallowed grounds and it is really I'm overwhelmed by the welcome and generosity extended to me. I think I will be only looking into Africa, the Sahel region and the hotly contested Horn of Africa. Many Western security experts arguably claim that the Sub-Saharan Africa is currently the global eye of terrorism with over 60%, some people say over 50% of worldwide terror related killings occurring there.

 

Thus, the Al-Qaida affiliated Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, JNIM, and the Islamic State affiliates, Islamic State of Greater Sahara and which is called the ISGS, and the ISWAP, Islamic State of West African Province, Boko Haram remnants and others, they continue to infest the Sahel region.

 

Incidentally, on 25th of December last year, U.S. President Donald Trump delivered what he called an amazing Christmas gift to ISIS-linked Lakurawa jihadist group in the form of airstrikes in Nigeria. The American president called the U.S. military strikes a blow to the jihadist genocide of Christians in Nigeria and even blamed the Nigerian government of some kind of insidious complicity.

 

Many security experts, however, have found problems with President Trump's charge in framing the counter-terrorism strikes on a very communal basis, saying that it is not only problematic factually, but also counterproductive. According to U.N. and accolade figures, the long-running ISIS terror campaign in Nigeria has killed more Muslims than Christians and fears that now ISWAP might exploit these one-off airstrikes as an excuse to target more Christians in order to vitiate the communal harmony within that country.

 

On the other hand, President Trump's precision strikes against what he calls ISIS terrorist scum, as he put it, has hit empty farmlands with many of these bandits running over into the Niger borders. In any case, Trump might not be aware that the Nigerian president's own wife is a Christian. Not only that, she is pastor of the Protestant Redeemed Christian Church of God, which reflects the composite culture of mainstream Nigerian society.

 

After the Cold War, were anti-colonial sentiments in Africa, which are still very high, were before that, before the Cold War, were fanned by communist rebel movements. But after 1991, that empty space of discontent was exploited by Islamic extremists and terrorists. It is noteworthy that Islamist parties and Salafi jihadist groups, although they were present there for about more than a decade, it was only after 2011 that Sub-Saharan Africa found the rise of big jihadist movements, particularly once the Gaddafi regime fell.

 

And from there, you find weapons depots actually being emptied by the Tuareg militias, who then spread those weapons into Sub-Saharan African countries and the Sahel regions, starting with Mali and then into Burkina Faso and other parts of Africa. On cue, it is surprising to find, and here I would diverge a little bit with our professor, you find French forces, despite their colonial past in the region, brazenly re-entering Sahel in 2010s, in 2013 actually.

 

And then conducting operations Serval and Barkhane, which led to even European leaders, people like Berlusconi, down to Maloney, and even Russian government, talking about a new Frank-Afrique and designed to probably exploit African natural resources on the pretext of fighting terrorism. It is noteworthy that Sahel region, which has countries like Niger, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, this region is very rich in petroleum, uranium, gold, and all kinds of rare minerals.

 

French companies like Orano have exploited Niger all these years for uranium deposits and it is only last year that Niger was able to nationalize the Sumer mines from where uranium was extracted by French companies by cancelling their permits. In addition, Malian heads of state claim of having evidence that French forces trained jihadists in their Malian enclave in Kidal, where even Malian military was barred from entry by French forces until 2022.

 

While Russia has accused France of fomenting terrorism in Africa, Italian Prime Minister Maloney blames France for keeping Africa poor, unsafe and underdeveloped with its CFA Frank currency peg, used by 14 African countries, which she claims is the reason for exacerbating the African migrant influx into Europe.

 

In the wake of such intense criticism, France finally withdrew its forces, first from Mali in 2022, Burkina Faso in 2023, Niger in 2023 and Chad in early 2025. It has also withdrawn forces from Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, and Senegal recently. However, it is equally worrying to note that these African states, as rightly said by Professor Gunaratna, have now relied on other extra-regional powers, like Russian private army Wagner Group, and the new Ottoman Turkish troops to fill in the void.

 

Yet the number of jihadist killings and destruction is at an all-time high in the wake of the confusion. It is estimated, according to the Global Terrorism Index, that about 25,800 people have been killed in the region from 2023 to 2025. In adjacent Sudan, and this is important, there is an ongoing civil war in Sudan since 2023.

 

Now, with you, on the one side, you have got the Sudanese Armed Forces on the other side you have the rapid support forces. It is this security vacuum created in Sudan which has allowed Al-Qaida and ISIS factions who were in the Sahel regions to now operate inside Sudan. What is more, Sudan is now serving as a land bridge connecting Al-Qaida affiliates JNIM in Western Africa to connect to the Al-Shabaab Al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia.

 

So, Sudan has become the land bridge between the East African and the West African terrorist groups. You also find ISIS groups like ISWAP now shaking hands with Ahlu Sunnah wa Jamaah in Mozambique. Thus, we are today looking at the almost entire North if not Central Africa becoming a hotbed of jihadist terror and a number of Islamist protostates are emerging that have links with radical forces not only within Africa but in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, even Iran.

 

Curiously, the main Sudanese forces involved in the civil war also have jihadist elements within their ranks. So, you find the Sudanese armed forces. There is proof that the Sudanese Islamist leader Bashir's paramilitaries are part of the SAF forces. One must know that Bashir's mentor was Hassan al-Turabi who was also the ideological guru of Bin Laden. These jihadist elements in SAF are now aided by Turkey, Egypt and Qatar while the rival RSF forces receive support from the UAE, Israel, Ethiopia and Haftar's Libyan forces.

 

So, there is a scramble among extra-regional powers who are backing their terrorist proxies in Sudan which is all aimed at mining Sudan's immense gold and mineral resources, its fertile agricultural land and control of the choke points of the Red Sea around the Bab-el-Mandeb. It is in this context that Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report says that Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are also now forging links with the Al-Shabaab Al-Qaida groups across the Red Sea which is surprising because the Houthis are Zaidi Shias whereas Al-Qaida is a hardcore Salafi Wahhabi terrorist organization who considers almost all Shias Kafir.

 

Further confounding the crisis is Israel's recognition of Somaliland and its purported plans to establish military bases and to allegedly provide its old ally in Christian dominated Ethiopia access to the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa. Arab media reports claim that a secret Israeli plan of building a Suez, of not only blocking and bypassing Suez Canal, by building a supposed Ben Gurion Canal through the Eilat port on the Gulf of Aqaba which will run through Jared Kushner's project Sunrise in Gaza to finally reach Israel's Mediterranean port of Ashkelon.

 

This plan has actually created so much fear that some critics say or some specialists say that Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia have become increasingly uneasy finding Israeli forces in Somaliland and thus they are backing the Sudanese armed forces. And so we find that when it comes to Tanzania you have got Chinese corporates, engineers, workers actually making their own enclaves within that country even as anti-Islamist UAE is rapidly increasing its economic infrastructure and strategic influence in Zanzibar.

 

Not surprisingly Tanzania and more so Mozambique are afflicted with ISIS jihadist groups, Ahlu Sunnah wa Jamaah group in an area rich in vanadium, which is critical for making China's breakthrough nuclear fusion reactors. Meanwhile, the allied democratic forces in Congo and Uganda have attacked Christian populations after swearing allegiance to ISIS. Somalia's Al-Shabaab is also increasing its attacks in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda.

 

In the end extra-regional powers it seems may again be exploiting counter-terrorism excuse to enter African nations and to loot their rich natural resources. Meanwhile, Europe has good reason to be alarmed by the massive immigrant influx from Africa, as it was Carthage, now Tunisia, from where migrant vandals finally gave the decisive blow to ancient Rome in 455 CE. Thank you.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you, Dr. Adil for that very sort of comprehensive insight into this. So, ladies and gentlemen as we know that, I think there is a great game in Africa today by being played out by the proxies of the great powers for control over resources. The unfortunate part is that most of the UN missions, peacekeeping missions have wound up in that region. The host countries, which have declined to sort of invite these UN peacekeeping missions there.

 

We also know another thing that while there was set of forces, even though not fully aligned to contest ISIS in MENA, particularly Middle East, you had Iran, Turkey, you have Kurds, you have U.S. to an extent, Russia but there is nobody who is in control as far as Africa is concerned. You do not have a set of forces and what I foresee that whenever this crisis erupted in Middle East, it did have its ripple effect on security of Europe and now whatever is going to happen in Africa it will have its effect on security of Europe because of the geographical proximity.

 

So this problem is much bigger than what actually, it seems to be and that is what we need to be very watchful and it also affects India in terms of that region being an alternate source of energy for us, whether we can make investments and whether those investments are secure or they are not secure. So that's a moot point. So with this, may I now request Professor Ajay Behera to just in 10 minutes give his insights into the whole topic.

 

Ajay Darshan Behera: Thank you, Chairman Sir, and I am thankful to the ICWA for giving me this opportunity. Let me begin by trying to reflect on this question that the Chairman raised as why the epicenter or the focus of terrorism is shifted to Africa from West Asia or from the APAC region. One of the reasons that possibly I mean the answer for this could be that South Asian countries have managed terrorism well.

 

For some reasons we do not have the kind of spectacular terrorism for some time. We, I mean South Asia anyway had there were historical reasons for why you had so many kinds of different movements separatist to ideological movements and some of these movements had become very, very stringent in terms of the kind of rebellion or terrorist attacks they could carry out and I am referring to groups like the LTT in South Asia or even the Maoists in Nepal who controlled territory for a fairly long time.

 

We have also seen similar kind of ability of some of the groups in the Northeast or in Kashmir and of course in Pakistan what we notice now or what we are seeing currently of the ability of the Baloch groups, the BLA and all to almost declare no zone areas or operate within a certain, operate within with certain amount of impunity in carrying out the attacks they are doing. So, in this environment, what we can see is that there is certainly a decline in the spectacular terrorism and some of the groups have been degraded.

 

So, the fact that the LTT is not an important group right now. The fact that the Maoists in Nepal were co-opted by the Nepalese government and I think India has kind of managed fairly well, in Kashmir, managing the situation and ability to avoid terrorist groups to carry out operations in Kashmir. But that would be a little short-sighted in terms of thinking. The problem of terrorism has gone away. Because the causes for terrorism still remain and that's something that you know we don't discuss.

 

Second, the ability of terrorist groups to operate in this new environment, which is essentially tech enabled, which allows them still to be a potent force and the states have a certain problem, challenge in trying to deal with that. They at the moment do not have the kind of abilities or resources to deal with that. But the difference that I see in terms of trends of terrorism in this region and in Africa and that is, I think one of the reasons and I am subject to correction over here.

 

That most of the terrorist operations in Africa, which you can understand from this concept of new wars, which a scholar like Mary Kaldor gave, that these are mostly profit motivated conflicts. Most of them, I mean, even if they are logically driven by the end of it, these are for profits and various groups etc. which are competing for resources.

 

I don't think so. I mean, in South Asia, even if we did see groups' ability to raise resources for conducting the operations, it was not really profit motivated and that's something that, Prof. Rohan can come in later and tell us. That the ability of the ITT to use various kinds of the internet and other things to raise resources for itself, that was not primarily directed towards profits. It was essentially for the movement.

 

But here profit is becoming a motive for various groups and why it's happening also is because the inability of states to have control over the territories. Either the states are not in a situation to monitor their own territories. And this is where I think one of the major distinctions between South Asia and Africa would be that even if you had very strong movements in South Asia, I don't think the states ever were not in control of their own territory. So, even if I mean, the ITT was able to create liberated zones etc. But still the Sri Lankan state was in control.

 

The Maoists in Nepal were able to create liberated zones or operated with impunity. State balance was very limited in various areas and yet I think the Nepalese government still had certain control. And the same thing one can say about India that India has essentially ensured that these groups do not have the ability to create that kind of liberated zones from where they can operate independently.

 

So, this factor becomes an important factor in how we look at the state structures in various other regions in South Asia. But then we do have a problem in the APAC region where there are a lot of areas which are no-go areas or where the state really doesn't, neither the Pakistani state has that kind of control over the northwest province nor I would still say, the Taliban has the control or ever the governments in Kabul, whether the republican governments or subsequently the Taliban, whether they have that kind of control over certain regions. So, that's one of the reasons why I think there are still so many groups based in Afghanistan.

 

Now, the concept note or the questions that were raised in the concept note which was about how warfare has become tech enabled and all. Well, that's correct. But in the context of South Asia again, what I would like to say is that, yes, since 2010 onwards we see the use of technology. But in terms of warfare hybrid warfare or grey zone warfare, this has been there for a long time. I mean, in fact, I would say that this has been there since 1947 with the Pakistan state using various proxy forces against India.

 

And still today I think that proxy dilemma that India has in terms, in relation to the threat from the western border. That proxy dilemma is something that is continuing and we have to deal with it and something which is difficult for India to dismantle the networks and all. So, there is this state sponsorship which is helping these groups organize, reorganize and carry out attacks against India.

 

So, the hybrid warfare which we talk about today. Actually, has been there for a very long time. And I think the Pakistani state has used non-state actors all throughout. Whether it was in 1947, 48, 65 or in 1971. And subsequently we know that they have been doing this for a very long time. But to understand these hybrid threats for India and I am going to focus a little on India-Pakistan because of the shortage of time. That it's become a problem in the sense that I still think that in terms of the terrorism challenge that both India and Pakistan have.

 

I don't make any equivalence but as an academic interest or as an academic understanding that the terrorism challenge they have is not really non-kinetic. I mean, in the sense that tech enabled warfare, etc., which is these groups are able to do that, is not by the end of it going to create that kind of serious crisis for the states as much as the kinetic operations. And that is where I think India has been able to tackle it to a certain extent.

 

Pakistan for various reasons is having a serious issue with it at this point of time. Because of both the ability of the TTP to carry out attacks and the BLA which has done some major spectacular attacks in the recent past with the Jaffar Express train hijacking to the recent attacks which happened just last Saturday. So, the kinetic challenge is still much more serious.

 

But that's we can leave that aside because that's something which would require responses which will need to take into consideration the hybrid nature of these warfares. That you can deal with kinetic operations but these kinetic operations are supplemented or supported by what these groups are now able to use. Whether they are in terms of how they are using the social media for narrative warfare or narrative control.

 

So, this has become one of the issues as to how the social media has changed mobilization and ability of propaganda for these groups and we have seen a shift in this from 2010 onwards. Where you one of the major examples or good examples of that was this social media driven militant persona building of Burhan wani in Kashmir. And many of you remember when he was killed, the kind of response that came for his burial.

 

And in the recent past, the TRF which probably came to limelight after the Pahalgam attacks. But actually, they have been there from the 2020s onwards and this trend. The TRF is essentially a group, created group, which joins these various groups within Kashmir. It's a front organization. Many believe for the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. But the TRF literature itself says that we connect with all the other groups like the Jaiswal, Mujahideen, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, etc.

 

And the TRF from 2020 onwards we see has been using the social media in a very effective way. I mean, they have been using social media to raise resources. They are using the social media to mobilize. They are using the social media to intimidate recruitment and also the kind of narratives on Indian occupation of Kashmir and all. So, these help these groups, by the end of it, to create a certain narrative which now, its kinetic operations are not sufficient. States also have to deal with this issue of narrative.

 

And something which became very clear after the 2025 India-Pakistan clash where you could see how the social media led to a lot of false, misleading, battlefield content, to moffed or recycled footage, AI generated material. Now, we have to deal with that. I mean, you cannot now. I will just take a minute, sir. So, you cannot deal with them. I mean, unless you deal with them, the process of terrorism or the trend of terrorism is going to continue because the ability of these groups to operate through these mechanisms.

 

So, it becomes difficult for states to engage in direct confrontation. It becomes difficult to dismantle the networks which exist. There is a technology capability gap meaning that these groups, what they are using, in some cases, the use of drones, etc., we do not have counter responses at this point of time. I mean, these are evolving and hopefully, they will.

 

It also creates a serious challenge for the states when it creates a legitimacy crisis when stringent anti-terrorism laws are used or followed or rights restrictions are done by curbing the internet, etc., which can be politically destabilizing for the states and it sometimes can drive radicalization of various groups. And final point is that given the India-Pakistan equation in this region and a lot of challenges across borders, South Asia will never be able to have a regional mechanism to deal with terrorism. So, I will stop there. Thank you, sir.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you. Thanks a lot. I think I have a few questions for you and Dr. Adil Rasheed, but time permitting, I will raise them. Over to you and Dr. Awasthi. You are talking about digital.

 

Soumya Awasthi: Yes. Thank you so much, General Sharma. Good evening, everyone. Thank you, ICWA, for having me here. I will try to focus mostly on how tech is enabling terrorism and how it's blurring the geography and the territory. So, aim is to tell you that what are the ways it is happening and how it is impacting our geographies and national security. I will not talk about any particular case here, but we'll take it as it comes.

 

So, the key argument that I'm giving here is that terrorism has evolved into a technologically enabled hybrid form of conflict that operates across physical, digital and psychological domains. It is being re-engineered into a form of systemic disruption. So, instead of relying on solely physical attacks, these violent actors are going into producing continuous instability by exploiting the digital platform. So, it's not restricted only to carrying out attacks in terms of fedayeen or just shooting rampantly on the citizens or the armed forces. So, it's trying to manipulate the social narrative and operate below the threshold of a formal warfare as well.

 

This shift is visible in how regional groups like Jaish-e-Mohammad or Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or even the global groups like Al-Qaida and ISIS and its affiliates have adopted to the digital space. Taking again the example from the resistance force and the Kashmir Tigers, it has actually given us a solid model on how these groups are functioning in the hybrid space or in the digital space.

 

So, when you talk about these particular groups, they have also learned the art of delivering their ideas and that is not just like in the old age when Taliban used to do fatwa or the Shabnamah night letters. It has also now used very smartly the social media platforms and also defined and customized the messaging as per their audience. So, it's not one message for all. It's different message for different kind of audience.

 

So, the impact is not just physical violence, it's also cognitive and psychological space that they try to hit and target. So, the bottom line is that modern terrorism is not designed merely to kill. It seeks to fragment societies, influence political behavior, distort electoral outcomes and erode public trust as well.

 

So, the violence is triggered, narrative is the weapon and cognition is the battlefield. That's how I would like to argue it and when I talk about the terrorism, how it's colluding with other kinds of acts of crime and terrorism, it comes out that it's not simply the non-state actors functioning. It's also the fusion of the state actors along with the non-state actors that we have often come across whether we talk about Pakistan or we talk about Bangladesh or even if we look towards West Asia or Middle East like my previous speakers have already discussed that at length.

 

So, terrorism is colliding with the organized crimes. It's also using political signaling and proxy conflict and lastly a very important thing that we all are quite aware of is information warfare. Now, the way that they are using it is of course through AI generated propaganda. They are also using algorithm amplification because hashtags is the new tool in their hands. So, the more you end up looking for those tweets on X or the message on the X that repeatedly comes across and basic simple example will be if you go to Instagram and you are looking at particular kind of videos then those similar kind of the trend will start following you. So, you don't have to follow the trend but trend is following you.

 

So, you will be served what you are looking for. So, there is of course encrypted platforms also like Telegram that is hosting thousands of accounts of these extremist groups and another important aspect of technological ecosystem is the Fintech platform and the informal digital payment systems which is helping in funding of these terror organizations. So, for example, we all came across these magazines by ISIS where they had put the digital QR in front of their magazine cover so that you can just go and donate.

 

So, it considers even a small amount as a donation or in the name of Zakat they are asking you to do the donations. They are using Monro not just one particular cryptocurrency like Ethereum but they are diversifying and using several other kinds of cryptocurrencies for example Monro and of course there is Bitcoin involved and another way that they are able to delete their or not leave any trace behind for the agencies to trace them back to the originator is the method of tumbling and mixing.

 

So, when you go on dark web and use these cryptocurrencies there are tools like tumbling and mixer. So, for example, if person A is giving you Ethereum and I give you Bitcoins and the third person gives you Monro so these methods can mix these cryptocurrencies and redistribute them. So, you get basically a mixture of cryptocurrencies and not one particular kind. So, it again becomes difficult for the Fintech or the security agencies or the investigative agencies to trace the trail of money and of course there are also use of commercial drones as mentioned by one of the speakers that more and more terror organizations are using drones.

 

We have seen its use in the case of Houthis also and in the ISIS of course and also by LET and Jaish-e-Mohammed for dropping of drugs across Punjab, Kashmir and Gujarat, Rajasthan belt, but also for dropping of weapons and fake currencies as well. Now, given what ways they are using emerging technologies in the terror ecosystem and the collusion between state actors and non-state actors, there are few kinds of advantages that they actually, get out of it.

 

One is of course accessibility because it allows the groups to stay in their own four walls of the room and not really go out on the battlefield to acquire drones or encryption of tools or even recruit people. So, you can sit back in your room, use the desktop and maybe use a social media platform to recruit and radicalize people and also spread propaganda. But another think beyond social media platforms is the gaming platform that I keep highlighting in my writings also, that how gaming platforms are becoming more and more prone towards recruitment, radicalization, and propaganda. Because more and more terror groups are now in the West, the Europe, it has been seen as a trend that they are modifying these gaming applications.

 

For example, Call of Duty being one of the most famous, then Roblox, and you name it. There are multiple others. What they are doing is they are creating a modified version of it, which then uses the logo of their terror group. A flag maybe, they will put it on the tank. So you are not just playing a game which is virtually created by a terrorist organization, but also getting to associate yourself by seeing those flags constantly on your screen. So you start associating yourself with it.

 

And then there are private chat rooms that they use to communicate and mobilize people for a particular kind of a mission. And hence, you see a rise in number of lone wolf attacks, which are not directly associated to a particular group. But later on in investigations, it's been found that they were aligned or associated mentally or psychologically with a particular terror organization. We saw that in the Bondi Beach attack in Australia. And also in the past, we have seen it in New Zealand or in London. And there are many more cases of that kind.

 

The second reason they rely on technological architecture is also because of anonymity that it provides. The scalability, you don't need to, like I said, you don't need to go out to recruit. You can recruit thousands of people sitting just using your laptop or even mobile phone. And then, of course, there is deniability. So the gray zone aspect comes in here with the use of tech that they can live in ambiguity and go ahead with the deniability as well.

 

And that's why I say that it's not just the non-state actors, but also the state powers involvement when we talk about state-sponsored terrorism. So there are states involved, whether it is deep state or it is a state going out in the open and supporting particular kind of terror organization. One particular thing that I highlighted in the beginning, I want to take it back again here, is the method of messaging. And like I said, that they customize their messages. So for example, I'll give you three kinds of audiences.

 

One will be the audience of within, so you're basically communicating with the people within the group or the sympathizers who want to join the terror group. So you are delivering a certain kind of messaging so that they believe in martyrdom. They believe in how it is important to fight for the religion or for the cause. The second messaging that they do is towards the government or the enemy or the state, where they try to tell the state government and the paramilitary forces that how we are coming at you and towards you because you are the enemy of the people who are sympathizers.

 

So they try to tell what wrong they are doing, name-calling, sometimes they will go on doing hashtags and do name-calling also for the leaders of the state. And they also target these armed forces especially, and the paramilitary forces by using a very high-end technologically solid graphics where they come up with videos as good as any Yash Raj movie. They try to tell you that how your weapons are not capable enough to fight with us and we have all the high-tech advanced weaponry compared to what you are using and hence you are a loser in their language and they are coming to win over you.

 

Then there is a third kind of audience for the terrorist organizations, which is basically citizens like you and me whom they want to swing towards their favor by justifying their acts. So whatever they are doing, they will try to tell you, why they are doing it so that you get convinced and there is less and less protest against them. So this is the way in which they use audience and the content as for the audience for their messaging.

 

Coming to the gaps, I feel that terrorism is no longer only a kinetic threat. It means that terrorism today combines, of course, the digital amplification, the chair spoke in the beginning that how it is a force multiplier and you can have scale, speed and reach. What it means for India, India cannot assess success only through arrests, neutralizations or body counts, especially in the case of hinterlands and with regard to Kashmir, especially you can't say that, okay, you banned certain groups, you banned certain apps, so you are winning over terrorism. No, because the moment you ban certain applications, there are immediate apps which come up in response to that. So that's something we have to look at.

 

Second, counter-terrorism is now a digital governance challenge. So because I said that recruitment, radicalization, fundraising, propaganda, all are happening on social media, gaming platforms, encrypted applications and Fintech systems. So for India, it means that there is an intersection of internal security, digital regulation and Fintech oversight and platform accountability where we need to focus and bring up a more harmonic way of functioning rather than working in the silos and being more reactive to the event.

 

Maybe we should look at how we can use the DPDP Act to talk about terrorism and recruitment and radicalization because it talks about privacy, it talks about access to your data, so how is algorithm amplification looking at DPDP Act. The third would be the cognitive domain is the new center of gravity. What has changed? Violence triggers disinformation, communal narratives and emotional polarization faster than verified information can respond.

 

So again, for India, it means that if you leave it unmanaged, this undermines social cohesion, fuels communal fault lines and weakens trust in democratic institutions which is basically a strategic advantage for our adversaries and in this case those who are non-state actors. Lastly, terrorism is embedded in hybrid and proxy warfare. The militant groups are increasingly functioning as a deniable instrument of the state-aligned hybrid conflict, particularly in case of India's neighborhood. We saw that in Bangladesh, we've been seeing it in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

 

Basically, the fusion between state and non-state actors as rightly mentioned by Professor Behera as well, be it in the case of, like I said, Bangladesh, Pakistan or other countries, we've been seeing the trend for the last more than two decades here. What it means for India, traditional distinctions between terrorism, information warfare and geopolitics is no longer operationally helpful. We need to look at it in a holistic way.

 

So all these three, four factors come together to build your security or go against your strengths. So you need to look at them in a broader landscape. So the bottom line is that treating terrorism as a policing problem alone will lead to tactical success and strategic failure. India's institutional response must evolve towards integrated security, digital governance, cognitive resilience and geopolitical strategy. To conclude, the terrorism in 21st century is not defined solely by bombs and bullets. It is defined by networks, narratives, algorithms and ambiguity as well. Thank you.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you. So how much time do we have? You can take some questions. Yes, so see, I'll just give you a little food for thought, so that we can then culminate the session by question-answers. So I think what emerges here in the Indian context, we have to be extremely mindful of the non-kinetic domain and dimension of combating terrorism. In that, my worries are about first the social engineering attacks.

 

Second is, if you want to rattle India, terrorist attacks against the critical infrastructure. Third thing is about the leadership targets per se. The Pager attack, what happened, how the whole leadership of Hezbollah was totally eliminated, right? Then we cannot also close our eyes to what happened during this COVID period. NBC, terrorism very much is alive. It's a new weapon in the hands of terrorists, a low-hanging fruit, chemical, biological and radiological attacks.

 

Then hydroterrorism as an act of state policy. You use this as a tool of strategic coercion. So these are some of the things. Please mull them over. And one, before I open the house for question-answer session, I wanted a little assessment both by Professor Behera and by Adil, depending on who speaks. You see, I think the centre of gravity of kinetic terrorism in India is shifting to northeast. With the developments which are taking place in Bangladesh now, what is happening in Myanmar, you see across in Rohingyas, then you have the unguarded spaces of border with Myanmar, where you have the Nagaland problem and all that.

 

So is there a potential for somebody, an external force, to abet those very forces which we have been able to pacify? Is this the new frontier? So with that, I think I'll request for your response, but after I have got some questions from the house. So house is open for two or three questions in one go. Yeah. Okay, let's start from front. Quick.

 

Yashi: Hello, sir. I'm Yashi, master's student in political science. My question is, where do we see the greatest blind spots in India's current approach to hybrid threats, particularly where terrorism intersects with cyber operations, disinformation, and non-state proxies? Thank you.

 

BK Sharma: Okay. Yes. Next question. Yeah.

 

Ashok Kumar: Hello, respected panel. My name is Ashok Kumar. I am a student of political science. My question is especially to Professor Rohan. As you said that there are two fronts of terrorism nowadays. One is in Africa and second is in the Western world as the rise of far extremist right wing groups have escalated. So my question is, do you think that the notion that there is a shift of terrorism towards Africa and neglecting the emergence of far right extremist groups in the rest of the world is due to the traditional understanding of terrorism? And do you think that there is a need to redefine what terrorism actually means? Thank you.

 

BK Sharma: Yeah, so let me go front to rear. Yes, sir.

 

Unidentified Participant: I have a question more directed towards Ajay. I think so far the presentations, most of it is the manifestation of terror and how various governments might be trying to face the challenge and all that. I think one issue on which he had sort of emphasized was the question of motive or what is the objective? Why all this terrorism? And he mentioned something about profit is one of the motives and he tried to defer that South Asia is a little bit different from others because here the motive is not profit but some others.

 

Now what is that other motive or what is it actually because if you really come down to the brass tacks, all are for some kind of profit, whatever might be the form of profit, either an ideological promotion, promotion of your own ideology, which almost like somebody mentioned about religion, all religions don't have that ideological base. Some have that ideological base. Others are trying to imitate maybe possibly like Hindutva and all that trying to codify what is in Islam and all that kind of thing. So how would you, I mean would you call the other motives also as profitable or some other designate them as something else?

 

BK Sharma: Thanks, yes. Yeah, please ask your question, quick.

 

Unidentified Participant: Yeah, so my question pertains to that what should be the counter-terrorism strategy of India post Operation Sindoor and the role of the information warfare that we have seen that we have failed in the narrative building. So how do you see that how we can incorporate the idea of information warfare wings in the Indian armed forces? Thank you.

 

Unidentified Participant: Thank you, sir, for the discussion. My question is regarding what should policy makers look out for in terms of trends in terrorism in the coming decade? So counter-terrorism strategy, right?

 

Nandini Khandelwal: Yeah. Thank you, panelists, for the discussion. I'm Nandini Khandelwal, Research Analyst at the Council. From the discussion specifically on Sub-Saharan Africa, I could understand that while government governance challenges within African states are undeniable, external exploitation or external interference with respect to, for example, natural resources, is equally disturbing and problematic. Is there a viable approach through which African countries can safeguard their strategic autonomy and identity while building effective counter-terrorism capacity? And my question is posed towards Dr. Adil Rasheed and Professor Rohan Gunaratna. Thank you.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you. Okay.

 

Ratanjo Goswami: Yeah. Hi. I'm Ratanjo Goswami from Jindal University. My first question to Professor, Dr. Awasthi. In the lights of Bitcoin and all these technologies, blockchain, we are seeing, does national security apparatus around terrorism in these organizations using BTC? For example, recent reports from J&K, are we putting national security separately from overall economic interest because blockchain is going to be a huge financial option in the upcoming 10 years?

 

And second fast question regarding Rohingyas because their penetration is quite enough in upper belt of Bhadravaha in Kishtwar. So they are also coming from displaced territory. So are we seeing any potentiality of them turning into OJWs? Thanks.

 

BK Sharma: Okay. Last two questions, last three questions and then we'll have one response from the panelists. Yeah. Start from this side so that I don't lose track of people asking questions. Thank you.

 

Zeeshan Ali: Thank you, panelists, for the discussion. I'm Zeeshan Ali, a research intern at the council. My question is that effectively using AI also has options for creating surveillance risks, personal bias, discrimination, privacy, erosion. So can AI be leveraged as a viable counterterrorism strategy?

 

BK Sharma: Okay. Yeah. Before that. Yeah.

 

Sachin Yadav: Good afternoon, panelists. My name is Sachin Yadav. I am a Ph.D. scholar at Jamia Ahmadiyya and a research intern at ICWA. My question is for Rohan sir. Sir, you have mentioned that globally we have seen a shift from traditional terrorism ideology to a far-right ideology. Does we have seen the same shift in South Asia also, and if yes, which are the main or major organizations in South Asia which are adopting this new ideology?

 

BK Sharma: Okay, thank you. Yeah, last question.

 

Azra Shahab: Good evening. My name is Azra. I'm a research intern at the Council. My question is supposed to be what anybody from the panelists can answer. Since most of the states in Africa are plagued by internal conflicts and political fragmentation, we see that in the case of Yemen, Sudan, Libya. So in this context, do you think state collapse and lack of a central sovereign authority in the states provide fresh grounds for groups like, terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to thrive? If yes, how we can address these challenges?

 

BK Sharma: Thank you. Very interesting questions. I'll make it a little simple for the panelists to respond. My first request is to Professor Rohan, if you could address the question related to far right, whether it can manifest even in Indian subcontinent and about Africa. So kindly confine your response to these questions or if something else that you feel is extremely important. Over to you, Professor.

 

Rohan Gunaratna: General, in November of last year, a 17 year old Muslim boy went and put a bomb in his mosque, the mosque school. He was driven by the far right ideology of Brenton Tarrant. In the weapon, he inscribed the name of Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch attacker and other far right attacks. So what we are seeing, the violence has been of great appeal to the youth in Asia. It is not so much the ideology. Ideology came later, the violence of it.

 

So I think that it is so important for us to restrict the use of social media for children in schools and the parents and the teachers should have more supervision of the children and the juveniles, of the young adults. If we don't do this, certainly we will have more children moving towards violence and extremism. We have seen a number of cases in Asia. We call them Asian supremacists.

 

The second question is about Africa you are right. It is primarily a governance challenge for Africa. You need strong governments to deal with terrorism. You need extraordinary, bright and far-reaching and educated leaders to deal with terrorism. Because terrorism is no longer the traditional terrorism. Today it is mixed very much with economic warfare, with espionage, with information operations. You can call it psychological or influence operations. So you need to train your leaders, including your political leaders, on understanding the national security, the broader national security dimensions of fighting this threat.

 

So the next phase of threat is going to be what you call hybrid warfare or what you call grey zone warfare or irregular warfare. So we need to train our national security practitioners, including in Delhi and defense schools, on the broad aspects of irregular warfare, so that they will be better equipped to manage terrorism and these other threats. Because they have all converged together. Thank you very much. I especially thank General Sharma for his effective managing the question and answer session. Thank you, General.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you, sir. So, Soumya, all the questions related to technology, AI and how can we put it into our national security strategy?

 

Soumya Awasthi: So there was a question on something related to armed forces and narrative warfare. I think it would be unfair to say that it is the duty or job of only armed forces to take care of narrative building. Their job is to create facts on the ground. Our job is to do narrative building. So when you reverse the role, you will also know what you should do as a citizen of the country to counter the narratives and also build the right narratives.

 

So there comes the role of citizens. And when you talk about citizens, just do a comparative study. The simple would be to do it with Pakistan, that even the citizens within Pakistan are doing it rightly so. But there is also the diaspora which is involved from other countries, whether it is in the Gulf or it's in West, East, Europe, U.K.., anywhere. These Pakistanis sitting in the U.S. are also equally involved in the narrative building.

 

So there comes our role as citizens of the country to counter these narratives. And as far as government mechanism goes, I think we are making those baby steps that helps us counter to the algorithmic studies and work with the private sectors to ensure that the keywords that keep coming again and again and the hashtags are highlighted timely and then they are withdrawn from the websites.

 

Other than that, I think one of the suggestions that I keep telling is that why not use our own government people and people who have retired as mascots of narrative building? Maybe they can do better when they go on the news channels for debate shows. Maybe that is the place where you can do narrative building. So there are many ways. Yes, school, university, college audience needs to be timely addressed for them to know what the government is doing. So there has to be the gap between the lead and the leader has to reduce. Because when the leader is working in silo, of course, the people or the masses will not know what exactly is happening and how we should approach it and react. So that gap has to reduce.

 

There was a question on surveillance. There have been a lot of debate on surveillance. And there will be many on the street of Delhi when there was a discussion on Aadhaar cards, when there is a talk on downloading a mandatory app by the government. We all talk about our privacy, whereas we appreciate the same thing if done by Chinese or by the Americans. And we talk about surveillance.

 

So we need to understand that it's not very easy to do surveillance in our country, given the wide ethnicity or the fabric of the country is involved. And then, of course, when government is doing it, trying to take people in confidence before doing any action. And then there was a question on financial security. Is it separate from economic power? I don't think so. It's separate. Because the supply chain does impact our economic prowess as well. And when you talk about financial security, a lot of financial intelligence units are involved and working with the government in tandem.

 

And they are looking at how these trades are taking place. They are working on the illicit trafficking or trades, which are trying to the whole corruption circuit also they are trying to break. And that's why you keep seeing new reforms every day. That's the reason you're seeing the reforms, because economic security or economic power is equally dependent or interdependent with the financial security. And with that, I would like to thank you.

 

Unidentified Participant: I don't want any reply, you talk privacy, everything in our system non of his server is located in India. Thank you

 

BK Sharma: Yeah, that's correct. So Professor Ajay, would you like to respond to this question about other motives and also your assessment about our northeast vulnerability?

 

Ajay Darshan Behera: Yeah, thank you, sir. I will just respond to these two things. That's a good question, Professor Ghoshal, about the motive. But the motives here was very clear, you know, I mean, let me refer to two major groups which were degraded in South Asia, that one is the LTT and the ULFA. And the clearly, I mean, the LTT's objectives were separatism. I mean, there was a clear separatist ideology, which, you know, guided or motivated the LTT. But there is a very complex kind of interpretation of how groups become violent, because what explains the brutality of the LTT?

 

And that argument is called the post-ethnicity argument, which basically says that groups have a cause for which they come up, they organize, but to sustain themselves, they have to use violence, they have to raise resources. So the LTT essentially was very, very successful in raising resources, not only from the internet, media, extortion, including the Sri Lankan state.

 

So taxes of the Sri Lankan state were coming to the LTT itself. And the ULFA also did the similar thing. The ULFA also invested in stocks, etc., gun running, selling weapons to others to raise resources. But the real question is what was the motive? I don't know whether this motive was entirely profitable, but it's very difficult to make a distinction between where exactly is that distinction between profit and resources for sustaining the movement. And that is where I see a big difference between what is happening in the context of Africa, where it's become a profitable business, war has become a profitable business, if you can do that, if you can control territory and all.

 

So these are still gray areas we cannot never be very, very clear about how these things happen. The second question about the Northeast is, I think the Northeast is far more integrated into India than what it was earlier. And over a period of time, I think the government has also been able to neutralize a number of groups. I mean, the Northeast had, I don't know, maybe hundreds of insurgent groups. I mean, now you find that many of the areas Tripura, the NSCN never considers itself as a terrorist group or the NACN actually does not carry out terrorist attacks. It essentially carries out attacks against the military or government institutions.

 

So, it is very difficult to label the NACN as a terrorist group. So, I think, I do not think, I mean, we cannot be very, very categorical about it unless and until things go wrong in the North-East politically. If there is enough political space for most of the groups vying for power over there, I think we will be able to co-opt them increasingly. It does not mean that there are no, possibilities for external groups like the Rohingyas and all, but they would not, in my understanding, create a serious threat to our state structure or institutions and all. It is far more easier to tackle them rather than when your own people, groups from within your own people start challenging the state. So, that would be the big difference between how groups from outside or groups from within India challenge the Indian state.

 

BK Sharma: Dr. Adil, you have written extensively on Bangladesh, also for USI publications and all. So, I would like to have your assessment about particularly Bangladesh being exploited by ISI with a wink from Chinese to create certain destabilization forces in this region, particularly Siliguri corridor. It may be a kind of a symmetric threat, but it will be a very big pinprick, I feel.

 

Adil Rasheed: Yes, I agree with you there is a threat and we should not be blind to that. But I think what is very important is that when people talk about any kind of malaise, either in the biology or in the society, we should look at the internal weaknesses. Viruses will keep coming from outside, but what are the internal vulnerabilities? And here I would like to come to the problem of narratives. How many of us actually, know the narrative of the other side?

 

We can make counter narratives only when we know the narrative of the other side. We presume we know that, but many times when you read it deeply, like if you read the narrative of the Taliban, it is different from that of the Wahabi Al-Qaida. So if we know the narratives of the, and also what are we trying to do to culturally connect ourselves with the Northeastern people more? It is an ongoing exercise. It is not that we used to do it and now how many of us in maybe in different parts of India actually know about the different states and their ethnicities and their cultural laws and their society, that connect is very important.

 

I think we need to feel that that is as much as part of us. And I think there, if we make that connect, we can overcome any kind of permutations or combinations coming from either China into the region or America trying to create a Christian state in that region and trying to create problems with the Presbyterians or whatever. So we need to actually feel for each and every person of India as our own.

 

There is a story about Peter the Great. He said, even the snakes and scorpions of my country, I feel for them. Even if we do not get along with certain people, we should embrace each and every one. So if we will show that, it might not give us the desired result, but we should always feel for that. And then perhaps, and I think one of the excellent presentations was of Soumya Awasthi. It was an absolutely wonderful presentation. And that's how we are going to, we should be creating narratives by first understanding what are the vulnerabilities, what is the sense of deprivation in different communities around the country, in different parts of the country.

 

Why is there a demand for khalistan, whatever? Even if they are wrong perceived problems, what are those and how we should move towards alleviating them. These are the blind spots. The other big problem around the world is the decline of liberalism. We had a liberal international order which came after the second world war. Now it has been 80 years and this generation has not seen the second world war. So we are actually open, but we have not seen war.

 

So we need to, and there will be a change in the way people will think about their countries. And on that question on motives and all that, profit, the motive when it comes to the subcontinent, one of the major thing behind it is that people here have not felt, whether it is Pakistan, whether it is India, whether it is Sri Lanka, that the maps are rightly drawn. So Afghanistan has problems with the Durand line, with Pakistan. China has problems with the lines with India. India has issues with the way, and also at cultural levels.

 

So those permutations and combinations which were in place at the time of the independence, there is a revision going on, because that assimilative spirit of liberalism has weakened and the narratives should be formed. If you don't know what should be your narrative, read your constitution because that is binding the country together. What are the values of the constitution? They are very liberal values. The more you will make those values strong, you will be able to counter fissiparous tendencies, divisive narratives and bring the country closer.

 

And I think there we need to actually work hard. In modern warfare, we need to understand the narratives of the extremists and then we should have rigorous, that's the idea of democracy. We don't need to go to war. We can sit on the table and discuss it and have intellectual ability to discuss it one-to-one and we should engage them. And we have been successful, particularly in the north-east in Meghalaya and other places, that we have engaged with those people. Erstwhile, terrorists have become leaders over there.

 

I think that is the effort which we should work upon. So I feel that what we are seeing all over the world, whether it is far-right extremism in Europe, whether it is jihadism, you see the Muslim world to begin with, after the Second World War, was moving towards secularism from Turkey to Egypt to Iran. It was only in the 1980s that there was a flip in Iran, Afghanistan, then all these jihadist groups suddenly came over. So we need to have the liberal narrative and liberal institutions strengthened, otherwise the basis on which the post-World War II order and the states were formed would be under threat. And that is the way I look at it.

 

BK Sharma: Thank you, Adil. I would just conclude by saying the biggest blind spot is actually in our collective thinking, in our strategic outlook. We are still mired by what you call cognitive biases, flawed assumptions, mental maps, group thinking. There's very little element of critical thinking in our research and analysis. This requires a multi-domain, a cross-domain specialist approach and not only left to the policy makers because they have their own problems.

 

Second issue here is that there are new red lines as far as India's strategic calculus is concerned drawn post-Sindoor. That means terror, talks, water cannot flow together. Secondly, we will not disaggregate terrorists from the establishment. It's one ecosystem. Third, that we have said is that we will call your nuclear bluff right, no more you can sort of intimidate us by flashing the nuclear card. From that, it's a very hazy concept of what you call is a dynamic retaliatory response strategy.

 

But it's a big buzz word, which has not been translated into actualities per se. Because I feel the kind of response we had to what happened in Gulmarg is not sustainable to every terror attack. This is a very good way for the adversaries to drain out India's energy. You cannot repeatedly use a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Right?

 

So you need to have a more advanced multi-domain warfare strategy, which should be a subset of your classified, I'm using the word classified national security strategy because that's a compass which will actually guide the entire policymaker and nation, and subset of that is multi-domain warfare strategy in which two things are extremely important. One is your cognitive security, and second is your digital security. She talked about it. And this is very important.

 

And unless we have documents like this, and these are also practiced across the board, and you create the kind of literacy and mechanisms and instruments to implement that, we will only have the knee-jerk reactions, episodic reactions, and we'll not be able to deal with this threat of terrorism, which is changing its character and nature every now and then in a holistic manner. It would be episodic. It would be seasonal. But it's not going to give us sustainable, long-term results.

 

So, at the end, I just want to thank ICWA for giving us this opportunity to share this platform, and to my panelists, particularly Dr. Professor Rohan, who joined us from Singapore, and my co-panelists from India, and most of all, all the participants, particularly young students, who raised some very, very deep and very, very sort of thought-provoking questions. Thank you very much.

 

Unidentified Speaker: Thank you, sir. It just leaves me to thank our Chair and our panelists for sharing their thoughts with us this afternoon on this important topic. I also thank Dr. Nivedita Ray, Director Research, and our audience for their active participation in this discourse. I now invite you all to join us for high tea. Thank you so much.

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List of Participants

1. Major General BK Sharma, AVSM, SM & Bar (Retd.), Former Director General, United Service Institution of India (USI) (Chair)
2. Professor Rohan Gunaratna, Professor of Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of   International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Online)
3. Dr. Adil Rasheed, Research Fellow and Coordinator, Counter-Terrorism Centre,    Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA)
4. Professor Ajay Darshan Behera, Director, MMAJ Academy of International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia
5. Dr. Soumya Awasthi, Fellow, Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi