With no major headway in Mumbai’s July 13 bomb blasts and only some email leads following the September 7 blast at the Delhi high court (the second one this year), an explosion at Agra’s Jai Hospital on September 18 injured at least 15 people.
Indicating that the blast in the Delhi high court could have been the handiwork of homegrown terror outfits, home minister P. Chidambaram stated in an interview: “We can no longer point to cross-border terrorism as a source of terror attacks in India. That threat remains, but we must also look at Indian modules or India-based modules which are capable of carrying out terror attacks. There have been three major attacks in India recently — in Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. In respect of the Mumbai and Pune attacks, we are fairly certain they were carried out by Indian modules or India-based modules. The government can build capacity and extend the intelligence network, but policing is a very complex task and there will be cases where a terrorist is able to slip through the cracks.” Addressing the All India Directors-General and Inspectors-General Conference in the capital on September 16, Mr Chidambaram said the country’s proximity to Pakistan and Afghanistan was a cause for worry and India was concerned about how to prevent the “radicalisation” of its youth. “Some modules are loosely knit under an organisation called Indian Mujaheedin (IM). Many old cadres of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) are morphed into IM cadres,” he said.
However, referring to Af-Pak as terror’s epicentre, Mr Chidambaram also reportedly stated: “Four out of five major terrorist groups are based in Pakistan and three of them continue to target India. There is no letup in efforts to infiltrate from across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.” He added that there have been infiltration attempts via Nepal and Bangladesh as well as attempts to find a safe transit route via Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu.
At the same conference Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned that terror camps across the border are being reactivated with attempts to induct fresh batches of militants into the country and marked out the prevailing security environment as “uncertain”. Highlighting the need for the security apparatus to be “one step ahead of the terrorists”, he said the recent blasts in Mumbai and Delhi were “grim reminders” of the challenges posed by terrorism to national security.
The two terror groups who are supposed to have claimed to launch the Delhi high court attack are HuJI and IM. On HuJI, Mr Chidambaram said that though it had claimed responsibility for the blast, the group had not been active in India for a while. He further admitted Delhi and Mumbai blasts were a blot on the security and India’s intelligence agencies need a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. “Two terrorist attacks in the space of two months are indeed a blot on our records. The Central government and security forces have been severely criticised. While we accept the responsibility for the incidents and legitimate criticism, it is our duty to set out the context in which such terrorist attacks take place,” he said.
He also said since 26/11, 50 terror modules have been neutralised in the country and that foiling of a SIMI plot to assassinate the three judges who had delivered the Ayodhya verdict in Madhya Pradesh was also a significant breakthrough.
The unfortunate fact remains that this breakthrough or instances of pre-emption or prevention are quite rare in India, as it has been the target of Pakistan Army, ISI-sponsored, indoctrinated, trained and exported terrorists for over three decades. Compared to 10 years of homeland security since 9/11 in the US, India’s record of the same in barely three years since the 26/11 attacks is dismal. And all the more so as on July 13 this year, Mumbai was targeted for at least the 14th time in 18 years since the 1993 multiple blasts.
The HuJI is closely linked to the ISI, Taliban and Al Qaeda and with several Islamist groups operating in India, including Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). HuJI’s Indian recruits were trained at ISI-backed training camps in Pakistan. Till Bangladesh Nationalist Party was in power for almost two decades, its Bangladeshi wing, known as HuJI-B, was actively directed by ISI officers and operatives posted in good strength in Dhaka. The HuJI-B coordinated its attacks along with SIMI, LeT and JeM. SIMI cadres provided crucial shelter and logistical help to HuJI-B cadres prior to attacks and a number of SIMI cadres also joined the HuJI-B.
The October 12, 2005 suicide attack on the Special Task Force (STF) office of the Hyderabad police brought HuJI under the scanner of intelligence agencies. Since then, HuJI seemed to be featuring either directly or indirectly in most of the terrorist attacks in India’s urban centres. Then came the highly-planned and well-coordinated 26/11 multi-mode and multiple terror attacks in Mumbai. A name that did not feature in investigations of this attack was of Ilyas Kashmiri. He was mentioned by the late Pakistan journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad in his book, Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11, as a key figure in planning and execution of 26/11 and 2010 German Bakery blasts in Pune. According to Shahzad, Kashmiri sent him a message in February 2010 suggesting the 313 Brigade was involved in the bombing of a German bakery in Pune. Shahzad also alleged in his book that Kashmiri confided to him that “Mumbai was nothing compared with what has already been planned for India in the future.” Kashmiri’s plan, Shahzad wrote, was to provoke hostilities between Pakistan and India, thereby easing pressure on terrorists to realise their ambitions in Afghanistan.
If on the one hand the home minister recommended focus on “homegrown” terror groups instead of cross-border terrorism, on the other hand he has also said that the latter continues. While five people, including two persons who are suspected to have sent an email to the media in the name of HuJI, owning responsibility for the Delhi blast, were arrested from Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), this claim needs to be investigated. As mentioned above, HuJI has never had any major presence/activity in J&K. The groups active there since long are mainly LeT, JeM and Hizbul Mujahideen. As such the possibility of HuJI and IM being behind the Delhi blast being a ruse or red herring cannot be ruled out. Since 26/11, the large number of embarrassing exposures about the Pakistan Army, the ISI, steadily and substantially LeT and Al Qaeda in planning and implementation of attacks against India, Pakistan’s military has changed tack to ensure that while the momentum of attacks must continue, they must not point towards Pakistan.
Indian political leaders making statements amounting to “looking inwards” at “homegrown’ groups is not going to help us in earning brownie points to improve the quality of the peace-talks with Pakistan, but will certainly further encourage Pakistan-supported terrorists to continue or step up their attacks with the assurance that even if captured they will not be hanged.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi