Jihadis fumed and fretted. They changed their names and reappeared on the streets of Karachi, Muridke and Muzaffarabad. Soon afterwards they targeted Musharraf himself and he, in turn, came down harsh on them. But was his sense of frustration with these outfits shared by his subordinates in intelligence and security forces?

Facts emerging from the region in subsequent months reveal that there was an effort on the part of Pakistani intelligence and the jihadi outfits to export Islamist radicalism to other countries in the region. This had started in 2000-2001. In post-9/11 days, with the onus on Pakistan to contain the extremist elements at home, there was a temptation to persuade these outfits to launch their missionary operations in the neighbourhood.

This is when Bangladesh came in handy for these forces. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) outfit from Bangladesh was too eager to be the midwife in such an Islamist proliferation. Its links with LeT and J-e-M and even Al Qaeda were already established and well known. In August 2005, HuJI suffered the wrath of Bangladesh security for its involvement in a series of bomb blasts in its own country. In subsequent days, however, one has witnessed a rise of terrorist activities in India attributed to HuJI-Bangladesh.

Recent investigations in India reveal that since the beginning of 2001, effort are afoot to plant Bangladeshi motivators on Indian soil. It was easy to infiltrate these Bangladeshi elements across India-Bangladesh border and put them in Islamic institutes. Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was found to be too obliging to host them. In an invisible but effective way a network of Islamist radicalism spread across India from Deoband in Uttar Pradesh to Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

HuJI-India started operating clandestinely in the country since 2004-05. Led by motivated Islamists from India like Shahid Bilal, Abu Hamza and Jalaluddin, HuJI prospered right under the noses of Indian security agencies. These agencies have unearthed the links but failed to prove them conclusively. They have also not been able to identify, prevent and defuse HuJI's plans and programmes.

In October 2005 the terror network struck in Hyderabad and Delhi in close succession. On October 12, 2005, suicide bombers attacked an Indian Special Task Force's office in Hyderabad. The bomb blast in Sarojini Nagar in Delhi came soon afterwards on October 29, on the eve of Diwali celebrations. Other attacks followed – Sankat Mochan attack in Varanasi (March 2006), Mumbai train blasts (July 2006), Mecca mosque explosion in Hyderabad (May 2007), suicide attack in Ajmer (October 2007) and the most recent serial blasts in Jaipur (May 2008).

Shortly after the Hyderabad attack in 2005, security forces unearthed the Bangladeshi links when one of the detainees admitted to acting at the behest of an operative from Bangladesh. Further investigations revealed that the links went all the way to Dhaka and beyond into Pakistan.

The reports of Shahid Bilal's death in Karachi have added credence to the suspicion of Indian security forces that such linkages had firmed up over the years. Bilal was an Indian and the head of HuJI operations in India. Similarly, two HuJI operatives – Mursalin and Muttakin – are today in captivity in the Tihar jail of New Delhi.

Some of the attacks carried out by HuJI have also been timed well, which suggests their cross-border links. For example, the Mumbai and Jaipur serial blasts preceded talks between India and Pakistan. Other attacks, like the ones in Ajmer and Hyderabad, indicate the radical strain championed by the attackers. The mode of worship or prayers advocated in these Indian mosques is anathema to the Wahabi-influenced neo-Islamists of the world today.
India with its vast Muslim population wallowing in illiteracy and poverty is emerging as a favourite hunting ground for these forces. There was a time during the heights of Afghan jihad in the 1980s, and even in the wake of communal riots in India during the mid-eighties, when it was claimed that there was not a single Muslim from India in the ranks of the Afghan mujahideen. This was touted as a remarkable achievement of Indian democracy by most Indians. The success of HuJI activities in recent years has proved that it may not be easy to maintain such claims. There indeed are disaffected constituencies within Indian Muslims who may like to play ball with radical elements in the neighbourhood.

The Bangladeshi authorities have disregarded these charges. However, recent media reports indicate that Bangladeshis are waking up to such a reality. A recent issue of the daily Janakantha reported the arrest of a Bangladeshi national, Abdur Rahman, from New Delhi on May 2, 2008, shortly after the Jaipur blasts. The newspaper reported that Mufti Abdul Hannan who is under arrest in Bangladesh, was one of the founder members of HuJI-Bangladesh and had very close cooperation with Maulana Abu Sayeed alias Abu Zafr (of Lashkar-e-Tayiba) and Maulana Masud Azhar, (of Jaish-e-Muhammad). It also reported that the noted Indian militant Ghulam Yazdani visited Dhaka in 2003 and had connections with HuJI-Bangladesh.

Quoting police sources in New Delhi, the paper reported that it could be true that such radical elements have a free run across the borders in South Asia and may create serious internal security problems in days to come.

These news reports are often dismissed by observers in Pakistan and Bangladesh as notorious fabrications of Indian security agencies to frame Pakistani intelligence. But the links are too well known to be brushed aside.

It is important therefore to ask: Could these links have been there without the blessings of the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh? One school of thought in India believes that Pakistan is subcontracting terror in India to radical outfits in Bangladesh, in continuation of its policy of bleeding India through thousand cuts.

On the other hand, does it suggest that terror outfits like HuJI, LeT and JeM have emerged from the shadows of their mentors in Pakistan intelligence and assumed wide autonomy in their operations in South Asia? Such a scenario is even more troubling for security agencies in the region. It is time they pool their strengths to counter such a menace.

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