Every time an act of terror takes place in India, the speculation about the identity of the perpetrators ranges from a near-abroad directive to an Islamist terrorist group that has a global identity to one that is home-grown. Although it is the considered opinion of the author that Islam does not promote terror, the unfortunate aspect is that terrorist action in recent times have got identified with the religion. However, one aspect that must not be disregarded is the unity of purpose in the agenda, especially in the post 9/11 era. It is Al Qaeda core and now the ousted (from Iraq and Syria) Islamic State (ISIS) — perhaps by way of the Islamic State of the Khorasan Province — that is the prime salar-e-allah of all Islamist action across the globe.
Although it might seem unlikely, the fact of the matter is that action in the Middle East, the Arab peninsula, South and South East Asia and in the general Islamic Maghreb is being directed from either the caves in Tora Bora, or safe houses in Djakarta/Chittagong/Dera Ismail Khan. It is of little consequence whether Al Qaeda temporarily wore the garb of Sirajuddin Haqqani, Maulana Saidur Rahman or Abu Bakr Bashir. The interchangeability has ascertained that names mean little where important action is at stake. Therefore, if doubts persist about the gravity of the Salafi movement’s agenda in recent times, especially in South and South-East Asia, action that practitioners of the movement are planning to perpetrate in places in India should not only dispel misgivings but also reinforce the aspect that alludes to interchangeability.
For instance, if one were to hark back to the explosions in Bangladesh’s 63 out of 64 districts on 17 August 2005, which proclaimed a new milestone of terror (albeit more by way of propaganda than damage: there were no deaths in the bombings!), the violence that were being perpetrated in India provides unassailable assertion to the cross-border nature of the movement. Therefore, even as the Islamists in Bangladesh are trying to assert their identity by such acts (quietened temporarily!), the import of the exercise has always been to sabre-rattle their identity across the borders. Indeed, almost all Salafi agenda in the region is now emanating from either Pakistan or Bangladesh, with both countries, notwithstanding Sheikh Hasina’s brave stand in Dhaka, emerging as the dual-epicentre of terror.
However, the analysis wishes to concentrate on two aspects. One that pertains to the North East and the robust launching pad that it is providing for the Islamists from Bangladesh, and that of interchangeability of tanzeems that seem to be bewildering India’s security apparatus.
The crucial aspect that is poised to overwhelm the North East is the Islamist invasion from Bangladesh, with a clear Pakistanisation motivation. The urgency with which this agenda is seeking to enter the region, for instance, together with the unabated migration from Bangladesh, is fraught with serious national security implications. The objective of Nizam-e-Mustafa is the agenda’s technique of exploiting Islam in order to consolidate the annexation that is happening as a result. This is primarily because the allegiance of the migrant continues to be informed by the country of her birth (Bangladesh) — a commitment that the agenda has encouraged by resorting to a multitude of subterfuges, the most important of which is the avowed agenda of a Brihotor Bangladesh. The Islamists and their surrogates, the illegal migrants, are not engaging the security forces (for fear of alerting the anti-terror grid), and political formations in the North East that they are representing have jettisoned national security concerns for political gain.
It must also be noted that the Assamese language is deliberately being censused as the mother tongue in certain Bangladeshi migrant populated areas. It is also being noted that illegal migrants are increasingly beginning to take on working-class Assamese sounding aliases such as “Mamoni,” or “Raju” in order to provide a veneer of Assamysation. Indeed, there is a determined progression in the Salafi movement in Assam — one that is not quite vocal at this point of time.
In the context of the anti-India agenda, an important aside that must be borne in mind is that the situation can no longer refer to separate tanzeems. In the opinion of the author, the agenda, as aforesaid, is now being guided only by Al Qaeda-IS duo. A unique concept of “sleeper cells” working independently of one another has been activated. The uniqueness of the movement is that no conventional command and control exists, and each tanzeem/module/cell follows a set of general political motivation, and not instruction. The coordination system between the groups (despite the fact that they are all subservient to Al Qaeda-IS) is untenable — groups have their own agenda and have their own system of functioning.
Say, a module of Khudam-ul-Ansar wants to bomb a mass transit system in Mumbai, it does not have to take the aid of another tanzeem (or, even the clearance of its own salar-e-allah, Mohammad Azhar), but can act independently, seeking assistance from even non-traditional underground organisations, or in the case of the Mumbai blasts in earlier years, an illegal Bangladeshi population-driven mafiosi in the metropolis. It may have different ways of manifesting itself, whether it is Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir and Pakistan, Jemaah Islamia in Indonesia, HUJI (B) or Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh in erstwhile East Pakistan or Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA) in Assam, the grand strategy is to wage war against the “non-believers” and institute dar-ul-aman throughout the world.
Also, the interchangeability factor has become the prime strategy. A member of one tanzeem can operate under the banner of another tanzeem, and there are no longer strict compartments from which a puritan operates. With the deconstruction of the Islamist paradigm, boundaries have ceased to exist not only between countries but also between tanzeems. Only the methods are different, and individual puritans innovate their own methods of operation. There are no patterns of discovery, apart from a decisively anti-India agenda. Indeed, the author would not be surprised if the violence would be carried out inside India directly by puritans from Bangladesh and Pakistan, albeit with Indian surrogates, who are increasingly becoming subservient to near-abroad and al-Qaeda-ISIS direction.
It would, therefore, be prudent to institute non-orthodox analyses and “moves” when actions of such groups are taken into consideration. The accent should be to avoid patterns and move forward with novelty.
The author is a well-known conflict analyst and author of several bestselling books on security and strategy. Views expressed are personal.
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