Impact on India continues....

All of these actors are operational today. Though jihadi leaders like Khalil have been relegated to the back-burner, mainly because of age and other factors, JeM, LeT, the Haqqani Network and al Qaeda are operational in different parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Although these groups have maintained a distinct identity, they share a common ideological objective and have worked together in targeting Indian and western targets in Afghanistan and India in the past decade. Many of them continue to enjoy the patronage of the Pakistan Army as they did in the past.

It is quite possible that with the drawdown, Pakistan may no longer

exercise restraint and allow these groups to plan and launch terrorist operations against India.

The army’s key proxy, LeT, has been getting ready for a revival since the Mumbai attack. It has grown in strength and today boasts of an ever-expanding base in India and elsewhere in the world, besides a marked willingness to enter into alliances with other terrorist and extremist groups in different parts of the continent.

LeT amir, Hafiz Saeed, in an interview to Urdu newspaper, Khabrain, on July 20, 2005, said that his group “would extend support to the organisations active in jihad anywhere in the world.”

Saeed’s statement came 10 days after a suicide attack on the Ayodhya temple on July 5. The subsequent serial blasts in Delhi on October 29, 2005, the Bangalore attack of December 2005 and the March 2006 Varanasi twin blasts betrayed LeT’s hand in the conspiracy and execution, and pointed to the existence of a loose confederation of various groups including LeT, SIMI, Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami-Bangladesh (HuJI-B) and Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

To be continued...