It has been a mind-boggling scenario for me that most of the terror incidents in India have taken place at crucial times for both India and Pakistan. The most recent incident that occurred just days before the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to arrive in India for strategic talks in mid July in 2011 was one such reminder that from out of the blue such happenings take place despite the fact that with such high profile visits around the corner, the security apparatus in India remains most vigilant, but they fail to stop such incidents with 'regularity', which claim innocent lives.
Interestingly, this chain of events seemingly started in March 2000, when the then US President Bill Clinton was about to reach India for a five-day state visit.
A couple of days before Bill Clinton's visit 36 Sikhs were massacred on March 20, in Chittisinghpura village in the Islamabad district of Jammu and Kashmir for which the blame was immediately laid on the Kashmiri freedom-fighters and Pakistan. Wearing Indian Army fatigues to avoid detection, the killers came into the village in two groups at separate ends where the two Gurdwaras were located. They first lined up the Sikhs celebrating the 'Holi' and 'Hola Mahalla' Festival in front of their Gurdwaras and opened fire killing 36 of them.
It is another matter that the Sikh community worldwide had absolved the Kashmiri Muslims and blamed the Indian establishment for the massacre. Even more importantly, a subsequent inquiry by a retired Indian judge had held Indian intelligence agencies responsible for this gory incident. The Americans too had stated they had no evidence whatsoever to put the blame on Kashmiris or Pakistanis.
Apart from that, the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 was carried out soon after 9/11 when India was trying hard to get Pakistan declared a 'terrorist state' and America had rebuffed its offer of collaboration in the invasion of Afghanistan.
The attack led to the death of a dozen people (5 attackers, 6 policemen and 1 civilian) and to increased tensions between India and Pakistan and the 2001-2002 India-Pakistan standoff.
On 13th December 2001, five gunmen infiltrated the Parliament House in a car with Indian Home Ministry and Parliament labels. While both the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha (the upper and lower houses of Indian Parliament) had been adjourned forty minutes prior to the incident, many Members of Parliament (MPs) and government officials such as Home Minister LK Advani and Minister of State (Defense) Harin Pathak were believed to have still been in the building at the time of the attack. Indian Government initially accused defunct Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jash-e-Muhammad to be involved in this attack. However, defunct Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any involvement in the incident. In December 2002, four alleged JeM members were caught by Indian authorities and put on trial. All four were found guilty of playing various roles in the incident, although the fourth, Afsan Guru/Navjot Sandhu, wife of Shaukat Hussain Guru (one of the accused) was found guilty of a minor charge of concealing knowledge of conspiracy. Mohammad Afzal Guru, also known as Afzal Guru, was the only accused to be awarded the death penalty for the attack. On 20th December, India mobilized and deployed its troops to Kashmir and Punjab in what was India's largest military mobilization since the 1971 Indo-Pak War.
The raid on the temple in Ayodhya on July 5, 2005, on the eve of Dr Manmohan Singh's extremely important trip to the US when, in addition to a number of agreements on defense and nuclear cooperation, he would be canvassing for a seat in the UNSC, is yet another example.
After that, some bombings intriguingly happened in Mumbai in July 2006 when the US Congress had started considering the vitally important civilian nuclear deal with New Delhi and the Indian premier was there to attend the G-8 summit, which was receiving global media attention. The July 11, 2006 Mumbai train bombings were a series of seven bomb blasts that took place over a period of 11 minutes on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai, the capital of Indian state of Maharashtra and India's financial capital. The bombs were set off in pressure cookers on trains plying the Western line of the Suburban Railway network. 209 people were killed and over 700 were injured. According to Mumbai Police, the bombings were carried out by defunct organization Lashkar-e-Toiba and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Following the bomb attacks, Indian Minister of State of External Affairs E. Ahamed announced on 14 July that India would suspend the talks with Pakistan until President Pervez Musharraf abides by his 2004 promise of ending all support to cross-border terrorism. However, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed India's willingness to be flexible with Pakistan following Pervez Musharraf's statements that ending the three-year long peace process would signal a victory for the terrorists. The case was so because Pakistan too had been a victim of terrorist attacks since 9/11 particularly after the US attack on Afghanistan. On 16th September 2006, at the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Cuba, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf made a joint statement announcing that the two countries would resume formal peace negotiations and set up a joint agency to tackle terrorists.
Further more, the US Congress was scheduled to take up the issue of sale of F-16s to Pakistan on July 16, 2006 which got immediately postponed as a reaction to the Mumbai train explosions.
On the other hand, the Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008 once again derailed the peace process between India and Pakistan. The peace process that had been gaining momentum between the two countries at that time came to a grinding halt with very little hope for its resumption.
If one looks at the background, the two sides had put in great deal of efforts, track-two diplomacy and high-level contacts, for slowly but surely moving the things towards resolving the contentious issues between them.
India unilaterally discontinued the talks process. Several summit meetings were held later, which called for resuming the stalled peace process. The summit between President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Yekaterinburg on June 16, 2009 and between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani at Sharm Al Sheikh on July 16, 2009, the foreign secretaries’ meeting in the Indian capital on February 25, 2010 followed by the two prime ministers’ successful meeting at Thimpu on April 30, 2010, foreign secretaries’ preparatory meeting in Islamabad on June 24, 2010 and the ensuing home ministers' meeting on June 26, both in Islamabad bore testimony to the importance of talks for breaking the deadlock and moving forward towards reconciliation and rapprochement.
With all this background, it seems probable that some Indian agency or Hindu militant organizations orchestrated the recent blasts in Mumbai before Mrs Clinton's visit to win her sympathies, who understandably appeared to be moved by the blasts. Soon after arrival she gave statements condemning the incidents. "We cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists anywhere," she said at a joint press conference with Indian Foreign Minister S M Krishna on July 19, 2011, which may be seen as implicating terrorists using Pakistani soil for their designs.
The US used an Indian forum to deliver a stern message to Pakistan, reminding it of its obligation to punish the 26/11 masterminds, but also acknowledged that there were limits to what it could do to goad Islamabad to take action against the perpetrators of the ghastly 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai.
While expressing support for the India-Pakistan dialogue, Clinton made a forceful pitch to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice. "In the aftermath of the attacks of 2008 in Mumbai, we made it very clear that there was an absolute international responsibility to cooperate to bring the perpetrators to justice, we have made that equally forcefully clear to Pakistan that it has a special obligation to do so transparently, fully and urgently," she said.
My contention is supported by the fact that no one claimed responsibility for the recent Mumbai attacks whereas the analysts suspect it was the handiwork of a domestic militant group. Although the Indian government talked about foreign hand and did not start the blame game, as has been its usual habit, the surprising and sad thing was that the Indian media almost with indecent haste jumped on the bandwagon of usual blame game that the attacks were carried out by Pakistan and started spewing venom against the nuclear-armed neighbor. Some Indian investigation officials did express their suspicion at defunct organization Lashkar-e-Toiba for staging the attacks, but mainly they were holding the Indian Mujahideen as the most likely perpetrators.
The thing, which justifies my contention, is the reality that these blasts occurred just before the top US diplomat's visit as has been the case with other such incidents taking place in the first decade of the 21st century. But one thing that has been proved in the entire decade is that India has attained much from these gory incidents in the form of civil nuclear deal, stopping sale of F-16s to Pakistan and many more such benefits at the cost of some innocent souls as compared to what it lost. Who cares how many people India has lost in its drive to gain sympathies from the US. The fact of the matter is that the group of people behind these gory incidents have found the right formula for achieving their vested interests and put their nation on the path of development and also in the good books of the sole 'Super Power' of the world. India on the other hand is also eager to retain influence in Afghanistan with the help of America and is trying to scare the world about extremists in Pakistan.
It is the right time that the US must open its eyes or I should say look at the irony behind timings of acts of terrorism in India, as why they usually took place when some important personality was coming to visit New Delhi or New Delhi was about to set an important deal with the US. This is time to ponder and not to overlook the matter or should I say the US is not interested in looking at this angle of the picture, as it does not suit its interests because with its deteriorating relations with Pakistan, Washington needs another ally in the region to counter China and Iran in the form of India and keep its feet grounded to remain the big boss of the world. But how long this policy will go on, only the time will tell.
