பயங்கரவாத தாக்குதல் நடத்த எளிய நாடு இந்தியாதான்

உதவாக்கரை அரசாங்கமும், அருகாமை நாடுகள் இந்தியாவை எதிர்ப்பதும், உதவாக்கரை உள்நாட்டு விஷயங்களும் இந்தியாவை பயங்கரவாத தாக்குதல்கள் நடத்த எளிய நாடாக ஆக்கியிருக்கின்றன என்று ராய்ட்டர்ஸ் அறிக்கை கூறுகிறது.


நன்றி கலீஜ் டைம்ஸ்

India easy prey for bombers
(Reuters)
28 August 2007


NEW DELHI - A hostile neighbourhood combined with a lack of domestic political will and some sloppy policing have made India a soft target for Muslim militants, experts say, after bombs killed 40 people in the south.


The US government’s National Counterterrorism Center says India was second only to Iraq in terms of terrorist incidents and deaths between January 2004 and March this year, with 3,674 people killed, more than hotspots like Afghanistan and Colombia.

A daily diet of violence in Kashmir and attacks by small bands of Maoist rebels in the countryside seldom make national headlines, but high-profile bomb attacks on India’s cities blamed on Islamist militants now take place more often.

“As a nation we are impotent when it comes to tackling terror,” the Times of India said. “After every attack, our police and politicians make the same old noises but nothing happens.”

The latest attack, in the southern city and emerging IT centre of Hyderabad, was swiftly blamed on Islamist militant groups based in Bangladesh or Pakistan, using Indian Muslims to carry out their work.

It was an explanation rejected by both neighbours, but one diplomats say has a ring of truth.

Chief suspect is Shahid Bilal of the Harkat-ul Jihad Islami (HuJI), a Bangladeshi group originally set up during the Afghan jihad against Soviet occupation, who was also blamed for organising another bombing in Hyderabad in May.

“The clever money is on him,” said one Western diplomat. ”It is a very reasonable working hypothesis.”

Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba works hand-in-glove with HuJI, with a network of militants commuting between the two countries and using Bangladesh’s long, porous border to enter India, security experts say.

“A huge problem the Indians face is that they don’t have a functional relationship with their near neighbours... with the people who can help them,” said the diplomat.

Harder than it looks

Rivals India and Pakistan set up a joint mechanism to share information on terrorism as part of their peace process last year but that body has held just one, unproductive meeting.

India’s police also came in for criticism this week. Each time a bomb goes off, police round up suspects and make a few arrests, but seldom seem to get to the perpetrators.

Analysts say the police are massively understaffed and under-resourced given the scale of the challenge they face, with vast swathes of the rural hinterland virtually unpoliced. The criminal justice system is overwhelmed and outdated.

There is also a lack of coordination between police in rival states and with the centre, no central database of militant suspects and little time for the kind of meticulous, post-attack hunt for clues undertaken elsewhere.

But Ajai Sahni of New Delhi’s Institute for Conflict Management says the critics sometimes overlook how tough a task India faces when the only people who know exactly what is being planned may never set foot in the country.

Foot soldiers in India are given small, specific tasks without necessarily knowing the people they are dealing with, or the grand plot.

“So if you catch any of these people, it doesn’t take you very far,” Sahni said.

India’s Home Minister Shivraj Patil defended his intelligence agencies from accusations they failed to act on information that an attack on Hyderabad was being planned, but in the process virtually admitted their impotence.

“Our country is so big, things are happening in such a manner that even if we have the information that something is likely to happen we do not know when and where it is likely to happen.”

Politics of appeasement?

But critics say a lack of political will or coherent political direction to fight militancy in India hardly helps.

Instead of standing together, Patil and opposition leader Lal Krishna Advani squabbled this week over the government’s 2004 decision to repeal a controversial anti-terrorism law.

The government says the law was misused to harass Muslims under the previous, Hindu nationalist-led government. The opposition says the repeal was an act of appeasement meant to cynically canvas Muslim votes.

“We need to have a consensus approach,” said security expert C. Uday Bhaskar, adding that India, like many democracies, needed to balance human rights and security needs, while also making sure laws were not misused.

Politicians, experts say, do need to acknowledge that India’s 140-million-strong Muslim population is beginning to provide recruits for militant groups, especially after communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 in which around 2,500 people died.

That uncomfortable fact, they say, is sometimes skirted over by politicians keen on attracting Muslim support.

Yet, if the Indian state risks being overwhelmed by the scale of the problem it faces, there are perhaps a couple of reasons for cautious optimism.

Militants’ attacks in recent years have failed in what most presume is their aim -- to destabilise India by fomenting violence between Hindus and Muslims, and to destroy the peace process with Pakistan.

They have also failed, at least since a 2001 attack on India’s parliament, to strike at high security targets.