How India Can Fight Pakistani Terror

There are renewed intelligence inputs about the possibility of India being the target of further terrorist attacks. The fencing of India's land borders has had a major and palpable impact on the Pakistani ISI's methodology for exporting terror and destabilising this country. Fencing had helped curtail terrorism in Punjab and the same access denial solution has worked well in J&K. With the extension of the fence to Rajasthan, the degree of difficulty in infiltrating personnel, arms and ammunition into India has increased exponentially.

This clearly has prompted the ISI to revamp its terror offensive strategy against India. This tactical shift was effected in 2007 and its consequences became painfully visible in 2008, through a series of high profile and mass casualty strikes in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Guwahati and Mumbai. The Mumbai mayhem unleashed an unprecedented wave of public anger and indignation at the embarrassing failure of the Indian state to protect the lives of its citizens.

The ISI's strategy is fairly explicit in hindsight. It has two clear strands. The reduced porosity of land borders impelled the ISI to place heavy reliance on the local Tanzeems with localised narratives. These were trained not in PoK or Pakistan but in various jungle locations within India. The emphasis was on greater deniability, which would enable the Pakistani establishment to distance itself from these actions. Salient characteristics of these Indian Mujahideen-initiated strikes were using locally available explosive materials like ammonium nitrate, hydrogen peroxide and slurry etc. The deliberate design was to spread the terror war from J&K to the rest of India.

Local Tanzeems, however, could be easily penetrated and tracked down by the Indian police and intelligence agencies. Most of the IM operatives were swiftly rounded up after the terror strikes. This seems to have compelled the ISI to exploit the sea flank to launch meticulously planned sea-borne assaults using highly motivated and well-trained west Punjabi operatives of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.