Ideas In Irreducible Conflict

With the arrest of Jagtar Singh Hawara, the Babbar Khalsa International's (BKI)'operations chief' in India, on June 8, 2005, the curtain has rolled down onanother chapter of the long saga of Pakistan's failed attempts to reviveKhalistani terrorism in Punjab. Hawara fell quickly into the net as the leaderof the circle of conspirators who engineered the Delhi Cinema Hall Blasts on May22, 2005. The rapidity with which this 'terrorist module' unravelled is animportant index of the state of the Khalistani movement and of what was once themost feared terrorist organisation in the Punjab.

Hawara was arrested in the Narela Industrial Area on the outskirts of Delhi,along with two of the accused in the May 22 blasts - Jaspal Singh @ Raja, theprime coordinator in the Cinema Hall bombings - and Vikas Seth. These arrestscame after another five conspirators had been arrested from hideouts in Delhi,Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. They included Balwinder Singh, who helped plant thebombs, and Jatinder Singh who were taken in by a joint team of the Delhi andPunjab Police at Nawan Shehar in Punjab on May 30; Jagan Nath, a Hinduoriginally from a village in the Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh, who wastracked down in Madipur, West Delhi on the same day; and Bahadur Singh andGurdeep Singh, who were arrested from village Mallpur in Nawan Shehar, on June5.

The disruption of a single cell would ordinarily not be expected to lead to thearrest of the 'operations chief' of a group such as the BKI - one of the firstgroups to take to terrorism in the Punjab in the late 1970s, and regarded as themost ideologically driven and violent organisation among the proliferation ofgangs that overran Punjab through the 80s and early 90s. The operationalleadership is normally insulated by significant layers and 'circuit breakers',so that the arrest of one of the 'foot soldiers' cannot lead beyond theimmediate cell.

Hawara, who had evaded arrest since his sensational escape from the BurailJail in Chandigarh on January 21, 2004, clearly lacked the organisational depththat could isolate him from the bottom rung of what are evidently mercenary andmost unreliable operatives. It is significant that none of the otherconspirators in the present case fit the profile of the traditional and deeplyconservative BKI activist. Two are Hindus, and the others have an evident tastefor the 'good life' and a hankering to go abroad - legally or otherwise. All fitthe profile of petty criminals who took to terror for purely mercenary motives.That Hawara was in direct contact with, and exposed to, the likes of theseindicates the degree to which the ideologically motivated Khalistani recruitmentbase has simply vanished from Punjab.

This is despite frenetic efforts by Pakistan to keep the 'defeated rump ofKhalistani terrorist organisations' (as I have described them elsewhere) alive;and despite significant flows of funding, support and propaganda from minusculeand increasingly isolated groups among Non Resident Indian (NRI) Sikhs. It wasprecisely this network of support that had made the Cinema Hall bombingspossible.

While Hawara and Jaspal Singh 'masterminded' the operation in India, theywere functioning under the direct control of Wadhawa Singh, the BKI 'chief', whocontinues to enjoy Pakistani hospitality ever since he fled the fighting inPunjab in the late 1980s. The group was coordinated through Satnam Singh SattaMallian, Wadhawa Singh's son-in-law, propped up by his Inter ServicesIntelligence (ISI) handlers, who is currently taking advantage of the laxity ofGerman law in Stuttgart, to manage the movement and operations of BKI cadres,who have a presence in several European countries, including Germany, France,Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom. BKI is also activein Canada and USA. It is on the list of terrorist organisations in both the USand UK.

The Cinema Hall Blasts were, in essence, operations of opportunity, seeking tocapitalize on a passing ferment and power struggle within the ShiromaniGurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC, the administrative body that manages Sikhshrines, and that has assumed in some measure the character of a 'state within astate'), which had expressed itself in the controversy over the 'Bollywood'(Hindi) film, Jo Bole So Nihal.

Since a faction within the SGPC had challenged the decision of the Akal Takthjathedar (high priest) to allow screening of the film, and hadsuccessfully orchestrated a few public demonstrations on this 'sensitive issue',the calculation was that a few well-timed terrorist incidents may have thepotential of catalyzing a wider movement and 'reviving' Khalistani passions(they had, in fact, the opposite effect, and the occasional and motivatedprotests died out).

The incidents also coincided with recent developments within the DamdamiTaksal - the organisation Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the original architect ofKhalistani terrorism, was drawn from - as a result of the installation of a newchief, Baba Harnam Singh Dhuma, and the formal declaration of Bhindranwale'sdeath (the Damdami Taksal had, till now, kept the fiction alive thatBhindranwale had not died in Operation Blue Star in 1984, and would return tolead the Taksal). Combined with the protests organised by a particular factionof the SGPC and some marginal Sikh extremist organisations during the 'GhallugharaWeek' (which commemorates Sikh martyrs), and the call to raise a memorial tothose who were killed during Operation Blue Star, these events were thought tocreate opportunities that could be exploited to kick-start the spent Khalistanmovement.

Such attempts have a continuous history since the comprehensive defeat ofKhalistani terrorism in 1993, with a cycle of two to four years. Punjab Policesources indicate that over 100 civilians have died in terrorist related violenceover the past decade (1995-2005), overwhelmingly in bomb attacks on softtargets, such as public transport, markets, cinema halls, etc. The worst yearafter the collapse of high intensity terrorism was 1997, when 56 civilians werekilled in a rash of bomb blasts between March 14 and July 10. The year 2000 sawat least 18 civilians killed; and 2002, five.

The past three years have seen no civilian fatalities in Punjab (the singlefatality in year 2005 was in the Cinema Hall Blasts, in Delhi), but there hasbeen a continuous pattern of arrests and seizures of arms and explosives,indicating unrelenting efforts to resuscitate the terror, stifled, on eachoccasion, by the complete absence of public support, and the immensely improvedintelligence capabilities of the Punjab Police. Over 1,000 kilograms ofexplosive materials have been recovered from terrorist cells in the State inthis period, along with a large number of sophisticated weapons includingassault rifles and grenade launchers, as well as other equipment, and at least30 Pakistan-backed 'modules' have been neutralized.

These persistent failures can be traced to the fact that the fundamentalistmindset, which the ISI and Pakistan military establishment are themselves aproduct of, cannot understand the culture and the way of thought that areintegral to the Sikh - and indeed, Indian - way of thought. There is a graphicand utter failure of understanding on the part of the Pakistani establishment inthis, and, while such efforts can inflict great personal tragedies on haplessinnocents, they have little potential to help Pakistan secure its strategicobjectives in India.

Past failures and the futility of the enterprise, however, has not preventedPakistan from continuing to support the tattered survivors of the movement inthe hope that circumstances may, eventually change sufficiently to effectivelyrevive the terror in Punjab. In addition to the BKI, its 'chief', Wadhawa Singh,and 'deputy chief', Mehal Singh, and an unspecified number of cadres, Pakistancontinues to host the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) and its 'chief', RanjitSingh Neeta; a faction of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) and its 'chief'Paramjit Singh Panjawar; the International Sikh Youth Federation - Rode and its'coordinator', Lakhbir Singh Rode; the Dal Khalsa International, headed byGajinder Singh 'Hijacker'; and the Council of Khalistan, led by Balbir SinghSandhu.

In addition, a number of Khalistani groups maintain a significant presence inseveral Western countries. They include the BKI, KZF, KCF-Panjwar, KhalistanNational Army, Kamagata Maru Dal of Khalistan, Sikh Youth of Belgium, ISYF, theCouncil of Khalistan, Sikh Youth of America, and the Sikh Affairs Committee.Their efforts are closely coordinated by the ISI, and though these groups havenot engaged in violence in these countries in recent times, they continue toprovide critical support in terms of funding, propaganda, logisticalcoordination and recruitment. Several young men based in these countries haveundergone training in Pakistan in the handling of sophisticated weapons andexplosives, with the understanding that their 'services' may be called for at anappropriate time.

In addition to the BKI, among the relatively active of these groups in recenttimes has been Ranjit Singh Neeta's KZF, which has been responsible for severalincidents of explosions in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir(J&K). One of the active modules of the KZF was neutralized towards the endof 2004 in district Gurdaspur, leading to a massive recovery of weapons andexplosives. The module included two Pakistani nationals - Mohammad Hanif andAbdul Hamid - who had been given Sikh identities.

The ISI has exploited these various groups for a range of other subversiveactivities as well, including the provision of active assistance to narcoticssmuggling and narcotics transportation to various destinations; the distributionof fake currency; and espionage. There have been repeated attempts to forgealliances with Islamist militants active in J&K, but these have, at worst,met with very limited and transient success.

It is abundantly clear that, despite the abject failure of the Khalistanmovement, Pakistan continues to maintain and support these various groups in theexpectation of future opportunities that may arise out of politicalcircumstances in Punjab, or from predicaments that arise out of transientexigencies, as was the case in the Cinema Hall Blasts in Delhi, which sought toexploit momentary passions whipped up over the film, Jo Bole So Nihal.

While the prevailing circumstances in Punjab make any significant revival ofthe Khalistani terror an extraordinarily remote possibility, a residual capacityto cause local disruption survives, and dovetails with Pakistan's long-termintent in India. As with the many other terrorist, insurgent and subversivemovements and groups across India, the Khalistanis can rely on Pakistani supportas long as they retain this residual capacity, and as long as Pakistan'sdominant political forces remain relentlessly tied to the country's roots in theideology of religious exclusion, theocratic authoritarianism, communal hatred,and Islamist extremism - ideas in irreducible conflict with India's definingideologies of secularism, liberalism and democracy.

K.P.S. Gill is Publisher, SAIR; President, Institute for Conflict Management. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia TerrorismPortal