The Neglected Season Of Terror

If any doubts existed regarding the direction and future intensity of the Pakistan-backedIslamist terrorist assault in India, incidents over the past week will put these to rest. With Iraq consumingthe preponderance of the world's attention and interest, and with the extraordinary licence enjoyed by theMusharraf regime in Pakistan as a result of its 'special status' in America's 'global war against terror', thespace for terrorism in South Asia has suddenly and considerably been enlarged.

In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), summer is the season of terror, as the snows melt, opening up passes fromPakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), and providing easier access to armed infiltrators, most of whom hibernate inPakistani camps through winter. This year, however, the killings are beginning to escalate much before thesnows begin to melt.

Portents of a bloody summer came late in the night of March 15-16, when an extraordinarily large group (atleast 50 men, on preliminary estimates) of heavily armed terrorists attacked a remote police post in Indvillage in district Udhampur in the Jammu region. 11 persons, including at least nine policemen, were killedin the attack, the armoury was looted and destroyed, and several houses and a hospital torched.

In another departure from recent trends, as many as four terrorist groupings - theHizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM) the Jamait-ul-Mujahiddeen (JuM), the Tehreek-ul-Mujahiddeen and theHarkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami (HuJI) - have, according to initial reports, been quick to claim credit for this'joint operation'.

After 9/11, by and large, most terrorist organisations have been eager to avoid openassociation with incidents of extremist violence for fear of attracting international attention and sanctionsagainst their parent organisations and their state sponsors. These inhibitions, however, now appear to besubstantially diminished in view of the greater 'tolerance of terror' reflected in Western - and particularlyAmerican - perspectives towards South Asia.

This was the worst of a succession of attacks in J&K over just the past one week. Earlier on March 15, anentire village in the Rajouri-Poonch belt was set on fire, though there were no casualties.

On March 14, two Security Forces' (SF) personnel - including a Deputy Superintendent ofPolice - and three civilians were killed in a fidayeen (suicide terrorist) attack in Poonch. The fidayeen,affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), was killed in the subsequent SF operation. The original target of theattack is believed to have been Shias participating in a muharram procession nearby, but the terrorist isbelieved to have panicked and opened fire when confronted by the SF personnel.

On March 13, two persons, including a six-year old child, were killed, and another 33injured in a powerful explosion in a passenger bus in Rajouri. Another three persons were killed and eightothers injured on March 11, in an explosion inside a shop at City Chowk, Rajouri.

J&K did not, however, exhaust the ambit of escalating Islamist terrorism in India. On March 13, a powerfulbomb exploded in a crowded local train at the suburban Mulund Railway Station in Mumbai - India's 'financialcapital' - killing 12 persons and injuring another 71. India's Home Minister, L.K. Advani, has identified thePakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the proscribed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) as beingresponsible for this attack.

This was the second major terrorist operation in Mumbai this year, the first being apowerful explosion on January 27, in the up-market Vile Parle area, in which a woman was killed, and another25 persons injured. A second explosive with a timer device was detected and defused a few hours later.December last year had also seen two major explosions in Mumbai: on December 6, 2002, 25 persons were injuredin an explosion at a fast-food outlet at Mumbai Central Railway Station; and on December 2, 2002, threepersons were killed and another 32 injured in a powerful blast in a public bus outside the Ghatkopar localstation in Mumbai.

On March 14, 2002, the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh Police killed a terrorist of the JeM in anencounter at NOIDA, one of the satellite townships of the National Capital Region. Police sources indicatedthat Manzoor Dar @ Sirajuddin Khan, was a JeM 'Area Commander' from Baramulla in J&K.

Dar had been pursued and engaged on the basis of information secured after the arrest ofthree Kashmiri students and members of the Jaish - Mehraj Hasan, Ejaz Hasan Jan and Sajjad Hasan Jan - fromthe Choudhury Charan Singh University in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Their interrogation indicated that Dar hadbeen charged to plan and execute attacks on a number of targets, including the Indian Parliament, India Gate,Red Fort, the Qutab Minar Complex, railway stations, stock exchanges and other crowed areas in Delhi.

Ironically, this is precisely the time when India's Opposition parties have chosen to launch a broadsideagainst the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002, the only operative law that India has against terrorism.The Party spokesman for the Congress, the largest Opposition Party at the Centre, declared that this'draconian law' should be scrapped in its entirety because of its 'potential for abuse'.

Criticism of POTA was revived in the wake of the Union Government's decision to set up aCommission to inquire into cases of its misuse by political parties in power against their opponents. Thisdebate is expected to heat up considerably as speculation about an early General Election rises, and variouspolitical parties seek to seduce their 'vote banks' by striking populist postures on emotive issues.

At roughly the same time, a vigorous foreign-funded campaign has been initiated to secureamnesty for a Punjab terrorist - Devender Pal Singh Bhullar - condemned to death for the 1993 bombing thattargeted a Youth Congress leader, and that actually ended up killing nine bystanders and injuring another 29.This campaign has also secured limited support from a number of Indian 'human rights' groups and activiststhat have remained wedded to a range of issues closely connected with obstructing legal action againstterrorist groups.

There are grave dangers here. The approach to an impending election is inevitably a time of mass politicallunacy, but the national interest - and what is, today, widely acknowledged as a collective internationalobjective - in containing and neutralizing terrorism is one that must not be lost sight of in the heat of theelectoral competition.

The present and escalating terror in an ever-widening sphere comes as a warning thatdemocracies must learn to protect themselves against a lawless, opportunistic and utterly merciless andunrelenting enemy, lest they succumb to the machinations of the rising international and state sponsoredterrorism that targets their vulnerabilities.

There are, certainly, abuses of the anti-terrorism law, and these must be swiftlyidentified and punished - POTA contains clearly defined and harsh penalties for its abuse and for maliciousprosecution under the Act. The setting up of a Commission to identify cases of politically motivated abuse ofsuch laws is, to this extent, a step in the right direction. Allegations of such abuse must not, however, beallowed to undermine the efficacy and legitimacy of legal action against terrorism.

An urgency must, moreover, attend the task of assessing the recent spate of terrorist incidents at variouslocations across the country to determine the origin, cause and motive for this sudden escalation, and also toreview the state's strategies of response.

It is clear that the states and agencies who have, over the past two decades, engineered aninternational campaign of terrorism - despite their own current difficulties - have far from abandoned thismethod as a strategy and a tactic to pursue their geopolitical ambitions. The neutralization of this abundantsource of terror must lie at the core of India's strategies of response if a permanent solution to thisenduring affliction is to be found.

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