PAKISTAN & TERRORISM: THE EVIDENCE (8-1-2002)

B.RAMAN

The international community is yet to understand clearly that Pakistan's State-sponsorship of terrorism against India in Indian territory is not related only to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). This started in the North-Eastern tribal areas of India in the 1950s, spread to the Punjab in the 1970s, to J&K in 1989 onwards and to other parts of India, including New Delhi, since the late 1990s.

From 1956 to 1971, it provided safe haven to the Naga and Mizo hostiles in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of the then East Pakistan and gave them arms and training assistance. During the war in East Pakistan in December,1971, an Indian commando group raided the headquarters of the Mizo National Front (MNF) in the CHT. Laldenga, the leader of the MNF, and other MNF cadres managed to escape into the Arakan Division of Myanmar, leaving behind all their records, which were captured by the Indian commando group. The records gave complete details of the MNF's contacts with the ISI and the training and arms assistance received.

From Myanmar, the ISI took Laldenga to Islamabad, where he lived till 1975. In 1975, Laldenga got disenchanted with the ISI. He realised that the ISI was using the MNF to achieve Pakistan's strategic objective against India and that it had no interest in the future of the Mizos.
He escaped into Afghanistan, travelled from Kabul to Geneva, contacted the Indian diplomatic mission in Switzerland and sought negotiations with the Govt. of India, which ultimately led to a peaceful political settlement in Mizoram. During his talks with the Government of India, he gave complete details of the ISI's role in instigating acts of terrorism and insurgency in the North-East. The Govt. of Pakistan totally rejected Indian evidence of the ISI's sponsorship of terrorism in the North-East.

In the late 1970s, the ISI contacted some members of the Sikh diaspora in the UK and Canada and instigated them to take up a fight against the Govt. of India for what was called an independent Khalistan in Indian Punjab. A number of terrorist organisations came into being such as the Dal Khalsa, the Babbar Khalsa, the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) etc. The ISI gave them funds, arms and training in camps set up in Pakistani territory.

The explosive post-1967 increase in hijackings by terrorists all over the world led to the adoption of international conventions against hijacking and other criminal acts against civil aviation such as those of the Hague (1970) and Montreal (1971) . These conventions made it obligatory for nations to arrest and prosecute hijackers or extradite them to the countries whose aircraft were hijacked. Pakistan has never co-operated with India under these Conventions.

Since these Conventions were adopted, there have been seven hijackings of aircraft of the Indian Airlines Corporation (IAC) by ISI-trained terrorist organisations. Five of these were by Sikh terrorists, all India-based, one by Kashmiri extremists, again India-based, and the seventh in December 1999 by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a Pakistani-based organisation of Pakistani office-bearers and cadres, which was designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in October,1997, under its then name of Harkat-ul-Ansar and which became in 1998 a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel and signed bin Laden's first fatwa against the US as stated in the US State Department's Report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2000 released on April 30,2001, by Gen. (retd) Colin Powell, US Secretary of State.

All these hijackings took place when the Pakistani military was in power. There was no hijacking of Indian planes by ISI-supported terrorist organisations whenever Pakistan was under a democratically-elected political leadership. Five of these hijackings took place under Zia-ul-Haq and one each under Yahya Khan and Pervez Musharraf.

After a series of five hijackings in quick succession by Sikh terrorists between 1981 and 1984, India managed to get clinching evidence of ISI involvement in 1984 in the form of a West German Government report that the pistol given to the hijackers of August 24,1984, at Lahore by the ISI was part of a consignment supplied to the Pakistan Government by the West German manufacturers. This resulted in a severe warning to Pakistan by the Reagan administration and a total discontinuance by the ISI of the use of hijacking as a weapon against India for 15 years till the latest hijacking on December 24,1999, after Musharraf seized power on October 12,1999.

The first hijacking in 1981 by a group of terrorists of the Dal Khalsa headed by Gajendra Singh was terminated at Lahore by the Pakistani authorities and Gajendra Singh and the other highjackers were ostensibly taken into custody. The Zia administration rejected India's repeated demands for handing them over to India for investigation and trial, even though all of them were Indian nationals. It told India and the Reagan Administration, which had taken up the matter with Islamabad, that the highjackers would be tried under Pakistani laws in a Pakistani court.
The highjackers were not kept in a prison. Instead, they were allowed to live in the Nankana Sahib gurudwara in Lahore and direct the terrorist activities in Indian Punjab from there. From the gurudwara, they orchestrated four more hijackings by different Sikh groups. After repeated Indian protests, the Pakistani authorities held a sham trial in which the hijackers were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Instead of sending them to jail after their conviction, different Pakistani administrations allowed them to continue to live in the gurudwara and organise terrorist activities in Indian Punjab.

In June, 1985, terrorists of the Babbar Khalsa, Vancouver, headed by Talwinder Singh Parmar, a Canadian national, had the Kanishka aircraft of Air India flying from Toronto to India blown up off the Irish coast, killing all the passengers. As the Canadian investigation into the terrorist incident zeroed in on the involvement of Talwinder Singh Parmar, he escaped to Pakistan and took up residence in the Nankana Sahib gurudwara and from there, guided terrorist activities in the Indian Punjab.

Again in June,1985, Bhajan Lal, former Chief Minister of Haryana, and Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, visited the US. Before their visit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found evidence of a plot by a group of terrorists of the ISYF, Canada, led by Lal Singh alias Manjit Singh, a Canadian national, to assassinate them. As the FBI's investigation zeroed in on Lal Singh, he too escaped to Lahore and took up residence there under a Muslim name in a house belonging to the Jammat-e-Islami (JEI) and started directing the terrorist activities in India from there.

To repeated requests from the Canadian and US authorities for tracing and arresting Talwinder Singh Parmar and Lal Singh, the Pakistani Government replied that they were not in Pakistan and might be operating in Indian Punjab. Ultimately in 1992, the Canadian and US authorities obtained conclusive evidence that both of them had been living in Lahore. When they again took up the matter with Islamabad, the ISI asked them to leave the country. They both entered India, where Lal Singh was arrested by the Indian Police and Talwinder Singh Parmar was killed in an encounter with the Punjab Police along with a Pakistani national, who was suspected to be an official of the ISI. The Pakistani authorities refused to accept his dead body under the pretext that he was not a Pakistani national, but his relatives demonstrated in their home town in Pakistani Punjab demanding that his dead body should be brought back to Pakistan for burial.

Before 1992, the Government of India had repeatedly taken up with the USA the question of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab, but Washington DC rejected all Indian evidence against Pakistan under the pretext that the evidence was based on interrogation during which the Punjab Police must have used torture.

During his interrogation, Lal Singh gave complete details of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab. The Government of India invited the counter-terrorism experts of the US and other Western countries to come to India and interrogate him. They were assured that no Indian official would be present during the interrogation so that they could satisfy themselves that no force or torture was used. Some Western countries accepted the offer and sent their experts to interrogate him. They went back satisfied that India's complaint of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab stood fully corroborated.

The US was the only Western country which declined the Indian offer. It was afraid that if he told the US interrogators about the Pakistani role, they would no longer be able to reject his statement as obtained under torture. Nor was the US interested in taking him to the US for investigation and prosecution since it was afraid that if he testified before a US court about the Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab, Washington DC would no longer be able to evade declaring Pakistan a State-sponsor of terrorism. They closed the investigation against him on the ground that this was unnecessary since he was already being prosecuted in India.

Before 1993, Dawood Ibrahim, the notorious narcotics smuggler and mafia leader, his brother and the principal members of his gang were living in Dubai, but used to frequently visit Karachi in connection with their narcotics smuggling business.

Details of their close nexus with the ISI came during the investigations into the Mumbai blasts of March 1993. The perpetrators were taken to Dubai with Indian passports. At Dubai, Dawood got them Pakistani visas on plain pieces of paper from the local Pakistani consulate. They were then taken to Karachi by Pakistan International Airways (PIA) flights, received at the tarmac by Dawood Ibrahim's representative in Karachi, and taken out of the airport without immigration formalities.

They were then taken to a training camp in the North-West Frontier Province, suspected to have been run by the Harkat-ul-Ansar (now called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) and, after training, sent back to Mumbai by the same route. Their plain paper visas were removed from them by Dawood's men and destroyed. Their Indian passports did not show any entry of their visit to Pakistan.

Dawood separately sent the explosives, detonators and timing devices given by the ISI by boat to clandestine landing points on the Maharashtra coast. One of these detonators and timing devices was recovered from an explosive device, which had failed to explode at Mumbai, and given to US law-enforcement officials for examination by their forensic science laboratory. They confirmed that the timing device was of US origin and part of a consignment given to the Pakistani Government during the Afghan war of the 1980s for use in Afghanistan. Austrian experts certified that hand-grenades of Austrian design found on the spot had been manufactured in a Pakistan ordnance factory with technology and machine tools sold by an Austrian company to Pakistan's Defence Ministry.

While some perpetrators of the blasts were arrested by the Mumbai Police, others including the members of the Memon family of Mumbai, who were close to Dawood Ibrahim and had played a leading role in organising the explosions, managed to escape to Karachi via Dubai or Kathmandu. When the US, at India's instance, started making enquiries about their presence in Karachi, the ISI took them to Bangkok, kept them in a hotel there till the US enquiries had ceased and then brought them back to Karachi. Some members of the Memon Family subsequently got fed up with the ISI and returned to India in 1994, where they were arrested and interrogated. They gave full details of the ISI's role in the Mumbai blasts.

When the Government of India took up with Interpol and the authorities of the United Arab Emirates the question of the arrest and deportation of Dawood for his involvement in the explosions, the Dubai authorities pressurised him in 1994 to leave Dubai. He and Chhota Shakeel, his lieutenant, shifted to Karachi, from where they supervised their underworld operations in India, Nepal and elsewhere.

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 was given 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.

In 1995, US President Bill Clinton, by presidential decision directive number 42, designated the activities of organised crime groups a major threat to national security and made it a priority for American intelligence agencies. A similar decision was taken by John Major's government in the United Kingdom on the recommendation of Stella Rimington, then Director-General of MI5, and by other European Union governments.

Since then, Dawood Ibrahim's gang was amongst the organised crime groups being closely monitored by various Western intelligence agencies, thereby keeping him largely confined to Karachi, where he is a privileged guest of the ISI.

Indian investigators had a cast-iron case against Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel and the two Memon brothers still living in Karachi. This was based on the interrogation of those captured, xerox copies of the manifests of the flights by which they went to Karachi from Dubai for training and returned to Dubai after the training, evidence regarding their stay in Bangkok and technical intelligence.

Since the Pakistani authorities could not question the credibility of this evidence, they have been taking up the stand since 1994 that none of them is in Pakistan. When the Government of India took up the matter with Musharraf during his visit to New Delhi in July,2001, he took up the same stand.

Musharraf was once again proved a "straight-faced you know what" by an investigative cover story carried by the "Newsline", a reputed monthly journal of Pakistan, in its September, 2001, issue under the title "Portrait of a Don". The report, inter alia, said: "Dawood Ibrahim and his team, Mumbai's notorious underworld clan including his righthand man Chota Shakeel and Jamal Memon, are on India’s most wanted list for a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai and other criminal activites. After the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, the gang have made Karachi their new home and base of operations. Living under fake names and IDs, and provided protection by government agencies, they have built up their underworld empire in Karachi employing local talent........ Dawood Ibrahim has been operating out of Karachi with the apparent blessings of the Government."

Dawood Ibrahim and his gang have had very little to do with the terrorism in Punjab and J & K. Pakistan's jehadi organisations have no apparent interest in them. And yet, the military junta has not been arresting and handing them over to India due to fears that their interrogation might bring out conclusive evidence about the ISI's involvement in the Mumbai blasts and about its use of this mafia group for the clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technology and components from the West and North Korea .

The Musharraf junta has consistently avoided carrying out its obligations under the Hague and Montreal Conventions in relation to the hijacking of December,1999.

The use by the ISI of the HUM, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), all Pakistan-based organisations, with Pakistani office-bearers and cadres and with links with the Al Qaeda for sponsoring terrorism in J & K and now in New Delhi is well-known. Details of this could be found in our previous articles at http://www.saag.org.

The most damning indictment of the terrorist activities of these organisations from Pakistani territory against India and their links with the Al Qaeda is to be found in the State Department's report on the Global Patterns of Terrorism during 2000. This report is based not on Indian evidence, but on independent evidence gathered by the USA.
The credible nature of the evidence against them could be understood from the fact that they have been banned by the UK under the Terrorism Act of 2000 and designated as Foreign Terrorist Organisations by the US under a 1996 law.

The Musharraf junta has at every stage refused to act or avoided acting against terrorists operating from its territory against India, whether they be connected with the North-East or Punjab or J & K or narcotics smuggling. The pretexts used are that either the evidence is not credible or that the terrorists wanted by India are not in its territory even though its own media has been reporting on their presence and activities from its territory.

The junta is so blatantly able to encourage and protect the activities of terrorists from its territory because of its conviction that the US would not go beyond a point in pressurising it to act against terrorists threatening Indian lives and interests so long as it extends full support to the US against terrorists threatening US nationals and interests.

This conviction has only been strengthened by the recent shocking decision of President Bush designating the LET and the JEM as indulging in terrorism against India and Pakistan thereby pre-empting any demand for action against Pakistan for violation of the Security Resolution No. 1373. There has not been a single proved or reported instance of these organisations indulging in terrorism against Pakistan.

On September 28, 2001, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1373 under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. This established a body of legally binding obligations on all member states.

Its provisions require, among other things, that all member states prevent the financing of terrorism and deny safe haven to terrorists. States will need to review and strengthen their border security operations, banking practices, customs and immigration procedures, law enforcement and intelligence cooperation, and arms transfer controls. All states are required to increase cooperation and share information with respect to these efforts. The Resolution also called upon each state to report on the steps it had taken, and established a committee of the Security Council to monitor implementation.

Since September 11, 2001, the US has taken the following steps:

* On September 23, Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, froze all the assets of 27 foreign individuals, groups, and entities linked to terrorist acts or supporting terrorism and authorized the freezing of assets of those who commit, or pose a significant threat of , acts of terrorism.

* On October 5, 2001, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, redesignated 25 terrorist organizations (including Al Qaeda) as foreign terrorist organizations under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Giving material support or resources to any of these foreign organizations is a felony under U.S.law. The HUM figured in the list. Subsequently, in the last week of December, the LET and the JEM were also added to the list.

* On October 12, the U.S. added 39 names to the list of individuals and organizations linked to terrorism or terrorist financing under E.O. 13224.
* On October 26, the U.S. enacted the USA PATRIOT Act, which significantly expanded the ability of U.S. law enforcement to investigate and prosecute persons who engage in terrorist acts.

* On October 29, the U.S. created a Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force aimed at denying entry into the U.S. of persons suspected of being terrorists and locating, detaining, prosecuting and deporting terrorists already in the U.S.

* On November 2, the U.S. designated 22 terrorist organizations located throughout the world under E.O. 13224, thus, highlighting the need to focus on terrorist organizations worldwide.

* On November 7, the U.S. added 62 new organizations and individuals, all of whom were either linked to the Al Barakaat conglomerate or the Al Taqwa Bank, which have been identified as supplying funds to terrorists.

* On December 4, the U.S. froze under E.O. 13224 the assets and accounts of the Holy Land Foundation in Richardson, Texas, whose funds are used to support the Hamas terrorist organization, and two other entities, bringing the total to 153.

* On December 5, the Secretary of State designated 39 groups as "terrorist organizations" under the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by the new USA PATRIOT Act, in order to strengthen the United States' ability to exclude supporters of terrorism or to deport them if they are found within US borders. The list of such designated organizations is called the "Terrorist Exclusion List." The HUM, the LET and the JEM figure in the list.

Between September 11 and December 6, 2001, the U.S. blocked a total of 79 financial accounts within the U.S.under E.O. 13224. The accounts totaled $33.7 million. Included was the November 7 blocking by the Department of the Treasury of the property and interests in property of several financial institutions and accounts -- primarily those of the "Al Barakaat" organization. According to a statement made by the British Government in the House of Commons on October 15,2001,the UK had till then frozen 35 suspect bank accounts, immobilising more than £63 million of suspect terrorist funds. France has announced freezing of suspected terrorist funds/assets worth Pound Sterling 2.7 million.
On November 17,2001, the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called on each IMF member to freeze all terrorist assets within its jurisdiction and to implement fully UNSCR 1373. Members should publish monthly reports by February 1, 2002, listing terrorist assets subject to freezing and the amount of assets frozen.

How did Musharraf comply with the directives of the UN Security Council and the IMF? After taking over as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on October 8,2001, Gen. Mohammad Aziz called a meeting of all the jehadi organisations and briefed them on the various steps which the junta would have to take in pursuance of the UN resolution and pressure from the US. Even before this meeting, the Al Rashid Trust of Karachi had transferred most of the amounts held in its name in different banks to new accounts in the names of individuals, who had not come to the adverse notice of the US. Similar action was taken by other jehadi organisations after the briefing by Aziz.

Pakistan-Afghanistan was the main epicentre of international Islamic terrorism inspired by bin Laden and the Taliban and there was a large flow of funds to various organisations in Pakistan associated with terrorism from contributors in Pakistan, the West, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Ummah. One would have, therefore, expected that the funds frozen in Pakistan would have been much larger than in any other country.

On the contrary, the total amount was derisively low. The two accounts of the HUM had a total of Rs. 4,742, the JEM had Rs. 900, the Al Rashid Trust, which handled the accounts of the Taliban and the LET, had Rs.2.7 million and US $ 30. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, of the Al Jihad, Egypt, who operated the accounts of the Al Qaeda, had just US $ 252.Pakistani Rs.68 are equivalent to one US dollar.

The "News" of Islamabad reported as follows on January 1,2002: "The frozen accounts had a balance of $190,554 and close to Rs 10 million till December 20,2001. The Government has sent the details of these bank accounts, including that of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad, to the US authorities. Experts said the policy to freeze the accounts in "pieces" gave ample time to most of these account-holders to withdraw their money."

Of the terrorist organisations and their supporters in Pakistan figuring in the various US lists, which are important from India's point of view are the Al Rashid Trust, the HUM, the JEM and the LET, all of which were connected with the Taliban and bin Laden.

In an investigative report published by the "Asia Times" on October 26,2001, Pepe Escobar wrote as follows: " The Pakistani-based Al-Rashid Trust is one of the key organizations included in America's black book of terrorist groups. American intelligence - for many a cynic, a contradiction in terms - may think that the elusive Osama bin Laden is the main source of hard cash for Al-Rashid. But in fact it is the other way around: Al-Rashid is one of Osama's many sources ofincome.

"Asia Times Online has learned from a key source how the trust is "very much part of Osama's international work" and that it is closely linked with the Taliban and with separatists fighting in Kashmir. The source says that "they [members of the trust] are financially helping the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Jaish-i-Mohammad".

"Mufti Rashid is the amir (leader) of the trust. Mufti Abu Lubaba is theideologue, while Maulvi Sibghatullah of the Dar-ul-Uloom (religious school) in Karachi is the director of the trust in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that serves as the headquarters for the Taliban. Only the two muftis have direct access to bin Laden.

"Al-Rashid is also closely linked with the Jaish-i-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based militant religious organization, which is now also on the US terrorist list. Al-Rashid and Jaish-i-Mohammad share office buildings across the country, although some are strictly for the use of the Jaish-i-Mohammad. The groups also have common cadres, who undertake fundraising activities for both organizations. Indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish between the two outfits. Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-i-Mohammad regularly writes for the weekly newspaper of Al-Rashid, the Zarb-I-Momin.

"Zarb-i-Momin, a weekly, reports the jihadi activities of the Taliban and the Jaish-i-Mohammad. It was closely associated with the Harakat-ul-Ansaar (another one on the US terror list) before the Jaish-i-Mohammad was founded in early 2000. The paper spews ultra-venomous propaganda against Hindus, Jews and Christians.

"Pakistani banks, after President General Pervez Musharraf's spectacular pro-US realignment, froze Al-Rashid's bank accounts, but this does not seem to pose a problem: the trust opened new accounts in the names of individuals. The biggest source of funds for Al-Rashid are the Middle East and everywhere where Pakistanis can be found, especially in Britain. The trust also has a network in South Africa. Al-Rashid also raises a lot of money in Pakistan. And Osama bin Laden, even if he cannot access an ATM in Kandahar, obviously remains an elite financial recipient."

In "the Washington Times" of November 6, 2001, Julian West reported as follows: "The Taliban regime is receiving weapons from Pakistani arms dealers who are funded by sympathetic local businessmen and a religious trust linked to al Qaeda, the international terror network headed by fugitive Osama bin Laden.

"Intelligence sources in Pakistan have described how arms are sent to the Taliban from the arms bazaars of Pakistan using a complex network of money changers, arms dealers and smugglers.

"According to these sources, the main sponsor of the illicit trade is Al Rashid Trust, a Karachi-based extremist organization whose bank accounts recently were frozen by the Pakistani government after it was suspected of channeling funds to al Qaeda, the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States. The other principal backers are a few wealthy businessmen based mainly in Lahore, Pakistan.

"In the past few weeks, Al Rashid Trust is believed to have smuggled an undetermined quantity of weapons and ammunition in trucks containing relief supplies such as blankets or wheat.

"The arms have been shipped through the desert border crossing at Chaman, near the Pakistani city of Quetta. From there, the weapons, bought in the arms bazaars of Karachi, are being trucked along the straight desert road that leads to Kandahar, the Taliban heartland.

"The Al Rashid Trust is totally involved in supplying ammunition and weapons," said a former Pakistani intelligence source, who could not estimate the number of arms supplied. "They are sending in heavy weapons under blankets and foodstuffs; it's nonsense to believe this has stopped."

"An Afghan shipper in Peshawar, who until recently ferried fruit and other goods to and from Afghanistan, also confirmed that relief trucks had been used to transport arms during the period when the Taliban regime was under U.N. sanctions."

While making a pretense of freezing the accounts of the Al Rashid Trust, Musharraf has not acted against any of its office-bearers. He has reportedly arrested or placed under house arrest over 100 office-bearers of the JEM and the LET, including Maulana Masood Azhar of the JEM and Prof.Hafeez Mohd.Saeed of the LET, but has sought to exonerate them of any responsibility for their acts of terrorism in India by attributing their arrests to their inflammatory statements against Pakistan's support to the international coalition against terrorism.
He has not acted against the headquarters of the JEM in the Binori madrasa in Karachi or of the LET in Muridke, near Lahore. He has not acted against Mufti Shamzai, the chief mentor of the Taliban as well as the HUM and the JEM.

He has evaded action on India's request for the arrest and extradition of Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon wanted in connection with the Mumbai blasts of March, 1993, the JEM members who had hijacked the Indian Airlines plane in December, 1999, or others wanted in connection with other terrorist cases.

What Musharraf has been doing is to indulge in a series of tactical manoeuvres to convince President Bush about his so-called sincerity in wanting to eliminate terrorism from Pakistani soil and, at the same time, re-clothing and re-locating the terrorist organisations in order to preserve their capability to continue to assist in Pakistan's proxy war against India.

Under common law, a criminal, who co-operates with the law-enforcing agencies in dealing with crime and in the investigation of his crime, does not become a saint. He continues to be a criminal in the eyes of the law, but his co-operation could be a mitigating factor in deciding the quantum of punishment to be awarded to him.

Before September 11, 2001, the Government of Pakistan created the Taliban, helped it to capture power in Afghanistan and run the administration. It refrained from co-operating with the international community in the arrest and prosecution of bin Laden and in eliminating the Al Qaeda. On the contrary, it used bin Laden and the Al Qaeda for training the HUM, the JEM and the LET in training camps in Afghan territory. It used the Al Qaeda for occupying the Kargil heights in 1999.
After September 11,2001, while pretending to co-operate with the international community and to implement the Security Council Resolution No.1373, it has continued to provide safe haven in its territory to organisations declared as terrorist organisations under the laws of the US, the UK and India and has evaded strict compliance with the provisions of the Security Council Resolution, by facilitating the withdrawal of their money by the internationally-designated terrorist organisations from their accounts held in Pakistan.

It has provided safe haven to terrorists wanted by India in connection with the Mumbai blasts of March,1993, and has denied their presence in Pakistani territory despite detailed reports carried by the Pakistani media about their presence and activities in Karachi with the blessings of the Pakistan Government. It has repeatedly violated its various obligations under international conventions to deal with hijacking and criminal offences against civil aviation.

By ostensibly co-operating with the US-led allies after September 11, 2001, in their war against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, Pakistan has not become a saint State. It continues to be a terrorist State.

The Government of India should issue a detailed White Paper on the Dawood Ibrahim case, Pakistan's non-compliance of international conventions relating to hijacking of planes, its providing safe haven to organisations internationally designated as terrorist organisations and its evasion of strict compliance with the directives of the UN Security Council Resolution 1373. Copies of this White Paper should be given to all Governments which are members of the international coalition against terrorism, the monitoring committee set up by the UN Security Council to monitor the implementation of Resolution 1373 directives regarding denial of safe haven to terrorists and seizure of their funds, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The relatives of the Indians who were killed in the New York World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, should form a committee for taking up with the UN Security Council, the US Administration and Congress and the US judiciary the links of Pakistan-based terrorist organisations with the Al Qaeda and bin Laden, which, according to the US, were responsible for the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Centre. They should also bring to the notice of the American public the role of Pakistan in this matter.

The Government of India should make it clear that there cannot be any resumption of dialogue with Pakistan unless and until it hands over the terrorists given safe haven in Pakistan, who are wanted by India.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )