NSA Ajit Doval NSA Ajit Doval

National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval on Thursday expressed concerns over lack of global cooperation against terrorism. He said there has been “no real” cooperation for containing international terror. “Two things have gone wrong — either it (international cooperation) is not an antidote or there has not really been an international cooperation. I belong to the school that believes in the second category,” he said at a counter-terror conference organised by India Foundation, a thinktank run by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav.

He underlined the need for cooperation among countries in the Indian Ocean Rim Association. “Terrorism is not something that remained constant… 20 years ago we never talked about social media, cyberspace or internet exposure,” Doval said. “They (terrorists) have evolved from one stage to another. What al Qaida was in 1996 is entirely different from what Baghdadi, IS or Daesh is today.” He added that the world is facing the fourth generation of warfare, “where the frontier will be civil society and the enemy will be from civil society…”

The NSA referred to the long-pending Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. “India was the one that pioneered the draft (in 1996). It is pending on two issues. One is the definition of terrorism. There has been an insistence by a few countries that the cause at times justifies the ends and therefore, if the end is justified, then means should be condoned and it should not come under the category of terrorism… If we really have to fight terrorism, we have to unite on both the means and ends, and if the world is really serious about countering international terrorism, it will have to come to a common definition of terrorism…”

He continued, “A terrorist from one country today cannot be extradited from another country except by the due process of law like a common criminal.”

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