The Deepening Imprint of Terror K.P.S. Gill President, Institute for Conflict Management
If any doubts existed regarding the direction and future intensity of the Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist assault in India, incidents over the past week will put these to rest. With Iraq consuming the preponderance of the world's attention and interest, and with the extraordinary licence enjoyed by the Musharraf regime in Pakistan as a result of its 'special status' in America's 'global war against terror', the space for terrorism in South Asia has suddenly and considerably been enlarged.
In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), summer is the season of terror, as the snows melt, opening up passes from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), and providing easier access to armed infiltrators, most of whom hibernate in Pakistani camps through winter. This year, however, the killings are beginning to escalate much before the snows begin to melt. Portents of a bloody summer came late in the night of March 15-16, when an extraordinarily large group (at least 50 men, on preliminary estimates) of heavily armed terrorists attacked a remote police post in Ind village in district Udhampur in the Jammu region. 11 persons, including at least nine policemen, were killed in the attack, the armoury was looted and destroyed, and several houses and a hospital torched. In another departure from recent trends, as many as four terrorist groupings - the Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM) the Jamait-ul-Mujahiddeen (JuM), the Tehreek-ul-Mujahiddeen and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami (HuJI) - have, according to initial reports, been quick to claim credit for this 'joint operation'. After 9/11, by and large, most terrorist organisations have been eager to avoid open association with incidents of extremist violence for fear of attracting international attention and sanctions against their parent organisations and their state sponsors. These inhibitions, however, now appear to be substantially diminished in view of the greater 'tolerance of terror' reflected in Western - and particularly American - perspectives towards South Asia. This was the worst of a succession of attacks in J&K over just the past one week. Earlier on March 15, an entire village in the Rajouri-Poonch belt was set on fire, though there were no casualties. On March 14, two Security Forces' (SF) personnel - including a Deputy Superintendent of Police - and three civilians were killed in a fidayeen (suicide terrorist) attack in Poonch. The fidayeen, affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), was killed in the subsequent SF operation. The original target of the attack is believed to have been Shias participating in a muharram procession nearby, but the terrorist is believed to have panicked and opened fire when confronted by the SF personnel. On March 13, two persons, including a six-year old child, were killed, and another 33 injured in a powerful explosion in a passenger bus in Rajouri. Another three persons were killed and eight others injured on March 11, in an explosion inside a shop at City Chowk, Rajouri. J&K did not, however, exhaust the ambit of escalating Islamist terrorism in India. On March 13, a powerful bomb exploded in a crowded local train at the suburban Mulund Railway Station in Mumbai - India's 'financial capital' - killing 12 persons and injuring another 71. India's Home Minister, L.K. Advani, has identified the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the proscribed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) as being responsible for this attack. This was the second major terrorist operation in Mumbai this year, the first being a powerful explosion on January 27, in the up-market Vile Parle area, in which a woman was killed, and another 25 persons injured. A second explosive with a timer device was detected and defused a few hours later. December last year had also seen two major explosions in Mumbai: on December 6, 2002, 25 persons were injured in an explosion at a fast-food outlet at Mumbai Central Railway Station; and on December 2, 2002, three persons were killed and another 32 injured in a powerful blast in a public bus outside the Ghatkopar local station in Mumbai. On March 14, 2002, the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh Police killed a terrorist of the JeM in an encounter at NOIDA, one of the satellite townships of the National Capital Region. Police sources indicated that Manzoor Dar @ Sirajuddin Khan, was a JeM 'Area Commander' from Baramulla in J&K. Dar had been pursued and engaged on the basis of information secured after the arrest of three Kashmiri students and members of the Jaish - Mehraj Hasan, Ejaz Hasan Jan and Sajjad Hasan Jan - from the Choudhury Charan Singh University in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Their interrogation indicated that Dar had been charged to plan and execute attacks on a number of targets, including the Indian Parliament, India Gate, Red Fort, the Qutab Minar Complex, railway stations, stock exchanges and other crowed areas in Delhi. Ironically, this is precisely the time when India's Opposition parties have chosen to launch a broadside against the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002, the only operative law that India has against terrorism. The Party spokesman for the Congress, the largest Opposition Party at the Centre, declared that this 'draconian law' should be scrapped in its entirety because of its 'potential for abuse'. Criticism of POTA was revived in the wake of the Union Government's decision to set up a Commission to inquire into cases of its misuse by political parties in power against their opponents. This debate is expected to heat up considerably as speculation about an early General Election rises, and various political parties seek to seduce their 'vote banks' by striking populist postures on emotive issues. At roughly the same time, a vigorous foreign-funded campaign has been initiated to secure amnesty for a Punjab terrorist - Devender Pal Singh Bhullar - condemned to death for the 1993 bombing that targeted a Youth Congress leader, and that actually ended up killing nine bystanders and injuring another 29. This campaign has also secured limited support from a number of Indian 'human rights' groups and activists that have remained wedded to a range of issues closely connected with obstructing legal action against terrorist groups. There are grave dangers here. The approach to an impending election is inevitably a time of mass political lunacy, but the national interest - and what is, today, widely acknowledged as a collective international objective - in containing and neutralizing terrorism is one that must not be lost sight of in the heat of the electoral competition. The present and escalating terror in an ever-widening sphere comes as a warning that democracies must learn to protect themselves against a lawless, opportunistic and utterly merciless and unrelenting enemy, lest they succumb to the machinations of the rising international and state sponsored terrorism that targets their vulnerabilities. There are, certainly, abuses of the anti-terrorism law, and these must be swiftly identified and punished - POTA contains clearly defined and harsh penalties for its abuse and for malicious prosecution under the Act. The setting up of a Commission to identify cases of politically motivated abuse of such laws is, to this extent, a step in the right direction. Allegations of such abuse must not, however, be allowed to undermine the efficacy and legitimacy of legal action against terrorism. An urgency must, moreover, attend the task of assessing the recent spate of terrorist incidents at various locations across the country to determine the origin, cause and motive for this sudden escalation, and also to review the state's strategies of response. It is clear that the states and agencies who have, over the past two decades, engineered an international campaign of terrorism - despite their own current difficulties - have far from abandoned this method as a strategy and a tactic to pursue their geopolitical ambitions. The neutralization of this abundant source of terror must lie at the core of India's strategies of response if a permanent solution to this enduring affliction is to be found.