The Unfinished Business

After Bosnia and Jammu & Kashmir, it will be Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Junagadh in Gujarat.

That is what the pan-Islamic jihadi terrorist organisations in Pakistan, which are members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), have been saying even long before the IIF was formed in February,1998.

They look upon Hyderabad and Junagadh as Pakistani territory, which should have come to Pakistan in 1947. They also look upon them as legitimate lands of the Ummah, which should be restored to the Ummah. They project their jihad as a three-phase struggle. Under Phase I, they would "liberate" J&K. Under Phase II, they would "free" Hyderabad and Junagadh from "Hindu control." And under Phase III, they say they would "liberate" the Muslims in other parts of India.

In this connection, attention is invited to my following articles: The SaudiConnection of September 4, 2003, and Bosnia &Hyderabad of September 3, 2001. 

Forty-five per cent of the world's Muslims live in the sub-continent. These Pakistani jihadi organisations, which support Al Qaeda, want to "liberate" all these Muslims and form a single Islamic State in thesub-continent--a South Asian Islamic Caliphate. They feel that such a State would be a major power in the world. The activities of these jihadi elements in India have to be examined against the background of their strategic objective, which has to be countered strategically by us.

Instead, most analysts in India tend to tactically project this terrorism and the mindset behind it as a short-term phenomenon not calling for long-term policies such as strict control of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, action against the illegal immigrants of the past,check on the flow of jihadi money and ideological ill-winds from abroad etc. Lack of a strategic response from the Indianstate would make this threat more and more difficult to handle in future.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.