Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat - 4: An examination of a terrorist group, a loosely organized indigenous Islamist militant network known as the Indian Mujahideen
By Stephen Tankel
Phase 3
India and Pakistan initiated the Composite Dialogue in 2004 to address the bilateral issues between them, and began back channel negotiations to address territorial disputes as well. The Musharraf regime in Pakistan began making a more consistent effort to curtail militant infiltration into Indian-administered Kashmir. By 2006 even the Indian defense minister acknowledged Pakistan’s contribution to the reduction in violence there.144 However, if Pakistan eliminated its proxy capability this would rob it of what the security establishment perceived to be strategic assets for use against India, which it still viewed as an existential threat. Simultaneously, the need for deniability had grown. The infrastructure in Pakistan that supported LeT-led or -supported attacks against India remained extant.
Domestically, the Indian establishment could not accept or admit that its citizens, acting on their own rather than on behalf of Pakistan, might be responsible for terrorist attacks. Foreign HuJI-B operatives were blamed for the IM’s Varanasi bombing. Confusingly, police also asserted that it was not an attack at all, arresting a tea stall owner whose cooking cylinder was said to have exploded due to leaking gas that caught fire. In reality, the Azamgarh module, as it became known because its ranks drew heavily from those Sadique Sheikh recruited from that area, had placed two pressure cookers containing RDX at the site. Mohammed Atif Ameen allegedly built the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with the help of Arif Badr, a former SIMI member who later developed into a bomb maker for the Indian Mujahideen. Ameen and Shahnawaz Alam planted the IEDs, one of which failed to detonate, receiving logistical support from several other colleagues.
Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat 37The use of RDX, and historic hands-on involvement of foreign militant groups, helps explain the authorities’ initial confusion. However, additional IM attacks followed during the next three years and, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the authorities continued to blame foreign militants. Privately, intelligence officials admit that they wrongly attributed the increased number of attacks almost exclusively to HuJI-B or LeT, explaining that they often chalked this up to compensation for reduced violence in Indian-administered Kashmir. They also admit to having a blind spot regarding the possibility that Indian militants could act semi-independently and that this hampered counterterrorism efforts.
As the Indian Mujahideen became a more potent force, its needs in terms of external support shrank, though they did not disappear. LeT, in some cases HuJI-B, and occasionally JeM, continued separate recruiting efforts and provided non-IM recruits with funding, guidance, and other logistical support for attacks. Thus, India was confronting a hybrid threat: from foreign militant organizations, primarily LeT, using Indian operatives to launch attacks or support operations, and from the Indian Mujahideen network, which executed unilateral attacks with varying degrees of external support. In addition to discrete operations, these networks also sometimes converged to carry out joint attacks, further complicating investigations for the authorities.
Indian Mujahideen: Halcyon DaysIn February 2006, a bomb shook the Ahmedabad railway platform in Gujarat. Fayyiz Kagzi, a LeT operative who had belonged to Rahil Sheikh’s network, allegedly planted the device containing 900 grams of RDX. The attack is notable because it was one of the few executed by LeT and not the IM during this period. Notwithstanding the 2006 Mumbai blasts, which may have been a joint LeT-IM attack, and the 2008 Bangalore blasts, conducted by southern Indians with LeT and some IM support, the Indian Mujahideen is believed to have been responsible for ten bomb attacks between 2005 and 2008:150
• The bombing at the Dasashwadmedha Ghat in Varanasi on February 23, 2005;151
• The bombing of the Shramjeevi Express on July 28, 2005;
• The serial blasts in Delhi during Diwali on October 29, 2005;152
• The serial blasts in Varanasi on March 7, 2006;
• The low-intensity blasts in Gorakhpur on May 22, 2007;
• The twin bombings in Hyderabad on August 25, 2007;
• The coordinated bombings of the Varanasi, Faizabad, and Lucknow courthouses on November 23, 2007;
• The serial blasts in Jaipur on May 13, 2008;
• The serial blasts in Ahmedabad and failed attempt to bomb Surat on July 26, 2008; and
• The serial blasts in Delhi on September 13, 2008.
The Azamgarh module executed nine of these attacks and, if Sadique Sheikh and other captured IM members are to be believed, the 2006 Mumbai blasts. Its members hailed from the Sarai Mir and Sanjarpur villages of Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. Led by Sadique Sheikh and Atif Ameen, these men were responsible for conducting surveillance, selecting the specific targets, planting the explosive devices and, in many instances, building them as well.
With the Azamgarh module active in the north, the Shahbandri brothers increased their recruitment efforts in southern India. This included establishing a module in Pune, Maharashtra, where the two were based for part of 2007. Mohsin Choudhary, who met Iqbal at a religious event in 2004 and became another high-ranking IM leader, is believed to have assisted with these efforts.154 Under the direction of Riyaz Shahbandri, the Pune module executed the 2007 twin bombings in Hyderabad that killed forty-four people and lent assistance for the LeT-led 2008 Bangalore blasts that left two dead.
The IM network remained relatively decentralized and fairly compartmentalized, but portions of it became increasingly cohesive.156 In an e-mail dictated by Riyaz Shahbandri (using the nom de guerre Guru-Al-Hindi) and sent to claim responsibility for the May 2008 Jaipur bombings, the IM leader claimed:
Up to now the Indian Mujahideen were not in an organized form but by the help of Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, we have succeeded in establishing a real force to attack the polytheist. We have divided the Indian Mujahideen into three wings: 1. Shahabuddin Gouri Brigade: - to attack Southern India; 2. Mahmood Ghaznavi Brigade:- to attack Northern India; 3. Shaheed Al-Zarqawi Brigade:- to carry out suicide attack.
Atif Ameen led the Mohammad Ghaznavi Brigade, which was built around the Azamgarh module and also known as the Northern Brigade. After the November 2007, coordinated bombings, the Indian Mujahideen added the media group responsible for claiming its attacks via missives electronic and print media. Following the Mohammad Ghaznavi Brigade’s successful attack on Ahmedabad in July 2008, and the Shahabuddin Brigade’s failure to execute bombings in Surat on the same day, Atif Ameen was put in charge of the Shaheed-Al-Zarqavi brigade as well. He allegedly received weapons and ammunition that month and began preparing members to execute Fidayeen attacks, but these never came to fruition.
All of the explosive devices used up to and including the July 2006 Mumbai blasts contained RDX that investigators now believe Babu Bhai smuggled across the Bangladesh border. While the Azamgarh module used this explosive material in its bombings, Riyaz Shahbandri worked to develop a logistical support base in southern India. These efforts paid off after June 2006 when Babu Bhai was arrested and the explosives supply line from Bangladesh broke down. The lag between the July 2006 bombings in Mumbai and the next Indian Mujahideen attack, which occurred the following May, is notable. In that time, Riyaz Shahbandri successfully sourced ammonium nitrate from Karnataka. Ahmad Siddi Bapa (aka Yasin Bhatkal and Shahrukh), another early recruit who went on to become the IM commander in India, was tasked with transmitting ammonium nitrate used for all of the attacks from 2007 to 2008 as well as some of the IEDs constructed for those operations.
After Siddi Bapa’s arrest in 2013, he told investigators that, to avoid leaving an even bigger trail, the Indian Mujahideen sourced all of its explosive material from one place in Karnataka rather than from different parts of the country. Tapping into locally sourced explosive material enabled the Indian Mujahideen to become increasingly self-reliant. External actors in Pakistan may have provided supplementary financing and limited logistical assistance, but during its heyday from 2007 to 2008, the Indian Mujahideen was for all intents and purposes operating as an indigenous terrorist movement.
In 2007, to distinguish itself from LeT and HuJI-B, which were still being blamed for its terrorist campaign, the Indian Mujahideen began claiming credit via e-mail for its attacks. This was also likely intended to emphasize the IM’s homegrown qualities and highlight the domestic grievances that fueled its rise, which were obscured when foreign militants were blamed for attacks. Finally, IM leaders likely believed that acknowledging any association with external actors would taint their cause domestically. Thus, the IM’s first manifesto, released immediately prior to the November 2007 bombings, stated explicitly, “we are not any foreign mujahidin nor even we have any attachment with neighboring countries agency like ISI, LET, HUJI etc. … we are purely Indian.” The reality was more complicated.
IM members were not foreign and many did not have an attachment with Pakistani or Bangladeshi militant groups or the ISI. But their leaders had benefited from external support and maintained ties to these various foreign entities. As part of their larger effort to ensure the motivation for their attacks was understood, IM leaders used these manifestos to obtain other objectives as well. First, whether or not they were involved in other nefarious actions, many of those arrested for these attacks were Jihadist Violence: The Indian Threat 41innocent of them. The Indian Mujahideen sought to make that clear and demanded their release. Second, in addition to claiming attacks they had executed, IM leaders rejected accusations of involvement in strikes erroneously ascribed to them. Specifically, Hindu extremists upset at the state’s failure to curb Islamist terrorism bombed a Muslim cemetery adjacent to a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra, in 2006 and, separately, the Samjhauta Express and Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in 2007. Although Muslims were killed in each instance, the Indian authorities wrongly attributed the attacks to jihadist attempts at sowing communal tension. The Indian Mujahideen began its first manifesto by stating the attacks it had engineered:
• Indian Mujahidin: Our Big Successful Attacks In India
• Delhi 29/10
• Varanasi March
• 7/11 Mumbai Local Train Blast
• Hyderabad Gokul Chat & Park
• Blast not Executed by Us nor by any Muslim
• Malegaon
• Samjhauta Exp
• Mecca Masjid Hyderabad166
Early manifestos were short, crude in presentation and language. The final two, sent in 2008, were significantly longer and more clearly written and contained several paragraphs of Islamic blessings (in Arabic and English) at the beginning. Mohammad Mansoor Ashgar Peerbhoy told investigators that Iqbal Shahbandri, considered more of an ideologue than his brother, dictated the language in Urdu, another member translated that language into English, and he (Peerbhoy) corrected grammatical errors. A fourth member created an Indian Mujahideen logo and additional graphics. These final missives also included video.
Initially, e-mails to the media were sent from cyber cafes. According to Peerbhoy, a software engineer, who took command of the IM’s 42 Stephen Tankel Media Group after these first claims of credit were made, Riyaz wanted him to design a website so that the Indian Mujahideen could proclaim its mission. Peerbhoy warned that the Internet protocol (IP) address would be easily traced. The plan was discarded and the IM continued to rely on e-mail. However, at Peerbhoy’s recommendation, the IM abandoned the use of cyber cafes in favor of driving around in search of publicly available Wi-Fi systems.
Reconnaissance was done in advance to locate an area where Wi-Fi was available. Timers were used for the bombings, which enabled those sending e-mails—whether from cyber cafes or a car via a Wi-Fi hotspot—to time their media operations accordingly. In addition to indigenizing and developing more sophisticated propaganda, in 2008 the IM reached its operational apogee. Its attacks that year involved larger numbers of militants and, on average, killed more people. Although it continued to become more cohesive, even at this point all the entities acting under the IM label were not in touch with each other.
Yet the Ameen-led Azamgarh module had become a relatively high-functioning militant entity. Thus, destroying it would cause a crippling blow the entire IM network. During an investigation into the September 2008 serial blasts in Delhi, the police collected a mobile phone number connected to Atif Ameen. Officers went to his last known address at Batla House, Delhi. According to one interrogation report, at least thirteen Indian Mujahideen members were based there at the time. Five of them were present when the police arrived. A shootout ensued. Ameen and another militant, Mohammad Sajid, were killed, two others were arrested, and one suspect escaped.
The information gleaned from the Batla House encounter dealt a serious blow to the IM networks, scattering members and assets, and leading to a wave of arrests that included Mohammed Sadique Israr Sheikh. It also forced Riyaz Shahbandri to flee to Pakistan along with his brother Iqbal. This brought the bloodiest chapter in India’s indigenous jihadist movement to a close. It did not, however, spell the end of the Indian Mujahideen or the threat from indigenous jihadism.
Source: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/jihadist-violence-the-indian-threat
URL of Part 3:
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/jihadist-violence-indian-threat-4/d/35228