Delhi blast: 9/11 musings and the me-too terrorists

Barely a couple of hours after the Delhi blast, before it was possible to piece together any meaningful information about the terrorists involved, BJP leader LK Advani attempted to frame the latest attack in a geopolitical-historical context. Drawing attention to the fact that this was the week leading up to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the US, Advani noted that while it was impossible, based on evidence available then, to meaningfully connect the two events, terror groups themselves were mindful of marking such anniversaries. [caption id=“attachment_78471” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Relatives of a bomb blast victims wail at the RML hospital in New Delhi on Wednesday. A bomb apparently hidden in a briefcase exploded outside the Delhi High Court. Gurinder Osan/AP”]  [/caption] Advani’s point is not without merit. The upcoming anniversary has infact been flagged with a heightened risk alert, particularly after it became known that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US Navy Seal commandoes on 2 May, had been plotting a 9/11 anniversary attack in the US involving trains. Similar intelligence alerts will almost certainly have been put out in other jurisdictions, including in India. Home Minister P Chidambaram said as much when he suggested that the Delhi Police had been sounded an alert in July – but, this being India, it was probably filed away after the due observance of protocol governing ministerial missives. It’s true that terror groups, particularly pathetic rumps like the Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), which has reportedly claimed responsibility for the Delhi blast, are always looking to establish themselves as being Big League bearers of the terrorist torch by injecting themselves with me-too attacks timed for key anniversaries. As if the fact of spilling blood as red as the red-letter day that marked the spectacular strike of 9/11somehow elevates them from the Junior Jihadis league. But in fact, to the extent that one can fathom the perverted thought process of terrorist minds, this is far more likely to have been an attack motivated less by an aspiration for grand scale and more by provincial considerations. Even before it was known that the HuJI had claimed responsibility for the blast, strategic affairs analyst B. Raman noted that there was “no reason to connect with the 10th anniversary of 9/11”. Raman has in recent days pointed to a glaring anomaly in India’s counter-terrorism preparedness. “While investigation, forensic and physical security capabilities in the rest of the world have improved after 9/11, ours seem to be stagnating,” he observed. Pointing to the succession of terror strikes in India since 9/11 – including the November 2008 attack and the July 2011 bombings in Mumbai, Raman reasoned that “our inability to successfully investigate any of the post-26/11 strikes despite the availability of greater international cooperation is a matter of serious concern”. In fact, for the families of the people who were killed or injured in today’s blast, it matters not one whit whether the cause that agitated the terrorists’ minds was tied up with an Al Qaeda-indoctrinated worldview or a petty provincial mindset. The loss of a dear one’s life or the pain of a limb that has been torn away is no less traumatic either way. And for these families, 7 September is just as grievous a day as 9/11 was for the families of the victims of that milestone day - even given the vastly different scale of deaths from the two events. In that sense, for every Indian, every day is potentially a 9/11 (even if only on a smaller scale), seeing that terrorists can seemingly strike at will, and inflict forever weeping wounds on our tortured, terrorised psyche.