B.RAMAN
Before March 1993, the Dawood Ibrahim group, which indulges in large-scale smuggling, money-laundering and other criminal activities, was operating from Dubai. In March 1993, this group organised at the instance of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan a series of explosions directed at important economic targets in Mumbai---such as the local stock exchange, which is the biggest in India, a local hotel for tourists run by the Air India etc.
Subsequent investigation brought out that the perpetrators of these acts of terrorism, all Indian nationals, had been recruited, at the instance of the ISI, by Dawood Ibrahim in Mumbai, taken to Pakistan via Dubai for training in the use of arms and ammunition and explosives and then sent back to Mumbai via Dubai. The Pakistani Consulate in Dubai issued them plain paper visas so that their passports did not carry any entries of their visit to Pakistan for training. However, Indian investigators managed to get xerox copies of the passenger manifests of the flights by which they went to Pakistan via Dubai for training. After they returned to Mumbai from Pakistan after the training, the explosives and other arms and ammunition required by them for organising the terrorist attacks were sent by the ISI by boat with the help of Dawood Ibrahim and clandestinely landed on the Western coast of India.
After carrying out the explosions, the perpetrators escaped to Pakistan, some via Dubai and some via Kathmandu, and were given sanctuary in Karachi by the ISI. When the Govt. of India took up with the Dubai authorities the question of the involvement of Dawood Ibrahim, the Dubai authorities pressured him to leave their territory. He took shelter in Karachi and has been living there since then along with some of the perpetrators, who have been given Pakistani passports under different names. Repeated requests by the Govt. of India to Islamabad for arresting and extraditing/deporting them to India have been turned down by Pakistan, which denies their presence in Pakistani territory. Red-cornered notices of the INTERPOL for their arrest have not been honoured by Pakistan.
This matter was again taken up by the Govt. of India with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan when he visited India in July last. He denied their presence in Pakistani territory. Subsequently, "Newsline", a presitigious Pakistani monthly, in its issue for September, 2001, carried a detailed article on their presence and activities in Karachi. The Pakistani media reported that the journalist who wrote this article (Ghulam Hasnain) was detained and harassed by the Pakistani authorities.
The article stated as follows:" Dawood Ibrahim and his team, Mumbai's notorious underworld clan, including his right hand man Chota Shakeel and Jamal Memon, are on India's most wanted list for a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai and other criminal activities. After the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, the gang have made Karachi their new home and operating base. Living under fake names and IDs (identities), and given protection by government agencies, they have built up their underworld operations in Karachi employing local talent like Shoaib and Bholoo.
" In Pakistan, Dawood managed to establish another huge empire, comprising both legitimate and illegitimate businesses. In fact, the last few years have witnessed Dawood emerge as the don of Karachi. Dawood and his men have made heavy investments in prime properties in Karachi and Islamabad and are major players in the Karachi bourse and in the parallel credit system business--hundi. Dawood is also said to have rescued Pakistan's Central Bank, which was in crisis at one point, by providing a huge dollar loan. His businesses include gold and drug smuggling. The gang is also allegedly heavily involved in (cricket) match-fixing. "
The article added: " Not only have the Pakistani authorities turned a blind eye to the gang's activities within Pakistan, but many in the corridors of power have partaken of Dawood's hospitality.....He is said to have the protection of assorted intelligence agencies. In fact, Dawood and his men move around the city guarded by heavy escorts of armed men in civies believed to be personnel of a top Pakistani security agency. A number of Government undercover agents, who came into contact with Dawood because of their official duties, are now, in fact, working for him. Nearly all the men, who surround him for security reasons, are either retired or serving officers, claims an MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) activist."
The article further said: " According to informed sources, Dawood is Pakistan's number one espionage operative. His men in Mumbai help him get whatever information he needs for Pakistan. Rumour has it that sometimes his men in Karachi accompany Pakistani intelligence agents to the airports to scan arriving passengers and identify RAW (Indian external intelligence) agents." (End of citation from the article)
Though the laws of Pakistan do not provide for "economic citizenships", the Pakistan Government informally provides them to international criminals and terrorists, who maintain a minimum dollar deposit in Pakistani banks and help the Government. Dawood Ibrahim, who had reportedly lent money to Pakistan in the past for the clandestine procurement of missiles and connected technology from China and North Korea, has been given informal "economic citizenship" in order to protect him from the arms of the Indian law and provided with a Pakistani passport under a different name .
After the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, the Govt. of India has given to Pakistan a list of 20 terrorists, wanted for trial in India, who have been given sanctuary in Pakistan. The list includes the names of Dawood Ibrahim and other members of his mafia group wanted for trial in connection with the explosions in Mumbai in March 1993 and other crimes. Pakistan continues to take up the stand that they are not in its territory.
It is alleged that Dawood Ibrahim played an active role in organising the recent referendum campaign of Musharraf in Karachi and in bringing voters to the polling booths in trucks to vote for Musharraf.
------ Extract from a paper titled "CONTROL OF TRANSNATIONAL CRIME & WAR AGAINST TERRORISM: An Indian Perspective" presented by me at a meeting of the Working Group on terrorism of the Council on Security Co-operation Asia Pacific (CSCAP) held at Shanghai in May,2002. The paper is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers5/paper452.html.
DAWOOD IBRAHIM: The Global Terrorist
Shortly after the commission of the terrorist strikes in the US on September 11, 2001, US President George Bush signed Executive Order (EO) No.13224 on September23, 2001, declaring a national emergency to deal with terrorist threats to the USA.He said in his EO: " I also find that because of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the financial foundation of foreign terrorists, financial sanctions may be appropriate for those foreign persons that support or otherwise associate with these foreign terrorists. I also find that a need exists for further consultation and cooperation with, and sharing of information by, United States and foreign financial institutions as an additional tool to enable the United States to combat the financing of terrorism."
2.The annual report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2001 submitted to the US Congress in May, 2002, by Gen.(retd) Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, described the significance of this EO as follows: "EO 13224 enables the US Government to block designees' assets in any financial institution in the US or held by any US person. It also expands US Government authority to permit the designation of individuals and organisations that provide support or financial or other services to or associate with, designated terrorists. EO 13224 designations allowed the US Government, as well as coalition partners acting in concert, to block tens of millions of dollars intended to bankroll the murderous activities of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups."
3.Under this EO, the US Government has so far designated 322 individuals of different nationalities and organizations as terrorists and terrorist supporters and frozen over $136.8 million in terrorist assets by acting in concert with other member-nations of the UN.Apart from terrorist organisations such as the Al Qaeda, the Jemaah Islamiya, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) etc which have been so designated under this EO, a number of individual terrorists wanted for acts of terrorism in different countries have also been so designated. Important amongst them are Osama bin Laden, his No 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri and other leaders of the Al Qaeda.
4. While the US Government has designated the HUM, the LET and the JEM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, none of their leaders has so far been designated as global terrorists. The only individuals living openly in Pakistan who had been brought under the purview of this EO till October 15, 2003, were Sultan Bashir-ud-din.Mahmood, Abdul Majeed and Mahammed Tufail, who were suspected of trying to help bin Laden in the clandestine acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They were so designated on December 20, 2001, and their bank accounts, wherever found, were ordered to be frozen.
5. Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader- cum- terrorist living in Pakistan since the 1990s, became yet another individual terrorist leader living in Pakistan to be brought under the purview of this EO on October 16, 2003, when the US Department of Treasury announced that it was designating him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 and that it would be requesting the UN to so list him as well. The designation would freeze any assets belonging to Dawood within the U.S. and prohibit transactions with U.S. nationals. The UN listing will require that all UN Membe-States take similar actions.
6."This designation signals our commitment to identifying and attacking the financial ties between the criminal underworld and terrorism,” stated Juan Zarate, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. “We are calling on the international community to stop the flow of dirty money that kills. For the Ibrahim syndicate, the business of terrorism forms part of their larger criminal enterprise, which must be dismantled."
7. A press release of the US Department said: "Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian crime lord, has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government. He is wanted in India for the 1993 Bombay Exchange bombings and is known to have financed the activities of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Righteous), a group designated by the United States in October 2001 and banned by the Pakistani Government -- who also froze their assets -- in January 2002. "
8. A fact sheet attached to the press release said: "Ibrahim's syndicate is involved in large-scale shipments of narcotics in the UK and Western Europe. The syndicate's smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa are shared with Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network. Successful routes established over recent years by Ibrahim's syndicate have been subsequently utilised by bin Laden. A financial arrangement was reportedly brokered to facilitate the latter's usage of these routes. In the late 1990s, Ibrahim travelled in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban."
9. It added: "Ibrahim's syndicate has consistently aimed to destabilise the Indian Government through inciting riots, acts of terrorism and civil disobedience. He is currently wanted by India for the March 12,1993, Bombay Exchange bombings, which killed hundreds of Indians and injured over a thousand more."
10. It also said: "Information from as recent as Fall 2002, indicates that Ibrahim has financially supported Islamic militant groups working against India, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LET). For example, this information indicates that Ibrahim has been helping finance increasing attacks in Gujarat by LET. "
11. The statement and the attached fact sheet do not say how the US Government came to know of Dawood's links with the Al Qaeda, bin Laden and the LET. However, it needs to be noted that last week the US Government also designated the Al Akhtar Trust, a supposedly charity organisation based in Pakistan founded by the JEM, for purposes of freezing its accounts under this EO. It described the Al Akhtar Trust as the successor organisation to the Al Rashid Trust, which had earlier been brought under the purview of this EO.
12. The Treasury Department statement indicated that it suspected the Al Akhtar Trust of funding jihadi terrorist activities not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. Since February last, I have been drawing attention to reports that the HUM and the LET have been sending small numbers of their cadres to Iraq to participate in a jihad against the US troops there and that the LET has been collecting funds in Pakistan for assisting the families of its "martyrs" in Iraq.The statement reveals that the JEM has also been indulging in activities in support of the jihad in Iraq through the Al Akhtar Trust.
13.The fact sheet attached by the US Treasury Department to the order relating to the Trust says as follows at two places: "During a custodial interview in early 2003, a senior Al Qaida detainee related that AL AKHTAR TRUST and Al-Rashid Trust were the primary relief agencies that Al Qaida used to move supplies into Qandahar, Afghanistan. " Again it says: "During a custodial interview in mid-April 2003, a senior Al Qaida detainee stated that Al-Rashid Trust and Al AKHTAR TRUST provided donations to Al Qaida."
14. The USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers in Pakistan had got hold of two senior Al Qaeda operatives during this period---Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,who is suspected to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the USA and who was caught in Rawalpindi in March last, and Walid bin Attash, the principal Al Qaeda suspect in the case relating to the bombing of the US naval ship USS Cole in Aden in October, 2000, who was caught in Karachi in April last.
15. The interrogation of Walid bin Attash by the FBI had not yet started by mid-April. It would, therefore, be reasonable to infer that the action against the Al Akhtar Trust was probably based on information provided by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Since the action against Dawood followed two days after the action against the Trust, there is a strong possibility that the information obtained during the same interrogation about his links with the Al Qaeda triggered off the action of the Treasury Department.
16.What next? The designation of Dawood as a global terrorist does not automatically freeze his bank accounts and the accounts of the organisations with which he is associated. It only directs all banks and other financial institutions in the US to identify such accounts and freeze them. How effective is the follow-up action depends on how effective is the identification of the accounts.
17. The Treasury Department order does not give all the aliases of Dawood. It names him as Dawood Ibrahim, also known as Dawood Ebrahim, also known as Sheikh Dawood Hassan. Only all accounts held in these names will be affected by this order. If he has been holding accounts under other names, those would not be affected till identified to be his.
18. The UN Security Council, in its capacity as the monitor of the implementation of its Resolution No.1373 calling for action against terrorism by member-nations, would now be moved by the US to issue instructions to all member-nations, including Pakistan, to freeze the accounts of Dawood held under these three names.
19. Whenever such instructions were issued by the UNSC in the past, the Government of Pakistan circumvented them by alerting organisations and individual terrorist leaders named by the EO and the UN about the impending freezing of their accounts, thereby enabling them to withdraw the bulk of the balance to their credit or transfer it to other accounts under different names.
20.This has been repeatedly happening since January last year. As a result, when the accounts were finally frozen, they were found to contain paltry amounts.
21.The last one year has also seen a tremendous increase in the remittance of funds from overseas bank accounts to accounts in Pakistan. The total remittances during this period were estimated at US $ four billion. The Pakistani authorities attributed this increase to the fact that Pakistanis living abroad have started using normal banking channels for their remittances due to fears that the use of the informal hawala channels as in the past might attract the suspicion of the FBI. Even if this explanation is true, it could account for the transfer of only about US $ 1.5 billion from overseas accounts to accounts in Pakistan.
22. Following suspicion that the steep increase in the remittances flowing into Pakistan might be due to the transfer of the money held overseas by the so-called Saudi charity organisations associated with terrorism to accounts in Pakistan and the use of new accounts in Pakistan by organisations based in Saudi Arabia for funding terrorism, the FBI is reported to be closely monitoring all remittances of over US $ 1,000 to accounts in Pakistan. The Washington correspondent of the "News", the Pakistani daily newspaper, has reported (October 1, 2003) that the Pakistani authorities have agreed to a request from the US to report to the FBI details of all such remittances.
23. The action taken by the Pakistani authorities against all suspected bank accounts in Pakistan continues to be an eye-wash. On June 14,2003, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's Finance Minister, placed on the table of the National Assembly a statement giving details of the accounts frozen by the authorities. In the statement figured three accounts in Peshawar banks held in the name of bin Laden and one in the name of his No.2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri (name of the branch not given). Of the three accounts of bin Laden, two were joint accounts held by him along with others and one was an account only in his name. The three bin Laden accounts, according to the statement, had balances of only US $ 306, US $ 342 and US $ 1585 and the account of Al-Zawahiri had a balance of US $ five only.
24.. The statement contained a remark that the account of Al-Zawahiri had remained dormant since 1993. There were no such remarks in respect of the accounts of bin Laden. Hence, they are presumed to have been active. The statement remained silent as to what were the various deposits made in the accounts and withdrawn or transferred from them before they were frozen, who were the beneficiaries etc.
25. According to the same statement, the HUM had three accounts with balances of US $ 62, US $ 48 and US $ 35. The JEM had one account with US $ 14.
26.Over the years, Pakistan, its military dictator Gen.Pervez Musharraf and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have fine-tuned the art of hoodwinking international community and particularly the US Administration-- whether it be in respect of its clandestine WMD assistance to North Korea and Iran, its sponsorship of cross-border terrorism into India and Afghanistan or evasion of action under the UNSCR No.1373 against terrorists and other organisations.
27. Unless India takes advantage of the slight opening provided by the US designation of Dawood as a global terrorist and acts proactively and aggressively through the UN monitoring mechanism and through bilateral channels to ensure that Pakistan does not again wriggle out of its obligations under the UNSC Resolution 1373, we will find history repeating itself.
28. In my paper No.515 of September 1, 2002, ( "INDIA'S NATIONAL SECURITY MANAGEMENT & 9/11") available at www.southasiaanalysis.org, I wrote as follows: "After 9/11, the purely legalistic approach to the question of blocking terrorist funding has given way to a more pragmatic approach, with actions now being taken by the international community against suspected terrorist accounts even on the basis of strong suspicion instead of waiting, as in the past, till legally sustainable evidence was forthcoming. This should have been taken advantage of by us by moving for the freezing of the bank accounts of Dawood Ibrahim and other members of his mafia group wherever they are held--whether in Pakistan, the UAE, South Africa, Nepal, Thailand or elsewhere. Our plea for action could have been justified on the basis of the strong evidence at our disposal regarding their involvement in the Mumbai blasts of March,1993."
29. In a paper (available at www.southasiaanalysis.org) presented at a panel discussion on Terrorism in the Indian sub-continent , organized by the US-India Political Action Committee and the US-India Institute for Strategic Policy at Washington DC on July 16, 2003, I had stated as follows: " About 400 survivors of the 500-strong hardcore of Al Qaeda had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistan giving a slip to the US security forces in the beginning of last year. Of these, about 75 are estimated to have since moved over to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and 30 are estimated to have crossed over into Iran via Pakistan’s Balochistan. Of the remaining, about 75 took shelter in Karachi and 220 in Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). Of the 75, who took shelter in Karachi, about 50 are still holed up in various hide-outs there with the assistance of their Pakistani sympathizers and the mafia gang led by Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted by the Indian authorities for prosecution in connection with the Mumbai (Bombay) blasts of March,1993, a precursor of mass-casualty or catastrophic terrorism."
30. India should act on the US order and move against Pakistan before it is too late.
31. Annexed is an extract from a paper on terrorism and transnational crime presented by me at a meeting of a working group on this subject held in Shanghai, China, in May last year. "Herald", the monthly journal of the prestigious "Dawn" group, has since come out (August,2003) with more details on the presence of Dawood in Pakistan and his activities there.
-----Copy of a paper prepared by me on October 19,2003. Available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers9/paper818.html
ISI SHIFTS DAWOOD IBRAHIM TO WAZIRISTAN?
Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia leader, was living in Karachi with a Pakistani passport under a different name since the explosions in Mumbai in March,1993, in which over 300 innocent civilians were killed. The entire operation was orchestrated by him from Dubai, where he was living before March,1993.He had the perpetrators of the blasts trained clandestinely by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan in Pakistani territory. After the training, they returned to Mumbai and carried out the explosions with the help of explosives, detonators and timers given by the ISI. These were clandestinely shipped to landing points on the western coast of India in boats hired by Dawood.
2. When his involvement in the blasts was proved, the Government of India requested the Dubai authorities for his arrest and deportation. The Dubai authorities advised him to leave their country. He shifted to Karachi and started living there. Sections of the Pakistani media reported from time to time about his presence in Karachi and the activities of his mafia group from Pakistani territory. They also reported that many retired officers of the Pakistani intelligence community had been employed by him as his security officers.
3. At the request of the Government of India, the International Police Organisation (INTERPOL) based in Lyons in France issued many look-out notices for his arrest and deportation to India if he was found in the territory of any member-country. The look-out notices also gave his Karachi address.
4. In response to these notices, the Pakistani authorities kept denying the presence of Dawood in their territory. The matter was taken up by Mr. A.B.Vajpayee, our former Prime Minister, with President Pervez Musharraf during their meeting in Agra in July,2001, and again during their meeting in Islamabad in January 2004.Dawood's name also figured in the list of 20 terrorists wanted for trial in India, which was handed over by the Government of India to Islamabad in the beginning of 2002. The stock response from Musharraf was that Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan.
5. In the meanwhile, the Karachi-based Dawood developed contacts with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Al Qaeda elements such as Ramzi Binalshibh (since arrested by the Pakistani authorities and handed over to the US), who had been given sanctuary in Karachi by the LET.
6. Following the receipt of information about his contacts with Al Qaeda and the LET, the US took serious notice of his presence in Karachi. The US Treasury Department issued a notification in October, 2003,declaring him an international terrorist. The notification, which recommended to the UN Security Council the freezing of his bank accounts because of his involvement in global terrorism, specified that he was residing in Karachi and gave his address. The Pakistani authorities contended that no person by the name Dawood Ibrahim or resembling him was living in Karachi at the address given by the US.
7. Thereafter, references to his presence and activities in Pakistani territory became less and less in the Pakistani media. Then suddenly, on June 18, 2006, the "News" of Pakistan carried a detailed report on him. It claimed that he had changed his physical appearance by undergoing plastic surgery, that he had shifted from Karachi to Afghan territory and that the Afghan security forces were searching for him.
8. The "News" report said inter alia: " The US-backed Afghan National Army and the Afghan Police have launched a new hunt---this time for an Indian fugitive by the name Dawood Ibrahim. The tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, which were being searched for Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, are now being combed for the man accused of the Mumbai blasts of March,1993....Sources in the Pakistani intelligence agencies, however, express ignorance about the whereabouts of the wanted Indian national. Afghan sources also claim Dawood Ibrahim might be having a safe sanctuary in Pakistan, where, they say, he continues to maintain close links with militant outfits..... According to a theory doing the rounds in Peshawar, close friends in Pakistan may have convinced Dawood Ibrahim to re-locate himself amid fears he will be targeted by his enemy (Chhota Rajan)......... The Afghan sources rule out Dawood's presence in Nangarhar Province, but hint the restive Kunar and even the troubled eastern provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Khost could be the possible hide-outs of the terror suspect. "This is highly unlikely though," says an Afghan security official."
9. Quoting unidentified Indian officials, sections of the Indian media reported on July 7,2006,that the Pakistani authorities have informed the INTERPOL that Dawood Ibrahim was not living in Pakistan as stated in its notices and requested it to delete from its notices the references to his so-called Karachi address. Questioning the contention of the Pakistani authorities, Indian officials have asserted that they have evidence that Dawood Ibrahim was in Karachi at least till May,2005 (the "Indian Express" of July 8,2006).
10. According to some sources, fearing that Dawood might unwittingly expose his presence in Karachi to the US intelligence through the careless use of his telephones, the ISI has shifted him to the Waziristan area, where the hide-outs of Osama bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri are also located. These sources say that he is in Pakistani and not Afghan territory and lives under the protection of the ISI as well as his security guards, all of whom are retired officials of the Pakistani intelligence.
11. During his stay in Dubai and Karachi, Dawood Ibrahim was not only indulging in narcotics smuggling and other acts of organised crime and terrorism, but was also running some legitimate business enterprises. One of them produced documentaries and other features for the local TV channels. It would be worthwhile enquiring whether the company (Sahab), which usually produces and disseminates the features and messages of Al Qaeda, including those of bin Laden and Zawahiri. has any links with Dawood.
-----Copy of a paper prepared by me on July 8,2006, available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers19/paper1869.html
PAKISTANI CITIZENSHIP
Many Caribbean and South Pacific countries offer fugitives from justice what is called 'economic citizenship' to enable them to evade arrest and deportation to countries where they are wanted for crimes. This citizenship is sold in return for a minimum deposit in foreign currency kept by them in local banks.
Pakistan does not have any laws providing for such 'economic citizenship', but its government, on the ISI's advice, informally awarded economic citizenship to Dawood Ibrahim, who was issued a Pakistani passport under a different name. Similarly, Chhota Shakeel has a Pakistani passport under a different name.
It is believed that in the 1990s, Dawood Ibrahim had financially helped Pakistan in the clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technology and components and that this factor too probably influenced Islamabad's decision to grant him economic citizenship.
---Extract from an article written by me for Rediff.com on August 21,2001, available at http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/aug/21guest.htm
DAWOOD & NUCLEAR SMUGGLING
Tahir's family was closely connected with Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia leader living in Pakistan, who had helped the nuclear and missile establishments of Pakistan in their clandestine procurement and shipping activities. The Dawood group is well-entrenched in Singapore and Malaysia. Its activities in Singapore include: Investment in real estate; a shipping company (name not known) and hawala operations to South India. Among the hawala operators of Singapore allegedly associated with Dawood is a company called the Abdul Gafoor and Company. Before Musharraf visited India in 2001 for the Agra summit, the ISI secretly sent away Dawood to Malaysia through Singapore with the help of one Rakesh Tulshiyan and Shahid Sohail. He stayed in Malaysia as a guest of Tahir's family. He returned to Karachi later. Dawood is believed to have extensive mining interests in Malaysia from where he and his group indulge in the smuggling of silver into India via Nepal
-----Extract from an article written by me on February 23, 2004, , which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers10/paper931.html
Thursday, April 23, 2009
OPERATION ENDURING TALIBAN ( 5-10-2006)
B. Raman
As the US-led war against international terrorism completes five years on October 6, 2006, with no end yet in sight, it is uncomfortably apparent that Operation Enduring Freedom has turned into Operation Enduring Taliban in Afghanistan.
2. After having re-established its presence, despite the repeated attacks of the NATO forces led by the UK, in the Pashtun majority areas of Southern and Eastern Afghanistan adjoining Pakistan's Pashtun majority areas, the Neo Taliban is inexorably creeping its way up northwards to Kabul. The sporadic acts of suicide terrorism in Kabul and the anti-US and anti-Hamid Karzai demonstrations witnessed earlier this year in Kabul following a traffic accident show that since the beginning of this year the internal security situation in Afghanistan except in the Tajik and Uzbeck areas has been steadily deteriorating. Neither the induction of the NATO forces nor the raising of a multi-ethnic Afghan Army nor Police has been able to stop the inexorable rise of the Neo Taliban.
3. The figures of the large number of fatal casualties ( about 2,500), which the NATO forces have claimed to have inflicted on the Neo Taliban during the last two months or so have been questioned by the Neo Taliban. It admits that about 2,500 persons have been killed by the NATO forces, but asserts that only about 20 per cent of them are its cadres. According to it, the remaining fatalities were of innocent civilians killed due to the indiscriminate use of air strikes and the heavy artillery by the NATO forces.
4. The NATO forces, while denying the Neo Taliban figures of civilian casualties, do admit that civilian casualties have taken place, but in much smaller number. They attribute this to the Neo Taliban's practice of taking shelter in the midst of civilian population when chased by the NATO forces.
5. The Neo Taliban is qualitatively different from the pre--October 7, 2001 Taliban. The Taliban of the past was a ragtag militia of students recruited from the Deobandi madrasas of Pakistan. It was a force with considerable religious fervour, but with very little professional fighting capability. It dispersed and vanished into the villages on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at the first sign of confrontation with the US-led forces. Even the religious fervour of its cadres was not strong enough to induce them to take to suicide terrorism.
6. The Neo Taliban is an increasingly professional fighting force of well-trained, well-equipped, well-motivated and well-led cadres with a capability for conventional as well as unconventional operations against the NATO forces and the Afghan Security forces. Its conventional capability, remarkably acquired over a short period of three years, is demonstrated by its knowledge of military craft and tactics and its ability to use them effectively against the NATO forces.
7. It is also demonstrated by its ability to operate in section, platoon and company strengths and to stand up and fight instead of vanishing at the first sign of contact with the NATO forces. Its unconventional capability is reflected in its increasing resort to acts of suicide terrorism. According to one estimate, there have been nearly 90 acts of suicide terrorism this year. There was more Arab than Pashtun involvement in suicide terrorism last year. There has been more Pashtun than Arab involvement this year.
8. The suicide attacks have killed more Afghans than members of the NATO forces. One would have normally thought that Afghan anger over the indiscriminate killing of the Afghans by these Neo Taliban suicide strikes would have turned public opinion against it and come in the way of its recruitment to its conventional as well as unconventional fighting units. It has not.
9. Whereas religious fervour was the main driving force of the Taliban, a mix of religious and nationalist fervour is the driving force of the Neo Taliban. The Neo Taliban and its cadres view their conflict with the NATO forces not only as a jihad against the infidels, the crusaders and their Afghan surrogates, but also as a war of national liberation against foreign occupiers of Muslim territory. The religious fervour fuels the acts of suicide terrorism and the nationalist fervour fuels the conventional battles. The fight is viewed as a jihad to liberate the Muslim soul as well as territory.
10. Urban terrorism and rural insurgency are the two faces of the Neo Taliban's tactics. The increasing resort to rural insurgency by the Neo Taliban provides an opportunity to the NATO forces to make use of air and artillery strikes to inflict hopefully debilitating casualties on it. The inability of the NATO forces to prevent civilian casualties is playing into the hands of the Neo Taliban. Civilians angered by the NATO tactics are in the forefront of the new recruits for it.
11. There are questions to which correct answers could be found only in the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army and in the headquarters of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). How many of the Pashtuns in the Neo Taliban are Pakistani nationals and how many are Afghans? How many of the Afghan Pashtuns have been recruited in the Afghan villages and how many in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistani territory? One knows their source of funding (the ISI and narcotics), but where from are they getting their modern arms and ammunition?
12. And the most important of all: where are they being trained and by whom? One can acquire unconventional suicide terrorism capabilities by watching the TV and browsing the Internet and in the training camps of Al Qaeda and its associates, but one cannot acquire conventional set-piece battle capabilities from the TV and the Internet. They could be acquired only in training camps manned by experienced conventional instructors. Neither the Al Qaeda nor the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan nor the Pakistani jihadi organisations can impart such a capability to the Neo Taliban in their training camps in the Waziristan area of Pakistan, adjoining the Afghan border.
13. Everyone, who has his eyes and ears open --- President Hamid Karzai and his officials, Western and Pakistani media, non-governmental analysts----could see that the roots of the Neo Taliban are in Pakistan---in the Pashtun majority districts of Balochistan, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Until the roots are eliminated, the Neo Taliban cannot be defeated.
14. The US intelligence agencies, security forces and political leadership are aware of this. The other NATO countries are equally aware of this. Dealing with the roots means writing off Gen. Pervez Musharraf. They do not as yet have the courage to write him off. With Musharraf, things are bad. Without him, they could be worse. So they think. Between the bad and the worse, they prefer to put up with the bad now, hoping they could prevent the worse. They are unlikely to.
15. The US' bleeding preoccupation in Iraq has made Musharraf a more confident man---just as it has made President Ahmadinejad of Iran a more confident person. Both have concluded---each independently of the other--- that Iraq has set the limits to the US power. What the US did to Saddam Hussain in 2003, it cannot do to them. Their conclusion is reflected in Ahmadinejad's increasing defiance of the US on the nuclear issue and in Musharraf's increasing insensitivity to the US concerns over his inaction against the Neo Taliban.
16. The US finds itself with no cards against Ahmadinejad. He is popular at home and has no enemies. It still has cards against Musharraf if it decides to act against him. Musharraf has enemies within----in the political parties, in the circle of retired military officers and in the general population. By helping them as the next year's elections in Pakistan approach, it can undermine him and pave the way for the return of the political parties opposed to him. The Government of the political parties may be less competent, but will be more sincere in its co-operation in the war against terrorism.
17. Of late, Musharraf has been projecting the Neo Taliban as more a resistance movement than a terrorist organisation and saying that it can be tackled only politically and not militarily. He wants the Neo Taliban to have its share of power in Kabul, if not the whole of power. His ill-concealed efforts to have the Taliban, in its new version, re-ensconced in power in Kabul have to be countered if one has to prevent Afghanistan from sliding back to the pre 9/11 days. That could be done only through a regime change in Islamabad---politically through the elections and not militarily. The US has to start working for it now.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com)
As the US-led war against international terrorism completes five years on October 6, 2006, with no end yet in sight, it is uncomfortably apparent that Operation Enduring Freedom has turned into Operation Enduring Taliban in Afghanistan.
2. After having re-established its presence, despite the repeated attacks of the NATO forces led by the UK, in the Pashtun majority areas of Southern and Eastern Afghanistan adjoining Pakistan's Pashtun majority areas, the Neo Taliban is inexorably creeping its way up northwards to Kabul. The sporadic acts of suicide terrorism in Kabul and the anti-US and anti-Hamid Karzai demonstrations witnessed earlier this year in Kabul following a traffic accident show that since the beginning of this year the internal security situation in Afghanistan except in the Tajik and Uzbeck areas has been steadily deteriorating. Neither the induction of the NATO forces nor the raising of a multi-ethnic Afghan Army nor Police has been able to stop the inexorable rise of the Neo Taliban.
3. The figures of the large number of fatal casualties ( about 2,500), which the NATO forces have claimed to have inflicted on the Neo Taliban during the last two months or so have been questioned by the Neo Taliban. It admits that about 2,500 persons have been killed by the NATO forces, but asserts that only about 20 per cent of them are its cadres. According to it, the remaining fatalities were of innocent civilians killed due to the indiscriminate use of air strikes and the heavy artillery by the NATO forces.
4. The NATO forces, while denying the Neo Taliban figures of civilian casualties, do admit that civilian casualties have taken place, but in much smaller number. They attribute this to the Neo Taliban's practice of taking shelter in the midst of civilian population when chased by the NATO forces.
5. The Neo Taliban is qualitatively different from the pre--October 7, 2001 Taliban. The Taliban of the past was a ragtag militia of students recruited from the Deobandi madrasas of Pakistan. It was a force with considerable religious fervour, but with very little professional fighting capability. It dispersed and vanished into the villages on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at the first sign of confrontation with the US-led forces. Even the religious fervour of its cadres was not strong enough to induce them to take to suicide terrorism.
6. The Neo Taliban is an increasingly professional fighting force of well-trained, well-equipped, well-motivated and well-led cadres with a capability for conventional as well as unconventional operations against the NATO forces and the Afghan Security forces. Its conventional capability, remarkably acquired over a short period of three years, is demonstrated by its knowledge of military craft and tactics and its ability to use them effectively against the NATO forces.
7. It is also demonstrated by its ability to operate in section, platoon and company strengths and to stand up and fight instead of vanishing at the first sign of contact with the NATO forces. Its unconventional capability is reflected in its increasing resort to acts of suicide terrorism. According to one estimate, there have been nearly 90 acts of suicide terrorism this year. There was more Arab than Pashtun involvement in suicide terrorism last year. There has been more Pashtun than Arab involvement this year.
8. The suicide attacks have killed more Afghans than members of the NATO forces. One would have normally thought that Afghan anger over the indiscriminate killing of the Afghans by these Neo Taliban suicide strikes would have turned public opinion against it and come in the way of its recruitment to its conventional as well as unconventional fighting units. It has not.
9. Whereas religious fervour was the main driving force of the Taliban, a mix of religious and nationalist fervour is the driving force of the Neo Taliban. The Neo Taliban and its cadres view their conflict with the NATO forces not only as a jihad against the infidels, the crusaders and their Afghan surrogates, but also as a war of national liberation against foreign occupiers of Muslim territory. The religious fervour fuels the acts of suicide terrorism and the nationalist fervour fuels the conventional battles. The fight is viewed as a jihad to liberate the Muslim soul as well as territory.
10. Urban terrorism and rural insurgency are the two faces of the Neo Taliban's tactics. The increasing resort to rural insurgency by the Neo Taliban provides an opportunity to the NATO forces to make use of air and artillery strikes to inflict hopefully debilitating casualties on it. The inability of the NATO forces to prevent civilian casualties is playing into the hands of the Neo Taliban. Civilians angered by the NATO tactics are in the forefront of the new recruits for it.
11. There are questions to which correct answers could be found only in the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army and in the headquarters of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). How many of the Pashtuns in the Neo Taliban are Pakistani nationals and how many are Afghans? How many of the Afghan Pashtuns have been recruited in the Afghan villages and how many in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistani territory? One knows their source of funding (the ISI and narcotics), but where from are they getting their modern arms and ammunition?
12. And the most important of all: where are they being trained and by whom? One can acquire unconventional suicide terrorism capabilities by watching the TV and browsing the Internet and in the training camps of Al Qaeda and its associates, but one cannot acquire conventional set-piece battle capabilities from the TV and the Internet. They could be acquired only in training camps manned by experienced conventional instructors. Neither the Al Qaeda nor the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan nor the Pakistani jihadi organisations can impart such a capability to the Neo Taliban in their training camps in the Waziristan area of Pakistan, adjoining the Afghan border.
13. Everyone, who has his eyes and ears open --- President Hamid Karzai and his officials, Western and Pakistani media, non-governmental analysts----could see that the roots of the Neo Taliban are in Pakistan---in the Pashtun majority districts of Balochistan, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Until the roots are eliminated, the Neo Taliban cannot be defeated.
14. The US intelligence agencies, security forces and political leadership are aware of this. The other NATO countries are equally aware of this. Dealing with the roots means writing off Gen. Pervez Musharraf. They do not as yet have the courage to write him off. With Musharraf, things are bad. Without him, they could be worse. So they think. Between the bad and the worse, they prefer to put up with the bad now, hoping they could prevent the worse. They are unlikely to.
15. The US' bleeding preoccupation in Iraq has made Musharraf a more confident man---just as it has made President Ahmadinejad of Iran a more confident person. Both have concluded---each independently of the other--- that Iraq has set the limits to the US power. What the US did to Saddam Hussain in 2003, it cannot do to them. Their conclusion is reflected in Ahmadinejad's increasing defiance of the US on the nuclear issue and in Musharraf's increasing insensitivity to the US concerns over his inaction against the Neo Taliban.
16. The US finds itself with no cards against Ahmadinejad. He is popular at home and has no enemies. It still has cards against Musharraf if it decides to act against him. Musharraf has enemies within----in the political parties, in the circle of retired military officers and in the general population. By helping them as the next year's elections in Pakistan approach, it can undermine him and pave the way for the return of the political parties opposed to him. The Government of the political parties may be less competent, but will be more sincere in its co-operation in the war against terrorism.
17. Of late, Musharraf has been projecting the Neo Taliban as more a resistance movement than a terrorist organisation and saying that it can be tackled only politically and not militarily. He wants the Neo Taliban to have its share of power in Kabul, if not the whole of power. His ill-concealed efforts to have the Taliban, in its new version, re-ensconced in power in Kabul have to be countered if one has to prevent Afghanistan from sliding back to the pre 9/11 days. That could be done only through a regime change in Islamabad---politically through the elections and not militarily. The US has to start working for it now.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com)
MUSHARRAF RELEASES BIN LADEN'S CLOSE ASSOCIATE (5-12-2006)
B. Raman
Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), who is a close associate of Osama bin Laden and who had disappeared from public circulation since March last, is back in circulation. He has been visiting mosques and madrasas controlled by the HUM in Pakistan and addressing religious congregations. He has been appealing to the Muslims to step up the jihad against the American and British forces in Iraq, against the NATO forces in Afghanistan and against the Indian security forces in India's Jammu and Kashmir. He has been claiming that Osama bin Laden is hale and hearty and preparing another major terrorist strike in the US homeland. He has been calling for a united jihad against the NATO forces in Afghanistan under the leadership of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban.
2. It is learnt from reliable sources that the Maulana was kept all these months in a safe house of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and was released on November 19, 2006. According to the "Post", a daily of Peshawar, ( November 21, 2006), "with a new vigour, his followers plan to regroup themselves for helping their Afghan brothers and free the neighbouring Islamic State from the US-led NATO forces." With the HUM joining the Taliban, Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami and Al Qaeda, an intensification of acts of jihadi terrorism, including suicide terrorism, in Afghanistan is likely. The HUM is also expected to assist the Hizbul Mujahideen in J&K in stepping acts of terrorism.
3. The HUM is one of the founding-members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People and Maulana Fazlur Rehman was one of the signatories of bin Laden's first fatwa of 1998 against the US.
4. This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article of March 31, 2006, titled "MYSTERIOUS ATTACK ON BIN LADEN'S ASSOCIATE" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers18/paper1754.html .
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com ))
Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), who is a close associate of Osama bin Laden and who had disappeared from public circulation since March last, is back in circulation. He has been visiting mosques and madrasas controlled by the HUM in Pakistan and addressing religious congregations. He has been appealing to the Muslims to step up the jihad against the American and British forces in Iraq, against the NATO forces in Afghanistan and against the Indian security forces in India's Jammu and Kashmir. He has been claiming that Osama bin Laden is hale and hearty and preparing another major terrorist strike in the US homeland. He has been calling for a united jihad against the NATO forces in Afghanistan under the leadership of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban.
2. It is learnt from reliable sources that the Maulana was kept all these months in a safe house of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and was released on November 19, 2006. According to the "Post", a daily of Peshawar, ( November 21, 2006), "with a new vigour, his followers plan to regroup themselves for helping their Afghan brothers and free the neighbouring Islamic State from the US-led NATO forces." With the HUM joining the Taliban, Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami and Al Qaeda, an intensification of acts of jihadi terrorism, including suicide terrorism, in Afghanistan is likely. The HUM is also expected to assist the Hizbul Mujahideen in J&K in stepping acts of terrorism.
3. The HUM is one of the founding-members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People and Maulana Fazlur Rehman was one of the signatories of bin Laden's first fatwa of 1998 against the US.
4. This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article of March 31, 2006, titled "MYSTERIOUS ATTACK ON BIN LADEN'S ASSOCIATE" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers18/paper1754.html .
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com ))
THE CURIOUS CASE OF RASHID RAUF (6-12-2006)
B. Raman
Rashid Rauf is from a Mirpuri family of Birmingham. The Mirpuris are the Punjabi-speaking residents of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). He disappeared from the UK in 2002 after the British Police suspected him in connection with the murder of one of his relatives in Birmingham. Their search for him did not produce any clues---either in the UK or in Pakistan.
2. Then, suddenly, on August 9, 2006, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed to have picked him up from a house in Bhawalpur, southern Punjab, which he had bought after coming to Pakistan in 2002. He had married a woman related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was involved in the aborted attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001.
3. The Pakistani authorities claimed that he was in close touch with Al Qaeda and that it was his arrest that gave them an inkling regarding the imminence of the plot of a group of jihadi extremists based in the UK to blow up a number of US-bound planes. The discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of many UK-based suspects were then announced by the British Police. The final results of their investigation are not yet known.
4. Since Rashid Rauf was projected by the Pakistani authorities as the most important player in the plot and as the man, whose arrest led to the unearthing of the planned terrorist conpiracy in the UK, one would have thought that his being handed-over to the British for interrogation would have been of the highest priority to the British investigating authorities. But, no action has been taken so far. The Pakistani media had reported that a team of British Police officers had visited Pakistan to question him, but it is not clear whether Rashid was questioned by them and, if so and if his questioning did indicate his involvement in the plot, why they have not so far moved for his extradition.
5. It is clear from the facts available so far that as with Omar Sheikh, the principal accused in the case relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in the beginning of 2002, and Dr. A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist with links with Iran, North Korea, Libya and Al Qaeda, in the case of Rashid Rauf too, the Pakistani authorities are avoiding handing him over to the British or American investigators.
6. Reliable police sources in Pakistan say that the reluctance of Gen. Pervez Musharraf to hand over Rashid Rauf to the UK or US is due to the fear that his independent interrogation by them might bring out that Rashid Rauf was aware of the training of some of the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts of July, 2006, in which over 180 suburban train commuters were killed, in a camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Bhawalpur and that the ISI was aware of his presence in Bhawalpur ever since 2002, when he fled to Pakistan from the UK. These police sources say that the ISI's contention that it came to know of his presence only in the beginning of August, 2006, is not correct.
7. The Government of Pakistan told a court on October 30, 2006, that Rashid Rauf had been detained under the Security of Pakistan Act. A Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorism Judge, Justice Safdar Hussain Malik, passed orders on November 21, 2006, approving his judicial custody in the Adiala jail. This could rule out his early transfer to the British Police for interrogation.
8. Under the joint anti-terrorism mechanism recently set up by the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan, India should also request the Pakistani authorities for permission to interrogate him on the LET training camp in Bahawalpur. If Pakistan refuses to co-operate, the international community should be informed about it.
9. Extracts relating to Rashid Rauf from some of my past reports are annexed.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )
ANNEXURE
EXTRACTS RELATING TO RASHID RAUF FROM MY PAST REPORTS
Musharraf and his officials proclaimed that it was Pakistan, which discovered the plot and alerted the British about it on August 9. They projected Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, as the chief co-ordinator of the plot on behalf of the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. What strip-tease they have been playing about Rashid Rauf! They said he was arrested while crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan a week before the British announcement. Sections of the Pakistani media reported that he was actually arrested in Bahawalpur in southern Punjab on August 8. He had acquired an expensive house there and married the sister-in-law (wife's sister) of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which was designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in December, 2001. After the publication of the report of his arrest in Bahawalpur, the Pakistani officials changed their version. They said they had actually arrested an associate of Rashid Rauf while crossing over into Pakistan from Afghanistan and he led them to Rashid in Bahawalpur. They have not given the name of this associate. They said that the entire plot was conceived by the No.3 of Al Qaeda who, according to them, is based in Afghanistan, but they could not give his name except to say he was close to No.2 Zawahiri. Then, they said it was actually a son-in-law of Zawahiri, who conceived the plot and tried to use Rashid to have it executed. They gave the name of the so-called son-in-law. When it was pointed out to them that this son-in-law was reported by them earlier this year to have been killed in an American air raid in the Bajaur tribal agency, they have gone silent. Musharraf has advised his agencies not to give any more briefings to the media. Musharraf has suddenly become a stickler for the law. In the past, the Pakistani authorities had informally handed over to the Americans without following the due process of the law Mir Aimal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef, Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi Binalshib, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Faraj al-Libi and many others without informing their courts about their arrests. Abu Faraj was handed over despite the fact that he was the principal accused in the case relating to the plot to kill Musharraf in December,2003. In the case of Rashid Rauf, they are following the entire procedure as laid down in the law. They informed a court of his arrest. They produced him before a magistrate and obtained his remand in police custody for interrogation. They have reportedly requested the British for a formal written application for handing him over so that they can put it up to the Magistrate for orders. A British police team is waiting in Islamabad patiently for an opportunity to question him. Any police would have been anxious to question him as urgently as possible in order to neutralise any other threat before it materialises, but not the British. It is now 10 days since the plot was discovered, but the British are yet to interrogate the so-called principal co-ordinator of it. They are showing remarkable patience. It is like a clip in slow motion from a Charlie Chaplin movie. The whole case relating to Rashid is moving at a pace which would make the proverbial snail look a great sprinter. Rashid Rauf may well go down in history as the terrorist, whom nobody wanted to interrogate. The Pakistanis don't want to interrogate him too much lest their duplicity be exposed.The British and the Americans don't want to be in a hurry to interrogate lest their own gullibility be exposed.Moreover, there is a great danger if it comes out that they again let themselves be taken for a ride by Musharraf.Not only will their credibility be in ruins, but they may even face claims for damages from airline companies and passengers, who incurred losses amounting to billions of dollars as a result of the drama staged by the British police. (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers20/paper1920.html)
Bahawalpur, which is the home-town of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), has generally been known as the stronghold of the JEM, but the LET too has a training camp there, which is run by Azam Cheema, a Pakistani national. Azam Cheema alias Baba, who is No.3 in the LET of Pakistan and reportedly co-ordinates its operations in India, is Professor of Islamiat at a degree college of Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab. Abu Zubaidah, the No.3 in Al Qaeda, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in March, 2002, in the house of an LET operative in Faislabad. The US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had come to know of his having been given shelter by the LET in Faislabad. The ISI arrested him, at the prodding of the CIA, and he was flown out of Pakistan by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for interrogation. At that time, there were reports that Azam Cheema had brought Abu Zubaidah to Faislabad after he had escaped from Afghanistan and organised shelter for him there. Despite this, he was not arrested by the Pakistani authorities and Cheema continued to co-ordinate the operations of the LET in India. The presence of an LET training camp in Bahawalpur came to notice during the interrogation of two LET operatives ---Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala alias Abdullah and Mohammad Chippa alias Ubedullah---arrested by the Delhi police in May, 2006. Their interrogation also brought out that they were taken to Teheran via Dhaka with valid visas and immigration stamps on their passports and then clandestinely taken by road from Teheran into Balochistan and then to Bahawalpur for the training. They returned to India after the training by the same route. It would appear that the Indian members of the LET, who had participated in the Mumbai blasts of July 11, 2006, had also travelled to Bahawalpur via Teheran for training with valid Iranian visas and immigration stamps, but with no entries regarding their further travel from Teheran to Bahawalpur via Balochistan. It is interesting to recall that the three British citizens of Pakistani origin, who carried out the London blasts of July, 2005, were also reported to have visited Bahawalpur and that Rashid Rauf, a Mirpuri absconder wanted in a murder case of Birmingham, who was reported by the Pakistani authorities to have acted as a cut-out with an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda leader in planning the operation to blow up some US-bound planes in August, was arrested in Bahawalpur, where he had been living for three years in a house bought by him. He had married a woman related to Maulana Masood Azhar (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers20/paper1971.html)
Rashid Rauf is from a Mirpuri family of Birmingham. The Mirpuris are the Punjabi-speaking residents of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). He disappeared from the UK in 2002 after the British Police suspected him in connection with the murder of one of his relatives in Birmingham. Their search for him did not produce any clues---either in the UK or in Pakistan.
2. Then, suddenly, on August 9, 2006, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed to have picked him up from a house in Bhawalpur, southern Punjab, which he had bought after coming to Pakistan in 2002. He had married a woman related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was involved in the aborted attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001.
3. The Pakistani authorities claimed that he was in close touch with Al Qaeda and that it was his arrest that gave them an inkling regarding the imminence of the plot of a group of jihadi extremists based in the UK to blow up a number of US-bound planes. The discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of many UK-based suspects were then announced by the British Police. The final results of their investigation are not yet known.
4. Since Rashid Rauf was projected by the Pakistani authorities as the most important player in the plot and as the man, whose arrest led to the unearthing of the planned terrorist conpiracy in the UK, one would have thought that his being handed-over to the British for interrogation would have been of the highest priority to the British investigating authorities. But, no action has been taken so far. The Pakistani media had reported that a team of British Police officers had visited Pakistan to question him, but it is not clear whether Rashid was questioned by them and, if so and if his questioning did indicate his involvement in the plot, why they have not so far moved for his extradition.
5. It is clear from the facts available so far that as with Omar Sheikh, the principal accused in the case relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in the beginning of 2002, and Dr. A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist with links with Iran, North Korea, Libya and Al Qaeda, in the case of Rashid Rauf too, the Pakistani authorities are avoiding handing him over to the British or American investigators.
6. Reliable police sources in Pakistan say that the reluctance of Gen. Pervez Musharraf to hand over Rashid Rauf to the UK or US is due to the fear that his independent interrogation by them might bring out that Rashid Rauf was aware of the training of some of the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts of July, 2006, in which over 180 suburban train commuters were killed, in a camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Bhawalpur and that the ISI was aware of his presence in Bhawalpur ever since 2002, when he fled to Pakistan from the UK. These police sources say that the ISI's contention that it came to know of his presence only in the beginning of August, 2006, is not correct.
7. The Government of Pakistan told a court on October 30, 2006, that Rashid Rauf had been detained under the Security of Pakistan Act. A Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorism Judge, Justice Safdar Hussain Malik, passed orders on November 21, 2006, approving his judicial custody in the Adiala jail. This could rule out his early transfer to the British Police for interrogation.
8. Under the joint anti-terrorism mechanism recently set up by the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan, India should also request the Pakistani authorities for permission to interrogate him on the LET training camp in Bahawalpur. If Pakistan refuses to co-operate, the international community should be informed about it.
9. Extracts relating to Rashid Rauf from some of my past reports are annexed.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )
ANNEXURE
EXTRACTS RELATING TO RASHID RAUF FROM MY PAST REPORTS
Musharraf and his officials proclaimed that it was Pakistan, which discovered the plot and alerted the British about it on August 9. They projected Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, as the chief co-ordinator of the plot on behalf of the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. What strip-tease they have been playing about Rashid Rauf! They said he was arrested while crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan a week before the British announcement. Sections of the Pakistani media reported that he was actually arrested in Bahawalpur in southern Punjab on August 8. He had acquired an expensive house there and married the sister-in-law (wife's sister) of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which was designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in December, 2001. After the publication of the report of his arrest in Bahawalpur, the Pakistani officials changed their version. They said they had actually arrested an associate of Rashid Rauf while crossing over into Pakistan from Afghanistan and he led them to Rashid in Bahawalpur. They have not given the name of this associate. They said that the entire plot was conceived by the No.3 of Al Qaeda who, according to them, is based in Afghanistan, but they could not give his name except to say he was close to No.2 Zawahiri. Then, they said it was actually a son-in-law of Zawahiri, who conceived the plot and tried to use Rashid to have it executed. They gave the name of the so-called son-in-law. When it was pointed out to them that this son-in-law was reported by them earlier this year to have been killed in an American air raid in the Bajaur tribal agency, they have gone silent. Musharraf has advised his agencies not to give any more briefings to the media. Musharraf has suddenly become a stickler for the law. In the past, the Pakistani authorities had informally handed over to the Americans without following the due process of the law Mir Aimal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef, Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi Binalshib, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Faraj al-Libi and many others without informing their courts about their arrests. Abu Faraj was handed over despite the fact that he was the principal accused in the case relating to the plot to kill Musharraf in December,2003. In the case of Rashid Rauf, they are following the entire procedure as laid down in the law. They informed a court of his arrest. They produced him before a magistrate and obtained his remand in police custody for interrogation. They have reportedly requested the British for a formal written application for handing him over so that they can put it up to the Magistrate for orders. A British police team is waiting in Islamabad patiently for an opportunity to question him. Any police would have been anxious to question him as urgently as possible in order to neutralise any other threat before it materialises, but not the British. It is now 10 days since the plot was discovered, but the British are yet to interrogate the so-called principal co-ordinator of it. They are showing remarkable patience. It is like a clip in slow motion from a Charlie Chaplin movie. The whole case relating to Rashid is moving at a pace which would make the proverbial snail look a great sprinter. Rashid Rauf may well go down in history as the terrorist, whom nobody wanted to interrogate. The Pakistanis don't want to interrogate him too much lest their duplicity be exposed.The British and the Americans don't want to be in a hurry to interrogate lest their own gullibility be exposed.Moreover, there is a great danger if it comes out that they again let themselves be taken for a ride by Musharraf.Not only will their credibility be in ruins, but they may even face claims for damages from airline companies and passengers, who incurred losses amounting to billions of dollars as a result of the drama staged by the British police. (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers20/paper1920.html)
Bahawalpur, which is the home-town of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), has generally been known as the stronghold of the JEM, but the LET too has a training camp there, which is run by Azam Cheema, a Pakistani national. Azam Cheema alias Baba, who is No.3 in the LET of Pakistan and reportedly co-ordinates its operations in India, is Professor of Islamiat at a degree college of Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab. Abu Zubaidah, the No.3 in Al Qaeda, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in March, 2002, in the house of an LET operative in Faislabad. The US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had come to know of his having been given shelter by the LET in Faislabad. The ISI arrested him, at the prodding of the CIA, and he was flown out of Pakistan by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for interrogation. At that time, there were reports that Azam Cheema had brought Abu Zubaidah to Faislabad after he had escaped from Afghanistan and organised shelter for him there. Despite this, he was not arrested by the Pakistani authorities and Cheema continued to co-ordinate the operations of the LET in India. The presence of an LET training camp in Bahawalpur came to notice during the interrogation of two LET operatives ---Feroz Abdul Latif Ghaswala alias Abdullah and Mohammad Chippa alias Ubedullah---arrested by the Delhi police in May, 2006. Their interrogation also brought out that they were taken to Teheran via Dhaka with valid visas and immigration stamps on their passports and then clandestinely taken by road from Teheran into Balochistan and then to Bahawalpur for the training. They returned to India after the training by the same route. It would appear that the Indian members of the LET, who had participated in the Mumbai blasts of July 11, 2006, had also travelled to Bahawalpur via Teheran for training with valid Iranian visas and immigration stamps, but with no entries regarding their further travel from Teheran to Bahawalpur via Balochistan. It is interesting to recall that the three British citizens of Pakistani origin, who carried out the London blasts of July, 2005, were also reported to have visited Bahawalpur and that Rashid Rauf, a Mirpuri absconder wanted in a murder case of Birmingham, who was reported by the Pakistani authorities to have acted as a cut-out with an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda leader in planning the operation to blow up some US-bound planes in August, was arrested in Bahawalpur, where he had been living for three years in a house bought by him. He had married a woman related to Maulana Masood Azhar (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers20/paper1971.html)
THE AL QAEDA STRIPTEASE CONTINUES (5-5-2005)
B.Raman
(To be read in continuation of my earlier article titled "The Al Qaeda Striptease" of August 29,2004)
How big a catch is Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a 40-year-old Libyan married to a Pakistani, fluent in Urdu and Arabic and suffering from lucoderma, whose arrest was announced by the Pakistani authorities at Islamabad on May 4,2005?
2.They have not announced how and where he was captured, but reports from non-governmental sources indicate that a Pakistani security patrol near Mardan, 30 miles north of Peshawar, had stopped for identity check a man on a two-wheeler with a person in burqa sitting behind him. The person in burqa opened fire and they tried to escape. They were captured after a chase. The person in burqa turned out to be Abu Faraj. In the wake of his arrest, the Pakistani authorities in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have reportedly arrested seven Pakistanis, three Uzbeks, one Afghan and one Chechen.
3. In the past, Abu Faraj had been described as an operative of Al Qaeda in North Africa, who had shifted to Afghanistan from the Sudan along with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and had been assisting him in his work in Afghanistan. Some reports of the past had described him as his personal assistant and some others as one of his bodyguards.
4.He apparently did not occupy any high place in the Al Qaeda hierarchy as would be evident from the facts that he was not one of the top guns of Al Qaeda for whom the FBI had issued look-out notices after 9/11 and that his name did not figure prominently in the report of the US' National 9/11 Commission, which had at its disposal details of the interrogation of all the Al Qaeda operatives arrested in Pakistan, including that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, who was arrested at Rawalpindi in March,2003.
5. Nor did his name figure prominently in the reports regarding the investigation into the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the journalist of the "Wall Street Journal" and other terrorist attacks directed against French and American nationals in Karachi and Islamabad by suspected pro-Al Qaeda jihadi elements in 2002 and the attempt to kill the then Corps Commander of Karachi in June 2004.
6. His name figured for the first time in May,2004, as the suspected mastermind of the two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf at Rawalpindi in December,2003.After the two attempts to kill Musharraf, the only other incident in the investigation of which his name figured was the attempt to kill Shaukat Aziz, the present Prime Minister and the then Finance Minister, in July last year. Initially, the Pakistani authorities had described him merely as an Al Qaeda operative, but by September,2004, they started describing him as the successor to KSM as the No.3 in the Al Qaeda.
7. Similarly, initially, they had projected him as the co-ordinator of the Al Qaeda operations in Pakistan, but by October last started describing him as also the co-ordinator of its operations in Europe and the US as well. Shortly after the July,2004, Lahore arrest of Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan , a Pakistani, who was said to be the computer expert of Al Qaeda , and the death of Amjad Farooqi, projected as another big fish of Al Qaeda, in an encounter with the security forces at Nawabshah in Sindh in September last, Abu Faraj found himself promoted by the Pakistani and US authorities and the non-governmental Al Qaeda watchers of the world as the No. 3 in Al Qaeda and a vigorous man hunt was launched for him in the South Waziristan area.
8. According to reliable police sources in Pakistan, the US intelligence had been convinced since September last year that Abu Faraj was operating from sanctuaries in the South Waziristan area and kept up pressure on Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment to smoke him out. The same police sources believed that he was operating along with Tohir Yuldashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who once narrowly escaped capture by the Pakistan Army.
9. It is interesting to note that while all the important arrests and killings of Al Qaeda leaders till now were made in major towns of Pakistan like Lahore,Faislabad and Gujarat in Punjab, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Nawabshah in Sindh, the arrest of Abu Faraj is reported to have been nade in the tribal areas, thereby indicating that he felt himself safer in the tribal areas than elsewhere in Pakistan.
10. The Pakistani authorities have not so far taken their public into confidence regarding the details of the two plots to kill Musharraf in December 2003, in which four junior officers of the Army and six of the Air Force were allegedly involved. One of the army officers named Islamuddin has already been court-martialed and sentenced to death even before the investigation is complete, but the Pakistani authorities have denied media speculation that he has already been executed. Another army officer named Havaldar Younis has been sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment. Much to the discomfiture of the authorities, one of the Air Force officers, who was being held in custody in an Air Force station, managed to escape in November last.
11.In December,2004, the Lahore Police arrested a band of four hoodlums who used to indulge in mugging. The chief investigating officer projected them as the trusted men of Abu Faraj and their arrests as yet another major break-through in the hunt for Abu Faraj , al-Zawahiri and bin Laden. According to the police, one of the hoodlums admitted that Abu Faraj had takem him in his car to the vicinity of a UN vehicle in February,2004, and asked him to throw a hand-grenade at it. Abu Faraj could have thrown the hand-grenade himself. Why should he take an eye-witness in his car and ask him to throw it? What kind of an Al Qaeda top general he is if he did not have the confidence to throw a hand-grenade himself? Other police officers debunked the claim of the investigating officer that the hoodlums belonged to Al Qaeda. The "News", the prestigious daily of Pakistan, reported on January 8,2005, as follows: "In the post-September 11 scenario, Pakistani intelligence agents admit, there are multiple problems in identifying the actual enemy of the State."
12. In the reports relating to the investigation leaking out of the police and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from time to time, the names of various organisations had figured as the perpetrators of the two plots to kill Musharraf---the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the Harkat-ul-jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ),the Jundullah and finally Al Qaeda. In August last, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the head of the HUJI, was arrested by the Dubai authorities and deported to Pakistan. One does not have the details of his interrogation.
13. One need not be surprised that President Bush seems happier than even Musharraf over the arrest of Abu Faraj, whom he has described as a top General of bin Laden and whose arrest he has hailed as a critical victory in the so-called war against terrorism. It should help temporarily in drawing attention away from the continuing rampage of the resistance fighters and terrorists in Iraq, who have already killed 12 Americans and about 200 Iraqis, mainly Shia and Kurdish recruits to the Police, since April 29, thereby negating the claims of the US that the resistance movement and the foreign terrorists headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were showing signs of internal dissension and loss of morale since the elections earlier this year.
14. In my three decades with the Indian intelligence, I have learnt one lesson. Never make a tall claim. Tall claims have a nasty way of coming back to haunt you.
15. Will the arrest of Abu Faraj turn out to be yet one more striptease act in the long show in Pakistan since the beginning of 2002 or will it be the prelude to the ultimate striptease, namely, the arrest or neutralisation of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? I wish I had the answer.
16. One does not know when the ultimate striptease will come about. So long as the show lasts, let us not leave the ringside seat. Interesting days and sights ahead.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )
(To be read in continuation of my earlier article titled "The Al Qaeda Striptease" of August 29,2004)
How big a catch is Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a 40-year-old Libyan married to a Pakistani, fluent in Urdu and Arabic and suffering from lucoderma, whose arrest was announced by the Pakistani authorities at Islamabad on May 4,2005?
2.They have not announced how and where he was captured, but reports from non-governmental sources indicate that a Pakistani security patrol near Mardan, 30 miles north of Peshawar, had stopped for identity check a man on a two-wheeler with a person in burqa sitting behind him. The person in burqa opened fire and they tried to escape. They were captured after a chase. The person in burqa turned out to be Abu Faraj. In the wake of his arrest, the Pakistani authorities in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have reportedly arrested seven Pakistanis, three Uzbeks, one Afghan and one Chechen.
3. In the past, Abu Faraj had been described as an operative of Al Qaeda in North Africa, who had shifted to Afghanistan from the Sudan along with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and had been assisting him in his work in Afghanistan. Some reports of the past had described him as his personal assistant and some others as one of his bodyguards.
4.He apparently did not occupy any high place in the Al Qaeda hierarchy as would be evident from the facts that he was not one of the top guns of Al Qaeda for whom the FBI had issued look-out notices after 9/11 and that his name did not figure prominently in the report of the US' National 9/11 Commission, which had at its disposal details of the interrogation of all the Al Qaeda operatives arrested in Pakistan, including that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, who was arrested at Rawalpindi in March,2003.
5. Nor did his name figure prominently in the reports regarding the investigation into the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the journalist of the "Wall Street Journal" and other terrorist attacks directed against French and American nationals in Karachi and Islamabad by suspected pro-Al Qaeda jihadi elements in 2002 and the attempt to kill the then Corps Commander of Karachi in June 2004.
6. His name figured for the first time in May,2004, as the suspected mastermind of the two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf at Rawalpindi in December,2003.After the two attempts to kill Musharraf, the only other incident in the investigation of which his name figured was the attempt to kill Shaukat Aziz, the present Prime Minister and the then Finance Minister, in July last year. Initially, the Pakistani authorities had described him merely as an Al Qaeda operative, but by September,2004, they started describing him as the successor to KSM as the No.3 in the Al Qaeda.
7. Similarly, initially, they had projected him as the co-ordinator of the Al Qaeda operations in Pakistan, but by October last started describing him as also the co-ordinator of its operations in Europe and the US as well. Shortly after the July,2004, Lahore arrest of Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan , a Pakistani, who was said to be the computer expert of Al Qaeda , and the death of Amjad Farooqi, projected as another big fish of Al Qaeda, in an encounter with the security forces at Nawabshah in Sindh in September last, Abu Faraj found himself promoted by the Pakistani and US authorities and the non-governmental Al Qaeda watchers of the world as the No. 3 in Al Qaeda and a vigorous man hunt was launched for him in the South Waziristan area.
8. According to reliable police sources in Pakistan, the US intelligence had been convinced since September last year that Abu Faraj was operating from sanctuaries in the South Waziristan area and kept up pressure on Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment to smoke him out. The same police sources believed that he was operating along with Tohir Yuldashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who once narrowly escaped capture by the Pakistan Army.
9. It is interesting to note that while all the important arrests and killings of Al Qaeda leaders till now were made in major towns of Pakistan like Lahore,Faislabad and Gujarat in Punjab, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Nawabshah in Sindh, the arrest of Abu Faraj is reported to have been nade in the tribal areas, thereby indicating that he felt himself safer in the tribal areas than elsewhere in Pakistan.
10. The Pakistani authorities have not so far taken their public into confidence regarding the details of the two plots to kill Musharraf in December 2003, in which four junior officers of the Army and six of the Air Force were allegedly involved. One of the army officers named Islamuddin has already been court-martialed and sentenced to death even before the investigation is complete, but the Pakistani authorities have denied media speculation that he has already been executed. Another army officer named Havaldar Younis has been sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment. Much to the discomfiture of the authorities, one of the Air Force officers, who was being held in custody in an Air Force station, managed to escape in November last.
11.In December,2004, the Lahore Police arrested a band of four hoodlums who used to indulge in mugging. The chief investigating officer projected them as the trusted men of Abu Faraj and their arrests as yet another major break-through in the hunt for Abu Faraj , al-Zawahiri and bin Laden. According to the police, one of the hoodlums admitted that Abu Faraj had takem him in his car to the vicinity of a UN vehicle in February,2004, and asked him to throw a hand-grenade at it. Abu Faraj could have thrown the hand-grenade himself. Why should he take an eye-witness in his car and ask him to throw it? What kind of an Al Qaeda top general he is if he did not have the confidence to throw a hand-grenade himself? Other police officers debunked the claim of the investigating officer that the hoodlums belonged to Al Qaeda. The "News", the prestigious daily of Pakistan, reported on January 8,2005, as follows: "In the post-September 11 scenario, Pakistani intelligence agents admit, there are multiple problems in identifying the actual enemy of the State."
12. In the reports relating to the investigation leaking out of the police and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from time to time, the names of various organisations had figured as the perpetrators of the two plots to kill Musharraf---the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the Harkat-ul-jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ),the Jundullah and finally Al Qaeda. In August last, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the head of the HUJI, was arrested by the Dubai authorities and deported to Pakistan. One does not have the details of his interrogation.
13. One need not be surprised that President Bush seems happier than even Musharraf over the arrest of Abu Faraj, whom he has described as a top General of bin Laden and whose arrest he has hailed as a critical victory in the so-called war against terrorism. It should help temporarily in drawing attention away from the continuing rampage of the resistance fighters and terrorists in Iraq, who have already killed 12 Americans and about 200 Iraqis, mainly Shia and Kurdish recruits to the Police, since April 29, thereby negating the claims of the US that the resistance movement and the foreign terrorists headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were showing signs of internal dissension and loss of morale since the elections earlier this year.
14. In my three decades with the Indian intelligence, I have learnt one lesson. Never make a tall claim. Tall claims have a nasty way of coming back to haunt you.
15. Will the arrest of Abu Faraj turn out to be yet one more striptease act in the long show in Pakistan since the beginning of 2002 or will it be the prelude to the ultimate striptease, namely, the arrest or neutralisation of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? I wish I had the answer.
16. One does not know when the ultimate striptease will come about. So long as the show lasts, let us not leave the ringside seat. Interesting days and sights ahead.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )
Friday, April 10, 2009
AN ISI WITHIN THE ISI ( 7-5-2005 )
B.RAMAN
The investigations into the two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Pakistan's President Gen.Pervez Musharraf in December, 2003, brought to light the penetration of jihadi terrorist organisations into the Pakistan Army and Air Force at the junior and middle levels. Four officers of the Army and six of the Air Force were found to have joined hands with an assortment of jihadi terrorist organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM),the Jundullah, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and the Al Qaeda in hatching the conspiracy to have Musharraf killed as a reprisal for his co-operation with the US in the so-called war against terrorism.
2. They could not forgive him for helping the US-led coalition in Afghanistan in its military operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He became an apostate in the eyes of the Al Qaeda despite his continued support to the jihadi organisations for their activities in India's Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and had to be eliminated at any cost. In fact. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda, had openly called for the overthrow of Musharraf and warned that his continuance in power would help the Hindus of India in destroying Islam in Pakistan.
3. The leadership role in the planning and execution of this conspiracy was played by the LEJ and Al Qaeda, represented by Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the Libyan, who was arrested by the Pakistani security forces earlier this month.
4. There are still many unanswered questions about this conspiracy. Who took the initiative in planning this conspiracy? These officers or the leaders of these jihadi organisations? When was the conspiracy hatched? How did Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Directorates-General of the Army and the Air Force remain unaware of this conspiracy despite the fact that the conspirators had allegedly held some of their preparatory meetings in their living quarters in military cantonments and Air Force stations? Was there a complicity in the intelligence establishment itself? If so, at what level? Why has the Government not been able to identify so far those in the intelligence establishment involved in the conspiracy? Was there an involvement of the Hizbut Tehrir, a highly secretive organisation which came into existence in Pakistan for the first time in 2000, in this conspiracy?
5. These questions have re-surfaced in the wake of the arrest of Abu Faraj and the re-arrest of a civilian employee of the Air Force involved in the conspiracy, who had managed to escape from custody in November last while under interrogation. It may be recalled that when a section of Army officers led by Maj. Gen. Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi joined hands with the HUJI in 1995 in plotting to have Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen. Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), assassinated and then to capture power, the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence had come to know of the conspiracy and crushed it before the conspirators could make progress. But the detection at that time was accidental. The capture of a jeep carrying arms and ammunition from the North-West Frontier Province in which an Army Brigadier and Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the HUJI, were travelling together led to the detection.
6. In the case of the conspiracy against Musharraf there was no detection. The conspirators were able to complete their preparations and actually execute the conspiracy. If Musharraf survived it was partly due to God's grace and partly to the use by his security guards of a remote-control de-activation device.
7.That there are apprehensions in the minds of those close to Musharraf over the role of sections of the intelligence establishment in the entire conspiracy and over the failure of the investigating agencies so far to unravel the entire conspiracy became evident from an interview given by Dr.Aamir Liaqat Hussain, Minister of State for Religious Affairs, to the prestigious "Daily Times" of Lahore, on May 5,2005. An advance summary of the interview was carried by the newspaper on May 6,2005. This summary has quoted the Minister as warning that Musharraf had a lot of enemies ‘within’ who could make an attempt on his life again at any time. He said that there were certain elements within the forces who could attack the General. He added: “No common people could attack President Musharraf, but certainly there are elements in the forces who can launch yet another attack against him. There is an ISI within the ISI, which is more powerful than the original and still orchestrating many eventualities in the country.” The Minister said he feared a threat to his own life because he supported Musharraf's call for an enlightened and moderate Islam and has been given the task of preparing the texts of sermons advocating enlightened and moderate Islam to be used at all mosques of the Armed Forces.
8. Well-informed sources in Pakistan say that apart from the failure of the intelligence establishment to identify and weed out the pro-jihadi elements in the Armed Forces and the intelligence establishment, another cause for serious concern is the continuing failure of the intelligence establishment to identify all the leaders of the highly secretive Hizbut Tehrir (HT) and its supporters in the Armed Forces and arrest them.
9. This organisation, which has built up a world-wide presence since 1953, made its appearance in Pakistan for the first time in 2000. It had little role to play in the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Like Al Qaeda, it advocates an Islamic Caliphate in which the Sharia will be supreme, but says it wants to achieve it through peaceful mass agitations and not by resort to terrorism or other acts of armed violence. Even though it was born long before Al Qaeda, many believe that the HT now functions as the political wing of the Al Qaeda. What the Al Qaeda seeks to propagate through jihadi terrorism, it propagates through political means.
10. There is nothing secretive about its ideological propaganda in favour of an Islamic Caliphate, which is open. What is highly secretive are details of its leadership, organisational structure, methods of recruitment, membership and sources of finance.
11. What is equally disturbing is that the HT, while advocating open AGITPROP (Agitation-Propaganda) methods for spreading its ideology, lays equal emphasis on the importance of a clandestine penetration of the security forces since, in its view, it would not succeed in establishing an Islamic Caliphate if the Armed Forces remain opposed to it.
12. The HT ideology and operational methods were imported into Pakistan from the UK by its supporters in the Pakistani community in the UK. It is said that within five years it has been able to make considerable progress not only in setting up its organisational infrastructure, but also in recruiting dedicated members in the civil society as well as the Armed Forces. It is said that no other jihadi organisation has been able to attract as many young and educated members and as many supporters in the Armed Forces as the HT despite the fact that it has been present in Pakistan hardly for about five years now.
13. It has been carrying on a campaign -- open as well as secret--against Musharraf on various issues such as his alleged betrayal of Islam by supporting the US against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, his failure to "liberate" J&K from the control of India, his failure to condemn the US policies in Iraq etc.
14. In a statement circulated on April 27, 2005, on Musharraf's recent visit to New Delhi for talks with the Indian leaders, it said: "Musharraf’s claim that he has not taken a U-turn on Kashmir is an absolute lie. As a matter of fact, in Delhi, his statement that he has come to India with a ‘new heart’ exposes that he has taken a U-turn on Kashmir. In expressing his view ‘new heart’ he proposed to make Line of Control a ‘soft border. Not only this, the General also explicitly called for working out arrangements where ‘boundaries become irrelevant.’ During his visit, Musharraf for the very first time claimed that there existed a representative Kashmiri leadership other than All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a clear shift in policy. In the past Pakistan was calling for solving Kashmir first, but now it maintains that trade, cultural exchange and other CBMs (Confidence-building Measures) should get preference. Hence, the Indian stance i.e. all issues should not be linked to Kashmir, is now being propagated by Musharraf himself. The Ummah should get rid of such rulers and the Muslims be united under a single leadership by establishing Khilafat. Consequently, it will be able to resolve problems such as Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine with a great ease."
15. There was no credible evidence of the HT's possible involvement in the anti-Musharraf plots of December,2003, but its present call for "getting rid of such rulers", which is similar to the call issued in the past by al-Zawahiri, is ominous.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
ANNEXURE
The "Daily Times" of October 4, 2004, carried the following report on HT activities in Pakistan: Hizbut Tehrir defies ban, continues to draw educated Pakistanis
KARACHI:
They are considered a new breed of Islamic fundamentalists, who study at top British and American schools yet abhor Western values, advocate a pan-Islamic state and favour the removal of Pakistan’s pro-US government.
Militancy and violence is not part of their agenda and they want to achieve their “lofty goals” through a peaceful and non-violent struggle. But analysts say such men, fired by the passion of an Islamic renaissance, stand on a thin line dividing political and violent struggle.
Hizbut Tehrir, an international Islamic group with roots from England to Central Asia, is a recent addition to myriad radical organisations striving to enforce “true Islam” in Pakistan. The group was outlawed in Pakistan in November 2003, just three years after it started operations, but its members continue undeterred, distributing party literature and holding small meetings in efforts to expand their base. Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war on terror, banned several militant Islamic groups, but most re-emerged under new names. Hizbut Tehrir has refused to change its name despite the closure of offices and the arrest of several members.
British and US nationals of Pakistani origin comprise the backbone of this secretive group formed in Jerusalem in 1953. It wants to establish a supra-Islamic state on the model of the caliphate that existed in the early days of Islam. The group came to Pakistan through second-generation Pakistanis living in the West, particularly in Britain and the United States. They claim they had supporters in Pakistan for a long time but formal operations took time to establish.
Many members abandoned what they call the luxuries of the West to come to Pakistan to live among fellow Muslims and work for the country’s transformation into a puritanical Islamic society of their dreams. “In terms of living standards, England is better. You don’t confront problems such as water shortages and power failures there,” said a Hizb member, who works as an executive at a bank.
“But you cannot safeguard the Islamic way of life in Western society. You become alienated,” said the 32-year-old, who migrated from his birthplace, London, to Pakistan two years ago.“We believe a change will come in the Muslim world from places like Pakistan, where an overwhelming number of people are Islamic-minded,” he said in a clipped British accent. Scores of young men like him moved to Pakistan mainly from Britain and the United States to work for the Islamic cause.
With their trimmed beards and Western clothes, they stand in contrast to the turban and skull cap-wearing traditional followers of local Islamic parties. But their anti-West rhetoric is as radical as that of their more orthodox counterparts.
Intelligence officials say the shadowy network is taking root among educated Pakistanis and a few of its members are under surveillance. Group members include engineers, chartered accountants, computer experts and doctors. Several of its members, some on the condition of anonymity, said the number of their supporters was increasing.
“We advocate unity amongst Muslims,” said Ismail Sheikh, a frail 34-year-old British national of Pakistani origin who was arrested for distributing pamphlets outside a Karachi mosque in July.
But an anti-terrorism court acquitted him on lack of evidence last month and he was back to organisational work the same day, saying the arrest only strengthened his resolve. “They questioned me whether I had links to Al Qaeda, or if I had visited Afghanistan,” said Mr Sheikh, a dentist from the University of Wales. He abandoned his medical career in London and moved to Karachi in 1999 to become one of the group’s pioneer members. The government sees Hizbut Tehrir as a threat.
“Its activities were found prejudicial to national interest,” said Abdul Rauf Chaudhry, an interior ministry spokesman. “Its members incite people against the government through their writings and leaflets.”
But Naveed Butt, a spokesman for Hizbut Tehrir, said that to bring about a change one needed political, not militant action. “We are being associated with militancy because we preach an alternative ideology,” said Mr Butt, an engineer from Chicago, where he was first introduced to the group in the mid-1980s.
“The best yardstick for our success is that we were banned within three years of our activities here.”
Ahmed Rashid, author of a book on the Afghan Taliban, said Hizb was a movement based in Europe.
“Young Muslims living in the West get exposure to their culture through religion. I don’t think they have any real popular support. Given the enormous number of Islamic schools and parties, it is difficult for someone like Hizb, which is seen as an import from England, to come in the field and make room for itself,” said Mr Rashid. He said despite its radical ideas, there were no indications Hizb was involved in militancy.
“The membership of Hizbut Tehrir could just be a passing phenomenon for Islamic radicals rather than a permanent one. From here they could move on to militant groups,” Mr Rashid said.
The investigations into the two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Pakistan's President Gen.Pervez Musharraf in December, 2003, brought to light the penetration of jihadi terrorist organisations into the Pakistan Army and Air Force at the junior and middle levels. Four officers of the Army and six of the Air Force were found to have joined hands with an assortment of jihadi terrorist organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM),the Jundullah, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and the Al Qaeda in hatching the conspiracy to have Musharraf killed as a reprisal for his co-operation with the US in the so-called war against terrorism.
2. They could not forgive him for helping the US-led coalition in Afghanistan in its military operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He became an apostate in the eyes of the Al Qaeda despite his continued support to the jihadi organisations for their activities in India's Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and had to be eliminated at any cost. In fact. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda, had openly called for the overthrow of Musharraf and warned that his continuance in power would help the Hindus of India in destroying Islam in Pakistan.
3. The leadership role in the planning and execution of this conspiracy was played by the LEJ and Al Qaeda, represented by Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the Libyan, who was arrested by the Pakistani security forces earlier this month.
4. There are still many unanswered questions about this conspiracy. Who took the initiative in planning this conspiracy? These officers or the leaders of these jihadi organisations? When was the conspiracy hatched? How did Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Directorates-General of the Army and the Air Force remain unaware of this conspiracy despite the fact that the conspirators had allegedly held some of their preparatory meetings in their living quarters in military cantonments and Air Force stations? Was there a complicity in the intelligence establishment itself? If so, at what level? Why has the Government not been able to identify so far those in the intelligence establishment involved in the conspiracy? Was there an involvement of the Hizbut Tehrir, a highly secretive organisation which came into existence in Pakistan for the first time in 2000, in this conspiracy?
5. These questions have re-surfaced in the wake of the arrest of Abu Faraj and the re-arrest of a civilian employee of the Air Force involved in the conspiracy, who had managed to escape from custody in November last while under interrogation. It may be recalled that when a section of Army officers led by Maj. Gen. Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi joined hands with the HUJI in 1995 in plotting to have Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen. Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), assassinated and then to capture power, the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence had come to know of the conspiracy and crushed it before the conspirators could make progress. But the detection at that time was accidental. The capture of a jeep carrying arms and ammunition from the North-West Frontier Province in which an Army Brigadier and Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the HUJI, were travelling together led to the detection.
6. In the case of the conspiracy against Musharraf there was no detection. The conspirators were able to complete their preparations and actually execute the conspiracy. If Musharraf survived it was partly due to God's grace and partly to the use by his security guards of a remote-control de-activation device.
7.That there are apprehensions in the minds of those close to Musharraf over the role of sections of the intelligence establishment in the entire conspiracy and over the failure of the investigating agencies so far to unravel the entire conspiracy became evident from an interview given by Dr.Aamir Liaqat Hussain, Minister of State for Religious Affairs, to the prestigious "Daily Times" of Lahore, on May 5,2005. An advance summary of the interview was carried by the newspaper on May 6,2005. This summary has quoted the Minister as warning that Musharraf had a lot of enemies ‘within’ who could make an attempt on his life again at any time. He said that there were certain elements within the forces who could attack the General. He added: “No common people could attack President Musharraf, but certainly there are elements in the forces who can launch yet another attack against him. There is an ISI within the ISI, which is more powerful than the original and still orchestrating many eventualities in the country.” The Minister said he feared a threat to his own life because he supported Musharraf's call for an enlightened and moderate Islam and has been given the task of preparing the texts of sermons advocating enlightened and moderate Islam to be used at all mosques of the Armed Forces.
8. Well-informed sources in Pakistan say that apart from the failure of the intelligence establishment to identify and weed out the pro-jihadi elements in the Armed Forces and the intelligence establishment, another cause for serious concern is the continuing failure of the intelligence establishment to identify all the leaders of the highly secretive Hizbut Tehrir (HT) and its supporters in the Armed Forces and arrest them.
9. This organisation, which has built up a world-wide presence since 1953, made its appearance in Pakistan for the first time in 2000. It had little role to play in the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Like Al Qaeda, it advocates an Islamic Caliphate in which the Sharia will be supreme, but says it wants to achieve it through peaceful mass agitations and not by resort to terrorism or other acts of armed violence. Even though it was born long before Al Qaeda, many believe that the HT now functions as the political wing of the Al Qaeda. What the Al Qaeda seeks to propagate through jihadi terrorism, it propagates through political means.
10. There is nothing secretive about its ideological propaganda in favour of an Islamic Caliphate, which is open. What is highly secretive are details of its leadership, organisational structure, methods of recruitment, membership and sources of finance.
11. What is equally disturbing is that the HT, while advocating open AGITPROP (Agitation-Propaganda) methods for spreading its ideology, lays equal emphasis on the importance of a clandestine penetration of the security forces since, in its view, it would not succeed in establishing an Islamic Caliphate if the Armed Forces remain opposed to it.
12. The HT ideology and operational methods were imported into Pakistan from the UK by its supporters in the Pakistani community in the UK. It is said that within five years it has been able to make considerable progress not only in setting up its organisational infrastructure, but also in recruiting dedicated members in the civil society as well as the Armed Forces. It is said that no other jihadi organisation has been able to attract as many young and educated members and as many supporters in the Armed Forces as the HT despite the fact that it has been present in Pakistan hardly for about five years now.
13. It has been carrying on a campaign -- open as well as secret--against Musharraf on various issues such as his alleged betrayal of Islam by supporting the US against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, his failure to "liberate" J&K from the control of India, his failure to condemn the US policies in Iraq etc.
14. In a statement circulated on April 27, 2005, on Musharraf's recent visit to New Delhi for talks with the Indian leaders, it said: "Musharraf’s claim that he has not taken a U-turn on Kashmir is an absolute lie. As a matter of fact, in Delhi, his statement that he has come to India with a ‘new heart’ exposes that he has taken a U-turn on Kashmir. In expressing his view ‘new heart’ he proposed to make Line of Control a ‘soft border. Not only this, the General also explicitly called for working out arrangements where ‘boundaries become irrelevant.’ During his visit, Musharraf for the very first time claimed that there existed a representative Kashmiri leadership other than All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a clear shift in policy. In the past Pakistan was calling for solving Kashmir first, but now it maintains that trade, cultural exchange and other CBMs (Confidence-building Measures) should get preference. Hence, the Indian stance i.e. all issues should not be linked to Kashmir, is now being propagated by Musharraf himself. The Ummah should get rid of such rulers and the Muslims be united under a single leadership by establishing Khilafat. Consequently, it will be able to resolve problems such as Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine with a great ease."
15. There was no credible evidence of the HT's possible involvement in the anti-Musharraf plots of December,2003, but its present call for "getting rid of such rulers", which is similar to the call issued in the past by al-Zawahiri, is ominous.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
ANNEXURE
The "Daily Times" of October 4, 2004, carried the following report on HT activities in Pakistan: Hizbut Tehrir defies ban, continues to draw educated Pakistanis
KARACHI:
They are considered a new breed of Islamic fundamentalists, who study at top British and American schools yet abhor Western values, advocate a pan-Islamic state and favour the removal of Pakistan’s pro-US government.
Militancy and violence is not part of their agenda and they want to achieve their “lofty goals” through a peaceful and non-violent struggle. But analysts say such men, fired by the passion of an Islamic renaissance, stand on a thin line dividing political and violent struggle.
Hizbut Tehrir, an international Islamic group with roots from England to Central Asia, is a recent addition to myriad radical organisations striving to enforce “true Islam” in Pakistan. The group was outlawed in Pakistan in November 2003, just three years after it started operations, but its members continue undeterred, distributing party literature and holding small meetings in efforts to expand their base. Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war on terror, banned several militant Islamic groups, but most re-emerged under new names. Hizbut Tehrir has refused to change its name despite the closure of offices and the arrest of several members.
British and US nationals of Pakistani origin comprise the backbone of this secretive group formed in Jerusalem in 1953. It wants to establish a supra-Islamic state on the model of the caliphate that existed in the early days of Islam. The group came to Pakistan through second-generation Pakistanis living in the West, particularly in Britain and the United States. They claim they had supporters in Pakistan for a long time but formal operations took time to establish.
Many members abandoned what they call the luxuries of the West to come to Pakistan to live among fellow Muslims and work for the country’s transformation into a puritanical Islamic society of their dreams. “In terms of living standards, England is better. You don’t confront problems such as water shortages and power failures there,” said a Hizb member, who works as an executive at a bank.
“But you cannot safeguard the Islamic way of life in Western society. You become alienated,” said the 32-year-old, who migrated from his birthplace, London, to Pakistan two years ago.“We believe a change will come in the Muslim world from places like Pakistan, where an overwhelming number of people are Islamic-minded,” he said in a clipped British accent. Scores of young men like him moved to Pakistan mainly from Britain and the United States to work for the Islamic cause.
With their trimmed beards and Western clothes, they stand in contrast to the turban and skull cap-wearing traditional followers of local Islamic parties. But their anti-West rhetoric is as radical as that of their more orthodox counterparts.
Intelligence officials say the shadowy network is taking root among educated Pakistanis and a few of its members are under surveillance. Group members include engineers, chartered accountants, computer experts and doctors. Several of its members, some on the condition of anonymity, said the number of their supporters was increasing.
“We advocate unity amongst Muslims,” said Ismail Sheikh, a frail 34-year-old British national of Pakistani origin who was arrested for distributing pamphlets outside a Karachi mosque in July.
But an anti-terrorism court acquitted him on lack of evidence last month and he was back to organisational work the same day, saying the arrest only strengthened his resolve. “They questioned me whether I had links to Al Qaeda, or if I had visited Afghanistan,” said Mr Sheikh, a dentist from the University of Wales. He abandoned his medical career in London and moved to Karachi in 1999 to become one of the group’s pioneer members. The government sees Hizbut Tehrir as a threat.
“Its activities were found prejudicial to national interest,” said Abdul Rauf Chaudhry, an interior ministry spokesman. “Its members incite people against the government through their writings and leaflets.”
But Naveed Butt, a spokesman for Hizbut Tehrir, said that to bring about a change one needed political, not militant action. “We are being associated with militancy because we preach an alternative ideology,” said Mr Butt, an engineer from Chicago, where he was first introduced to the group in the mid-1980s.
“The best yardstick for our success is that we were banned within three years of our activities here.”
Ahmed Rashid, author of a book on the Afghan Taliban, said Hizb was a movement based in Europe.
“Young Muslims living in the West get exposure to their culture through religion. I don’t think they have any real popular support. Given the enormous number of Islamic schools and parties, it is difficult for someone like Hizb, which is seen as an import from England, to come in the field and make room for itself,” said Mr Rashid. He said despite its radical ideas, there were no indications Hizb was involved in militancy.
“The membership of Hizbut Tehrir could just be a passing phenomenon for Islamic radicals rather than a permanent one. From here they could move on to militant groups,” Mr Rashid said.
CIA'S EXASPERATION WITH PAKISTAN (21-6-2005)
B.RAMAN
The exasperation of Porter Goss, the Director of the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with Pakistan's role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other remnants of the Al Qaeda, is evident from his remarks on bin Laden during an interview with the "Time" magazine which has been carried by it this week
2. The interview has come in the wake of the arrest of one Hamid Hayat, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, his father and some others by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) earlier this month. They belonged to a 2500-strong Pakistani community living at a place called Lodi near Sacramento in California. Hamid and his father have been charged by the FBI with covering up from the law enforcement agency the fact regarding his having attended a six-months jihadi training at a camp near Rawalpindi during a visit to Pakistan in 2003-04.
3. Hamid was reported to have told the FBI that the camp was being run by the Al Qaeda, but the indications are that it was actually being run by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM--which now calls itself the Jamiat-ul-Ansar), a virulently anti-US Pakistani jihadi terrorist organisation, which is a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formed in 1998. Its then Amir, Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, who was released by the Pakistani authorities after having been detained for some months last year without being prosecuted, was a co-signatory of bin Laden's first fatwa of 1998 against the US.
4.The Pakistani authorities have sought to ridicule the FBI's charge against Hamid by pointing out that it was inconceivable that a jihadi training camp attended by hundreds of trainees, as claimed by him, could be located in or near Rawalpindi, where the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters are located. Coincidentally, Yasin Malik, the head of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), one of the jihadi terrorist organisations of India's J&K, during a recent visit to Pakistan, revealed that hundreds of members of his organisation had been trained in the late 1980s in a camp at the very same place, which was being run by Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a Kashmiri, who used to be a member of the Government of Nawaz Sharif and is now the Minister for Information in the Cabinet headed by Shaukat Aziz.
5. Amongst the members of the present Cabinet, he is considered as close to President Pervez Musharraf. He has had a long history of association with the HUM and Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil and had obtained for the HUM a large plot of land near Rawalpindi for starting a jihadi training camp.
6. Embarrassed by the disclosure of Yasin Malik, Sheikh Rashid strongly denied running any such training camp and maintained that he was only running a humanitarian camp for the refugees from J&K. Yasin Malik also subsequently retracted from his statement and accused the media of misreporting him. He asserted that what he had said was that Rashid was looking after the refugees. He denied having said anything about jihadi training organised by Sheikh Rashid.
7. The loud-mouthed Sheikh Rashid, who has many enemies in Pakistan because of his proximity to Musharraf and his habit of frequently dropping the name of Musharraf, found himself contradicted not only by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), during whose Government the jihadi training camp was started, but also by Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, who was the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) at that time, Brig. (retd) Nasurullah Babar, who was the Interior Minister in Benazir Bhutto's Cabinet, a former officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Hashim Quereshi, a co-founder of the JKLF, who had hijacked an Indian Airlines aircraft to Lahore in Pakistan in 1971.
8. While all of them asserted that it was correct that Sheikh Rashid was running a jihadi terrorist training camp, the PPP revealed that the ISI, without the clearance of Benazir, had got transferred hundreds of acres of land in the suburban areas of Islamabad for starting his training camp. Hashim Quereshi, who corroborated the allegations against Sheikh Rashid during a media interview, was asked whether any other member of the present Cabinet had been associated with jihadi terrorism. He replied: "It would be easier to answer who are the members of the present Cabinet who were not associated with terrorism?"
9. From a study of the various statements emanating from these persons, it is clear that the camp at which Hamid attended a jihadi training course was probably the same as the one run by Sheikh Rashid on behalf of the HUM in a large plot of land got transferred to him by the ISI. However, the name of the camp as given by Hamid in his statement to the FBI slightly differs from the name as given by the critics of Sheikh Rashid. According to the FBI, Hamid had given the name as Tamal, whereas the critics of Sheikh Rashid have given the name as Tarnol.
10. While the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon have been very generous in their praise of the co-operation received from Gen.Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in the so-called war against terrorism, their positive perception of the Pakistani Army's role is not shared by their officers at the field level--- either by the American Army officers deployed in the Afghan territory across the Pakistani border or by the US diplomats in Kabul or by the US intelligence officers posted in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan.
11. The American Army officers have been particularly outspoken in giving expression to their dissatisfaction over the effectiveness of the combing operations conducted by the Pakistani Security Forces in the Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The Pakistan Army's claim that the Security Forces had fought vigorously against the foreign terrorists, who had taken shelter in this area, losing during their operations nearly 230 officers and men has not been satisfactorily corroborated. There are grounds to suspect the casualty figures given by the Pakistan Army.
12. During the last few months, the Pakistan Army has practically suspended its combing operations in the area, claiming that most of the foreign terrorists operating from this area have been killed or captured or driven into Afghanistan. This claim is not accepted by the US Army officers who have been demanding that the combing operations be resumed.
13. The Pakistan Army has also not taken any action to arrest Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, and other Taliban leaders who have been operating from the Pashtun areas of Balochistan. Since the end of winter, these remnants, with the help of the survivors of the Al Qaeda operating from the Waziristan area, have stepped up their acts of violence in Afghanistan. There have also been one or two acts of suicide terrorism, involving Arabs, suspected to be of the Al Qaeda.
14. The differences between the US officials in Afghanistan and their Pakistani counterparts came to a head last week when Geo TV, a private TV channel of Pakistan, interviewed a leader of the Taliban, who assured the viewers that both Mulla Omar and bin Laden were alive and well. In an interview to an Afghan TV station, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan who is under orders of transfer to Iraq, asserted that Mulla Omar and other Taliban leaders were operating from Pakistan. He asked: "If a TV station can get in touch with them, how can the intelligence service of a country which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces not find them?" The Pakistan Foreign Office strongly protested against Khalilzad's TV interview and described his remarks as irresponsible.
15. It is against this background that one has to see the comments of Porter Goss, which apparently reflect the exasperation of his own officers in the field. India has always been saying that Musharraf has not taken any action to dismantle the training infrastructure of the pro-Al Qaeda Pakistani jihadi terrorist organisations in Pakistani territory. While this was not disputed by the US, it was at the same time not exercising adequate pressure on Musharraf to dismantle these camps because the US apparently felt that these were being used only to train jihadi terrorists to operate in J&K. The reported revelation by Hamid that these camps were also being used to train jihadis from the Pakistani community in the US for operating in US territory has come as a shock to the US agencies.
16.In his interview to the "Time", Goss made the following points: It was unlikely bin Laden would be brought to justice until "we strengthen all the links" in the chain in the US-led hunt for terror suspects. "In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links . When you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play. We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways that are acceptable to the international community." Asked if he had a good idea where bin Laden is, he said: "I have an excellent idea of where he is."
17. He did not mention Pakistan by name, but it was apparent that he was talking of Pakistan. On the Afghan side of the border, it is the 16,000-strong US troops, which have the responsibility for the hunt for bin Laden. If he was in Afghan territory, there was no reason why Goss should have talked of sanctuaries in sovereign states, weak links etc. If bin Laden was in Iranian territory, there was no reason why he should have refrained from naming Iran since the US relations with Iran are already at the rock-bottom.
18. His reference to the need for working in unconventional ways in a conventional world is intriguing. Is he talking of the need for the US Special Forces operating clandestinely on their own in Pakistani territory in order to kill or capture bin Laden, with or without the concurrence of Musharraf? Is the State Department refusing to agree to this? If he has such an excellent idea of where bin Laden is, why is the CIA not using the Predator aircraft to kill him?
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
The exasperation of Porter Goss, the Director of the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with Pakistan's role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other remnants of the Al Qaeda, is evident from his remarks on bin Laden during an interview with the "Time" magazine which has been carried by it this week
2. The interview has come in the wake of the arrest of one Hamid Hayat, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, his father and some others by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) earlier this month. They belonged to a 2500-strong Pakistani community living at a place called Lodi near Sacramento in California. Hamid and his father have been charged by the FBI with covering up from the law enforcement agency the fact regarding his having attended a six-months jihadi training at a camp near Rawalpindi during a visit to Pakistan in 2003-04.
3. Hamid was reported to have told the FBI that the camp was being run by the Al Qaeda, but the indications are that it was actually being run by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM--which now calls itself the Jamiat-ul-Ansar), a virulently anti-US Pakistani jihadi terrorist organisation, which is a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formed in 1998. Its then Amir, Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, who was released by the Pakistani authorities after having been detained for some months last year without being prosecuted, was a co-signatory of bin Laden's first fatwa of 1998 against the US.
4.The Pakistani authorities have sought to ridicule the FBI's charge against Hamid by pointing out that it was inconceivable that a jihadi training camp attended by hundreds of trainees, as claimed by him, could be located in or near Rawalpindi, where the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters are located. Coincidentally, Yasin Malik, the head of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), one of the jihadi terrorist organisations of India's J&K, during a recent visit to Pakistan, revealed that hundreds of members of his organisation had been trained in the late 1980s in a camp at the very same place, which was being run by Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a Kashmiri, who used to be a member of the Government of Nawaz Sharif and is now the Minister for Information in the Cabinet headed by Shaukat Aziz.
5. Amongst the members of the present Cabinet, he is considered as close to President Pervez Musharraf. He has had a long history of association with the HUM and Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil and had obtained for the HUM a large plot of land near Rawalpindi for starting a jihadi training camp.
6. Embarrassed by the disclosure of Yasin Malik, Sheikh Rashid strongly denied running any such training camp and maintained that he was only running a humanitarian camp for the refugees from J&K. Yasin Malik also subsequently retracted from his statement and accused the media of misreporting him. He asserted that what he had said was that Rashid was looking after the refugees. He denied having said anything about jihadi training organised by Sheikh Rashid.
7. The loud-mouthed Sheikh Rashid, who has many enemies in Pakistan because of his proximity to Musharraf and his habit of frequently dropping the name of Musharraf, found himself contradicted not only by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), during whose Government the jihadi training camp was started, but also by Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, who was the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) at that time, Brig. (retd) Nasurullah Babar, who was the Interior Minister in Benazir Bhutto's Cabinet, a former officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Hashim Quereshi, a co-founder of the JKLF, who had hijacked an Indian Airlines aircraft to Lahore in Pakistan in 1971.
8. While all of them asserted that it was correct that Sheikh Rashid was running a jihadi terrorist training camp, the PPP revealed that the ISI, without the clearance of Benazir, had got transferred hundreds of acres of land in the suburban areas of Islamabad for starting his training camp. Hashim Quereshi, who corroborated the allegations against Sheikh Rashid during a media interview, was asked whether any other member of the present Cabinet had been associated with jihadi terrorism. He replied: "It would be easier to answer who are the members of the present Cabinet who were not associated with terrorism?"
9. From a study of the various statements emanating from these persons, it is clear that the camp at which Hamid attended a jihadi training course was probably the same as the one run by Sheikh Rashid on behalf of the HUM in a large plot of land got transferred to him by the ISI. However, the name of the camp as given by Hamid in his statement to the FBI slightly differs from the name as given by the critics of Sheikh Rashid. According to the FBI, Hamid had given the name as Tamal, whereas the critics of Sheikh Rashid have given the name as Tarnol.
10. While the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon have been very generous in their praise of the co-operation received from Gen.Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in the so-called war against terrorism, their positive perception of the Pakistani Army's role is not shared by their officers at the field level--- either by the American Army officers deployed in the Afghan territory across the Pakistani border or by the US diplomats in Kabul or by the US intelligence officers posted in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan.
11. The American Army officers have been particularly outspoken in giving expression to their dissatisfaction over the effectiveness of the combing operations conducted by the Pakistani Security Forces in the Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The Pakistan Army's claim that the Security Forces had fought vigorously against the foreign terrorists, who had taken shelter in this area, losing during their operations nearly 230 officers and men has not been satisfactorily corroborated. There are grounds to suspect the casualty figures given by the Pakistan Army.
12. During the last few months, the Pakistan Army has practically suspended its combing operations in the area, claiming that most of the foreign terrorists operating from this area have been killed or captured or driven into Afghanistan. This claim is not accepted by the US Army officers who have been demanding that the combing operations be resumed.
13. The Pakistan Army has also not taken any action to arrest Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, and other Taliban leaders who have been operating from the Pashtun areas of Balochistan. Since the end of winter, these remnants, with the help of the survivors of the Al Qaeda operating from the Waziristan area, have stepped up their acts of violence in Afghanistan. There have also been one or two acts of suicide terrorism, involving Arabs, suspected to be of the Al Qaeda.
14. The differences between the US officials in Afghanistan and their Pakistani counterparts came to a head last week when Geo TV, a private TV channel of Pakistan, interviewed a leader of the Taliban, who assured the viewers that both Mulla Omar and bin Laden were alive and well. In an interview to an Afghan TV station, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan who is under orders of transfer to Iraq, asserted that Mulla Omar and other Taliban leaders were operating from Pakistan. He asked: "If a TV station can get in touch with them, how can the intelligence service of a country which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces not find them?" The Pakistan Foreign Office strongly protested against Khalilzad's TV interview and described his remarks as irresponsible.
15. It is against this background that one has to see the comments of Porter Goss, which apparently reflect the exasperation of his own officers in the field. India has always been saying that Musharraf has not taken any action to dismantle the training infrastructure of the pro-Al Qaeda Pakistani jihadi terrorist organisations in Pakistani territory. While this was not disputed by the US, it was at the same time not exercising adequate pressure on Musharraf to dismantle these camps because the US apparently felt that these were being used only to train jihadi terrorists to operate in J&K. The reported revelation by Hamid that these camps were also being used to train jihadis from the Pakistani community in the US for operating in US territory has come as a shock to the US agencies.
16.In his interview to the "Time", Goss made the following points: It was unlikely bin Laden would be brought to justice until "we strengthen all the links" in the chain in the US-led hunt for terror suspects. "In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links . When you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play. We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways that are acceptable to the international community." Asked if he had a good idea where bin Laden is, he said: "I have an excellent idea of where he is."
17. He did not mention Pakistan by name, but it was apparent that he was talking of Pakistan. On the Afghan side of the border, it is the 16,000-strong US troops, which have the responsibility for the hunt for bin Laden. If he was in Afghan territory, there was no reason why Goss should have talked of sanctuaries in sovereign states, weak links etc. If bin Laden was in Iranian territory, there was no reason why he should have refrained from naming Iran since the US relations with Iran are already at the rock-bottom.
18. His reference to the need for working in unconventional ways in a conventional world is intriguing. Is he talking of the need for the US Special Forces operating clandestinely on their own in Pakistani territory in order to kill or capture bin Laden, with or without the concurrence of Musharraf? Is the State Department refusing to agree to this? If he has such an excellent idea of where bin Laden is, why is the CIA not using the Predator aircraft to kill him?
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
MUSHARRAF & THE US: THE FATAL ATTRACTION ( 27-8-2005)
B.RAMAN
The London explosions of July 7,2005, have once again focussed the spotlight on Pakistan and its President Gen.Pervez Musharraf.
2. Even before July 7, American and European media was replete with reports voicing concern over the fact that Pakistan was continuing to be the main hub of jihadi terrorism in the world despite the seeming crack-downs against terrorist and extremist organisations ordered by Musharraf from time to time since 9/11.
3. Amongst the developments, which triggered off these media reports were the following:
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A report submitted by the security experts of the European Union (EU) to the European Parliament in October last year, which highlighted the large number of Pakistanis or persons of Pakistani origin detained for questioning by the law-enforcing agencies of different EU countries after the Madrid blasts of March,2004. The fact that none of them could be prosecuted for want of sufficient evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism did not mean that the agencies’ suspicion against them was unwarranted.
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The arrest at Lodhi near Sacramento in California in June this year of a US resident of Pakistani origin (Hamid Hayat), who reportedly admitted during his interrogation that during a visit to Pakistan he had undergone jihadi training in a camp near Rawalpindi. The camp is suspected to have been run by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a founding-member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People. Its then Amir, Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, was also a co-signatory of a fatwa issued by the Al Qaeda and other members of the IIF in 1998 calling for attacks against US and Israeli nationals and interests.
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Three facts ascertained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shocked the American authorities and large sections of their public.
Firstly, Hamid Hayat reportedly stated during the interrogation that during the training the trainees practiced firing on a portrait of President Bush. Thus, a training camp in which the trainees were motivated to hate Bush to such an extent as to create in them an urge to kill him was being run right under the nose of the military-intelligence establishment.
Secondly, a Pakistani cleric, hailing from a well-known anti-US madrasa of Karachi, had managed to obtain a resident visa for working as a cleric in a Lodhi mosque. What shocked American observers most was that openly this cleric was condemning the Al Qaeda and jihadi terrorism and participating in inter-faith meetings against terrorism, but covertly he was supporting the activities of the HUM and the Al Qaeda and motivating young Muslims in the US to go to Pakistan for training.
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Thirdly, the report carried by the “Herald”, the prestigious monthly journal of Karachi published by the “Dawn” group of publications, giving details of the revival of jihadi terrorist training camps in the Manshera area of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). After the publication of this report, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) started harassing Mr.Amir Mir, the journalist who discovered the revival of the training camps and wrote on it. This brought to public memory two past instances of similar harassment of journalists in 2002. In the first instance, the then Editor of the “News” of Islamabad was harassed for carrying details of the interrogation of Omar Sheikh, the mastermind behind the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in defiance of a directive from the ISI not to publish them. The Editor, who was sacked by the publishers under military pressure, went away to the US fearing a threat to his life from the ISI. In the second instance, a journalist of a periodical was illegally detained and allegedly tortured following the publication by his journal of an investigative report by him, which showed that, contrary to the denials of the Pakistani authorities, Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian trans-national mafia leader , wanted for his involvement in acts of terrorism and other offences in India, was living in Karachi under the protection of the Pakistani agencies. This report created considerable embarrassment for Musharraf, who has been consistently denying Dawood’s presence in Pakistan. The present harassment of the journalist of the “Herald’ for writing the report about the revival of training camps in Manshera has led to a number of journalists’ organisations of the West such as the Reporters Without Borders of France addressing communications to Musharraf, expressing their concern over the dangers of the ISI getting this journalist killed by criminal elements and then projecting his death as due to a traffic accident.
4. The suspicion that Musharraf has been double-dealing with the international community on the question of continued Pakistani support to the jihadi terrorists and the involvement of the Pakistani military establishment in the proliferation activities of Dr.A.Q.Khan, the nuclear scientist, has been further strengthened by some recent developments.
5. The first of these developments is the upsurge in attacks on US and Afghan troops in Afghan territory by Pakistan-based remnants of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami since the end of the last winter in March,2005. The stepped-up activities of these elements from Pakistani territory have already cost the lives of 45 US troops and nearly 700 members of the Afghan Army, Police and other Government supporters.
6. Since the US launched its military strikes against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban on October 7,2001, this is the highest casualty rate sustained by the US forces in Afghanistan. Suicide terrorism, which had practically disappeared from Afghan territory for nearly three years, has made its appearance once again. For the first time since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7,2001, Afghanistan witnessed violent anti-US riots instigated by the Pakistan-based Hizbut Tehrir in protest against the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by the US guards at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Fifteen persons were killed in the riots.
7.Who is responsible for this disturbing upsurge in terrorism and other acts of political violence in Afghan territory? If they are from Pakistan as alleged by the Afghan authorities and even by the junior and middle level US officers fighting and bleeding in Afghanistan, who do not agree with the projection of Musharraf by Washington as a stalwart ally against terrorism, how are they able to move back and forth across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border despite Musharraf’s claims of having effectively sealed the border to make such infiltration difficult? How has there been an increase in their ranks since the beginning of this year? After 9/11, Musharraf effectively controlled acts of jihadi terrorism directed against the US from Pakistani territory, while taking no action against terrorism directed against India. Now, he is not controlling---or at least not able to control----even terrorism directed against Afghan and US troops. What is this change of policy, which could ultimately cost him the support of the West, due to?
8. These are questions crying out for an answer as more and more US and Afghan troops die in Afghanistan at the hands of jihadi terrorists operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan. But, the Bush Administration is evading addressing these questions lest its examination prove its policy of trusting and lionising Musharraf to have been seriously wrong.
9. The Bush Administration in the US and the Government headed by Mr.Tony Blair in the UK share a common trait----a dogged refusal to admit their errors. We saw it and continue to see it in their refusal to admit that their unwarranted over-demonisation of Saddam Hussein on the basis of fabricated and incorrect intelligence has been responsible for the current mess in Iraq. And we have been seeing it in their refusal to admit that their policy of trusting Musharraf and closing their eyes to his charade of acting against jihadi terrorism and Islamic extremists could create for them a similar mess in Afghanistan.
10. It is widely known in Pakistan that:
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The ISI helped the survivors of the Taliban, including its Amir Mullah Mohammad Omar, find sanctuaries in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Balochistan and Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and keep their fighting capability intact.
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It helped Gulbuddin Heckmatyar and his followers in the Hizbe Islami to re-enter Pakistan from Iran, where they had taken sanctuary before 9/11, and facilitated an understanding between the Taliban and the Hizbe Islami to operate jointly in Afghan territory.
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While claiming to have effectively sealed the border during the US’ Operation Tora Bora against Osama bin Laden and other survivors of the Al Qaeda towards the end of 2001, the Pakistan Army quietly let them take shelter in Pakistani territory.
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The ISI and other Pakistani intelligence agencies rounded up only those operatives of the Al Qaeda about whose presence in Pakistani territory, the US agencies had independently procured precise intelligence and avoided action against those, including bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, about whose location the US agencies were unable to get such precise intelligence.
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The Pakistani Army and intelligence agencies allowed many of the survivors of the Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi organisations, which are members of the IIF, to go to Iraq in 2003 to start a new front of the jihad against the US. Now that the jihad in Iraq has become self-sustaining as a result of the induction of a large number of Saudis, Syrians, Kuwaitis and others, those who went from Pakistan have been sent back to Pakistan on the orders of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the leader of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, in order to re-activate the original front of the global jihad against the US. The Pakistani agencies closed their eyes to the return of these jihad-hardened terrorists to Afghanistan through Pakistani territory.
11. There has been a certain method in the manner in which Musharraf has repeatedly hoodwinked the US and other countries of the West---whether in matters relating to jihadi terrorism from Pakistani territory or nuclear proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
12. First, totally deny any wrong-doing by Pakistan so long as he feels the international community has no strong evidence against him. Second, admit the wrong-doing, wholly or partly, when he feels the US has got hold of some evidence against Pakistan, but blame the wrong-doing on others--- the fundamentalist and jihadi organisations in the case of terrorism and A.Q.Khan in the case of nuclear proliferation--- and deny any complicity of the Pakistani Army. Third, launch a flurry of actions against the wrong-doers as projected by him.Four, slow down and ultimately call off the actions when he feels the US and international attention is diverted elsewhere. Five, re-start the charade when he finds that their attention is back on him and Pakistan.
13.We have been seeing the re-start of the charade on the jihad in Afghanistan since May,2005. Till May 2005, Musharraf and his officers were indignantly denying allegations emanating from US diplomats and military officers in Afghanistan about the activities of the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the Hizbe Islami from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. After the deaths of a growing number of US soldiers at the hands of the terrorists operating from Pakistan, they have been grudgingly admitting that infiltrations into Afghanistan have been taking place despite the claimed sealing of the border by the Pakistani troops. At the same time, they have been blaming the fundamentalist coalition called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which is in power in the NWFP and is part of the ruling coalition in Balochistan, for these infiltrations and promised to act against them.
14. In media interviews, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI), which is an important constituent of the MMA, has strongly denied any MMA role in the recent infiltrations into Afghanistan and the subsequent upsurge in attacks on the US and Afghan security forces. He has alleged that it was the Army itself, which has facilitated these infiltrations and that it is now trying to put the blame on the fundamentalists.
15. The “News”, the prestigious daily, in its issue of August 8,2005, has quoted the Maulana as saying as follows: “ If people are being sent to Afghanistan, then it must be seen who is transporting people to Afghanistan via black road after crossing military checkposts. Is any common civilian capable of doing so? Similarly, if people are taken to military camps, then who takes them to the camps in Manshera and elsewhere? Neither the tribal elders nor the common people can do that. Whom such allegations (against the fundamentalists) are meant to deceive---Washington, the West or our own nation?”
16. The same day, the prestigious “Daily Times” of Lahore quoted the Maulana as saying as follows: “They (the Army) must also give the nation the identities of the men being moved from Waziristan to militant camps in Manshera. This is hypocrisy. The rulers are not only trying to deceive the US and the West, but also hoodwinking the entire nation. We ask the rulers to reveal the identities of the people being transported to Afghanistan from Waziristan in private vehicles. Reveal who is supervising their trouble-free entry into Afghanistan and reasons for their infiltration. We will have to openly tell the world whether we want to support jihadis or crack down on them. We can’t afford to be hypocritical anymore.” The Maulana warned that if pressured he would reveal more facts that would open a Pandora’s Box. Musharraf has maintained a discreet silence on the allegations against the Army.
17. Thus, everybody in Pakistan is agreed that there has been large-scale infiltration of jihadi terrorist elements into Afghanistan from Pakistan since May,2005, and that they are responsible for the current upsurge in attacks on the US and Afghan forces. The only difference is as to who is responsible for this infiltration and why. Musharraf and the Army blame the MMA Government in the NWFP for facilitating this infiltration. MMA leaders strongly deny this and accuse the Army of facilitating this infiltration and putting the blame on the fundamentalists.
18. Why should Musharraf covertly facilitate this infiltration and the attacks on the US and Afghan forces, while openly condemning it----in a double-dealing and an act of dissimulation, which bring to mind the act of the cleric in the Lodhi mosque in California, who was active in joining inter-faith groups campaigning against terrorism as one of their staunch allies and at the same time, was covertly helping the Al Qaeda and the HUM?
19. Two reasons are cited by well-informed sources in Pakistan for Musharraf’s duplicity. First, to save his own life and to prevent these pro-bin Laden jihadis from creating trouble for him in Pakistan, they say that he has made a secret deal with them. Under this deal, he would allow them to operate freely in Afghanistan so long as they do not operate in Pakistani territory. They point out that there have been no more attempts by the pro-bin Laden jihadis and their supporters in the Army to kill Musharraf since the two failed attempts in December, 2003. There have been no major terrorist attacks attributable to the Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistani territory since the middle of last year, when they unsuccessfully tried to kill Mr.Shaukat Aziz, the then Finance Minister and presently the Prime Minister.
20. The second reason cited is the concern in the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment over the implications of a long stay of the US and other NATO forces in Afghan territory to Pakistan’s strategic objective of using Afghanistan as a rear base for its activities against India.
21. It would be logical to ask: By following such a deceitful policy, Musharraf runs the risk of losing the hard-earned American political, economic and military support to his regime. Would it not be suicidal for him to do so? That is Musharraf in a nutshell. Not hesitating to indulge in deceitful actions if they were in his and Pakistan’s interests, so long as there is no danger of his being caught in his duplicity.
22. This duplicity, which became evident in the two seeming crack-downs on jihadi terrorists, extremists and madrasas ordered by him after 9/11, has again become evident in the implementation of the third crack-down ordered by him after the investigation by the London Police into the July 7 explosions determined that three of the four terrorists involved in the explosions were British citizens of Pakistani origin, who had visited Pakistan in the months before the explosions. One of them had stayed in the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Muridke, near Lahore, and met a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), who was allegedly involved in a terrorist strike on a church congregation at Islamabad in March,2002, in which the wife of an officer of the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US and their daughter were killed.
23. A literal army of Western journalists descended on Pakistan not only to investigate the activities in Pakistan of these three perpetrators of the July 7 blasts, but also to enquire into the effectiveness of the implementation of the two crack-downs ordered by Musharraf in 2002 with great fanfare, which won him praise from the Bush administration as the US’ stalwart ally in the so-called war against terrorism.
24. What did they find?
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That the jihadi terrorist organisations ostensibly banned by Musharraf in 2002 continue to function under different names and run terrorist training camps.
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That the LET, one of the banned jihadi organisations, was co-ordinating the activities of the IIF on behalf of the Al Qaeda and had opened secret cells in a number of Western countries.
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That the leaders and cadres of these organisations arrested in 2002 on the orders of Musharraf or placed under house arrest, have been released on the ground that there was no evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory.
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That the freezing of the bank accounts of the banned organisations under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 has not affected the flow of money into new accounts opened by them under different names.
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That there is a free flow of heroin money from Afghanistan into Pakistan adding to the coffers of the Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations.
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That no action has been taken by the Pakistani agencies to trace bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and to prevent the flow of money and volunteers to Iraq.
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That only a half of the about 12,000 madrasas had complied with an order issued by Musharraf in 2002 to register themselves with the Government under the Societies Act. The remaining had defied his orders and refused to register themselves. No action had been taken against them.
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That the decision to launch a jihad in Southern Thailand in January,2004, was taken at a secret meeting of the jihadi leaders held in Lahore and that 1,200 Muslims from Southern Thailand, known locally as Pattanis, are studying in the Pakistani madrasas.
25. In 1993, the Pakistani agencies, reportedly on a tip-off from the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation, had found a brother of Hambali of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and some other Indonesians and Malaysians studying in a madrasa of the LET in Karachi. They arrested them and deported them to their countries.
26. Thereafter, Musharraf had ostensibly issued an order for a strict control over the admission of foreign students into the madrasas. Their admission was made conditional on their governments issuing a no objection certificate. Despite this, nearly 6,500 foreign students were studying in the madrasas as on July 7,2005. Of these, 2,500 were the children of the Afghan refugees staying in the NWFP, Balochistan and the FATA. About 1,400 had joined the madrasas legally after obtaining a study visa from the Pakistani diplomatic mission in their country for the specific purpose of joining a madrasa. The remaining 2,600 had joined the madrasas illegally. That is, they arrived in Pakistan on tourist visas, joined a madrasa and overstayed their stay or got their stay regularised with the help of their contacts in the Pakistani jihadi organisations.
27. Apparently embarrassed by these disclosures, Musharraf admitted during a talk with foreign media personnel that the two crack-downs ordered by him in 2002 had not been satisfactorily implemented because of fears of a backlash from the religious elements at a time when he feared a military confrontation with India. He assured them that the third crack-down ordered by him after the London blasts would be implemented seriously.
28. What are the details of the crack-down ordered by him after the London blasts and how are they being implemented?
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He has ordered the police to arrest the leaders and cadres of all organisations banned in 2002 under whatever name they may be operating. Nearly a month after the issue of the orders, only about 200 cadres have been arrested. None of the leaders has been arrested,
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He has ordered all unregistered madrasas to register themselves before December 31,2005. At the same time, Government spokesmen have assured the officials of the madrasas that the purpose of the registration is to maintain a correct data-base of the madrasas in the country and that the registration would be voluntary. Non-registration would not entail any penal consequences.
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Organisations registered under the Societies Act are required to submit annual audited statements of their accounts, indicating details of income and expenditure and identifying the sources of funding. If the Government is not satisfied with the auditing, it could order an independent audit. The madrasas have been assured that they need not identify the sources of their funding and that the provision for an independent audit would not apply to them.
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He has ordered the expulsion of only the 1,400 foreign students who have legally enrolled themselves in the madrasas. The 2,500 children of Afghan refugees have been exempted from the expulsion orders. They are the recruiting reserves of the Taliban and the Hizbe Islami. The expulsion orders have not been made applicable to the 2,600 foreign students, who have enrolled themselves illegally on the ground that the Government does not have data regarding them. The illegal enrollments have been mostly in the madrasas controlled by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam, the LET, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Jammat-ul-Fuqra (JUF) and other fundamentalist and jihadi terrorist organisations. They would thus be spared of expulsions. Those, who have legally enrolled themselves, are mostly in madrasas run by genuine educational foundations, who have already registered themselves and are not linked to fundamentalist and jihadi organisations. They have been regularly feeding to the Government details of foreign students studying in them.
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As he did in 2002, Musharraf has once again announced that the madrasas would be required to include general subjects like science, computer literacy, Urdu, English etc in their curricula and that the extra expenditure in this regard would be met by the Government. To do this effectively, the Government has to either amend the Societies Act, which deals with only the submission of annual accounts and not the curricula, or bring forward a separate law to regulate the accounts and curricula of the madrasas. He has so far shown no inclination to do so.
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The Governments of all Islamic countries have been informed of the identities of their students being expelled from the madrasas, but no such intimation has so far been sent to the Governments of non-Islamic countries.
29.According to Mr.Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Minister of the Interior (“News” of August 8,2005), of the 1405 legally enrolled foreign students from 56 countries in the madrasas, 42 are from the US, 23 from the UK, over 20 from France, four from Canada and others are from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other countries.
30. Since Musharraf does not admit the presence of jihadi terrorist training centres in Pakistani territory-----whether directed against India or the West or other countries--- the post-July 7 orders issued by him do not relate to them.
31. Since the beginning of 2004, the jihadi terrorist organisations, which are members of the IIF, have modified their training methods. While those meant for operations against India, are being trained in large numbers in their camps in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) and the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, those meant for operations in South-East Asia, West European countries and the US are being trained in small cells of not more than four or five each in the safe houses of these organisations----with members of each cell not knowing the identities of the members of the other cells.
32. According to reliable sources, 20 volunteers from the UK divided into five cells, 15 from Italy divided into four cells and about 10 from France divided into two cells were thus trained last year in the safe houses of the HUM, the LET, the JEM and the JUF and sent back to their respective countries for organising terrorist strikes at a time and against a target of their choosing. These numbers do not include those trained by Al-Zarqawi’s set-up in Iraq.
A.Q.KHAN
33. The methods followed by Musharraf for hoodwinking the international community (to use the phrase of Maulana Fazlur Rahman) have again become evident in his recent admission in an interview to the Kyodo news agency of Japan that Dr.A.Q.Khan had supplied centrifuges for uranium enrichment to North Korea.
34. Musharraf had admitted the role of Khan in the supply of centrifuges and other material to Libya only after the British and American officials, acting jointly, had intercepted off the Italian coast a consignment of centrifuges manufactured by a Malaysian company at the instance of Khan. After Libya made a clean breast of the project, Musharraf came out with more details.
35. He admitted the role of Khan in the supply of centrifuges to Iran only after Teheran admitted this to inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Vienna, who found traces of enriched uranium in some of the centrifuges in the Iranian plant. The Iranian officials strongly denied US allegations that the presence of these traces indicated that Iran has already embarked on uranium enrichment. They contended that the traces seemed to have come from the plant of the suppliers---meaning Pakistan—from whom it had bought them second-hand.
36. Musharraf and other Pakistani authorities had for long been denying any nuclear or missile supply relationship with North Korea, even though Mrs.Benazir Bhutto under whose prime ministership it started had been talking about it.
37. Musharraf himself admitted the missile supply relationship in a press interview before a visit to South Korea two years ago, but he continued to deny any nuclear supply relationship with North Korea till now. He has now admitted that Khan did supply centrifuges to North Korea, but has insisted that Khan would have had no role in helping North Korea acquire a military nuclear capability since his expertise was confined to uranium enrichment.
38. Why did Musharraf find himself constrained to make this admission now? For many months, the IAEA had been demanding that Pakistan should hand over to it some of its old centrifuges from the Kahuta plant in order to enable it to compare them with the centrifuges in the Iranian plant to see whether the Iranian contention was correct.
39. Musharraf resisted this demand till March last, when Ms.Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, visited Pakistan. After the visit, Musharraf agreed to hand over some of the centrifuges to the IAEA. Media reports from Vienna indicate that the examination of the centrifuges handed over by Pakistan indicate that the Iranian contention was correct.
40. In the 1990s, Khan had got the centrifuges of the 1970 vintage in Kahuta replaced by new ones. Of the replaced old centrifuges, he supplied some to Iran and some to North Korea and allegedly some to Iraq of Saddam Hussein .
41. After the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, there were reports from reliable sources in Pakistan that before the US occupation, Khan had taken a plane to Damascus and airlifted from there to Pakistan some nuclear-related “material”, which had been moved by road from Baghdad to Damacus.
42. What were those material? According to some sources, those were second-hand centrifuges from Kahuta and documents relating to their assembling. It was said that the Saddam Hussein Government had not been able to install them and that they were lying in a godown. To prevent their falling into American hands, Khan managed to have them brought back to Pakistan via Damascus.
43. It is likely that the IAEA might ask Pakistan how many centrifuges were replaced in Kahuta and where did the replaced centrifuges go? Any detailed enquiry would have brought out not only their supply to Iran and North Korea, but also to Iraq.
44. In the hope of pre-empting a detailed enquiry, Musharraf has admitted the supply of some of the centrifuges to North Korea. He feels that while he could limit the damages, if any, to Pakistan’s relations with the US by admitting the supplies to North Korea, he may not be able to do so if the supply to Iraq is exposed. He is frantically trying to limit the enquiries to North Korea.
45. Unless the US takes Khan into its custody and interrogates him outside Pakistan, it might not be able to establish Khan’s relationship with Iraq and the details of the complicity of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in the nuclear trade of Khan.
46. Annexed is an article written by me on April 8,2003, on the Pakistan-North Korea Nexus.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India.
ANNEXURE
PAKISTAN-NORTH KOREA NEXUS (My article of April 8,2003)
Pakistan's arms supply relationship with North Korea dates back to 1971 when the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then foreign minister under the late General Yahya Khan, visited Pyongyang and sought North Korean arms supplies to strengthen the Pakistani armed forces in the face of a looming war with India.
Pakistan then did not have diplomatic relations with North Korea. The visit led to the signing of an agreement on September 18, 1971, 10 weeks before the outbreak of the war with India, for the supply of North Korea-made conventional weapons to Pakistan.
Under another agreement signed the same day, the two countries agreed to set up mutual consular relations, which were upgraded to full-fledged diplomatic relations on November 9, 1972.
Under the September agreement, Pakistan received from North Korea, in return for payment in US dollars, many shipments of items such as rocket launchers, ammunition, etc. In the 1980s, Pakistan also acted as an intermediary in facilitating arms supply agreements concluded by Pyongyang with Libya and Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, North Korea became the principal supplier of weapons to Iran, which was the target of an arms embargo imposed by the Western countries.
To escape detection by Western intelligence agencies, North Korean arms shipments meant for Iran used to be received by sea at Karachi and from there transported in Pakistani trucks to Iran across Balochistan. Amongst the supplies made by North Korea to Iran via Karachi were more than 100 Scud-B (known as the Hwasong 5 in North Korea) ballistic missiles and equipment for the assembly, maintenance and ultimate production of these missiles on Iranian territory.
In this transaction, Pakistan played a double game. On one hand, the then ruling military regime of the late Zia-ul-Haq collaborated with the US Central Intelligence Agency and Iraqi intelligence in destabilisation operations directed at the Sunni Balochis living on the Iranian side of the border. At the same time, it clandestinely allowed the transport by road of North Korean arms and ammunition meant for use by the Iranian army against the Iraqis. Pakistani army officers were also sent to Libya to help train Libyan army officers in the use and maintenance of North Korean weaponry.
During the Zia regime, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and its North Korean counterpart collaborated closely for the clandestine acquisition of nuclear- and missile-related equipment and technology from erstwhile West Germany and other Western countries. Since North Korea did not have either a presence or funds and other capability to indulge in clandestine procurement from the West, it gave lists of its requirements to the ISI, which procured them and passed them on.
This co-operation between the two countries, the foundation for which was laid by Bhutto, was strengthened during the two tenures of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister (1988-90 and 1993-96). It was during this time that Pakistan failed in its efforts to develop indigenous missile production capability (the Hatf series) and sought Chinese and North Korean supplies of missiles as well as technology for their production in Pakistan.
In her second tenure, Benazir Bhutto visited Pyongyang during which the scope of the arms supply agreement concluded when her father was foreign minister was expanded to include co-operation in the nuclear and missile fields -- including the training of Khan Research Laboratories' scientists and engineers in North Korea, the training of North Korean scientists and engineers at the Pakistani uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta, and the supply of No-Dong missiles and related technology to Pakistan.
Earlier, during Nawaz Sharief's first tenure as prime minister (1990-93), Lieutenant General Javed Nasir, then director-general of the ISI, visited Pyongyang to sign a secret agreement with North Korea's intelligence organisation for joint production, through reverse engineering, of the US-made, shoulder-fired Stinger missiles and their batteries. Some of the missiles in the Pakistani army's stock were given to North Korean intelligence for this purpose. Iranian intelligence agreed to fund the project.
It is not known whether this project succeeded in producing an imitation of the Stingers and their batteries. The ISI was particularly interested in the batteries because it was unable to use a large number of the Stinger missiles in its stocks since the life period of the batteries supplied by the US before 1988 for use of the missiles against the Soviets in Afghanistan had expired.
Throughout the 1990s, whoever was at the helm in Islamabad, the trilateral co-operation involving Pakistan, Iran and North Korea in the development and production of the Scud-C (called Hwasong 6 in North Korea) and the No-Dong missiles continued without interruption, despite Tehran's anger against Pakistan for backing the Taliban and failing to prevent the periodic massacre of Pakistani Shias and Iranian nationals by the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba and its militant wing, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
In 1992, when Nawaz Sharief was prime minister, a team of Pakistani scientists and engineers had visited North Korea's missile development centre, reportedly for joint examination of some technical problems encountered by the Koreans in the development of the No-Dong. The same year saw a visit by Kim Yong-nam, then North Korea's foreign minister and deputy prime minister, to Syria, Iran and Pakistan in July-August. Pakistani and Iranian scientists and engineers visited North Korea in May 1993 to witness the launching of one No-Dong and three Scud missiles (model not known).
Benazir's visit to Beijing and Pyongyang in December 1993 was followed by the visits of a number of North Korean personalities to Pakistan in 1994-95 to discuss bilateral nuclear and missile co-operation. Important amongst these were:
In April 1994, Pak Chung-kuk, deputy to the Supreme People's Assembly, visited Iran and Pakistan with a team of officials from the North Korean foreign ministry and the nuclear and missile establishment.
In September the same year, Choe Hui-chong, chairman of the State Commission of Science and Technology, visited Pakistan at the head of a team of North Korean nuclear and missile experts.
In November 1995, a delegation of North Korean military officers and nuclear and missile experts headed by Choe Kwang, vice-chairman of the National Defence Commission, minister of the People's Armed Forces and marshal of the Korean People's Army, visited Pakistan. The delegation met senior officials of the armed forces and visited Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishments, including KRL. The team included senior officials of the fourth machine industry bureau of the second economic committee and the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation (also known as the North Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation).
During the visit, KRL and the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation signed an agreement to supply Pakistan with No-Dong missiles as well as fuel tanks and rocket engines. The agreement also provided for stationing North Korean missile experts in KRL to train their Pakistani counterparts in the use and maintenance of the missiles supplied by North Korea and for the supply and development of mobile erector launchers for the missiles.
These visits contributed to the speeding up of Pakistan's missile programme and culminated in KRL firing the Ghauri missile on April 6, 1998. Pakistan projected Ghauri as its own, indigenously developed missile.
Despite this, the US state department imposed a two-year sanction against KRL and the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation on April 24, 1998, which expired on April 23, 2000.
KRL had earlier been the subject of similar sanctions imposed by the state department in August 1993 for its clandestine procurement of M-11 missiles from China.
The sanctions imposed on March 24, 2003, are the third against KRL. These sanctions have had no effect either on Pakistan or North Korea.
KRL and the North Korean corporation are State-owned entities, run and managed by officers of the armed forces of the two countries. Pakistan used a US-supplied aircraft from its air force for transporting the missiles. Missiles and other weapons sent by North Korea to Iran in the 1980s transited through Pakistan, escorted by Pakistani troops. Pakistan and North Korea have a joint project for reverse-engineering US-made Stingers.
North Korean scientists witnessed Pakistan's Chagai nuclear tests in May 1998. Pakistan has been helping North Korea in the development of its uranium enrichment facility. The two countries have been training each other's nuclear and missile scientists in their respective establishments. In return for North Korea's assistance, Pakistan diverted to it wheat purchased from the US and Australia, paying for the grain from its huge dollar reserves built up after 9/11, thereby enabling Pyongyang to withstand the economic boycott imposed by the West.
To hoodwink US intelligence, Pakistan transported some of the Chinese and North Korean missiles by road via the Karakoram Highway. Pakistan's diplomatic mission in Pyongyang is generally headed and staffed by serving or retired army officers, who had previously served in the ISI's clandestine nuclear and missile procurement set-up. The latest instance in this regard is Major General (retd) Fazle Ghafoor.
For the US to pretend, despite all this, that Pakistan's repeated violations of nuclear and missile-related regulations are the misdeeds of errant individual entities for which the State cannot be held responsible shows the extent to which it is prepared to close its eyes to what Pakistan has been doing.
If there is one country in the world which has been systematically violating all regulations relating to nuclear and missile proliferation and from which there is a real danger of leakage of weapons of mass destruction and related technologies to pan-Islamic terrorists, it is Pakistan.
US's double standards in this matter are evident from the alacrity and vigour with which it has acted against Iraq despite the lack of credible evidence against it and the care with which it protects the regime in Pakistan, despite all the evidence available against it.
The London explosions of July 7,2005, have once again focussed the spotlight on Pakistan and its President Gen.Pervez Musharraf.
2. Even before July 7, American and European media was replete with reports voicing concern over the fact that Pakistan was continuing to be the main hub of jihadi terrorism in the world despite the seeming crack-downs against terrorist and extremist organisations ordered by Musharraf from time to time since 9/11.
3. Amongst the developments, which triggered off these media reports were the following:
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A report submitted by the security experts of the European Union (EU) to the European Parliament in October last year, which highlighted the large number of Pakistanis or persons of Pakistani origin detained for questioning by the law-enforcing agencies of different EU countries after the Madrid blasts of March,2004. The fact that none of them could be prosecuted for want of sufficient evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism did not mean that the agencies’ suspicion against them was unwarranted.
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The arrest at Lodhi near Sacramento in California in June this year of a US resident of Pakistani origin (Hamid Hayat), who reportedly admitted during his interrogation that during a visit to Pakistan he had undergone jihadi training in a camp near Rawalpindi. The camp is suspected to have been run by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a founding-member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People. Its then Amir, Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, was also a co-signatory of a fatwa issued by the Al Qaeda and other members of the IIF in 1998 calling for attacks against US and Israeli nationals and interests.
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Three facts ascertained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shocked the American authorities and large sections of their public.
Firstly, Hamid Hayat reportedly stated during the interrogation that during the training the trainees practiced firing on a portrait of President Bush. Thus, a training camp in which the trainees were motivated to hate Bush to such an extent as to create in them an urge to kill him was being run right under the nose of the military-intelligence establishment.
Secondly, a Pakistani cleric, hailing from a well-known anti-US madrasa of Karachi, had managed to obtain a resident visa for working as a cleric in a Lodhi mosque. What shocked American observers most was that openly this cleric was condemning the Al Qaeda and jihadi terrorism and participating in inter-faith meetings against terrorism, but covertly he was supporting the activities of the HUM and the Al Qaeda and motivating young Muslims in the US to go to Pakistan for training.
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Thirdly, the report carried by the “Herald”, the prestigious monthly journal of Karachi published by the “Dawn” group of publications, giving details of the revival of jihadi terrorist training camps in the Manshera area of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). After the publication of this report, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) started harassing Mr.Amir Mir, the journalist who discovered the revival of the training camps and wrote on it. This brought to public memory two past instances of similar harassment of journalists in 2002. In the first instance, the then Editor of the “News” of Islamabad was harassed for carrying details of the interrogation of Omar Sheikh, the mastermind behind the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in defiance of a directive from the ISI not to publish them. The Editor, who was sacked by the publishers under military pressure, went away to the US fearing a threat to his life from the ISI. In the second instance, a journalist of a periodical was illegally detained and allegedly tortured following the publication by his journal of an investigative report by him, which showed that, contrary to the denials of the Pakistani authorities, Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian trans-national mafia leader , wanted for his involvement in acts of terrorism and other offences in India, was living in Karachi under the protection of the Pakistani agencies. This report created considerable embarrassment for Musharraf, who has been consistently denying Dawood’s presence in Pakistan. The present harassment of the journalist of the “Herald’ for writing the report about the revival of training camps in Manshera has led to a number of journalists’ organisations of the West such as the Reporters Without Borders of France addressing communications to Musharraf, expressing their concern over the dangers of the ISI getting this journalist killed by criminal elements and then projecting his death as due to a traffic accident.
4. The suspicion that Musharraf has been double-dealing with the international community on the question of continued Pakistani support to the jihadi terrorists and the involvement of the Pakistani military establishment in the proliferation activities of Dr.A.Q.Khan, the nuclear scientist, has been further strengthened by some recent developments.
5. The first of these developments is the upsurge in attacks on US and Afghan troops in Afghan territory by Pakistan-based remnants of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami since the end of the last winter in March,2005. The stepped-up activities of these elements from Pakistani territory have already cost the lives of 45 US troops and nearly 700 members of the Afghan Army, Police and other Government supporters.
6. Since the US launched its military strikes against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban on October 7,2001, this is the highest casualty rate sustained by the US forces in Afghanistan. Suicide terrorism, which had practically disappeared from Afghan territory for nearly three years, has made its appearance once again. For the first time since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7,2001, Afghanistan witnessed violent anti-US riots instigated by the Pakistan-based Hizbut Tehrir in protest against the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by the US guards at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Fifteen persons were killed in the riots.
7.Who is responsible for this disturbing upsurge in terrorism and other acts of political violence in Afghan territory? If they are from Pakistan as alleged by the Afghan authorities and even by the junior and middle level US officers fighting and bleeding in Afghanistan, who do not agree with the projection of Musharraf by Washington as a stalwart ally against terrorism, how are they able to move back and forth across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border despite Musharraf’s claims of having effectively sealed the border to make such infiltration difficult? How has there been an increase in their ranks since the beginning of this year? After 9/11, Musharraf effectively controlled acts of jihadi terrorism directed against the US from Pakistani territory, while taking no action against terrorism directed against India. Now, he is not controlling---or at least not able to control----even terrorism directed against Afghan and US troops. What is this change of policy, which could ultimately cost him the support of the West, due to?
8. These are questions crying out for an answer as more and more US and Afghan troops die in Afghanistan at the hands of jihadi terrorists operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan. But, the Bush Administration is evading addressing these questions lest its examination prove its policy of trusting and lionising Musharraf to have been seriously wrong.
9. The Bush Administration in the US and the Government headed by Mr.Tony Blair in the UK share a common trait----a dogged refusal to admit their errors. We saw it and continue to see it in their refusal to admit that their unwarranted over-demonisation of Saddam Hussein on the basis of fabricated and incorrect intelligence has been responsible for the current mess in Iraq. And we have been seeing it in their refusal to admit that their policy of trusting Musharraf and closing their eyes to his charade of acting against jihadi terrorism and Islamic extremists could create for them a similar mess in Afghanistan.
10. It is widely known in Pakistan that:
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The ISI helped the survivors of the Taliban, including its Amir Mullah Mohammad Omar, find sanctuaries in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Balochistan and Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and keep their fighting capability intact.
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It helped Gulbuddin Heckmatyar and his followers in the Hizbe Islami to re-enter Pakistan from Iran, where they had taken sanctuary before 9/11, and facilitated an understanding between the Taliban and the Hizbe Islami to operate jointly in Afghan territory.
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While claiming to have effectively sealed the border during the US’ Operation Tora Bora against Osama bin Laden and other survivors of the Al Qaeda towards the end of 2001, the Pakistan Army quietly let them take shelter in Pakistani territory.
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The ISI and other Pakistani intelligence agencies rounded up only those operatives of the Al Qaeda about whose presence in Pakistani territory, the US agencies had independently procured precise intelligence and avoided action against those, including bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, about whose location the US agencies were unable to get such precise intelligence.
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The Pakistani Army and intelligence agencies allowed many of the survivors of the Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi organisations, which are members of the IIF, to go to Iraq in 2003 to start a new front of the jihad against the US. Now that the jihad in Iraq has become self-sustaining as a result of the induction of a large number of Saudis, Syrians, Kuwaitis and others, those who went from Pakistan have been sent back to Pakistan on the orders of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the leader of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, in order to re-activate the original front of the global jihad against the US. The Pakistani agencies closed their eyes to the return of these jihad-hardened terrorists to Afghanistan through Pakistani territory.
11. There has been a certain method in the manner in which Musharraf has repeatedly hoodwinked the US and other countries of the West---whether in matters relating to jihadi terrorism from Pakistani territory or nuclear proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
12. First, totally deny any wrong-doing by Pakistan so long as he feels the international community has no strong evidence against him. Second, admit the wrong-doing, wholly or partly, when he feels the US has got hold of some evidence against Pakistan, but blame the wrong-doing on others--- the fundamentalist and jihadi organisations in the case of terrorism and A.Q.Khan in the case of nuclear proliferation--- and deny any complicity of the Pakistani Army. Third, launch a flurry of actions against the wrong-doers as projected by him.Four, slow down and ultimately call off the actions when he feels the US and international attention is diverted elsewhere. Five, re-start the charade when he finds that their attention is back on him and Pakistan.
13.We have been seeing the re-start of the charade on the jihad in Afghanistan since May,2005. Till May 2005, Musharraf and his officers were indignantly denying allegations emanating from US diplomats and military officers in Afghanistan about the activities of the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the Hizbe Islami from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. After the deaths of a growing number of US soldiers at the hands of the terrorists operating from Pakistan, they have been grudgingly admitting that infiltrations into Afghanistan have been taking place despite the claimed sealing of the border by the Pakistani troops. At the same time, they have been blaming the fundamentalist coalition called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which is in power in the NWFP and is part of the ruling coalition in Balochistan, for these infiltrations and promised to act against them.
14. In media interviews, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI), which is an important constituent of the MMA, has strongly denied any MMA role in the recent infiltrations into Afghanistan and the subsequent upsurge in attacks on the US and Afghan security forces. He has alleged that it was the Army itself, which has facilitated these infiltrations and that it is now trying to put the blame on the fundamentalists.
15. The “News”, the prestigious daily, in its issue of August 8,2005, has quoted the Maulana as saying as follows: “ If people are being sent to Afghanistan, then it must be seen who is transporting people to Afghanistan via black road after crossing military checkposts. Is any common civilian capable of doing so? Similarly, if people are taken to military camps, then who takes them to the camps in Manshera and elsewhere? Neither the tribal elders nor the common people can do that. Whom such allegations (against the fundamentalists) are meant to deceive---Washington, the West or our own nation?”
16. The same day, the prestigious “Daily Times” of Lahore quoted the Maulana as saying as follows: “They (the Army) must also give the nation the identities of the men being moved from Waziristan to militant camps in Manshera. This is hypocrisy. The rulers are not only trying to deceive the US and the West, but also hoodwinking the entire nation. We ask the rulers to reveal the identities of the people being transported to Afghanistan from Waziristan in private vehicles. Reveal who is supervising their trouble-free entry into Afghanistan and reasons for their infiltration. We will have to openly tell the world whether we want to support jihadis or crack down on them. We can’t afford to be hypocritical anymore.” The Maulana warned that if pressured he would reveal more facts that would open a Pandora’s Box. Musharraf has maintained a discreet silence on the allegations against the Army.
17. Thus, everybody in Pakistan is agreed that there has been large-scale infiltration of jihadi terrorist elements into Afghanistan from Pakistan since May,2005, and that they are responsible for the current upsurge in attacks on the US and Afghan forces. The only difference is as to who is responsible for this infiltration and why. Musharraf and the Army blame the MMA Government in the NWFP for facilitating this infiltration. MMA leaders strongly deny this and accuse the Army of facilitating this infiltration and putting the blame on the fundamentalists.
18. Why should Musharraf covertly facilitate this infiltration and the attacks on the US and Afghan forces, while openly condemning it----in a double-dealing and an act of dissimulation, which bring to mind the act of the cleric in the Lodhi mosque in California, who was active in joining inter-faith groups campaigning against terrorism as one of their staunch allies and at the same time, was covertly helping the Al Qaeda and the HUM?
19. Two reasons are cited by well-informed sources in Pakistan for Musharraf’s duplicity. First, to save his own life and to prevent these pro-bin Laden jihadis from creating trouble for him in Pakistan, they say that he has made a secret deal with them. Under this deal, he would allow them to operate freely in Afghanistan so long as they do not operate in Pakistani territory. They point out that there have been no more attempts by the pro-bin Laden jihadis and their supporters in the Army to kill Musharraf since the two failed attempts in December, 2003. There have been no major terrorist attacks attributable to the Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistani territory since the middle of last year, when they unsuccessfully tried to kill Mr.Shaukat Aziz, the then Finance Minister and presently the Prime Minister.
20. The second reason cited is the concern in the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment over the implications of a long stay of the US and other NATO forces in Afghan territory to Pakistan’s strategic objective of using Afghanistan as a rear base for its activities against India.
21. It would be logical to ask: By following such a deceitful policy, Musharraf runs the risk of losing the hard-earned American political, economic and military support to his regime. Would it not be suicidal for him to do so? That is Musharraf in a nutshell. Not hesitating to indulge in deceitful actions if they were in his and Pakistan’s interests, so long as there is no danger of his being caught in his duplicity.
22. This duplicity, which became evident in the two seeming crack-downs on jihadi terrorists, extremists and madrasas ordered by him after 9/11, has again become evident in the implementation of the third crack-down ordered by him after the investigation by the London Police into the July 7 explosions determined that three of the four terrorists involved in the explosions were British citizens of Pakistani origin, who had visited Pakistan in the months before the explosions. One of them had stayed in the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Muridke, near Lahore, and met a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), who was allegedly involved in a terrorist strike on a church congregation at Islamabad in March,2002, in which the wife of an officer of the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US and their daughter were killed.
23. A literal army of Western journalists descended on Pakistan not only to investigate the activities in Pakistan of these three perpetrators of the July 7 blasts, but also to enquire into the effectiveness of the implementation of the two crack-downs ordered by Musharraf in 2002 with great fanfare, which won him praise from the Bush administration as the US’ stalwart ally in the so-called war against terrorism.
24. What did they find?
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That the jihadi terrorist organisations ostensibly banned by Musharraf in 2002 continue to function under different names and run terrorist training camps.
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That the LET, one of the banned jihadi organisations, was co-ordinating the activities of the IIF on behalf of the Al Qaeda and had opened secret cells in a number of Western countries.
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That the leaders and cadres of these organisations arrested in 2002 on the orders of Musharraf or placed under house arrest, have been released on the ground that there was no evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory.
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That the freezing of the bank accounts of the banned organisations under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 has not affected the flow of money into new accounts opened by them under different names.
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That there is a free flow of heroin money from Afghanistan into Pakistan adding to the coffers of the Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations.
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That no action has been taken by the Pakistani agencies to trace bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and to prevent the flow of money and volunteers to Iraq.
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That only a half of the about 12,000 madrasas had complied with an order issued by Musharraf in 2002 to register themselves with the Government under the Societies Act. The remaining had defied his orders and refused to register themselves. No action had been taken against them.
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That the decision to launch a jihad in Southern Thailand in January,2004, was taken at a secret meeting of the jihadi leaders held in Lahore and that 1,200 Muslims from Southern Thailand, known locally as Pattanis, are studying in the Pakistani madrasas.
25. In 1993, the Pakistani agencies, reportedly on a tip-off from the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation, had found a brother of Hambali of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) and some other Indonesians and Malaysians studying in a madrasa of the LET in Karachi. They arrested them and deported them to their countries.
26. Thereafter, Musharraf had ostensibly issued an order for a strict control over the admission of foreign students into the madrasas. Their admission was made conditional on their governments issuing a no objection certificate. Despite this, nearly 6,500 foreign students were studying in the madrasas as on July 7,2005. Of these, 2,500 were the children of the Afghan refugees staying in the NWFP, Balochistan and the FATA. About 1,400 had joined the madrasas legally after obtaining a study visa from the Pakistani diplomatic mission in their country for the specific purpose of joining a madrasa. The remaining 2,600 had joined the madrasas illegally. That is, they arrived in Pakistan on tourist visas, joined a madrasa and overstayed their stay or got their stay regularised with the help of their contacts in the Pakistani jihadi organisations.
27. Apparently embarrassed by these disclosures, Musharraf admitted during a talk with foreign media personnel that the two crack-downs ordered by him in 2002 had not been satisfactorily implemented because of fears of a backlash from the religious elements at a time when he feared a military confrontation with India. He assured them that the third crack-down ordered by him after the London blasts would be implemented seriously.
28. What are the details of the crack-down ordered by him after the London blasts and how are they being implemented?
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He has ordered the police to arrest the leaders and cadres of all organisations banned in 2002 under whatever name they may be operating. Nearly a month after the issue of the orders, only about 200 cadres have been arrested. None of the leaders has been arrested,
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He has ordered all unregistered madrasas to register themselves before December 31,2005. At the same time, Government spokesmen have assured the officials of the madrasas that the purpose of the registration is to maintain a correct data-base of the madrasas in the country and that the registration would be voluntary. Non-registration would not entail any penal consequences.
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Organisations registered under the Societies Act are required to submit annual audited statements of their accounts, indicating details of income and expenditure and identifying the sources of funding. If the Government is not satisfied with the auditing, it could order an independent audit. The madrasas have been assured that they need not identify the sources of their funding and that the provision for an independent audit would not apply to them.
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He has ordered the expulsion of only the 1,400 foreign students who have legally enrolled themselves in the madrasas. The 2,500 children of Afghan refugees have been exempted from the expulsion orders. They are the recruiting reserves of the Taliban and the Hizbe Islami. The expulsion orders have not been made applicable to the 2,600 foreign students, who have enrolled themselves illegally on the ground that the Government does not have data regarding them. The illegal enrollments have been mostly in the madrasas controlled by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam, the LET, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Jammat-ul-Fuqra (JUF) and other fundamentalist and jihadi terrorist organisations. They would thus be spared of expulsions. Those, who have legally enrolled themselves, are mostly in madrasas run by genuine educational foundations, who have already registered themselves and are not linked to fundamentalist and jihadi organisations. They have been regularly feeding to the Government details of foreign students studying in them.
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As he did in 2002, Musharraf has once again announced that the madrasas would be required to include general subjects like science, computer literacy, Urdu, English etc in their curricula and that the extra expenditure in this regard would be met by the Government. To do this effectively, the Government has to either amend the Societies Act, which deals with only the submission of annual accounts and not the curricula, or bring forward a separate law to regulate the accounts and curricula of the madrasas. He has so far shown no inclination to do so.
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The Governments of all Islamic countries have been informed of the identities of their students being expelled from the madrasas, but no such intimation has so far been sent to the Governments of non-Islamic countries.
29.According to Mr.Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Minister of the Interior (“News” of August 8,2005), of the 1405 legally enrolled foreign students from 56 countries in the madrasas, 42 are from the US, 23 from the UK, over 20 from France, four from Canada and others are from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other countries.
30. Since Musharraf does not admit the presence of jihadi terrorist training centres in Pakistani territory-----whether directed against India or the West or other countries--- the post-July 7 orders issued by him do not relate to them.
31. Since the beginning of 2004, the jihadi terrorist organisations, which are members of the IIF, have modified their training methods. While those meant for operations against India, are being trained in large numbers in their camps in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) and the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, those meant for operations in South-East Asia, West European countries and the US are being trained in small cells of not more than four or five each in the safe houses of these organisations----with members of each cell not knowing the identities of the members of the other cells.
32. According to reliable sources, 20 volunteers from the UK divided into five cells, 15 from Italy divided into four cells and about 10 from France divided into two cells were thus trained last year in the safe houses of the HUM, the LET, the JEM and the JUF and sent back to their respective countries for organising terrorist strikes at a time and against a target of their choosing. These numbers do not include those trained by Al-Zarqawi’s set-up in Iraq.
A.Q.KHAN
33. The methods followed by Musharraf for hoodwinking the international community (to use the phrase of Maulana Fazlur Rahman) have again become evident in his recent admission in an interview to the Kyodo news agency of Japan that Dr.A.Q.Khan had supplied centrifuges for uranium enrichment to North Korea.
34. Musharraf had admitted the role of Khan in the supply of centrifuges and other material to Libya only after the British and American officials, acting jointly, had intercepted off the Italian coast a consignment of centrifuges manufactured by a Malaysian company at the instance of Khan. After Libya made a clean breast of the project, Musharraf came out with more details.
35. He admitted the role of Khan in the supply of centrifuges to Iran only after Teheran admitted this to inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Vienna, who found traces of enriched uranium in some of the centrifuges in the Iranian plant. The Iranian officials strongly denied US allegations that the presence of these traces indicated that Iran has already embarked on uranium enrichment. They contended that the traces seemed to have come from the plant of the suppliers---meaning Pakistan—from whom it had bought them second-hand.
36. Musharraf and other Pakistani authorities had for long been denying any nuclear or missile supply relationship with North Korea, even though Mrs.Benazir Bhutto under whose prime ministership it started had been talking about it.
37. Musharraf himself admitted the missile supply relationship in a press interview before a visit to South Korea two years ago, but he continued to deny any nuclear supply relationship with North Korea till now. He has now admitted that Khan did supply centrifuges to North Korea, but has insisted that Khan would have had no role in helping North Korea acquire a military nuclear capability since his expertise was confined to uranium enrichment.
38. Why did Musharraf find himself constrained to make this admission now? For many months, the IAEA had been demanding that Pakistan should hand over to it some of its old centrifuges from the Kahuta plant in order to enable it to compare them with the centrifuges in the Iranian plant to see whether the Iranian contention was correct.
39. Musharraf resisted this demand till March last, when Ms.Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, visited Pakistan. After the visit, Musharraf agreed to hand over some of the centrifuges to the IAEA. Media reports from Vienna indicate that the examination of the centrifuges handed over by Pakistan indicate that the Iranian contention was correct.
40. In the 1990s, Khan had got the centrifuges of the 1970 vintage in Kahuta replaced by new ones. Of the replaced old centrifuges, he supplied some to Iran and some to North Korea and allegedly some to Iraq of Saddam Hussein .
41. After the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, there were reports from reliable sources in Pakistan that before the US occupation, Khan had taken a plane to Damascus and airlifted from there to Pakistan some nuclear-related “material”, which had been moved by road from Baghdad to Damacus.
42. What were those material? According to some sources, those were second-hand centrifuges from Kahuta and documents relating to their assembling. It was said that the Saddam Hussein Government had not been able to install them and that they were lying in a godown. To prevent their falling into American hands, Khan managed to have them brought back to Pakistan via Damascus.
43. It is likely that the IAEA might ask Pakistan how many centrifuges were replaced in Kahuta and where did the replaced centrifuges go? Any detailed enquiry would have brought out not only their supply to Iran and North Korea, but also to Iraq.
44. In the hope of pre-empting a detailed enquiry, Musharraf has admitted the supply of some of the centrifuges to North Korea. He feels that while he could limit the damages, if any, to Pakistan’s relations with the US by admitting the supplies to North Korea, he may not be able to do so if the supply to Iraq is exposed. He is frantically trying to limit the enquiries to North Korea.
45. Unless the US takes Khan into its custody and interrogates him outside Pakistan, it might not be able to establish Khan’s relationship with Iraq and the details of the complicity of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in the nuclear trade of Khan.
46. Annexed is an article written by me on April 8,2003, on the Pakistan-North Korea Nexus.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India.
ANNEXURE
PAKISTAN-NORTH KOREA NEXUS (My article of April 8,2003)
Pakistan's arms supply relationship with North Korea dates back to 1971 when the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then foreign minister under the late General Yahya Khan, visited Pyongyang and sought North Korean arms supplies to strengthen the Pakistani armed forces in the face of a looming war with India.
Pakistan then did not have diplomatic relations with North Korea. The visit led to the signing of an agreement on September 18, 1971, 10 weeks before the outbreak of the war with India, for the supply of North Korea-made conventional weapons to Pakistan.
Under another agreement signed the same day, the two countries agreed to set up mutual consular relations, which were upgraded to full-fledged diplomatic relations on November 9, 1972.
Under the September agreement, Pakistan received from North Korea, in return for payment in US dollars, many shipments of items such as rocket launchers, ammunition, etc. In the 1980s, Pakistan also acted as an intermediary in facilitating arms supply agreements concluded by Pyongyang with Libya and Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, North Korea became the principal supplier of weapons to Iran, which was the target of an arms embargo imposed by the Western countries.
To escape detection by Western intelligence agencies, North Korean arms shipments meant for Iran used to be received by sea at Karachi and from there transported in Pakistani trucks to Iran across Balochistan. Amongst the supplies made by North Korea to Iran via Karachi were more than 100 Scud-B (known as the Hwasong 5 in North Korea) ballistic missiles and equipment for the assembly, maintenance and ultimate production of these missiles on Iranian territory.
In this transaction, Pakistan played a double game. On one hand, the then ruling military regime of the late Zia-ul-Haq collaborated with the US Central Intelligence Agency and Iraqi intelligence in destabilisation operations directed at the Sunni Balochis living on the Iranian side of the border. At the same time, it clandestinely allowed the transport by road of North Korean arms and ammunition meant for use by the Iranian army against the Iraqis. Pakistani army officers were also sent to Libya to help train Libyan army officers in the use and maintenance of North Korean weaponry.
During the Zia regime, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and its North Korean counterpart collaborated closely for the clandestine acquisition of nuclear- and missile-related equipment and technology from erstwhile West Germany and other Western countries. Since North Korea did not have either a presence or funds and other capability to indulge in clandestine procurement from the West, it gave lists of its requirements to the ISI, which procured them and passed them on.
This co-operation between the two countries, the foundation for which was laid by Bhutto, was strengthened during the two tenures of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister (1988-90 and 1993-96). It was during this time that Pakistan failed in its efforts to develop indigenous missile production capability (the Hatf series) and sought Chinese and North Korean supplies of missiles as well as technology for their production in Pakistan.
In her second tenure, Benazir Bhutto visited Pyongyang during which the scope of the arms supply agreement concluded when her father was foreign minister was expanded to include co-operation in the nuclear and missile fields -- including the training of Khan Research Laboratories' scientists and engineers in North Korea, the training of North Korean scientists and engineers at the Pakistani uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta, and the supply of No-Dong missiles and related technology to Pakistan.
Earlier, during Nawaz Sharief's first tenure as prime minister (1990-93), Lieutenant General Javed Nasir, then director-general of the ISI, visited Pyongyang to sign a secret agreement with North Korea's intelligence organisation for joint production, through reverse engineering, of the US-made, shoulder-fired Stinger missiles and their batteries. Some of the missiles in the Pakistani army's stock were given to North Korean intelligence for this purpose. Iranian intelligence agreed to fund the project.
It is not known whether this project succeeded in producing an imitation of the Stingers and their batteries. The ISI was particularly interested in the batteries because it was unable to use a large number of the Stinger missiles in its stocks since the life period of the batteries supplied by the US before 1988 for use of the missiles against the Soviets in Afghanistan had expired.
Throughout the 1990s, whoever was at the helm in Islamabad, the trilateral co-operation involving Pakistan, Iran and North Korea in the development and production of the Scud-C (called Hwasong 6 in North Korea) and the No-Dong missiles continued without interruption, despite Tehran's anger against Pakistan for backing the Taliban and failing to prevent the periodic massacre of Pakistani Shias and Iranian nationals by the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba and its militant wing, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
In 1992, when Nawaz Sharief was prime minister, a team of Pakistani scientists and engineers had visited North Korea's missile development centre, reportedly for joint examination of some technical problems encountered by the Koreans in the development of the No-Dong. The same year saw a visit by Kim Yong-nam, then North Korea's foreign minister and deputy prime minister, to Syria, Iran and Pakistan in July-August. Pakistani and Iranian scientists and engineers visited North Korea in May 1993 to witness the launching of one No-Dong and three Scud missiles (model not known).
Benazir's visit to Beijing and Pyongyang in December 1993 was followed by the visits of a number of North Korean personalities to Pakistan in 1994-95 to discuss bilateral nuclear and missile co-operation. Important amongst these were:
In April 1994, Pak Chung-kuk, deputy to the Supreme People's Assembly, visited Iran and Pakistan with a team of officials from the North Korean foreign ministry and the nuclear and missile establishment.
In September the same year, Choe Hui-chong, chairman of the State Commission of Science and Technology, visited Pakistan at the head of a team of North Korean nuclear and missile experts.
In November 1995, a delegation of North Korean military officers and nuclear and missile experts headed by Choe Kwang, vice-chairman of the National Defence Commission, minister of the People's Armed Forces and marshal of the Korean People's Army, visited Pakistan. The delegation met senior officials of the armed forces and visited Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishments, including KRL. The team included senior officials of the fourth machine industry bureau of the second economic committee and the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation (also known as the North Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation).
During the visit, KRL and the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation signed an agreement to supply Pakistan with No-Dong missiles as well as fuel tanks and rocket engines. The agreement also provided for stationing North Korean missile experts in KRL to train their Pakistani counterparts in the use and maintenance of the missiles supplied by North Korea and for the supply and development of mobile erector launchers for the missiles.
These visits contributed to the speeding up of Pakistan's missile programme and culminated in KRL firing the Ghauri missile on April 6, 1998. Pakistan projected Ghauri as its own, indigenously developed missile.
Despite this, the US state department imposed a two-year sanction against KRL and the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation on April 24, 1998, which expired on April 23, 2000.
KRL had earlier been the subject of similar sanctions imposed by the state department in August 1993 for its clandestine procurement of M-11 missiles from China.
The sanctions imposed on March 24, 2003, are the third against KRL. These sanctions have had no effect either on Pakistan or North Korea.
KRL and the North Korean corporation are State-owned entities, run and managed by officers of the armed forces of the two countries. Pakistan used a US-supplied aircraft from its air force for transporting the missiles. Missiles and other weapons sent by North Korea to Iran in the 1980s transited through Pakistan, escorted by Pakistani troops. Pakistan and North Korea have a joint project for reverse-engineering US-made Stingers.
North Korean scientists witnessed Pakistan's Chagai nuclear tests in May 1998. Pakistan has been helping North Korea in the development of its uranium enrichment facility. The two countries have been training each other's nuclear and missile scientists in their respective establishments. In return for North Korea's assistance, Pakistan diverted to it wheat purchased from the US and Australia, paying for the grain from its huge dollar reserves built up after 9/11, thereby enabling Pyongyang to withstand the economic boycott imposed by the West.
To hoodwink US intelligence, Pakistan transported some of the Chinese and North Korean missiles by road via the Karakoram Highway. Pakistan's diplomatic mission in Pyongyang is generally headed and staffed by serving or retired army officers, who had previously served in the ISI's clandestine nuclear and missile procurement set-up. The latest instance in this regard is Major General (retd) Fazle Ghafoor.
For the US to pretend, despite all this, that Pakistan's repeated violations of nuclear and missile-related regulations are the misdeeds of errant individual entities for which the State cannot be held responsible shows the extent to which it is prepared to close its eyes to what Pakistan has been doing.
If there is one country in the world which has been systematically violating all regulations relating to nuclear and missile proliferation and from which there is a real danger of leakage of weapons of mass destruction and related technologies to pan-Islamic terrorists, it is Pakistan.
US's double standards in this matter are evident from the alacrity and vigour with which it has acted against Iraq despite the lack of credible evidence against it and the care with which it protects the regime in Pakistan, despite all the evidence available against it.
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