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Indians on high alert in Kashmir during Bush visit
Alerted by a plot to organise a major terror attack in J&K to coincide with and sabotage the visit of US president George Bush, Centre has put all the security forces in the state on high alert, according to top intelligence sources.This follows a tip-off that terror groups, Al-Qaida affiliates Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, might attempt a repeat of the Chattissinghpura massacre of March 2000 on the eve of the visit of the then US president Bill Clinton. Besides their intense loathing of the American president, the terrorist groups conspiring to pull off a headline grabbing incident in the Valley might also be motivated by their determination to embarrass the Indian government and to seek to portray J&K as a danger spot. The possibility of India signing a nuclear energy deal is seen as a another driver. Both Lashkar and Jaish figure on the top of the list of "potential threats" prepared by the US agencies collaborating with their Indian counterparts to secure the visit. Jaish is an offshoot of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which was one of the signatories of the infamous "jehad against the US and Jews" fatwa Al Qaida issued in 1998. However, it is Lashkar which has emerged as the key strike formation of the Al-Qaida in the region. The close link that the jehadi outfit, a derivative of Ahl-e-Hadis sect, has formed with Qaida was borne out by the arrest of one of its senior figures, once the chief of its operations in J&K, in Iraq last year. In March 2000, 35 Sikhs were gunned down at a time when New Delhi had pulled all stops to ward off any trouble in the Valley during Clinton's presence. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-28 |
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