Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: July 15, 2006
URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/07/13/stories/2006071303420800.htm
There has rarely been a crime so predictable
as that visited on Mumbai. It is part of a war that is still far from over.
"The Hindu," wrote the Lashkar-e-Taiba's
founder and spiritual guide Hafiz Mohammed Saeed in 1999, "is a mean
enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers,
who crushed them by force." Most of the few people who read Saeed's article
dismissed it, correctly, as the ranting of a lunatic - and then made the error
of dismissing his repeated promises to deliver maximum terror.
Judging by the breathless air with which much
of the media has responded to Tuesday's carnage, it might appear that the
serial bombing of Mumbai took India by surprise. In fact, there has rarely
been a crime so predictable as the unimaginable horror visited on Mumbai:
its perpetrators published their intention to execute massive terror strikes
and made repeated efforts to do so in the months before one terror cell succeeded
in penetrating the defences of India's covert services and police.
Investigators have so far said only that the
seven explosive devices used in Mumbai were expertly fabricated, and that
the execution of the bombings was near-flawless. Using electronic timers set
to detonate at 6-15 p.m., each bomb is thought to have had an RDX core - the
military-grade explosive recovered from a Lashkar cell discovered in Aurangabad
in May, which was also used in an unsuccessful attack on an Ahmedabad-Mumbai
train in February.
Yet, there's little doubt in which direction
investigators' compasses are pointed. Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil said
the attacks were executed by the same terror group that executed the July
11 grenade attacks in Srinagar, which claimed the lives of eight tourists.
Mohammad Afzal Rather, a Baramulla resident whom bystanders grappled to the
ground minutes after he threw one of those grenades, told police he was working
for the Lashkar - leaving no doubt about just who Mr. Patil meant.
Could the bombings in Mumbai, as Mr. Patil
appeared to suggest, have been carried out by a Jammu and Kashmir-linked terror
cell? Evidence exists that the Lashkar has been attempting to establish those
capabilities for some years. In December, the Intelligence Bureau and the
Mumbai Police arrested National Conference-affiliated municipal councillor
Arshad Badroo along with two other Jammu and Kashmir residents - the key figures,
it turned out, in a Lashkar bombing operation targeting the city.
Badroo, along with Haji Mohammad Ramzan and
Khurshid Ahmad Lone, had been despatched to Mumbai by the Lashkar's north
Kashmir commander, an elusive 6 foot 6 inch Pakistani national known only
by the aliases `Bilal' and `Salahuddin.' While Badroo had been tasked with
picking up a Rs.300,000 payment for the Lashkar, Ramzan and Lone had been
asked to transport electronic circuits and detonators to contacts in Mumbai
- essential components for making a bomb that cannot be fabricated by amateurs.
All three men were arrested before they could
make contact with their local Lashkar contact. Investigators were unable to
establish, therefore, whether the explosives needed to build a device had
been brought to Mumbai by separate Lashkar couriers, or if local operatives
intended to plant the circuits and detonators in a bomb made from commercial
chemicals. Information also emerged that the cell had sought to acquire fake
Indian passports for top Kashmir-based operatives.
Evidence that `Bilal' had contacts in Mumbai
is of some significance in the context of the serial bombings - not the least
because of his demonstrated expertise in executing such attacks. As second-in-command
to his predecessor, a Pakistani national still known only by the code-name
`Abu Huzaifa,' Bilal had helped organise the serial bombings in New Delhi
last year. While Abu Huzaifa was killed soon after the bombings, the pan-India
networks he set up were, for the most part, inherited intact by Bilal.
Lashkar networks in Mumbai have evolved steadily
since the end of the Kargil war. In August 1999, the Intelligence Bureau succeeded
in breaking a pan-India network led by Lashkar operative Amir Khan, which
had been tasked with recruiting cadre from among communities hit by communal
violence. Despite this success, the Lashkar was still able to build offensive
capabilities. In November 2000, police arrested three Lashkar cadre, all Pakistani
nationals, who were planning to assassinate Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.
By 2004, Bilal's unit was poised to execute
even more ambitious operations targeting Mumbai. Shahid Ahmad, a Rawalpindi
resident who had served with the Lashkar for several years, was tasked with
organising a major attack against the Bombay Stock Exchange. He turned to
Manzoor Ahmad Chilloo, a one-time Hizb-ul-Mujahideen member who had left Jammu
and Kashmir to study medicine in Pune. Chilloo, in turn, turned to former
members of the Students Islamic Movement of India for help.
A dramatic Intelligence Bureau operation -
which also led to the controversial elimination of a woman Lashkar operative,
Ishrat Jehan Raza, and her lover Javed Sheikh in an encounter in Ahmedabad
- eventually led to the detection and exposure of the cell.
Few commentators paid attention, though, to
the real lessons that emerged: despite the threat of an India-Pakistan war
forcing a reduction of levels of violence within Jammu and Kashmir, the Lashkar
was looking to take its jihad to a new level.
Last month, evidence emerged that the Lashkar
continued to seek the resources needed for a major strike. Acting on information
provided by the Intelligence Bureau, the Maharashtra Police arrested 11 members
of a Lashkar cell that had shipped in an incredible 43 kilograms of explosives,
along with assault rifles and grenades. Several had links to SIMI - just like
Raza and Sheikh. Soon after, three Lashkar operatives were killed while attempting
to storm the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's office in Nagpur.
Alarms were ringing in the intelligence community.
Sources have told The Hindu that the Intelligence Bureau provided at least
half a dozen warnings that Mumbai could face a major strike, using explosives
brought into Maharashtra at around the same time as the consignments that
were interdicted. SIMI-linked cadre, the Intelligence Bureau knew, had also
been trained for a major operation. However, the cell that carried out the
terror strikes on Tuesday succeeded in slipping under its radar.
Organised crime networks
What has enabled the Lashkar to obtain the
resources for running so many parallel cells? And where are the explosives
used in recent attacks coming from? Some in the intelligence community believe
the answer lies in the organisation that executed the 1993 serial bombings
of Mumbai, the largest-ever terror strike in India. From a safehouse in Pakistan's
North-West Frontier Province, some say, mafioso Dawood Ibrahim's smuggling
networks are being used again to pump in large flows of explosives.
Like the Maharashtra explosives, which are
believed to have been landed by sea, smuggling networks along the Gujarat
coast have also been central to recent Lashkar operations. In May, the Delhi
Police shot dead Lashkar operative Mohammad Iqbal, a Bahawalpur resident who
had operated in Jammu and Kashmir from 2002 to 2003. Iqbal, it turned out,
had arranged for mafia-linked traffickers to smuggle nine kilograms of RDX,
along with two assault rifles and a Thuraya satellite phone set, across the
Bhuj border.
Part of this consignment was intended for
use by Feroze Abdul Latif Ghaswala, a Mumbai automobile mechanic who had been
tasked by the Lashkar with executing bombings in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
While Ghaswala's cell was penetrated and broken by the Delhi Police, part
of an earlier consignment of explosives sent through Gujarat was used in a
February 19 bomb explosion on the railway platform in Ahmedabad that injured
25 people - the first time an RDX-based explosive was used in Gujarat.
Evidence exists that Dawood Ibrahim's mafia
shares ideological affinities with Islamist terror groups. Much of the jihadi
leadership is drawn from seminaries like the Jamia Islamia at Banori in Karachi.
Some elements in the mafia, moreover, have links with the Tablighi Jamaat,
a religious organisation that has considerable influence both amongst jihadi
organisations and Pakistan's military. During Dawood Ibrahim's long stay in
Karachi, these links flowered into an operational relationship.
But the mafia's role in terror strikes isn't
restricted to shipping weapons. Dawood Ibrahim-affiliated gang-lord `Chhota'
Shakeel helped ship Ahmedabad residents recruited by the Jaish-e-Mohammad
through Dhaka in 2001. Mafia operative Javed Hamidullah Siddiqui, who was
arrested in 2004, told Indian authorities that Shakeel had arranged to have
the group flown from Dhaka to Karachi on fake passports. Another mafia operative,
Rasool Khan `Party,' received the recruits in Pakistan.
Another Dawood Ibrahim lieutenant, Fahim Machmach,
helped a separate group of terror recruits transit through Bangkok, including
two Bangalore residents who identified themselves using the code-names `Iqbal'
and `Sohail.' Machmach, interestingly, is alleged to have personally supervised
a 2003 attempt on the lives of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Bharat Banot
and Ashok Bhat, using the services of a longstanding mafia hit man, Vikram
Parmar, also known as Ali Mohammad Kanjari.
Painstaking investigation will be need before
we learn just how the Mumbai bombings were planned and executed - acts of
maximum terror intended to destroy what the author Suketu Mehta described
as "Maximum City." Just who shipped in the weapons, who fabricated
them, and whether the Lashkar's Jammu and Kashmir-based operatives had a role
in organising the bombings could take weeks or months to establish. This much
is clear though: what happened in Mumbai is part of war that is still far
from its end.
