The tip of India's terror iceberg

By M H Ahssan

A wave of bomb blasts in four Indian cities over the past few months has drawn attention to a new, shadowy terror outfit which calls itself the Indian Mujahideen (IM).

In less than a year of existence, the group has a high rate of terror strikes - 43 bomb blasts over a four-month period in four cities leaving over 140 dead. The frequency and potency of the attacks have left India significantly rattled.

But it is not just the IM's capacity for terror that is troubling India. Just as worrying is the fact that the IM is, as its name suggests, Indian. Unlike terror outfits the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed or the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (HUJI), which are based across the border in Pakistan or Bangladesh, the IM - like the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) - is a homegrown outfit.

Although some of its funding might come from abroad - on Sunday, a Saudi national was detained at Delhi airport on suspicion of funding the IM - its members are Indian Muslims.

The IM first surfaced in November last year, when it sent an e-mail to a television channel minutes before serial blasts rocked civil courts in Varanasi, Faisabad and Lucknow in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. In May this year, it sent another claiming responsibility for seven blasts which killed 63 people and injured over 200 in the tourist hub of Jaipur.

In July, the IM struck in quick succession in Bangalore and then Ahmedabad. Four minutes before 17 bombs ripped through Ahmedabad, an e-mail sent in the name of the IM warned India would soon, "feel the terror of death". And then on September 13, the IM struck in Delhi, with five bombs exploding in busy commercial areas killing 8 and injuring 130. Once again the group claimed responsibility via e-mail for the blasts, saying they were intended to "stop the heart of India from beating".

Indian intelligence sources say a pattern is emerging which exposes the IM's modus operandi.

The IM plants bombs, made of easily available substances like ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) and nails, in crowded places and triggers them with timers during peak times to cause the maximum casualties.

Above all, "Its attacks carry the group's macabre signature - real-time e-mails to media outlets claiming responsibility for the blasts," an official of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) told Asia Times Online, adding that the e-mails are being sent through unsecured Wi-Fi internet connections.

The IM has used e-mails not only to claim responsibility for blasts but also to lay out its manifesto. The e-mails reveal that while it is inspired by the rhetoric of pan-Islamic groups, its motives clearly stem from anger directed against the Indian state.

The group's outlook was most explicitly detailed in the e-mail that preceded the Ahmedabad blasts, which it said were revenge for the Gujarat riots of 2002 in which over 2,500 people, mainly Muslims, were killed. It also drew attention to alleged injustices suffered by the Muslim community at the hands of the state, the police, the courts and enquiry commissions.

This anger with the country's justice system was expressed in its first e-mail, when it justified the attacks in Uttar Pradesh as revenge for lawyers beating up and refusing to defend three "innocent group members" detained for allegedly plotting the abduction of Congress party member of parliament Rahul Gandhi.

In its e-mail preceding the Delhi blasts, the IM railed against the approach taken by the Indian police, the media and the judiciary to terrorism, claiming it is hypocritical. "Why is it that Sangh parivar [a family of Hindu right wing organizations] violence is never dealt with the same intensity as Islamic terror?" it asked.

"The word terrorism is never used when a story on Sangh violence is told, no matter how large-scale the violence is. The violence unleashed by the Sangh Parivar in Gujarat was defined only as expression of communalism and the same is case with what happens in Orissa at the moment."

While the IM surfaced less than a year ago, its members are hardly new to the terror game, say intelligence officials. "The IM is simply a front for the hard-line faction of SIMI. It is just old wine in a newly labeled bottle," the IB official said.

The IM has emerged from a rift in SIMI between hardliners, keen to wage war against the Indian state, and moderates. While its increasing radicalism can be traced back to the destruction of a 16th century mosque by Hindu extremists in the early 1990s, the IM faction emerged only in 2005. But since then its members have been trained in bomb-making and explosives techniques in various camps around the country.

According to the IB official, while IM's ties with SIMI "have been evident for a while - the close links were underscored further during interrogations of detained SIMI and IM members". The IM had demanded the release of SIMI activists held on terrorism charges in the e-mail preceding the Ahmedabad blasts.

The IM's masterminds include many SIMI hard-line stalwarts, like SIMI general secretary Safdar Nagori. Now in jail, Nagori is said to be "the architect of SIMI's transformation to IM, its shift to all-out terrorism and war against the Indian state".

Abdus Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer, an expert hacker, worked for a major software firm in Mumbai before he joined SIMI and jihad activity. He is now on the run, wanted for masterminding the Delhi blasts and his role in several other attacks over recent years. "IM's emerging leaders are all 'graduates' from its terror training camps," the IB official said.

Police claim to have arrested several IM "masterminds" in recent weeks, with two suspected IM terrorists gunned down in a firefight with police in Delhi, and police telling the media of, "major successes in busting IM's terror modules".

However, in private they are not so confident. A senior police official admitted to Asia Times Online that what investigating agencies know about the IM could well be just "the tip of the iceberg", meaning the battle against the IM has only just begun.

It is not the size of the IM or its possible number of supporters that makes the outfit difficult to tackle, but rather the flawed approach of police and investigating agencies, which is only fueling further anger among Muslims towards the Indian state.

Civil society activists have been drawing attention to the harassment and random arrests of Muslim youth following the Delhi blasts, and claim the police version of the encounter in Delhi where two IM "terrorists" were killed is "riddled with holes".

The competition among various police agencies to claim credit for arresting terrorists and masterminds is resulting in the targeting of innocent Muslim youth, said a recent report written by a fact-finding team of lawyers, academicians and civil rights campaigners.

"This must stop immediately. It appears that after making SIMI the scapegoat, the police has now shifted focus to Azamgarh [a town in Uttar Pradesh from where most of those arrested in connection with the Delhi blasts hail] which is being dubbed the nursery of terrorism."

This groups adds that targeting young Muslim boys from Azamgarh or those who may have been members of SIMI in the past has led to an enormous sense of insecurity, fear and resentment in the Muslim community.

Terrorism is bound to be an important issue in upcoming parliamentary and state assembly elections, and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is already criticizing the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for being "soft on terrorism". Having to defend its rather shabby performance in preventing terrorist attacks in the country, the Congress party is attempting to adopt a tougher position.

The UPA, which scrapped the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) passed by the BJP-led NDA government in 2002 on the grounds that the anti-terrorism legislation claiming it was anti-minority and had not worked, is in a bind.

It does not want to be seen to be as "soft on terrorism", hence its growing demands for new anti-terrorism legislation, and claims that inaction will undermine the party's support among urban Indians. But then there is also the Muslim vote, which is important not only for the Congress but for some of its allies in the UPA.

Anxious to be seen to be tough in tacking terrorism, police and politicians have been providing detailed press conferences on blast investigations, interrogations of those in custody and encounters with "terrorists" - but intelligence officials complain this is undermining investigations.

As the government looks for new ways to appear tough on terror, it is rapidly alienating the Muslim community as its targets hundreds of Muslim youths who migrated to the cities for study and work. These youths are now said to be streaming back their villages angry and disillusioned, with only the IM set to gain.