Pakistan-Backed Indian Mujahideen: Down But Certainly Not Out! – Analysis

http://www.eurasiareview.com/

By Ajai Sahni

The Indian Mujahideen (IM) has been declared by many as one of the most lethal Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist organisations operating in India, and has been the most prominent presence in terrorist attacks outside Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) after 2008. At the same time, there is speculation that the organisation is now teetering on the edge of collapse, with much of its top leadership in jail and the remaining principals in Pakistan.

This latter perception has gained greater currency with the string of arrests between August 2013 and March 2014, and indeed, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde has made the claim that, “The Indian Mujahideen cadre is almost finished with the capture of prominent IM leaders.”

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, at least 219 Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and IM cadres have been arrested since 2008 (data till April 15, 2014) in cases relating to terrorism. The most significant of a recent spate of arrests has included Yasin Bhatkal, IM’s ‘operations chief’ in India, officially arrested on Aug 28, 2013, in Bihar’s Raxaul town on the Indo-Nepal border; Zia-ur-Rahman aka Waqas, a Pakistani and the organisation’s ‘top bomb maker’, officially arrested from Ajmer in Rajasthan on March 22, 2014; and Tehseen Akhtar, Yasin Bhatkal’s successor as ‘operations chief’ in India, officially arrested on March 25, 2014, from Naxalbari in Darjeeling District, West Bengal. It is significant that each of these three arrests involved crucial assistance from security agencies in Bangladesh or Nepal, indicating a high measure of counter-terrorism (CT) cooperation between India and these countries.

Nevertheless, neither assessment – that the IM is the most dangerous Islamist terrorist group in India, or that it is now ‘almost finished’ – is an accurate reflection of the situation on the ground.

The former conclusion is based on a singular misreading of the data. On the surface, of course, an overwhelming proportion of all Islamist terrorist attacks outside J&K over the past few years have been engineered by, or are believed to have involved, the IM. These include several high-profile urban attacks, prominent among which are the repeat attacks in Hyderabad and Delhi, and major explosions in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Varanasi, Mumbai, Pune and Jaipur, among others. In all, however, just 15 attacks have been claimed by or attributed to IM since the Nov 27, 2007, serial bombings in courts in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow, with a total of 312 fatalities (some earlier attacks have also been arguably attributed to the group by a few commentators). Between 2007 and 2014 (till April 27), Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist attacks resulted in a total of 3,114 fatalities, including 2,598 in J&K and 516 across the rest of India.

Significantly, the more recent of IM’s attacks have been far from effective. The twin blasts of Feb 21, 2013, in Hyderabad killed 17. However, the April 17, 2013, bomb blast in Bangalore injured 17, but resulted in no deaths. On July 7, as many as 13 bombs were planted in and around the Bodh Gaya temple complex, of which 10 exploded, but there were no fatalities and just two people were injured. On Oct 27, 2013, 10 explosions (and another two devices that failed to detonate) targeting densely crowded areas in Patna, including Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime minister designate Narendra Modi’s Hunkar Rally resulted in just seven fatalities.

No terrorist threat should be underplayed, but in the current profile of Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorism in India the IM has played, at worst, a limited role. Other groups, particularly the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami have had a much more devastating profile, and retain far greater strike capabilities even today. These groups are, however, being held in abeyance for the time being by their Pakistani handlers due to a range of extraneous factors, including most prominently international pressure on Pakistan post-26/11, the country’s own difficulties with domestic terrorism, the tactical decision to project an ‘Indian’ face to terrorism in India, and the strategic priority the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) currently ascribes to its Afghan campaigns, as against the Indian operations, which have been calibrated downwards.

Nevertheless, IM’s potential is far from negligible or neutralized, and while significantly damaged by the arrest of much of the operational leadership on Indian soil, its capacities for renewal and future terrorism remain substantial. This is particularly the case because of the location of its entire top leadership and a significant fraction of its operational cadres, in Pakistan; and continuous and generous support to the organisation from the ISI, including the facilitation of linkages with a range of other Islamist terrorist formations. Some commentators have drawn solace from disclosures suggesting a split – possibly a three-way division – in the organisation in Pakistan, but this may prove deceptive.

The reported fracture into splinters headed, respectively, by the Bhatkal brothers, Amir Reza Khan and Mohammad Sajid aka Bada Sajid, may in fact lead to greater operational diversification and independence under a loose coordinating arrangement administered by the ISI. Crucially, the Pakistan-based IM factions continue to exercise some influence over elements in the widely dispersed network of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), and have drawn cadres and operatives from it. However, this network is clearly not yielding any overwhelming armies of enthusiastic recruits, and the recent spate of IM arrests have included Pakistani nationals Zia-ur-Rehman aka Waqas, Muhammad Fahim and Muhammad Abdul Walid, indicating that the ISI has been forced to fall back on Pakistani recruits.

Like other Islamist terrorist groups operating in India, IM is a pawn of Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex, and its potential for escalation will remain as long as its leaders and cadres are located in complete safety in Pakistan, and as long as the Pakistani establishment continues to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy.