Eyes Wide Shut

Significantly, PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh chose the aftermath of the Ayodhya incident to reiteratethat the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan was yet to be dismantled andstated, further, that incidents like Ayodhya could impact adversely on the peaceprocess. It is a different matter, of course, that he was contradicted in thislatter claim by his own home minister, who was quick to state that Ayodhya wouldhave 'no impact' on the Indo-Pak talks. The apparent contradiction is, perhaps,explicable in terms of the different time frames within which the two leaderswere speaking, the Prime Minister focusing on the long term impact of continuedPakistan-backed subversion and terror, the home minister speaking of the directimpact of this specific incident; or it could be explained in terms of thehabitual muddle-headedness that afflicts India's top policy echelons.

Despite the efforts of a sensationalist media and opportunistic elements withinthe Hindu far-right to milk the Ayodhya incident, it is abundantly clear thatthis failed attack was just another and abortive attempt to polarise communitieswithin the country. Once the dust has settled, its abject failure will relegateit to a long list of minor terrorist attacks in the country. 

But Ayodhya is nomore than the tip of the iceberg.

The enormity of Pakistan's subversive enterprise in India can be gauged from thefact that, since mid-1998, a single central intelligence unit charged withmonitoring Pakistan backed Islamist terrorist and subversive activities outside Jammu & Kashmir has identified and neutralized as many as 222 terroristand espionage cells across the country. 641 persons were arrested (39 of thesewere Pakistani nationals) and another 51 (30 Pakistanis) were killed duringthese operations. 

In addition, while consolidated data on this is unavailable,there has been a significant number of arrests carried out by various statepolice units. No region and virtually no state in the country has remainedunaffected by the activities of these cells. While a comprehensive listing ofall these cells, their activities and their affiliations is not possible here,it is useful to look at a sample of the more important modulesdetected and neutralized in the current year.

• January 16, 2005: The Delhi Police arrested a Pakistan trained terrorist, Aijaz Ahmed Farash of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) at Karol Bagh.
  
  
• February 12, 2005: The Delhi Police arrested a Pakistani agent, Mohammed Ahsun Untoo, from Church road in the Cantonment area.
  
  
• March 7, 2005: A Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) cadre, Iftikar Ehsan Malik, was arrested from Dehradun, Uttranchal.
  
  
• March 10, 2005: Khalil Husain Shah, a suspected Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent, arrested at Lalkurti, Uttar Pradesh.
  
  
• March 19, 2005: Eyaz Mohammad, a member of the Al Badr, arrested at Kaliachak in Malda, West Bengal.
  
  
• April 28, 2005: Abdul Rezzak, a suspected ISI agent, arrested in Mumbai, Maharashtra, for running a fake currency racket.
  
  
• May 11, 2005: Mohammad Aish-ur-Rahman, a citizen of Nepal suspected to be linked with the ISI, arrested from the New Delhi Railway Station with high quality heroin worth INR 10 million and fake currency of INR 195,000.
  
  
• May 12, 2005: Harun Rashid, a resident of Siwan, Bihar, working with the LeT, arrested at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi.
  
  
• May 15, 2005: Mohammed Hasifuddin, working for the ISI, arrested at Minkrie Village, Khliehriat Police Station, Meghalaya, with 400 gelatine sticks. He is believed to have supplied explosives for the August 15, 2004, blasts in the Dhemaji town of Assam.
  
  
• May 30, 2005: ISI agent Mohammad Mehmood @ Sahil @ Aplu arrested from a hotel in Ajmer, Rajasthan.
  
  
• June 10, 2005: An HM cadre, Ali Mohammed, arrested with RDX at the Inter-State Bus Terminus, New Delhi. He transported explosives to supply to a module of the organisation in Delhi.
  
  
• July 1, 2005: Four terrorists, Masood, Zahid, Bashir and Nazir, are arrested from the South-West Delhi area. Recoveries included arms, ammunition and a map of the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

In addition to these, the Pakistanbacked Sikh terrorist module involved in the Delhi cinema hall blasts was alsouncovered:

• June 1, 2005: Jaspal Singh arrested at Inderpuri in Delhi with 1 kilogram of RDX, a timer, detonator, rifle, ammunition and several fake driving licenses.
  
  
• June 5, 2005: Two Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) activists, Bahadur Singh and Gurdip Singh, arrested from Nawanshahar, Punjab. A kilogram of RDX, 11 detonators and cordex wires were recovered from them.
  
  
• June 8, 2005: Jagtar Singh Hawara, 'operations chief' of the BKI in India arrested with two other accused in the Cinema hall blasts from an industrial area in Narela, West Delhi. 10.35 kilograms of RDX, pistols, ammunition, three remote-controlled explosive devices, and hand grenades were recovered during the arrests.

Several other arrests have also takenplace since in a 'mopping up' exercise targeting Hawara's associates and thesupport structure that facilitated the module's shelter, movement andoperations.

This small selection of cells - linked together only by the accident of thetiming of their detection - illustrates the sheer spread, intensity andrelentless character of the Pakistan-backed enterprise of terror in India. Whileterrorist activities and attacks offer the most dramatic instances of theexisting threat, there is a far more insidious danger that continues to benurtured in, and exported from, Pakistan: the continued, vigorous and universalpropagation of the ideology of jihad, of communal polarisation andhatred, the demonisation of all other faiths in the eyes of the Muslims, thecontinuous recruitment of cadres and the build-up of widely distributed armscaches for future use.

This process is not unique to India, and the Islamist extremist enterprise -both with state support from Pakistan and within more autonomous non-stategroups - is replicating a process of 'encirclement and penetration' in targetcommunities across the world. The process often precedes actual terroristactivity by years, if not decades, and passes through the following stages:

2. The second stage of this process is the mobilisation of motivated Islamist cadres for political action, and for support activities to existing terrorist operations, both in present areas of such operation as well as in all potential areas of expansion. Such potential areas are conceived, within the pan-Islamist perspective, to comprehend all concentrations of Muslim populations, wherever these may be located.

3. The third stage involves exfiltration and training of such cadres for terrorist operations - in the past, primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These processes continue in camps in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).

4. The fourth stage involves the infiltration of these cadres back into the target communities, either for immediate terrorist operation in 'active' theatres, or for the creation of cells that engage in consolidation activities, further recruitment, the build-up of arms and ammunition caches, financial mobilisation, propaganda, the creation of 'front organisations' that engage in legal and political activities based on an exploitation of the institutions and processes of democracy to undermine democracy, or as 'sleepers', awaiting instructions for deployment and terrorist action.

The actual scope of the penetration ofthese processes comprehends elements - large or small - within virtually everymajor pocket of Muslim populations in South Asia - particularly, in India,Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Most of the major groups involved in Islamistterrorist activities in India have a transnational presence, with bases,training facilities, headquarters and supply lines located particularly inPakistan, with Bangladesh as a secondary player, and with operational linkageswith the larger pan-Islamist enterprise of terrorism. More specifically, themajor Islamist terrorist actors in the region are either directly connected, orhave had mediated linkages, with the AlQaeda.

There is sufficient evidence of Pakistan's abiding support to a wide range of jihadigroups in its covert war against India. The export of terror to J&K, thuscontinues, although there has been a secular decline in the number of incidentsand fatalities since 9/11, related essentially to an erosion of Pakistan'scapacities to sustain a high intensity conflict in this state as a result ofincreasing international - and particular US - pressures, as well as an enormousmedia focus on Pakistani activities in this region. 

Significantly, the trends infatalities have, since 9/11, shown no correlation between 'peace processes' orperiods of acute belligerence between the two countries. Thus, even as peacetalks with India continue to be pursued as a parallel tactic, 1,810 persons werekilled in J&K in 2004 in violence related to Pakistan-backed terrorism;another 915 had lost their lives in 2005, by July 10. 

Pakistan also continues toextend support to terrorism by ideologically incompatible groups such as theKhalistani terrorists to whom it continues to play host even over twelveyears after the comprehensive defeat of terrorism in the Indian province ofPunjab; and to ethnic insurgencies in India's Northeast. There is now someevidence of arms and ammunition supplies to Left Wing extremists active across awidening swathe of territory along India's eastern board.

Further, across Europe, America, South, South East and Central Asia, and Africa,evidence of continued subversion and of the persistence of terrorist trainingcamps and activities in Pakistan continues to crop up with the arrest anddisruption of a number of Islamist extremist cells. 

In the US alone, this hasincluded the arrest of several 'modules', the latest in Lodi, California, inwhich one of the accused confessed that he had attended a jihadi trainingfacility run by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, as recently as 2003-2004, at, accordingto reports, "Tamal in Rawalpindi" (probably Dhamial in Rawalpindi,where Rehman has run a 'jihad factory' for many years). 

Whileinvestigations into the London bombings of July 7, 2005, are yet in thepreliminary stages, Pakistani linkages have repeatedly cropped up in mediareports, and varying estimates of British citizens who have undergone terroristtraining in camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been thrown up in assessmentsof the future potential of terrorist activities in the UK. Unless the productionlines of the global jihad are destroyed, more and more terrorist modulesare going to be discovered across the world - and at least some of these aregoing to slip through intelligence filters to execute their missions ofdevastation.

The proclivity of states and the international community to focus only on themost dramatic incidents of terrorist violence, and on the dubious pronouncementsof Pakistan's military dictator and his proxies in government, ignores thisgradual and sustained campaign of subversive mobilisation and capacity building.This, and not the sporadic manifestation of these capacities in specific acts ofterror, comprehends the real potential that counter-terrorist agencies,operations and policies are required to confront and neutralise.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; ExecutiveDirector, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South AsiaIntelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal