No good, bad terrorists, says India ahead of rare UN terror meet at Mumbai’s Taj

Fashioning a global response to the use of new technologies for terrorism, especially new digital payment systems and drones, will be the focus of a special meeting of the UN Security Council’s Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC) to be hosted by India this week.

The meeting will have an informal opening session on October 28 at the Hotel Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, a venue chosen for its symbolism as it was one of the main targets of a 10-member team from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) that unleashed a three-day wave of carnage in India’s financial hub in November 2008.

The session will be attended by external affairs minister S Jaishankar, UK foreign secretary James Cleverly, Gabon foreign minister Michael Moussa Adamo, Ghana foreign minister Shirley Ayorkar Botchwey, UAE minister of state for international cooperation Reem Ebrahim Al Hashimy, Albania’s deputy foreign minister Megi Fino and a delegation from the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) led by under secretary general Vladimir Voronkov.

All 15 current members of the UN Security Council and five incoming members of the body will join a solemn ceremony at Hotel Taj Palace, during which a wreath will be laid at the 26/11 memorial site and participants will observe a minute’s silence for the 166 victims of the terror attacks.

Statements in memory of the victims will be read out by Jaishankar and Adamo, since Gabon along the west coast of Central Africa is the current president of the Security Council. Some victims of the Mumbai attacks will address participants and there will be an informal briefing on the theme of “Combating terrorism financing in local and regional contexts”.

More substantive discussions on the main theme of the CTC’s special meeting – countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorism – will be held on the second day in New Delhi. India, which chairs the CTC till December, proposed the holding of the meeting in the country in line with the government’s focus on shaping a coordinated global response to terrorism.

Ruchira Kamboj, India’s envoy to the UN, and Sanjay Verma, secretary (West) in the external affairs ministry, told a media briefing on Wednesday these discussions will focus on three sub-themes – countering terrorist exploitation of information and communication technologies, internet and social media, countering online terrorist financing and threats related to new payment technologies and fundraising methods, and threats posed by use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) by terrorists.

Experts from UN’s operational partners and specialised agencies such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will participate in the discussions. The meeting will begin with a ministerial plenary session, which will have a message from the UN secretary-general and speeches by the ministerial participants.

CTC was formed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001 and this is only the eighth time the body is meeting outside the UN headquarters in New York. This is also the first time a CTC meeting is being held in a foreign country since 2015 when a meet was hosted by Spain.

“The terrorist threat persists and despite our best efforts has evolved,” Kamboj said. Terror in all its forms is one of the “most serious threats to international peace and security” and addressing the use of new technologies for terrorist purposes has become an issue of increasing concern because of the rapid rise in digitalisation, she added.

Without naming Pakistan or China, which has blocked recent Indian proposals to sanction Pakistan-based terrorists, Kamboj said there can be no double standards or “good or bad terrorists”. She added, “Those who propagate this distinction have an agenda and those who cover up for them are just as culpable.”

Verma said the institutional arrangements and decision-making processes at the UN were “outdated” and India’s objective proposals for terrorist listings were running into objections on technicalities and “geo-strategic alliances far removed from the cause for listing”.

David Scharia, the director of CTED, emphasised that all new and emerging technologies are a “force for good” and allowed the world economy to function during the Covid-19 pandemic. “But it is because these technologies are so powerful, so disruptive and so transformative that they become such a threat when they are misused, abused or weaponised,” he said.

“This alarming risk led the CTC under the Indian chair to decide that it is time to act,” Scharia said, adding that the upcoming meeting will lead to a process that will help shape a global response. “There is no silver bullet or magic solution to these complex questions,” he said.