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War on Terror Hits Home: Thoughts on a Growing Threat

Westporter Sharmishtha Roychowdhury follows the growing tensions between Indian and Pakistan closely. Her father is a retired general former member of the Parliament of India with strong feelings about the War on Terror.

Sharmishtha Roychowdhury — a mother of two who works as an adjunct professor at UConn in Stamford - is like many Westporters. But there is one interesting detail that separates her from the pack; her dad is a retired army general and a member of Parliament of India.

In 2008, while most Westporters were busy defrosting their Thanksgiving turkeys, Sharmishtha had just learned that a terrorist attack was underway in her homeland— the city of Mumbai, formally known as Bombay.

"I learnt about the attack while browsing Indian news websites," says Sharmishtha, who left India 17 years ago to attend Northwestern University before marrying an American and putting down new roots in Westport.

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In the weeks leading up to the assault, intelligence services in India and the United States had information that Pakistan-based militants were preparing to launch suicide attacks on iconic sites in the city of 18-million.

Her dad (whose formal title is Chief of Army Staff) Shankar Roychowdhury, authored a book in English titled Officially at Peace, describing his country's military campaign against externally sponsored radicalized Islamic insurgency and terrorism launched by Pakistan.

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The general returned to India on Aug. 18 (the day President Obama pulled all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq) after spending part of the summer (Monsoon season back home) with Sharmishtha and his grandkids. Roychowdhury has been studying Pakistan for a number of years as it poses the greatest threat to India.

"The Pakistan Army is a very reluctant partner in the War on Terror, when it's directed against at its own strategic surrogates—the Taliban in Afghanistan through whom it exercises control and influence in that country," he says. "They will not cooperate seriously with the United States against the Taliban, no matter what the elected government of that country says."

While he has always worried about the Pakistani threat in his country, he now has similar concerns for his daughter and grandchildren's safety in America. The Times Square Bomber (a Pakistani national who was residing in Bridgeport) attempted to set off a car bomb on Christmas day in New York City.

"The case of the Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad cannot be considered in isolation," says Roychowdhury. "It has to be linked in a broader perspective with the growing number of radicalized American citizens, including some native born, who are coming forward to join the Islamic Jihad within the country."

These include Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Jordanian American officer of the United States Army who carried out the Fort Hood shootings, as well as other native-born Americans such as Adam Yahie Gadahn (alias "Azzam Amriki" – Azzam) the American al Qaeda member known for his videos posted on various jihad websites.

"In addition, a growing number of American Somalis are being influenced by the jihad in their country of origin, the latest being fourteen Somalis being prosecuted by the FBI for attempting to recruit and raise funds in the United States for onward dispatch to Al Shabab, the fundamentalist Islamic organization in Somalia, which has formally announced its affiliation to al Qaeda," the General adds.

While the United States has formulated its Af–Pak policy as the strategic guideline for its "War on Terror" and has deployed troops and resources to fight al Qaeda at its sources of origin in distant countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, Roychowdhury feels the critical struggle may be homeland defense inside the U.S. itself.

"Afghanistan and Iraq seem to indicate that public mood in America does not favor expeditionary engagements by American forces in faraway countries, unless quick and positive outcomes are guaranteed," he explains. "Ground commitments are inevitably long drawn out and result in the heaviest American casualties. These are therefore the least favored forms of military intervention in popular opinion, who find it hard to accept that these are somehow in the interests of America's national security."

According to Roychowdhury, the "creeping menace" of radical jihad targeting the United States, as well as other secular societies (like India) is a reality that cannot be wished away.

"Democratic societies are at a distinct disadvantage in fighting against this threat while maintaining their basic values, but will nevertheless they will have to adjust and devise appropriate societies if they are to survive," he asserts. "At the root of America's problems is its "Af–Pak" strategy which is a fatally flawed example of wishful thinking. Pakistan is a totally undependable ally in Afghanistan, because its strategic interests in that country are totally divergent from those of the United States."

The United States has deployed troops to Afghanistan for the purposes of seeking and destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban with whom they are embedded.  Yet, Roychowdhury says that Pakistan actually seeks to protect and preserve these militants as strategic assets against its true enemy, India, and also to re-establish control over Afghanistan after the American departure.

"Which seems to be only a matter of time now," he says. "In the meanwhile, Pakistan seeks to exploit American gullibility and extract the maximum military and economic aid for as long as it can, to strengthen itself to achieve its future objectives."

Sharmishtha thinks that the U.S. should exercise diplomacy, regardless of Pakistan's role in fighting the Taliban and helping in the hunt for bin Laden. Pakistan's role, however, is trickier.

"The current elected government in Pakistan is very fragile and has little control over rogue elements in the Pakistan Army and intelligence establishment who have close links with the LET and the JEM," says Sharmishtha. "The current president of Pakistan (Asif Ali Zardari ) lost his wife Benazir Bhutto to terrorists of the same persuasion. While his personal inclination may be to crack down hard on them, I do not know if he has the political authority to reign in these groups in any effective way. The Indian government's dilemma is how to strike against terrorist groups in Pakistan without undermining Zardari who is against terrorism, unlike the army establishment there."

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