He was introduced by Programme Chairman Nanik Rupani as a specialist in governance, conflicts, global and regional security, political economy and political philosophy. Known for developing innovative policies for peaceful change, his ideas had been discussed in the UN, in the Indian, European and British Parliaments, the League of Arab States, the Davos World Economic Forum and so on.
Mr. Waslekar had earned a reputation for his ability to take a sweeping look at human history, to analyse emerging trends and to draw long-term conclusions for the future of the world.
After studying philosophy, politics and economic science at Oxford University, he had received a degree in mass communications from Bombay University. At present he was a visiting faculty for the higher command course of the Indian Defence Forces.
He founded the International Centre for Peace Initiative (the first conflict resolution NGO in South Asia) in 1991. Under its auspices he was involved in Track II diplomacy between India and Pakistan, as well as with leaders of various Kashmiri movements. His most recent effort was to bring Western and Islamic leaders together to find a common ground in a time of crisis.
In 1991, he was invited to the then Soviet Union by then President Mikhail Gorbachev to a conclave of world leaders. His conversations there and at other places resulted in a book of essays, A New World Order.
Mr. Waslekar started his speech by revealing that at 5 pm on November 27, 2008, less than 24 hours after the launch of the terror attacks on Bombay (on 26/11), a meeting was organised in Islamabad to “celebrate the victory” of the Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba (LeT) and its collaborators even as the terror operation was going on.
That meeting was chaired not by terrorists or politicians, but by one of the leading intellectuals of Pakistan, Majid Nizami. It was organised by a trade union and most of the people present in the room were serving or former military officers. The meeting which declared “victory” got over around 6 or 6.30 pm.
And then, on December 2, 2008, a week after the terror strikes, there was a demand in Pakistan to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on India; there was a demand that the Pakistani military launch an attack with nuclear weapons on certain targets in India.
Even this demand was raised not by terrorists or politicians, but by a leading scientist of Pakistan; and it was supported by some military officers. For 15 to 20 days, the news of a scientist demanding a pre-emptive nuclear attack on India dominated Pakistan. Then, the din died down.
“Of course, the Indian media didn’t carry any of this news, because the Indian media was busy with a lot more important things, such as interviewing actresses and socialites and interviewing themselves or other media people.
“A Pakistani scientist demanding a nuclear attack on India, a ‘victory rally’ in Islamabad, all these were minor issues which didn’t matter to our media… (which reported the thoughts on) terrorism of our movie actresses.”
A few months later, said Mr. Waslekar, there was news that the Pakistani government was taking action against the LeT and that the US was also moving to have it banned or blacklisted. However, what actually transpired was that the LeT was blacklisted under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 which had a limited scope of implementation.
But just six months ago the LeT was gifted a 25-acre plot in Muzaffarabad by the government of Pakistan. And this for an organisation that already had its headquarters in Muridke, not far from Lahore, on an area of 114 acres. How many Indian companies had headquarters spread over 114 acres, with just offices and not factories or plants? Hardly any.
Suddenly changing tack, Mr. Waslekar declared that there would be another attack on the city of Bombay, this time not by the LeT but by the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). Further, the attack would not be directed at the Taj Mahal Hotel.
“If I can tell you in advance that the next attack will be by the Jaish-e-Muhammad, you must be wondering why no one is taking action. Why aren’t the Pakistanis taking action? Forget the Pakistanis, why aren’t the Indians taking any action? Why are the Americans not taking any action?
“There is nothing secret about this… You may think that the LeT and the JeM are terrorist organisations and you may have in your mind a certain picture of a terrorist organisation. After I give you details of how these organisations function and operate… (you will probably have to) send management students for an internship of three months in sophisticated management skills at the LeT or JeM headquarters.”
These organisations were structured at various levels; for example, the LeT had 10,000 agents on the ground who were paid a commission on a regular basis, just as Colgate had retailers whom it paid a certain commission for the toothpaste that they sold.
Next came the mid-level management which got house rent allowance (not free houses), a limited expense account and some commission. And then there was the top management which got free housing, a no-limits expense account and a lot of resources.
The LeT had 150 regular schools, not madrassas, and had only recently got another property to set up a new university (apart from the 25 acres gifted by the government six months ago). It had several factories and a media empire which had five popular newspapers. It was the same story with the JeM, with the Sipah-e-Saheba and other groups, too.
Mr. Waslekar said that in the case of Pakistan one could use a special term, GTP or gross terror economy product. And Pakistan’s GTP was 6% of its GDP as per calculations made in 2004. Since then it was likely that the GTP had grown to 8 or 9% of the GDP.
In other words, there were huge financial stakes involved in terrorism and before discussing the impact of terrorism on the economy, it was necessary to look at the economics of terrorist organisations.
Thus, if 6% of Pakistan’s GDP was controlled by just ten to twelve organisations, then the financial stakes involved were massive indeed. And, as already explained, these terrorist organisations were not just gangs or groups of outlaws but highly corporatised structures with professional management from top to bottom.
Drawing a parallel, Mr. Waslekar said that most people believed that the now-decimated LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) of Sri Lanka was just a terrorist organisation. But few people knew that terrorism was its secondary business. Its primary business was different.
The LTTE was one of the most exceptional shipping lines in the world, specialising in shipping contraband material; it was the only shipping line which could ship drugs, narcotics, arms and all kinds of contraband material and which indulged in trading on the high seas.
It had huge investments in many countries, including in shopping malls in Toronto, London and other places, and in other regular businesses. (Now that it had been decimated, the Somalians were likely to replace it.)
In the case of the LTTE, too, the financial stakes were huge. Its revenue distribution saw about 20% going to the cadres and foot soldiers and 80% to those at the top. The same ratio applied to LeT and other organisations.
“It is one of the biggest profit ratios… terrorism is a business with extremely high profit ratios… the last I heard it was 65%... For every Pakistani terrorist that India kills, the terrorist organisation gets ‘X’ amount of money from the ISI; of this, 35% is given to the family and 65% is retained by the leadership. Can you tell me a business with a profit ratio of 65%?
“I was involved in discussions with Pakistani leaders during secret talks. I suggested certain ways and means of bringing down terrorism and violence and how we (India) can take care of some of the Pakistani concerns.
“And they said our biggest complaint against India is that you are not killing enough terrorists. The more you kill, the more money these organisations make and the more we get rid of the problem of some of the unemployed youth. The ten or twelve boys that we killed (during 26/11) would have generated a fairly good amount of revenue for some of these terrorist organisations.”
It was likely that the terrorist organisations were frustrated that Kasab had not yet been hanged, because the day he was hanged, money would be changing hands in Lahore.
From this, Mr. Waslekar said, it could be seen that India was dealing with (terrorist) organisations which were huge commercial entities. And one of the reasons why nobody was taking action against them was the vast business interest in which everybody had a stake – people in the Pakistani military, those in the intelligentsia and the civilian leadership.
This applied to other organisations, too, not just those in Pakistan. The Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and other areas had started with the intention of “restoring social justice” but many of them had turned entrepreneurs. They levied “taxes” on the trucks that passed (their areas) and were involved in various kinds of businesses; in the forests, tendu leaves was a source of income for them.
Basically, terrorism had become a big commercial enterprise. That was the reason why despite knowing everything, it was difficult to take action against them. Asking Pakistan to take action against terrorist groups was like trying to empty the coffers of some of the leading people there.
Summing up his analysis of Pakistan, the speaker said that the economy of that country could be segregated into three sectors. First, the civilian economy in which normal business was conducted by normal people; second, the terror economy whose GTP accounted for 6% or perhaps 8% of the country’s GDP; and third, the four organisations that actually controlled the state.
These four organisations owned 150 to 200 Pakistani companies; all these companies were legitimate, involved in producing paper, cement, sugar and in airlines and so on (Shaheen Airlines, a private airline, was owned by one of these organisations).
But these four organisations were covertly owned by the military. Shifting for a moment to the UK and Northern Ireland, Mr. Waslekar recalled that there was a “Good Friday” agreement between the UK government and the Irish Republican Army (apart from the Ulster groups and others). And since 1999 there had been no terrorist attack in the UK.
But the scope for terrorism had weakened from 1985 itself when the Irish Republic and the UK signed the Anglo-Irish agreement to find a political solution to the problems of Northern Ireland.
After that, the Irish government completely stopped allowing the Irish Republican Army or any other terrorist group from operating from their territory, either for plotting physical attacks on the UK or even for carrying on propaganda.
After 1985, things automatically came under control. “The point I am making indirectly is that what happened in Bombay at the Taj and other places – and what will happen in future – may be called a terrorist attack, but there is no such thing as a terrorist attack, it’s always a terrorist-cum-military attack with full involvement of at least sections of the military (the Pakistani military in this case).
“The (audio) tapes of the exchanges between terrorists (at the Taj) and their handlers contained expressions like ‘use cover fire’, ‘use you rounds sparingly’ and so on. Any retired military officer will tell you that this is military language; it’s not the language of terrorists.
“You don’t have terrorism unless there is a vested interest of a country or a hugely organised structure involved... (because, as in the case of Ireland), once the Irish Republic decided to withdraw, the Irish Republican Army became weak and eventually the ‘Good Friday’ agreement was signed.”
Similarly, so long as the Pakistani government was involved and so long as the “GTP” was growing from 6% to 7% to 8%, India would have to face the problem of terrorism. It was the same with the Al-Qaeda and many other organisations.
There were some groups not backed by countries, but these had created their own commercial structures as the Naxalites had done. They were not backed by any country, neither by the ISI, nor by the Maoists of Nepal (the ULFA was backed by the ISI). A similar approach had been adopted by groups in the Philippines, in Uganda, by the Al-Qaeda and so on.
Having thus far spoken on the economy of terrorism, Mr. Waslekar turned to the impact of terrorists on the economy, whether the world economy or the national economy.
He stated emphatically that the objective of the terrorists was not to have an impact through an act of terror but through the response that the attack elicited.
For example, when terrorists attacked the Taj Mahal Hotel and other properties, the loss was huge, about Rs. 1,000 crores, but that was a limited loss.
However, in response to the attack, the Indian government was forced to divert resources to the security sector and it had to introduce various new laws and new duties the cost of which could run into hundreds of thousands of crores.
Similarly, when Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, the loss was limited to millions of dollars. But the response that the US government had to come up with cost billions and billions of dollars.
“What the terrorist groups intend to do is to damage your economy not by their acts, but by the response that they want to elicit from you. When people get emotionally affected by these attacks and say that we have to give a hard response, we are falling into their trap, because they are not interested in those 100 people who have died. They are innocent people and the terrorists understand that they are innocent people.
“Their whole interest is to try to change your behaviour, that is, the behaviour of the state. Their entire interest is to redirect your energy, to change your resource allocation, to draw your attention away from economic development and to take it towards security issues. That’s their entire interest.
“And the moment you give a response to terrorists in the language that they want, you have lost the battle, because your loss is not (that which is incurred) in the direct attack, your loss... is defined by the kind of response that you give. And that is what they want.”
Mr. Waslekar ended his talk by narrating two anecdotes.
In January, 2008, his organisation, the Strategic Foresight Group (SFG), had said in a public report that “the global financial system will collapse”. It had not said “may collapse” or “might collapse”, but “will collapse”.
Several CEOs had sent him angry SMSes, saying the stock markets were booming, the economy was doing well, so why was he talking about the global financial system collapsing?
But he had been proved right and the global financial system had collapsed by the end of the year. That was when he was called by the Italian Foreign Minister for a preparatory meeting to provide inputs for the G-8 meeting (Italy was then the Chairman of the G-8). The SFG was invited because it had predicted the economic collapse.
Several senior persons were present including the MD of the IMF, the governors of the central banks of many countries and so on. And all of them asked how on earth had he known that the financial collapse would occur?
Mr. Waslekar said there were no secrets to it, only analyses. However, they countered, there were hundreds of analysts who could have made the prediction that he had made.
WHEN TERRORISTS WERE GIVEN A SIX-HOUR LECTURE ON LOVE, SEX AND ROMANCE
He had replied that his prediction had to do with 9/11 and the response to it. They were shocked and asked what had 9/11 got to do with banks in the USA giving bad loans?
“I said, everything, because the attention of the Bush administration was so focused on what they called the war on terror (and then the war in Iraq), that they had no clue of what was going on in the financial sector and in other sectors.
“So you had a country which ended up in a big mess not only economically but even socially – but which had succeeded in preventing another attack of the 9/11 type.
“This was what the Al-Qaeda wanted and they got it. Al-Qaeda’s main success was not what happened on 9/11 in 2001, their success was what happened at the end of 2008.”
Finally, the speaker turned to his meeting with a former Home Minister of Pakistan to whom he had he suggested that there was no point in fighting India.
That man said, “I know that the Indian economy has a tremendous potential to go from 1 to 100. We do not have that potential, we may only go from 1 to 10. But we have the wherewithal to bring you down from 100 to 10. Our interest is in creating equality; and if we can’t create equality by going from 1 to 100, we can do it by bringing you down from 100 to 10".
The floor was then thrown open for questions. Mr. Waslekar replied after several questions were asked.
PDG Manibhai Doshi asked what was the way out. Would India have to organise itself in a different way?
Dr. Shailesh Raina pointed out that all those who had picked up the gun in Kashmir had become rich; they had the finest and the biggest houses and were successful commercial businessmen.
Was their success due to the fact that they were operating like corporates? Or was it that they were getting money from both sides? And what was the answer to the economic terrorism which was aimed at reducing India to Pakistan’s level?
Shyyamniwas Somani said it had become clear from 26/11 that the media had helped the terrorists. Since the speaker had warned of another attack, could something be done about the media? Perhaps it could be taught how to misguide, so that this time the terrorists were misled?
Dr. Percy Chibber asked what had made the Republic of Ireland change its mind. For, Ireland seemed to be the only success story against terrorism in the recent past. Could that effort be duplicated in the Indo-Pakistani situation? And could India arm-twist Pakistan into giving up its support of terrorism?
Sitaram Shah asked a brief question, while Dev Thukral made a somewhat loaded comment that the speaker decided to “pass”.
In answer to the questions posed to him, Mr. Waslekar said it was difficult to explain all the solutions that could be attempted and clarified that he was not making a claim to the post of National Security Adviser to the government of India. Considering that he had been highly critical of the media, he did not expect it to project him, either.
Taking up the case of Ireland, he said that what had worked for the Irish Republic and for the Irish Republican Army (which was involved in terrorist activities), was that they realised that if they achieved peace they would be able to join the European Union.
Further, the economic gains that would accrue from being part of the EU would be far greater than the psychological, political and other gains that they were making by carrying on with their warfare.
“And the EU responded by giving huge amounts of concessions and aid to Ireland… That was the major carrot that was offered.”
It was at this stage that Mr. Waslekar talked about the unholy alliance between Pakistan and the USA (all of which is set out in detail at the beginning of this report).
As for Kashmir, he recalled that he had gone there a week after the holy site, Charar-e-Sharif, was set on fire in 1995. That was also the time when the state went through its worst violence. He had gone with a few people and without security in order to talk peace with the Kashmiris. They stayed in Nageen Lake which was far more risky than the Dal Lake in those tumultuous times.
Talks were being held with a group of 20 boys armed with loaded guns. Their condition for talks was that the boys would remain armed and that Mr. Waslekar and his group would remain without arms. Further, they would have to be polite and avoid using rough language.
To cut a long story short, late one night, one of the men in his group used some rough words. The boys immediately turned their guns and were about to shoot him and the rest of the group.
Mr. Waslekar tried to broker peace. As one of the boys pointed a gun at him, he said that he wanted to ask just one question. The boy gruffly told him to hurry and not waste time.
“We were speaking in Urdu. I said to him, I am not concerned about India, Pakistan, Kashmir and so on. But I have one question and you have to give an honest answer… I asked, ‘Do you have a girl friend?’
“He said ‘I am very popular among the girls of the mohalla’. I said there is a difference. It is one thing to be admired by women, another thing to have women friends and yet another thing to have a girl friend. He asked, ‘What is the difference between a girl friend and a woman friend?’
“I said I will explain. So I started explaining to him the difference between a girl friend and a woman friend, and love and sex and romance – and for the next six hours I gave them a lecture on love, sex and romance – and they dropped their guns. By the time it was morning I told them that the best thing for them was to get married. All those leaders have since married and have given up terrorism.”
Mr. Waslekar added that people had multiple needs; if those were addressed, then it was possible to tackle their problems in multiple ways.
The vote of thanks was proposed by Nowroze Vazifdar.