After September 11, Afghanistan became almost synonymous in the popular mind with terrorism and religious extremism. The image of a wild ungovernable region shot through with warlordism and ethnic warfare became established and, along with it, an underlying assumption that such a state of affairs had been a historical inevitability. The curious absence of any Afghans among the 19 suspected hijackers of September 11 went unnoticed by most commentators. With the fall of the Taliban and the rise of Hamid Karzai's government, however, there is now a new image of an Afghanistan transformed into a “success story,” thanks to international intervention.

Neither perception – of the historical inevitability of the preceding violence or of a country about to be saved from itself – is wholly accurate. Much like its neighbors in South Asia, the Afghan identity is made up of diverging secular, religious and geopolitical identities. To understand the rise of extremism in Afghanistan and forecast its future, it is necessary to see how these different tendencies have interacted to produce religious militancy and the excesses of the Taliban and beyond. The US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 turned the spotlight on the key political and military actors in Afghanistan who had long been shielded from international sight: first during the covert anti-Soviet war; then through the dizzying civil wars; and finally under the Taliban's self-inflicted isolation.

From margin to epicenter: Locations and dislocations

In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs on November 2, 1999, Ambassador Michael Sheehan, Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the US, concluded that “The center of anti-American terrorism has moved from the Middle East to South Asia … As direct involvement in terrorism by most Middle Eastern state sponsors and groups has declined, our attention has increasingly focused on Osama bin Laden and the alliance of groups operating out of Afghanistan with the acquiescence of the country's de facto rulers, the Taliban.” When viewed from a historical standpoint, however, South Asia's new status presents a serious anomaly.

Chapter One noted the major gaps and analytical shortcomings in ethno-religious explanatory frameworks for violent extremism in the region. This chapter will take a substantive look at a broad sweep of South Asian history to suggest that it is difficult to find any historically deterministic trend in ethno-religious extremism. It would be a mistake to take the current period as the touchstone and project backwards as many seem to do. The need for historical analysis becomes clear when we consider how many observers of South Asian politics and geopolitics either ignore, or do not understand, critical historical aspects. This chapter will provide context to the contention that, although violence in South Asia is certainly not a modern phenomenon, the fault lines along which violence occurred in the past cannot be reduced to religion or ethnicity.

The proposition that equates extremism and terrorism with ethnic and religious factors is easy to make, but harder to prove, as evidence from these cases reveal. The region's long socio-political history is revealing in its absence of strong religious identity constructions prior to the colonial period. Remarkably, this was the situation even on the eve of independence during the 1940s. But by then, conditions had already been laid for what was to become a three-way struggle in contemporary South Asia between ethno-religious, secular and geopolitical identities.

How this interaction unfolds significantly explains the key puzzles that animate the book. What accounts for the rise of extremist ethno-religious groups in societies that were historically not so predisposed? How do we account for the wide variation in ethnic and religious ideology, political strategy and the foreign-policy orientations of political groups? Most importantly, what determines the winners and losers in the overarching identity struggles that we see in South Asia and what tips the balance between more moderate and extremist outcomes?

Internal–external links

As Chapter One shows, the literature on the politics of ethnicity and religion is vast but inconclusive. I argue for the addition of another variable, the geopolitics of ethno-religious identity (or what I term geopolitical identity) that influences, and at times even determines, the trajectory of extremism in South Asia. The role of the state is critical in fashioning geopolitical identities that bring together external foreign policy considerations and internal power-seeking objectives.

The surprising electoral success of a number of religious parties in the 2002 national elections in Pakistan brought the question of religion and politics to the forefront in an unprecedented fashion. The main issues are: the extent to which this demonstrates a break with the past; the relationship between violent extremism, terrorism and politico-religious groups; and the implications for regional and international relations. The subsequent victory of more secular mainstream political parties in the elections of 2008, following the dramatic assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, holds the promise of reversing Pakistan's slide towards extremist politics. But at the same time jihadi groups are redoubling their efforts inside Pakistan and in the border areas with Afghanistan. The two main political parties have only a tenuous power-sharing agreement at the center, the resurgent secular Pashtun National Awami Party (NAP) in the North-West Frontier Province has been a prime target for intimidation and attacks by religious radicals and remains highly vulnerable, and the prime minister and parliament are having to “co-habit” with a hostile President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan is at a critical juncture.

None of these trends can be understood without a deeper analysis of the evolution of politicized Islam in Pakistan. In Pakistan, as in neighboring countries, we find a wide spectrum of general political sentiment, from secularism to religious extremism. Most importantly, within the context of religio-political groups in Pakistan, we find notable variations even among groups with common origins and overlapping sympathies. How can we understand these divergences?

The long-running conflict in Sri Lanka appeared to have finally run its course in 2002 when an unprecedented ceasefire agreement was signed by the newly elected government of Prime Minister Ranil Wikramsinghe and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). By 2008 however, after a series of political upheavals among the dominant Sinhalese, a devastating tsunami that killed 35,000 people, new factional fighting among the Tamil militants, and renewed clashes between the LTTE and the military, peace on the island has crumbled under the force of another violent spiral. Like the rest of South Asia, there was little in the island's history to predict the conflict that has dominated Sri Lanka's political landscape for more than 25 years and claimed nearly 65,000 lives. The rise of rigid and polarized ethno-religious identities that have fed violent confrontations has edged out more moderate and accommodating voices on all sides.

How did Sri Lanka's strong secular ethos at independence in 1947 crumble and distort one of the most promising democratic experiments in the developing world? As in the cases of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, this chapter traces the rise of extremism in Sri Lanka by looking at a three-way identity struggle between secular, ethno-religious and geopolitical identity conceptions. The chapter argues that as the influence of these three elements has waxed and waned in Sri Lanka, it has created conditions that foster extremism and violence.

Re-examining extremism

In the popular mind, extremism and terrorism are invariably linked to ethnic and religious factors. Yet the dominant history of South Asia is notable for tolerance and co-existence, despite highly plural societies. What then accounts for the rise of extremist ethno-religious groups in societies that were historically not predisposed thus? What determines the winners and losers in the identity struggles that we see in South Asia, and what tips the balance between more moderate and extremist outcomes? Despite the unprecedented international attention South Asia has received in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, we would be hard-pressed to conclude that our understanding of extremism and our capacity to combat it, have improved significantly. If anything, the situation has become more dire – from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, extremist violence is breaking out anew or remains unabated. Much of the post-9/11 analysis is from a US policy perspective with little theoretical or historical content, and for a region that has an overabundance of history and political complexity, such an approach is far too limited.

We need a new way to grasp the complex of political and geopolitical factors that have determined outcomes in South Asia over the contemporary period, pre- and post-9/11. It would seem vitally important to re-examine a phenomenon that shows little signs of receding, let alone being defeated.

Bangladesh's short history since independence in 1971 has produced several surprises. Economically, it has defied those who dismissed its prospects from the beginning and has even been an innovator in small-scale economic development. Politically, it has moved haltingly towards a democratic framework that has been durable, if turbulent. Bangladesh's society, too, has been notable for its pluralist ethos and religious co-existence. For the most part, it has also managed to remain relatively insulated from major geopolitical upheavals that have shaken the region and beyond.

Since the elections of 2001, however, politics in Bangladesh has become unexpectedly divisive, exposing sharp polarizations on secular, religious and geopolitical identities. A critical question is whether the increasing violence in the political sphere is a reflection of these fundamental issues or, more simply, competition among parties for political spoils. The rise of Islamist extremism in the country and its implications beyond its borders suggests that we cannot ignore this question, despite the country's promising origins. In addition, as a Muslim majority country, Bangladesh has stood in some contrast to Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing us with a counter-example to developments in the region. For the purposes of this book, the focus here is on how the various identity strands in Bangladesh have interacted over time, with the country first escaping the worst forms of polarization, only to be confronted with them later. Unlike the other chapters, it is the potential for sustained violent extremism that is of concern.

The demand by Kashmiri Muslims for greater autonomy burst into a full- fledged insurgency against the Indian government in 1989, and has kept the territory in the grip of violence ever since. The politics and actors involved have, however, hardly been constant. There have been numerous political and ideological formations in the interim, from parties that have held power as part of the Indian state to groups that are largely foreign. There are more facets to the Kashmir conflict than are often acknowledged, with local, national and regional forces affecting Kashmir's political developments.

The most important Kashmiri separatist umbrella organization, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), ultimately split in 2004 on the issue of negotiating with the Indian government. The APHC sees itself as the main political representative of the Kashmiri militancy, but there are other armed groups that wield influence, such as the Hizb ul-Mujahideen. The Hurriyat itself defies easy characterization; as the political face of the militancy, its relationship with armed groups is ambiguous.

As in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the way in which competition between the three dominant identity constructions have occurred over time (religious, secular and geopolitical) tells us a great deal about the evolution of the militancy and the balance between moderate and extremist forces. An understanding of the prospects for resolving the conflict based on our findings is more important than ever given some of the powerful changes that have taken place regionally and within India since 2001.