Author: Siddharth Srivastava
Publication: Asia Times
Date: January 20, 2006
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HA20Df01.html
In the past few weeks police across India
claim to have arrested or killed several terrorists belonging to dreaded militant
outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which derives its support from Pakistan. While
this is good news, it also portends that the tentacles of terror are spreading
fast to every part of the country. New Delhi has conveyed its feelings in
no uncertain terms to Islamabad, which it holds responsible for protecting
and supporting the LeT infrastructure.
This week Indian security forces in Kashmir
killed Abu Huzaifa, who New Delhi claims was the mastermind of the October
29 serial bomb blasts in the capital that left more than 60 dead. Police say
Tariq Dar, a Srinagar-based LeT operative who was arrested in connection with
the New Delhi blasts, revealed information about Huzaifa. Over the past few
days, the security forces in Indian Kashmir have also been alarmed by revelations
of some politicians forming a nexus with militants. Security forces have uncovered
the involvement of a leader of the People's Democratic Party, an important
regional party, with the LeT in a plot to assassinate former chief minister
Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, who heads the PDP. The police also shot dead two guerrillas
who were hiding in the home of a Congress party leader.
Security forces in Bangalore, in the state of Karnataka, meanwhile claim to
have arrested an LeT militant, Mehaboob Ibrahim (alias Habeeb), linked to
the terror attack on the Indian Institute of Science campus last month. The
arrest of Habeeb follows that of Abdul Rehman in the state of Andhra Pradesh,
whose capital Hyderabad is said to be in danger of terror attacks because
of its status as a major information-technology (IT) hub. Rehman is said to
be a very important LeT operative in southern India with contacts in Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Andhra Pradesh and Chennai, another IT base. Police say both Rehman
and Habeeb have spent considerable time in Saudi Arabia and were in regular
touch with each other.
The Bangalore police commissioner has been
quoted as saying, "Rehman has revealed an LeT-backed conspiracy to indulge
in violent activities by organizing attacks on vital installations [and] places
of economic and other national importance and by spreading communal disharmony."
The attacks included explosions at the Kaiga plant, Almatti Dam and Sharavathy
Transmission Lines.
Recently police in Hyderabad claimed to have
foiled a plot by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) to trigger bomb
blasts, including suicide bombings, in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, the two
states that lead the software and outsourcing boom in India. Police seized
14 kilograms of explosives and said the two arrested terrorists were planning
to attack the office of the city's police chief, police headquarters and buildings
housing top IT companies.
After the Bangalore and Delhi attacks, several
intelligence reports have said commercial center Mumbai is high on the terrorist
target. Recently Mumbai police picked up the imam of Haj House, Maulana Ghulam
Yahya Ilahi, who is suspected to have been in touch with the LeT commander
of northern India, Salah-ud-din. According to police, the imam also traveled
to Saudi Arabia. In the past months Mumbai has been witness to the trial of
underworld don Abu Salem, revealing several details about the involvement
of organized gangs, terror circles, Dawood Ibrahim (another mobster), and
arms and drug smuggling.
The LeT, known to be violently anti-Shi'ite,
has a history of orchestrating attacks in India. These include an attempt
to storm the Indian parliament on December 13, 2001, which triggered a military
standoff with Pakistan and brought the neighbors close to a fourth war. India
also holds the LeT responsible for killing 37 and injuring more than 80 Hindu
devotees assembled for prayer at the Akshardham Temple in September 2002 in
the state of Gujarat. As with al-Qaeda, the LeT cadres are generally not mercenaries
out to make a fast buck from the cash-laden terror industry, but indoctrinated
youths driven by the desire to kill in the name of a distorted jihad. The
LeT derives most of its cadres from Indian Kashmir as well as Pakistan and
the mercenaries are usually renegade mujahideen from Afghanistan.
Alarmed by the spate of attacks, conspiracies
and arrests, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week suggested a proactive
approach against terrorism because of the new tactics as well as the support
of "state sponsors", a clear reference to Pakistan.
"Terrorism is the biggest national-security
threat our country faces today. Combating this threat presents unique and
unprecedented challenges. The tactics adopted by terrorists in planning, sponsoring
and executing their attacks, often with the assistance of the state sponsors,
require constant study and analysis," Manmohan said.
"The convergence of terror dealers and
conventional criminals presents obvious and acute dangers for our country.
Therefore the counter-terrorism culture and organization have to shift from
a reactive to a proactive mode."
New Delhi has made it apparent that it wants
Pakistan to do more. Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, who began talks this week
with his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Mohammed Khan as part of the peace process,
said: "Despite assurances at the highest levels, there has been no end
to cross-border terrorism from Pakistan. Our ability to carry forward the
peace process will be deeply impacted unless it happens in an atmosphere free
of violence. Some steps have been taken, but much more needs to be done."
Saran said the recent attacks in Bangalore
and New Delhi indicate that the infrastructure of terrorism remains intact
in Pakistan.
New Delhi has conveyed that it does not think
much of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's ideas of self-governance
and demilitarization of Kashmir to end terrorism. Saran said after his first
round of talks with Khan, "Terrorism cannot be used as a bargaining chip."
He also reiterated that a workable system of self-governance already exists
in Indian Kashmir, unlike in Pakistan. India has also not reacted too kindly
to a proposal by Pakistan this week that military strike formations on either
side (especially Kashmir) should not be "permanently relocated"
to forward positions.
Indeed, while the confidence-building measures
as well as people-to-people contacts between the two countries continue, India
has upped its aggressive stance against Pakistan. In the recent past and as
part of a new strategy to counter Islamabad's vitriol on Indian Kashmir, New
Delhi has picked on the situation in Balochistan as a similar bargaining chip,
especially in the eyes of the international community. Phrases that have formed
part of Pakistan's vocabulary to refer to the situation in Indian Kashmir
such as "freedom struggle", "exercise restraint", "people's
rights", "self-governance", and "atrocities of security
forces" are being liberally applied by Indian diplomats to describe the
military crackdown on the tribal population of Balochistan.
But beyond diplomatic point-scoring, the security
situation continues to be a cause for concern. Frontline, a reputed Indian
magazine, recently explored the causes and contexts of Islamist terrorism
in India. It examined the threat of the LeT from the west and the emerging
menace of the Bangladesh-based Harkat ul-Jihad Islami.
"In its own publications, the Lashkar
is remarkably clear: the destruction of a state it sees as a predatory Hindu-fundamentalist
entity, and the creation of a caliphate that would stretch from China to Spain,"
it said. "To see low-level acts of terrorism in Bangalore, Hyderabad
or New Delhi as trivial acts of violence is to miss their point: any of these
pinpricks could, in the Lashkar's imagination, prove to be the decisive moment
when the jihad is transformed into a general communal war that will tear India
apart. No great imagination is needed to see that this is no fantasy: the
wages of the Indian state's decades-old failures to contain Hindutva fascism
are depressingly evident, and will be with us for decades to come."
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based
journalist.
