Terror Wave Sweeps India: Is this the Beginning?

The back-to-back serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad on July 25 and 26, 2008 have clearly demonstrated that countering terrorism has firmly affirmed itself as the prime most challenge for Government of India in the post-trust vote agenda.

The death toll from 17 serial blasts that rocked the western city of Ahmedabad mounted to 45 as people wounded in the attacks succumbed to injuries in hospitals, which too were a target in this latest round of appalling terrorist violence, while transforming the city into scenes of carnage. Terror seems to have gripped the common man as scenes of twisted debris and pools of blood on the streets narrated the ghastly act committed by the perpetrators of terror.

A day prior to the blasts in Gujarat, came the string of 8 low-intensity bombings in quick succession in the southern city of Bangalore reportedly of killing one and wounding six. An Islamist group called the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ claimed responsibility for the Gujarat attacks by means of an e-mail according to the Press Trust of India.

These terrorist bombings are the latest to have struck India yet again since the tourist city of Jaipur was rocked by a series of seven bombs that detonated a few minutes apart from each other on May 13, 2008. Significantly, it should be recalled that this diminutively known group Indian Mujahideen had claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Jaipur as well.

Apparently, the serial blasts in all these cities bear the imprint of a well-coordinated strike with signs of the involvement of transnational terrorist organizations—Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI), Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and possibly, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) according to sources in the central intelligence agencies. In addition, security analysts and intelligence officials have always suspected that militant Islamic groups operating from Pakistan and Bangladesh are behind the attacks.

The HuJI and Lashkar have scores of sleeper cells all over India ready to strike on directions from ‘outside’. Lately, HuJI is said to have established several sleeper cells across UP, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and even Rajasthan. The suspected involvement of HuJI does not entirely eliminate the Lashker-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) angle altogether in that HuJI’s cadres have often been trained in terror camps across the border in Pakistan. This manifestly refers to the involvement of Pakistan and the Islamic militant groups that India accuses its neighbor of backing incessantly.

Moreover, in what could be characterized as one of the sharpest exchanges between the neighbours since they launched peace talks in 2004, Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said ‘elements in Pakistan’ were behind a resurgence of militant activities, including the recent bomb attack at the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed 58 people, together with two Indian diplomats.
 
Transnational terrorism and transnational crime are being perpetrated largely by non-state actors across or beyond the political borders of a single state. Most governments respond to international terrorism at a tactical level and resultantly, even after decades of combating terrorism, the conventional response of either eliminating or apprehending terrorists has not deterred terrorism.

This primarily could be attributed to the failure of the affected nations to obliterate the transnational support structures of terrorist groups. Transnational terrorist groups have established support infrastructures overseas where they are beyond the operational reach and domestic jurisdiction. According to a report by the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, during the period ranging from January 2004 to March 2007, the death toll from terrorist attacks in India was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq during the same period.

The need of the hour is to pull up the intelligence agencies with an enhanced emphasis on intelligence sharing between the agencies so as to confront the transnational terror mechanism. According to former Intelligence Bureau Joint director and Chief of Police Intelligence in West Bengal Amiyo Samanta, “Until we modernize our intelligence gathering and hold it publicly accountable, we cannot win the fight against terrorism.”

The bombings throughout the country demonstrate of the fact that the wings of transnational terror are fast spreading throughout India and thus are concentrated not just in and around Kashmir. Notably, cross-pollination among various transnational terror groups makes it difficult to separate them.

There is an emerging sense that the war against terror cannot reach its logical conclusion by investigating a particular case/incident. The focal question arising post these incidents is to assess, as to where are these blasts engineered from and what steps would India undertake in order to address this challenge? This precisely is the key impediment for New Delhi, as the masterminds of terror are believed to be residing beyond the frontiers of the country, and indeed is one of the central causes in the frailty of cracking these cases at the core.

Evidently, India’s counter terrorism efforts need to be reassessed in that these attacks would well witness yet another inquiry. Time-bound accountability ought to be mandatory and the intelligence radar needs to be sharpened since intelligence and geo-political assessments are indicating that terror outfits are planning more attacks on India in the coming months and that these blasts are just the beginning of what could be termed as the ‘new tide of terror’ aimed at India.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies)