Impact on India continues .....

Though most of the Pakistan-backed groups target Kashmir, at least two of

them, LeT and HuJI, and its many offshoots and allies like Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), have expanded their network of supporters and operators across the country over the

years.

Although the groups operating and targeting India have been divided on regional and sectarian lines in the past, these groups are now increasingly networking with each other to carry out attacks against India.

This jihadi coalition has two primary goals: to target the economic infrastructure and vital installations which includes

pumping of counterfeit currency notes of higher denomination into India and; equally if not more importantly, to widen the communal divide by fuelling mutual distrust between communities, spreading disillusionment in the Muslim community towards the Indian state and triggering violence between the communities.

The involvement of young professionals in acts of terrorism in the recent past is another disturbing trend. Of the several suspects picked up in four terrorist attacks before the July 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts, five were engineers, three doctors, one an MBA, two PhDs and one a doctorate student. Almost all of them were motivated by ‘local’ factors like the Gujarat riots and large-scale detentions of Muslims after every terrorist incident in the recent past.

But, going by their statement to the police and other material evidence, these men were also influenced by the developments taking place elsewhere in the world, particularly in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya. That is what makes the extremist groups target them as potential recruits, to be picked up and trained in centres manned by the neo-Taliban trainers and fused with the radical ideologies championed by LeT, Taliban and al Qaeda.

To be continued......