Behind India’s criticism of UNSC, immediate factors, an old grouse

India’s critical remarks about the failure of the United Nations Security Council in proscribing Pakistan-based terror entities – involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attack – can be seen with a rear view into the last few decades as much as within a shorter frame of recent months. 

Earlier this week, at the special meeting of the Counter Terror Committee of the UNSC in Mumbai, external affairs minister S Jaishankar talked about the security council’s inability to act decisively against the conspirators of 26/11 despite India providing sufficient evidence. But those specific references are now just a more focused extension of India’s decades-long campaign at international fora for censuring state sponsors of proxy terrorism. 

In an oblique reference to China’s role, in blocking India’s proposal for putting the Pakistan-based terrorists on the UNSC’s 1267 list of terror entities, Jaishankar reflected on why political differences shouldn’t come in the way of tackling international terrorism. India’s response has been shaped by some immediate factors but it is also in line with how it has been articulating such concerns for long.

By the turn of the present century, India’s foreign policy had started to show a sense of urgency in convincing the international community about censuring Pakistan- sponsored cross-border terrorism. Such efforts, however, made little headway. Beyond some considerate notes of concern, major powers were unwilling to come to grips with its seriousness, not least because of their reluctance to tinker with the geopolitical equations in South Asia. 

It was also a phase when India’s deterrent logic hadn’t cut much ice with western capitals, even if the US was in the process of lifting sanctions on India for its 1998 nuclear tests – it finally did so in December 2001. When the world was grappling with the 9/11 terror strikes in the US, India’s statement of condemnation and solidarity with victims didn’t forget to remind the world of what India had been suffering for a long period. This had a subtext that India was facing this challenge without the international community taking serious note of the threat of global terrorism. It wasn’t a statement of vindication but the Indian government then – particularly its foreign affairs and home affairs wings – was telling the world leaders that they are late in acknowledging the gravity and scale of the challenge. 

Two months later, the terror attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, and the Mumbai terror strikes of 2008, brought an element of particularity to India’s proposals in international bodies for measures on combating terror.

In India’s latest critique of the political determinants behind UNSC’s inaction in listing the 26/11 prime accused as terror entities, it’s clear that there is a thinly-veiled protest against Chinese intervention. Over the last four months, China has four times blocked the proposals made by India as well as the US to designate Pakistan-based terrorists on the UNSC list of terror entities. This has meant that China has effectively overruled the UNSC line of decision-making. 

The last blocking act by China came as recently as the third week of this month. Ironically, this coincided with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s visit to Mumbai, where the top UN official called for “global cooperation” in the fight against terror after visiting the 26/11 memorial site. To add to that, the Financial Action Task Force plenary session in Paris recently removed Pakistan from the grey list – the country had been put on that list in 2018 for failing to act effectively against terror financing. 

The latest CTC meet in Mumbai also saw Indian authorities make a point about Sajid Mir, one of the key handlers of the Mumbai terror strikes. The authorities played a recording of Mir directing the perpetrators as the latter executed those designs in India’s western metropolis. In September, China had blocked the proposal to put Mir’s name on the UNSC terror list. This might be one of the ways India chose to answer China’s line of citing lack of sufficient evidence as the rationale behind its blocking vote at UNSC. 

India has been clear that such reasoning isn’t based on facts but politically motivated. Besides objecting to the political considerations behind the UNSC inaction, the Indian external affairs minister also prescribed a five-point roadmap that counter-terrorism efforts should follow on a global scale. Among these proposals, the key themes are centred around: tough action against terror financing, evidence-based listing of terrorist groups, vigilance and action gainst sponsors of terrorism, the need to act against the terror-organised crime nexus, action against the misuse of new technologies by terror groups and penetrating the anonymity of such operations that emerging technologies provide.

The geopolitical equations and the resultant interests as well as rivalries will continue to shape the responses of major powers to counter-terrorism concerns. More than most state actors in international politics, India has grasped this over the past few decades. India’s call for rising above “political differences’’ to combat the menace of global terror is more of a thinly-veiled response to China’s persistent blocking of the UNSC terror entities list, and that too for what Beijing conveniently argues as lack of “sufficient evidence”. India isn’t buying that reasoning; it’s that disapproval that India made clear at the CTC meet of the UNSC in Mumbai.