India awakens to al-Qaeda
threat By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The United States Embassy in
New Delhi issued a warning on August 11 of likely
terrorist attacks, possibly by al-Qaeda, four days
ahead of India's Independence Day. Although the
warning was a routine travel advisory, it was the
first time the US had warned of an al-Qaeda threat
in India.
The US alert also came a day
after an alleged terror plot targeting
trans-Atlantic airliners was apparently foiled in
Britain.
"The embassy has learned that
foreign terrorists, possibly including al-Qaeda,
allegedly intend to carry out a series of bombing
attacks in and around New Delhi and Mumbai in the
days leading up to India's Independence Day on
August 15, 2006," the US advisory said.
The US State Department subsequently
clarified that the "warning
message" was put out by
the embassy for US citizens in India, and that it
spoke in "somewhat more hypothetical terms in
saying 'possibly including' members of al-Qaeda"
and that it was not based on "definitive
information".
The warning might have been
routine, but the alert to a possible al-Qaeda
attack has been taken note of in Delhi. A week
after the US warning, police in the northern
Indian state of Uttar Pradesh received a letter
purportedly sent by al-Qaeda warning of an attack
on the Taj Mahal.
The US warning came amid
increasing reports of al-Qaeda presence in India.
After the serial blasts on trains in suburban
Mumbai in July, a news agency based in Srinagar
received a call from an unidentified person
announcing that the "Jammu and Kashmir al-Qaeda
group has been formed with Abu Abdul Rahman Ansari
as its chief", expressing happiness over the
Mumbai blasts and calling "Indian Muslims to rise
in jihad in favor of Islam and freedom". More
recently, newspapers have drawn attention to
"intercepts of communications between
Lashkar-e-Toiba cadres about the presence of
al-Qaeda members".
Reports of al-Qaeda
sightings in Kashmir or intercepts of al-Qaeda
chatter are not new. These have in the past been
routinely dismissed by the government as hoaxes.
Calls warning of terrorist attacks have often been
traced to "pranksters".
In recent months,
however, the Indian government has been taking the
calls and alerts more seriously. This is because
India has begun figuring in Osama bin Laden's
speeches (India had figured earlier in the
speeches of other al-Qaeda leaders, including
Ayman al-Zawahiri). In a message broadcast in
April, bin Laden for the first time referred to a
"Crusader-Zionist-Hindu conspiracy against the
Muslims" and to the Kashmir issue.
India's
new closeness to the United States and Israel and
the visit of US President George W Bush to India
in March seems to have "brought India in the
al-Qaeda's crosshairs", an Indian intelligence
official told Asia Times Online.
Officials
have often bragged that no Indian Muslim figured
among those captured in Afghanistan in 2001-02 or
being held in prison camps such as Guantanamo Bay.
Indian Muslims - the growing radicalization of
some sections notwithstanding - were not drawn by
calls of global jihad. "Al-Qaeda is not active in
India, and neither have Indian Muslims joined
al-Qaeda," is a refrain that the Indian
establishment has chanted often.
Now that
might be changing. India's intelligence community
seems divided on the issue of al-Qaeda presence in
India. Outlook, a weekly newsmagazine, cites
Intelligence Bureau sources as saying that
al-Qaeda operatives are present in the upper
reaches of Kupwara, Handwara and the Macchil
sector in Kashmir, but there isn't hard evidence
to support this. Al-Qaeda operatives of Sudanese
origin are said to be operating in Kashmir.
Even if al-Qaeda is not operating in India,
organizations such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET),
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed and
Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, which are known to have
very close links with al-Qaeda, have been active
in India. These organizations are constituents of
the International Islamic Front (IIF) - an
umbrella organization founded by Osama bin Laden
in 1998 - of which al-Qaeda too is a part.
They share ideology, vision and strategic
objectives, and they have dipped into one
another's resources and networks. "So while
al-Qaeda might not have an Indian arm,
organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba have acted
as such," points out the Indian intelligence
official. "The Pakistani constituents in the IIF
have acted as Osama's elves in India."
B
Raman, a former director of the Research and
Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external-intelligence
agency, warned that the Pakistani members of the
IIF - LET, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed
and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami - "could turn out to be
the Trojan horse of al-Qaeda". And in a recent
interview on television, Indian National Security
Adviser M K Narayanan warned that LET is the "most
visible manifestation" of al-Qaeda in India.
Of all bin Laden's Pakistani elves active
in India, it is LET that has undergone the most
dramatic growth. It operates today not only in
India but across continents. Although LET is
banned in Pakistan, it continues to function
openly in that country under the name of Jamaat-ud
Dawa.
LET has been designated a terrorist
organization in several countries, including the
US, Britain and Australia, but their "war on
terrorism" has focused on dismantling only those
terrorist groups that threaten Western interests.
In getting Pakistan to act against
terrorism, the United States adopted a piecemeal
approach, twisting Islamabad's arms to act against
groups, such as al-Qaeda, that directly threatened
US interests, while turning a blind eye toward
outfits like LET and Jaish-e-Mohammed that were
seen to be primarily anti-India and therefore of
little concern to the West.
LET and others
were tolerated so long as they steered clear of
the US and Europe. This shortsightedness, or
rather hypocrisy, on the part of Washington in its
approach to Pakistan-based terrorist outfits
allowed LET to spread its tentacles quietly across
continents.
The investigation into the
plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners has laid
bare the hand of Jaish-e-Mohammed and LET among
others. Even if the plot was masterminded by
al-Qaeda, as Pakistan claims, the key links in
carrying it out were operatives of LET and
Jaish-e-Mohammed.
What were dismissed as
anti-India jihadist groups are now striking in the
West. The US and Britain are now discovering that
Osama's elves are no "guided jihadists". They
might have trained their guns on India for years,
but they are now ready and willing to train them
on the US and Europe.
What is more, as the
US travel advisory to Americans in India
indicates, they could, on bin Laden's behalf,
direct their guns on Americans and US interests in
India.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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