Awesome
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Have you read the rule about no off-topic comments? You're violating this very one right now.
You should address these questions through PMs/email.
Delhi rocks by Blasts
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You should address these questions through PMs/email.
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Ok Shrivastava's post is removed.
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Its the Intelligence, Stupid!
Written by Mirza Faisal · September 14, 2008
With terrorist acts continuing to happen unabated every now and then through various major cities in India there is a need of a new thought that can alter the equations that seem to be currently in favour of the terrorists.
The latest terrorist act in Delhi killing more than 20 people and claimed by Indian Mujahideen just reinforces and reminds that the whole way in which these investigations have been pursued till now are completely ineffective. There will continue to be the same noise, with Congress making defensive out-of-the-pocket statements and the BJP making the same kind of usual attacking statements.
The investigations that have been done after the various blasts have been completely ineffective which has been evident from two aspects. First, it has in no way stopped the subsequent terror acts, which shows that there have been no useful leads but all media saving eyewash. Second, we have seen the extra-judicial treatment of innumerable innocents which is completely counter-productive.
There will be even more noise in the media immediately linking these acts with SIMI (as was done immediately by Times of India even though the claim was made by Indian Mujahideen). The hardliners will again harp on the same old-beaten theme of Islamic (sic) Terrorism. The police under pressure will detain scores of people on some or no basis which could never be verified if it is valid or not. This will continue for a week until the things get back to normal and everything settles down.
Through all this the life will be changed only for those who lost their loved ones or the families of those who are falsely put under extra-judicial detentions. There will continue to be even more apprehensions in the society which is already hitting the basic fabric of judiciary. Most lawyers are backing out of taking cases of accused (which they have every right to do). But when these lawyers boycott and physically assault their colleagues who are taking up these cases then the very basis of the judicial system is being attacked which as a principle assumes every accused innocent until proven otherwise. One can understand if this reaction comes from the common man but if the lawyers indulge in this then it raises a red flag for the Indian judicial system.
Narendra Modi and Sheila Dixit have called for more stringent anti-terrorist laws. It is a useless demand and any such law will end up subjugating innocents more as we have seen under POTA and TADA than stopping the terrorists. Innumerable detentions throughout India after each blast has shown most of those apprehended have nothing to do with the blasts.
The most probability of these terror acts falls on some extremist fringe Muslim groups. But at the same time the line of investigation on some Hindutva outfits need not be dismissed right away. A few recent events, not covered in much detail by the national media, like Kanpur (where two Bajrang Dal activists died while making a bomb), Nanded (bomb making factory discovered in an RSS activist house), Thane (where members of Sanathan Sanstha were caught for planting bombs in theaters), Tenkasi (where activists of Hindu Munnani were caught for planting bombs) need more investigation. Most of these outfits are linked together and there needs to be an explanation as to why this line of investigation is never carried out seriously.
The statement by Bal Thakerey in Saamna where he exorted the Hindus to make better bombs and explode them in mini-Pakistans (a phrase which he chooses for Muslim areas) was criminal. But yet little was the reaction for this awfully blatant provocation for violence by the leader of a major political party. The Bajrang Dal has 12.5 lakh members who indulge in unlawful activities at will, most recently in Orissa. Similarly, in Eastern UP the local MP Yogi Adityanath maintains an armed group which has time and again created nuisance in that area. Why cannot these well organized groups take out operations that subvert the Indian system?
Let us go back to the Muslim extremist groups who may be indulging in these activities. Their language is laced with Islamic words and they try to back it with some ill-founded religious sanction and try to build a theological reasoning. But the theological argument of the Muslim fringe groups has been completely lost on the mainstream. Until recently the Indian Muslim religious leadership could be accused of not speaking out enough against terrorism. But in the recent past Deoband and Jamat-ul-Ulama have categorically spoken out against terrorism and called it un-Islamic and held a conference, a rally and issued a fatwa against it. Even before that at an individual level various religious scholars had been speaking out against it.
On my recent visit to India wherever I would talk among Muslims (and Muslim only gathering) they would be totally un-sympathetic to terrorism. There could be many conspiracy theories that I could hear but that was more as a defense where as a primary premise they accepted that this wanton killing was totally wrong. I could also sense more amity between the communities than during the charged atmosphere that I can relate from the Babri Masjid times. It is also visible from the change in the political atmosphere in UP.
The ways of the terrorists in no way depict the traditional Indian Muslim way of thinking. I remember during the tense moments of Babri Masjid where in the middle of one night there were slogans shouted from both sides in the locality, the elders in my area were shouting from their roof tops to calm down and telling that everything was fine. It just turned out the next morning that slogans of Jai Shree Ram were recorded versions that were being played out as provocations. A meeting was done from both sides the next morning and from the next night this whole thing stopped.
I could see a lot of common sense prevailing at the level of the common man. It is only that it needs to be built upon. And that can only show the way to get out of this cycle.
So what is it that can really make a change? I strongly believe that the only way out is building a strong intelligence system. Any call of new laws, accusing the Muslim community, making detentions and high-profile media coverage is useless propaganda at best. It will not achieve anything as we have seen and these events will continue to happen. A sound intelligence system with mechanisms in place to check any corruption in the system which can kill this intelligence is the need of the hour.
We need some short-term strategy and long-term strategy. The only way to do that would be if we can rise up with maturity as a nation and instead of pointing fingers on the other community we look at the problem jointly. If there is a system to gather actionable intelligence and a sound process to uniformly process that intelligence one can see a lot of improvements.
But the important question would be how to gather actionable intelligence? It is important for that to build trust and contacts within the community that is always suspected. There is a realization among the Muslims that this whole thing is not only wrong but is not going to take us anywhere. But when unnecessary detentions happen with often no judicial process following, no one wants to get into the middle of these issues and wants to run away from them as much as possible.
The Indian intelligence system needs to build contacts with the local Muslim communities, with the imams of mosques and community leaders with honour and respect. They need to bring them on-board and give a sense to the community that we are all in it together. They also need to ensure that the focus is on stopping unlawful activities rather than making the whole community suspect. The buy-in of the community will only happen if the problem is separated from religion and the beliefs are given their due respect.
Similarly there is an equal need of processing any intelligence. If it is stringently process based with strong checks on corruption stopping intelligence in between, it can ensure that irrespective of whether it relates with a Muslim group or a Hindu group the action taken is the same. So if there is a lead on a Bajrang Dal activist and if there is a lead on a SIMI activist the process should act the same way.
The longer-term strategy should be to build better intelligence systems that can track suspects and could separate them from the common man. That would need government expenditure in building these systems as quickly as possible.
But in the end all this could happen only if there is a political maturity among the major political parties where they agree that more than arousing the masses and suspecting a community there is a need of a sound strategy. Knee-jerk reactions like asking for another POTA or TADA and getting political mileage out of it will not solve anything. It will only make things worse. If we continue to do that and if we believe it will take us anywhere then we are living in a fools world. It can only take India on a wrong path of policy-making.
It?s the Intelligence, Stupid! | Indian Muslims Blog
Written by Mirza Faisal · September 14, 2008
With terrorist acts continuing to happen unabated every now and then through various major cities in India there is a need of a new thought that can alter the equations that seem to be currently in favour of the terrorists.
The latest terrorist act in Delhi killing more than 20 people and claimed by Indian Mujahideen just reinforces and reminds that the whole way in which these investigations have been pursued till now are completely ineffective. There will continue to be the same noise, with Congress making defensive out-of-the-pocket statements and the BJP making the same kind of usual attacking statements.
The investigations that have been done after the various blasts have been completely ineffective which has been evident from two aspects. First, it has in no way stopped the subsequent terror acts, which shows that there have been no useful leads but all media saving eyewash. Second, we have seen the extra-judicial treatment of innumerable innocents which is completely counter-productive.
There will be even more noise in the media immediately linking these acts with SIMI (as was done immediately by Times of India even though the claim was made by Indian Mujahideen). The hardliners will again harp on the same old-beaten theme of Islamic (sic) Terrorism. The police under pressure will detain scores of people on some or no basis which could never be verified if it is valid or not. This will continue for a week until the things get back to normal and everything settles down.
Through all this the life will be changed only for those who lost their loved ones or the families of those who are falsely put under extra-judicial detentions. There will continue to be even more apprehensions in the society which is already hitting the basic fabric of judiciary. Most lawyers are backing out of taking cases of accused (which they have every right to do). But when these lawyers boycott and physically assault their colleagues who are taking up these cases then the very basis of the judicial system is being attacked which as a principle assumes every accused innocent until proven otherwise. One can understand if this reaction comes from the common man but if the lawyers indulge in this then it raises a red flag for the Indian judicial system.
Narendra Modi and Sheila Dixit have called for more stringent anti-terrorist laws. It is a useless demand and any such law will end up subjugating innocents more as we have seen under POTA and TADA than stopping the terrorists. Innumerable detentions throughout India after each blast has shown most of those apprehended have nothing to do with the blasts.
The most probability of these terror acts falls on some extremist fringe Muslim groups. But at the same time the line of investigation on some Hindutva outfits need not be dismissed right away. A few recent events, not covered in much detail by the national media, like Kanpur (where two Bajrang Dal activists died while making a bomb), Nanded (bomb making factory discovered in an RSS activist house), Thane (where members of Sanathan Sanstha were caught for planting bombs in theaters), Tenkasi (where activists of Hindu Munnani were caught for planting bombs) need more investigation. Most of these outfits are linked together and there needs to be an explanation as to why this line of investigation is never carried out seriously.
The statement by Bal Thakerey in Saamna where he exorted the Hindus to make better bombs and explode them in mini-Pakistans (a phrase which he chooses for Muslim areas) was criminal. But yet little was the reaction for this awfully blatant provocation for violence by the leader of a major political party. The Bajrang Dal has 12.5 lakh members who indulge in unlawful activities at will, most recently in Orissa. Similarly, in Eastern UP the local MP Yogi Adityanath maintains an armed group which has time and again created nuisance in that area. Why cannot these well organized groups take out operations that subvert the Indian system?
Let us go back to the Muslim extremist groups who may be indulging in these activities. Their language is laced with Islamic words and they try to back it with some ill-founded religious sanction and try to build a theological reasoning. But the theological argument of the Muslim fringe groups has been completely lost on the mainstream. Until recently the Indian Muslim religious leadership could be accused of not speaking out enough against terrorism. But in the recent past Deoband and Jamat-ul-Ulama have categorically spoken out against terrorism and called it un-Islamic and held a conference, a rally and issued a fatwa against it. Even before that at an individual level various religious scholars had been speaking out against it.
On my recent visit to India wherever I would talk among Muslims (and Muslim only gathering) they would be totally un-sympathetic to terrorism. There could be many conspiracy theories that I could hear but that was more as a defense where as a primary premise they accepted that this wanton killing was totally wrong. I could also sense more amity between the communities than during the charged atmosphere that I can relate from the Babri Masjid times. It is also visible from the change in the political atmosphere in UP.
The ways of the terrorists in no way depict the traditional Indian Muslim way of thinking. I remember during the tense moments of Babri Masjid where in the middle of one night there were slogans shouted from both sides in the locality, the elders in my area were shouting from their roof tops to calm down and telling that everything was fine. It just turned out the next morning that slogans of Jai Shree Ram were recorded versions that were being played out as provocations. A meeting was done from both sides the next morning and from the next night this whole thing stopped.
I could see a lot of common sense prevailing at the level of the common man. It is only that it needs to be built upon. And that can only show the way to get out of this cycle.
So what is it that can really make a change? I strongly believe that the only way out is building a strong intelligence system. Any call of new laws, accusing the Muslim community, making detentions and high-profile media coverage is useless propaganda at best. It will not achieve anything as we have seen and these events will continue to happen. A sound intelligence system with mechanisms in place to check any corruption in the system which can kill this intelligence is the need of the hour.
We need some short-term strategy and long-term strategy. The only way to do that would be if we can rise up with maturity as a nation and instead of pointing fingers on the other community we look at the problem jointly. If there is a system to gather actionable intelligence and a sound process to uniformly process that intelligence one can see a lot of improvements.
But the important question would be how to gather actionable intelligence? It is important for that to build trust and contacts within the community that is always suspected. There is a realization among the Muslims that this whole thing is not only wrong but is not going to take us anywhere. But when unnecessary detentions happen with often no judicial process following, no one wants to get into the middle of these issues and wants to run away from them as much as possible.
The Indian intelligence system needs to build contacts with the local Muslim communities, with the imams of mosques and community leaders with honour and respect. They need to bring them on-board and give a sense to the community that we are all in it together. They also need to ensure that the focus is on stopping unlawful activities rather than making the whole community suspect. The buy-in of the community will only happen if the problem is separated from religion and the beliefs are given their due respect.
Similarly there is an equal need of processing any intelligence. If it is stringently process based with strong checks on corruption stopping intelligence in between, it can ensure that irrespective of whether it relates with a Muslim group or a Hindu group the action taken is the same. So if there is a lead on a Bajrang Dal activist and if there is a lead on a SIMI activist the process should act the same way.
The longer-term strategy should be to build better intelligence systems that can track suspects and could separate them from the common man. That would need government expenditure in building these systems as quickly as possible.
But in the end all this could happen only if there is a political maturity among the major political parties where they agree that more than arousing the masses and suspecting a community there is a need of a sound strategy. Knee-jerk reactions like asking for another POTA or TADA and getting political mileage out of it will not solve anything. It will only make things worse. If we continue to do that and if we believe it will take us anywhere then we are living in a fools world. It can only take India on a wrong path of policy-making.
It?s the Intelligence, Stupid! | Indian Muslims Blog
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But the problem is world over.
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damn, why cant these hindu and muslim terrorist groups just kill each other, than kill innocent people!
india is facing a major security crisis. we really have to step up anti-terrorism efforts. and by that i mean there should be more surveillance, more policemen and more anti-terrorism units. terrorist groups like indian mujahideen want nothing more than to kill innocents, hindus and muslims alike, and negotiating with them is impossible. the only thing to do is to step up efforts to find the heads of these groups and kill them.
india is facing a major security crisis. we really have to step up anti-terrorism efforts. and by that i mean there should be more surveillance, more policemen and more anti-terrorism units. terrorist groups like indian mujahideen want nothing more than to kill innocents, hindus and muslims alike, and negotiating with them is impossible. the only thing to do is to step up efforts to find the heads of these groups and kill them.
Five bombs went off within an hour in various parts of New Delhi on Saturday, killing more than 20 and recalling earlier such explosions in Bangalore in Karnataka and Ahmedabad in Gujarat. A local terrorist group calling itself Indian mujahideen has claimed responsibility. This is not the first such bombing in New Delhi: In October 2005, sixty-six people were killed when three blasts ripped through the markets. In February last year two bombs exploded aboard a train heading for Pakistan, killing 66 passengers, most of them Pakistanis.
In the coming days comment will flood the Indian media and will doubtless retrace the past pattern of casting suspicion on the Indian Muslims and reflecting on the ongoing contest with Pakistan in Afghanistan. The latest blasts, although clearly a continuation of what has been happening in Assam, Varanasi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, will be seen in the context of a tit-for-tat game with Pakistan, with Pakistan accusing India of funding the terrorists in Balochistan and the Tribal Areas. But the Indian Mujahideen are not making things easy for Pakistan either. Their email after the blasts contains details that will probably be misinterpreted in the coming days.
The email message contains the address Al Arabi, pointing to a link with the Arabs of Al Qaeda who are today headquartered somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Although the Indian Mujahideen are seen by some as a hardline splinter group of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), or a bunch of SIMI activists who have managed to evade arrest and have become more radicalised, important quarters in India will soon point fingers at Pakistan. The Indian Mujahideen email also contains a reference which some Indian newspapers find mysterious. The email claims that the latest blasts were plotted to salute the memory of two of its inspirational martyrs, Sayyed Ahmed and Shah Ismail. The reference is to Sayyed Ahmad Shaheed of Rai Bareilly and his disciple Shah Ismail, a scion of the family of the great Muslim thinker, Shah Waliullah of Delhi. Sayyed Ahmad Shaheed and Shah Ismail waged a jihad against the Sikh empire in 1830 and were both martyred in Balakot in the Hazara division of the NWFP. These two great martyrs are today the inspiration behind the jihad pursued by the Pashtun warriors of Pakistan against the Americans. In the past, the training camps of the jihadi organisations were located near the tombs of Sayyed Ahmad Shaheed and Shah Ismail.
The grounds for the radicalisation of the Indian Muslims have been provided by violently radical Hindus in the past. The massacre of Muslims in the state of Gujarat by a BJP government was condemned by the entire world; and all true Indians have abominated the chief minister, Narendra Modi, who still rules the state after having communalised it. But bad India-Pakistan relations mainly because of the situation in Afghanistan will deflect attention from local causes and the rising ghettoisation of the Muslim Indians.
An observation made on the timing of the Delhi blasts by an Indian newspaper may also be misinterpreted: Only 10 days before Australia are scheduled to land in India for their four-Test tour, just hours after a Pakistan team arrived in the national capital to play their Nissar Trophy match against Ranji champions Delhi, serial blasts have ripped through the city, throwing things into uncertainty. Is it Pakistan which is trying to throw India into the same turmoil it is suffering at the hands of Al Qaeda? Yet the truth is that a terrorist caught in Ahmedabad had already revealed under interrogation that Delhi would soon be targeted.
Two developments in the region threaten another trough in the current Indo-Pak equation. India has blamed a blast at its embassy in Kabul on Pakistan and Pakistan has blamed a blast at its consulate in Herat on India. Additionally, Pakistan has accused India of fomenting mischief in Balochistan and the Tribal Areas, saying that some of the terrorist attacks in the latter region too were funded by India. Under the circumstances, it is unfortunate that some jihadi organisations in Pakistan held rallies in Karachi and Lahore last week, threatening India with another bout of jihad in Kashmir and denouncing the Bajaur Operation being carried out by the Pakistan army.
It is tragic that India and Pakistan are moving towards conflict even when they know they are being tricked into it by elements within them who dont want peace to prevail. Recent enactments of terrorism on both sides have put the peace process on hold and there is no politician big enough to rise above the smoke of these blasts to complete the job of normalising relations. In fact, as days pass, the two nuclear-armed states may look less and less able to pursue the road they know is right. *
Negligence over the years is paying off big times. For years your government has denied the existence of homegrown militancy and blamed it all on Pakistan and ISI to the benefit of these small militant groups who've grown stronger and spread all over India. India needs to face domestic problems such as ethnic devide and grieve and rethink her domestic policy.
Anti Islam sentiment displayed by hundreds of thousands nationalist hindus over the internet is just a reflection of how things are in India and how insucure muslims feel when associated with terror. India is home to over 150 million muslims, third largest muslim concentration on earth and you're sitting on a time bomb, one mistake and it will explode. Inti Islam propaganda is the fuel to militancy and sympathy for terrorists. You can blame Pakistan, AQ or the whole muslim world for all your problems but infact its your own governement and your people who're responsible for rising militancy.
Sorry if I hurt anyone's feeling but thats the way I feel about it.
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I'm sure Indians will find it hard to believe that Pakistan is still bombing them! I mean there must be at least a significant percent of doubt that Pakistan would risk bombing India, while it faces attacks from the US, bombings of its own, economic crisis, food shortage and so on.Negligence over the years is paying off big times. For years your government has denied the existence of homegrown militancy and blamed it all on Pakistan and ISI to the benefit of these small militant groups who've grown stronger and spread all over India. India needs to face domestic problems such as ethnic devide and grieve and rethink her domestic policy.
Anti Islam sentiment displayed by hundreds of thousands nationalist hindus over the internet is just a reflection of how things are in India and how insucure muslims feel when associated with terror. India is home to over 150 million muslims, third largest muslim concentration on earth and you're sitting on a time bomb, one mistake and it will explode. Inti Islam propaganda is the fuel to militancy and sympathy for terrorists. You can blame Pakistan, AQ or the whole muslim world for all your problems but infact its your own governement and your people who're responsible for rising militancy.
Sorry if I hurt anyone's feeling but thats the way I feel about it.
Indians have often accused Pakistan that when the going is good, Pakistan attacks! So now that the going is bad, it should be assumed that we didn't. While I'm sure any intelligence agency worth its salt would have kept links with the "enemy's enemy", but to say that Pakistan's ISI pulls SIMI's strings is a stretch. Trust me, this SIMI thing is getting way out of hands and Indians have not BEGUN to truly put a dent on their work.
Even their name is an English version of TTP.
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Negligence over the years is paying off big times. For years your government has denied the existence of homegrown militancy and blamed it all on Pakistan and ISI to the benefit of these small militant groups who've grown stronger and spread all over India. India needs to face domestic problems such as ethnic devide and grieve and rethink her domestic policy.
Anti Islam sentiment displayed by hundreds of thousands nationalist hindus over the internet is just a reflection of how things are in India and how insucure muslims feel when associated with terror. India is home to over 150 million muslims, third largest muslim concentration on earth and you're sitting on a time bomb, one mistake and it will explode. Inti Islam propaganda is the fuel to militancy and sympathy for terrorists. You can blame Pakistan, AQ or the whole muslim world for all your problems but infact its your own governement and your people who're responsible for rising militancy.
Sorry if I hurt anyone's feeling but thats the way I feel about it.
I completely agree.
The point here is not that India and Indians should not be vigilant about potential Pakistani involvement, but that they should recognize that terrorism cannot exist without local support and understand the dynamics that lead to sympathy amongst certain sections of the population for extremist ideology.
As a Pakistani, I am deeply suspicious of India's involvement in Baluchistan, and in to some extent FATA, but at the same time I have vociferously argued that any such involvement by India finds fruition because certain sections of the local population are sympathetic to whatever ideology is being exploited. It is Pakistanis who are carrying out suicide bombings, blowing up businesses and attacking the military and innocent civilians in Pakistan, and it is therefore the responsibility of the GoP and ordinary Pakistanis to first and foremost address the threat from within.
Blaming Pakistan is part of India's foreign policy and its worked many times. Off lately I've observed that bombings in India occur whenever Pakistan is already in bad lights...
How often do we hear that terrorist conspiracies were defused at crucial times and people got arrested..??
How much does India gain by playing victom?
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No need to be flippant. Neo raised a legitimate point. Get beyond your prejudices and try and engage in discourse rather than knee jerk Pakistan bashing.
The answer to your question is that the battlefield is already in India. The question now is whether it will get worse before it gets better.
On the issue of the battlefield in Pakistan - the Taliban has lost a tremendous amount of support with the locals. In Bajaur and Swat you have local Lashkars defending villages and towns and patrolling with the SF's.
So far this year is nowhere close in terms of the popular support and capabilities the militants possessed last year. Whether this trend will continue we shall have to see.
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