Interesting article and although I agree with most points, I would like to do clear up some myths in the article as well. Particularly around this part
But these attacks could only be carried out because the ISI had a huge support base in India in the shape of organizations like the Students Islamic Movement of India, Indian Mujaheddin, Ahle Hadith and the Tabligi Jamaat. When bereft of this kind of support in its own country, the ISI has moved from blunder to blunder.
The four organizations mentioned have completely different objectives memberships and profiles. And the "huge support base" is also different. And what constitutes ISI's "huge support base" to carry out a terrorist operation and whether it actually needs it is also an pertinent question. In fact, a huge support base - mainly due to internal grievances - translates to an insurgency as we saw Kashmir, NE or the Maoists areas. Then external agencies like ISI only play a supporting role in keeping the insurgency en flamed. Its the lack of a huge support base that leads to terrorism because it doesn't need it a huge support base to operationalise in the first place.
Let's take all of this one by one beginning with the organisations mentioned
SIMI
SIMI is an extremist political Islamic organization that was formed in the early 1980s. So extreme where their views that they were not only ostracized by the mainstream Muslim scholarly bodies but also from the Jammat Islami -i- Hind itself. SIMI was one of the organizations that actually protested against Yasser Arafat when he visited India in the 80s because he was a secular Arab nationalist. SIMI was an extremist Islamist organization but not a terrorist organization until it got radicalized by the lack of justice from 1992 riots or the 2002 riots and more directly post 9/11 attacks.
Safdar Nagori- India - DNA.
Other than the 1992 or 2002 riots, the 9/11 attacks also played a major role in the radicalization. Infact, SIMI gave their support to the misguided call of OBL of Jihad against the US post 9/11 in September. It was soon after banned and remains banned. Many SIMI activists are now in Jail facing trial. Some have been given prison sentences. The problem here is identifying those activists that have crossed the line into terrorism and those who just hold extreme political views. Both are dangerous of course, but those who are providing support to terrorism obviously need the full weight of the law thrown behind them.
IM
While SIMI had a clear presence with a few 1000 members all over India, IM was a shadowy group. But more importantly we have no idea of how many members it has but it would be a subset of SIMI. Also those who provided support to terrorist acts would not necessarily be even IM or SIMI members. "The Karachi Project" has been reported by some Pakistani and Indian journalists in which the ISI had recruited between 60-100 young Indian Muslims mainly from Mumbai and Gujarat regions. And the majority of them had been radicalized by 2002 or 1992 riots. The inspiration training for them was not religious and exhortations to martyrdom according a report in Outlook if I remember correctly but to watch Indian movies like
Black Friday. This was the most aggressive campaign ever taken to Indianise the terrorist acts. The idea was this would provide a cycle of violence in which recruits would increase and more could be trained and so on eventually creating destablising forces within India. But of course it didn't turn out that way.
The name "Indian" Mujaheddin or the mumbai attacks claimant "Deccan" mujaheddin points to this. The idea being that there would be a crackdown and possibly backlash against Muslims that can be exploited locally.
This doesn't mean that there are no locals that may have provided the logistics ofcourse. But you don't need a "massive support base". Even a 5-10 people are enough to create bombs and cause havoc as long as they don't get caught. We saw this in the case of Abhinav Bharat (a militant political Hinduistic group) as well where 5-10 people who had the indigenous bomb making knowledge were able to execute this to deadly affect killing many people.
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Now lets look at the other two groups. I am just surprised and wonder if he ever had a chance to discuss this with the local police or even IB officials on this. Or even done his own field work by visiting centres of these places or read scholarly work on them.
Ahle-Hadith
This is a school of though. A minority view held by Muslims in India but nonetheless has no political ambitions. It has nothing in common with SIMI or Jamaat Islami let alone IM. And infact, they have been at the fore front of rejected extremist and terrorist ideology. Most recently an Ahle-Hadith scholar was killed in Kashmir because of his views against groups like LeT, HuJI and others.
Only Kashmir: SOUT-UL-HAQ BEHIND MOLVI SHOWKAT'S MURDER: POLICE
I might not agree with their school of thought in terms of theological views but that does not mean that they provide a support base to terrorists. That is quite absurd with due respect to the retd. Col. And as I mentioned above, how the Ahle Hadith and their scholars can be an ideological bulwark against terrorism directed against India. The fact that these groups go to the extent of killing and silencing these scholars shows how scared they are to their recruitment base.
Tablighi Jamaat
This is more of a social movement with no "membership criteria" as such and is also in a completely separate category of all the other above. While SIMI is a extremist political Islamist movement and Ahle-e- Hadith is a school of thought, TJ is a apolitical traditionalist movement which does not really advocate a school of thought (you can be salafi,hanafi,shafee e.t.c.) and has a global prescence. Its global HQ after all is in New Delhi and have an open door policy. Infact, the ret. Col. could probably go and visit the place when he has some time.
If not then he can read the scholarly work done by people like Yoginder Sikand or Barbara metcalfe who have dome some extensive work in this regard.
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In short, a huge support base directly correlates to an insurgency. We have examples of this in Punjab, Kashmir and NE where at different times ISI had provided some help. A limited and narrow support base results in terrorist attacks.
Second point is that while most Pakistani based groups have an ideological reason to attack India; indigenous reasons for attacks are due to local grievances like communal riots or fake encounters of a close relative e.t.c. As these grievances are addressed and local religious organizations take an ideological stand against terrorism, these factors are further diminished as shown by the lack of presence of Indian muslims in groups in international Jihadist outfits as shown by the Guantanamo detainees and wikileaks cables.
And lastly, as the Headley trials and Saleem Shazad's book revealed about Mumbai attacks; sophisticated capability from surveillance to planning to attacks all had to be Pakistani based. There is no Indian support base sophisticated enough to do so. This doesn't mean that there could be indigenous Indian Muslims who have some capability to make bombs of course. But the perspective should be kept in mind.
What needs to be kept in mind is that law and order and internal security needs a higher budget than probably our external defense and this means keeping communal riots under control. We shouldn't need the army to be called out if the local police/govt. machinery is capable to act in an unbiased manner. And a good local police has good contact with the local community including Muslims. The good rapport will help the police to gather intelligence on whats happening. This can be done by interacting with the local Muslim communities like the Mumbai police does on a regular basis and as needed higher police officials and constables from various areas as well.
Preventing acts of terrorism is not easy precisely because you don't need a support base. To try and prevent every single terrorist act is in fact very costly and there is never a 100% guarantee. But trying to create an impression of huge support bases instead of directing efforts towards critical support networks with good intelligence from local communities would just result in fighting shadows at best or aggravating the problem at worst.
Kashmiris r still waiting for the BRAVEST army in the world. 
