And ISI for an eye

Jihad, it turns out, is also good business. Collection boxes are reportedly brimming over for the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba after the Mumbai blasts last November.

Jihad, it turns out, is also good business. Collection boxes are reportedly brimming over for the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba after the Mumbai blasts last November. In true capitalist tradition, money is chasing terrorist outfits with established performance. And as track records go, the Lashkar and its various avatars are way up there: the Red Fort carnage (2000), the Parliament attack (2001), the Diwali blasts in Delhi (2005), the Varanasi temple bombings (2006), the Mumbai train explosions (2006), the capture of the Taj and Trident hotels (2008). This is the murderous curriculum vitae it claims only for India. Sundry other atrocities abroad are footnotes.

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It’s the chicken-and-egg question: foil the attacks and stem the money tide or clamp down on the finance so that the terror abates. India, with the backing of much of the the world, can lean on the Lashkar’s promoter group, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the other fat cats in West Asia and Europe, but what of the millions of small investors across the subcontinent? The retail segment is mostly driven by sentiment. They dig deeper into their pockets when they see the Lashkar stock scorching the ticker. That means more, and more outrageous, outrages.

Corporate battlegrounds offer a couple of solutions. Engineer a coup in the Lashkar boardroom (take out its key commanders) or mount a hostile takeover through a proxy outfit (set up our own jihadis to infiltrate the Lashkar network). Neither seems to have worked yet.

So we’re back to the tried and tested formula: keep our eyes and ears open and pray a new worst does not happen next week.