[Reader-list] The rebirth of the Indian Mujahideen - PRAVEEN SWAMI

[Rajendra Bhat Uppinangadi]

Javed,
to say "trusting"  is different from reading and trying to understand, as
far as Praveen Swami is concerned, it is persons like him who occassionally
, inadvertently, give out information, it is for the readers intellect to
assimilate, understand and analyse, or rather take the grains and throw out
the chaff. At times, we have seen the posts of many other ids, who in their
enthusiasm to defend violence, forget they are particles of the state, to
make the state, but behave as if they are the state within the stste, but
moot point is trying to understand the views, and naxal supporters are when
they justify violence are the enemies of the democratic rule, using the
backseat driver position to bring in their leaders by subverting the rule of
laws, bringing in their rule of politburo.Citizens who use freedom of
expression to usher in dictatorship of politburo are the enemies of
democracy as naxals have only one goal, to upstage the democratic rule with
armed struggle and bring in the 'leaders" to power and rule.
So, it is better to seek the information, as information is knowledge,
knowledge is power if used for the society and the nation,
regards,
rajen.

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Javed <javedmasoo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Pawan
> If you remember, some weeks ago, everyone on this list agreed that
> whatever Praveen Swami says is not to be trusted. So, kindly do not
> forward any of Swami's write-ups here.
>
> Thanks
>
> Javed
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article402892.ece
> >
> > Saturday's bombings in Bangalore are a grim reminder that the jihadist
> > movement is far from spent.
> >
> > Less than an hour before police surrounded the Indian Mujahideen
> > bomb-factory hidden away on the fringes of the Bhadra forests in
> > Chikmagalur, Mohammad Zarar Siddi Bawa had slipped away on a bus bound
> > for Mangalore — the first step in a journey that would take him to the
> > safety of a Lashkar-e-Taiba safehouse in Karachi.
> >
> > Inside the house, officers involved in the October, 2008, raid found
> > evidence of Bawa's work: laboratory equipment used to test and prepare
> > chemicals, precision tools, and five complete improvised explosive
> > devices. Even as investigators across India set about filing paperwork
> > declaring Bawa a fugitive, few believed they would ever be able to lay
> > eyes on him again.
> >
> > But in February, a closed-circuit television camera placed over the
> > cashier's counter at the Germany Bakery in Pune recorded evidence that
> > Bawa had returned to India — just minutes before an improvised
> > explosive device ripped through the popular restaurant killing
> > seventeen people, and injuring at least sixty.
> >
> > Dressed in a loose-fitting blue shirt, a rucksack slung over his back,
> > the fair, slight young man with a wispy beard has been identified by
> > police sources in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka as “Yasin
> > Bhatkal” — the man who made the bombs which ripped apart ten Indian
> > towns and cities between 2005 and 2008. Witnesses at the restaurant
> > also identified Bawa from photographs, noting that he was wearing
> > trousers rolled up above his ankles — a style favoured by some
> > neo-fundamentalists.
> >
> > Bawa is emerging as the key suspect in Saturday's bombings outside the
> > M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore — a grim reminder that the
> > jihadist offensive that began after the 2002 communal violence in
> > India is very far from spent.
> >
> > The obscure jihadist
> >
> > Little is known about just what led Bawa to join the jihadist
> > movement. Educated at Bhatkal's well-respected Anjuman
> > Hami-e-Muslimeen school, 32-year-old Bawa left for Pune as a teenager.
> > He was later introduced to other members of the Indian Mujahideen as
> > an engineer, but police in Pune have found no documentation suggesting
> > he ever studied in the city.
> >
> > Instead, Bawa spent much of his time with a childhood friend living in
> > Pune, Unani medicine practitioner-turned-Islamist proselytiser Iqbal
> > Ismail Shahbandri. Like his brother Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri — now the
> > Indian Mujahideen's top military commander — Ismail Shahbandri had
> > become an ideological mentor to many young Islamists in Pune and
> > Mumbai, many of them highly-educated professionals.
> >
> > The Shahbandari brothers' parents, like many members of the Bhatkal
> > elite, had relocated to Mumbai in search of new economic
> > opportunities. Ismail Shahbandri, their father, set up leather-tanning
> > factory in Mumbai's Kurla area in the mid-1970s. Riyaz Shahbandri went
> > on to obtain a civil engineering degree from Mumbai's Saboo Siddiqui
> > Engineering College and, in 2002, was married to Nasuha Ismail, the
> > daughter of an electronics store owner in Bhatkal's Dubai Market.
> >
> > Shafiq Ahmad, Nasuha's brother, had drawn Riyaz Shahbandri into the
> > Students Islamic Movement of India. He first met his Indian Mujahideen
> > co-founders Abdul Subhan Qureshi and Sadiq Israr Sheikh, in the months
> > before his marriage. Later, Riyaz Shahbandri made contact with
> > ganglord-turned-jihadist Amir Raza Khan. In the wake of the communal
> > violence that ripped Gujarat apart in 2002, the men set about
> > funnelling recruits to Lashkar camps in Pakistan.
> >
> > Early in the summer of 2004, investigators say, the core members of
> > the network that was later to call itself the Indian Mujahideen met at
> > Bhatkal's beachfront to discuss their plans. Iqbal Shahbandri and
> > Bhatkal-based cleric Shabbir Gangoli are alleged to have held
> > ideological classes; the group also took time out to practice shooting
> > with airguns. Bawa had overall charge of arrangements — a task that
> > illustrated his status as the Bhatkal brothers' most trusted
> > lieutenant.
> >
> > Bhatkal, police investigators say, became the centre of the Indian
> > Mujahideen's operations. From their safehouses in Vitthalamakki and
> > Hakkalamane, bombs were despatched to operational cells dispersed
> > across the country, feeding the most sustained jihadist offensive
> > India has ever seen.
> >
> > Communal war
> >
> > Like so many of his peers in the Indian Mujahideen, Bawa emerged from
> > a fraught communal landscape. Bhatkal's Nawayath Muslims, made
> > prosperous by hundreds of years of trade across the Indian Ocean,
> > emerged as the region's dominant land-owning community. Early in the
> > twentieth century, inspired by call of Aligarh reformer Syed Ahmed
> > Khan, Bhatkal notables led a campaign to bring modern education for
> > the community. The Anjuman Hami-e-Muslimeen school where Bawa studied
> > was one product of their efforts, which eventually spawned
> > highly-regarded institutions that now cater to over several thousand
> > students.
> >
> > Organisations like the Anjuman helped the Navayath Muslims capitalise
> > on the new opportunities for work and business with opened up in the
> > United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia during the 1970s. But this
> > wealth, in turn, engendered resentments which laid the ground for an
> > communal conflict. In the years after the Emergency, the Jana Sangh
> > and its affiliates began to capitalise on resentments Bhatkal's Hindus
> > felt about the prosperity and political power of the Navayaths. The
> > campaign paid off in 1983, when the Hindu right-wing succeeded in
> > dethroning legislator S.M. Yahya, who had served as a state minister
> > between 1972 and 1982.
> >
> > Both communities entered into a competitive communal confrontation,
> > which involved the ostentatious display of piety and power. The
> > Tablighi Jamaat, a neo-fundamentalist organisation which calls on
> > followers to live life in a style claimed to be modelled on that of
> > the Prophet Mohammad, drew a growing mass of followers. Hindutva
> > groups like the Karavalli Hindu Samiti, too, staged ever-larger
> > religious displays to demonstrate their clout.
> >
> > Early in 1993, Bhatkal was hit by communal riots which claimed
> > seventeen lives and left dozens injured. The violence, which began
> > after Hindutva groups claimed stones had been thrown at a Ram Navami
> > procession, and lasted nine months. Later, in April 1996, two Muslims
> > were murdered in retaliation for the assassination of Bharatiya Janata
> > Party legislator U. Chittaranjan — a crime that investigators now say
> > may have been linked to the Bhatkal brothers. More violence broke out
> > in 2004, after the assassination of BJP leader Thimmappa Naik.
> >
> > Iqbal Shahbandri and his recruits were, in key senses, rebels against
> > a traditional political order that appeared to have failed to defend
> > Muslim rights and interests. Inside the Indian Mujahideen safehouses
> > raided in October, 2008, police found no evidence that traditional
> > theological literature or the writings of the Tablighi Jamaat had
> > influenced the group. Instead, they found pro-Taliban videos and
> > speeches by Zakir Naik — a popular but controversial Mumbai-based
> > televangelist who has, among other things, defends Al-Qaeda chief
> > Osama bin-Laden.
> >
> > “If he is fighting the enemies of Islam”, Naik said in one speech, “I
> > am for him. If he is terrorising America the terrorist—the biggest
> > terrorist — I am with him.” “Every Muslim” Naik concluded, “should be
> > a terrorist. The thing is, if he is terrorising a terrorist, he is
> > following Islam”. Naik has never been found to be involved in
> > violence, but his words have fired the imagination of a diverse
> > jihadists — among them, Glasgow suicide-bomber Kafeel Ahmed, 2006
> > Mumbai train-bombing accused Feroze Deshmukh, and New York taxi driver
> > Najibullah Zazi, who faces trial for planning to attack the city's
> > Grand Central Railway Station.
> >
> > Language like this spoke to concerns of the young people who were
> > drawn to separate jihadist cells that began to spring up across India
> > after the 2002 violence, mirroring the growth of the Indian
> > Mujahideen. SIMI leader Safdar Nagori set up a group that included the
> > Bangalore information-technology professionals Peedical Abdul Shibli
> > and Yahya Kamakutty; in Kerala Tadiyantavide Nasir, Abdul Sattar, and
> > Abdul Jabbar set up a separate organisation that is alleged to have
> > bombed Bangalore in 2008
> >
> > Storms of hate
> >
> > Well-entrenched in the political system, Bhatkal's Muslim leadership
> > has been hostile to radical Islamism. Efforts by Islamist political
> > groups to establish a presence there have, for the most part, been
> > unsuccessful. But authorities acknowledge Bhatkal, like much of the
> > Dakshina Kannada region, remains communally fraught. Small-scale
> > confrontations are routine. Earlier this month, the Karavalli Hindu
> > Samiti even staged demonstrations in support of the Sanatana Sanstha,
> > the Hindutva group police in Goa say was responsible for terrorist
> > bombings carried out last year.
> >
> > Pakistan's intelligence services and transnational jihadist groups
> > like the Lashkar nurtured and fed India's jihadist movement — but its
> > birth was the outcome of an ugly communal contestation that remains
> > unresolved. Even as India's police and intelligence services work to
> > dismantle the jihadist project, politicians need to find means to
> > still the storms of hate which sustain it.
> > _________________________________________
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-- 
Rajen.