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Kashmir: Suicide
terror
By Kanchan Lakshman
How lethal a terrorist group is is proportionate
to the effective strategies that it unveils and the
levels of violence it can inflict on a target society.
Suicide terrorism is now widely considered a relatively
cost-effective, high-impact tactic in various theaters
of conflict, including, over the past three years, in
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), and in Sri Lanka.
More 335 persons have been killed and another
432 injured during suicide (fidayeen) attacks
between July 1999 and November 2002 in India. On
November 29, a deputy inspector general of the Border
Security Force (BSF), R S Bhullar, disclosed that
suicide attacks had claimed the lives of 161 security
force personnel in J&K over the past three years.
Ninety terrorists and an almost similar number of
civilians have also died in these fidayeen
strikes. He also said that Pakistan-based terrorist
formations had carried out as many as 55 suicide attacks
on police and security force camps. The army has
suffered the maximum casualties, losing 82 personnel;
the J&K police has suffered 42 fatalities; the
Central Reserve Police Force has lost 24; while the BSF
has lost 10 men. Two personnel of the Indo-Tibetan
Border Police and one of the Indian Air Force have also
died in these attacks.
The Pakistan-based
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) has been responsible for the
majority of the suicide attacks. Between November 3,
1999 and December 31, 2000, LeT cadres were involved in
15 out of an estimated 19 fidayeen attacks in
J&K, in which 50 security force personnel were
killed and another 37 injured, with three civilian
casualties. Twenty-four Lashkar terrorists were killed
during these attacks.
The Lashkar has also been
responsible for at least 10 fidayeen attacks in
the current year. One of the high-intensity strikes was
the September 24 attack on the Akshardham Temple of the
Swaminarayan sect of Hindus in the western Indian state
of Gujarat. Although a crack team of the National
Security Guards eventually killed both the Lashkar
fidayeen, 32 persons, including 16 women and four
children, had already lost their lives, and at least
another 74 had been injured.
Again, on November
24, at least 12 persons were killed and 45 others
injured when three LeT fidayeen simultaneously
attacked two shrines – Raghunath and Panjbakhtar temples
– in the heart of Jammu city. Violence recommenced
briefly around the Panjbakhtar temple the next morning
when a third terrorist, presumed to be part of the same
squad was engaged and neutralized by the by the security
forces. J&K director general of police A K Suri
indicated that the LeT was responsible for this attack,
the second in eight months on the Raghunath temple. This
information was derived from a telephone call received
by Suri at his residence in which a "Pakistani LeT
cadre" said, "We have done it and now it is your turn."
Suicide terror in J&K is not merely a
measure undertaken out of tactical despondency, nor is
it a measure of last resort. Pakistan-based terrorist
groups introduced suicide attacks on security
installations in J&K after the Kargil War in 1999.
In mid-1999, army units were moved from the Kashmir
valley to the Kargil sector for duties under Operation
Vijay. Taking advantage of the momentary disruption in
the counter-insurgency grid and also the resulting gaps
in deployment, terrorist groups began sneak attacks on
security force formations.
Eric Herren of the
International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism,
while observing that Kashmir presented a particularly
difficult problem vis-a-vis suicide bombings, says, "It
is becoming something of a mass movement among terrorist
… almost every mission is a success." According to
Herren, the suicide terrorist in J&K is likely to be
"between 15 and 25 years of age, male, and may be
Kashmiri but is most likely to be Pakistani, Afghan,
Arab or a European-born Muslim."
The general
pattern of fidayeen attacks carried out by the
LeT is directed towards storming a particular target,
inflicting maximum fatalities, before death (or
occasional escape) intervenes. Though targets have often
been security installations, civilian targets are far
from the exception.
The Lashkar attack on August
7, 2001, at the Jammu railway station was the first
suicide attack in the state that targeted civilians.
This left seven civilians dead and another 24 injured.
The second, and arguably the most lethal attack thus
far, was the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s (JeM) strike on the
J&K state Legislative Assembly complex in Srinagar,
in which 36 persons were killed and 24 others injured.
The suicide attack on the Legislative Assembly,
in addition to being one of the most daring attacks,
also demonstrated the tactical use of a vehicle-borne
suicide bomber in a larger terrorist attack. The
objective of the fidayeen was to blow open the
gates to the complex in order to allow the back-up team
to enter and eliminate members of the assembly.
The most dramatic and consequential of
fidayeen attacks, however, was the December 13,
2001 attack on India’s parliament at Delhi, which led to
the mobilization of forces and deployment along the Line
of Control and international border by both countries,
arousing international apprehensions of an open – and
potentially nuclear – war. A group of five JeM
terrorists, armed with guns and hand grenades, stormed
the parliament complex with an explosives-laden car
shortly before noon on December 13, and in the
indiscriminate firing, nine security force personnel and
a member of the parliament staff were killed. All five
terrorists were subsequently killed.
The
Pakistani terror machinery appears to regard the
fidayeen option as attractive and Mohammed Nawaz,
alias Abu Hijrat, who was an instructor at an
Afghanistan training camp, disclosed in August 2000 that
hardcore terrorists, primarily murderers, criminals
under death sentence, and religious fanatics were being
inducted into suicide squads and given training at such
camps. Hijrat also revealed that mercenaries secure a
special three-month training for graduating to suicide
squads at the Umal Basti in Muzaffarabad of
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Bagalpur in Pakistan. A
fidayeen is given training in special acts of
sabotage after his three-month commando course and three
months of special training on mapping, surveillance,
civilian cooperation and intelligence gathering at
Bagalpur, Zafarwal and Umal Basti camps, among others.
A suicide attack involves a minimal security
risk for its sponsors, since the impossibility of
interrogating the attacker leaves the terrorist
infrastructure intact. In addition to the physical
destruction caused, suicide attacks also carry
psychological ramifications for they target society at
large, delivering a message that the enemy is willing to
pursue and resort to the most extreme measures at its
disposal. The extension of the fidayeen strategy
to other theaters outside J&K also indicates that no
place or category of persons is secure.
Countering the fidayeen, evidently,
presents a difficult problem for security agencies. In
the J&K case, where the entire mobilization,
training and planning of the attacks takes place on
foreign soil, in Pakistani safe havens, it is not
possible to "work backstage" on the organization that
prepares the fidayeen for their macabre missions.
Nor, indeed, would the various long-term
strategies recommended – including "de-indoctrination"
and counter-propaganda targeting either the terrorist
political agenda or the religious/ideological logic of
martyrdom, undercutting the recruitment capability of a
terrorist group by removing the necessary ideological or
religious fuse – have significant potential for success,
until the supporting state structure in Pakistan is
brought under extraordinary pressure to end the
exploitation of an impoverished and ignorant population
to recruit a continuous stream of volunteers and
mercenaries whose only way of escape is in such suicidal
acts of violence.
Kanchan Lakshman,
research associate, Institute for Conflict Management, a
non-profit society set up in 1997 in New Delhi committed
to the evaluation and resolution of problems of internal
security in South Asia.
Published with
permission from the South Asia Intelligence Review of
the South Asia Terrorism
Portal
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