CRamS wrote:
1) Why is Al Queda terrorism against US "global" while Paki terrorism against India is "local"?
It is certainly a fair question, and the answer has a couple of components, some which reflect the inherent unfairness of the international system.
- The first is made explicit in Al-Qaeda's own statements and ideology which sought to convince Muslims around the world that there was a point to attacking the "Far Enemy". In fact Ilyas Kashmiri quotes the same ideology in his interview with Saleem Shahzad in 2009. In short its a top-down view of the world where the US as the global hegemonic power is the upholder of the system. If you want fundamental change in any part of the world, whether the Middle East or the Subcontinent, then you must push America out of the picture, and you must punish its allies as well. This is not an unusual point of view. Many anti-Globalisation protestors, Marxists, and even some people here skeptical of the American role say the same thing. India has no such global role at this time. When Al Qaeda set off bombs in Madrid, it did it to weaken the American Coalition in Iraq, not India's position in Afghanistan. It is the same when Al Qaeda in Iraq bombed hotels in Amman, Jordan.
- Al Qaeda attacks the United States and its allies wherever it can - in the Americas, Europe, Africa, South Asia, East Asia, wherever possible. Attacks on Indian targets by Pakistan have been largely confined to the Subcontinent - Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This might change, but that is where things are.
2) If you claim that Al Queda attacks not only US but its western lackeys as well and hence "global", then give me an answer to this which I have posed many-a-times. After 9/11, if pipsqueaks like UK and others took a neutral stance, would they have been under OBL's radar? Prior to 9/11, I don't recall the existance of Al Queda, and while I heard of OBL, he mentioned only US and Israel, none of the other lackeys of US. Recall, after 26/11, a henious attack on India by Pakis, US and its pipsqueak allies had the gall to say that they don't want to take sides. By the same token, why did pipsqueaks like UK, Canada, Australia etc jump on the US bandwagon as though they were attacked? White brotherhood?
Al-Qaeda was first named as a threat by Arab allies of the US - Jordan and Egypt, specifically, and it was a couple of years before the Americans took it seriously. Just like the way America ignored Pakistani involvement in global jihadi terrorism, the Americans refused to recognise that these local Arab jihadis had a transnational element until 1995.
India and the United States are in the process of developing a strategic relationship. Its a slow process, but it would seem to me that things are far better than they used to be.
In contrast the United States and the other countries you mention are bound by mutual-defence treaties, and decades of close cooperation and mutual dependence. If you don't know what Article V of the NATO treaty is, then you should look it up, because the Americans invoked it after 9/11 for the first time. Of course there are limits. Canada did not go to Iraq.
Yet none of these countries, except perhaps France would be interested in joining the US in a war against Iran, and certainly none of them were interested in getting involved against North Korea.
Deobandi jihadis from HUJI preferred British as well as American hostages when trying to secure Azhar's release in the 1990s, and a foiled jihadi plot in Yemen was aimed largely at British targets. Bin Laden had in his messages in the 1990s also warned both France and the UK to distance themselves from the US if they did not want similar treatment.
