How 9/11 Shaped India's War On Terror

As Other Countries Realised Terrorism Wasn’t Merely India’s Cross-Border Itch, Delhi Went After Terrorists With A New Zeal

- Indrani.Bagchi

When debris from the destruction of the twin towers settled that day, Indian security planners began to join the dots. Could it be, they wondered, that the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in December 1999 was a dry run for 9/11? Two decades later, that’s an accepted fact.

The epoch-defining terror attack in New York 20 years ago reverberated around the world. It changed the definition of terrorism, the destinies of nations, and their foreign policies. It redefined global power equations, and in many parts of the world, the aftermath of that event redrew maps. India was profoundly impacted. In the two decades since, the reverberations have been reflected in India’s internal and external security policies, foreign policy and strategic outlook.

Al-Qaida was responsible for 9/11, but it inspired an alphabet soup of Pakistan-sponsored terror groups that targeted India in a series of terror attacks through the following decade. The results were not always what Pakistan intended.

The J&K assembly building was attacked in October 2001, but a bigger one was in store. On December 13, 2001, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists attacked India’s Parliament. India retaliated with Operation Parakram, a massive mobilization of troops on the Pakistan border. It was the biggest exercise of coercive diplomacy. Pakistan was forced to move its troops from the Afghan border to the Indian one as, for the next six months, the two sides remained in a precarious standoff. The US engaged in some serious shuttle diplomacy between the two, with the result that by June 2002, Gen Pervez Musharraf had agreed to stop cross-border infiltration by his terrorists into India, as a condition for a drawdown.