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 Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2003 1:49 am Post subject: India Pig-Fucked |
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Islamist Terror Comes to India's Streets
By Swapan Dasgupta
Wall Street Journal | August 27, 2003
There is a tendency, distressingly familiar among the global fraternity of
liberals, to shy away from facing awkward realities. India is no exception
to this escapism. In the aftermath of the two bomb blasts that killed at
least 50 people and injured another 160 in the center of Bombay -- India's
largest city and the nerve center of its entrepreneurial culture -- there
are some self-serving explanations doing the rounds. The first is that
Monday's explosions constitute the militant Muslim reaction to the riots in
Gujarat in March 2002. More bizarre is the suggestion that they coincided
with the release of a report by the Archaeological Survey of India
suggesting that a 10th century Hindu temple predated a 16th century mosque
demolished by Hindu activists in 1993.
Compelling as these theories are, they willfully skirt a grim phenomenon --
the expansion of Islamist terror networks into the heart of India. Monday's
fierce explosions in Bombay were not isolated occurrences. They were
preceded by five blasts, the first on Dec. 2 last year, that have killed 17
people and injured 189. Although no group has claimed responsibility for
Monday's terror, the earlier incidents have been traced to activists of the
outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LeT). Among those arrested was a government doctor, Jalees Ansari, which
clearly suggested that the terror networks had expanded from the underworld
to embrace a section of the Muslim middle-class.
For many Indians, the involvement of a person like Dr. Ansari in the LeT
operations has been an eye-opener. For long, enlightened public opinion has
maintained that ideologically motivated Islamist terror had bypassed Indian
Muslims -- who constitute 13% of the country's population. True, there was a
separatist insurgency in the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir
being sustained by Pakistan, but it was thought that Muslims in the rest of
India had spurned the militant revivalist movements plaguing Islamic
countries in Asia. Earlier acts of terrorism, such as the blasts in Bombay
10 years ago, were blamed on Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)
working in conjunction with the underworld. Even the attack on the American
Center in Calcutta in January 2002 was traced to a Dubai-based mafioso
specializing in kidnapping and extortion.
It is no longer possible to maintain this fiction. Indian intelligence
agencies are convinced that the wave of international jihadi terror has now
touched India. The new terrorists are not preoccupied with the "liberation"
of Kashmir from India, their objective is a wider jihad aimed at the
re-establishment of a Caliphate and a war against the West, Israel and
India. The ideological motivation of these individuals is not dissimilar to
those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing in Bali. Groups
like the LeT, with its roots in Pakistan, have been complemented by
homegrown organizations such as SIMI, the Muslim Defence Force with a
network in southern India and the Indian Muslim Mohammedi Mujahedeen.
According to one intelligence estimate, nearly 300 Indian Muslim youth have
had jihadi training in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They constitute a powerful
fifth column in India.
To separate these proponents of "political" Islam from devout religious
practitioners is not always possible. In formal organizational terms, it is
impossible to link the terror groups with religious seminaries. Yet, like
the Finsbury Park mosque in North London that spawned recruits for jihad in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, the breeding ground for terror networks are some
otherwise innocuous religious orders.
Heading the list is the ultra-orthodox Ahl-e-Hadis, with its center in the
town of Moradabad in north India, whose followers dominate the ranks of the
LeT. Not far behind is the Tabligh Jamaat whose followers torched to death
51 Hindus inside a railway compartment in Godhra in February 2002. A vicious
anti-Muslim riot followed this carnage in the state of Gujarat.
Further inciting young Muslims to rise up against a debased, materialist
world are itinerant Islamic preachers from other countries. Four months ago,
authorities in Gujarat estimated that 107 Islamic preachers from as far
afield as Indonesia, Sudan and Saudi Arabia were active simultaneously. The
reason is obvious. Following last year's riots, Muslims in Gujarat bear
terrible emotional scars that propel many of them into contemplating revenge
against Hindus.
It has become customary for the Indian government to blame Pakistan's ISI
for remote-controlled acts of subversion. There is ample evidence to suggest
the ISI, which is almost like a state within a state in Pakistan, is
hyperactive in trying to convert Muslim discontent into subversion. It seeks
opportunities to create confusion, through tactics that range from
distributing fake Indian currency notes through Nepal and Thailand to
plotting political assassinations. Certainly, the easy passage of jihadi
recruits from India to training camps in Pakistan would not have been
possible without a measure of ISI involvement.
Following the post-Sept. 11 international concern over terrorism, the ISI's
activities have been less brazen and marked by what one counter-terrorism
official in India calls "a high degree of deniability." Yet, its role as a
facilitator of Islamist incubators across India cannot be underestimated.
The ISI's role in instigating the Taliban rump against the Hamid Karzai
regime in Afghanistan -- despite President Musharraf's avowed commitment to
anti-terrorist operations -- suggest that its activities do not always stick
to the foreign-policy guidelines of Pakistan.
The Bombay blasts have heralded the entry of global Islamist terror into
India. For the moment, the diabolical objective of provoking a Hindu
backlash against the Muslim minority has not succeeded. But if the campaign
persists, public pressure in an election year will force the government to
consider retaliation against what is regarded in India as the epicenter of
Islamist terrorism -- Pakistan. Like the suicide bombers of Hamas, Bombay's
terrorists may have already derailed a fragile peace process involving India
and Pakistan.
Mr. Dasgupta, a Delhi-based political analyst and former managing editor of
India Today magazine, is writing a book on Hindu nationalism. |
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