The serial blasts in Jaipur on May 13, 2008, which killed about 60 innocent civilians, have many general characteristics, which are common to many terrorist organisations in South Asia. Among important examples of such characteristics are the use of bicycles to plant improvised explosive devices (IED) in crowded places and mixing projectiles such as the ball-bearings of cycles with the explosive.
Bicycles as carriers of IEDs have often been used by different terrorist groups since the jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Jihadi as well as non-jihadi groups have been using cycles. Among the non-jihadi oprganisations which use bicycle bombs is the United Liberation Front of Assam(ULFA).
The greatest advantage of bicycles for terrorists is that they are used by millions of people and unattended bicycles left in crowded places do not attract suspicion. Cycles are also used under certain othercircumstances--when the terrorist organisation has only limited funds, when it has no capability for stealing cars and motor-cycles and having them driven to the targeted place and when it wants to use an unconscious cut-out for having the IED reached to the spot without using its own cadres for this purpose. The ULFA uses such cut-outs for having cycles fitted with IEDs left in crowded areas for which they are paid. In this manner, the cadres of the ULFA escape identification and arrest.
Ball-bearings are also often used to increase the lethality of the explosive.The LTTE has been using them for nearly 20 years now. When the Sri Lankan authorities imposed severe restrictions on the sale of ball-bearings in the Tamil areas, the LTTE started smuggling them in sackfuls from Tamil Nadu. By mixing ball-bearings with the explosive, one can not only increase the lethality of the IED, but one can also economise on the use of the explosive. A small quantity of explosive can cause a large number of casualties if mixed with ball-bearings and otherprojectiles. By mixing ball-bearings, a low-intensity explosive can be made to cause a high-intensity killer effect.
The IEDs at Jaipur were activated by mechanical timers. According to published details of one IED, which failed to explode, the timing mechanism was an ordinary clock. This was similar to the modus operandi of the Khalistani terrorists in Punjab in the 1980s. The new trend among jihadi organisations in other countries has been to use the alarm mechanism of the mobile telephones for timing an IED. This was apparently not used inJaipur.
In recent months, the police in Karnataka, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had claimed to have neutralised a number of jihadi sleeper cells constituted by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) with the help of the Students' Islamic Movement of India(SIMI). During their interrogation, those arrested reportedly spoke of the plans of these organisations to attack Israeli and Western tourists in Goa. In fact, Goa had been repeatedly figuring in interrogation reports as a possible target for attacks by the LET or the HUJI or both. Jaipur had not figured in the interrogation reports.
The fact that Jaipur and not Goa was attacked is mysterious. This would indicate one of two things: Either those arrested and interrogated earlier had misled the police by talking freely about Goa when their real target was Jaipur; or the Jaipur blasts were carried out by an organisation totally different from the organisations (the LET and the HUJI) to which those arrested earlier belonged,.
Tourism has been an important target of the terrorists all over the world. Al Gamah Al Islamiyah of Egypt used to attack tourist targets in Egypt in the 1990s. The Jemaah Islamiyah of Indonesia targeted the Australian tourists twice in Bali in 2002 and 2005. Al Qaeda targeted the foreign tourists (mainly Israelis) in Mombasa in 2002, in Casablanca in 2003 and in Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt in 2005. Their primary targets were foreign tourists though locals also got killed. In Jaipur, there was no targeted attack on foreign tourists. No foreigner has been killed. They did not attack restaurants, bars, hotels etc, which are known to be frequented by foreign tourists. The terrorists targeted the tourist potential of Jaipur, but not foreign tourists in particular.
Some police officers and embedded journalists have already started blaming the LET and the HUJI even though the blasts do not carry any unique signature of any organisation. The only way of identifying the organisation responsible is by arresting the perpetrators and interrogating them. Till we reach that stage, it will be premature and unwise to blame anyone.