Terrorist Sleeper Cells: What are they?

Sleeper cells – the dormant terrorist minds who are waiting for the most opportune moment to strike but remain mingled in the population have become the most potent weapon of the world wide terrorist organizations. Here is an interesting article explaining what these “Sleeper Cells” are?

Usually it consists of one to three trained and indoctrinated jehadis sent to a particular place with a deadly mission.

Their CV is usually impressive from bringing in arms, ammunition and bombs, they pinpoint a target and then carry out terrorist strikes.

Terrorists who are part of sleeper cells operate mostly in a similar fashion whether in urban India or semi-urban or rural areas.

They roam around freely and live and mix with people to avoid suspicious glances. So, today anticipating their movements and fishing them out has become more difficult.

“To locate them either in the rural pockets or in urban areas like Mumbai we simply don’t have the human resources for it,” former joint-director, Intelligence Bureau, M K Dhar said.

This is not because of lack of intelligence but also because one terror group might have put a cell in place but other groups can activate it – it’s called resource sharing.

And by the time security agencies get a whiff of such a cell, the jehadis usually vanish.

“Without human intelligence if you keep spending your resources then we might get it right once in a few lakh attempts,” Dhar explained.

As many as 65 terrorist modules have been busted in India in the last seven months, according to a senior official concerned with national security.

But many more are active, mostly handled by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).