Mumbai: Islamist Terror's New Modus Operandi

From the Middle East Times, an excellent article about the change in MO of Islamic terrorists.

One item stands out in particular:
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One of the main reasons for the terrorists switching tactics was to grab the world's attention. In fact as of last week before Mumbai, how many people knew that after Iraq India was the second country in the world most afflicted by terrorism? I would suspect not many. Nonetheless from January 2004 to today, over 4,100 people have died as a result of terrorist attacks in India.
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Indeed, I was angry at the media's indifference to bomb blasts in India. Bomb blasts had become commonplace. Even people in India had become indifferent. I had fallen down on the job. I had tracked the bomb blasts on Tagzania, but so many bomb blasts had happened, that I didn't keep up.

Jaipur bomb blasts

Several days have passed since May 13, 2008, when a series of bomb blasts hit Jaipur. It would have been remiss of me not to recognize this event on the Mera Bharat Mahan blog, as I have frequently written about Islamic terrorism in India on this blog (I leave documentation of Naxal terrorism to Naxal Terror Watch).

I have read various accounts, which differ in the number of victims and even the number of blasts. However, there were at least six blasts, which left at least 60 dead and 200 injured. The fact that these blasts took place within a short time indicates coordination, thus bearing the hallmarks of an Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist attack.

I will leave editorializing for another day. In the meantime, I pray for the departed, the injured, and their survivors.

Dar-ul-Aloom's phony fatwa

The Dar-ul-Aloom seminary in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh is the most influential school of Islamic learning after Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Moreover, Dar-ul-Aloom provides the ideological underpinning for the Taliban and Islamic terrorist movements in South Asia. Small wonder that Moorthy Muthuswamy said that its influence should be "neutralized."

Dar-ul-Aloom recently issued a fatwa (link found through MEMRI) ostensibly condemning terrorism. This article Deoband plays peace card; a few call it bluff from the Times of India reviews feedback from readers about the fatwa. While the article provides considerable space to opinions of those who are rightly critical about the fatwa and the motives of the Islamic scholars, it concludes with this statement:

For the majority though, the Deoband's initiative was an important step in the war against terror.

What I read in the Dar-ul-Aloom fatwa was a cursory denunciation of terrorism. As with a fatwa issued by American Muslim groups, no Islamic terrorist individual or group is called out by name and denounced. The principal concern of the Dar-ul-Aloom fatwa is the treatment of Muslims in India and around the world, not opposition to Islamic terrorism.

Hijackers free, helpers get life - Kandahar cuffs on trio after 7-year trial

From The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) , February 6, 2008, comes this article Hijackers free, helpers get life - Kandahar cuffs on trio after 7-year trial, in reference to the December 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814.

The article notes:

The masterminds, Masood Azhar, Ahmed Zargar and Sheikh Ahmed Omar Sayeed, are still out. The three were freed in exchange for the 189 passengers held hostage in Afghanistan’s Kandahar for a week.

For many Indians, it was a matter of shame that there was no Entebbe-type of raid when the plane landed in Amritsar. That shame was compounded when then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh personally handed over Masood Azhar, Ahmed Zargar and Sheikh Ahmed Omar Sayeed to end the standoff.

The Blame Game

Sadanand Dhume wrote that "An increasingly radicalized neighborhood, fragmented domestic politics and a curiously timid mainstream discourse on Islam add up to hobble India's response to radical Islamic intimidation."

Here are two examples how fragmented domestic politics hobbles India's effectiveness in fighting terrorism:

From Naxal Terror Watch, which in turn found this article through Offstumped, comes this commentary Make Terror Victims the face of Anti-Terrorism Campaign, which criticizes the efforts of Congress and the BJP to prove that the other party has the worse record on fighting terrorism. The article argues:

By making the voice of the Terror Victims and the voice of those brave women and men in uniform who shed their lives fighting terrorism the Anti-Terrorism Campaign will not just have tremendous credibility but it would frame the public debate in the right terms.

This article Maya’s Intelligence Quotient from Hard News indicates that while there was advance knowledge of the terrorist attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur, the Uttar Pradesh government headed by Chief Minister Mayawati claimed that it had not received intelligence from the Centre. It also reveals other gaps in the state intelligence network. The article closes with this question:

If [terrorists] can attack a CRPF camp and get away, what is the fate of ordinary people?

8 killed as terrorists attack CRPF centre in Rampur

Mera Bharat Mahan's dreary task of documenting terrorist attacks in India:

From The Hindu, 8 killed as terrorists attack CRPF centre in Rampur: Uttar Pradesh police suspect the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

"Eight persons including seven jawans were killed in a pre-dawn terrorist attack on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Group Centre in Rampur in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday."

The article goes on to say that central intelligence agencies had alerted the UP government about terrorist attacks on the camp, only 5 days after the UP courthouse blasts.

Jihad in India: an interview with Moorthy Muthuswamy

Moorthy Muthuswamy

Terrorism in India has been a recurring theme on Mera Bharat Mahan. I have mapped terrorist attacks in India at Tagzania and have presented views of Sadanand Dhume and others about India's susceptability to terrorism. From FrontPage Magazine via Jihad Watch, here is an interview with Moorthy Muthuswamy, Ph.D., author of The Art of War on Terror: Triumphing over Political Islam and the Axis of Jihad.

Salient points from the interview:

• Terrorism is a humanitarian issue. According to Dr. Muthuswamy, "millions of Indian children are going hungry and getting malnourished due to economic bleeding imposed in the name of Islam."

• Political Islam is the enemy. It is based on the trilogy of the Qu'ran, Hadith (documented sayings and actions of Muhammad), and Sira (biography of Muhammad). Dr. Muthuswamy elaborates, "We are now further identifying the enemy: a political ideology of conquest that inspires terror, mosques as the nodes that spawn jihad and axis of jihad [Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan] as the main backer nations of the ideology and the nodes."

• Jihad has forced out non-Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Kashmir. This pattern has been re-enacted in Muslim majority areas of India itself.

• "… Sonia Gandhi’s Congress party, according to Indian intelligence, has been infiltrated by jihadists. Due to the policies enacted by Manmohan Singh’s government, jihadi infiltration into Indian institutions is escalating, including its paramilitary forces.…"

• "It is a matter of time India is hit in a major way … Strikes on India’s nuclear reactors, oil refineries or call-center infrastructure, for instance, is bound to make devastating economic impact and make hundrends of milions more of its children go hungry, and destitute and set the stage for India’s ireversible destruction andeventual Islamization."

Dr. Muthuswamy notes that India has the right under international law to take pre-emptive strikes when faced with a "blatant and long-pattern of genocide by an enemy." Don't hold your breath for that to happen. Israel had the political will to bomb Saddam's nuclear reactor, as it expected that Saddam would unleash nuclear weapons on Israel (Col. Ilan Ramon, who perished in the Space Shuttle Discovery mission with Kalpana Chawla, was one of the pilots on the mission to take out Saddam's nuclear reactor). India's current leaders do not have that political will.

India Appeases Radical Islam - WSJ.com

In this article India Appeases Radical Islam from the November 27, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Sadanand Dhume addresses the UP courthouse bomb blasts and cites terrorist attacks that I have mapped: the August 2007 blasts in Hyderabad, the July 2006 train blasts in Mumbai, and October 2005 bomb blasts in Delhi.

He argues that "An increasingly radicalized neighborhood, fragmented domestic politics and a curiously timid mainstream discourse on Islam add up to hobble India's response to radical Islamic intimidation." Nothing new here for people who follow these issues, but the significance is that these issues are being addressed - however cursorily - in a prominent newspaper.

NOTE Some access to the Wall Street Journal online is available only to subscribers.

Bomb blasts in UP

According to the New York Times (via The Jawa Report) "At least 13 people were killed and more than 60 were wounded Friday [November 23, 2007] in a series of nearly simultaneous bomb blasts outside courthouses in three cities in northern India, the authorities said."


2007-11-23 tagged map by user - Tagzania

Indian Unrest Ensnares a Doctor - WSJ.com

The Wall Street Journal featured an article about Naxal terror in its Monday, November 12, 2007 edition. The article focuses on Dr. Binayak Sen, who was charged with passing notes from an imprisoned Naxal leader: Indian Unrest Ensnares a Doctor - WSJ.com.

This article will be available to non-subscribers until November 20. Access after that date, access will be provided only to subscribers to WSJ.com.

October 2007 - Two more bomb blasts to report

Back to the dreary task of documenting terrorist attacks in India:


2007-10 terrorist attacks tagged map by user - Tagzania

Thursday, October 11: A blast at sufi shrine of Khawaja Moinuddhin Chishti in Ajmer, Rajasthan killed two, injured nine.

Sunday, October 14: A blast at a cinema hall in Ludhiana, Punjab killed six, injured 32.

Zoom out to see locations of these bomb blasts in India.

Some explanations why India has frequent terror attacks

Last Saturday's twin bomb blasts that killed 43 in Hyderabad scarcely received any notice in western media. Perhaps it's because such incidents are all too familiar in India.

I was particularly haunted by the three bomb blasts that happened in Delhi in October 2005, given that the Sarojini Nagar market is within 15 minutes walking distance of my brother-in-law's home and that his family often shops there. This article Hyderabad blasts timed for Vinayaka festival from TOI notes that as with last week's bomb blasts in Hyderabad, the October 2005 Delhi blasts were timed before a festival, namely Diwali.

As with every terrorist strike, there is the usual debate on how to prevent another terror attack. Tavleen Singh, in her column A Violent History (found via Naxal Terror Watch), notes, "...we are losing the war against the jehadis who target India with increasing frequency is because successive governments, both in Delhi and our state capitals, have done nothing to fight back." She cites Ajai Sahni, Editor, South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR), who notes in his article Hyderabad Déjà, Déjà, Déjà Vu that India has too few police and "deficiencies of capacity" in intelligence. Tavleen Singh notes that more police would not be enough and then places blame on those in her profession who hamstring investigations: "If [police] enter Muslim neighbourhoods in search of clues they are charged with racial profiling and for this we in the media are more to blame than the politicians. We make the loudest protests without realising that the result is that the jehadis are winning the war against India."

The unfortunately titled We're our own worst terrorists, again from TOI, intimates that additional police would not be enough by putting the blame on bribery and corruption endemic at all levels of government in India:

It is often said that India is a 'soft', insteadof a 'hard', state. This means that we, collectively and individually, arewilling or unwilling accomplices to a flagrant flouting of the laws of the land. From the street constable who can be bought for Rs 50 to let an errant trucker or motorist go free, to a chief minister who, indicted in a scam, can openly defy the legal system by saying that he is answerable only to the 'court of the people’, the Indian state — as exemplified by its representatives at various levels — is commonly seen to be up for sale or otherwise open to subversion from within.

Time and again, our top law enforcement agencies have been reprimanded by the judiciary for hopelessly bungling or inexcusably delaying investigations with regard to crucial criminal cases, be they terror related or otherwise.

The inevitable suspicion arises as to whether the perpetrators of such acts enjoy political or other patronage which puts them out of reach of the truncated arm of our law: they are above or beyond the law...

A 'hard' state has to learn to be tough on itself first, in upholding its own rule of law and being seen to do so, before it can be tough against terror. Do we — should we —build the political and ethical sinews to do this? It’s a question for our collective conscience. And till we decide, we’ll have to learn to live with terror from outside, and our complicity with it within.

I have updated my map of terrorist attacks in India to include the most recent bomb blasts in Hyderabad.

Naxal Terror Watch

This report India celebrates independence from Associated Press was published on Yahoo! and in many newspapers. While I get frustrated by mainstream media (MSM) reporting on India (barring business reporting) because of its negativity, I feel that it is worth noting that the article mentions Muslim insurgencies in Kashmir and violence in the Northeast. However, it ignores persistent terrorism by Naxalites. Fortunately, the Naxal Terror Watch blog fills that void with frequent updates. I have now added Naxal Terror Watch to my blogroll on Bloglines.

Arise Arjuna: Seeds of Terrorism: Economic Disparity or Ideology

Islamic Rage Boy in Kashmir:
It's not the economy, stupid!

It's been a long time since Atul Kumar has blogged on Arise Arjuna, but for some reason, this article showed up when I viewed news feeds for favorite India blogs in Bloglines:

Arise Arjuna: Seeds of Terrorism: Economic Disparity or Ideology

This article is meaningful today, as it debunks the idea that poverty and the desparation it causes drives people to terrorism. The example of Kashmir illustrates the author's point.

Terror Unbound: 14 years old Hindu youth burnt alive

A truly heart-rending story about a Hindu youth from a West Bengal village whom Muslim miscreants set on fire: Terror Unbound: 14 years old Hindu child burnt alive.

The victim's father fled Bangladesh to escape persecution, only to rediscover it in his adopted village in West Bengal. The family has since relocated to Kolkata (Calcutta).

My mother once asked me where the street dwellers in Kolkata came from. I told her that I assumed that most of them were economic refugees who were fleeing poverty in rural Bihar and West Bengal. Now I wonder if many of them fled terrorism such as that experienced by Samrat Mondal and his family.

Jihad Watch: Islamic jihadists kill five Hindu road workers in Jammu and Kashmir

From the indispensable Jihad Watch web site:

Islamic jihadists kill[ed] five Hindu road workers in Jammu and Kashmir in March 2007.

Rājauri has now been added to our terrorism map.

Homegrown terrorists

A good article from Sulekha on the changing tactics of terrorism: Terror 'outsourced' in India.

Terrorist groups are relying more on native Indians to carry out terrorist attacks using crudely assembled bombs, whereas previous attacks were carried out by Afghan mercenaries or Pakistanis who used sophisticated weaponry.

Below is a map of terrorism in India that I created:


terrorism tagged map by user - Tagzania

I invite readers to make this map more complete by registering with Tagzania and tagging locations of terrorist attacks with "terrorism" and "India." I also request that readers identify source URLs for your information as documentation under Resources.