Crossfire War – Rapid Fire News=Tehran – Islamabad – Dhaka WATCH – South Asia Theatre: Ahmedabad – Commercial Capital of India’s Gujarat State – Hit by Several Explosions – Day After Bangalore – India’s Info Technology Center Hit – Action Plan Campaign of Destabilization
Night Watch: AHMEDABAD – I have always suspected part of Pakistan President-General Pervez Musharraf’s Action Plan included a campaign of destabilization in the form of increasing bomb attacks inside India by Islamic militant networks also supported by Tehran-Dhaka. For the past several years India has been hit by a number of these explosions including the commuter train bombing in Mumbai July 2006. There have also been explosions in Delhi, Varanasi, Malegaon, Hyderabad and Jaipur but never on successive days until now. Yesterday the city at the center of India’s information technology, Bangalore, was hit by eight small bombs designed to cause panic and disruption but today Ahmedabad, commercial center of Gujarat state, on the Arabian Sea and Pakistan border was hit by at least five larger bombs.
IRNA reports the bombs went off within 15-20 minutes of each other at 18:45 IST and it is believed they were strapped to bicycles as the bombs were in Jaipur in May. The explosions occurred in: Maninagar, Iganpur, Narol circle, Bapunagar, Hatkeshwar, Sarnagpur Bridge, Sakrej, Chakla and the Diamond Market area of the old city. [IRNA]
Swissinfo/Reuters are now reporting a total of thirteen bombs went off killing five people and wounding fifty-five. “This was done by some terrorist group which wants to destabilize the country,” was the accusation by the central government junior Home Minister Shriprakash Jaiswal through Sahara news channel. That is precisely the intention of President General Musharraf’s Action Plan which he presented to Iran February 2007. As an obvious sign of Tehran’s official approval, and that the plan was now about to go into full operation, Iran’s most powerful decision making body, the Council of Guardians, visited Islamabad in May. First infiltration attempts increased that month and with direct cover fire by Pakistani troops then Pakistani units have since fired on Indian positions across the Line of Control (LoC) which partitions Jammu-Kashmir between the two countries. [SWISSINFO]
Pakistan/India have fought three wars since their independence since 1947, all won by India without too much difficulty and I think we are seeing the opening moves of the fourth with Tehran-Beijing and Islamic units in Bangladesh all poised to enter. And at least twice in the past five years Saudi Arabia has had ground maneuvers with Pakistan including in its Punjab province and the House of Saud, in the mid-1980’s, purchased 50-60 CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China, each one with the range of 2,500 miles (4,000 km).
India police have stated so far leads are few concerning the explosions yesterday in Bangalore but Islamic groups are suspected including the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) or the Bangladesh based Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami both of which I suspect are directed by Pakistan-Iran. Local State Home Minister, Ahmit Shah did say, “The government had received a threat e-mail and we are probing into it.” Major companies with investments and operations in Bangalore are all increasing their security and Mallikharjuna Karge a political representative of Karnataka state, where Bangalore is located warned, “If such incidents continue investors will fly away from the city.”
Which is exactly what not only Tehran-Islamabad want to see but also one of India’s major economic and regional rivals China. Both countries are seriously competing for the same investments and economic growth and Beijing has signaled its readiness to enter the next war by still claiming India’s northeast state of Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory. China invaded the area for one month in October 1962.
Usually the targets bombed have been mosques, Hindu temples or transportation centers like railway-commuter stations but yesterday it was the information technology center and today it was the commercial center Ahmedabad in Gujarat. Both states are ruled by India’s Hindu nationalist party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the least compromising on the Pakistan-Kashmir issue. The BJP represents the beliefs India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru warned India about just before his death in 1964 on the dangers of Hindu extremist beliefs which motivated the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 as he attempted to end the massive Muslim/Hindu communal rioting. Riots that took place right after independence the previous year and continued throughout the first war 1947-48. The BJP are right now calling for all Muslims to leave Kashmir, which is populated mostly by Muslims and when the BJP headed the India government in 1998 they set off the nuclear bombs which Pakistan immediately responded to in kind nearly setting off the fourth war that year.
Gujarat, which again, borders Pakistan, is one of the Indian states most likely to experience communal riots as they did in 2002 when 2,500 people, mostly Muslims were killed by rampaging Hindu mobs. That fighting may have been prompted by the attack on India’s Parliament in Dec. 2001 by Muslim militants nearly setting off the fourth war that year. That was the incident which has created the military standoff in Kashmir, between Pakistan/India with both sides having nearly 500,000 troops on or near the border. Though the Islamic uprising in Kashmir began in Nov. 1989 the main reason the fourth did not begin was though Tehran was willing they were not yet fully prepared to enter as powerfully as they are now with their ballistic missiles and their stockpile of nuclear warheads. When Pakistan responded in 1998 by setting off nuclear explosions they were visited by Iran Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi who praised what he called the Islamic bomb. Of course Iran has nuclear weapons and has benefited from Islamabad’s nuclear testing.
And though analysts like to mention Iran’s Shahab-3 missile can reach Israel and parts of Europe they have never mentioned it can also reach most of India, since Tehran has disguised its ambitions concerning India behind the oil pipeline negotiations between Iran-Pakistan/India. Tehran jokingly refers to it as a “pipeline of peace” but it is actually a pipeline of deception, pretend to work with India while they prepare to attack, following Pakistan’s lead.
Tehran-Islamabad-Dhaka want to use these bombings to inflame communal tensions as they have done in Jammu-Kashmir and when the war becomes (f)allout it is quite possible Iran-Pakistan will invade Gujarat as well as Kashmir. Ahmedabad is only 200 miles from Pakistan’s border.
