New Theatre Of Islamist Terror

Whether by accident or design, even as the second phase of elections was unfolding in Jammu& Kashmir (J&K) on September 24, 2002, two terrorists launched an attack in the Akshardham Temple ofthe Swaminarayan sect of Hindus, one of the most hallowed temples in the western Indian State of Gujarat. Theyfirst lobbed grenades and opened indiscriminate fire on the devotees in the crowded hour of the evening aarti(prayer), and then, as darkness fell, entered into a protracted exchange of fire with security forces thatlasted through the night. They were eventually killed at dawn by a crack team of the National Security Guard,but only after they had taken the lives of 32 persons, including 16 women and four children, and injured atleast another 74. With this outrage, militant Islamists opened up one more theatre of terrorism on Indiansoil.

There has been a certain inevitability about a terrorist attack in Gujarat for some time now. Theinternational pressure on Pakistan to curb cross border terrorism in J&K has mounted substantially since9/11 - and can be expected to increase further after the very credible election process in that State. Underthe circumstances, it had become necessary to extend the terrorist campaign to other theatres to maintain thecover of deniability, and to project the fiction that Islamist terrorism in this country is an 'indigenous'outcome of the frustrations and despair of the Muslim community. 

The tragic and indefensible slaughters afterthe Godhra carnage of February 27, 2002, in the retaliatory riots in Gujarat through the months of March andApril, made this State the highest priority in this process, since it is here that Pakistan can most plausiblyclaim that the violence is 'indigenous', the result of local Muslim anger against the post-Godhra atrocities.It is significant that the Akshardham incident occurred within days after General Pervez Musharraf brought upthe issue of the Gujarat riots in his address to the United Nations. Gujarat, however, will not be the last oronly destination of such violence - more and more concentrations of Muslim populations will be targeted inthis strategy to project to the world that Muslims in India are spontaneously resorting to violence as aresult of their growing frustrations in 'Hindu India'.

This, precisely, is why the perpetrators of the Akshardham Temple outrage identified themselves as members ofan entirely unknown organization, the Tehreek-e-Qisas or 'movement for revenge', although there is preliminaryevidence to suggest that they were linked to existing Pakistan based terrorist proxies operating on Indiansoil. More significantly, there has been continuous evidence of recurrent efforts by Pakistan backed Islamistextremist groupings to engineer terrorist incidents in Gujarat in the months since the riots in this State.Thus,

• On August 28, 2002, Farhan Ahmad of Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh) and Shahid Ahmed Bakshi ofAhmedabad were arrested from the Nizamuddin area in Delhi with four kilogrammes of RDX, a pistol, twodetonators and ammunition. Interrogation reports indicated that they were linked to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)and were tasked to go to Gujarat and to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi and some senior members ofthe Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Council of Hindus, VHP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Ahmad andBakshi had been recruited while they were working in Kuwait, by three Pakistani LeT members identified asBasharat, Faheem and Mujahid-ul-Islam. Farhan had undergone training in Muzaffarabad (Pakistan occupiedKashmir, PoK) as far back as in 1998, and was a specialist in illegal fund transfers from Kuwait to variousrecipients in India. He had returned to India in May 2002 to mobilize support in madrassas (seminaries) inTanda, Rattanpura, Umrikalan and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, and to motivate these institutions to accept andretain Muslim youth orphaned during the Gujarat riots until they could be trained to join the jehad. In July2002, Farhan had visited relief camps in Gujarat and identified at least 33 boys for possible recruitment.Bakshi, in turn, had received substantial funds to purchase a tanker for 'milk collection' in the Kutch-Bhujareas of Gujarat, which was intended to be used for transporting arms and explosives clandestinely inductedfrom Pakistan, to urban centers in the State.
  
  

• On August 4, 2002, security forces arrested Mohammed Maqbool Joiya @ Bashir Joiya, aPakistani terrorist of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)from Kotla, under Khavda police station limits, Kutch district, Gujarat. Maqbool, a native of Saiwal inPakistani Punjab, had infiltrated into India via Jammu. He had trained with the JeM at camps at Kotli (PoK)and later at an Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) training camp at Sensa, and was 'launched' into J&Kalong with a group of eight terrorists. He initially operated in Rajouri in that State, and was involved in anencounter with Village Defence Committee (VDC) members in the district. He was surveying infiltration /exfiltration possibilities on the Kutch border in Gujarat in an effort to identify new routes and operationalbases.
  
  

• On May 10, 2002, Delhi Special Commissioner of Police (Intelligence) K.K. Paul disclosedthat five terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) [two of whom were killed in an encounter in Delhi on May 9]had plans to target VVIPs and industrial interests in Delhi and were operating under a changed name ofTehreek-bin-Zaid. He also indicated that the terrorists planned to rope in Muslim youth from Gujarat intomilitancy, as they apparently visualised the State as a 'fertile ground' for recruitment into terroristorganisations in view of the recent communal violence there.
  
  

• In early May, intelligence agencies in J&K intercepted communications between theLashkar-e-Toiba and their handlers in Pakistan. The LeT cadres were being instructed to send groups to executeacts of terrorism in Gujarat, and also to identify and mobilize potential recruits among the victims andsurvivors of the Gujarat riots.

These are only a handful of the recent intelligence breakthroughs that prevented acts ofterrorism from taking place in Gujarat, and are part of a much larger plan that extends well beyond thisState, and that predates the Gujarat riots by many years. Since 1998, for instance, Central intelligence andState police units charged with countering Pakistan-backed terrorism in India outside the State of Jammu &Kashmir, have identified and dismantled at least 162 terrorist and support modules [1998: 29; 1999: 30; 2000:25; 2001: 59; 2002 (till September 25): 19] located virtually across the country. These figures relate only toterrorist and terrorist support activities, and do not include arrests relating to subversion and espionagecharges.

Despite these successes, it is in the nature of terrorism that someone will eventually slip through even themost elaborate intelligence and security net. As the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) said to the thenBritish Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, "We only have to be lucky once. You will have to be luckyalways." This is what manifested itself at Akshardham - one more among the many occasions on which theterrorists 'got lucky'. Such occasions, regrettably, will repeat themselves again and again, as long as themotives, the incentives and the external support for terrorism survive.

K.P.S. Gill, the 'super cop', is President, Institute for Conflict Management which runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal and brings out a weekly - South Asia Intelligence Review - courtesy which this piece appears here.