Open source intelligence indicates that Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HuJI) is responsible for the recent attack on the Sufi shrine in Ajmer in Rajasthan as well as several other recent bombings:
- Jama Masjid. April 14, 2006. Delhi. Two nearly simultaneous bombs at this prominent mosque resulted in 14 dead.
- Shab-e-Barat. September 8, 2006. Malegaon. Three bombs interrupted a festival. 38 dead, 200 injured.
- The Samjhauta Express. February 19, 2007. Simultaneous suitcase IEDs caused a fire resulting in 68 dead and 50 dead on the single railway link between Lahore and Delhi.
- Mecca Masjid. May 18, 2007. Hyderabad. A bomb in the 400 year old mosque resulted in 14 killed and 50 injured. In the ensuing violent protest an additional five were killed by anti-riot police.
Influenced by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organization, the Tanzim Qaidat Al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn or Al Qaeda in Iraq, HuJI is targeting physical religious infrastructure an effort to collapse the fragile social structures that contain diverse local communities.
“It is an act of terror, no religion including Islam permits it and the perpetrators of the act aim to break the Indian nation in to religious lines,” said Maulana Badruddin Ajmal Al-Qasmi, president Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF).
In short, HuJI is searching for the social systempunkt. Iraq’s al-Askari Mosque bombings and the ensuing sectarian violence exemplify this approach.
HuJI’s attacks have wildly fluctuated in terms of effectiveness due to technical considerations such as unexploded or inadequate ordinance and, so far, the secondary violence stemming from these attacks has been relatively mild.
Should HuJI close the gap between its strategic thinking and tactical abilities, it could explode through the systempunkt and potentially cause significant disorder.
Shlok,
Before words like systempunkt and chaps like Zarqawi entered the lexicon, it was quite clear that this was the ISI’s strategy of countering India. “Death by a thousand cuts” was one phrase they used; but in the lead up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, it was clear that a communal conflagaration was what they were aiming for. The post-Babri riots indicated to the ISI that there were rewards for this strategy.
systempunkt is a theory
[...] religious infrastructure in Jaipur, northwest india, in a continued attempt to find and exploit the social systempunkt . Significant push/pull at the federal and state level has resulted as politicians and state [...]