[Reader-list] Ahmedabad blasts: the usual suspects

[Partha Dasgupta]

Hi,

Don't know were you sourced this from, but this large continuous block of
text with punctuation missing is unreadable.

Rgds, Partha
...............................

On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 6:44 PM, TaraPrakash <taraprakash at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ahmedabad blasts: the usual suspects
>  Praveen Swami  Gujarat has been targeted by jihadists half-a-dozen times
> since 2002 in a little-understood war.  One still afternoon in March 2002,
> Feroze Abdul Latif Ghaswala watched 40 victims of the anti-Muslim pogrom
> being buried near his aunt's home in Ahmedabad.Back home in Mumbai, the
> automobile mechanic saw a printout of a Lashkar-e-Taiba pamphlet, which
> purported to show a riot victim begging for his life:"Do you think he should
> have a gun," it asked.  In September 2003, Ghaswala volunteered for training
> in Pakistan with a group led by the 2006 Mumbai serial bombing architect,
> Rahil Abdul Rehman Sheikh.When the Delhi police caught up with him in the
> summer of 2006, Ghaswala, along with computer engineer Ali Mohammad Cheepa,
> had just received a consignmentof military-grade explosives from the Lashkar
> for a major bombing in Ahmedabad Ever since last week's bombings in
> Ahmedabad — one among half-a-dozen major plots targeting Gujarat that the
> Indian police and intelligence services didnot succeed in interdicting — the
> media have not tired of informing us that jihadist terrorism has taken a
> dramatic new turn. Instead of Pakistan-basedterrorists, it is claimed, a new
> generation of Indian jihadists is spearheading the attacks.  On point of
> fact, the claim is nonsensical: not one single Islamist urban terror cell
> since 1993 has not involved a preponderance of Indian nationals. Butthe
> claim does show how little Islamist terror groups, and the politics that
> have driven their growth, are understood in India. Politics isn't welcome at
> the Lal Masjid seminary in Ahmedabad's Kaulpur area. Its students learn the
> six principles of Islam as enunciated by the founderof the Tablighi Jamaat,
> Mohammad Illyas, and are exhorted to give up frivolities like television and
> cinema. Maulana Sufiyan Patangia, who ran the seminary,often travelled to
> Saudi Arabia, seeking support for his students. After the January 26, 2001
> Gujarat earthquake, the cleric put these networks to useto raise funds for
> relief work. It was his first foray into the secular world. The al-Qaeda's
> bombing of New York and Washington D.C. gave Patangia a new cause. In the
> wake of the United States-led war on the Taliban, he declared thatIslam was
> in danger. He set up a study group, Idara-e-Fadlullah-ul-Muslimeen
> (Institution of Charity for Muslims), to educate his earthquake
> volunteers.The IFM members monitored events in Afghanistan on the Internet,
> and listened to tapes of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Mohammad Masood Azhar's
> speeches.  Patangia used to be jokingly called 'Mullah Omar,' after the
> Taliban leader. His second-in-command Suhail Khan adopted an Osama
> bin-Laden-style headgear,acquiring the nickname 'Chhota Osama,' or Little
> Osama. In February 2002, when the communal pogrom in Gujarat began, Patangia
> was in Saudi Arabia on hisannual pilgrimage. He turned to the South Asian
> Islamist there for help to defend his community — and to exact revenge.
> Abdul Bari, a one-time Hyderabadresident who is among the Lashkar's top
> financiers, put up Rs.3,75,000. Two Saudi-based JeM fundraisers of Hyderabad
> origin, Farhatullah Ghauri and AbdulRehman, threw in another Rs.5,00,000.
> Most important, though, Patangia made contact with Rasool Khan 'Party' —
> nicknamed with the Ahmedabad argot for 'contractor' because of his work for
> topGujarat mafioso Abdul Latif Sheikh and his Pakistan-based boss, Dawood
> Ibrahim Kaksar. In May 2002, Khan and his brother Idris met Patangia in
> Mumbai todiscuss just how vengeance might be planned.  Late in May 2002,
> five bombs went off on buses in Ahmedabad, injuring 26 people. It was the
> first act of violence by Gujarat-based jihadists. In December,Khan arranged
> for eight of Patangia's volunteers to travel to Pakistan for training. Along
> with other groups of young people from Hyderabad, Mumbai andBangalore, the
> Ahmedabad jihadists flew to Pakistan through Dhaka, Kathmandu, Dubai and
> Bangkok. Soon, the vengeance they sought was delivered. Gujarat's Home
> Minister, Haren Pandya, who had led some of the most murderous mobs in
> Ahmedabad during thepogrom, was shot just 13 months later, by when he ceased
> to be Home Minister. Central Bureau of Investigation detectives later
> determined that he was killedby a hit-team directed by Patangia. Nine of the
> 12 assassins received life terms last year. Despite the CBI's successes,
> plans for large-scale reprisal attacks in Gujarat continued apace. The LeT
> and the Maharashtra-based Students Islamic Movementof India operatives took
> the lead — helped by a steady flow of funds.  In June 2004, the LeT
> despatched two Pakistani nationals from Jammu and Kashmir to execute a
> fidayeen attack in Gujarat. Jishan Johar of Gujranwala in Pakistanand Amjad
> Ali Rana, who hailed form Sargodha, were killed in a controversial encounter
> in Ahmedabad along with SIMI activist Javed Sheikh and his friend,Ishrat
> Jehan Raza.  The Maharashtra-based SIMI bomb-maker Zulfikar Fayyaz Kagzi
> built a sophisticated suitcase bomb that was planted on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad
> Express train inFebruary 2006. An error in the timer circuit resulted in the
> bomb exploding 12 hours after the scheduled detonation time, by when the
> cleaning staff haddeposited the suitcase in an empty corner of the Ahmedabad
> station. And in May 2006, the Intelligence Bureau prevented a potentially
> catastrophic bombingin Gujarat, penetrating an Aurangabad-based SIMI unit,
> which was in an advanced stage of preparation for serial bomb strikes.
>  Intellectual infrastructure  Has the vengeance the jihadists sought been
> delivered? Not quite. Minutes before the latest bombing, the Indian
> Mujahideen — a Lashkar-SIMI front organisationwhich also took responsibility
> for the earlier bombings in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — sent out a
> manifesto explaining just what it now seeks. According to the manifesto, the
> Indian Mujahideen is "raising the illustrious banner of Jihad against the
> Hindus and all those who fight and resist us,and here we begin our revenge
> with the help and Permission of Allah — a terrifying revenge of our blood,
> our lives and our honour that will Insha-Allahterminate your survival on
> this land." The manifesto calls on Hindus to "realise that the falsehood of
> your 33 crore dirty mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb mute and
> naked idolsof ram, krishna and hanuman [sic; capitalisation as in original
> throughout] are not at all going to save your necks from being slaughtered
> by our hands."It demands that Hindus change their attitudes, lest "another
> Ghauri shakes your foundations, and lest another Ghaznavi massacres you,
> proving your bloodto be the cheapest of all mankind." No great effort is
> needed to locate the intellectual genesis of this body of ideas: it draws
> heavily on long-standing LeT polemic. Indeed, the manifesto'splea that the
> LeT not take responsibility for the attacks is something of a giveaway,
> since the terror group has never owned up to actions targeting civilians.In
> 2003, for example, the LeT argued on its website that violence against
> Muslims in India was an outcome of the core character of Hindus, who "have
> nocompassion in their religion." It was the duty of Muslims to wage a jihad
> against "Hindu oppressors," and it was "the Hindu who is a terrorist."
> Lashkar chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed also said, "the Hindu is a mean enemy and
> the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers
> [who]crushed them by force." He made clear — just as the Indian Mujahideen
> has — that the objective of the jihad was extending Muslim control over what
> it sawas Muslim land. At a November 1999 rally, he promised that he would
> "not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan." All those
> who participatedin this project were promised "huge places in Paradise."
> SIMI, like the Indian Mujahideen, also invoked medieval conquerors in its
> literature. In the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, SIMI called
> forMuslims to avenge the act by following in the steps of the 11th century
> conqueror, Mahmud Ghaznavi. SIMI posters appealed to god to send another
> Ghaznavi,and thus avenge attacks on Muslims and their mosques by attacking
> temples. Local influences  Local religious influences are also evident. In
> its manifesto, the Indian Mujahideen describes itself as "terrorist," an
> apparently odd usage. However,it suggests that the author followed the
> neoconservative television evangelist Zakir Naik — just as several past
> Mumbai-based Lashkar operatives like RahilSheikh and Feroze Deshmukh did.
>  In a controversial speech on al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden, Naik
> proclaimed, "If he is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him. If he is
> terrorisingAmerica the terrorist — the biggest terrorist — I am with him."
> "Every Muslim should be a terrorist," Naik concluded. "The thing is, if he
> is terrorisinga terrorist, he is following Islam." Most Indian Muslims would
> dispute the proposition: it is not for nothing, after all, that the Indian
> Mujahideen manifesto devotes considerable space torailing against clerics
> who oppose its jihadism. But the fact remains that some numbers of young
> Muslims — angered by discrimination, enraged by pogroms— see jihadism as the
> sole option available to them. As the work of scholar Ashutosh Varshney
> points out, the roots of this tragedy lie in the breakdownof inter-communal
> institutions: in a creeping religious apartheid that enveloped Gujarat in
> the second half of the last century, decades before the pogrom. In the weeks
> to come, the police and intelligence investigators will have to find out the
> perpetrators of the bombings. Politicians, however, have a farmore important
> task: to ensure that justice and equity are placed at centre stage of civic
> life in Gujarat, and India as a whole. No other way exists tobring down the
> intellectual infrastructure of hate, on which the jihadist campaign rests.
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-- 
Partha Dasgupta
+919811047132