Connecting the Dots – Preface

In the immediate aftermath of the 11th July 2006 (7/11), serial blasts in Mumbai, writing on the Prime Minister’s response, Offstumped had on 13th July  said 

 In his entire address Dr. Singh makes no mention, none whatsoever about what is the nature of the terrorism India is now facing…Dr. Singh is in complete denial about this new brand of terrorism that has started to show its face over the last six months….Dr. Singh neither showed the courage nor the intellectual clarity in his address to the nation, to call out this new form of terror for what it is and. That it is no longer about Kashmir, it is no longer about Maoist revolution but a new brand of Islamic Terrorism with no apparent political objectives but with the clear anarchist aim of destabilizing our democracy and striking at the way of life

Two years later in the aftermath of the 26th November Mumbai Attacks, Offstumped once again reiterated that

Offstumped believes that it is critical for any strategic response to accurately define the enemy ….

define the nature of the War that was thrust upon us …

nature of the enemy that has called this War on the Indian State….

It seems Offstumped is not alone in asking these questions, Mr. Raman seems to have done exactly that with similar questions.

For the last 10 days Offstumped has been reflecting on the events this past month and has painstakingly gone through every publicly available story on acts of Terror in the past few years to connect the dots.

Having connected the dots Offstumped has come to the conclusion that India cannot win its War on Terror without “accurately defining the enemy” and more importantly India cannot win its War on Terror if there is no Dharma in how it goes about “defining” the enemy.

Over the course of this series of posts Offstumped hopes to share the thought process behind this connecting of the dots, the conclusions it leads to and a hypothesis on where India needs to focus its attention if it wants to win its War on Terror.

So where does one begin to connect the dots ?

Should we go back all the way to 1947 as the latest e-mail from the terrorists wants you to or Should we go back to L.K. Advani’s Rathyatra as Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh wants you to ?

Alternately should we go back to the hijacking of IC-814 to Kandahar or should we go back to the many fidayeen attacks during the Vajpayee government from the december 13th attack on Parliament to the attack on Akshardham ?

Should we go back to the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai or to the smaller scale serial blasts in multiple trains in the same year ?

Were the Diwali eve serial blasts in Delhi the beginning of this chain of events or the Varanasi blasts as the Indian Mujahideen email sent after Jaipur claims to be ?

Were all of these events orchestrated by the same controlling entity or were they independent efforts by entities that shared a common pool of resources, sponsors, recruits and objectives ?

To develop a coherent hypothesis that allows for a meaningful connecting of the dots, let us agree on a few things:

#1 – Fidayeen attacks or blasts inside Kashmir, Maoist attacks in the hinterland,  assorted separatist activities in Assam and other North Eastern states while contributing to the general objective of weakening the Indian State by a “thousand cuts” should be considered as a ancillary to this analysis and not the primary focus

#2 – One off, low intensity, low casualty incidents on targets of no strategic significance and with either no claims or doubtful claims of responsibility should also be considered as not the primary focus

#3 – Incidents with a clear objective of maximising Muslim Casualties, while likely having a significance will be treated as a sub-text that may ultimately fit with the overall narrative

If we apply these ground rules we are left with major incidents that have occurred in the hinterland (Major states minus Kashmir, minus Assam and North East). From this list if we eliminate all events before the 1993 blasts and eliminate Kandahar for its limited objective of securing the release of specific individuals, we are left with a chain of high profile fidayeen attacks with claims of responsibility which morphed into a chain of serial blast attacks with no claims of responsibility initially before culminating into the deadly cocktail of mass casualty attacks.

Connecting the dots from this chain of incidents leads us to this 6 post series from Offstumped.

#1 Why Connect the dots – Some open/unanswered questions from Indian Mujahideen  e-mails and a macro overview of a significant shift that occured in late 2005 and early 2006

#2 What if we connect the dots – Some profound conclusions that arise from connecting the dots and their implications

#3 The Connected dots lead us to …. – A partial and still evolving hypothesis on where we must focus our attention going forward

#4 Background to Connecting the Dots - Before 2006 provides the detailed chronology of events before 2006

#5 Background to Connecting the Dots – During 2006 provides the detailed chronology of events during 2006 leading up to 7/11

#6 Background to Connecting the Dots - After 2006 traces the timeline on specific events that indicate we may have blindsided ourselves on the nature of the enemy

Filed under: Connecting the Dots, DesiPundit, War on Mumbai, War on Terror