Prime Minister Modi has done well to walk the talk on terrorism at G20 summit
A good part of the credit for the G20 leaders' statement against terrorism must go to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has consistently used every international forum to not just highlight the menace but also call for concerted global action. At the Hamburg summit, he went one step ahead and presented to member states a 11-point Action Plan to fight terrorism and placed militant outfits such as the laskhar-e-Tayyeba (leT), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Islamic State (IS) and the Boko Haram on an equal footing. This is important because certain nations, especially of the West, have been more occupied with the threats from the likes of the IS than with regional players such as the JeM or the leT which have carried out terrorist attacks in India.
As India has consistently maintained, there can be no differentiation in dealing with all of these organisations, and that the ‘good terrorist' versus the ‘bad terrorist' syndrome, which Pakistan especially nurtures, should be brought to an end. Prime Minister Modi expressed not just India's perception but also the belief of a larger world community when he said that countries across the globe should be doing more than it is, to tackle terrorism. Obviously, one of the effective means of doing so is greater cooperation among nations, and to this end the 11-point Acton Plan recommends the sharing of list of terrorists among G20 member nations and actions against those on that list. The Prime Minister's other suggestion, that extradition processes must be expedited for names that feature in this list, is relevant, because often, terrorists living in one country and wanted by another, take refuge in the maze of legal procedures of the host nation and escape justice. Modi's third suggestion to choke off funds to terror groups is too obvious to need an elaboration, and must be implemented if the world has to strike at the roots of this menace. Given that the Indian Prime Minister made these recommendation in front of a gathering of the world's strongest leaders, one can only hope that these nations will take his ideas seriously.
While the statement issued by leaders of the summit — “There should be no safe haven for terrorist financing anywhere in the world” — is welcome, action is needed. As of now, terror groups derive their financial muscle, which helps them spread their wings and conduct terror strikes, from the international financial system, both legal and covert. For instance, militant groups across Afghanistan and Pakistan have monetarily flourished through poppy trade. To make the international financing system ‘entirely hostile' to terror financing, it's important to cut off aid to outfits that are facades for terror groups. It's not enough for a nation to occasionally declare (as the US did in Syed Salahuddin's case) a militant a ‘global terrorist'; world action in tandem is desired. The UN must take the lead by adopting India's suggestion for a global convention on terrorism.