February 23, 2008:
India is trying to
deal with growing Islamic radicalism by using diplomacy. That's the case with combating
terrorist tendencies among the nearly 140 million Indians who are Moslems (and
don't live in Kashmir). In the last seven years, members of the Indian Moslem
community have been involved with terror attacks that have killed 602 people,
nearly all of them civilians. Some of these attacks have been aided and
encouraged by Pakistan. But that support was scaled back after 2001, when an Islamic terror attack on
the Indian parliament building resulted in India mobilizing its army and
sending it to the Pakistani border. At that point, India was telling Pakistan that
their support for terrorism inside India could start a conventional war. Given
that both nations have nuclear weapons, and that the U.S. had, since September
11, 2001, gone to war against Islamic terrorists, Pakistan reconsidered, and
cut way back on support for Indian Moslem terrorists.
But Indian Moslems support for Islamic
terrorism was growing anyway. The ideas of "Islam under attack", converting the
planet to Islam, and using terrorism to cope, caught on with enough young
Moslems to be noticeable. These terrorists are a radical fringe of the Indian
Moslem community, and have to watch out for fellow Indian Moslems who would
report their activities to the police. But even a few terror attacks can cause
a lot of casualties. Such violence killed 262 in 2006, and 141 last year. In
those two years, India was getting the upper hand in Kashmir (which is
considered a separate war), where over a decade of Islamic terrorism had turned
the Moslem population against the terrorists. New equipment (night vision gear
and new sensors) had made it more difficult for the terrorists to cross over
from Pakistan. There were fewer new recruits in Kashmir itself.
Pakistan itself is increasingly at war
with Islamic radicals. Six years ago, Islamic conservative parties won 20
percent of the seats in parliament. In the recent elections, they lost 90
percent of those seats. In a word, Indian Islamic terrorists are on their own
in a hostile environment. However, even a fraction of a percent of the Indian
Moslem population backing Islamic terrorists, still translates into thousands
of eager killers, and even more willing to support them. With that in mind, India has increased its
counter-terror operations, seeking to detect active terrorists cells, and round
up the members before attacks can be carried out. Most Indian Moslems have noted the failure of
Islamic radicalism in so many other Moslem countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt,
Algeria, Indonesia), and don't want to get behind a loser.