Bloodshed and futility

by A.R. | DELHI 

EARLY in the evening on February 21st, as middle-class shoppers and cinema-goers waited beside bus stops or picked up snacks from roadside stalls, two bombs exploded in a district of Hyderabad, one of India’s largest cities. The explosions, and shrapnel, killed at least 16 people and injured 119, said India’s home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, visiting the site the following day. Cities across the country have been put on high alert.

On the face of it, the attackers would seem to belong to Indian Mujahideen (IM), a home-grown Islamic extremist group, though nobody claimed the murders nor did officials rush to pass judgment. Reports suggest the bombs were placed inside tiffin boxes (metal lunch-containers) strapped to bicycles parked on the roadside, a method apparently favoured by the group. The crowded, commercial location, Dilsukhnagar, has twice before been the target of terrorists (in 2002 and 2007). Hyderabad, a southern city of nearly 7m which is home to many Western technology firms, has an unusually large Muslim population for India, of around 40%. Dilsukhnagar may be a target because it has a prominent Hindu temple which typically draws devotees on Thursday evenings. In addition two local cinemas regularly put on new screenings the same day.

Officials in Delhi also report that a member of the IM, arrested in the national capital in 2012, admitted to conducting reconnaissance of Dilsukhnagar to plan for such an attack. All that points towards IM, though an alternative possibility exists, that some other group was responsible but intended for the Muslim group to be blamed.

Just what the bombers might have been hoping to achieve—other than to provoke retaliation against their co-religionists, or at least more disharmony between Muslims and Hindus—is unclear. Possibly the bombings could be seen as response to the recent execution of two men convicted for their part in terrorist attacks: Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani, was executed in November for his role in the 2008 assault on Mumbai that killed 166 people; Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri, was hanged this month, convicted for his part in a 2001 assault by gunmen on India’s parliament. Mr Guru, who did not confess to any such role, wrote that “my hanging will not stop such attacks.”

More likely, the murders in Hyderabad will achieve nothing. In neighbouring Pakistan terrorism on a terrifyingly large scale continues, as sectarian conflict (between Sunni and Shia strands of Islam) have reduced certain quarters, such as the city of Quetta, to a state of near civil war. This week nearly 90 people were killed in a bomb attack in that city.

By contrast, in India terrorist strikes have grown less frequent in recent years. This was the first fatal blast in India since a bomb exploded outside of Delhi’s high court in September 2011, which killed 12 people. (Four bombs that went off in Pune last year failed to claim any lives).

Bombers have failed to radicalise more than a tiny minority, while the Indian press and politicians of all stripes take admirable care to call for communal calm. Even a hot-headed Muslim politician from Hyderabad, whose brother had recently been arrested for hate speech against Hindus, was quick to condemn this violent attack as an unacceptable assault on “all Indians”.

More usefully, public debate may now focus on the quality of India’s intelligence and policing. It is unforgiveable that a site twice before attacked by bombers—and known to have been the subject of reconnaissance by others intending an attack—did not have better protection.

The government in Delhi had, two days before the bomb blasts, issued a general warning to cities across India that a terrorist strike might be imminent. Similar complacency was evident in the case of the Delhi high-court attack, in 2011. No better security provisions had been made despite a bomb (which failed to do any serious damage) being placed in the same spot some months earlier.