By Praveen Swami
"MOHABBAT DI gaddi," Allah Ditta, a locomotive driver on the Samjhauta Express called it in a February 2000 interview: "the train of love." Only when counter-terrorism investigators in India succeed in arresting the perpetrators of the Samjhauta Express bombing will a full account of their motives emerge. But Pakistan's jihadi press, little monitored in India, provides not a little insight into the hearts and minds of the terrorists who most likely carried out the attack.
Islamists have, in recent weeks, repeatedly argued that the peace process poses a threat to both Pakistan's economic survival and its ideological raison d'etre. Growing interaction at the level of ordinary people, Islamists have claimed, is working to soften the hatred they believe is necessary to protect their nation. In their imagination, Allah Ditta's train of love is a Trojan Horse, a vehicle for the destruction of the project of Pakistan. |