Terrorism, Interrupted

It8217;s a quickie that8217;s come too late. The war on terror has been on for over six months and then you get a book on the six most wanted terrorists in this part of the world that tells you almost everything that you already knew. What else would you expect in a book that crams half a dozen terrorists with over a decade worth of life8217;s work in murder mode into less than 150 pages. In actual fact, most of these people merit an account to rival the bulk of A Suitable Boy.

The introduction by K.P.S. Gill is promising. It leads you through his interpretation of the complex rules of tackling the unresolved issues of a terrorist8217;s psychology. He indicates the urgent need for documenting the process of indoctrination into the school of terrorism. The book belies that promise. Terrorism even today is a little known but immensely volatile chapter in modern history, and its unforgettable characters here are reduced to mere shadows of themselves. For instance, the dreaded Hafiz Mohammed Saaed, chief of Lashkar-e-Toiba, is a genial scholar with a penchant for humble behaviour while he goes about conducting his daily business of jihad. Amir Mir completely misses the irony of his personality. If you wanted to judge the man who has quite competently turned Pakistan8217;s contribution to Kashmir into the hands of Punjabi cadre there on his own words then Mir gives you a link to Saeed8217;s website. That doesn8217;t sound right. You buy a book and its tells you what8217;s on the Net! Who can blame children after this who won8217;t read because they think the Internet is the font of all knowledge.

In the case of Jaish chief Maulana Masood Azhar, Harinder Baweja actually recounts a conversation with him. These are vivid observations that sometimes give you an insight into the distortions of a deviant mind. The Orator is speaking to 25 armed mujahideen and says, 8220;all of them were listening to me intently and their AK-47s lay cradled in their laps like children in their mother8217;s care8221;. Anyone who thinks AK-47s are children probably also thinks children should be used as weapons. They are things of joy too. 8216;8216;My joy knew no bounds as I held the loaded gun in my hands,8221; says Azhar. These are moments in a book that are all too few to justify the whole. Terrorism is history as a living thing that we are recounting and these men form its grimmest humanscape. But mostly they appear as tame mercenaries. At best they are scholars of the art of killing and at worst vain protagonists of home videos produced in peculiar locations like the deserts of Afghanistan or the jungles of Sri Lanka.

There are as many books about why Osama bin Laden is in so much trouble with the Americans. Rahimullah Yusufzai has a different spin on it. 8216;8216;Bin Laden would not have landed in trouble if he didn8217;t have the habit of talking big,8217;8217; he says. Meaning that he could have bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but not boasted about it? Your guess is as good as mine on that one.

The profiles on Prabhakaran and Paresh Barua seem to serve the purpose of secularism more than anything else. Historical legacies, even profiles, are made up of meaningful minutiae of daily life. You8217;d hardly get that sense here.

Really, if someone took six months to produce this book, maybe they should have waited a while longer to give us a more substantial read.