After New Delhi and Varanasi, terrorism has struck Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the financial capital of India, with seven explosions at twenty minute intervals, which bring to mind “sophisticated logistics resulting from careful planning by an expert group”. This is the opinion of the Indologist Michel Guglielmo Torri, who is helping us to comprehend the background to a slaughter which has left 200 dead and 724 injured.

 

Joint operation. So far the Indian government is cautious and prefers not to hazard guesses as to who is responsible for the attacks. The police, on the other hand, accuse the Kashmiri militant group based in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Toiba, which however denies all involvement. According to Mr Torri, the picture is much more complex and could be a joint operation by two groups. “The explosives used in Mumbai, notwithstanding a minimum quantity of high-power RXB, were made with chemical agents that are easy to obtain. This leads us to believe that the terrorist acts were carried out by a local group, that could easily merge into the urban context of this city; that is, by the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), active in western India, where Mumbai is located”.

 

The SIMI. But what type of movement is the SIMI, which few have spoken of up to now? “It was founded – explains the professor – by a group of cultured, middle class youths that, after the massacre of Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002 which left 2 thousand dead, decided to adopt terrorist methods to fight against the discrimination of Muslims in India”. Today the SIMI has been outlawed by the government and may have become the fifth column, allowing the militants of Kashmir to operate in the rest of the country. “The Kashmiri separatist rebels – continues Mr Torri – once did not have operating capacity outside their region, disputed by India and Pakistan, but since December 2001 they have widened their range of action with a series of attacks. The claims on Kashmir are united with the desire for revenge on certain sectors of the Muslim community in other regions”.

 

The role of the Pakistani secret services. Islamic militants from Kashmir and members of the SIMI united, hence, to carry out attacks of horrifying dimensions. But the attacks on Mumbai may have involved a third party: “It is possible that wayward factions of the Pakistani secret services – insists Mr Torri – have acted to bring the Musharraf regime into danger and disfavour. These are Islamicised sectors of the army that, not approving the pro-western policies of the president, manipulate, penetrate and logistically assist extremist groups in India to demonstrate that Musharraf is not able to handle the situation”. For a long time now, moreover, the Kashmiri groups have been trained, organised and financed precisely by the Pakistani secret services.

 

Al Qaeda is not involved. Is it for this reason that, when attacks are made in India bearing Kashmiri hallmarks, al-Qaeda is sometimes alleged to be involved? Mr Torri is sceptical: “Only some right-wing analysts, sympathetic to the American neo-cons or to the nationalist Hindus, say that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks in India. But it is a weak affirmation: there is no operational link between the Kashmiri militants and those of Osama Bin Laden. The only element in common dates back some time, when in the middle of the Nineties some groups that had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets scattered around the Islamic world: some went to fight with al-Qaeda and others went to Kashmir. Among the Kashmiri militants, thus, there may be origins and ideological positions of the same type. But nothing more”.

 

Kashmiri claims. Between the attacks on New Delhi, Varanasi and Mumbai, there is indisputably a connecting thread: “In the background – concludes the professor – there are always the Kashmiri working towards the boycott of the reconciliation process between India and Pakistan, in progress for some years. At the beginning of the Nineties there was a lay group, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which wanted Kashmir’s independence from India, but in ’92 it was crushed by the Indian army. Today there are the remaining Islamist groups that all demand one thing: annexation to Pakistan, from where their financing arrives”. But here too things become complicated. The population, often victims of the war in Kashmir between militants and the army, mostly support the independence of  the Himalayan region.