It goes without saying that India’s law enforcement agencies must see this case to its logical conclusion — after all, February 13, 2012, was the first time that a foreign diplomat was attacked within this country by a suspected terrorist group of another country. It is imperative for India to make clear that it will not tolerate such activities on its soil. And this is a message that must be sent out loud and clear so as to ensure that India is not viewed as a soft target by groups such as the Quds Force and its primary terrorist proxy Hezbollah that are looking to implement their devious agendas in countries they perceive to be as ‘low security’.
The attack in New Delhi came at a time when there is ample evidence to suggest that the Quds Force and the Hezbollah have embarked on a new, global campaign of violence particularly against American, Israeli and Jewish targets but also against Western interests in general. It is important, therefore, to view the February 13, 2012, attack in New Delhi as part of a wider, international terror campaign which even though does not target Indian citizens or Indian interests specifically but could still be played out within the territorial borders of India.
Of course, this is not the first time that Iranian terror proxies have wanted to bring down Western targets. The Hezbollah, for instance, has a long history of such attacks that go back to the early 80s. At the time, the group operated mostly in its home country of Lebanon but quickly expanded its activities abroad. Consequently, in 1992, Hezbollah operatives used a car bomb driven by a suicide bomber to attack the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 civilians. Two years later, the group used the same method to blow up the Jewish community centre in the Argentinian capital and killed 85 people. Two years later in 1996, the Hezbollah joined forced with the Quds Force to bomb Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
Things changed, however, at the turn of the century when Al Qaeda grabbed headlines with its spectacular attack on the Twin Towers of New York in September 2001. In response, as America led the Western world in its global war on terror, the Hezbollah was reluctant to be trapped in the crosshairs. And so, the group, then led by Imad Mughniyah, consciously rolled back its activities, particularly its global operations. It was also around this time that Hezbollah actively worked to gain a certain sense of autonomy from Iran which had always been the “senior partner” in the relationship, in the words of a senior US intelligence officer.
But this period of relative quiet lasted only a short while. In February 2008, Imad Mughniyah was assassinated leading to the rejuvenation of Hezbollah’s international operations arm, the Islamic Jihad Organisation, under the leadership of Mustafa Badreddine and Talal Hamiyeh. The primary aim of the IJO at that time was to avenge the death of Mughniya. In his paper, Mr Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy describes the “three-tiered shadow war” that Iran and the Hezbollah planned to take down American and Israeli and Jewish targets. According to Mr Levitt, the targets were divided into three categories — tourists, diplomats and Jewish centres. While the Hezbollah was to carry out attacks on tourists, considered to be easy targets, the more skilled Quds Force was to focus on the high-profile targets.
But as Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah declared an “open war”, Israeli and American security officials were immediately put on guard, allowing them to disrupt a series of terror attacks planned by Hezbollah and the Quds Force. It started with the fiasco in Baku in May 2008 when planned bombings of US and Israeli Embassies were exposed. Then in September 2009, a Hezbollah terror attack in Turkey was foiled despite the tremendous logistical support from the Quds Force. Finally after yet another failed attack in Jordan in January 2010, “a massive operational revaluation” of the IJO was undertaken, says Mr Levitt based on his interviews with Israeli intelligence officials.
Following the overhaul of 2010, the Hezbollah-Quds combine came up with three major goals: Apart from the avenging the death of Imad Mughniya and terrorising Western targets, protecting Iran’s nuclear interests was added to the list. It was also around this time that the Quds Force created a special external operations unit — Unit 400 — that would later engineer the New Delhi attack.
Throughout 2010 and 2011, terror attacks were planned but foiled across the world from Cyprus to Azerbaijan and Turkey. In October 2011, the most brazen of attacks come to the fore with the bungled assassination attempt on the Saudi Ambassador to the US in Washington, DC. This was to be followed by the arrest of a Lebanese national, Hussein Artris, in Bangkok in January 2012 who eventually led Thai police to the 8,800 pound of chemicals he and his associate had stockpiled to attack Israeli diplomats. Then came the serial attacks of February 2012 around the death anniversary of Mughniya. On February 12, an attack on the American Ambassador to Baku was foiled but followed by the car explosion in New Delhi. Then, a similar bomb was discovered in Tbilisi in Georgia hours later. On February 14, an explosion was reported in Bangkok in a home rented by the Iranians.
Eventually, investigators would tie the three attacks as part of one major conspiracy. And even though all the attacks were operational failures, they would do little to dissuade the terrorists who would venture even into Africa before eventually tasting success with the July 18, 2012 bombing of Burgas airport in Bulgaria.
The point here is that, while both the Quds Force and the Hezbollah have been sloppy and inefficient in their activities all this while, they are sure to learn from their mistakes. They will eventually get better and then, it is countries like India (and Bulgaria and Azerbaijan) that have relatively low level security measures as compared to countries like the United States and Israel, for instance, that will be their early targets.
(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on February 21, 2013.)
