Sound and fury

The Vietcong in their time would have approved of it. So too, but for different reasons, would the ISIS, the Islamic State whose black flags have recently appeared in Srinagar. The Vietcong, for the organisation and concealment of a well-stocked and fully-equipped clandestine bomb and grenade making factory in the residential madrasa for girls in the non-descript village of Khairagarh in Burdwan, West Bengal.

The factory might have been as good as any they had established under the noses of the Americans in the Iron Triangle near Saigon, during the Vietnam War. The ISIS would have reason to be reassured by the stubborn spirit of intense jihad inculcated in two semi-literate housewives of the same village (carrying their infant children) who refused to divulge any information to investigators despite prolonged questioning by the National Investigation Agency, India’s closest equivalent to the American FBI. Why West Bengal?

What has emerged from whatever information has become available is a very definite connection between the Khairagarh bomb factory, and a network of extremist elements within the state, as also in Bangladesh, in this case the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (Bangladesh) or JMJB, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (Bangladesh) or HuJi.

For India, there is little difference between the various Bangladeshi fundamentalist groups, all hostile to India, and all engaged in a campaign of terrorism against the liberal, secular-minded (and hence by their definition unislamic) government of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League. Sheikh Hasina is a friend of India and India’s interests require her continuance in office. One way of doing so is to satisfactorily resolve the case of “The Bombs of Khairagarh” and eliminate the terrorist network surrounding it, particularly elements inside this country.

A natural corollary to the above would be to examine the intended destination and targets for these crude bombs reportedly a batch of 60, along with a very substantial quantity of explosives. Much of the latter were destroyed without adequate investigation, an irresponsible and indeed somewhat childish assertion of the “federal authority” of the state, without consulting any of the two Central agencies responsible, the NIA for investigation of terrorist activity, or the NSG for examination and disposal of explosives associated with terrorism.

The devices apparently came to light during the height of the Durga Puja season, which, this year around, was interspersed with the festival of Bakrid as well, itself a time of community joy  but also a time of communal tension, particularly in certain pockets of the state. There could be a multiple choice of targets, prime amongst them the revelers thronging the streets, and places of worship or packing into super-crowded public transport.

Alternately, were these the finished goods meant for export to as yet unknown destinations, whether eastwards into the Naxalite-infested jungles of peninsular India, or to other similar killing grounds in Jharkhand and Bihar? Or were they to be fed back into Bangladesh, for yet another attempt on the life of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by Hizbul and Jamaat seething at the War Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, set up by the Government of Bangla-desh to try the guilty of 1971?

The Islamic State has never been encountered before in India in its present incarnation, but this country and its security and intelligence agencies are familiar with most of the earlier manifestations of “Jihad International”, whether it’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad or any other such group. All have one common link, as indeed does the ISIS — the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence.

Now Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the senior commander and leader of Al Qaeda, has issued a characteristically bombastic proclamation for the formation of a “Qaedat-al-Jihad” in the Indian subcontinent under the leadership of Asim Umar, a hitherto unknown figure based in Pakistan, aiming to cover India, Bangladesh and possibly Myanmar as well. India has dealt with many similar organisations earlier and continues to do so successfully. “The Bombs of Khairagarh” and its linkages in Bangladesh are merely the latest phase of a very old struggle. This too will be met and defeated successfully.

In Shakespearean terms, Zawahiri’s bombast remains merely “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament