America's General
Pakistan takes its most crucial decision since the 1971 war — to side with the US against the Taliban. The clerics may protest, but Musharraf has few options.

ECONOMIC IMPACT
Where Are We Going?
Fear and uncertainty stalk the Indian economy as early damages begin to show.

Ready For Battle
Where will the US strike, with what and how? A report on the military options before the global coalition that the Americans are building against terrorism.

Shifting Stance
Indian foreign policy is in a flux following the terrorist strikes in the US, metamorphosing in tandem with the tectonic shift in the geopolitical landscape of the world.

Menace In The Mind
People like bin Laden are not so much politicising religion as religionising politics.

COVER STORY: TERRORIST OUTFITS

Transgressing Boundaries

	SPREADING TERROR: Hawash, a Sudanese national, was arrested earlier this year for planning to bomb the US Embassy in Delhi
	These foreign groups interact closely with local outfits like SIMI and the banned Deendar Anjuman of Hyderabad.

ASALA: The Armenian Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia has for years threatened diplomats in the Turkish Embassy in Delhi to further its liberation struggle, say intelligence agencies. With offices in Pune and Mumbai, ASALA has strong links with Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian terrorist outfits. It recruits its members from among 350 people of Armenian origin who live in Kolkata, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai and have adopted Iranian, Iraqi Russian or Australian citizenships.

PALESTINIAN GROUPS: Indian intelligence officers say Palestinian student groups based in Bhopal, Delhi, Nagpur, Pune, Indore, Bangalore, Chennai and Aurangabad are quick to simmer in reaction to events at home. The anti-Arafat group in India owes its allegiance to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and has an estimated 250 membership. It has recruited students from Chennai, trained them in terrorist camps in Libya, and along with Syrian nationals it has used them for strikes against Israel in the West Bank. In India, it targets diplomats from Kuwait, Jordan, the UK, the US and Israel.

The PFLP has a history of hijacking out of India-first a Lufthansa Airlines Boeing 747 from Delhi in 1972 and five years later a Japan Airlines flight that took off from Mumbai.

Of more serious concern is the presence of the Muslim Students Union of Palestine (MSUP), the students' wing of Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement). MSUP is headquartered in Delhi and has a strong presence in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Aligarh and Pune. Some members have married Indian Muslim women and have blended well with mainstream Indian society. In early 1993 an MSUP member, Imam Hussain Amin Dagharma, a resident of the West Bank, returned home after a nine-year stint as a student in India, where he was mainly engaged in recruiting youth for training them in terrorist camps in Pakistan. Agencies in India do not rule out the possibility of Nidal joining hands with Hamas and PFLP to carry out strikes against Israeli establishments in India, events that could have serious international repercussions.

IRANIAN GROUPS: The potential of the large number of Iranian youth in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to attack western missions and diplomats is not ruled out. The most militant among the groups is the Organisation of Iranian Peoples' Fidayeen Guerrilla, an offshoot of the Tudeh Party in Iran, which is gradually establishing itself in India.

OTHERS: Some of the most violent Sunni terrorist groups of Africa are trying to set up bases in India, among them the Groups Islamique Are of Algeria and Al Gama Al Islamiya and the Al Jehad of Egypt. The Sudanese have used members of the Pune-based Islamic Movement of Sudanese Students to support its anti-US cause. Sudanese Abdul Raouf Hawash, interviewed by India Today in its July 2, 2001 issue, had been arrested for planning to blow up a section of the US Embassy in Delhi. He was directly liaising with Al Safani, one of bin Laden's trusted global networkers, a diplomat in the Sudanese Embassy in Delhi and a minister from Khartoum.

Among Indian groups, SIMI is on the IB watchlist because of its fanatical ideology that is said to have sparked off riots in Kanpur in March that killed 13 people. SIMI is generously funded by radical groups in Iran, Libya and the Gulf. Some of these are the Riyadh-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the Kuwait-based International Islamic Federation of Students' Organisations. In an interview to India Today (April 2, 2001), SIMI's secretary-general Safdar Nagori had said that the outfit had extolled the virtues of bin Laden at its conferences "for standing up to the Americans, the biggest terrorists in the world" several times.

In an atmosphere of dread and insecurity, the Base is ready to expand.

Constant suspicion, poverty, ill-health and lack of work dog Afghan asylum seekers in India. INDIA TODAY's Principal Correspondent Anna M.M. Vetticad meets some of them.
Living On The Edge