HIGH-PROFILE terrorist attacks in South Asia over the last few years demonstrate that terrorists are either quick learners or are part of the same nexus. Similarities in a few terrorist attacks across different countries and regions can be shrugged off as copycat acts, but when the likeness almost becomes a trademark it merits a closer look.

In recent years, terrorists have gone after new targets and evolved new tactics in a near-simultaneous manner that point to an increasing exchange of notes, so to speak. Shared ideological, political and, sometimes, operational objectives bring terrorists closer.

In that context, similarities between the Sept 13 attacks on US and Nato targets in Afghanistan, the assault on Pakistan’s Mehran naval air force base in May this year and the November 2008 Mumbai attacks may not be surprising.

The operational and tactical likeness of these attacks reflects that terrorists have enhanced their operational capabilities and demands counterterrorism measures that are commensurate with the new challenges.

A broader conceptual framework and effective coordination among states facing the shared threat of terrorism can build an effective pre-emptive mechanism. But such a synchronised effort to take on terrorism has not been achieved even a decade after 9/11. Interstate cooperation against terrorism remains a pipe dream in South Asia in particular, even as terrorists grow ever-savvy and constantly find sophisticated techniques of striking their targets.

The security crisis and the insurgency that erupted in Iraq after the US invasion of that country in 2003 was a watershed moment in the history of terrorism. Iraq proved a virtual laboratory for terrorists where Al Qaeda tried and perfected new and sophisticated techniques of wreaking havoc, which were later exported to other regions, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Al Qaeda’s edge in terrorism expertise influenced the Taliban and other militant movements in the region, which had been under immense pressure from the state after 9/11. Al Qaeda’s support in the form of improved capabilities and techniques for striking their targets was a virtual lifeline for them.

The February 2008 suicide attack in Kandahar that targeted a dog-fight festival was the first in Afghanistan where the tactics could be compared to those involving attacks targeting pilgrims in Iraq starting 2003. The objective was similar: to kill as many members of opponent tribes, sects and political adversaries as possible, even if they were civilians. More destructive suicide jackets were developed to maximise the impact.

Also in 2008, Pakistan saw progression in techniques in three major terrorist attacks which targeted the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) building in Lahore and the Danish embassy and Marriott hotel in Islamabad. In the FIA attack, terrorists used a pickup truck loaded with over 50kg of C4 plastic explosives, in a tactic that was strikingly similar to the April 2005 botched attack on Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison by Al Qaeda, with the aim of freeing detainees and targeting US forces in a series of car bombings. The method adopted in the devastating Marriott suicide bombing showed their enhanced capabilities and the ability to strike at will the most protected parts of the country.

The Mumbai attacks were another defining moment, when a new technique of urban guerrilla warfare proved brutally effective in the hands of terrorists, who have since developed such tactics further, adding elements of suicide bombing to it and striking in Pakistan and Afghanistan more than a dozen times.

Terrorists imitated the Mumbai attacks in four major assaults in Pakistan in 2009: an attack on GHQ in Rawalpindi, an assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore and two attacks on a police training school in the same city. Afghanistan suffered a similar attack in Kabul in February 2010 when terrorists targeted a shopping centre, a guesthouse and a hotel.

One tactic has been to target a particular city through repeated strikes with a view to terrorising the population and enhancing the impact of attacks beyond just physical damage. In 2009, terrorists repeatedly targeted Peshawar in that manner and in 2010 they focused on Lahore. In 2011, Karachi seems to be high on the terrorists’ list. In Afghanistan, initially Kandahar was a magnet for such sustained attacks and now it is Kabul.

At the level of nexus, things have been much clearer. Terrorist groups that shared similar ideological and political ambitions not only borrowed tactics and techniques ascribed to each other, but also mirrored other terrorist outfits’ approaches by merging or otherwise converging, transforming or altering their organisational composition. This happened in the case of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and a few Kashmir-based militant groups, mainly Brigade 313 headed by Ilyas Kashmiri.Under Al Qaeda’s influence these outfits have transformed and have been imitating each other on the tactical, operational and organisational levels. Typically, the influence has impacted smaller groups who had been struggling to survive or had material deficiencies and required external help to survive. Al Qaeda has been more than willing to help out, through both ideological and operational support. There is little doubt that quid pro quo has been involved.

That was the conclusion that slain Pakistani journalist and expert on terrorism reporting, Syed Saleem Shahzad, had reached in his book Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban, pointing out that Al Qaeda was in the driving seat and that the Taliban and other militant groups were essentially acting like its foot soldiers.

He had argued that the Mumbai attacks were planned by Al Qaeda, which used Lashkar-i-Taiba to execute the plan. He believed that Al Qaeda wanted to destabilise the region to break the alliance of the ruling Muslim elites and the masses with the West and make the region the base for a global caliphate.

The challenges that terrorism poses in the 21st century are complex, and in many cases insurmountable in the absence of interstate cooperation. Effective collaborations are impossible without trust, to state the obvious. When partners in the war on terror talk to each other through the media or consider arm-twisting and threats of use of force to be the preferred modes for winning cooperation, prospects for teamwork are doomed. By acting in this manner, states fall into the trap of terrorists.

No prizes for guessing which party to this new kind of war ends up the winner then and which ends up shooting itself in the foot.

The writer is editor quarterly research journal Conflict and Peace Studies.

mamirrana@yahoo.com