Terror arrests raise alarm in
India By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - 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.
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