By Siddharth Srivastava

NEW DELHI – The terror strike in the western city of Pune of February 13 that killed 11, including two foreigners, and injured 60 people has once again brought into focus the role and nexus of indigenous terror groups and sleeper cells in orchestrating militant strikes in India.

Although New Delhi has said elaborate planning went into implementing the attack, it is apparent that “soft targets” can almost be picked at will in India, as has happened following India’s recent offer to renew the peace process with Pakistan.

United States President Barack Obama called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday morning to condemn the Pune blast and express solidarity in the fight against terrorism, an official statement said. Obama also backed the upcoming India-Pakistan talks.
Commenting on the Pune blast, Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters, “I am not ruling out anything and not ruling in anything. It was an insidious attack, planting a bomb at a soft-target establishment.”

“Most pointers to the blast suggest it is the handiwork of terror elements from outside the city. The incident appears thoroughly well-planned and executed.”

Official sources tell Asia Times Online that the role of a domestic terror group such as the Indian Mujahideen (IM) is being overstated as over time numerous sleeper cells involving just a few people, sometimes even single individuals (such as arrested Pakistani-American national David Headley) have been formed and cultivated.

Like with al-Qaeda, IM is an abstract for multiple terrorist cells plotting attacks without knowing about each other’s existence and they can also be involved with banned groups such as the Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which are known for their radical or extremist stands.

An attack such as the one on Mumbai in November 2008 – involving 10 gunmen and lasting several days – required elaborate planning and training of jihadi commandos, while a strike such as Pune using improvised explosive devices (IED) is relatively easy to execute and need only involve one person.

The changing and dynamic nature of the IM and associate cells is reflected in the statement of Home Secretary G K Pillai, who said following the Pune attack, “We do not know whether the old modules still exist or whether some new modules have come up. But we have alerted the states wherever they had existed earlier and where we had kept a check on their activities.”

At the same time, officials say that the count of local Indians involved in terrorist crimes does not exceed 100-150. The handlers, meanwhile, could be much bigger forces embedded within the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence or based out of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh or Nepal.
Investigating agencies are particularly pursuing what has been dubbed the “Karachi project”, involving Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)-IM groups that worked with American jihadi Headley, who has confessed to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation of having conducted several reconnaissance trips to potential targets in Pune and other cities.

There is evidence of big monetary compensation involved rather than purely fighting for a “cause”, whether “Kashmir or injustice to Muslims or imperialist America”, that requires a separate strategy of building indoctrinated jihadi cadres involved in the numerous suicide attacks in the region, the officials say.

The Pune attacks bear some resemblance to attacks carried out in India over the past five years spanning cities across the country – Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Varanasi, Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur and Guwahati, among others.

The IEDs, usually remote-controlled, are locally assembled or smuggled explosive is used, causing maximum casualties in a small area, usually a crowded place such as a restaurant, movie hall, market, passenger train or place of worship.

Police have procured CCTV footage of the Pune blast and are studying the evidence, which reports say points to at least two terrorists involved.

New Delhi has rubbished claims by two obscure groups – the Lashkar-e-Taiba al-Alami (International) and the IM-Kashmir – claiming responsibility for the Pune blast as having “no value” and intended to “confuse ongoing investigations”.

Much has been said about the absence of any militant attack in India following the brazen Mumbai strikes, until Pune happened. However, officials closely involved in internal security operations in India say that the 15-month “lull” was because terror cells “chose” not to attack. That is, the lull was not the result of any major security overhaul or systemic change.

This is also reflected in the repeated Maoist attacks in West Bengal and Bihar over the past months – there has also been violence in the states of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

“Terror strategies keep on changing,” said an official. “Earlier, the focus of militant groups such as LeT and their backers in Pakistan was to orchestrate a low-intensity proxy war against India, implemented most violently in Kashmir. Now the aim is to create a global impact as the message is sought to be conveyed to America, which is seen as enemy number one.”

Given such an approach, sources tell ATol, there was no “rationale” for the Pune attacks as the effects of the brazen Mumbai attacks, in which many foreigners died, still continue to reverberate across the globe.

“The focus of the Islamists right now is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. India has come into the spotlight of the militants again only because of the recent happenings related to renewing India-Pakistan talks and efforts by New Delhi to have more of a say in Kabul,” an official said.

In this context, the sources say that the message from the Pune blast is clearly to the US, which has been pushing the peace talks so that Pakistani troops from the eastern borders (with India) can be deployed for operations against al-Qaeda and militants in the northwest provinces bordering Afghanistan.

This could also pave the way for a gradual reduction of the American military presence in the violent Pakistan-Afghanistan vortex that involves the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The worrying factor for officials is that strikes such as the one in Pune could be carried out will little preparation time. Pune took place within days of the India-Pakistan talks being announced.

New Delhi’s official statement following the attack reflects this. The top-level Cabinet Committee on Security stated, “The government believes the blast was timed to derail the resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan,” adding that this should not be allowed.

As a result, Foreign Minister S M Krishna said “terror” would be the focus of the India-Pakistan foreign-secretary talks slated for February 25. “The composite dialogue [discussing Kashmir and water among other issues] is suspended. The brief for our secretary is that terror is the center and focus point of the talks.”

Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist. He can be reached at sidsri@yahoo.com.