POLITICS: India Demands Action against Pakistani ‘Jihadists’

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 18 2001 (IPS) - India’s interior minister, Lal Krishan Advani formally announced on Tuesday that the Dec 13 armed assault on Parliament was carried out by Pakistan-based ‘jihadist’ groups, but he appeared eager to scale down spiralling belligerence between the neighbours.

The two organisations he named — the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed) — are yet to be classified as “foreign terrorist organisations” by the United States in spite of long-standing demands from India.

Washington’s reluctance to ban these organisations stand despite the fact that one of them, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, claimed responsibility for a similar attack on the provincial legislature building in Srinagar, capital of the Indian state of disputed Kashmir, on Oct. 1, killing 50 people.

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf considers the dispute over Muslim-majority Kashmir as the “unfinished business of the Partition” by which Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims on the sub- continent in 1947.

Musharraf, who has pledged Pakistan’s crucial support to the United States in its current war in Afhanistan, has described members of the two organisations as ‘mujahideen’ or freedom fighters.

However, both organisations figure in the softer “terrorist exclusion list” which automatically prevents its members from being granted visas to enter the United States.

Advani described the attack in which 12 people, including five ‘fedayeen’ (suicide squad members) and six security personnel were killed, as “most audacious in the history of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism against India” and as an attempt to “wipe out the entire political leadership of India”.

The attackers had driven into the premises of Parliament house using a car disguised to look official, complete with a flashing red light on its roof. They failed to set off the high explosives inside the car and were engaged by security personnel in a firefight and eliminated.

Like Musharraf, Advani harkened back to the violent partition of the two countries in 1947 on the basis of what he called the “indefensible two-nation theory”.

Millions of people died in one of the biggest population exchanges the world has known and one which saw Musharraf’s family migrating to what is now Pakistan and Advani’s in the opposite direction.

Advani went on to call Pakistan “a theocratic state with an extremely tenuous tradition of democracy” and one which “was unable to reconcile itself with the reality of a secular, democratic, self-confident, and steadily progressing India”.

But beyond accusing Pakistan’s secret Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of sponsoring terrorism in India with the support of organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Advani’ speech was tame compared to the belligerent tone he and other members of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) adopted earlier.

A day after the Dec 13 attack, Advani vowed to “liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors, whoever they are, wherever they are,” triggering off speculations on possible air strikes on ‘jihadist’ camps across the Line of Control (LoC) or ceasefire line that runs through divided Kashmir.

It seemed to many that once again Washington had stayed India’s hand in the same manner that India was asked to show restraint following the attack in Srinagar.

Hostilites between the two neighbours could easily complicate the war in Afghanistan and U.S. State Secretary Colin Powell was shown on television networks on Monday urging India to work with Pakistan and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify precisely who the attackers were.

Powell’s urgings seemed to echo an offer of a joint inquiry made by Musharraf’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, who said if the result of such an inquiry found any outfit based in Pakistan involved in the attack, his government would act against it.

But India’s Minister of State for Home, I.D. Swami dismissed Qureshi’s offer as one designed to hide Islambad’s complicity. “How can any country accept such an offer? This is not only ridiculous but also highly absurd.”

Swami said India had already established clear links between members of the suicide squad and the ISI. “Pakistan must now take stringent measures to ensure that terrorists do not operate from its soil.”

In discussions that followed Advani’s speech in Parliament, opposition leader and former defence minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, said India was steadily being isolated with no country supporting it.

Yadav said any action against Pakistan ought to be taken only after weighing all the pros and cons. He also demanded that the Opposition parties be consulted on any plan.

India’s former army chief Gen. V.P. Malik has also warned that the country was now edging steadily closer to an all-out war with its neighbour as a result of repeated terrorist attacks against important institutions.

Malik, who was army chief during the brief but bloody war on the Kashmir border at Kargil in 1999, said any attempt to strike across the LoC was for the political and military leadership to weigh carefully because it could escalate an already explosive situation.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have already fought three wars over possession of Kashmir since 1947.