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| The long arm of terror groups | | Is Pak involved in new 'bleed the hinterland' policy? | | POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI: If it's true that a telephone call was made to Afghanistan, resurgent nursery of terror, minutes after the Mumbai rail blasts, it raises the spectre of the radicalisation of Indian Muslims for the first time since 9/11. The long arm of terror groups that flourish under the Al Qaida umbrella has finally succeeded in entangling elements of a community that had remained largely untouched by blandishments from across the border.
Just as the rigged elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly in 1989 was the trigger that turned Kashmiri youth against Delhi, the destruction of Babri Masjid and the cynical anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat -- used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to win elections -- have become the new tools to systematically goad a simmering fringe into unleashing mayhem.
The façade of amity has held, but only just. A façade, painstakingly rebuilt after Hindus and Muslims turned on one another in January 1993 in the aftermath of the serial bomb blasts in the financial capital that killed more than 250 people. This time, the mature microcosm of India, alert that the blasts were intended to provoke Baghdad-style sectarian clashes in Indian cities, stayed true.
What will be interesting to see is if Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, will elaborate on a half-finished conversation during a crucial cabinet meeting in New Delhi, hours after the blasts ripped through the nation's commercial capital. And if that thought will translate into a paradigm shift in India's policy towards neighbouring Pakistan, reflecting a similar see-saw that visited the previous Atal Bihari Vajpayee dispensation.
The half-finished thought? Manmohan Singh's reservations were underlined in public over continuing peace talks with neighbouring Pakistan, given Islamabad's seeming inability to keep up its side of the bargain on not allowing attacks from its soil. It has already led to the cancellation of Foreign Secretary level talks scheduled for the weekend, the first casualty. The second could be far more serious.
Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has thrown up his hands and absolved his government of Indian charges of involvement in the new "bleed the hinterland" policy which has the twin objectives of derailing the peace process and destabilising the Indian economy. But it may prove a double-edged sword. Pakistan has asked for proof of Indian accusations that the terror infrastructure has not been dismantled, merely put on hold, to be unleashed from time to time using back office operatives from Al Qaida.
But this is the nub. Even Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, was in some difficulty trying to explain away his implication that when the Kashmir track gets bogged down because of Indian intransigence, certain elements arrest it with terror attacks. Until Mumbai, repeated provocations have not affected the snail-pace Kashmir process. The bigger danger is if Manmohan Singh has begun to feel that there is little point in engaging Islamabad if there are groups, outside of Islamabad's influence that can wreak havoc at will on India at large, and not just in Kashmir.
Now for the rest of Manmohan Singh's half-finished thought. Delhi has noted the political undercurrents in domestic Pakistan politics brought on by the prospect of parliamentary elections in 2007, and the threat of mass resignations by opposition lawmakers in both assemblies if Musharraf intends to go ahead with seeking re-appointment as president. That would end the semblance of democratic rule. If the disparate elements of the new found united opposition hold together, Delhi is hoping that instead of dealing with the military, a more pragmatic leader will emerge next year with whom they could revisit a Lahore-like agreement, the high point of India's relations with Pakistan.
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