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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (10928)	11/1/2006 9:29:53 PM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 217928

maybe

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (10928)	11/1/2006 10:45:45 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217928

Hello Maurice, regarding <<if things are in fact dire and rescue is not at hand>> ... for at least 1.2 billion folks edged that way overnight per stratfor, meaning the local officialdom will have to print more money, pushing folks to save more gold, which pays no dividends, and just sits there. India: Militants Borrowing from Al Qaeda's Playbook? Summary Indian security forces in Karnataka reported Oct. 31 that a suspected member of the Al Badr militant organization had approached a flying school in Bangalore to learn to pilot a jetliner, at the behest of Al Badr leadership in Pakistan. Coupled with earlier reports that a member of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India was responsible for the Sept. 8 attacks on Muslim worshippers in Malegaon, Maharashtra, the Oct. 31 announcement indicates that militant Kashmiri Islamists are beginning to adopt radical new tactics in their fight against India. Analysis Indian police revealed Oct. 31 that Mohammed Fahad, one of two suspected Al Badr militants arrested Oct. 28 in Mysore, had intended to learn to fly jetliners at a Bangalore flight school. This follows India's formal charging of Noor-ul-Huda (possibly a nom de guerre) -- a member of the banned militant Islamist group Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) -- with perpetrating a bombing attack against Muslim worshippers in Malegaon, Maharashtra on Sept. 8. If the details released by the Indian security forces are true, they indicate that Kashmiri militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Al Badr are beginning to weave radical new plots against India, which could spell trouble for both New Delhi and Islamabad. According to Indian police, Fahad had attempted to learn how to fly a jetliner on the orders of Al Badr's leadership in Pakistan. Though Kashmiri militants have hijacked Indian airliners in the past, and there have been recent threats of further hijackings, piloting skills are not required for these operations. Rather, the idea harkens back to the 9/11 al Qaeda tactic of creating a weapon of mass destruction by hijacking a plane and then aiming it at the heart of a major city. Such an attack would likely cause many more casualties than LeT's July 11 attack on the Mumbai train system, or any other Kashmiri attack for that matter. LeT and its Al Badr brethren are clearly looking for increasingly spectacular operations The details of the Huda arrest also indicate very different tactics for the Kashmiri militants and their SIMI collaborators in India. Huda originally was arrested for planting a hoax bomb in Malegaon on Sept. 13, and was believed at the time to be merely taking advantage of a Hindu extremist attack against Muslims on Sept. 8 in order to incite communal tensions. However, after being interrogated, Huda apparently admitted to the Sept. 8 bombings as well. Islamist militant attacks on Muslims in India are anomalous. LeT, SIMI and other groups typically target neutral or symbolically Hindu targets, such as the Indian Parliament in 2001 or Diwali festivals in 2005. The idea was that such attacks would cause Hindus to retaliate against Muslims across India, which would result in an upsurge of new recruits and support for militant movements challenging Indian sovereignty in Kashmir. It was not too far-fetched of a plan; Hindu mobs went on murderous rampages against Muslims in Mumbai in 1993 and Gujarat in 2002. Unfortunately for the Kashmiri militants, the Hindu groups have not played ball lately. Extremist Hindu groups, such as Shiv Sena, have been internally fractured and weakened for domestic political reasons. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is in the opposition now as well, unlike during the parliamentary attacks in 2001. Thus, even after LeT executed the July 11 Mumbai bombings -- its largest operation in India in the past five years -- there was little widespread communal violence. Life returned to normal in Mumbai the very next day. Given the lack of Hindu reaction -- and the LeT's Wahhabi roots, which justify attacking mainstream Barelvi and secular Muslims -- the Kashmiri militants plotted to "create" their own Hindu response in Malegaon. That LeT and its splinter groups are planning bigger and more diverse attacks on India is obviously bad news for New Delhi, but it is also bad for Pakistan. Pakistan still has a firm grip on the larger, more mainstream Islamist groups operating within its borders and in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, such as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the United Jihad Council (UJC). But groups such as LeT, Al Badr and Jaish-e-Mohammed are much more autonomous. Though Pakistan still maintains some tacit contact with and control over them, these groups, for the most part, operate independently of Islamabad since they were banned in the fallout from the 2001 Indian parliamentary attack. This arrangement is useful, as India remains under the pressure of militant attacks while Pakistan maintains plausible deniability of involvement. But as LeT gets more frustrated with its inability to provoke a communal uprising in India and resorts to larger and more outrageous attacks, the ante will be upped for Pakistan. India can absorb a bombing now and then from the LeT; this summer's Mumbai attack, for instance, did not seriously alter New Delhi's stance toward Islamabad, although it did result in peace talks being put off for a few months. However, a major attack on India with thousands dead will find New Delhi in a much less forgiving mood. As the LeT and the other more autonomous Kashmiri militant groups become increasingly drawn into the international jihadist camp -- as recent evidence has indicated is occurring -- their tactics will change in favor of more spectacular attacks. If Pakistan is unable to reassert its control over the Kashmiris before such an attack occurs, Pakistan could find that the LeT has created a bigger problem than Islamabad can handle.