Pages

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Indian Mujahedeen could be a surrogate for any Pakistani Jihadi lashkar

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad
19 Sep 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Indian Mujahedeen could be a surrogate for any Pakistani Jihadi lashkar

 

Terrorists innovate, but Govt response is unchanged 

 

By Vikram Sood

 

THE terror attack in Delhi on Saturday was the 14th such incident — among both big and small – since April 1999 (about the time Kargil was taking place). It was also the 12th attack on a major urban civilian target since the Mumbai train blasts on July 11, 2006. Other bomb attacks have taken place in Mumbai, Malegaon, the Samjhauta Express, Hyderabad (twice), Ajmer Sharif, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Varanasi, Faizabad, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. In the last three years more than 600 persons have been killed in various terrorist attacks.

 

Democracies are supposed to react to terrorism with determination and sensitivity. In India, however, each terrorist act brings forth the same tired clichés, the same repetitive promises and compensations, the same gory pictures on front pages, the same breathless TV channel reporting in shrill horror, the same allegations of intelligence failure in a trial- by camera.

 

Yet nothing is done to strengthen intelligence, the counterterrorist mechanisms or to enhance the quality of the police force. There is no apparent determination to take this battle to the enemy.

 

Vote-banks

 

Each time there is an incident we are that much closer to what the terrorists want to achieve — fissures in the Indian community. And today, terrorism in India, thanks to our soft policies, is more or less on autopilot. Terrorism is about murder, not about any great cause or freedom struggle. But for years our leaders have played the Muslim card in vote bank politics, whether it was the Shah Bano case or the Babri Masjid issue. Even in our dealings with Pakistan we have let this feeling creep into our sub- conscious.

 

We have not realised that the Indian Muslim does not want to be linked with Pakistan in that manner.

 

All he wants is his place in the sun and not promised quotas at election time.

 

The terrorists have learnt this game and now it is play back time for them just a few months before elections.

 

What has happened in Delhi or in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and other cities before is not mindless violence.

 

It has been carefully planned, executed to perfection and almost at will. They either want to terrorise and get the majority to react or to drive away prospective investors.

 

Some of the messages that the terrorists have been mailing are distinctly Islamic in character and are thus more inspired by the Al Qaeda mindset than with ethnic or regional aspirations. Of course seeds for all this were sown all these years in the nursery of terrorism — in Pakistan.

 

Pakistan

 

Years ago the ISI would have started placing "sleepers" in India as saboteurs and talent- spotters for new recruits. Many of the Pak- sponsored terrorist groups like the Lashkar- e - Tayyaba and Harkat ul Jehadi (Bangladesh) are signatories to Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front. HUJI's contacts with the ISI are well known and so also the fact that Bangladesh has been the conduit for arms and terrorists operating in India. HUJI volunteers have been trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There have been reports indicating linkages between SIMI, HUJI, LeT and ISI and this could be a reworking of the Afghan Jehad in another place and another time. The Indian Mujahedeen could be a surrogate for any one of these organisations but nothing can be said until the identity of the leadership is established.

 

Unfortunately, we gave this battle away to glib talk by agreeing that Pakistan too was a victim of terrorism.

 

We did not point out that Pakistan was a victim of its own terrorism.

 

The truth is that we have misread Pakistan's leaders. They need India as an enemy for their survival and Kashmir is the excuse not the cause. Even if Kashmir were solved to Pakistan's "satisfaction" they would invent other causes for continued animus. Make no mistake; Kashmir is important for its water that irrigates the Punjab. The will of the people is not important either in Kashmir or Pakistan.

 

The questions are why is it that we let it happen again and again and can we not do anything to win this war against an unscrupulous and invisible enemy? Why do we give the impression of being soft and confused? There is no short cut to improving the intelligence and security apparatus of the country. Spare no cost and accept no compromises on this. If the country has a well- endowed and trained intelligence apparatus acting without political interference ( as distinct from accountability) it could provide pre-emptive intelligence that could abort terrorist acts and lead to arrests. It would also prevent indiscriminate arrests and all that follows. We could learn from the Americans — not completely but suitably — they tightened their laws to the extent that they were draconian, spent billions of dollars and improved intelligence collection and surveillance, making them intrusive, and outsourced certain aspects of the work to maximise use of talent.

 

Policing

 

This would not be enough. The state apparatus up to the thana level have to be similarly educated and strengthened and placed on the same grid as the national agencies. We need a rapid action force located in the states to follow intelligence trails. We need political will to sustain this campaign over years and changes in governments.

 

Above all, we need a lot of luck because there is no certified method of spotting a would- be terrorist.

 

Nearly three years ago in an article, I wrote: "Many in India are given to wishful thinking that peace between India and Pakistan is possible and .... that this would lead to an end to terrorism in India. It will not, given the mindset that prevails in Rawalpindi and Islamabad along with the madrasa culture which collectively dreams of a destabilised, if not balkanised, India. If Pak- inspired terrorism in India were to come to an end where would all these jehadis be sent? To the rest of India, perhaps? Or to Afghanistan, Central Asia or even further into Europe? Keeping them in Pakistan would be suicidal for the Pakistani establishment. Islamic radicals and terrorists may not have yet developed a replica of the Comintern but they do seem to have a Jehad's Rapid Deployment Force as a counter to Centcom." And so it came to pass.

 

The war is long, arduous and also ruthless. It is a war we cannot afford to lose. Ultimately there is no real choice between security and liberty — for a people to have the second they must have the first.

 

The writer is a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing

 Source: www.mailtoday.in

 

0 comments: