‘Non-state actors acting for states’

Days after the US called the terrorist Haqqani Network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), India’s national security adviser Shivshankar Menon rubbished the distinction drawn between states and so-called non-state actors.

Days after the US called the terrorist Haqqani Network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), India’s national security adviser Shivshankar Menon rubbished the distinction drawn between states and so-called non-state actors.

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“Sixty percent of what I look at is not state dealing (with) state. We see immediately in our neighbourhood… the so-called non-state actors, they perform state functions. They act for the state,” Menon said on Saturday.

The US has accused the Haqqani Network of attacking its installations in Afghanistan, and claimed that it has links with the ISI.

Pakistan has often blamed “non-state actors” for carrying out terrorist activities from its territory, including the November 2008 attack in Mumbai.

Menon said the nature of international relations is changing and power is moving from larger states into the hands of smaller groups of people.

Besides technology, he said, the demands of food and energy security were the catalysts for change. “There are structural shifts in nature of power,” he said, adding that India needs to anchor this shift towards itself.