NEW DELHI - India has been the target of
some of the most dreadful terrorist attacks.
Recent events now suggest the threat might have
turned even more serious.
An assessment by
US intelligence has underlined that the
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and other
militant groups that operate on the premise of
"freeing" Indian-administered Kashmir will
continue to orchestrate "attacks" in India.
India holds the LeT responsible for some
of the worst crimes in the country, including an
attempted storming of the Indian Parliament in
December 2001 and the killing of devotees at a
temple in Gujarat in September 2002.
"The
intelligence community assesses that
Pakistan-based
Lashkar-e-Toiba and other
Kashmir-focused groups will continue attack
planning and execution in India. Shi'ite and Hindu
religious observances are possible targets,"
Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnel
said to the US Select Senate Committee on
Intelligence recently. "We judge Kashmir-focused
groups will continue to support the attacks in
Afghanistan and the groups will continue to
feature in al-Qaeda transnational attack
planning."
Worried about reports that
Pakistan has been diverting funds meant for the
"war on terror" to build weaponry against India, a
US Senate panel has asked Defense Secretary Robert
Gates to submit his views on the issue early next
month.
In a recent interview on state-run
television, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf
said, "There is no place for al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
A negative picture of Pakistan is being portrayed
by the media, especially in the West."
But
this talk is too little and too late as the terror
cells in Pakistan now basically set their own
agendas.
Indeed, US concerns have found
resonance in a recent advisory by the federal
Indian Home Ministry to important leaders in the
country that desperate elements within Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence have been looking to
kick-start fidayeen (suicide) terror
attacks in India.
Interestingly, the Home
Ministry has warned that the opposition Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) leader, L K Advani, is a prime
target of terrorists. Advani has been nominated as
the BJP's candidate for prime minister in the
general elections scheduled for next year. The
BJP, known to espouse a pro-US stance given its
support base among the non-resident Indian
community, has been witnessing a resurgence of
sorts recently by winning provincial elections.
Advani, known for his tough stance on terror, has
blamed the Congress party led Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's New Delhi government of being
"soft" on militants.
The Congress approach
is due in part to anti-terror exercises which
invariably end up hurting the minority Muslim
population that the party is trying to
re-cultivate as an electoral base in many
important states.
However, nobody doubts
that New Delhi is feeling the pressure. Although
militant strikes in India happen with alarming
regularity, in the past two years most of the
attacks have been low-intensity crude bombs
strategically placed in crowded areas for maximum
human casualties.
This is unlike in
Pakistan, where the fidayeen attacks have
been perpetrated using sophisticated bombs,
intricate networks and specialized personnel.
These attacks have claimed many more lives,
including that of former prime minister Benazir
Bhutto in December 2007.
The thinking in
New Delhi is that the well-oiled terror machinery
that is focused within Pakistan today could very
easily be turned on India, given past experience.
At the insistence of the Home Ministry,
New Delhi recently extended the ban on the local
jihadi terror outfit the Students Islamic Movement
of India (SIMI) by two more years. SIMI is known
to keep close links with several Pakistan-based
terrorist groups.
The decision was made at
the highest level of the cabinet committee on
security, a group chaired by the prime minister,
with important ministers and defense chiefs in
attendance. SIMI's credo is "Liberation of India
through Islam".
The government has also
been miffed by Islamabad's lack of cooperation in
the handing over of the hijackers of Indian
airliner IC-814 and the apparent protection being
extended to gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who has been
accused of involvement in the serial bomb attacks
in Mumbai in 1993.
An Indian court
recently sentenced to life imprisonment three
people who helped in the hijacking of IC-814 in
December 1999. India is frustrated, however,
because the actual perpetrators of the crime
remain free and are strongly suspected to be in
Pakistan. The two most sought after Masood Azhar,
an Islamist preacher, and Omar Sheikh, accused of
killing journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in
2002.
Indeed, the intransigence of
Islamabad, assassination of Bhutto and now the
alleged targeting of Advani are affecting India's
strategic thinking, including matters of defense
and security.
Given the instability in
Pakistan, New Delhi has been apprehensive about
rogue terror groups taking control and securing
key defense installations and arms. Foreign
Minister Pranab Mukherjee recently said that India
is concerned about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
falling in the wrong hands. Defense Minister A K
Antony has called on Asian nations to share
intelligence on terror.
India's military
preparations center around perceived threats from
Pakistan and China. Beijing actively backs
Islamabad's defense efforts and supplies missiles.
Pakistan's foreign missiles are considered more
robust than India's domestically built arsenal.
India's recent acceleration of the
interceptor and ballistic missile defense program,
its purchase of radars from Israel and the
induction of surface-to-air Akash and medium and
long-range Prithvi and Agni missiles are aimed at
building a credible ground defense against a
sudden attack.
New Delhi realizes that the
peace process with Pakistan and the composite
dialogue is not enough to ensure India's security.
Such a top-down approach does not account for the
multi-dimensional terror cells that now operate
outside the purview of the Pakistani establishment
and are being promoted by vested interests in the
Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.
Whether it be a democratically elected
leader or military regime, New Delhi is keen that
the new government in Pakistan should focus on
curbing Islamist and terrorist groups, even if at
the behest of the US, as a long-term solution.
Many Indian analysts, however, say New
Delhi and other international observers have often
failed to understand the importance of democracy
as the only process that can account for the
voices of many groups and communities that are
lost in a military and feudal state.
For
example, India's vote-bank politics have a
downside, but they have also provided social and
economic opportunities to millions who might have
never had them.
Although retired general
Musharraf has garbed himself in civilian robes due
to immense internal and international pressure, he
still represents the military, an institution with
a dubious record of flirtations with terrorist
groups and some say cannot be fully trusted.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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