India has had problems with Islamist militant groups since acquiring independence from the British, but cannot be said to be in a Jihadist pit, says a Strategic Forecasting (STRATFOR) report.
Washington, Aug.2 : India has had problems with Islamist militant groups since acquiring independence from the British, but cannot be said to be in a Jihadist pit, says a Strategic Forecasting (STRATFOR) report.
According to the report, the arrest of three Indian-born doctors in Britain in connection with the failed London and Galsgow bombing plots in June, has led to suggestions that India is breeding trans-national Jihadists, but this case does not mean that India has fallen into the Jihadist pit, at least not yet. Factors that merit this view are that India-based Islamist militants traditionally have confined their attacks to India, mostly in Jammu and Kashmir, and have not ascribed to the wider trans-national Jihadist agenda. This narrow focus, according to STRATFOR, is because many of these groups are sponsored by Pakistan, and used as tools to pressure and destabilize India.
Over the past few years, however, Stratfor has observed a growing nexus between trans-national Jihadists -- al Qaeda and its affiliates -- and militant Islamist groups operating out of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.
Historically, al Qaeda's core leadership has paid only limited attention to India, though bin Laden did call on Kashmiri Muslims to rise up and fight the "grand Zionist-Hindu conspiracy against Islam" in an April 2006 communiqu‚. Because al Qaeda lacks both its own structure in India and a strong support network there, it has chosen to rely on Kashmiri groups such as the splintered remnants of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) (which formally ceased to exist in December 2001) to act on its behalf. Al Qaeda thus far has limited itself to providing support and guidance, leaving tactical issues to local militant operatives, says STRATFOR.
A number of recent attacks have also revealed how Al Qaeda tactics has increasingly influenced Kashmiri groups. They not only have begun to focus on conducting operations in India beyond Jammu and Kashmir, but also have conducted more spectacular attacks, such as the July 2006 railway bombings in Mumbai and the February explosion that killed almost 70 people aboard the Samjhauta Express in Panipat, Haryana.
As we have noted previously, this shift by Kashmiri militant groups toward trans-national Jihadism can be attributed to the gradual breakdown of Pakistani handlers' control over their militant proxies.
According to STRAFOR, this trend should grow stronger as Lashkar-e-Toiba remnants continue to splinter, making them harder to control, and as Pakistan further destabilizes -- undercutting the influence of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
In fact, India's Muslim community has not provided a strong radical current for Jihadists to exploit. It is important to note that the Ahmed brothers were not radicalised in India (or even in Saudi Arabia, where they lived for a time). Rather, they were radicalised while living in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
ANI