A major 26/11 type terror attack is ‘inevitable’ in India as it braces for general elections in April-May even though the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament has been moved to South Africa for security fears, warns a leading US strategic think tank.
Stratfor, which calls itself ‘the world leader in global intelligence’, said: ‘Despite the decisions, the Islamist militant threat to India remains.’
The Indian security apparatus is already bracing for another major attack, Stratfor said.
It said it had ‘received indications early on from Indian security sources that the IPL tournament was a prime target for another large-scale Islamist militant operation following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.’
Shifting the IPL tournament to South Africa gives the Indians more forces to secure the country for the national elections, but this does not necessarily mean that the threat level during this time period has subsided.
The elections still provide Pakistan-based and indigenous Indian militants a good occasion to target politicians, government buildings, and voting booths – to say nothing of the usual soft targets like crowded marketplaces, movie theatres, hotels or religious sites, the think tank said.
Founded by futurologist George Friedman, Stratfor has ‘an intelligence network located throughout the world’. Financial magazine Barron’s once referred to the private intelligence agency as ‘The Shadow CIA’.
It said the Indian intelligence apparatus is thought to have warned the central government of a flood of specific threats against both Indian and foreign cricket players. Warnings of specific threats against the players came from the governments of the states hosting matches, including Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
‘Given that these two states respectively are home to the information technology hubs of Hyderabad and Bangalore – both of which have a heavy foreign presence – and are where multinational corporations doing business in India are concentrated, these states are at a particularly high risk of attack,’ Stratfor warned.
‘The Lahore attack bore a number of similarities to the November 2008 Mumbai attack. And given LeT’s primary focus on India, the IPL tournament would have made another prime target,’ the think tank said. Over 170 people were killed in the terror strike in Mumbai last year.
