The terror attack on Afghan Parliament on Monday is a stark reminder of the assault on Indian Parliament 13 years ago and New Delhi is not ruling out Islamabad’s hand in the latest strike.
New Delhi, according to the sources, has “reasons to believe” that the “state and non-state actors of Pakistan” had a role in orchestrating the attack on Afghan Parliament, just as they had in plotting the assault on Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001.
Inputs recently received by the intelligence agencies of India and two other western countries indicated possibility of Pakistan government’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) using its assets within Taliban, Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Toiba to carry out terror strikes to further its pursuit of “strategic depth” in the war-ravaged country after the withdrawal of the US-led International Security Assistance Force from combat role.
New Delhi is funding several development projects in Afghanistan much to the chagrin of Islamabad, which is wary about India’s growing influence on the west of Pakistan.
Four Indian citizens are among 14 killed in a terrorist attack on a guesthouse in the capital of Afghanistan last month.
India’s envoy to Afghanistan, Amar Sinha, was apparently the target, although he dropped his plan to visit the guesthouse just hours before the terrorists carried out the attack.
The investigation by National Directorate of Security of Afghanistan later led to the arrest of two Haqqani Network terrorists, who revealed that the attack on May 13 was planned in Pakistan.
Pakistan-based Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Toiba earlier carried out attacks on Indian missions in Afghanistan, including not only the India’s embassy in Kabul, but also its consulates in Jalalabad and Herat. The US had in 2011 blamed the Haqqani Network for attacks on Indian Embassy in Kabul and stated that the terror group had acted “as a veritable arm” of the ISI.
Five operatives of LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another terrorist group based in Pakistan, had carried out the attack on Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. Six Delhi Police personnel, two Parliament Security Service personnel and a gardener were killed in the attack.
Though the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, Pakistan resorted to a propaganda blitzkrieg on social media.
Hours after the attack, several posts came up on Twitter insinuating that RAW had masterminded the strike on Parliament House in Kabul.
To buttress their claim, some tweets referred to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s recent statement that terrorists could be used to neutralise terrorists.
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