ISLAMABAD, Sept 24: Terrorism should be fought with “legality” and not the way the US is fighting it which is only driving more people into the arms of terrorists, according to a senior Human Rights Watch (HRW) official.

“It is certainly radicalising a lot of people, no doubt about that,” Brad Adams, HRW executive director for Asia, told Dawn in an interview on the connection between human rights violations and terrorism.

“We make the same point,” he said when asked to comment on President Pervez Musharraf’s statement in the United Nations General Assembly that “each new battleground involving an Islamic state has served as a new breeding ground for extremists and terrorists...”.

It was difficult to establish a definition of terrorism. “But any attack on civilians to achieve larger political goals is the core of terrorism,” he said.

“There can be state terrorism also,” he agreed but preferred to call Israel’s latest brutalities in Lebanon ‘war crimes’, or ‘crimes against humanity’.

“The point is not what the label is but the protection of civilians. When Israel targeted civilians, or did not take adequate precautions to protect civilians, it committed war crimes. If Pakistan is prosecuting its war on terror in Waziristan by indiscriminately firing upon civilians, it too would be committing war crimes,” he said.

Terrorism, whether by the opposition or the state, should be fought with “legality”, he said, stressing that no cause - even fighting occupation - justified violence against civilians.

Sometimes the foreign policy pursued by a country causes terrorist attacks. The 7/7 attacks on London’s transport system last year were a case in point. But the way to force a change in the policy was building public pressure, not mounting terrorist attacks.

Mr Adams said he sensed a great yearning for independence in the Indian-administered Kashmir but those using violent means to achieve that were losing popular support.

“We have to,” he replied when asked should the solution of Kashmir problem then be sought on the basis of the existing reality, as India wants to. “There is no other solution except where we are today,” he said.

“But we (HRW) are not going to take a position on independence or self-determination because the minute we do that our reports (on the human rights situation on both sides (of Line of Control) will be thrown out by one side or the other,” he said.

Facts of history and pledges made should not be forgotten. But the search for a solution should not be tied to first reaching an agreement on “the original cause” of the problem, he said.

Mr Adams was in Islamabad this week to launch a HRW report on alleged human rights abuses in Azad Kashmir which drew government’s ire.