HVK Archives: Taliban groups pose threat to India, warns book
Taliban groups pose threat to India, warns book - Sunday Times of India
Posted By Krishnakant Udavant (kkant@bom2.vsnl.net.in)
April 12, 1998
Title: Taliban groups pose threat to India, warns book
Author:
Publication: Sunday Times of India
Date: April 12, 1998
The organised groups of Taliban sympathiser in Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh might pose a serious threat to India in the near future.
It is feared that if this breed of Islamic warriors succeed in
Kabul, they may land on Indian soil any time to "subvert the
secular fabric of society besides resulting in proliferation of
arms and militant activities", according to a latest book.
Taliban leaders, it says, have mobilised Muslims from other
countries in a bid to justify the Wahabi-Sunni Islamic ideology
and that India has not escaped such efforts.
The book, authored by defence expert Sreedhar and journalist
Mahendra Ved, stresses that it is in India's long-term interest
that a semblance of stability returns to Afghanistan since the
existing stalemate is not conducive to its security interests.
The crisis would only worsen conditions in Pakistan, already
destabilised, with major spill-over effects in north and north-
west India.
Pakistan, the authors say, has used terrorist elements from
Afghanistan to prop up the insurgency movement in Jammu and
Kashmir and these mercenaries continue to operate in the
strifetorn valley, fighting the Indian armed forces o-called
atrocities" on the local Muslim population.
About the communal slant given to the civil war in Afghanistan,
the authors say Islamic zealots are continuing their jehad in an
effort to create a pan-Islamic world.
"ISI field operatives have tacitly approved the Taliban's new
initiative of exporting and supporting the Islamic revolution
across the borders, including to the Xinjiang province of China
and Central Asian republics," they say.
The civil war has also, over the years, resulted in the
proliferation of small arms in the entire region. The Afghan
Mujahideen have managed to establish linkages with other sub-
nationalist and insurgency movements in the entire northern belt
of South Asia.
Last year, weaponised pockets in the northern belt stretched from
Afghanistan to Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab and further eastward
in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh and in north-eastern India,
the book says.
Nepal may also be part of this northern arc of weaponised
societies and its hosting of ISI activities was a matter of
concern for Indian policy makers, it adds.
Expressing concern over the opium boom in recent years, the
authors say the production of the drug has gone up manifold in
Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. "India has begun to
receive some contraband consignments either from Karachi or
through the Wagah border and in Mumbai."
"The effort of The Indian policy planners should he to insulate
as much as possible, the Indian territory from becoming a haven
for Mujahideen/Taliban mercenaries, from arms being transported
to Afghanistan and from becoming a drug trail," they say.
The book says the northern arc of South Asia was emerging as a
focal point of narcotic trade since, with the poppy cultivation
in Afghanistan increasing substantially in recent years, new
outlets are being established by drug cartels to smuggle refined
poppy to North America and Europe.
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