The message to the world must be clear: Attempts to revive insurgency and terrorism in Punjab will be crushed
At the time of writing, Bikramjit Singh alias Bikram, one of the two alleged perpetrators of the grenade attack on a Nirankari congregation which left three dead and 20 wounded in Amritsar on November 18, has been arrested. The other, Avtar Singh, remains at large, with security personnel assiduously looking for him. Simultaneously, efforts are reportedly afoot to squelch any attempt to revive the violence that terrorist groups, created, trained, armed and provisioned by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), had unleashed to carve Punjab, and some adjoining territories, out of India and establish thereon a sovereign State called Khalistan (Land of the Pure). Those suspected of association with terrorist outfits are being questioned. Guest houses have been searched to ferret out suspicious new arrivals. Highway patrolling has been intensified, as has been surveillance of key installations and public places.
All this is hardly surprising. The violence, that had raged for more than a decade, had consumed as many as 21,469 lives and plunged Punjab into a nightmare before being comprehensively defeated in 1993 by the Punjab Police under the inspirational leadership of its director-general, KPS Gill. There have, however, been credible reports over several years that the ISI was trying to revive Khalistani terrorism and link it with Pakistan’s unconventional war against India in Jammu & Kashmir. Indeed, shortly after the Amritsar outrage, Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh had stated that it marked an attempt by the ISI to disturb the peace in the State.
His statement gains credence from the fact that the Austria-made Arges Type 84 fragmentation hand grenade, used in the Amritsar attack, is widely used by the Pakistani army. Not just that, such a grenade was reportedly to be used in an ISI-backed terror attack which was foiled with the arrest on November 1, 2018, of one Shabnamdeep Singh alias Mohinder Lahoria. The grenade, reportedly provided by an ISI contact, was found in Lahoria’s possession. The latter, who had been asked to target police posts and public places, confessed to have been receiving instructions from his handlers in Pakistan.
As pointed by Kamal Davar in Tryst with Perfidy: The Deep State of Pakistan, which provides a comprehensive overview of the ISI’s activities in India, the outfit “has been crafting its strategy for fanning secessionism in Punjab since decades and deviously tapping some politically disgruntled elements to forge them into a potent force.” It stepped up its activities in the early 1980s when it began coordinating the Afghan jihad against the Soviet forces with funds and weapons received from the United States and Saudi Arabia. In Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, Yossef Bodansky, then Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in the US, wrote, “The ISI capitalised on the rapidly expanding and lavishly funded training and support system for the Afghan Mujaheedin as cover for expanded sponsorship of and support for other insurgent groups dedicated to subversive activities in India.”
Bodansky further stated, “The main reason the ISI decided to keep the CIA out of the [training] camps was the extent of training and support non-Afghan ‘volunteers’ and others were getting in these camps. Most numerous were the thousands of Islamist trainees from Indian Kashmir and to a lesser extent the Sikhs from the Punjab.” He adds that in “1985 and 1986, as the quantity and quality of the weapons improved, Sikh terrorism and subversion in the Punjab and throughout India showed increased militarisation and radicalisation.”
The ISI did not abandon its sinister efforts even after the Khalistan movement was crushed in 1993. Its attempts, however, drew a blank for a long time as Punjab had enough of murder, forcible marriages, rape and extortion by the terrorists and the collateral consequences of the campaign against terrorism, including the virtual collapse of normal life. Things have been changing in the past several years.
What warrants particular concern is the fact that the latest incidents are part of a continuum of the renewed terrorist violence in — and flow of arms to — Punjab since 2015. The arms seized include Chinese-made AK-47 and modified MP9 rifles, 7.62 mm pistols, .32 bore revolvers and hand grenades. Enormous quantities of ammunition have also been apprehended. There are also indications of an increase in support among people.
The reasons include farmers’ discontent, perceived injustice to Sikhs and uneasiness over the rise of an assertive Hindu right. If all this facilitates the recruitment of militants, propaganda by pro-Khalistan groups flourishing in countries like Canada, the United States, Britain, Germany, Malaysia and Thailand, keeps the movement alive among the Sikhs of diaspora. To cite an example, a body which calls itself Sikhs for Justice organised in Trafalgar Square, London, on August 12, 2018, a rally demanding a global referendum among Sikhs in 2020 on the creation of a sovereign Khalistan.
Funds from such elements, supplementing the massive amounts from the ISI, reach Khalistani terror groups in India, as does their anti-India and pro-Khalistan propaganda. These and those generated by the ISI and indigenous terrorist sources, spread rapidly through social media,
particularly WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger groups, spurring separatism.
The question is: What is to be done? The first and most important effort should be to address the genuine grievances and apprehensions Sikhs harbour. Only a few of those who murdered, maimed and looted during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots have been punished. The rest have to be brought to book. Serious attempts should be made to ameliorate the plight of farmers, which is acute in most parts of India and not merely Punjab. Equally, the spread of majoritarianism, intolerant of minorities and determined to smother India’s rich diversity and fit the entire country into the cultural straitjacket advocated by its protagonists, must be halted and reversed.
Simultaneously attempts to revive terrorism and insurgency have to be defeated on the ground. Efforts to stanch the flow of funds and propaganda from abroad must be stepped up and pro-Khalistan propaganda abroad countered. The most important element here is intelligence without which no terrorist movement can be defeated. Efforts to further improve it must receive a thrust, as must those to enhance the ability of the security forces to act on the information received. Finally, terrorists must be firmly dealt with. The message to the world must be clear: Attempts to revive insurgency and terrorism in Punjab will be crushed.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
