India has witnessed major terror attacks in 2007. What kind of new trends are you reading into these events? Do you agree terrorists have failed to provoke riots in India?
In India, there has been an improvement in Jammu and Kashmir. Civilian fatalities in Jammu and Kashmir decreased from 521 in 2005 to 349 in 2006 and 162 till December 5, 2007. Security forces fatalities decreased from 218 in 2005 to 168 in 2006 and 120 till December 5, 2007. But there has been deterioration in the rest of India. There were three jihadi terrorist strikes in 2005, another three in 2006 and eight so far this year. Of the 14 attacks since 2005, three were on Muslim places of worship, two on Hindu holy places, three in public places, three on the legal community, two on public transport and one at a meeting of scientists.
Estimated fatalities are 300. Improvised explosive devices were used in 13 attacks and a gun in the 14th. In J&K, we are have a mixed modus operandi of killing with hand-held weapons and IEDs. In the rest of India, it is mostly with IEDs. It is urban terrorism in the rest of India. It is a mix of urban and rural in J&K. The operational control is still done by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence but the command and control increasingly operates from Bangladesh ever since Pervez Musharraf assured Atal Behari Vajpayee, the then prime minister, in 2004 that he would not allow any territory under Pakistani control to be used for acts of terrorism against India.
The ISI continues to use pro-Al Qaeda terrorist organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiyba, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammad against India. They operate increasingly from sanctuaries in Bangladesh. Since 2002, a small number of Indian Muslim youth have been joining these organisations. Instead of taking them to Pakistan for training via Dubai as in the past, they are now being taken by air to Teheran under the pretext of pilgrimage and then to the training camps in Pakistan by road. In this manner, their journeys by road from Teheran to Pakistan and back will not find mention in their Indian passports.
Al Qaeda has not operated in India, but it has been looking for Indian Muslim volunteers in the Diaspora in the Gulf and the UK since Indian Muslims are still able to travel easily and do not face the same difficulties as the Arabs and Pakistani Muslims. Al Qaeda is likely to continue with its present policy of using the Pakistani organisations on Indian targets. At the same time, it will look for opportunities to attack the US and Israeli targets in India. Provoking communal riots was not their only objective. An equally important -- if not more important -- objective is to keep the Indian population bleeding in order to demoralise them and create perceptions of increasing insecurity in the minds of foreign investors and foreign experts working in India. Disrupting the Indian economy is also an important objective.
Image: Soldiers look at the wreckage of an Indian Army vehicle in Srinagar.
Photographs: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images
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