Bomb attacks raise new Indian
fears By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Indian officials have pointed
their fingers at the "usual suspects" - Pakistan
and Bangladesh - after the twin bomb blasts that
killed at least 43 and injured more than 100
people this Sunday at India's cyber-city of
Hyderabad.
But security officials are also
speaking of a new front of terror infiltration via
southern India that makes other technology and
manufacturing hubs such as Bangalore and Chennai particularly
vulnerable.
The
victims were gathered at a popular street food
stall and an amusement park, with many engineering
students as visitors, when the blasts occurred.
Television channels have been showing gory
pictures of the dead and injured who were out for
an evening of leisure and entertainment in the
city, capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Security officials say at least 20 more
bombs fitted with timers have been found at
various public locations in the city.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S
Rajasekhara Reddy and federal Home Minister
Shivraj Patil have spoken of a "foreign hand"
involved in the blasts.
This is the second
attack in recent months in Hyderabad, a city of 7
million people with a 40% Muslim population -
terrorists attacked the historic Mecca Mosque in
Hyderabad, killing 12 and injuring more than 60
people.
Indian intelligence agencies say a
new terror channel has emerged that begins in
Pakistan, passes through Male in Maldives and then
goes to the southern Indian cities that have
direct flights to Male.
Maldives is an
Islamic state, and in the recent past traditional
moderate views have been tossed aside because of
an increasingly insecure President Abdul Gayoom,
who has begun patronizing madrassas
(seminaries) that foment extremists. Gayoom has
ruled Maldives for almost three decades.
Indian police have also been speaking
about a proliferation of extremist sleeper cells
in Hyderabad, as also evidenced by the recent
attack on controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima
Nasreen in the city.
The latest blasts
point toward the use of improvised explosive
devices (IEDs) that have been used in many other
serious terror attacks in India over the past few
years, including the Mumbai train blasts and the
Diwali attacks in New Delhi.
Ammonium-nitrate-based IEDs cause maximum
shrapnel damage within a close range and have been
used by terrorists to target areas packed with
people. The use of remote-controlled timer devices
demonstrates a reasonable level of sophistication
and coordination. Such mechanisms were used in the
Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the Bali attack
in 2005.
Police say one of the suspected
groups is the Taliban-inspired Bangladesh outfit
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), which enjoys
political patronage as well as links with
al-Qaeda. Shahed Bilal, a native of Hyderabad
associated with the HuJI, is said in some police
quarters to be the mastermind. Bilal is supposed
to have close links with Pakistan-based terror
groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammad and
Lashkar-e-Toiba that have orchestrated several
attacks in India. Reports suggest that other
explosive material used - TNT and RDX - had been
procured from Bangladesh.
The Hyderabad
attacks follow a spate of terrorist violence. In
the past year or so, more than 300 people have
been killed in bombings in India. These include
the coordinated train blasts in Mumbai, killing
200, and 30 dead in a bombing near a mosque in the
city of Malegaon, central India. In February, more
than 60 passengers were killed in a firebombing of
the peace train that runs between India and
Pakistan.
A report in The Times of India
said India has faced the brunt of terror attacks
globally and ranks only below war-ravaged Iraq in
the numbers killed. Since 2004, India has lost
more lives to terrorist violence than all of North
America, South America, Central America, Europe
and Eurasia combined. All of these areas lost a
total of 3,280 people in terrorist attacks between
January 2004 and March this year, while India
alone has lost 3,674 lives.
Other recent
strikes have included temple attacks in Benaras in
March last year (killing more than 30) and the
fidayeen (suicide) attack at the Akshardham
Temple in Gujarat in September 2002, killing close
to 40 and injuring more than 80 Hindu devotees.
The Jama Masjid in New Delhi was a target in April
2006 in which 15 people were wounded. More than 70
Hindus shopping during festivities were killed in
New Delhi in October 2005.
Many experts
say a much bigger game plan is being played out
and have advanced several theories. They have
linked the attacks to attempts to sabotage the
India-Pakistan peace process reining in India's
economic progress, and inspiring terror cells
around the world desperate to make their presence
felt and cause alarm.
While Western
nations have become strict with their security
measures, India, which is seen as increasingly
aligned to Western powers, especially the United
States, has become a soft target.
Hemmed
in by two nations, Pakistan and Bangladesh, with a
dubious record of taking on terrorism,
orchestrating attacks in a vast country with a
huge impoverished population is much easier then
providing water-tight security. Observers say that
such attacks also keep the terror cells well oiled
by the underground funds that flow in from secret
sympathizers.
By ensuring huge casualties
with minimum investment in terms of finance,
planning and personnel, terror attacks in India
easily catch the attention of the global
community.
Terrorists have also attacked
places of worship, in which both Hindus and Muslim
have been victims, which some say is a distorted
attempt to show the existence of Hindu terrorist
groups capable of fomenting communal clashes.
Investigators are surprised at the
alacrity with which visuals of the earlier
Hyderabad blast were telecast on a Bangladeshi
television channel whose antecedents are not very
well known. TV channels around the world quickly
picked up these images. It is reasoned that the
terrorists in Hyderabad actually filmed the blasts
and passed them on using multi-media messaging in
their cellular phones.
India has already
been under fire from anti-outsourcing sections in
the West because of the involvement of
Bangalore-based Indian doctors and an engineer in
recent failed terror plots in London and Glasgow.
This has put India's business process outsourcing
industry on the defensive. Failed Glasgow suicide
bomber Kafeel Ahmed worked for Bangalore-based
Infotech Enterprises.
This incident was
the first in which Indians had been involved in an
international terror incident since the blowing up
of an Air India flight from Canada more than two
decades ago.
The British plot brought into
focus an elaborate network of indoctrination via
the Internet that makes Indian technology workers
particularly vulnerable.
Indeed, the
picture does not look good.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
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