Use Of Soft Power In Counter-Terrorism---What I Wrote On
Use Of Soft Power In Counter-Terrorism---What I Wrote On November 17, 2007By B. Raman
Anger is a common root cause of all terrorism---ideological, ethnic, separatist, sectarian or religious. Terrorist organisations exploit the anger to motivate the members of the community from which they have arisen to support them in their acts of terrorism. Such support can be in the form of volunteers for committing acts of terrorism, contribution of funds, logistic support etc. Extreme anger in individuals can motivate them to resort to terrorism as individuals without their belonging to any organisation.
Anger containment and ultimate reduction has, therefore, to be an important component of counter-terrorism.
2. Terrorists use the soft power of the media----old and new--- to keep the anger sustained and make it increase in order to maintain a high level of motivation.
3. It is more difficult---often impossible--- to remove strategic causes of anger.
7. One has been seeing since 9/11 that jihadi terrorist organisations----particularly Al Qaeda and its associates--- have become more adept in their use of soft power against their State adversaries than their State adversaries in their use against the terrorists.
8. The inability of the US-led coalition to use soft power effectively against the jihadi terrorists comes in the way of the campaign against terrorism making headway.
10. One of the reasons the US was able to use its soft power effectively during the Cold War was the availability of a large reservoir of political dissidents from the Communist countries, who co-operated in the running of the radio stations and imparted credibility to their broadcasts.
11 Al Qaeda and its associates have shown some sophistication in their use of soft power against the US and its allies.
12. Any strategy for the use of soft power against Al Qaeda and its associates has to provide for two totally different kinds of audience.
The first audience is the people in the spawning areas of jihadi terrorism. The only instrument of dissemination with which they feel comfortable is the radio. Moreover, they are so poor that radio is the only instrument which they can afford.
16. The second audience is the diaspora of Muslims across the Western world.
17. While the second audience feels comfortable with all instruments of dissemination, it avoids the Western print media which it looks upon as controlled by Jewish money and interests. It, therefore, relies almost exclusively on the Internet for its jihadi mission. Al Qaeda and its associates too use the Internet for rallying radical elements of the diaspora to their cause.
17. The focus of counter-terrorism experts till now has been on countering the operational use of the Internet by the terrorists for acts of terrorism. Not adequate thought has been given to countering the use of the Internet as an instrument of soft power.
19. The Internet provides an excellent means of empowering this inarticulate majority and encouraging it to come out against religious radicalism and the resort to terror, without fearing the consequences of their Internet activism.
We can update this and say in the context of today's so-called war on terrorism: "When funds are limitless, a battlefield casualty is your imagination."
