Defeating Terror

The serial bombings at Delhi on October 29, 2005, weredescribed by one commentator as an ‘attack on the spirit of the nation’.Three days before the Hindu ‘festival of lights’, Diwali, daystraditionally reserved for shopping for the celebrations, terrorists plantedthree bombs in crowded public places – the Sarojini Nagar Market, thePaharganj Market, and a public transport bus in Govindpuri – killing at least59 persons and seriously injuring over 155.

No official determination has still been made regarding thegroup responsible for the attacks, but an analysis of preliminary evidence andpast trends in terrorist activities – including the continuous succession ofarrests and seizures of arms and explosives in and around Delhi – pointedunfailing to one or another of the many terrorist groups supported and sponsoredby Pakistan. And the needle of suspicion becomes the more steady with thestatement by the Islami Inqilabi Mahaz (IIM, Islamic Revolutionary Movement),claiming responsibility for the Delhi serial blasts.

While the claim is still to be verified, sources indicatethat it is useful to note that the IIM is a front organisation of theLashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), now renamed the Jamaat-ud-Dawa or JuD). Indeed, sourcesindicate, when the Lashkar first commenced operations in Jammu and Kashmir(J&K), it chose to initially operate under the banner of the Lahore-basedIIM. While no extraordinary operations are attributed in India to the IIM,several of its cadres were arrested between 1993 and 1996, and these includedZulfikar Ali Shah, a Pakistani National, arrested in February 1993, who figuredon the original list of prisoners whose release was demanded by the IC 814hijackers in December 1999 (the list was subsequently pared down, and Shah wasleft out).

The IIM also featured in the US Patterns of Global Terrorism,1997, Report in connection with the killing of four US citizens in Karachi:

In November (1997) four US employees of Union Texas Petroleum and their Pakistani driver were murdered in Karachi when the vehicle in which they were traveling was attacked 1 mile from the US Consulate in Karachi. Shortly after the incident, two separate claims of responsibility for the killings were made: the Aimal Khufia Action Committee – a previously unknown group – and the Islami Inqilabi Mahaz, a Lahore based group of Afghan veterans. Both groups cited as the motive for the attack the conviction of Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national who was tried in the United States in November for the murder of two CIA employees and the wounding of three others outside CIA Headquarters in 1993. Kansi was found guilty and sentenced to death.

It is significant that the charges for these murders wereeventually pinned on two members of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), Saeed andSalim Ganja, by an Anti-Terrorism Court at Karachi, and a sentence of death washanded down in August 1999. However, a Karachi court subsequently acquitted theaccused, and the actual perpetrators of the 1997 killings have yet to be found.

Available information, consequently, suggests that the 29/10attacks were, in fact, engineered by the LeT, which has sought to distanceitself from the incident by claiming the incident under this long-dormantidentity – a practice that it has followed in the past with several otheridentities, including Al Mansoorian, Al Afreen and the Salvation Front. And itis significant to note that the LeT’s founder and Amir (chief), HafizMohammad Saeed, operates freely in Pakistan, and has recently been much in thenews leading the most prominent jehadi initiatives in the earthquakerelief operations in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). There is no secret abouthis presence and freedom to operate in Pakistan, and his unambiguous links withthe terrorist LeT. The LeT/JuD remain the most prominent representatives of thegaggle of sarkari jehadi groups in Pakistan – groups that enjoy theprotection and patronage of the state and its covert agencies.

While definitive identification of the group responsible forthis most recent atrocity must wait on the investigations currently under way,it is essential to recognize that this incident confirms the strategiccontinuity of Pakistan’s broad orientation towards India, and its sustainedenterprise of encirclement, penetration and subversion, with an objective to doas much damage as is opportunistically possible, under the cover of (no doubtdiminishing) credible deniability. It is useful to recognize, here, that thepresent attacks fall entirely within past patterns, and there have, in fact,been at least 25 occasions since 1997 on which bomb blasts have been executed inDelhi by Pakistan-backed groups, though this attack has been by far the worst interms of casualties (followed by the Parliament attack of December 13, 2001, inwhich 11 persons were killed and 20 were injured).

There have, further, over just the past two years, beendozens of arrests of Pakistan-backed terrorists, and seizures of large caches ofarms and explosives in and around Delhi. The groups connected with these arrestsand seizures have prominently included the LeT, Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM), Jaish-e-Mohammed(renamed Khaddam-ul-Islam), Al Badr, Hizb-e-Islami, as well as Khalistanigroups, particularly the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) that was responsiblefor the May 22, 2005, serial blasts in two cinema halls in the city, and whoseentire top leadership is headquartered in Pakistan.

It is important to recognize that, despite the very high tollin life inflicted by the present attack, it does not reflect very high levels ofcapability. Terrorist groups, when they are well entrenched in a particular areaand have evolved sophisticated capacities, will attack strategic targets andvital installations; it is ordinarily when capacities are incipient, or havebeen significantly degraded by counter-terrorist and intelligence operations,that a group goes in for mass casualty soft targets of the kind witnessed on29/10. Indeed, the long list of arrests and seizures connected withPakistan-backed terrorist groups in and around Delhi over the past many years– and, indeed, across India, outside J&K and the Northeast, numbering atleast 44 modules over just the 2004-05 period – are a measure of the manyother potential threats that were neutralized by intelligence and enforcementagencies before they could be translated into action.

There is, however, no scope for complacency here. Apart fromthe tragic loss of life, given contemporary technologies, terrorists alwaysretain a residual capacity for generating a major strategic threat, and thiscannot be ignored. Regrettably, India’s responses have been restricted to merepolicing and intelligence work, and these can never suffice in neutralizingterrorism that enjoys external state support.

India’s policies have, moreover, encouraged Pakistan inkeeping a twin track of negotiation and terrorism simultaneously open, andPakistan knows that, as long as it verbally denies involvement and issues strongstatements condemning specific terrorist incidents – Musharraf was quick todescribe the 29/10 attacks as ‘criminal and barbaric’ – it can keep thelarger enterprise going without danger of Indian retaliation, or even anysignificant shift in or derailment of the peace process.

This reality was confirmed when, even as news of the enormityof the blasts was building up, several Indian leaders sought to reassure themedia, and through them, Pakistan, that the incidents would have no impact onthe course of the ‘peace process’, and a settlement was reached withPakistan during the very night of the attack, on the opening up of five pointsalong the Line of Control for relief to the earthquake affected populations inPoK.

Terrorism, however, cannot be defeated unless costs –indeed, unbearable costs – are imposed on its state sponsors. Regrettably, theIndian leadership does not appear to have the will, the imagination or thecapacity to evolve strategies to do so, and will continue to hope that it canbuy peace with Pakistan’s current dictator by offering more and more by way ofeconomic benefits and political concessions. Historically, however, terroristsand their sponsors have only been encouraged by concessions.

It is important, within this context, to recognize that the‘peace process’ between India and Pakistan has had no impact on thetrajectory of terrorist violence in J&K – and in other parts of India.This trajectory has demonstrated a steady downward trend since 9/11,irrespective of the alternating tensions or détente between the two countries,and is essentially related to a continuous diminution in capacities toengage in terrorism under cover of credible deniability as a result ofincreasing external and internal pressures on Pakistan. It is only by sustainingand augmenting such pressures through all means available that Pakistan will,eventually, be dissuaded from its enterprise of terror.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute forConflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of theSouth Asia Terrorism Portal