A rchive Date
[ 18-07-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ India ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2006/07/18/1689582.html
The scourge of Hindu-Muslim violence
By Eric Margolis
Tue, July 18, 2006
The perpetrators of last Tuesday’s train bombing in Mumbai (Bombay) that killed at least 200 and wounded 700 remain unknown as of this writing, though hundreds of suspects have been arrested.
India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has commendably refrained from reflex accusations against old foe Pakistan until all the evidence is sifted. His measured response is in stark contrast to the orgy of jingoism promoted by the Bush White House after the 9/11 attacks.
But there are suspects aplenty in India’s most recent terrorism attacks. Indian officials have suggested Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish Mohammed, two guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in divided Kashmir. India and the U.S. brand Lashkar, Jaish, and a score of other Kashmiri secessionist groups “terrorists.” To most Pakistanis, they are “freedom-fighters.”
Lashkar, Jaish and Pakistan denied any involvement.
India has long claimed Pakistan secretly supports Kashmiri independence groups. This is largely true. However, in 2002, Pakistan supposedly severed ties to Lashkar and Jaish after they attacked civilians in India.
India has repeatedly threatened to attack Pakistan if it does not cease supporting Kashmiri mujahidin. The two nuclear-armed countries have fought three wars since 1947. During fighting in Kashmir’s Kargil region in 1999, Indian and Pakistani nuclear forces went to high alert.
Other suspects: Bombay’s Hindu and Muslim gangsters, known as “goondas.” One notorious gang bombed the city’s rail lines in 1993, supposedly in revenge for the massacre of thousands of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. Since only first-class carriages were attacked, suspicion also falls on the Naxalites, a Maoist group operating in northeastern India.Sri Lanka’s deadly Tamil Tigers are also suspects.
Except for the deadly Tamil Tigers, these usual suspects lacked technical expertise to detonate eight synchronized bombs in rapid sequence made from powerful RDX military explosives. One thing is clear: high airport security has led extremists around the globe to target trains and subways.
There is one group that certainly has expertise: the shadowy network of veteran guerrillas, engineers, computer experts, graduate students, and America-haters — al-Qaida.
Just after the Mumbai bombing, a caller claimed al-Qaida was opening operations in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state. Hardly surprising, given the guerrilla war that has raged there since 1989 in which 60,000-80,000 Kashmiris, mostly Muslim civilians, but also Hindus and Sikhs, have died.
India has 600,000 troops and paramilitary police battling Kashmiri independence fighters in a brutal, dirty war marked by frequent atrocities by both sides.
It was only a matter of time before the real al-Qaida arrived. Or, as in Iraq, a local militant group adopting the name of al-Qaida’s worldwide franchise movement. Ominously, the so-called al-Qaida spokesman in Kashmir called on India’s Muslim minority to rise up against “Hindu oppression.”
Pogroms and massacres
India is the world’s third largest Islamic nation after Indonesia and Pakistan, with roughly 140 million Muslims. But they are only 14% of India’s one billion mostly Hindu population. India’s Muslims have been repeatedly subjected to pogroms and massacres since independence in 1947.
In spite of lengthy efforts by India’s ruling Congress Party to suppress religious extremism, Hindu-Muslim communal violence remains one of India’s greatest scourges. India’s opposition, the far right Hindu nationalist BJP, repeatedly fanned anti-Muslim violence when it was in power, calling for “purification” of Muslim influence and igniting bloody anti-Muslim riots.
One look at the ghastly religious mayhem in Iraq between the Shia majority and Sunni minority gives a horrifying foretoken of what could happen in India if al-Qaida or like-minded groups set about fanning Hindu-Muslim violence.
India is a prime target for al-Qaida, given its hostility to Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh, the festering Kashmir insurrection, India’s recent strategic pact with the U.S., and its deepening covert alliance with Israel, now India’s second largest arms supplier.
So let’s hope that any group other than al-Qaida or its allies was behind the Mumbai bombing. India is used to dealing with disasters and attacks. But confronting al-Qaida will be different.
margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
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