NEW DELHI, 31 October 2005 — Even fire-crackers ignited by children ahead of the Hindu festival Diwali are now enough to make Delhi residents’ heart skip a beat.
A rude reminder of the powerful blasts that ripped through the city’s marketplaces Saturday, making the busy Indian capital lapse into a grim, melancholy silence seen only in the aftermath of such an attack.
One of the chief aims behind the terrorist attacks — which struck with “maximum impact” in two coordinated blasts in busy shopping areas in the heart of the Indian capital — was to jettison the India— Pakistan peace process.
While such attacks in India in the past invariably put a question mark over the fate of the India-Pakistan peace process, it was not the case this time.
Soon after Delhi’s worst-ever terror attack, the regional neighbors displayed the political will to take a landmark step to improve relations, rendering futile efforts by militants to scuttle the peace process, analysts said.
In an unprecedented move, Pakistani and Indian diplomats successfully concluded negotiations to open points along the de facto border or Line of Control (LOC) to facilitate relief in wake of the devastating earthquake that claimed thousands of lives in the Kashmir region.
Indian media also reported that terrorist organizations who planned the blasts in New Delhi were incensed at the progress in the peace process, particularly as discussions to open the LOC were perceived as a signal toward bilateral ties.
The nuclear-armed neighbors with a history of hostile relations thus consolidated the peace process they embarked on last year.
“Notwithstanding the fact that the terrorists are linked or not linked to Pakistan, as that is yet unclear, India-Pakistan relations have acquired a certain resilience whereby they can sustain and are not changed by Saturday’s attack,” said Commodore Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses.
New Delhi has long accused Pakistan of training and aiding terrorists who carry out attacks in India, particularly in the Kashmir region over which the two neighbors have fought two of three wars since independence.
Kashmir and terrorism are the two main elements in the peace process between the neighbors. India has on several occasions asked Pakistan to rein in terrorists and dismantle the terror infrastructure on its soil. Pakistan calls the militants in Kashmir, freedom fighters, but has banned some groups based on its soil.
The current equation between the neighbors is even more significant, if the role played by militants in upsetting India-Pakistan ties is considered.
Pakistan-based terrorist organizations Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) which are suspected by the Indian police of being behind the Delhi attacks, carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, bringing the neighbors to the brink of a full-scale war.
LeT which is fighting to end Delhi’s control over Kashmir has been blamed for several attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir and other parts of India.
LeT chose sensitive places like places of worship, like the Swami Narayan Temple or just before Diwali, to spark communal strife in India that would disrupt daily life and thus affect the peace dialogue with Pakistan.
In July this year, LeT was believed to be involved in the attack on India’s best-known communal tinderbox, the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid complex in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya. The site is disputed between Hindus and Muslims.
Soon after the attack, Indian Premier Manmohan Singh calling it a “major incident” expressed concern that “these incidents... have the potential to disrupt” the Indo-Pakistan peace process.
But the atmosphere in the India-Pakistan dialogue have clearly changed since then.
“It is a positive augury ... the dialogue process has acquired such resilience,” Bhaskar said. “That is demonstrated by the fact that Islamabad was quick to lend its voice in the international condemnation of the attacks in India. Also, India didn’t jump the gun in pointing its finger toward Pakistan.”
