Brig Arun Bajpai
With the final batch of American troops leaving Afghanistan by end Dec 2014 the Pakistan based terror reaching Indian borders, as was predicted long time back is already happening much earlier than expected. The teenager Pakistani human bomb who blew himself up just after the beating retreat ceremony on the Wagha Border on the Pakistani side of the border on Nov 2, 2014 is a grim reminder of things to come for us and a wakeup call for India to revamp its internal security and counter terror setup at the earliest.
On Nov 2, a teenager Pakistani jehadi owing allegiance to Jundullah a Pakistan based jehadi organisation owing allegiance to Al-Qaeda blew himself up just 500 meters from the place where the regular beating of the retreat ceremony was taking place on the Wagha border between Indian BSF and Pakistani Rangers who man the International Border in respective countries.
In this blast 60 Pakistanis including three rangers were killed and almost 200 Pakistanis, all civilians who had come to see this ceremony have been wounded. Jundullah has said that this was to take revenge on Pakistani Army for their operation Zarb-i-Azb which Pakistani Army has launched against Jehadis in North Waziristan in June this year.
Another claimant for this blast is Tehrik-e-Pakistan -Taliban-Jammat-ul-Ahrar (TPP-JA) which has broken away from the TPP some time back and owes it allegiance to ISIS which has recently established a Caliphate in large areas in Syria and Iraq. Currently there is a keen competition going on for domination between ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Muslim world. Both these jehadi organisations do not see eye to eye. ISIS does not have much presence in South Asia but Al Qaeda is deeply entrenched here.
Pakistan is propagating a hypothesis that this bomber actually wanted to blow himself up right on the Wagha Border so that people on both sides get killed. He did not succeed because the Pakistani security was alert. This theory has been junked by Ehsanullah who says this bomber had only Pakistanis as target. He, however, warned that India and PM Modi will be next target.
From Indian point of view, it does not matter which jehadi organisation implemented this ghastly incident? We have no option but to take this threat seriously. Till now we in India have not faced a human bomb threat of jehadi kind from the Pakistan based jehadis while for Pakistan it is a regular happening and large number of innocent people have got killed there. Human bomb is the most lethal threat in a terror environment. Till date there is no defence against this type of threat. Besides the Indian State police responsible for maintaining law and order in the country is neither trained nor equipped to meet this type of threat. After removal of anti terror law POTA by the UPA under political considerations we do not even have a terror specific strong law in the country. In other words we ostrich like are ill prepared to deal with this Pakistan based jehadi threat. However, things are fast changing and now human bomb threat is right next door. If still we do not wake up then this is going to cost us very heavy, especially in loss of human lives.
It needs to be remembered that unlike organisations like Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Toiba and others who are protégé of Pakistani Army and ISI and are ready to do their bidding against India, TPP has turned rogue against Pakistan itself and wants to rule Pakistan .TPP has threatened reprisal against Pakistani Army long time back.
The sole aim of this blast was to kill as many Pakistani security persons as possible. What Pakistan and its Army should worry now is that TPP is solely composed of Pushtuns who comprise 30 percent of Pakistani population and 52 percent of Afghan population straddling both sides of Durand line, the official border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Till now TPP was creating mayhem in Sind, NWFP and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan but Punjab, their largest and richest province was mostly terror free. This blast brings terror to Punjab province also the bulk of Pakistani Army comes from, in a big way. Besides this threat is from Pushtuns who are not happy with the predominantly Punjabi Army of Pakistan. This is just a starter, now this Pushtun -Punjabi divide will further widen.
This, however, is their problem and they can stew in their own petard. However in India, we can no more sit idle doing nothing. First there is an urgent need now for all political parties to come together and amend the constitution so that all terror cases come under the concurrent list of both Centre and States. The NIA must be strengthened and expanded to automatically take over any terror related case in the country. All police stations in India must be linked in the NAT Grid and Counter Terror Centre must come up in New Delhi. Indian intelligence agency RAW must be re structursssed on the lines of MOSSAD of Israel or CIA of America having powers to take counter terror actions outside Indian shores. The State Governments must implement police reforms as ordered by the Supreme Court in 2006.Our Costal security must be strengthened and we must have a terror specific law likesss POTA with proper checks and balances. Now there are no short cuts available and the time is fast running out.
(The author is Defence and Strategic Analyst)
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