BRUTAL REALITY: Terrorism in Kashmir may soon be intensified

Abdul Raouf Hawash is no prophet of doom, just a man with his finger on the pulse of the terror trade. Nine days after the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC), Hawash, a Sudanese member of the Al Qaida, told interrogators in his high-security cell in the Tihar Jail: "India will be the new destination for the Al Qaida. Watch out." The words of Hawash, arrested in June 2001 for planning to blow up the American Embassy in Delhi, are coming true. Hazrat Ali, commander of Nangarhar province who flushed out the Al Qaida cadres at Tora Bora, also told india today, "After Afghanistan, the Al Qaida fighters are headed for Kashmir."

Officials say that of the more than 2,000 Al Qaida fighters in Pakistan, only 140 have been arrested. Indian intelligence agencies estimate that 125 hardcore Arab Al Qaida operatives are now in India. While the majority are in the Kashmir Valley, some are suspected to have reached Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and Hyderabad (see map), with a few even headed for Kathmandu. Key arrests in India after the WTC attacks have confirmed the worst: the world's first multi-nationalist terrorist force has turned its attention on India.

TELL ALL: Hawash says India is the next target

The arrest of Mohammad Afroz from Mumbai's Cheetah Camp in October revealed that he had taken flying lessons along with Egyptian members of the September 11 suicide squads. Then, the arrest of Qamar Ayoob, chief of the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), from Kashmir two weeks ago led the security agencies to an Al Qaida pointman. The Gulf national had arrived in Delhi four months ago from Pakistan on a task assigned by Osama bin Laden personally. The task was to target US and Israeli nationals in India and assassinate the two countries' ambassadors. The Gulf national, whose arrest is yet to be made public, revealed that he underwent arms training at the Al Qaida's Al Faruq camp, a 3-km drive from Kandahar. While Ayoob had been directed by his Pakistan-based HuM chief to meet him, the HuM was to supply weapons, explosives and money for the Al Qaida strikes in India. The Al Qaida man had even surveyed the hotels and guest houses frequented by American and Israeli tourists, but Ayoob's arrest scuttled the plot.

OMINOUS LINK: Afroz's arrest gave India vital leads on Al Qaida

The US Embassy and the prime minister's home are two prime targets for a kamikaze attack in Delhi.

However, the danger of an Al Qaida offensive in India still looms. Officials from the IB, raw, Indian Army's Military Intelligence and Special Field Force believe the arrangement between the Pakistan-based terrorist organisations and the Al Qaida elements is not random: Pakistani militant groups are supposed to provide ammunition and logistics and the Al Qaida, trained men. Ayoob also revealed that there was no longer any difference between the HuM and Al Qaida. "Both are fired by the same ideology and operate on the same circuit." An intelligence official who quizzed Ayoob says, "The ISI figured as the common link between the Al Qaida and HuM."

So India is now focusing on the potential targets and plans. Intelligence and interrogation reports indicate they include the entire gamut: assassinations of dignitaries, both Indian and foreign, and the September 11-style kamikaze attacks on well-known landmarks using hijacked planes. A few "threat assessment" reports detail plans to "abduct a senior cabinet minister" on Republic Day and refer to biological, radiological and chemical warfare.

On December 10, 2001, a conversation intercepted between a station of the Lashkar-e-Toiba called FIG 55 and a militant in Poonch (on frequency 144.02 MHz) revealed plans of a three-member fidayeen strike squad to assassinate Union Home Minister L.K. Advani at the earliest. HuM had been tasked by the ISI to "accomplish this noble mission". Of the three men, two were Pakistanis from Peshawar and Bahawalpur and the third, an Afghan national. The intercepted message added, "The tanzeem (community) would look after the families of the squad members in case they attained shahadat (martyrdom)."

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres was another potential target during his three-day visit to India last week. A January 2 alert by the intelligence agencies in Delhi sent out to the Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and the state police in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi says, "The Al Qaida network has threatened to target Israeli interests located in these countries, including India. Many Al Qaida terrorists of Middle-East origins have ... reportedly sneaked into India and may pose a serious threat to the security of the Israeli VIPs." A week before the Peres visit, a number of Palestinians were either detained or arrested in Jammu and Uttar Pradesh, suspected to be belonging to the radical Hamas group. Their objective, Indian officials believe, was to eliminate Peres during his tour of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Intelligence inputs available in January this year indicate that the Al Qaida operatives in India plan to attack various Christian and Jewish institutions and congregations. Apart from the Hamas operatives, officials have also identified members of the Al Jehad group of Egypt and the Hizbollah of Lebanon as being in India. As early as September, Hawash had revealed that he had met some of Al Qaida's notorious "sleeping agents". Hawash claimed that two groups of 90 "sleepers" each were waiting to strike at the American and Israeli targets after the Afghan war.

Yet another cause of concern for the Indian security agencies is the possibility of a New York-Washington type of attack in Delhi. Officials from the External Intelligence Wing of the IB and the raw say there are repeated "inputs" on plans to hijack an aircraft from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport and to crash it into a prominent symbol of Indian democracy or power. Intercepts obtained in the last week of December talked of plans to hijack a commercial aircraft and to crash it into one of the two prime targets in Delhi-the prime minister's residence on 7 Race Course Road or the American Embassy at Chanakyapuri. Pakistan International Airlines flights are now banned over India partly because they are believed to be more vulnerable to hijackings by jehadis who could use Pakistani contacts in Kathmandu to wheedle their way past airport security. A verification exercise is also on among all the students enrolled in Indian flying schools.

The Al Qaida is clearly India's new and present danger. Nineteen possessed men changed the course of world history on September 11. The scale of destruction that a hundred of them now in India could unleash is too difficult to comprehend and too terrifying to imagine.

-with Ramesh Vinayak