The Gateway Of India

Two explosions in quick succession in Mumbai on August 25, 2003, are estimated to have killed about 48innocent civilians. One of these explosions took place near the Gateway of India in the vicinity of the TajHotel, a five-star hotel, which attracts many affluent foreign tourists from the world of business, from theWest as well as the Gulf. Many middle class families of the Gulf, who cannot afford a vacation in the West andhence prefer to come to India, also often prefer to stay in this hotel.  The second explosion took placein the Zaveri Bazaar, an area with a concentration of jewellers, many of them Gujaratis.

Initial reports indicate that the explosives were probably kept concealed in hired taxis and detonatedthrough timers. The explosives do not appear to have been of high quality. The devastating impact seem to havebeen achieved by using a large quantity of material commonly available such as ammonium nitrate, which had inthe past been used in many of the explosions in different parts of the world in which Al Qaeda of Osama binLaden or the members of his International Islamic Front (ISI) were found involved or suspected. 

While explosives experts of the Government of India are reported to be examining the possibility of the useof high quality and difficult to detect explosives, the likelihood of their use is remote.  Forexplosions in public places where the terrorists do not have to pass through security checks, difficult todetect high quality explosives are not necessary.  One could achieve the desired effect by using materialof everyday use which would not attract the suspicion of the security agencies.  This has been thetypical modus operandi of the jihadi terrorists ever since the New York World Centre explosion ofFebruary,1993. 

This has been the sixth terrorist strike in Mumbai in recent months.  The main targets appear to havebeen chosen for their economic significance -- such as means of transport, areas of prosperous economicactivity or a very well-known hotel. 

Why Mumbai?

Like New York in the US, Mumbai in India has been a tempting target for jihadi terrorists since 1993. It isthe economic and financial capital of India. It is the base of India's off-shore oil industry.  It is onecity in India, which comes nearest to any Western city in its role as the engine of India's industrialisationand modernisation. It provides a vision of what the rest of India could be in the years to come if themodernisation and globalisation policies of the Government continue to make progress.  It is the home ofIndia's largest share market. It is a major contributor of the tax revenue of the Government of India. Manymultinational companies prefer to locate their corporate headquarters in Mumbai.

Though Mumbai is not India, many foreign investors tend to look at India through the prism of Mumbai. If internal security in Mumbai is good, they look at internal security in India as a whole as satisfactory. Ifit is bad in Mumbai, they tend to look upon security of life and property in the rest of India too asworrisome even if this is not necessarily so. Mumbai is also a city of strategic significance for India. Itwas the initial nerve-centre of India's nuclear establishment.  Though other nerve-centres have sincecome up, Mumbai's importance is undiminished.

The ISI Connection

In view of these factors, weakening the Indian economy by destabilising Mumbai has remained an importantobjective of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since 1992. In the early 1990s, the ISI had askedsome of the Sikh terrorists of Punjab trained by it to join the Mumbai Flying Club and crash a trainer planeon the off-shore oil installations. They did not do so since they did not believe in suicide terrorism. 

It subsequently approached Dawood Ibrahim, the leader of a mafia gang, who was then based in Dubai, forassistance. By taking advantage of the anger amongst some sections of the Muslim youth of Mumbai over thedestruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh and the subsequent communal riots in which manyMuslims were allegedly killed, he recruited a number of angry Muslims, had them trained in Pakistan in the useof explosives and used them for carrying out the explosions of March,1993, in Mumbai in which over 200innocent civilians were killed. 

The targets chosen were of economic significance such as the Mumbai stock Exchange building, the office ofan airline, a hotel near the airport etc. The explosives supplied by Pakistan were kept in vehicles and gotdetonated through chemical timers of US-origin. After examination, US forensic science experts had confirmedthat the timers used came from a stock issued by the US to Pakistan in the 1980s for use in Afghanistan. 

After the explosions, Dawood Ibrahim himself and some of the perpetrators managed to escape to Karachi,where they have been living now, even as reported by Pakistani media. Dawood Ibrahim had played an importantrole in the past in Pakistan's clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technology from abroad and ingratitude for this, Pakistan has given him and his associates Pakistani passports under different names andallowed them to operate from Karachi. In response to India's repeated requests for their arrest andextradition, it has repeatedly taken up the stand that they are not in Pakistan. 

The arrests and prosecution of many of the others involved in the Mumbai blasts of 1993 brought down theactivities of jihadi terrorist elements in Mumbai, but there were tell-tale indicators that the jihadistrained by the ISI had not given up their objective of making Mumbai an important base for their activities. 

The Gateway For International Terrorists

Mumbai has not only been the gateway of India, but also the gateway for international terrorists and mafiamembers.  Reports received in 1989 indicated that Carlos, the jackal, now in prison in Paris, used tocome to Mumbai and Bangkok from Damascus, his then sanctuary, for his vacation without his arrival andpresence in the city being detected by the local police. Over the years, it has become the operational groundof some of the most notorious mafia groups of the region, the most infamous of them being the group led byDawood Ibrahim. The Dawood Ibrahim group has penetrated into some sections of the local economic activity suchas that of Mumbai's flourishing film industry. Enquiries and investigations after the Mumbai blasts of 1993brough out the links and influence in the political circles of not only Mumbai, but also other parts of India,which Dawood and other mafia leaders had managed to develop with their money power. 

The 1993 Mumbai blasts brought out the ominous linkages which had started developing between the mafialeaders, many of them Muslims, and the jihadi terrorists. It was reported in 1999 that the terrorists of theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a founding member of bin Laden's IIF, who had hijacked an aircraft of the IndianAirlines from Kathmandu to Kandahar, had allegedly made their plans for their operation from hide-outs inMumbai before moving over to Kathmandu. 

For the last two years, there were reports that the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), one of the Pakistani componentsof the IIF, which has been responsible for the majority of the terrorist incidents in Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) since 1999, had burrowed into Mumbai by taking advantage of the conducive atmosphere in sections ofthe local Muslim community, particularly the youth, due to their anger over the Babri Masjid issue and thelarge-scale killing of Muslims in Gujarat last year following the massacre of a number of innocent Hindupilgrims by some Muslims of Godhra in Gujarat while they were travelling by train. 

Amongst the local accomplices of the LET in Mumbai were allegedly cadres of the banned Students' IslamicMovement of India (SIMI). One or two of its cadres had gone to Pakistan for training in the 1980s long beforethe Babri Masjid was destroyed and some others from its ranks had been trained in J&K by the terroristorganisations operating there such as Hizbul Mujahideen (HM). 

The LET, like the other Pakistani components of the IIF, is a pan-Islamic organisation, which advocates therevival of the Islamic Caliphate system and claims to be fighting for an Islamic Caliphate in the Indiansub-continent.  It has its headquarters in Pakistan, but also has an active co-ordination centre in SaudiArabia, which co-ordinates its activities in Mumbai, South India and the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. Thelinks of many of the jihadi terrorists arrested in recent months in Mumbai, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and inTamil Nadu were reportedly traced to this co-ordination centre in Saudi Arabia.  Even though the LET hasrecently emerged as the standard-bearer of Al Qaeda and the IIF, the Saudi authorities have not acted againstit. No action has been taken against LET activities in the other countries of the Gulf either. 

The Mumbai blasts of August 25, which have come in the wake of other blasts with less casualty earlier,would show that the security agencies have so far not been able to identify and neutralise all the sleeperagents of the LET, who have burrowed into not only Mumbai, but also Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Manyundetected networks continue to operate and the August 25 blasts are strong evidence of this.

While the continuing anger over the Babri Masjid issue and the killing of a large number of Muslims inGujarat last year would have definitely helped in motivating some of the local Muslim youth to help the LET,it would be incorrect to see the blasts merely as an act of reprisal for the Gujarat riots. They have to beseen as part of the larger plan drawn up by the ISI in 1992 to weaken the Indian economy by destabilisingMumbai. 

The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently,Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), ChennaiChapter.