A Jaipur update from ABC Radio Australia:
Police in India are sifting through the sites of eight bomb attacks that killed at least 80 people in the north-western city of Jaipur. Police have questioned four people in connection with the attacks which left about 200 people injured.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: MJ Gohel terrorism expert and head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.GOHEL: Well it’s early days yet but the modus operandi, the fingerprints of this attack do point very clearly to Al Qaeda or an Al Qaeda-linked group. We’ve seen this happening before where al Qaeda-linked groups have used soft symbolic targets to attack, they want to perpetrate mass casualty atrocities by deploying multiple coordinated bombings, and they want to hit at the economy of a country. Now all of those criteria are met here in this attack in Jaipur.
LAM: But all the same though there are several groups in India which may have grievances as well, including the Kashmiri separatists and also the Maoists?
GOHEL: There are certain groups within India and indeed it’s possible that one or two may have cooperated. But the suspicion at the moment is forming on a group known as Huji, which was a group established by Osama bin Laden in 1992, and also there’s another group but based in Pakistan, called the Lashkar-e-Toiba which has been responsible for attacks in India. And of course as you mentioned there have been attacks in Kashmir, indeed Kashmir was the first victim of this kind of Jihadi terrorism, because it goes back all the way to 1989. And there have been several attacks before in places like Delhi and in Bombay, trains have been attacked and other locations such as the Indian parliament was attacked also in 2001. But what we’re now seeing is much more worrying. These attacks have spread to other major cities in India and there is a pattern to this going back over the last few years.
LAM: You mentioned the Lashkar-e-Toiba and indeed India’s Foreign Minister is due to visit Pakistan later this month. What about the possibility that the attacks were aimed at derailing the peace process between India and Pakistan?
GOHEL: Well yes the peace process between India and Pakistan is still extremely fragile; India’s constant complaint has been that a lot of terrorists are coming over across the border from Pakistan, and indeed we’ve seen a number of attacks across the world. The trail has led back to Pakistan, where al Qaeda and other extremist groups have established their headquarters. An attack like this could derail the peace process and of course there’s also concern that an attack of this nature could set up communal tensions within India, which would be a great tragedy….