ISI ANALYSIS

ANOTHER JIHADI ATTACK ON PAK NAVY

2009-12-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO. 583

An alert official of the Pakistani naval intelligence in plain clothes and a naval security guard in uniform deployed outside the building of the Pakistan Navy Headquarters in Islamabad prevented what could have been a major terrorist strike against the Naval Headquarters by an unidentified suicide bomber on December 2,2009. Spotting a suspicious-looking individual outside the NHQ, they stopped him and searched him. He turned out to be a suicide bomber wearing a concealed suicide vest. However, they could not prevent him from activating the explosive device in the vest.One person was killed on the spot and another succumbed to his injuries later.

2. This was the second jihadi terrorist attack on a naval target since the commando raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July,2007. The Lal Masjid raid made the Pakistani Taliban known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) turn against the Pakistani security forces.Since July 2007, there have been many suicide and suicidal attacks on personnel of the Armed Forces and the police----not only in the tribal areas, but also in non-tribal areas , including in Islamabad and Rawalpindi and in heavily guarded cantonments.

3.The first attack on a naval establishment took place on March 4, 2008. Two unidentified suicide bombers, operating in tandem, attacked the prestigious Naval War College located in a high security area of Lahore. They were both on motor-cycles. One of them rammed his motor-cycle against the security gate at the rear of the building breaking it open. The other drove through this opening into the parking area and blew himself up. Their target was the naval institution and not any particular individual or individuals inside. They wanted to demonstrate their ability to penetrate the campus and cause damage. Six persons were killed--- one of them a naval officer, three members of the security guards at the gate and the two suicide bombers.

4.The Pakistan Navy has had no role to play in the operations in the Lal Masjid, the FATA ( Federally-Administered Tribal Areas) and Swat.However,the logistic supplies for the NATO forces are brought to the Karachi port, unloaded there under the protection of the Pakistani Navy and then transported to Afghanistan by trucks. While the Pakistani Army and Air Force have no operational role to play in the US-led military operations in the Afghan territory against Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban, the Pakistani Navy is a member of the US-led international naval force which patrols the seas to the west of Pakistan to prevent any hostile activity which could hamper the operations in Afghan territory. The Combined Task Force (CTF) 150, established near the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, comprise naval forces from France, Germany, Italy, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The task force conducts maritime security operations (MSO) in the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The leadership of the Task Force is rotated amongst the participating navies. A Pakistani naval officer has been commanding it off and on when the turn of the Pakistan Navy comes.

5.During the election campaign of 2008, one of the issues raised by Mr. Nawaz Sharif, former Prime Minister, was the need to re-examine the implications of the US declaring Pakistan a non-NATO ally. He apparently felt that this declaration was meant to facilitate the involvement of the Pakistani Navy in the Afghanistan-related joint naval operations of the NATO and wanted a re-think on it. He has not been raising this issue in recent months. The TTP has not raised this issue either.( 3-12-09)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail -- seventyone2@gmail.com )

THE DAWOOD IBRAHIM GANG ( 16-9-2006)

2009-04-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

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

OPERATION ENDURING TALIBAN ( 5-10-2006)

2009-04-23T02:01:00.000-07:00

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)

MUSHARRAF RELEASES BIN LADEN'S CLOSE ASSOCIATE (5-12-2006)

2009-04-23T01:30:00.000-07:00

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 ))

THE CURIOUS CASE OF RASHID RAUF (6-12-2006)

2009-04-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

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)

THE AL QAEDA STRIPTEASE CONTINUES (5-5-2005)

2009-04-23T00:08:00.000-07:00

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 )

AN ISI WITHIN THE ISI ( 7-5-2005 )

2009-04-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

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.

CIA'S EXASPERATION WITH PAKISTAN (21-6-2005)

2009-04-10T05:05:00.000-07:00

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.

MUSHARRAF & THE US: THE FATAL ATTRACTION ( 27-8-2005)

2009-04-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

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:
·
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.
·
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.
.
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.
·
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:
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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?
·
That the jihadi terrorist organisations ostensibly banned by Musharraf in 2002 continue to function under different names and run terrorist training camps.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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?
·
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,
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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 INSIDERS (19-1-2004)

2009-04-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

Nearly a month after the two failed attempts to kill Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf in the highly-guarded cantonment town of Rawalpindi, the Pakistani investigating agencies seem to be still groping in the dark in their attempts to unravel the conspiracy to kill him.

2. Contrary to the repeated claims of different Ministers of the Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali Cabinet that the two cases have almost been solved and that the agencies are in the process of rounding up the conspirators, independent reports from usually well-informed sources indicate that apart from establishing the identities of the two suicide bombers of the December 25 attempt and detaining a junior level police officer of the Islamabad Special Branch, the agencies have not been able to make any other forward movement so far.

3. Raids have been conducted in many madrasas and hospitals run by madrasas and Islamic charity organisations in many cities and smaller town of Punjab and Sindh, over a hundred suspects rounded up and many police officers of Islamabad and Rawalpindi with different levels of seniority have been questioned, but without any useful lead so far.

4. Surprisingly---and intriguingly-- there are no reports of any officers of the presidential security set-up and the armed forces being questioned in order to determine any complicity from their ranks. The Government has also played down the fact that one of the two suicide bombers----Muhammad Jameel, resident of Androot, Police Station Torarh, in Poonch district, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK)--- belonged to the Sudan tribe of the POK, the same tribe to which Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Maj.Gen. (retd) Mohammad Anwar Khan, the President of the POK, belong.

5. According to a retired senior officer of the Pakistani Police, who continues to be in touch with his former department, some associates of Jameel who were rounded up by the Police from his village in the POK told the police during their interrogation that one of the reasons why Jameel volunteered for this suicide mission was his anger over Musharraf's decision to retain the post of the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), thereby depriving Gen. Aziz of an opportunity to become the COAS.

6. There are many Sudans serving in the Pakistan Army in different ranks, but Gen.Aziz was the first Kashmiri to have risen to such a senior position. According to Jameel's associates, he allegedly blamed Musharraf for preventing a Kashmiri from becoming the COAS for the first time in the history of the Pakistani army.

7. During their searches of hospitals run by the madrasas and Islamic charity organisations, the investigating agencies have reportedly been looking for any patient who might have recently been admitted for the treatment of any unnatural injuries---such as those caused by gunshot or explosives. It is not quite clear whether their search for an injured person is in connection with the attempts on Musharraf's life or the recent incidents of violence earlier this month in the south Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the army has launched another drive---unsuccessful so far---to round up the dregs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. During this drive, four military personnel were killed when the local tribals fired mortar shells at their post.

8. The investigations into the attempts on the life of Musharraf have so far been directed against the two factions of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami, which was found to have been responsible for the earlier attempt to kill Musharraf at Karachi in April, 2002, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the Sunni extremist organisation, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Hizbul Tehrir (HT).

9. Initially, the investigating agencies described Jameel as a member of the JEM, but they are now projecting him as a member of the HUJI. The HUJI, headed by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, has close links with HT and the two have some following in the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the lower and middle levels.

10. In 1995, the Pakistani authorities arrested a group of army officers headed by Maj.Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi on a charge of plotting, in association with the HUJI, to have Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then COAS, assassinated, seize power and set up an Islamic State ruled according to the Sharia. Maj.Gen.Abbasi, who used to be a close personal friend of Musharraf, had served in the late 1980s as the ISI station chief in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi. He was expelled by the Government of India on a charge of indulging in espionage.

11. After his return to Islamabad, he was posted by Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, who was the COAS during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister, to the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan). While posted there, he tried to organise a raid, without the approval of the COAS, on an Indian Army post in the Siachen area, but it failed disastrously.

12. On coming to know of this, Gen.Asif Nawaz withdrew him from the Northern Areas and issued a severe reprimand. Thereafter, he drifted towards the HUJI.

13. Abbasi and his associates were court-marialled and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for their role in the conspiracy of 1995, but, surprisingly, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who was also arrested along with the plotters, was not prosecuted and was released from jail.

14. After Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif and seized power on October 12,1999, Abbasi was also released from jail. During the last two years, he had been travelling round the country and making anti-US speeches to gatherings consisting of ex-servicemen and jihadi elements. There were also reports of his gravitating towards the HT.

15. Since the middle of last year, the HT has stepped up its criticism of Musharraf and some of its leaders have even been calling for his assassination for betraying the cause of Islam by collaborating with the US. According to some reports, the Pakistani authorities suspected that the HT's sympathisers in the Army were responsible for the circulation of anonymous anti-Musharraf letters typed on the letter-head of the Army headquarters last year.

16. These letters called Musharraf and his associates "national criminals" and accused him of helping the Americans, the Christians and the Jews to kill the Afghans and turning Pakistan, "the fort of Islam, into a slaughterhouse of the Muslims."

17. After the two attempts to kill Musharraf last month, a member of the Senate, the upper House of the Parliament, revealed that some members of Parliament had been in receipt of a letter from the UK branch of the HT, warning them not to support the regularisation of the 2002 election of Musharraf as the President in a referendum. The letter accused Musharraf of "working for the American interests in Pakistan and helping the US in routing of the Muslims".

18. Last year, the ISI and the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence detained for questioning some officers on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Amongst them were Major Ali Quddus, Lt.Gen.Khalid Abbasi, Assistant Adjutant-General, Major Mohammad Atta, who was working in the office of the Quarter-Master General, and Ahsan Aziz (rank not known), an army engineer. While Ali Quddus was suspected of links with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad of Al Qaeda, who was arrested in Rawalpindi in March last, the others were suspected of helping the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ahsan Aziz is also from the POK and is believed to be a Sudan too.

19. Gen. Aziz, who had been keeping quiet ever since he was removed from the post of Corps Commander in Lahore in October, 2001, allegedly under US pressure, started openly criticising Musharraf's policies in the middle of last year without, however, personally criticising him. When Musharraf was away to the US in June last, he undertook a tour of the POK accompanied by Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan, who had served under him in the ISI before 1999. Addressing a meeting in the Rawalakot district, he was reported to have said: "America is the No.1 enemy of the Muslim world and is conspiring against Muslim nations all over the world. All the defects and setbacks that the Islamic world has suffered have been due to disunity and splits in Muslim ranks besides the presence of and tolerance shown to hypocrites within. It was because of the machinations of these elements that most of our movements came to naught. We would, therefore, have to tackle and put an end to such elements to be able to engage and face the mightiest of the world powers."

20. Muhammad Naeem of the Islamabad Special Branch, who has been detained since December 28 and is under interrogation, was on plainclothes duty on December 25 at the Islamabad Convention Centre where Musharraf had gone to address a meeting. As Musharraf left the Convention Centre after the meeting to return to Rawalpindi, Naeem is suspected to have alerted Jameel that Musharraf's convoy had started.

21. It is, however, believed that Naeem did not know which of the four routes on which the police had been deployed on route security duty would the convoy be taking. The suicide bombers apparently knew of it from another insider, who was privy to the decision on the route to be taken by the convoy. Who was that second insider? Was he from the police or the Army? That is the question to which the investigating agencies have not so far been able to find the answer.

22. Till all the insiders---whether two or more---are identified and arrested and the entire conspiracy unravelled , the threat to Musharraf from his own colleagues and men in the army and the police would remain as high as ever.

23.This may please be read in continuation of the earlier articles on the attempts on Musharraf's life, which are available at www.saag.org .

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

AMJAD FAROOQI : THE UNTOLD STORY (29-9-2004)

2009-04-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

The Pakistani security agencies claimed to have killed on September 26, 2004, Amjad Hussain Farooqi alias Mansur Hasnain alias Imtiaz Siddiqui alias Hyder, alias Doctor who, according to them, was the mastermind behind the two abortive attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December last year. According to them, he was killed during an encounter with the para-military forces who had surrounded a rented house in Nawabshah in Sindh, where he along with some others had been living for the last two months.

2. On August 20, 2004, the Pakistani authorities had announced cash rewards amounting to Rs.20 million each (US $ 344800) to anyone who would give information leading to the capture of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a Pakistani national, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan national, said to be belonging to Al Qaeda.Amjad Hussain Farooqi was accused of acting at the instance of the Libyan in his attempts to kill Musharraf.

3. Talking to the media at The Hague on September 27,2004, Musharraf was reported to have stated as follows:" We eliminated one of the very major sources of terrorist attacks. He was not only involved on attacks on me, but also on attacks elsewhere in the country. So a very big terrorist has been eliminated."

4.All accounts from Nawabshah indicate that if the Pakistani authorities had wanted they could have caught him alive and questioned him about the role of Pakistani civilian and military officials in the various terrorist incidents of the last three years, including the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the attempts to kill Musharraf himself and Shaukat Aziz, the Prime Minister, and the attacks directed against American and French targets. But, they did not want him alive.

5.In a report under the heading "Real conspirators in Musharraf case may never be exposed", Kamran Khan, the Pakistani investigative journalist, stated as follows in the "News" of September 28, 2004: "Senior lawyers say that the killing of Amjad Farooqi, the main accused in President Musharraf and Daniel Pearl cases, may also influence the final outcome of the two most important cases. A nationwide military investigation launched after two assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf last year had unveiled that some civilian and low level military individuals were the field operatives while Amjad Farooqi played an anchor in the abortive bids on Gen Musharraf’s life. Because of the most sensitive nature of the probe the principal investigative work was carried out under the supervision of the Commander Corps 10, who received inputs from all federal and provincial law enforcement agencies in the most extensive investigation of a crime case in Pakistan. "It was very important to catch Amjad Farooqi alive," said a senior law-enforcement official. "Farooqi was the key link between the foot soldiers and those who ordered the murder." "Amjad Farooqi is now dead with the most important secret and we still don’t know for sure the real identity of the Pakistani or al-Qaeda or any other foreign elements who had launched Farooqi into action to remove General Musharraf from the scene," said a second senior law-enforcement official. Some circumstantial evidence collected during the investigation of President Musharraf case had cited some connection between Abu Feraj, an al-Qaeda operative of Libyan origin, and Amjad Farooqi, hence the suspicion that al-Qaeda could be behind the murder attempts through Amjad Farooqi.The military investigators had found solid evidence to connect Amjad Farooqi with the suicide bombers involved in December 25 attacks on President Musharraf. Farooqi’s connections were also established with the group of low level Pakistan Air Force technicians who had planted bombs under Lai Bridge for the December 11 bid on the President’s life. The military investigators were also baffled how come the Air Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the PAF, detected no signs that about two dozen PAF men posted at the Chaklala airbase had been attending meetings with religious extremists and in the first week of December were making active preparations at the heart of the PAF base to bomb the presidential motorcade. Pakistani officials, worried that Farooqi’s killing would prevent them from getting the full knowledge about Farooqi’s connections and his actions, said that if captured alive Farooqi could have provided crucial information on the plot to kidnap and murder the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.Pakistani officials believed that, like in the murder attempts against the President, Farooqi was an anchor in the Pearl case. "The gruesome murder of Pearl and its video filming for the world was the work of Amjad Farooqi- Khalid Sheikh Muhammad combine," said a senior intelligence official who did not want to be identified.

6. The truth will now never be known. Somebody in the Pakistani military-intelligence-police establishment did not want the truth to be known. Why? Who was Farooqi? What were his links with the Army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and others in Pakistan? To which organisation he belonged? Read the following.

7.In April,1992, the coalition of Afghan Mujahideen groups, taking advantage of the revolt of Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek Commander, against Najibullah, the then President of Afghanistan, managed to invade and capture Kabul. Najibullah, who was overthrown from power, was taken by the United Nations into its protective custody and kept in its office in Kabul. The efforts of the UN to persuade the Mujahideen to allow Najibullah to go to India, where his family was living, failed.

8. The Mujahideen's success in capturing power was made possible by the assistance of a large number of jihadis from the Pakistani madrasas, who had been trained and armed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and sent into Afghanistan to help the Mujahideen. The Pakistani contingents, which participated in the invasion of Kabul, belonged to the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) was then known, and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). Amjad Farooqi, then an 18-year-old youth, entered Kabul as a member of the contingent of the SSP.

9. In 1994, there was a serious failure of the Pakistani cotton crop, which threatened to bring its textile industry to a standstill. Asif Zardari, the husband of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, flew into Turkmenistan and entered into a contract for the purchase of a large quantity of cotton. The Turkmenistan authorities wanted to send the cotton to Iran and from there ship it to Karachi.

10.Zardari did not agree to it. Instead, he asked them to send the cotton by road via Afghanistan. He had the contract for the road transport of the cotton awarded to a Pakistani crony of his based in Hong Kong. The first two cotton convoys from Turkmenistan were looted by Mujahideen groups operating in the Herat area of Afghanistan.

11. Zardari thereupon sent Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Babbar, Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister, and Pervez Musharraf to Afghanistan to provide protection to the cotton convoys. They asked Mulla Mohammad Omar, who subsequently became the Amir of the Taliban, to collect a large number of students (Talibs) from the madrasas of Pakistan and constitute them into a force for the protection of the cotton convoys. Thus, was the Taliban born.

12.Babbar and Musharraf, who had heard of the exploits of Amjad Farooqi in Kabul in 1992, asked him to help Mulla Omar in organising this convoy protection force. He did so. Babbar himself travelled with the first convoy after this arrangement came into force and Amjad Farooqi and his boys escorted it.

13. A few months later, Mulla Omar deputed Amjad Farooqi to raid Herat and capture it with the help of his boys. He did so without difficulty, to the pleasant surprise of many, including the ISI. Thus, from a cotton convoy protection force, the Taliban became the ruler of Kandahar and Herat and other areas. Assisted by Amjad Farooqi and his associates, it started gradually extending its administrative control to other areas.

14. In the beginning of 1995, Amjad Farooqi left the SSP and joined the HUA. The HUA sent him along with some others into India's Jammu & Kashmir, where they, under the name Al Faran, kidnapped a group of Western tourists. One of the tourists was beheaded and another managed to escape. The fate of the remaining is not known till today. They are believed to have been beheaded and buried, but this has not been confirmed.

15. In October,1995, Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) under Benazir Bhutto, discovered a plot by a group of Army officers headed by Maj.Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi to have him and Benazir assassinated, capture power and proclaim the formation of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Abbasi and his associates in the Army were arrested. They were found to have been plotting in tandem with a group in the HUA led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Abbasi, his associates and the Qari were arrested during the investigation. While Abbasi and his associates were court-martialled and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the Qari was released without any action being taken against him.

16.Before 1990, there were two jihadi organisations called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI). The HUM was headed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil and the HUJI by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Around 1990, the two merged to form the HUA, with Maulana Khalil as the Amir and Qari Akhtar as the Deputy Amir. Amjad Farooqi used to work closely with the Qari.

17. In the late 1980s, Abbasi as a Brigadier was posted in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi as the head of the ISI station in India. The Government of India had him expelled. On his return to Pakistan, he was posted to the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan). In the beginning of the 1990s, without the clearance of the late Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then COAS under Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister, Abbasi organised a raid on an Indian Army post in the Siachen area and was beaten back by the Indian Army with heavy casualties.Janjua had him transferred out and censured. Since then, he had been nursing an anger against the Pakistan Army's senior leadership and hobnobbing with the Qari. A few months after capturing power on October 12,1999, Musharraf had Abbasi released from jail. He formed an anti-US organisation called Hizbollah, which acted in tandem with the HUJI.

18. In September,1996, the Taliban captured Jalalabad and Kabul. A large number of jihadi students from the Pakistani madrasas joined the Taliban unit which invaded and captured Kabul. Amjad Farooqi joined the unit at the head of a contingent of the HUA. After capturing Kabul, Amjad Farooqi and his boys raided the UN office, where Najibullah was living, lynched him and hung him from a lamp-post.

19. When the Taliban, with the help of the madrasa students from Pakistan, captured Jalalabad, Osama bin Laden was living there. He had been permitted by the Burhanuddin Rabbani Government, which was in power in Kabul till September,1996,to enter Afghanistan and take up residence in Jalalabad. It had taken the clearance of the Benazir Bhutto Government to do so. After capturing Jalalabad, the Taliban had bin Laden shifted to Kandahar by Amjad Farooqi and his men.

20.In October,1997, after establishing the involvement of the HUA in the 1995 kidnapping, the US State Department designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation under a 1996 US law. The HUA thereupon dissolved itself and the pre-1990 HUM and HUJI resumed their original existence under their previous names. Qari Saifullah Akhtar took over as the Amir of the HUJI and made Amjad Farooqi his deputy.

21. In February 1998, Osama bin Laden announced the formation of his International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People. Among those who joined it at its inception were the HUM and a Bangladesh branch of the HUJI, identified as HUJI ( B ). The Pakistani branch of the HUJI, the LET and the SSP joined it in 1999. Amjad Farooqi used to represent the Qari at the meetings of the shoora (consultative council )of the IIF.

22. In December 1999, a group of Pakistani hijackers, said to be belonging to the HUM, hijacked an aircraft of the Indian Airlines, which had taken off from Kathmandu, and forced the pilot to fly it to Kandahar. They demanded, inter alia, the release of Omar Sheikh, a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, and Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani Punjabi belonging to the HUM. The Government of India conceded their demands in order to terminate the hijacking.

23. Amongst the hijackers was a Pakistani Punjabi by name Mansur Hasnain. Sections of the Pakistani media reported that this hijacker was none other than Amjad Farooqi. After their release from detention by the Indian authorities, Maulana Azhar and Omar Sheikh went to Pakistan. The return of Azhar led to a split in the HUM. Azhar and his followers formed a new organisation called the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which joined bin Laden's IIF. The formation of the JEM was blessed by the late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, of the Binori madrasa, Karachi, who used to be looked upon as the mentor of bin Laden, Mulla Omar and the Pakistani jihadi leaders.

24. Omar Sheikh took up residence in Lahore and was made in charge of an office run by Al Qaeda in that city. Among other tasks, he was made responsible by bin Laden to procure medicines and other humanitarian relief for the jihadis of the IIF. Azhar and Omar Sheikh, who were working for the ISI before their arrest in India, resumed their contacts with the ISI. Omar Sheikh used to visit Kandahar periodically to meet bin Laden. During one of those visits, he claimed to have come to know of Al Qaeda's plans for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and passed on the information to Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, the present Director-General of the ISI, who was then posted as the Corps Commander in Peshawar,

25. When the USA launched its military operations in Afghanistan in October,2001, the Pakistani components of the IIF called upon their members to proceed to Afghanistan to join in the jihad against the US. Over 30,000 Pakistani volunteers were estimated to have gone into Afghanistan. The largest number of them belonged to the HUJI and were led by Amjad Farooqi. The US air strikes inflicted heavy casualties on them and the survivors, including Amjad Farooqi, fled back into Pakistan. Farooqi took up residence in the Binori madrasa of Karachi where he was sheltered by the late Mufti Shamzai. From his sanctuary in the madrasa, he established contact with Omar Sheikh, who was living in Lahore, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), who was living in Karachi along with Ramzi Binalshibh.

26. On January 12,2002, under pressure from the US in the wake of the attempted terrorist strike on the Indian Parliament at New Delhi in December,2001, Musharraf announced a ban on the LET, the JEM and the SSP and had their leaders arrested or placed under house-arrest. The whole thing was a farce as was seen subsequently. Intriguingly, he did not ban the HUM and the HUJI, which had many supporters in the Army and did not take any action against Qari Saifullah Akhtar and Amjad Farooqi.

27. In January,2002, Daniel Pearl, the correspondent of the USA's "Wall Street Journal" in Mumbai (Bombay) in India, along with his wife Marianne went to Karachi to enquire into the Pakistani links of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. They reportedly stayed at Karachi in the house of an American free-lance journalist of sub-continental origin, who had worked for some time as a free-lancer for the WSJ, where she had come to know Pearl and Marianne. She had gone to Karachi in connection with a book she was writing on the sub-continent.

28. Before going to Karachi, Pearl had contacted many people in Pakistan and the USA in order to get introductions to knowledgeable people in Karachi and elsewhere who might be knowing about the local contacts of Reid. It was alleged that among those whose help he sought were James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Mansoor Ijaz, an American lobbyist of Pakistani origin, who often used to write articles for the US media jointly with Woolsey.

29. Pearl was particularly keen to meet Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), a terrorist organisation based in the USA and the Caribbean with a large following among Afro-Americans. Two of Gilani's four wives are stated to be Afro-Americans. Pearl wanted to talk to him about Richard Reid, since he had reportedly heard that Reid was a member of the JUF and had been trained in a HUM camp in Pakistan in the 1990s.

30. Even before coming to Karachi, Pearl was reportedly in E-mail contact with one Khalid Khwaja, a retired officer of the Pakistani Air Force who had served in the ISI in the late 1980s and one Mohammad Bashir, who later turned out to be none other than Omar Sheikh. It was alleged that Mansoor Ijaz had given Pearl an introduction to Khwaja. It is not known how he came to know of Bashir. According to the Karachi Police, Pearl was keen to meet Gilani and Omar Sheikh. Bashir promised to help him.

31.On January 23, 2002, Pearl went by a taxi driven by one Nasir to the Metropole Hotel of Katrachi. He asked the taxi to stop near the hotel and got out of it. He then went to a car parked nearby in which four persons were waiting. One of them got out, introduced himself and invited Pearl to get in. He willingly did so. The car then went away from there. Subsequently, after the arrest of Omar Sheikh, Nasir identified him as the man who got out of the parked car and invited Pearl to get in. The driver testified during the trial of Omar Sheikh that from the willing manner in which Pearl got in it was apparent that he did not suspect a trap.

32. Subsequently, E-mail messages announcing the kidnapping of Pearl with his photographs started arriving in newspaper offices in Karachi. The Pakistani authorities launched a drive for the recovery of Pearl. There was no success. They started searching for Omar Sheikh after finding out that it was he who, under an assumed name, had laid the trap for Pearl. They took into custody Omar Sheikh's wife and young child in order to force him to surrender. On February 5, 2002,he surrendered to Brig (retd) Ejaz Shah, the Home Secretary of Punjab, who had previously worked in the ISI and was the handling officer of Omar Sheikh. The ISI kept him in its custody till February 12,2002, and then handed him over to the Karachi Police for interrogation. The public announcement about his arrest claimed he was arrested on February 12 and did not refer to the fact that he was in the ISI's custody since February 5, 2002.

33.Omar Sheikh told the Police that the kidnappers operated in three groups. Omar himself and Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif, a resident of Bhawalpur, won the confidence of Pearl and made him come to the hotel for a meeting. They kidnapped him and handed him over to Amjad Hussain Farooqui for keeping him in custody. Omar Sheikh , with the help of Adil Mohammad Sheikh, a member of the staff of the Special Branch of the Sindh Police, and his cousins Suleman Saquib and Fahad Nasim arranged for taking the photograph of Pearl in custody, having it scanned and sending the E-Mail with his photograph to the media and others making their demands. According to the Police, Saquib and Nasim belonged to the JEM, thereby indicating the possibility that the kidnapping might have been jointly planned and carried out by the HUJI, the HUM and the JEM.

34. A few days later, messages arrived announcing the killing of Pearl, along with pictures showing his throat being slit. However, his dead body was not recovered. On May 16, 2002, the Karachi Police claimed to have recovered the remains of an unidentified dead body cut into 10 pieces, which were found buried in a nursery (Gulzare Hijri) on a plot of land in the outlying Gulshan-e-Maymar area of Karachi. They further claimed that the remains were recovered following a tip-off from a human source and that, according to the source, the remains were of Pearl. The local media also reported that there was an improvised shed on the plot where Pearl was suspected to have been held in captivity before his murder and that the plot belonged to Al Rashid Trust of Karachi. DNA tests and other forensic examination determined that the remains were of Pearl.

35.The Al-Rashid Trust, whose accounts were ordered to be frozen under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 because of its suspected links with Al Qaeda, is also closely linked with the JEM. Before Musharraf's ban on the JEM, the offices of the two used to be located in the same buildings in different cities of Pakistan. The two also had common cadres to undertake fund-raising activities for both the organizations.

36.Initially, it was not clear as to who gave the information to the Karachi Police about the burial of these remains in a plot of land belonging to the Al Rashid Trust----a human source as claimed by the Police or by some new suspects who had been picked up by the Police, but whose arrest had not been shown in Police records, lest the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wanted to interrogate them or sought their extradition to the US?

37.The answer came in a report carried by the "News" (May 23, 2002), the prestigious daily of Pakistan, which revealed that the information about the remains was given to the Karachi Police by one Fazal Karim -- a resident of Rahim Yar Khan and a father of five-- who was in Police custody, but had not been shown as arrested. According to the paper,Fazal Karim had identified Lashkar-e- Jhangvi's Naeem Bukhari as the ring leader of the group that also included "three Yemeni-Balochs" (father Yemeni and mother Baloch) who took part in Pearl's kidnapping, his murder and disposal of his body parts. Naeem Bukhari was wanted by police in Punjab and Karachi in more than a dozen cases of anti-Shia killings. Fazal Karim reportedly confirmed Omar Sheikh's role in planning Pearl's kidnapping.
38.According to Karachi Police sources, Amjad Farooqi was also taken into custody on the basis of the tip-off from Fazal Karim, but the ISI ordered them to release him and let him go. Fazal Karim reportedly named one of the Yemeni-Balochs involved in the beheading of Pearl as KSM, but the military regime did not admit this. On the basis of his information, the Police also rounded up some others involved in the kidnapping and murder.
39.Intriguingly, on May 14, 2002, two days before the recovery of the remains of the dead body of Pearl by the Karachi Police, the Punjab Police claimed that Riaz Basra, a long absconding leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the militant wing of the SSP in which Amjad Farooqi had started his career as a terrorist, and three of his associates were killed in an encounter in a Punjab village when they had gone there to kill a Shia leader. Sections of the Pakistani media expressed doubts over the Police version and alleged that Riaz Basra was in the informal custody of the ISI since Pearl's kidnapping in January, 2002, without it taking any action against him and that the Police, for reasons not clear, had shown him as having been killed in an encounter.
40. During the trial of Omar Sheikh and his associates, the defence lawyers drew the attention of the anti-terrorism court to media reports about the arrest of Fazal Karim and others and urged that the court should order a re-investigation of the case in order to determine their responsibility for the offence. The prosecution described the media reports as baseless and opposed any re-investigation. The court rejected the defence plea.
41. The court sentenced Omar Sheikh to death and others to various terms of imprisonment. The appeal against the death sentence filed by Omar Sheikh has not been disposed of by the court so far under some pretext or the other. In the meanwhile, KSM was arrested in Rawalpindi by the Pakistani authorities in March, 2003,and handed over to the FBI, which had him flown out of the country. In an article written in the "Salon", an online journal, in October,2003,the free-lance journalist in whose Karachi house Pearl and his wife had stayed said that Marianne had been informed by the US intelligence that KSM had admitted having personally killed Pearl. The defence lawyers of Omar Sheikh again raised the question of a re-investigation, but their plea was again opposed by the prosecution and rejected by the court.
42. In December, 2003, there were two unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf in Rawalpindi with explosives. In the second incident, suicide bombers were involved. There were strong indications of the involvement of insiders from the Pakistani Army and Police in both the incidents. Till June,2004, Musharraf blamed the JEM for the attempts just as he had initially blamed it in 2002 for the kidnapping and murder of Pearl. Subsequent investigation brought out that it was the HUJI and not the JEM, which was involved. Of all the pro-bin Laden jihadi organisations of Pakistan, the HUJI has the largest following in the Army. The investigation into Pearl's kidnapping and murder had also brought out indicators of a possible HUJI penetration into the Air Force.
43. By the end of January,2004, the investigators had started gathering evidence of the involvement of junior officials of the Army and the Air Force belonging to the HUJI and the Hizbut Tahreer in the two assassination attempts, which, according to them, were orchestrated by Amjad Farooqi at the instance of the Libyan.However, Musharraf did not openly admit this.
44. On June 10, 2004, the Corps Commander of Karachi narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Karachi. With the help of a mobile phone, which the terrorists had left behind at the scene, the Karachi Police established that the attempt was jointly organised by the HUJI and a new organisation called Jundullah (Army of Allah), which had been trained by the Uzbecks and Chechens in the South Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The Police managed to identify and round up the Jundullah members involved in the incident.
45. During their interrogation, they reportedly admitted their involvement and said that they were acting under the leadership of Amjad Farooqi. The Police had kept the arrest and interrogation of the Jundullah members a secret lest Amjad Farooqi be alerted before they got him. But, Sheikh Rashid, the Information Minister, prematurely announced it to the media, thereby alerting Amjad Farooqi before the Police could arrest him. He managed to escape from his Karachi hide-out and fled to Nawabshah.
46. For the first time, Musharraf admitted in an interview to a private TV channel in June, 2004, the involvement of junior officers of the Army and the Air Force in the plot against him and the role of Amjad Farooqi and the Libyan in the plot.
47. A man-hunt for Farooqi and the Libyan was launched by the Police. Before they could get Farooqi alive, someone in the military-intelligence establishment would seem to have ensured that he would not fall alive into the hands of the Police. Who is that somebody?
48.Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the HUJI, was picked up by the Dubai authorities on August 6, 2004, and handed over to the Pakistani authorities, who had him flown to Pakistan the next day. The results of his interrogation are not known so far.
49. After the suicide bomb attack in Karachi on May 8, 2002,which killed 11 French experts working in a submarine project, Khaled Ahmed, the well-known Pakistani analyst, had written an article titled "The Biggest Militia We Know Nothing About" in the prestigious "Friday Times" of Lahore. In this article, he gave details of the HUJI. Extracts from the article are given in the Annexure.
50.One of the most mysterious aspects of the activities of the jihadi organisations in Pakistan is why Musharraf has always been reluctant to or even afraid of taking action against the HUJI. He has avoided banning it even after evidence of its penetration into the Army and the Air Force and its involvement in the plots against him.

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

ANNEXURE: HUJI

"ARY DIGITAL TV’s host Dr Masood, while discussing the May 8 killing of 11 French nationals in Karachi, named one Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami as one of the suspected terrorists involved in the bombing. When the Americans bombed the Taliban and Mulla Umar fled from his stronghold in Kandahar, a Pakistani personality also fled with him. This was Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, Pakistan’s biggest jehadi militia headquartered in Kandahar. No one knew the name of the outfit and its leader. A large number of its fighters made their way into Central Asia and Chechnya to escape capture at the hands of the Americans, the rest stole back into Pakistan to establish themselves in Waziristan and Buner. Their military training camp (maskar) in Kotli in Azad Kashmir swelled with new fighters and now the outfit is scouting some areas in the NWFP (North-West Frontier Province )to create a supplementary maskar for jehad in Kashmir. Its ‘handlers’ (in the Inter-Services Intelligence) have clubbed it together with Harkatul Mujahideen to create Jamiatul Mujahideen in order to cut down the large number of outfits gathered together in Azad Kashmir. It was active in Held Kashmir under the name of Harkatul Jahad Brigade 111.

"The leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, Qari Saifullah Akhtar was an adviser to Mulla Umar in the Taliban government. His fighters were called ‘Punjabi’ Taliban and were offered employment, something that other outfits could not get out of Mulla Umar. The outfit had membership among the Taliban too. Three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to the Harkat. In difficult times, the Harkat fighters stood together with Mulla Umar. Approximately 300 of them were killed fighting the Northern Alliance, after which Mulla Umar was pleased to give Harkat the permission to build six more maskars in Kandahar, Kabul and Khost, where the Taliban army and police also received military training. From its base in Afghanistan, Harkat launched its campaigns inside Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya. But the distance of Qari Saifullah Akhtar from the organisation’s Pakistani base did not lead to any rifts. In fact, Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami emerged from the defeat of the Taliban largely intact. In Pakistan Qari Akhtar has asked the ‘returnees’ to lie low for the time being, while his Pakistani fighters already engaged are busy in jehad as before.

"The Harkat is the only militia which boasts international linkages. It calls itself ‘the second line of defence of all Muslim states’ and is active in Arakan in Burma, and Bangladesh, with well organised seminaries in Karachi, and Chechnya, Sinkiang, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The latest trend is to recall Pakistani fighters stationed abroad and encourage the local fighters to take over the operations. Its fund-raising is largely from Pakistan, but an additional source is its activity of selling weapons to other militias. Its acceptance among the Taliban was owed to its early allegiance to a leader of the Afghan war, Maulvi Nabi Muhammadi and his Harkat Inqilab Islami whose fighters became a part of the Taliban forces in large numbers. Nabi Muhammadi was ignored by the ISI in 1980 in favour of Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami. His outfit suffered in influence inside Afghanistan because he was not supplied with weapons in the same quantity as some of the other seven militias.

"According to the journal Al-Irshad of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, published from Islamabad, a Deobandi group led by Maulana Irshad Ahmad was established in 1979. Looking for the right Afghan outfit in exile to join in Peshawar, Maulana Irshad Ahmad adjudged Maulvi Nabi Muhammadi as the true Deobandi and decided to join him in 1980. Harkat Inqilab Islami was set up by Maulana Nasrullah Mansoor Shaheed and was taken over by Nabi Muhammadi after his martyrdom. Eclipsed in Pakistan, Maulana Irshad Ahmad fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets till he was killed in battle in Shirana in 1985. His place was taken by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, which was not liked by some of the Harkat leaders, including Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khaleel who then set up his own Harkatul Mujahideen.

"The sub-militia (of the HUJI) fighting in Kashmir is semi-autonomous and is led by chief commander Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri. Its training camp is 20 km from Kotli in Azad Kashmir, with a capacity for training 800 warriors, and is run by one Haji Khan. Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami went into Kashmir in 1991 but was at first opposed by the Wahhabi elements there because of its refusal to criticise the grand Deobandi congregation of Tableeghi Jamaat and its quietist posture. But as days passed, its warriors were recognised as ‘Afghanis’. It finally had more martyrs in the jehad of Kashmir than any other militia. Its resolve and organisation were recognised when foreigners were seen fighting side by side with its Punjabi warriors.

"To date, 650 Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami mujahideen have been killed in battle against the Indian army: 190 belonging to both sides of Kashmir, nearly 200 belonging to Punjab, 49 to Sindh, 29 to Balochistan, 70 to Afghanistan, 5 to Turkey, and 49 collectively to Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and the Arab world.

"The leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami in Uzbekistan is Sheikh Muhammad Tahir al-Farooq. So far 27 of its fighters have been killed in battle against the Uzbek president Islam Karimov, as explained in the Islamabad-based journal Al-Irshad. Starting in 1990, the war against Uzbekistan was bloody and was supported by the Taliban, till in 2001, the commander had to ask the Pakistanis in Uzbekistan to return to base.

"In Chechnya, the war against the Russians was carried on under the leadership of commander Hidayatullah. Pakistan’s embassy in Moscow once denied that there were any Pakistanis involved in the Chechnyan war, but journal Al-Irshad (March 2000) declared from Islamabad that the militia was deeply involved in the training of guerrillas in Chechnya for which purpose commander Hidayatullah was stationed in the region. It estimated that ‘dozens’ of Pakistani fighters had been martyred fighting against Russian infidels.

"When the Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami men were seen first in Tajikistan, they were mistaken by some observers as being fighters from Sipah Sahaba, but in fact they were under the command of commander Khalid Irshad Tiwana, helping Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev resist the Uzbek ruling class in the Ferghana Valley. The anti-Uzbek warlords were being sheltered by Mulla Umar in Afghanistan.

"Maulana Abdul Quddus heads the Burmese warriors located in Karachi and fighting mostly in Bangladesh on the Arakanese border. Korangi is the base of the Arakanese Muslims who fled Burma to fight the jehad from Pakistan. A large number of Burmese are located inside Korangi and the area is sometimes called mini-Arakan. Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami has opened 30 seminaries for them inside Korangi, there being 18 more in the rest of Karachi. Maulana Abdul Quddus, a Burmese Muslim, while talking to weekly Zindagi (25-31 January 1998), revealed that he had run away from Burma via India and took religious training in the Harkat seminaries in Karachi and on its invitation went to Afghanistan, took military training there and fought the jehad from 1982 to 1988. In Korangi, the biggest seminary is Madrasa Khalid bin Walid where 500 Burmese are under training. They were trained in Afghanistan and later made to fight against the Northern Alliance and against the Indian army in Kashmir. The Burmese prefer to stay in Pakistan, and very few have returned to Burma or to Bangladesh. There are reports of their participation in the religious underworld in Karachi.

"Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami has branch offices in 40 districts and tehsils in Pakistan, including Sargodha, Dera Ghazi Khan, Multan, Khanpur, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Mianwali, Bannu, Kohat, Waziristan, Dera Ismail Khan, Swabi and Peshawar. It also has an office in Islamabad. Funds are collected from these grassroots offices as well as from sources abroad. The militia has accounts in two branches of Allied Bank in Islamabad, which have not been frozen because the organisation is not under a ban. The authorities have begun the process of reorganisation of jehad by changing names and asking the various outfits to merge. Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami has been asked to merge with Harkatul Mujahideen of Fazlur Rehman Khaleel who had close links with Osama bin Laden. The new name given to this merger is Jamiatul Mujahideen. Jamaat Islami’s Hizbul Mujahideen has been made to absorb all the refugee Kashmiri organisations. Jaish and Lashkar-e-Tayba have been clubbed together as Al-Jahad. All the Barelvi organisations, so far located only in Azad Kashmir, have been put together as Al-Barq. Al-Badr and Hizbe Islami have been renamed as Al-Umar Mujahideen. "

PAK ARMY RESHUFFLE & AFTER (4-10-2004)

2009-04-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

As expected, President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan announced a major reshuffle of the senior officers of the Pakistan Army of the rank of Generals and Lts.General on October 2 and 3,2004. The reshuffle was necessitated by the impending retirement of Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, as the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Gen.Muhammad Yusuf Khan as the Vice-Chief of the Army Staff, both on October 7,2004.

2. The details of the promotions and postings announced by Musharraf are given in the Annexure. With the retirement of Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, a Kashmiri belonging to the Sudan tribe, from the Army, the Pakistan Army does not have any identified fundamentalist officers in the rank of Lts.Gen./Gen. When Musharraf seized power on October 12, 1999, the Army had two identified "fundos" in the rank of Lt.Gen.--- Lt.Gen. Mohammad Aziz Khan, who was then the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), and Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, the then Corps Commander, Karachi.

3. Subsequently, Musharraf appointed Mohammad Aziz Khan as the Commander of one of the two Corps in Lahore and Lt.Gen.Usmani as the Deputy Chief of the Army Staff. It was the triumvirate of Lt.Gen. Usmani as Corps Commander, Karachi,, Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan as the CGS and Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, as the then Corps Commander of Rawalpindi, which had staged the coup against Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, in the absence of Musharraf from the country and paved the way for his installation as the military dictator with the designation of Chief Executive. They refused to accept Nawaz's order dismissing Musharraf as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) and appointing Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, the then Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence ISI), in his place. They had both Nawaz and Ziauddin arrested.

4. After taking over, Musharraf appointed Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed as the DG of the ISI. After the 9/11 terrorist strikes, the US reportedly exercised pressure on Musharraf to ease out all the three from the sensitive posts held by them before the US military operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban started on October 7,2001. The US did not trust Usmani and Mohammad Aziz Khan because of their close proximity to the Islamic fundamentalist parties and it was annoyed with Mahmood Ahmed because of his failure to pressurise Mulla Mohammad Omer, the Amir of the Taliban, to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US.

5. After 9/11 and before the US military strikes started, Musharraf had sent a team of senior religious clerics of Pakistan headed by the late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Binori Madrasa, Karachi, to Kandahar to persuade Mulla Omar to hand over Osama to the US. He had asked Mahmood Ahmed, in his capacity as the DG,ISI, to accompany them.

6. During their meeting with the Amir, instead of asking him to hand over Osama to the US, they complimented him for not doing so and encouraged him to continue to resist US pressure. Mahmood Ahmed, who was present during the meeting, reportedly did not intervene and kept quiet. The US was furious with him on coming to know of this from one of the Mullas, who was allegedly in the pay of the US. It demanded his removal from the post of DG,ISI.

7.Musharraf had Usmani and Mahmood removed on October 7,2001. They went on premature retirement. He could not remove Mohammad Aziz Khan from the Army because of his Kashmiri background, his popularity amongst the fundamentalist parties and jihadi organisations and his role in orchestrating the jihad against the Indian Army in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). He removed him from Lahore, promoted him as a four-star General and appointed him to the largely powerless post of Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.

8. To reassure the fundamentalist parties and the jihadi organisations that his being kicked upstairs would not involve any dilution of the Pakistani support to the jihad in J&K, he told them that even after his appointment as the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, he would continue to handle the jihad in J&K.

9. Usmani, though a fundamentalist like Aziz, was not as popular as Aziz amongst the fundamentalist organisations. Musharraf did not, therefore, have to worry about any negative consequences of his removal.

10. Even after Aziz retires on October 7,2004, Musharraf has to keep a wary eye on him. Because of his role in the Kashmiri jihad and in helping the Taliban, Aziz is very popular amongst the lower ranks of the Army. Some of the junior Army officers and a Kashmiri belonging to the same Sudan tribe as Aziz and coming from the same village in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) as Aziz, who were arrested following the first unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Musharraf in December last year, were reported to have stated during the interrogation that they wanted to kill Musharraf not only because of his betrayal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but also of Aziz. The Kashmiri detenu has reportedly accused Musharraf of preventing a Kashmiri (Aziz) from becoming the COAS for the first time in the history of Pakistan by giving himself an extension .

11. Musharraf might find himself compelled to reassure the jihadis once again that Aziz's retirement would not mean any change in his Kashmir policy. There is already speculation in Pakistan that he might appoint Aziz as the President of the POK in replacement of Maj.Gen. (retd)Mohammad Anwar Khan, the present President, who is Aziz's cousin or nephew.

12. Ehsanul Haq, who succeeds Aziz, is believed to be a Pashtun. He is a close family friend of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), but is not a fundamentalist himself. In 2001, when Musharraf accepted an invitation from A.B.Vajpayee, the then Indian Prime Minister, to visit India for the Agra summit, the Qazi was strongly critical of it and refused to attend an all-party meeting convened by Musharraf before going to India. It was Ehsanul Haq, then a Corps Commander at Peshawar, who met the Qazi, at Musharraf's request, and persuaded him to support Musharraf's decision to visit India.

13. After taking over as the DG, ISI, he came under some suspicion in February,2002, when Omar Sheikh, one of the principal accused in the case relating to the kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, reportedly told the Karachi Police during the interrogation that during a visit to Kandahar before9/11 to meet Osama, he had come to know of Al Qaeda's plans for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and had mentioned this to Ehsanul Haq at Peshawar on his return. Omar Sheikh's allegation did not, however, affect Ehsanul Haq's position as the DG,ISI.

14. The US was reported to have been quite happy with his stewardship of the ISI for three years during which some pro-jihadi officers were eased out of it and many key Al Qaeda operatives, who had taken shelter in Pakistan, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, were arrested by the ISI and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the same time, there was concern over his perceived inaction against the Taliban leaders operating from the Pakistani territory. This, however, did not affect the USA's over-all positive assessment of him.

15. Keeping this in view, one would have expected Musharraf to appoint him as the VCOAS, in which capacity he would have continued to supervise and co-ordinate the functioning of the ISI. The post of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee to which he has been appointed is a largely paper-rich post involving medium and long-term assessment of the needs of the military, preparing and revising operational plans etc and does not involve important executive and operational responsibilities. Unless Musharraf has reassured the US that Ehsanul Haq would continue to be actively involved in the operations against Al Qaeda, his being shunted up to this post could mean his marginalisation for the next three years before he quits the Army.

16. It is not clear whether Gen. Hayat, the new VCOAS, who will assist Musharraf in the day to day running of the Army and the ISI and in supervising the anti-Al Qaeda operations, is a Punjabi or a Mohajir. He is senior to Ehsanul Haq, having been commissioned in 1967 in the Armoured Corps, whereas Ehsanul Haq was commissioned in 1969 in an Army Air Defence Regiment. Gen. Hayat is known for his personal loyalty to Musharraf and his proximity to the US. These two factors would seem to have played a role in the June 10 attempt to assassinate him at Karachi by the Jundullah ( the Army of Allah), a new organisation, which is a member of the IIF.

17. Not much is known about Lt.Gen.Kiani, the new DG of the ISI. He had also served in the past as the DG of Military Operations, an important post from the point of view of the anti-Al Qaeda operations.

18. Mohammad Aziz Khan and Muhammad Yusuf Khan owed their promotions as Lt.Gen. to Nawaz Sharif and not to Musharraf. With them out of the way and the supersession and consequent premature retirement of six others, all the serving Lts.Gen, owed their rise above the rank of Brigadier personally to Musharraf. He would, therefore, be confident of their personal loyalty to him.

19. There is unlikely to be any opposition from them to his giving himself another extension as the COAS or any heart-burning over it. The opposition to it is mainly from the opposition political parties and sections of the public. While it is certain that , with US backing for his decision, Musharraf will continue to wear the second hat of COAS after December in violation of the formal commitment made by him to the political parties to resign from that post, the events leading to his decision are not proceeding as he had expected them to .

20. He was planning to have resolutions passed by the two Houses of the Federal Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies of the four provinces requesting him to continue as the COAS too in Pakistan's supreme national interest. The provincial Assemblies of Sindh and Punjab have already done so and there should be no problem in getting similar resolutions passed by the two Houses of the Federal Parliament, which he controls through the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaide Azam) and the defectors from Benazir Bhutto's People's Party Parliamentarians.

21. However, he has been facing difficulty in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. The NWFP Assembly, which is dominated by the fundamentalists, has opposed his continuing as the COAS and in the Balochistan Assembly,where the fundamentalists have a large but not dominating presence, his supporters have not so far been able to have their way.

22. The religious fundamentalist parties, who feel cheated by him on this issue, have organised a series of public rallies to oppose his continuing as the COAS. Reliable reports from Pakistan say that the response to their rallies on this issue has been disquietingly (to Musharraf) large in the NWFP, reflecting the continuing Pashtun anger over his co-operation with the US against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

23. Musharraf does not, however, have to worry over the protests of the political parties opposed to him and the religious fundamentalists, so long as he has the support of his officers and the US. Unless the public protests against him gather unexpected momentum, as had happened under Ayub Khan, which seems unlikely at present, he should have no concerns over any negative public reaction to his violating his past commitment on the COAS issue.

24. If at all there is any threat to Musharraf's position, it is likely to come not from the senior officers, but from junior officers not only in the Army, but also in the Air Force. As admitted by Musharraf himself in a private TV interview in June, 2004, the investigations into the two attempts to kill him last December have revealed the involvement of junior non-commissioned officers of the Army and Air Force. Any future threat to his position would come mainly from that level and not from a senior level in the form of another conspiracy to kill him.

25.There is some penetration of jihadi organisations into the Army and the Air Force at the lower and middle levels and there is anger against Musharraf at those levels because of his co-operation with the US against Al Qaeda and the Taliban and in the anti-proliferation investigation against Dr.A.Q.Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. There is also considerable anger amongst the Shias in the Armed Forces over his inability to stop the massacre of Shias by Sunni terrorists. Since he took over power, there have been 40 instances of massacre of Shias in different cities of Pakistan. Such a large number of anti-Shia massacres had not taken place under any other previous leader. Any threat to him would come from these sections.

26. The new promotions and postings mark the climbing up the professional ladder of a new generation of officers, who distinguished themselves not in battles against India over Kashmir or in the covert jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan ostensibly to protect Islam, but in the so-called war against Al Qaeda to protect American lives and promote US interests. The fact that they did well in this war might be a good performance in the eyes of the US political leadership and policy-makers, but not in the eyes of large sections of Pakistani public opinion.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi) E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )

ANNEXURE: PROMOTIONS & POSTINGS ANNOUNCED ON OCT. 2 & 3,2004

LT.GENS. PROMOTED AS FOUR-STAR GENERALS & THEIR POSTINGS

1.Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. He replaces Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, who retires on October 7,2004.He was the DG of the ISI, till his promotion.

2.Lt-Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat, Vice-Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS).He replaces Gen.Muhammad Yusuf Khan, who also retires on October 7,2004. He was the Corps Commander, Karachi, till his promotion and had survived an assassination attempt by the International Islamic Front (IIF) on June 10,2004.

EXISTING LTS.GEN. RESHUFFLED

1.Lt.Gen.Ashfaq Kiani. Replaces Ehsanul Haq as DG,ISI. He was Corps Commander, Rawalpindi.

2. Lt.Gen.Shahid Hameed, Corps Commander, Quetta, posted as Commandant, National Defence College, on retirement following supersession of Lt-Gen Tariq Wasim Ghazi.

MAJ.GENS PROMOTED AS LT.GEN & THEIR NEW POSTINGS

1.Lt.Gen.Syed Ather Ali,Corps Commander, Karachi.

2.Lt.Gen.Mohammad Afzal Muzaffar,Corps Commander, 2nd Strike Corps, Multan.

3.Lt.Gen.Hamid Rabnawaz, Corps Commander, Quetta.

4.Lt.Gen.Salahuddin Satti, Corps Commander, Rawalpindi.

5.Lt.Gen.Mohammad Sabir, Corps Commander, Gujranwala.

6.Lt.Gen. Imtiaz Hussain will continue as Director-General, Weapons and Equipment, on his promotion as Lt.Gen.

7. Lt-Gen Wasim Ashraf appointed as Adjutant-General to succeed Lt-Gen Faiz Gillani, who retires this month.

LT.GENS WHO RETIRE ON BEING SUPERSEDED

1.Lt-Gen Mohammad Akram. He was Corps Commander, 2nd strike Corps, Multan.

2.Lt-Gen Javed Hasan. He was Corps Commander, Gujranwala. During the Kargil conflict with India of 1999, he was in charge of the operations as Commander FCNA (Force Command Northern Areas). He has been superseded reportedly because of his poor performance, which led to the death of hundreds of Pakistani soldiers at the hands of the Indian Army.

3.Lt.Gen Munir Hafeiz, Chairman, National Accountability Bureau. He is to retire from the Army on October 30, 2004, on reaching the age of superannuation, but will continue as Chairman, NAB, in a civilian capacity till October 2005 when his tenure in that post expires.

LT.GEN, WHO HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED, BUT WILL CONTINUE IN HIS PRESENT POST

1.Lt-Gen Hamid Javed, currently Chief of Staff with General Musharraf. He is already under extension for a year after reaching the age of superannuation. He has never held an independent charge of a Corps and, hence, was not eligible for consideration for promotion.
The position of Lt.Gen.S.P.Shahid, Corps Commander, Bhawalpur, who has also been superseded is not clear. Since no one has been appointed in his place, it is possible that, despite his supersession, he has chosen to continue in the post till his date of superannuation on April 30, 2005.

THE GUILTY MEN OF 9/11 ( 10-9-2003 )

2009-04-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

The "Time" magazine of the US (August 31, 2003) has carried a commentary on a book written by Gerald Posner titled "Why America Slept".

2.The commentary says: "Most of his new book is a lean, lucid retelling of how the CIA, FBI and U.S. leaders missed a decade's worth of clues and opportunities that if heeded, Posner argues, might have forestalled the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Posner is an old hand at revisiting conspiracy theories. He wrote controversial assessments dismissing those surrounding the J.F.K. and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations. And the Berkeley-educated lawyer is adept at marshaling an unwieldy mass of information—most of his sources are other books and news stories—into a pattern made tidy and linear by hindsight. His indictment of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies covers well-trodden ground, though sometimes the might-have-beens and could-have-seens are stretched thin. The stuff that is going to spark hot debate is Chapter 19, an account—based on Zubaydah's claims as told to Posner by "two government sources" who are unnamed but "in a position to know"—of what two countries (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) allied to the U.S. did to build up al-Qaeda and what they knew before that September day."

3. The reference is to Abu Zubaidah, then projected by the US intelligence agencies as the No.3 to Osama bin Laden in the Al Qaeda. He was arrested by the Pakistani authorities, at the instance of the US intelligence, from the house of an office-bearer of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), a member of bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), at Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab on March 28 last year and flown by the FBI to the US naval base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia for interrogation. It is not known where he is kept presently.

4. The book, according to the commentary, refers to a 1996 meeting in Pakistan between bin Laden and Mushaf Ali Mir, a high-ranking officer of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) who subsequently became the Chief of the Air Staff in November 2000 and died in a mysterious plane crash in February last. The book, according to the "Time", cites Abu Zubaidah as having claimed that he was present at the meeting during which "bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was blessed by the Saudis."

5. The mention of Mushaf Ali Mir by Abu Zubaidah as the ISI's contact man with bin Laden is surprising for the following reasons. First, the Pakistani Army, which always controls the ISI, never associates officers of the Air Force and the Navy with its sensitive covert operations. Second, it generally does not allow officers of the Air Force and the Navy to head the ISI or to occupy sensitive positions in it.

6. Since 1988, when the Pakistan Army used bin Laden and his tribal hordes for brutally suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit, the contacts with bin Laden had always been handled by senior officers of the Army. Amongst those who had handled bin Laden (in the order of importance) are Gen. Mohammad Aziz, a Kashmiri from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) belonging to the Sudan tribe, who is now Chairman, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Gen. Mehmood Ahmed, Director-General of the ISI from October,1999, to October 2001, when he was reportedly removed under US pressure because of his links with the Al Qaeda, and Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, the present DG of the ISI since October,2001, who was before that the Corps Commander at Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

7. Gen. Aziz was Deputy-Director-General of the ISI as a Major-General till November,1998, when Musharraf appointed him as his Chief of the General Staff (CGS) after his promotion as a Lt.General. Since Musharraf did not trust Lt.Gen. Ziauddin, whom Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, had appointed as the DG of the ISI, he ordered the transfer of all files relating to the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and terrorist operations in India from the ISI to the office of the CGS. Aziz continued handling these operations.

8.There were four phases in the ISI's relations with bin Laden. In the first phase before 1990, the ISI did not feel the need to keep the relations secret from the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The two were operating him jointly. In fact, it was the CIA which brought him from Saudi Arabia initially for making use of his civil engineering skills for the construction of tunnels in difficult terrain in Afghanistan. He subsequently became the head and mentor of the Arab mercenaries who had been brought by the Western intelligence agencies to Afghanistan for helping the Afghan mujahideen in their jehad against the Soviet troops.

9. In the second phase between 1990 and 1996, there were no reports of any contacts between the ISI and bin Laden. He was initially in Saudi Arabia and then the Sudan. During this period, Pakistani jehadi leaders such as Maulana Masood Azhar, then of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA) and now of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), Fazlur Rahman Khalil, then of the HUA and now of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), and Prof. Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, the Amir of the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad, the political wing of the LET, used to visit bin Laden, initially in Saudi Arabia and then in the Sudan. Since all these jehadi leaders had close contacts with the ISI, it was very likely that they had kept the ISI informed of their discussions with bin Laden and of the activities of the Al Qaeda in Somalia and Saudi Arabia.

10.The third phase was between 1996 and October 7, 2001. In the beginning of 1996, the Sudanese Government asked him to leave Khartoum. Through the Pakistani Jehadi leaders, he sought the permission of the Burhanuddin Rabbani Government, then in power in Kabul, to shift to Jalalabad in Afghanistan. After consulting the Benazir Bhutto Government, then in office in Islamabad, Rabbani allowed him and his entourage to shift to Jalalabad. Shortly thereafter, the Taliban captured Jalalabad and Kabul in September, 1996. Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, ordered the shifting of bin Laden and his entourage to Kandahar where the Taliban had set up its religious headquarters.

11. A number of serving and retired officers of the Pakistan Army and the ISI such as Mohammad Aziz, Lt. Gen.(retd) Hamid Gul, former DG of the ISI, and Lt.Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, another former DG of the ISI, called on bin Laden at Jalalabad and then Kandahar and used to remain in touch with him. Aziz used to organise his periodic medical check-up at a Pakistani military hospital at Peshawar. None of the reports received during this period mentioned about the presence of either Mushaf Ali Mir or Abu Zubaidah at any of these meetings.

12. The US was aware of the shifting of bin Laden and his entourage to Afghanistan. Though the Al Qaeda had been suspected in the attack on US troops in Somalia in 1993 and in the explosions in Saudi Arabia in 1996 targeting US troops, the US did not exercise pressure on the Taliban to hand over bin Laden to it. During this period, UNOCAL, the US oil company, was very hopeful of getting the approval of the Taliban Government for its oil and gas pipeline project and US officials such as Mrs. Robin Raphael, then Assistant Secretary of State, used to interact with the Taliban on this subject. There were no reports of their ever having raised the issue of bin Laden with the Taliban.

13. It was only after bin Laden had formed his International Islamic Front (IIF) in February 1998 and called for a jehad against the USA and Israel that the USA started pressurising the Nawaz Sharif Government to make the Taliban hand over bin Laden to the US for trial. The pressure increased after the explosions organised by the Al Qaeda outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998. By then, UNOCAL had also abandoned its pipeline project in collaboration with the Taliban following an outcry amongst women's groups in the West over the Taliban's anti-women policies. In the midst of all these happenings, Mohammad Aziz and Hamid Gul kept in regular touch with bin Laden and the Taliban Amir. The Taliban had allowed the HUM to set up training camps in its territory with Arab and Chechen instructors from the Al Qaeda. These were amongst the camps destroyed by the US Cruise missile strikes in retaliation for the explosions in Kenya and Tanzaniya.

14. As the US pressure increased, Musharraf and Mohammad Aziz presented to Nawaz in the beginning of 1999 a plan for shifting all the terrorists belonging to the Al Qaeda and its allied organisations from Afghanistan to the Kargil heights in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and let them loose against the Indian Army. They argued that by doing so they would be able to escape US pressure and, at the same time, add to the difficulties of the Indian Army. It was this plan which Nawaz approved.

15. After the fighting in Kargil broke out, Nawaz was totally surprised to learn that Musharraf and Aziz had used regular Pakistani Army troops and not the terrorists for occupying the Kargil heights. Why Musharraf changed the plans is not clear. Some say that he and Aziz did shift some of the terrorists from Afghanistan to Skardu in Gilgit and sent them to occupy the Kargil heights. They were surprised by the ease with each they moved into the heights and by the reports received from the terrorists that there was no Indian Army on the other side. They then decided to send the Army in to replace the terrorists and occupy the area.

16. Others say that Musharraf and Aziz had from the beginning planned to send the troops and not the terrorists, but had told Nawaz that they would be using the terrorists since they felt that Nawaz would never approve the plan if they told him that they intended to use their troops.

17. After the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops from the Kargil area under US pressure, the US again took up with Nawaz the question of Pakistani help to get hold of bin Laden. This matter came up during a visit of Ziauddin to Washington DC. The US wanted Pakistan's help for organising a commando operation into Kandahar to catch hold of bin Laden and his entourage. Nawaz asked the US to be patient and sent Ziauddin to Kandahar to persuade the Taliban Amir to hand over bin Laden to the USA. He refused.

18. Nawaz and Ziauddin had not kept Musharraf and Aziz in the picture. On coming to know of Ziauddin's secret visit to Kandahar, Musharraf sent Aziz to the Amir to tell him that he should not obey any instructions of Ziauddin. Nawaz came to know of this and this was one of the factors, which contributed to his decision to sack Musharraf on October 12,1999, which in turn led to his overthrow and Musharraf assuming power.

19. After Musharraf took over power, Aziz, who continued to be his CGS, and Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, who had replaced Ziauddin as the DG of the ISI, continued to remain in touch with bin Laden, who kept coming to Peshawar for his medical check-ups at the local military hospital. In the middle of 2001, a function was held in Kabul at which the first group of Taliban officers trained by the Pakistan Army passed out. Amongst those who attended this function were bin Laden, Hamid Gul and Ehsanul Haq, then Corps Commander, Peshawar.

20. After 9/11, under US pressure, Musharraf sent a team of Pakistani Mullas headed by Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, the chief of the Binori madrasa of Karachi, to Kandahar ostensibly to persuade the Taliban Amir to hand over bin Laden to the US. Mahmood Ahmed accompanied them. Surprisingly, instead of asking the Amir to hand over bin Laden, the Mullas, in the presence of Mahmood Ahmed, complimented him for resisting the US pressure.

21. It was reported that the US somehow came to know of this and it was under its pressure that Musharraf had to remove Aziz and Mahmood Ahmed from their posts when the US operations began in Afghanistan on October,7, 2001.

22. During his interrogation by the Karachi Police, Omar Sheikh, the principal accused in the case relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, last year was reported to have stated that during a visit to Kandahar in the middle of 2001 he had come to know of the Al Qaeda's plans for the terrorist strikes in the US and had conveyed this to Ehsanul Haq at Peshawar on his return from Kandahar. Ehsanul Haq is a close personal friend of Musharraf and it is very unlikely that he would not have immediately informed Musharraf about it. Thus, definitely Ehsanul Haq and most probably Musharraf himself were aware of the Al Qaeda's plans for the terrorist strikes in the US, but for reasons not clear, they chose not to alert the US about it.

23. From his new post as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee to which he had been transferred from his post as Corps Commander, Lahore, Aziz continued to keep in touch with bin Laden and other jehadi leaders. It was he who alerted the Al Qaeda, the HUM and the JEM of the impending freezing of their bank accounts last year and advised them to remove the bulk of their balances before the instructions for the freezing reached their banks.

24. It was Aziz, who also reportedly persuaded Mufti Shamzai to give shelter to bin Laden in the Binori madrasa after an injured bin Laden managed to escape into Pakistan from Tora Bora. It was also reported that Aziz also arranged for the treatment of bin Laden for a sharpnel injury by serving and retired doctors of the Pakistan Army.

25. Since August last year, bin Laden has disappeared from the Binori madrasa. One is no longer certain whether he is alive or dead and, if he is alive, where he is . Since a number of messages purported to be of his have been circulating, he is presumed to be alive unless proved to be dead. After August last year, there has not been a single reliable report of his being sighted anywhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world. Like the proverbial ghosts, he is only heard, but not seen.

26.Why did Abu Zubaidah mention to his FBI and CIA interrogators that it was Mushaf Ali Mir who was in touch with bin Laden? One can only speculate. It was probably to draw suspicion away from Mohammad Aziz, Musharraf and Ehsanul Haq.

27. There is, however, one intriguing aspect about Mushaf Ali Mir. He did not enjoy a great reputation in the PAF. He was heading the military equipment manufacturing complex at Kamra. In November,2000, Musharraf, who liked Mushaf Ali Mir tremendously, superseded five highly distinguished officers of the PAF and appointed Mir as the Chief of the Air Staff. The supersession of so many officers came in for strong criticism from a number of retired officers of the Pakistani Armed Forces. Why did Musharraf feel obliged to promote this mediocre officer even at the risk of causing widespread unhappiness in the PAF? A question to which there has been no answer.

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

ISI-BIN LADEN LINKS--AS SEEN BY THE DIA (17-9-2003)

2009-04-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

On the eve of the second anniversary of Al Qaeda's terrorist strikes in the USA on September 11, 2001, the US Government has declassified 32 documents relating to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Twenty-six of these documents are of the US State Department and the remaining are of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the Pentagon. This article analyses the contents of three DIA documents only.

2.The first document (15 pages), prepared in September,1999, is based on an analysis of all information received by the DIA till July 1,1999. It is titled "Defence Intelligence Assessment". The subject of the assessment is "Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda Information Operations". Nearly 90 per cent of the document has been excised before its declassification. Hence, it does not contain anything of value. From a perusal of the unexcised portions, one could guess that the assessment must have been about Al Qaeda's information assets such as its modern communications capability, its use of the internet,. its capability for attacking the information networks of others etc and the defensive and offensive options available to the US. The defensive aspect relates to protecting the networks of the USA against Al Qaeda attacks and the offensive to neutralising or penetrating Al Qaeda's assets.

3. The second document, dated September 24, 2001, is titled "Veteran Afghan Traveller's Analysis of Al Qaeda and Taliban's Exploitable Weaknesses" and carries the following caution: "This is an information report. Not finally evaluated intelligence."

4. It would appear that this document is not the traveller's report, but an analysis prepared by an official of the DIA, either in the US Embassy in Islamabad or in the DIA headquarters in Washington DC, on the basis of the traveller's report. The language used in the portion declassified and released is that of a professional intelligence analyst and not that of an Afghan traveller.

5. The analysis carries the following summary: "Eventually, the Taliban and Al Qaeda will war with each other. The weakness of both is in the minds of the individuals that belong to the groups and in the power that is given to them by their names. Al Qaeda have not integrated with Afghans or the Taliban, leaving them susceptible to exploitation." By this, the analyst means exploitation by the US to play the Taliban/Afghans and Al Qaeda against each other. What wishful-thinking this has proved to be in retrospect!

6.The analysis carries the most damning account of Pakistan's role as the real host of bin Laden and his Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It says: "Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network was able to expand under the safe santuary extended by Taliban following Pakistan directives. If there is any doubt on that issue, consider the location of bin Laden's camp targeted by US Cruise missiles, Zahawa. Positioned on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was built by Pakistani contractors, funded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate and protected under the patronage of a local and influential Jadran tribal leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani. However, the real host in that facility was the Pakistani ISI. If this was later to become bin Laden's base, then serious questions are raised by the early relationship between bin Laden and Pakistan's ISI."

7. It describes Jalaluddin Haqqani as "the Jadran tribal leader most exploited by ISI during the Soviet-Afghan war to facilitate the introduction of Arab mercenaries " and the Taliban as "the handy cloak woven by Pakistan to shroud their progress?" Whose progress---Al Qaeda's or Pakistan's? Most probably, Pakistan's, but this is not clear.

8. The analysis describes the US objective as "the establishment of a more stable coalition Afghan Government free of the Taliban and Pakistani interference" and advocates a cost effective military engagement, with appropriate air support, than the mass deployment of ground forces. It says: "The enemy does not have mass, which makes them harder to engage."

9. The analysis' predictions of differences one day emerging between the Afghans and the Taliban on the one side and Al Qaeda on the other because of Al Qaeda's superiority complex and its perception of itself as an elite force destined to command have not proved correct so far.

10. The analysis projects the then coming war against terrorism in Afghanistan as likely to be fought on two fronts--- a war to destroy the material strength of Al Qaeda---its cadres, training camps, infrastructure etc--- and another for the minds of the people. In the context of the war for the minds of the people, it underlines the importance of right names and right images to influence the minds of the targeted people.

11. It points out the impact on the minds of the Muslims made by the characterisation of the US as "the Great Satan". The constant reference to the US as the "Great Satan" and not as the US serves the double purpose of highlighting the immense power of the US which could be countered only with determination and projecting that power in negative colours to create an aversion for that power. It stresses the importance of a similar characterisation of Al Qaeda by an appropriate name and not by its real name of Al Qaeda. Apparently, US policy-makers and psy-warriors have not been able to determine what that characterisation could be.

12. The third document, also dated September 24,2001, is titled: "Veteran Afghanistan traveller's analysis of Al Qaeda and Taliban, military, political and cultural landscape and its weaknesses. " It also carries the same caution as the second. It goes into great detail regarding the Pakistani game in Afghanistan in the following words:

13. "During the Soviet-Afghan war, the West preferred to maintain a policy of deniability and allowed Pakistan to handle the daily administration of the war, cash and arms distribution. It was a task Pakistan carried out with great enthusiasm and they helped themselves to generous portion of cash and arms. The Pakistan Government also had a hidden agenda.

14. "Unlike the West, they (Pakistan) were concerned with what would happen after the war to ensure influence over any Government that came to power in Afghanistan after a Soviet withdrawal. Pakistan decided to directly influence the outcome. Rather than allow the most gifted Afghan commanders and parties to flourish, who would be difficult to control later, Pakistan preferred to groom the incompetent ones for the role of future leaders of Afghanistan. Being incompetent, they would be wholly reliant on Pakistan for support. The principal beneficiary of this policy was Gulbuddin Heckmatyar. His credentials were that of an anti-Western Islamic fundamentalist.

15." In tandem with favouring the incompetent Heckmatyar over more enterprising and gifted commanders such as Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Tadjik commander from Northern Afghanistan, Pakistan also encouraged, facilitated and often escorted Arabs from the Middle East into Afghanistan...... Visitors from the Middle East had been in evidence since the very early part of the Soviet-Afghan war. However, they lacked numbers, confidence, experience or bonding ties sufficient to give them a separate identity from their hosts.

16." This was allowed to evolve over a period of time, which was effectively the incubation of Al Qaeda. For the first time, large numbers of Arabs were observed in Afghanistan during the Soviet withdrawal. One of the key features of the Paktia border province, in which they were first established, was that it had no Russians.....At that point, the Arab visitors were largely linked and reliant on Haqqani's mujahideen in Paktia.

17. "When Kabul finally fell, it was Ahmed Shah Massoud who captured it, not Heckmatyar. Pakistan could not accept this result and the fragile Afghan coalition Government began another civil war, with the Pakistani stooge Heckmatyar being backed to seize total power. He was never able to wrest Kabul from Massoud, despite massive logistical and material ( including manpower) support from Pakistan. Against this failure, it should be noted that Pakistan has lost every war it has ever fought.

18. "After years of futile effort, which effectively saw the Lebanonisation of Afghanistan, Pakistan finally abandoned Heckmatyar. However, not in favour of a more rational policy. Instead, they set about doing the same thing all over again. They created another force they hoped to have better control over than Heckmatyar's rabble. It was called Taliban,the Arabic name "Talib" being literally translated as "Asker" or "Seeker".

19." Taliban means "the Seekers", signifying a student of divinity. This inspired title helped cloak Pakistan's hidden agenda in a new Islamic coat. To lead the Taliban Pakistan chose Mullah Mohammad Omar, who was willing to do as he was told. According to Taliban propaganda, the Mullah was divinely inspired to rid Afghanistan of the troublesome war and warlords. Afghanistan was blighted with both, largely due to years of civil war sponsored by Pakistan and reliant on the stockpile of arms plundered from a covert Western arms pipeline. From the old Soviet-Afghan war days, the Mullah emerged with a fully functioning, fully-armed, conventionally-equipped, fully-trained military force prone to large-scale conventional actions. Omar's emergence is credited to Pakistan ISI's actions.

20."The repeated, pronounced pattern under ISI direction has been to ignore the poorly-trained guerilla nature of the Afghan Mujahideen and press them to conduct conventional-style engagement, the same style Taliban are credited with learning from the Koran. As a result of these actions, the fully-supported by Pakistan Taliban prevailed over the unsupported legitimate government of Afghanistan.

21." The Taliban is not synonymous with Afghanistan. It was created, imposed and recognised by Pakistan in pursuit of its own interests. Playing the Islamic fundamentalist card as a means of securing control over a compliant proxy regime in neighbouring Afghanistan has seriously backfired. Pakistan has also lost control of the Taliban, who are proving to be both unpredictable and ungrateful. Under the shade of the Taliban umbrella, the bin Laden brand of extremism has been able to grow unmolested inside Afghanistan.

22." The Al Qaeda agenda in Afghanistan differs significantly from that of the Taliban. They are not about creating an independent Islamic State. Long term, there can be no room for Taliban in their ambitions. Having been artificially introduced to the region and encouraged in their ambitions so far, they have grown in confidence and stature. Taliban acceptance and approval of fundamentalist non-Afghans as part of their fighting force were merely an extension of the Pakistani policy during the Soviet-Afghan war. It is very important to realise that members of 055 Brigade (Al Qaeda) might serve with Taliban forces, but they are not in any Western sense integrated. They remain rather like an international brigade, different in language, habit and in the interpretation of Islam. Additionally, their vision of the future of Afghanistan differs.

23."Pakistan's goals are simple, the continuance of the policy they have always demonstrated regarding Afghanistan. It is failing with the Taliban and it cannot succeed under any Afghan Giovernment controlled by Al Qaeda. The repercussions from Pakistan's attempt to manipulate the Islamic card are just surfacing.

24." In Islamabad, they have tried to ignore or bury the evidence for some time. It must be a deeply troubling period for General (Musharraf) in Pakistan, who is asked to help hunt down the culprits that he helped to establish and supported. Not to support the US invites trouble and to assist the US to their aims also presents problems to Pakistan. The quandary leaves the Pakistanis confused as to how they might be absolved without permanently shattering their regional aspirations or their Government." (Citation of document ends)

25. The second and third documents are both dated September 24, 2001. The language in the second document is apparently that of a professional intelligence analyst, but the language of the third is not. It appears to be that of a source and not of the DIA. It would seem that the third document is the report of the source and the second is the note of a DIA analyst or analysts who had forwarded it to their superiors giving their assessment and making their recommendations regarding the future course of action.

26. From these documents, it is clear that the DIA knew of the role of the ISI in the sponsorship of not only the Taliban, but also Al Qaeda. And yet, the Bush administration has for over two years chosen to close its eyes to the complicity of Pakistan and to project Musharraf to its own public opinion as well as to the international community as a frontline ally in the war against terrorism. Why? A question to which there has been no convincing answer.

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

DID INDONESIA CONTACT BIN LADEN AFTER 9/11? (18-9-2003)

2009-04-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

This article may please be read in continuation of my earlier article dated September 17, 2003, in which I had analysed three of the six documents of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the Pentagon, which have been declassified by the US Government on the eve of the second anniversary of 9/11. This article analyses the remaining three.

2. Before commenting on the documents, certain general observations would be in order. In the US intelligence community, there has been an unresolved debate for many years on whether the DIA should have the same powers for clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) collection as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During the second tenure of former President Clinton, the Brown Commission on the working of the intelligence community had recommended as follows:

* During times of war, the DIA should have the same powers as the CIA.

* In times of peace, the DIA should have the same powers as the CIA only in areas of conflict where US troops are deployed.

* In other areas, if the DIA felt that one of its officers would be better able to handle a clandestine HUMINT operation, he should be deputed to the CIA to handle that operation under its supervision.

3. One does not know whether its recommendations have been accepted and implemented. Presuming they have been, the DIA must now be having the same powers as the CIA in Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia. One is not certain about Pakistan.

4. In the absence of clandestine HUMINT powers, the DIA restricts the activities of its overseas officers to collection of information from open and semi-open sources and their analysis and assessment. Examples of open sources are the media, military and military-related exhibitions, seminars etc. Semi-open sources are contacts, mainly in the armed forces of the host country, with whom the DIA officers have opportunities for official and social interaction. While they can pick their brain during such interactions, they are debarred from making any approach to them for recruiting them as conscious, paid clandestine sources.

5. The fourth document dated October 4, 2001, is the excised version of a report apparently sent by a DIA officer in Pakistan to his headquarters in Washington DC giving bits and pieces of information and views collected by him during an interaction with an unidentified Pakistani contact, most probably in the Armed Forces. The contact seems to have spoken to the DIA officer with confidence and authority, indicating thereby that he must be highly placed, most probably in the Inter-Services Intelligence. The DIA officer has recorded what was told to him by the contact and forwarded his note to his headquarters without any analysis and assessment and without any comments as to the reliability of the contact, his access to information of use to the US, the acceptability of his information/views and their significance, if true. The document carries the usual caution that what it contains is information and not assessed intelligence.

6. The document starts with the following summary of what the Pakistani contact told the DIA officer: "Maintains the vast majority of Pakistanis are firmly in support of President Musharraf; says TNI sought a meeting with UBL and Taliban reps to ask them to stop support for domestic Indonesian Muslim groups; claims GOP closed down the Al Rashid computer school and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen office in Lahore because of their ties to the Taliban; maintains Al Qaeda is producing rudimentary chem/bio agents in Afghanistan; Muslim groups demonstrate in front of the Pakistani Embassy."

7. The text of the report elaborates on all the points referred to in the summary except the one relating to Indonesia's request for a meeting with bin Laden and Taliban representatives. The portion of the text, apparently giving details of what the Pakistani contact told the DIA officer about the Indonesian attempts for a meeting with bin Laden and the Taliban, have been excised from the report before its declassification, but intriguingly the reference to it in the summary has not been excised. Was it oversight or deliberate?

8.UBL stands for Usama bin Laden and GOP for Government of Pakistan. The US intelligence agencies generally spell Osama as Usama. TNI is probably a reference to the Indonesian army.

9. The unexcised portion of the text gives the following important details of what the Pakistani contact told the DIA officer regarding the other points figuring in the summary.

10."President Musharraf is fully committed to support the international fight against terrorism and confident that it is the right course of action that serves Pakistan's self-interests. It has nothing to do with support for the US per se. But, of course, Pakistan would like to be recognised and assisted by the US and rest of the international community for its commitment in the struggle. Musharraf and other Pakistani leaders see this as an opportunity for a better future and expect concrete forms of assistance to help Pakistan climb out of the terrible economic condition the country is presently in.

11."There is no division within the military and no hesitation to support the President among Pakistan's military leaders. All of the Corps, Division and other senior military commanders have already pledged their loyalty to Musharraf.

12." It would be a mistake for the US to back the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He maintained that the Northern Alliance is of little importance. It has primary allegiance to Iran and Pakistan traditionally has never had close ties to this group.

13. "President Musharraf ordered the closing of the Al Rashid computer school in Lahore because of its connections to the Taliban. He said the President also ordered the authorities to shut down the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen office in Lahore. He said the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen is a Kashmiri group with connections to Taliban that had been collecting money in Lahore. According to him, both organisations were closed on Oct.2. He said the closing of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen office was controversial because some Pakistanis were accusing Musharraf of bowing to US pressure to cut off support for Kashmiri freedom-fighters. But, said the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was closed purely because of its ties to the Taliban. He categorically denied Indian allegations that Kashmiri Mujahideen were travelling to Afghanistan to support the Taliban.

14." Said he was sure that UBL and Al Qaeda have made efforts to produce chemical and biological warfare agents, but felt that these programmes were very rudimentary. He assumed that the GOP was sharing any details on these facilities, along with other UBL activities in Afghanistan, with the US.

15. "Said neither Indian nor Pakistani military forces were conducting dry season training manoeuvres near the border this year. Pakistan's only concern with India is the situation in Kashmir. In the aftermath of the serious car bomb incident in Indian Kashmir, said Pakistani leaders are concerned that the US will agree to India's demands that Kashmir be treated as a global terrorism problem. He maintained that the Indian leaders are now feeling politically and militarily strong. They are likely to exploit the situation by actively lobbying the international community over Kashmir. Said Pakistani leaders also expect that India might take some military action in Kashmir during the current crisis. " ( End of citation from the fourth document )

16. The fifth document, dated November 2,2001, discusses why bin Laden had Ahmed Shah Massoud killed on September 9, 2001. The document, heavily excised, does not read like the analysis of a DIA officer. It reads more like a source report, but does not give any indication that it is a source report. It carries the usual caution that what it contains is information and not assessed intelligence. It says:

17."Through Northern Alliance intelligence efforts, the late commander Massoud gained limited knowledge regarding the intentions of the Saudi millionaire Usama bin Laden and his terrorist organisation Al Qaeda to perform a terrorist act against the US on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzaniya. In April 2001, Massoud addressed the French and European Parliaments in Paris. In his televised speech, he warned the US Government about UBL.

18. "Although Commander Massoud was fighting the Taliban forces over the control of Afghanistan, he was not a threat to UBL and the Al Qaeda organisation. To Massoud, UBL was a Saudi citizen, exiled to Afghanistan due to his challenge to the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy. After the terrorist strikes on the US Embassies in Africa and receiving intelligence for his forces regarding UBL's future attacks, Massoud began to warn the West of UBL and Al Qaeda." ( End of citation from the fifth document )

19 The sixth document dated January 7, 2002,is also heavily excised before declassification. It gives the assessment either of a source or of a DIA officer, most probably based in Islamabad, on the situation in Pakistan with the usual caution that it was only information and not finally evaluated intelligence.

20. There are only two paras left unexcised. They say:" The Pakistani Government was stable and there was no chance that any groups, including the intelligence organisation, would overthrow the Government. The only formation capable of overthrowing the Government would be the Pakistani Armed Forces.

21." Many people in Pakistan feared that defeat of Taliban/Al Qaeda forces would cause more attacks on Westerners in Pakistan. The Pakistani Government would not officially hide any Taliban/Al Qaeda terrorists unless it would be beneficial to their security interests. There were many organisations within Pakistan, which would provide shelter and support Taliban/Al Qaeda terrorists. In the eyes of many Pakistani people (low class), what Western world perceives as terrorists, to them, they are freedom fighters or Moslem fighters of the same fate. " (End of citation from the sixth document)

22. The language in the document uses the past tense. In view of this, one cannot rule out the possibility that instead of being the assessment of a DIA officer, it was the assessment of a well-placed Pakistani contact, which he had recorded in indirect speech.

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

THE MYSTERY OF DIA DOCUMENTS ( 21-9-2003)

2009-04-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

This article is to be read in continuation of my earlier two articles on six recently-declassified documents of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the US relating to Pakistani sponsorship of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban before 9/11.

2. When the US intelligence community and lower level officers of the US State Department and the Pentagon feel aggrieved by what they perceive as the failure of their political leaders and senior policy-makers to act on any disquieting piece of information or assessed intelligence, they resort to one of two methods for bringing the information/intelligence to the notice of the public in the hope of thereby having pressure exercised on the decision-makers to act.

3. The first method is to have the information/intelligence leaked to media correspondents enjoying their confidence. They resort to this when the report containing the information/intelligence has no chance of being declassified in the near future. Examples of such reports are the intercepts of the National Security Agency (NSA), which is responsible for technical intelligence (TECHINT). Among instances of the use of this method, one could cite the leakage to sections of the US print media in 2001 of TECHINT showing that China had illegally sent to Pakistan a convoy carrying missiles and spare parts along the Karakoram Highway and the leakage earlier this year of a report about the use of a US-supplied C-130 plane by the Pakistan Air Force for airlifting missiles/spare parts from North Korea in August last Year.

4.The second method is to tip off analysts enjoying their confidence about the existence of classified documents containing serious information/intelligence and suggesting to them that they should apply for their declassification under the Freedom of Information Act, with a promise that the US intelligence agency concerned would not oppose their declassification.

5. In the US, all classified documents are automatically reviewed for declassification by the recording agency or department 25 years after they were recorded. In the case of documents less than 25 years old, a review for declassification is done on the receipt of an application for its declassification under the Freedom of Information Act.

6.Whether the documents are more than 25 years old or of recent origin, an agency or department can successfully oppose declassification on any of the following grounds: it will endanger an on-going clandestine operation or the life and/or career of a source or damage State-to-State relations.

7.Amongst such favoured analysts is a well-known writer on the US intelligence community, who generally writes positively of the performance of the intelligence community. In a book written by him in mid-1990s, he had levelled some allegations against Indian intelligence officers, evidently on the basis of a tip-off by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). His allegations were not noticed by the Indian policy-makers or media even though A.G.Noorani, the eminent columnist, had drawn attention to them in a commentary on the book written by him for the "Frontline" of Chennai.

8. In 2000, some documents of the sensitive NSA were declassified and made available on a web site with which he is reportedly associated. These documents, nearly 20 years old, showed that in the 1980s the US intelligence was keeping an electronic surveillance of Indian nuclear scientists and tapping their telephone conversations, not only when they travelled abroad, but also when they were in India, thereby indicating that it apparently had access to their land lines. The motive for the declassification of these documents was not clear.

9. There is reason to believe that the six DIA documents relating to Pakistan's links with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been declassified now at his instance because they were first displayed on the web site with which he is reportedly associated and other analysts tipped off about it.

10. What is interesting about this is that all the six declassified documents are hardly two years old and at least two of them contain sensitive information reflecting adversely on Pakistan, which is being projected by the US policy-makers as the USA's frontline ally in the war against terrorism. Before and after 9/11, there must have been hundreds of reports and messages sent by the DIA officers based in Pakistan to their headquarters. How did the applicant for their declassification under the Freedom of Information Act know of their existence and the inclusion in them of information about Pakistan's paternity of not only the Taliban, but also the Al Qaeda?

11. Most probably, some officers in the DIA, disturbed over the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan and aggrieved over the reluctance of the State Department to act against Musharraf, themselves tipped off the applicant about them and prodded him to apply for their declassification, with a promise that they would not oppose it.

12. What is the likely reason for their action? Since December last, reports from reliable sources in Afghanistan have been speaking of unhappiness amongst junior and middle level officers of the US Army deployed in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan over the continued backing of their superiors in the State Department and the Pentagon to Musharraf despite strong evidence of Pakistani complicity with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This unhappiness has increased after the Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami (HEI) stepped up their hit and run raids into Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistan in recent weeks.

13. There is anger amongst the US troops over the reluctance of their superiors in Washington DC to give them a free hand and to let them exercise their right of hot pursuit into Pakistani territory. Compare the trigger-happy actions and reactions of the US troops in Iraq, which have been given total freedom of action by the Pentagon and the State Department to do whatever was called for, with the tremendous restraint in words and actions with which they have been operating in Afghanistan, lest any over-reaction by them destabilise Musharraf.

14. Unable to give public expression to their unhappiness over their hands being tied, these officers, through their friends in the DIA, have probably tipped off the applicant to apply for the declassification and facilitated it.

15, While these documents have definitely created some embarrassment for Musharraf, he is unlikely to spend sleepless nights over them so long as he is certain that Gen. Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, and other senior US policy makers look upon him as indispensable at present.

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

RETURN OF THE "MIDNIGHT JACKAL"

2009-04-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

By Shahzad Raza (From "Dawn" of April 8, 2009)

ISLAMABAD, April 7:

Major Amir, who allegedly conspired and collaborated with others to topple the first Benazir Bhutto government, is said to have developed close relations with the Pakistan People’s Party top leadership.
Party sources told Dawn that Major Amir, a former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operative, had held a few meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari. However, what was discussed in the meetings remains unclear.

The sources said that Major Amir was part of the president’s entourage that accompanied him on his visit to Saudi Arabia in November 2008.
They added that some PPP leaders were quite surprised to see him around.

Major Amir confirmed the recent thaw in relationship between himself and the PPP top leadership.

“Let it be no surprise that I have had a cordial relationship with the PPP leadership for the past few years,” he asserted.

Asked what he discussed during his meetings with the president, he said, obliquely, that they had exchanged views on the issues of mutual interest.
However, the presidential spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, denied reports of meetings between Major Amir and President Zardari.

“I have never seen Major Amir in the Presidency during my stay. Moreover, I have not seen his name in any of the scheduled meetings of the president,” he said. But Mr Babar could not explain why Major Amir had been included in President Zardari’s entourage to Saudi Arabia.
Major Amir and Brigadier Imtiaz were the two main characters of “Operation Midnight Jackal” that was reportedly launched to topple the first Benazir Bhutto government in 1989.

The ISI had reportedly launched the operation to make Pakistan People’s Party MNAs support a no-confidence motion against their own prime minister.

According to the then director-general of the Intelligence Bureau, Masood Sharif Khattak, Major Amir and Brigadier Imtiaz were caught on video and audiotapes influencing some PPP parliamentarians.
But in an earlier interview with DawnNews, Major Amir and Brig Imtiaz had contradicted the reports of their involvement in the conspiracy.
Major Amir claimed he was acting on the specific directives of the then ISI director-general, Shamsur Rehman Kallue, who was an appointee of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

He claimed that he was acting to identify the black sheep within the ranks of the PPP. He offered the same version of events to the board in the GHQ which heard his case during court martial proceedings. The former ISI operative conceded that he kept a watchful eye on the treasury MNAs who were expected to support the no-confidence motion against the then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Sources said Major Amir would never have been able to find a place close to Benazir Bhutto. They added that some close aides of President Zardari helped Major Amir make his acquaintance.

The former ISI operative used to be a special adviser to former NWFP chief minister Sardar Mehtab Abbasi, a close aide of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

By then, Major Amir was said to be in the good books of the PML-N top leader. But this is not what the PML-N spokesman thought.
“He was just an adviser to Sardar Mehtab. But he did not have any close contact with Mian Nawaz Sharif,” PML-N spokesman Siddiqul Farooq claimed.

A political pundit, who has access to some important drawing rooms in Islamabad, did not rule out the possibility of the former ISI operative being given an important political assignment to deal with right-wing media or fundos or both.font-size small font-size largefont-size printemail shareadvertisement DAWN of April 8,2009

HAMBALI'S BROTHER: ANOTHER TELL-TALE ARREST ( 23-9-2003)

2009-04-07T02:07:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

There has been a pattern in Pakistan's Gen.Pervez Musharraf's so-called co-operation in the war against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which the recently declassified documents of the USA's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) show is Pakistan's own progeny, and International Islamic Front (IIF).

2.The pattern is: Avoid any action against the dregs of the Al Qaeda and the IIF sheltered in Pakistani territory so long as the US does not come to know of them; arrest them and hand them over with alacrity to the US once it comes to know of it.

3. This seems to have been repeated in the case of the reported arrest and handing-over of Gungun Rusman Gunawan (27), who is stated to be the brother of Hambali, projected as the operational chief of Jemmah Islamiyah (JI) of South-East Asia. Hambali was arrested in Thailand on August 11 and flown to a secret destination by the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for interrogation.

4. The reports regarding the arrest of his brother in Karachi coming out of Pakistan are confusing. While there seems to be no doubt that he was arrested, the confusion is about when, under what circumstances and where is he now.

5. On September 20, a spokesman of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Islamabad announced the arrest in Karachi of 13 Malaysian, two Indonesian and two Myanmarese students on suspicion of their links with the JI. It was stated that the arrests were made on a charge of illegally continuing to stay in Pakistan after the expiry of their visa. They were reportedly studying in the Abu Bakar Islamic University and two other madrasas of Karachi.

6. The FIA is Pakistan's equivalent of India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It was set up after Pakistan became independent for investigating cases relating to corruption, terrorism, narcotics smuggling and other inter-province crime. Over the years, the ISI, which has been using jihadi terrorist groups for achieving Pakistan's strategic objectives in India and Afghanistan, removed from the jurisdiction of the FIA many of its responsibilities relating to counter-terrorism.

7. According to well-informed sources in Pakistan, after 9/11, the USA, distrustful of the ISI, pressurised Musharraf to make the FIA once again the lead agency for counter-terrorism and sizable portion of the US assistance for strenghtening Pakistan's counter-terrorism capability is now going to the FIA and not to the ISI. The US has also been trying to have all the military officers in the FIA replaced by Police officers in order to totally civilianise the agency once again, as it used to be.

8.The Government-controlled Pakistani State TV reported the news as follows: " Pakistani security officials arrested 13 Malaysian and two Indonesian students in Karachi yesterday for involvement in activities seen as prejudicial to the interests of Pakistan. The relevant governments have been informed. The Malaysian and the Indonesian governments had withdrawn permission for the students to stay on in Pakistan. After completing necessary investigations and legal formalities, they will be handed over to the concerned countries.”

9. Subsequently, a report datelined Jakarta carried by the Pakistani media on September 22 stated as follows:" The Indonesian government has sent a protest note to the Pakistani authorities over the arrest in Karachi of two Indonesian students suspected of being Islamic militants. The acting Ambassador in Islamabad has sent a protest note to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry because it did not notify the embassy of the arrest. The Pakistani Ambassador to Indonesia has also been summoned to the Foreign Ministry,” the acting Indonesian Consul-General in Karachi, Temu Alam, said. However, the (Pakistani )Interior Ministry’s National Crisis Management Cell director, Brigadier Javed Cheema, said the “request for their arrest came from their respective countries, who have sought their deportation. They may be in a better position to confirm links of some of them with Jemaah Islamiyah,” a terror network thought responsible for a string of bombings in Indonesia that have killed around 233 people....Mr Alam identified the two arrested Indonesians as Gungun Rusman Gunawan (27) originally from the West Java town of Cianjur and Muhammad Saifuddin from the Central Java town of Sleman. He said the two were arrested at the Abu Bakar Islamic University in Karachi by police officers but their current whereabouts were unknown. Saifuddin was a new student still on probation, not yet a full permanent student of the university. " ( End of citation).

10. This report did not identify Gunawan as the younger brother of Hambali. The identification came separately from a report disseminated by the Associated Press (AP). There have been contradictory official versions regarding his arrest, as indicated below:

* That of Brig.Javed Cheema:" Reports of the arrest of Hambali’s brother Gungun Rusman Gunawan in Karachi were being investigated. It is too early, as our Foreign Office spokesman said in today’s briefing,”

* Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan:" It is too early to determine whether the Indonesian student was Hambali’s brother. No final determination has been made. Investigations are under way so it is not proper to jump to conclusions."

* An unidentified senior official (not clear whether he is of the Karachi administration or of the Federal Government):"We have not arrested Indonesian terrorist Hambali’s brother and we are preparing documents for their deportation in consultation with Indonesian and Malaysian authorities. I don’t think Hambali’s brother is among them.”

* Iftikhar Ahmed, spokesman of the Federal Interior Ministry:" The man identified as Rusman Gunawan was arrested on the weekend along with 15 Malaysian and Indonesian students suspected of terrorist activities, Yes, the brother of Hambali is among the 13 Malaysian and two Indonesian students who were detained in Karachi."

11. However, the prestigious daily "The News" claimed on September 23 that Hambali's brother had actually been arrested a month ago and handed over to the US. That is, if this version is correct, he was not among those arrested on September 20. It quoted Yaqoob Tahir, the registrar of the Jamia Abu Bakar Islamic University situated in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area of Karachi, as stating as follows: "Gungun Rusman Gunawan was taken into custody from the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police station by the army a month back. About a month ago, the SHO (Station House Officer) Gulshan-e-Iqbal police station summoned one of our Indonesian students, namely Abdul Hadi whose name was written on his passport as Gungun Rusman Gunawan, for questioning. At the police station, he was questioned by an army colonel and later was taken towards an undisclosed location. Since then we have no information regarding his whereabouts. We have informed his government but so far we did not receive any response. Gunawan was known as Abdul Hadi in the institution as his name was very difficult to pronounce. Hadi possessed all documents. Gunawan came here to acquire religious education on a scholarship about five years ago and he had no links with any extremist outfit. On the morning of September 20 some persons in plain clothes came to the institution and asked the administration to produce six students namely Ahmed Maaz, Muhammad Razi, Amin, Akhwan, Firdous (all Malaysians) and Saifuddin (Indonesian). The management produced them before the officials who claimed to be the personnel of the Federal Investigation Agency. The officials checked the luggage of the six persons and their travel documents. Later, the officials told the administration that the governments of these students gave their names to the Foreign Ministry, and requested to send them back. In order to deport them, the officials took the students along with them and since then we have no information regarding our innocent students. We immediately informed the Malaysian and Indonesian governments through their Consels-General regarding the arrest of their nationals and now they are dealing with the Pakistani Government. Some 147 students were studying in Jamia Abu Bakar. The students belong to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Uganda, Djibouti, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Philippine, Maldives, Australia, Ghana, Somalia, Cambodia, Cameron, Kenya, Senegal and Afghanistan. Some 270 Pakistanis are also studying in the institution."

12. The version given out by the Registrar of the madrasa, where Hambali's brother was reportedly studying on a scholarship of the Pakistan Government since 1999, appears to be more reliable than the official ones. If the registrar's version is accepted, an interesting question arises: Did the US come to know of the presence of Hambali in Thailand from the interrogation of his brother in Pakistan or vice versa?" The Malaysian authorities seem to believe that it was Hambali's interrogation by the US, which led to his brother and others in Karachi.
13. Another unanswered question is: Did the Pakistani authorities know of the presence of Hambali's brother in Karachi and his reported activities there since 1999 as the co-ordinator of the visits of JI recruits from South-East Asia to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training? If so, why they did not act against him till the US made them to?

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.)

THE TALIBAN & THE IIF STRIKE BACK (19-10-2003)

2009-04-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

SUMMARY

Since August last, the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating. Increasing numbers of better trained, better equipped and better led Taliban cadres operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan have stepped up their hit and run raids into Southern and Eastern Afghanistan in order to demoralise the newly-raised Army and Police of the Hamid Karzai Government in the hope of thereby inducing large-scale desertions. Their attacks have been focussed on members of the new Afghan Army, Police and other Government departments and foreign aid workers. They have avoided direct confrontations with the US forces, lest they pursue them into Pakistani territory. As a result, while there have been nearly 400 Afghan Government and civilian fatal casualties, the number of fatal American casualties has been only four.The Taliban has also set up a well-run Psychological warfare (PSYWAR) machinery in Pakistan, which is used to add to the anti-US anger in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. While the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Heckmatyar has been operating jointly with the revived Taliban from Pakistani sanctuaries, the survivors of the Al Qaeda and the Pakistani components of the International Islamic Front (IIF) have been focussing on harassing the US troops in Iraq through well-motivated jihadis infiltrated into Iraq through Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Pakistan-based jihadi terrorists owing allegiance to bin Laden through the IIF have been calculating that if they maintain a low, but sustained level of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq without unduly provoking the Americans into massive retaliation, battle fatigue would set in and force the US Government to recall its boys home before the campaign for the next year's presidential elections picks up momentum.

Though the US has been saying that it is prepared for a longish stay, whatever be the cost in terms of funds and casualties, in both countries, the jihadis view this as mere bravado and have convinced themselves that the closer the elections, the weaker will be the US will to continue the fighting. The USA's continued reluctance to act against Pakistan and make it pay a prohibitive price for helping the jihadi terrorists is coming in the way of an effective counter-terrorism strategy.Encouraged by this US reluctance, the Pervez Musharraf regime continues to keep the jihadi terrorists alive and active in the hope of using them to retrieve the lost Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and achieve its strategic objective of forcing a change in the status quo in India's Jammu & Kashmir.

THE TEXT OF THE PAPER

October 7,2003, marked the second anniversary of the launching of what was code-named by the US as Operation Enduring Freedom. This code-name was given by the US to the operation launched by it in the Afghan territory against the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People , which was formed by Osama bin Laden in 1998, in association with 13 jihadi terrorist organisations of the world, of whom five are presently from Pakistan.

2. The fact that the Taliban was fathered in 1994, when Mrs.Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan's Prime Minister, by the Pakistani Ministry of the Interior and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is well known and the details relating to its birth and the subsequent spread of its control over 90 per cent of the Afghan territory, including Kabul, do not need recapitulation.

3. Similarly, the fact that initially the US had blessed the creation of the Taliban in the hope of thereby restoring order and internal security in Afghanistan and thus facilitating the project of the UNOCAL, the US oil company, for the construction of oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghan territory is equally well known.

4.However, not so well known till recently was the role of the ISI and the Pakistan Army in fathering even the Al Qaeda in the hope of using it for furthering Pakistan's strategic objectives in relation to Afghanistan and India. This has been brought out in an assessment prepared in the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the Pentagon on September 24,2001, hardly 13 days after the Al Qaeda's terrorist strikes of 9/11 in US territory, which has been declassified recently by the US Government, reportedly in response to an application under the Freedom of Information Act.

5. Many other documents of the DIA and the US State Department relating to Afghanistan have also been simultaneously declassified and these are availble for perusal at the National Security Archives' Web site at http://ww.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB97/index.htm .

6. The declassified DIA document of September 24,2001, had carried the following damning account of Pakistan's role as the real host of bin Laden and his Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It said: "Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network was able to expand under the safe sanctuary extended by Taliban following Pakistan directives. If there is any doubt on that issue, consider the location of bin Laden's camp targeted by US Cruise missiles (in August 1998), Zahawa. Positioned on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was built by Pakistani contractors, funded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate and protected under the patronage of a local and influential Jadran tribal leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani. However, the real host in that facility was the Pakistani ISI. If this was later to become bin Laden's base, then serious questions are raised by the early relationship between bin Laden and Pakistan's ISI."

7. It described Jalaluddin Haqqani as "the Jadran tribal leader most exploited by ISI during the Soviet-Afghan war to facilitate the introduction of Arab mercenaries " and the Taliban as "the handycloak woven by Pakistan to shroud their progress."

8. Thus, as the Pentagon was making the preparations for launching Operation Enduring Freedom, it was known even to its own experts in its intelligence community that the Pakistan Army and its ISI were the creators and sponsors of not only the Taliban, but also of the Al Qaeda which emerged as the most dreaded jihadi terrorist organisation of the world after Osama bin Laden, its head, shifted from the Sudan to Jalalabad in Afghanistan in 1996 from where he subsequently moved to Kandahar.

9. Despite this, it chose to rely on the Pakistan Army and its ISI for logistics and intelligence support in its operation to wipe out the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the IIF. The Army and Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military dictator, who had sponsored and used jihadi terrorism in an attempt to achieve Pakistan's strategic objectives against India (destabilising India and annexing Jammu & Kashmir) and Afghanistan (strategic depth), were sought to be projected as the USA's stalwart ally in the war against terrorism and rewarded for their ostensible co-operation through the resumption of generous economic and military assistance, which had remained curtailed since the Pressler Amendment was invoked against Pakistan in 1990 for clandestinely developing a military nuclear capability and further cut after the Chagai nuclear tests of 1998 and the overthrow of the elected government headed by Mr.Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, by the Army in October,1999.

10. Why did the US choose to rely on the sponsor of jihadi terrorism in its attempt to vanquish it? There have been many answers to this question. None of them is totally satisfactory by itself, but all of them together give some indication of the thinking in Washington DC, which influenced the decision.Amongst such possible reasons mentioned by analysts, one could cite the following:

* The need for rear bases for the US armed forces in Pakistani territory from which they could operate in Afghan territory.

* The need for objective allies in the Pashtun community in the tribal belt on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in its operations to eliminate Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the Al Qaeda.

* The need for intelligence support from the ISI because of the poor human intelligence (HUMINT) assets of the US intelligence community.

* The fear of a Talibanisation of Pakistan should the military be forced to go to the barracks and its role weakened. The Army was wrongly perceived by the US not as the sponsor of the jihadi forces, but as the bulwark in countering the spread of their influence.

* The belief that only the Army would be able to prevent Pakistan's nuclear and missile assets from falling into the hands of the jihadi terrorists.

* The US perception of Musharraf as a force for stability in Pakistan and as a Muslim with a modern outlook, who genuinely wanted to curb the fundamentalist forces in Pakistan.

11. Why did Musharraf choose to support the US in its attempts to neutralise the offspring of his own Army and the ISI, thereby abandoning instruments which they had built up since 1994 for achieving what they looked upon as a strategic depth in Afghanistan and strengthening Pakistan's hold over that country? Musharraf, in his telecast to his people before October 7,2001, cited two reasons for his volte face, namely, the importance of safeguarding Pakistan's strategic assets by which he meant its nuclear and missile capability and the need to maintain its capability for achieving its strategic objective on J&K against India.

12. In other words, he chose to abandon temporarily the gains which the Pakistan Army had made in Afghanistan since 1994 through the Taliban and the Al Qaeda in order to protect Pakistan's nuclear and missile assets from any possible attempts at their neutralisation by the US and to retain the Army's ability to force a change in the status quo in J&K through the sponsorship of jihadi terrorism. While thus abandoning at least temporarily the gains on the ground in Afghanistan, he took care to protect the instruments with which these gains had been made in the hope of using them again in future to retrieve the ground lost by Pakistan in Afghanistan.

FIRST PHASE: THE TALIBAN

13. Since it was launched on October 7,2001, the US military operations in Afghanistan have passed through three phases. In the first phase, the Government set up by the Taliban with its administrative headquarters in Kabul and its religious headquarters in Kandahar was replaced by a provisional government headed by Hamid Karzai, an Indian-educated Pashtun enjoying the confidence of the US and other Western countries. In the second phase,the training and other terrorist infrastructure of the Al Qaeda and other components of the IIF in southern and eastern Afghanistan were destroyed through aerial and ground action. In the third phase, efforts were initiated to restore law and order and governance in the rural areas liberated from the control of the jihadi terrorist forces and to build the infrastructure of a liberal democracy in the country in the form of a Constitution paving the way for free and fair elections by next year.

14. Even though the undoubted success of the US-led coalition in the first phase was projected as due to the prowess of the US Armed Forces, it was largely due to the motivation and fighting capability of the forces of the Northern Alliance, which had been abandoned by the US and Pakistan after 1994 in favour of the Taliban. If India, Russia and Iran had not stood by the side of the late Ahmed Shah Masood and his Northern Alliance and helped it in whatever way they could, it was doubtful whether the post-Taliban Afghanistan would have had at its disposal the hard core of an army and an administration, which represented the positive aspects of Islam and sought to give it a modern outlook instead of taking Afghanistan back to the middle ages as the Pakistan and the US supported Taliban sought to do.

15. It was short-sighted on the part of the US not to have recognised openly and handsomely the role of the Northern Alliance in helping in the liberation of the Afghan State and society from the stranglehold of the Taliban and its medieval mullahs. Not only that. In response to the sensitivities of Musharraf, who was afraid and continues to be so that the Northern Alliance favoured the restoration of the historic friendly ties between Afghanistan and India, the US has at every stage tried to limit the influence of the leaders of the Northern Alliance on the ground that they were non-Pashtuns and hence would not enjoy the total confidence of the Pashtuns.

16. The attempts at State and administration re-building and to set up an all-ethnic army have also been influenced by an anxiety to restrict the influence of the Northern Alliance in the name of giving the Pashtuns their due share. The over-attention to the sensitivities of Musharraf and his anxiety to prevent the restoration of the historic ties of friendship between India and Afghanistan has also been responsible for the US action in having India excluded from any meaningful role in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whose command and control have since been taken over by the NATO, and in training the new Afghan Army.

17. If, in spite of the unhelpful attitude of the US and the obstructive policies of the Musharraf regime, the relations between India and Afghanistan have continued to develop in various fields, this has been largely due to the feelings of good will nursed by the Northern Alliance and Hamid Karzai himself towards India.

18. While Pakistan reconciled itself to the temporary loss of its ground influence in Afghanistan, it took care to give shelter to the leaders and cadres of the Taliban in its territory in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan and to help them re-group, re-train and re-arm in order to facilitate a come-back by the pro-Pakistan forces one day. Apart from a few lndividuals without any major importance such as Muttawakil, the former Taliban Foreign Minister, the former Ambassador of the Taliban in Islamabad etc, who were handed over by Pakistan to the US forces for interrogation, it avoided arresting and handing over any Taliban leader, including its Amir Mullah Mohammad Omar, of importance to the US.

19. The US calculation that its uncritical support to the Musharraf regime would prevent any Talibanisation of Pakistan has already proved wrong. The coalition of six fundamentalist, pro-Taliban and pro-bin Laden parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) managed to come to power in the NWFP on its own strength after the elections of October of last year. It is part of the ruling coalition in Balochistan in association with the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam).

20. Never before in the parliamentary history of Pakistan had the fundamentalist parties done as well in any elections as they did in those of last year. This was only partly due to the anti-US anger in the Pashtun belt because of the US action against the Taliban and alleged excesses by the US forces against the local people. It was considerably due to Musharraf's own action in facilitating the victory of the fundamentalists by withdrawing pending cases under the anti-terrorism act against the candidates of the fundamentalist parties in order to enable them to contest the elections while he refused to withdraw even cases relating to white collar crimes against mainstream leaders such as Benazir Bhutto, NawazSharif etc; by recognising the certificates in Islamic studies issued by the madrasas as equivalent to university degrees to enable the fundamentalist candidates circumvent the electoral provision that only graduates could contest the elections; and by engineering splits in the mainstream political parties critical of him in order to weaken them.

21. Musharraf's calculation in facilitating the fundamentalist victory was two-fold. First, to convey a message to the US that if it continued to press him to act against the jihadi terrorists operating against India, there was a danger of the fundamentalist influence spreading to the rest of the country and second, to use the fundamentalist control of the key provinces in the tribal belt as an alibi for explaining his inability to stop the flow of local support to the Taliban and the Al Qaeda.

22.After the fundamentalist coalition came to power in the NWFP and Balochistan,the Taliban started openly re-grouping, re-recruiting and re-arming in the local madrasas, without any action being taken against them by either the provincial or the federal authorities. The provincial authorities did not act because of their openly-expressed sympathy for the Taliban. The federal authorities headed by Musharraf pleaded helplessness ostensibly on the ground that policing and action against suspected terrorist elements was a provincial subject over which the federal government had little control in a "democratic set-up".

23. Starting from December last year, the re-grouped Taliban began indulging in hit and run raids from sanctuaries in the NWFP, Balochistan and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the US and Afghan military patrols deployed in the Afghan territory across the border with Pakistan. One such raid in the last week of December,2002, led to a clash between the South Waziristan Scouts, a para-military unit of Pakistan, and a US patrol, which called for an air strike on a madrasa in Pakistani territory in which the assailants had taken shelter after attacking the US troops.

24. This incident led to considerable anger amongst the junior and middle level officers of the US troops deployed in the area over the complicity of the Pakistani para-military forces with the Taliban raiders and they started demanding that they should be allowed to exercise their right of hot pursuit into Pakistani territory during their operations against the Taliban dregs based in sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. With great difficulty, the Pentagon and the State Department cooled the anger of their field officers and discouraged their talk of hot pursuit, lest such actions destabilise Musharraf.

25. Despite Pakistani assurances to act firmly against the Taliban raiders, such incidents continued to take place, but the numbers of the Taliban raiding parties were small and they mostly used small arms and ammunition. Moreover, they concentrated their attacks mostly on the Afghan members of the newly-raised Army, the police, other Government workers and aid workers of non-governmental organisations and avoided direct confrontations with the US forces.

26. However, since August last, the frequency, magnitude, gravity and range of their attacks have increased manifold. They have often been operating in large groups numbering dozens, if not hundreds, very often move in motorised units which give them greater mobility and element of surprise and have demonstrated an ability to move far deep into Afghan territory even upto the outskirts of Kabul and return to their sanctuaries in Pakistan unintercepted by the Afghan and American forces.

27. As before, they continue to avoid direct confrontation with the American and other Western troops and have been directing their attacks mainly on Afghan Government targets. Their objective is to demoralise the Afghan security forces and induce desertions in order to weaken their ability to maintain order and internal security and to convince the people that the newly-raised security forces would not be able to protect them.

28. The seriousness of the deteriorating situation in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan is evdent from a despatch dated October 8,2003, sent by Ahmed Rashid, the well-known Pakistani expert on the Taliban, from Kandahar to some Western newspapers and from a media briefing in Kabul by the Bush administration's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been designated as the new US Ambassador to Afghanistan, a nomination yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

29. Ahmed Rashid said in his despatch: "The Taliban army is mobilizing in Pakistan for an attack into Afghanistan before the start of winter. Up to 2,500 fighters are in Balochistan province preparing to cross the border on motorcycles and attack United States and Afghan government forces, according to Western and Afghan intelligence officials.

30."The Taliban have virtually taken over several suburbs of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, and are being supported by Pakistani religious parties, the drugs mafia and al-Qa'eda. There is also reportedly increasing support from the Pakistani authorities - a claim denied in Islamabad. They now plan to harry US forces in Kandahar, where residents feel increasingly under siege, and Zabul. Since August Taliban attacks have killed almost 400 Afghan soldiers, aid workers and civilians. Four US soldiers have also died.

31."We have the American forces and the puppet regime of [President Hamid] Karzai on the run. They will collapse soon" said a Taliban mullah in Pushtunabad bazaar (of Quetta). The Taliban have bought hotels, shops and houses, forcing many frightened local residents to leave. Vehicle dealers say the Taliban have bought 900 motorcycles in the past three months in the Quetta region and another 250 in Loralai. Motorcycle guerrillas roam Afghanistan's rural areas attacking aid agency vehicles and isolated police posts. For communications, they are importing hundreds of satellite telephones from the Arab Gulf states, because those bought in Pakistan are closely monitored by America's Central Intelligence Agency. Arms and ammunition are dumped inside Afghanistan. Their funding comes from the drugs trade and al-Qa'eda. Osama bin Laden is still in hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

32."The Taliban are also deeply involved in the heroin trade which last year generated £717 million in Afghanistan - a sum equal to the amount spent on reconstruction aid for the country. Logistical support for the Taliban is available from the hardline mullahs of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) - a partner in the ruling coalition that governs Balochistan.

33."In recent weeks President Karzai has appealed to JUI mullahs and the Pakistan army to stop the Taliban from organizing in Quetta, but that has only infuriated the JUI. "The Afghan government and Karzai are the stooges of America and every Muslim and every Afghan knows this," said Maulana Hafiz Hussain Sharodi, Balochistan's Information Minister. "Only the Taliban can constitute the real government in Afghanistan."

34."According to President Karzai, the headquarters for Taliban planning is the Shaldara madrassa in Quetta run by Maulana Nur Mohammed, who is a JUI member of parliament. "We are proud that the Taliban are made and helped here," said Maulana Abdul Qadir, the deputy to Nur Mohammed. "Our job is to make sure that the whole Pakistani nation supports the Taliban." Hundreds of Pakistani Taliban are joining their Afghan brothers, although Pakistan denies that its citizens are involved.

35."US officials are perturbed at the extent of Pakistani help to the Taliban and Congress has become increasingly critical. However, the White House is still reluctant to criticise President Pervaiz Musharraf because of America's desperate need to enlist Pakistani troops for Iraq. Yousuf Pashtun, the Governor of Kandahar province, says Pakistan has allowed the Taliban to establish six training camps inBalochistan. He accused the Pakistani authorities of "wanting to push the Taliban into another big battle with government forces", fearing that in the next phase "the Taliban will start urban terrorism". " (End of citation from his despatch)

36.Addressing a press conference at Kabul on October 7,2003, Zalmay Khalilzad made the following points:

* The Taliban and Al Qaeda might be planning "larger" or "more spectacular attacks" in Afghanistan as part of a campaign against the reconstruction process.

* "We have seen a surge in activity in recent weeks, but we also see signs that the response has been quite effective, and I think in desperation they may try, or there are indications that they may try, to do something to get a lot of attention."

* The resurgent Taliban presented a serious threat across the south and east of the country, not least on the main north-south highway between Kabul and Kandahar, a priority project supported by both President Bush and President Hamid Karzai.

* The first priority was for the government in Pakistan to stop border crossings and stop providing sanctuary to the Taliban and Al Qaeda members. "Pakistan cannot become a sanctuary for Taliban and Al Qaeda people who want to attack Afghanistan," he said. "There has to be a decrease, and at best an end, to cross-border attacks by Taliban and Al Qaeda people from Pakistan. I welcome the recent actions by the Pakistani government, but we would like to see more, in fact, a lot more."

* The Taliban had exploited a power vacuum in many southern districts where the central government, because of a lack of funds and personnel, has failed to make its presence felt. A significant part of the $1.2 billion more that the administration has requested for Afghanistan for the coming year will go toward expanding the central government's presence in the provinces.

37. The Taliban's morale and fighting capability have been bolstered by the reinforcements from the Hizb-e- Islami (HEI) headed by Gulbuddin Heckmatyar, the former favourite mujahideen of Pakistan before it created the Taliban in 1994. After the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996, Gulbuddin and his senior associates took shelter in the Iranian territory adjoining Pakistan's Balochistan and their men were sent back to their respective villages in the Pashtun belt of Pakistan and Afghanistan to resume their normal avocation.

38. The Government of Iran kept Gulbuddin and his associates under strict control and saw to it that they did not indulge in any terrorist activities , but after 9/11, under US pressure, it forced them to leave the Iranian territory. They crossed over into Balochistan where they were welcomed by the ISI and the dregs of the Taliban. Gulbuddin has since managed to re-mobilise his trained men from their villages and has played an active role in helping the Taliban to re-train and re-arm its cadres.

39.Since August last, the Taliban officials based in Pakistan have built up a propaganda and psywar machinery to whip up hatred of the US not only amongst the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also amongst the Muslims of the Gulf and West Asia. They have been using Al Jazeera and other Arab TV channels for disseminating their propaganda material prepared with the assistance of serving and retired officers of the ISI.

40. In a Kabul-datelined report dated October 16,2003, the Associated Press (AP) gave the following details of such activities:

* "The Taliban have launched an unprecedented campaign to win money and support from Muslim militants outside Afghanistan (news - web sites) amid a resurgence by the group marked by roadside killings, ambushes and public statements boasting of their successes.

* "After remaining relatively quiet for months, a bevy of Taliban spokesmen have been turning up on Arab TV and the Pakistani media, and a handful have started making direct phone calls to the international press, including The Associated Press.

* "The calls have increased in step with a bolder, bloodier insurgency that has shaken faith in the Washington-backed Afghan government's ability to assert its control, and the U.S. military's resolve at crushing the rebels.

* "Omar Samad, the Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the Taliban are using the media blitz to try to get their message out to hard-liners in neighboring Pakistan who share their strict brand of Islam. "I think it is all part of a more organized effort," he told The Associated Press. "They have lost much of their ability to be a real threat to the whole process of change here, but they unfortunately still have substantial support among influential groups in Pakistan with money and access to arms and manpower."

* "Most of today's Taliban fighters are not the same young men as those who fought with the militia during the U.S.-led bombing campaign in 2001, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said recently. They are new recruits, many drawn from the poor religious madrassahs of neighboring Pakistan.

* "Jalali told AP during a recent interview that several recently captured Taliban said they came to Afghanistan on the instructions of hardline Pakistani clerics, who convinced them it was every Muslim's duty to fight jihad, or holy war, against the Americans and their Afghan surrogates. One of the men said he was paid $55 in Pakistan to come and fight.

* "With Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other top figures in hiding, captured or killed, a crop of frontmen — some new, some old names from the regime's heyday in power — has gone into high gear. Sometimes their claims sound outlandish: that the Taliban killed 10 U.S. soldiers in fighting in September in southern Zabul province. The Americans say one special operations soldier died in a fall during a combat operation there.

* "The militia also calls to take credit for recent attacks or to warn of bloody repercussions for those who collaborate with the international community. A fax sent to AP in September claimed the Taliban were behind a wave of recent killings of employees of international aid groups — often referred to as non-governmental organizations, or NGOs.

* "Aid workers have been pulled from their cars and executed in southern Ghazni, Helmand and Zabul provinces in recent months. "Our government has always respected the people who are working in NGOs that really want to build Afghanistan," read the Taliban statement. "But there is another kind of NGO which only uses the name NGO but is actually working and spying for the United States. We advise Taliban all over the country to attack them and extradite them from Afghanistan."

* "A purported Taliban spokesman who calls himself Mullah Hedayatollah Akhund appeared on the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera two weeks ago threatening resistance to the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Another, Mohammed Hanif, claimed responsibility for the recent assassination of an Afghan official in southern Kandahar province in a phone call to "The News," Pakistan's largest English-language daily.

* "The Taliban have also used the media to manage its image. One of the main Taliban spokesmen, Sayed Hamid Agha, faxed a signed letter to AP in late September to deny a widely-circulated report that Taliban fighters had threatened to disfigure Afghans who listen to music or men who shave their beards.

* "It is impossible to independently confirm the credentials of the men claiming to be Taliban spokesmen. Some professed Taliban spokesmen are quite openly operating from Pakistan. Attiqullah Azizi, the former Taliban information minister in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, has met with journalists in Pakistan. Calls and faxes from at least two purported Taliban spokesmen appear to come from the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

* "Samad said the Taliban are using neighboring Pakistan as a center of its new PR campaign, and the presence of at least some spokesmen there is of growing concern. "Almost all of them are across the border," said Samad. "We know very well that if the authorities across the border wanted to put an end to this, they could. There is nothing to stop them from shutting them down." (End of citation)

PHASE II:

THE AL QAEDA & THE IIF

41. After disposing off the Taliban set-up, the USA turned its attention to neutralising the set-ups of the Al Qaeda and the IIF in Afghan territory. The IIF, which largely consists of the five Pakistani components---the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)--- plus some elements from the Central Asian Republics (CARs) and South-East Asia (SEA) and a large number of Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry was much easier to handle than the highly-motivated and do-or-die Arabs of the Al Qaeda.

42.In the IIF, the Pakistani nationals (30,000 plus) constitute the largest number followed by the Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry, who did not constitute a single, composite organisation, but used to operate in Afghanistan as members and mentors of the Taliban and the Pakistani organisations. Those from the CARs and SEA were much smaller in number and their presence in Afghanistan did not make much difference to the ground situation.

43.The liberation of Kabul by the Northern Alliance, with the help of the American air power, and the subsequent outburst of anti-Pakistan anger in Kabul and other cities of the north led to the hasty withdrawal into Pakistan of the dregs of the Pakistani components and their Arab associates of Chechen ancestry. Similarly, the jihadis from SEA and the CARs too withdrew into Pakistan helter-skelter. While those from SEA managed to find their way back to their countries of origin via Bangladesh where they were transported by a ship belonging to Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia-cum-terrorist leader now living in Karachi with a Pakistani passport under a different name, those from the CARs, many of whom had married Pashtun women, managed to disperse themselves in the villages of the FATA.

44. Only the Arabs of the Al Qaeda led by bin Laden stayed put in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan for some weeks and put up some resistance to the Americans. After the unsuccessful operation at Tora Bora where the Americans managed to surround the Al Qaeda dregs, including bin Laden, for some days, the latter managed to escape into the FATA, from where they dispersed themselves in small groups in the main cities of Pakistan.

45.When the US started the second phase of the operations against the Al Qaeda and the IIF, it sought the help of the Pakistan Army to seal the border with Afghanistan to prevent the dregs from escaping into Pakistan. It similarly sought the help of the Northern Alliance to prevent their escape into the CARs. While the Northern Alliance effectively sealed the escape routes to the CARs, the Pakistan Army, while ostensibly sealing the escape routes into Pakistan, let the terrorists, including bin Laden, slip into the tribal belt on the Pakistan side.

46. It is significant that while post 9/11, there has been no major flare-up of terrorism in the CARs due to the effective sealing by the Northern Alliance, the action of the Pakistan Army and the ISI in letting the terrorists escape into Pakistan and from there to other countries has led to a flare-up of terrorism in India, Indonesia, Kenya, Yemen, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

47. The return of the Pakistani components of the IIF to Pakistan led to a series of terrorist attacks on Western nationals and local Christians in Karachi, Islamabad, Bhawalpur, Murree and on the Karakoram Highway. All these attacks were carried out by members of the Pakistani components of the IIF. There was no involvement of the Al Qaeda, which used the Pakistani components for having reprisal attacks on Western nationals and Christians organised. However, some Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry and Yemeni-Balochis (of mixed Yemeni-Balochi parentage), who had joined the Pakistani organisations, were involved. For example, there was a Yemeni-Balochi involvement in the kidnapping and brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in Karachi in January last year.

48.Initially, Musharraf took up the stand that bin Laden must be dead, but after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, and his interrogation, Musharraf changed his spin and admitted that he was probably alive and hiding in the tribal belt. As an excuse for the inability of the Pakistan Army to deal effectively with the sanctuaries of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their cross-border raids into Afghanistan, Musharraf has been claiming that all these dregs have taken shelter in inaccessible areas of the FATA where no British or Pakistani soldier has gone before.

49.As he does in the case of cross-border terrorism into India, he has been using the same arguments to deny Pakistani culpability in the cross-border terrorism into Afghanistan. He has been claiming that the Pakistan Army is too small and ill-equipped to effectively seal the border and asks if the US with its better equipment and other technical resources is not able to prevent the infiltration into Afghan territory, how can it blame the ill-equipped Pakistan Army for not being able to stop it.

50. Musharraf's claims that all the dregs of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban are hiding in the inaccessible areas of the tribal belt are not correct. All the major arrests of important leaders of the Al Qaeda have so far been made from the major urban centres of Pakistan outside the tribal belt. For example, Abu Zubaidah, projected as the then No. 3 of the Al Qaeda, was arrested in March last year from the house of a functionary of the LET in Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab; Ramzi Binalshibh was arrested from a flat in Karachi belonging to Dawood Ibrahim in September last year; Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was also living in the same flat, managed to escape to Quetta from where he went to Rawalpindi where he was caught in the house of a women's wing leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which is now a member of the ruling coalition in the NWFP and Balochistan; and Waleed bin Attash, the principal suspect in the case relating to the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole at Aden in October 2000, was caught in Karachi in April last. Many minor functionaries of the Al Qaeda were also arrested in Karachi.

51. In an article in the prestigious "Dawn" (May 10, 2003) of Karachi, Afrasiab Khattak, the highly respected Pashtun leader, has ridiculed Musharraf's contention that the dregs of the Al Qaeda were operating from inaccessible mountainous areas in the tribal belt. After pointing out the various arrests made in Karachi and other places, he wrote: " It is true that many Al Qaeda followers were arrested in the tribal agencies at a time when they were fleeing out of Afghanistan after the US military operations in Tora Bora, Zhawar and Shahikot. They entered the tribal area because that is the only available route from the afore-mentioned places for crossing over into Pakistan and moving towards safer places. But, there is no question of the numerous Al Qaeda fugitives hiding in the tribal area. There are very solid reasons for that.

52."Some proclaimed offenders from the settled districts do take refuge in the tribal area, but it is done publicly and in many cases before a jirga or tribal assembly. The newcomer is introduced to everybody and the clan or family giving refuge to the person stands responsible for his conduct as long as he lives there. It is also important to know that there are no houses for rent in the area. Everyone lives along with their kith and kin in a fortress like house that has to be defended by the residents.

53."In the case of Osama bin Laden, there are additional reasons to believe that he could not have remained in the tribal area even if he had been initially there. He cannot be unaware of the news about his possible presence in the area being widely publicised. In all probability, he would have left the area to hide in the big cities that are far safer.

54."It is well known to everyone that the US Army is quite active along the border with a lot of aerial surveillance and electronic monitoring. Osama cannot be such a fool as to hang out in such close vicinity of US forces, knowing fully well that they will have little hesitation in crossing the border to get him.

55."In view of the past record of the present Government, it is safer to assume that it is making an effort to hide behind the so-called inaccessibility of the tribal area for the failure of its security apparatus in nabbing the most wanted fugitives. The myth of no-man's land and the wild north-west comes quite handy as a spin and as a diversion when the Government fails to muster the required political will for taking the bull of terrorism right by the horns." (End of citation)

56. Since April last, there have been reports from Police sources in Pakistan that in view of the splintering of the Al Qaeda after Operation Tora Bora and the disruption of its command and control, bin Laden and his No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri are no longer able to co-ordinate the activities of the various groups taking shelter in different cities of Pakistan and elsewhere. They say that as a result, the LET is now playing the leadership and co-ordinator's role in the IIF and organising operations on behalf of the Al Qaeda, not only in Pakistan, but also in the Gulf and West Asia, including Iraq.

57.Speaking 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 made the following quantitative assessment of the terrorist infrastructure in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, which continues to threaten the world:

* Al Qaeda: 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. Pakistan claims to have arrested and handed over about 400 Al Qaeda members to the US. It is not clear how many of them were hard-core members, how many just sympathizers and how many Arab residents of Pakistan, who were merely suspected of being associated with Al Qaeda.

* The Taliban: About 5000 survivors of the Taliban, including its Amir Mulla Mohammad Omar and other senior leaders, out of the pre-October 7, 2001, strength of 20,000 of the militia. Out of this, about 5,000 are estimated to have perished during the US air strikes and 10,000 to have dispersed to their respective villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 5,000, who have taken shelter in Pakistan, have been operating against the US and allied troops in Afghanistan from their safehavens in the NWFP and Balochistan, in concert with the Hizb-e-Islami (HEI) of Gulbuddin Heckmatyar and the survivors of the Uzbeck and Chechen components of the IIF.

* The survivors of the Pakistani components of the IIF: Before October 7, 2001, the five Pakistani components of the IIF---namely, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami (HUJI), the LET, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)-- had a total estimated strength of about 35,000 members deployed in Afghanistan to help the Taliban and Al Qaeda in their fight against the Northern Alliance (NA). Of these, about 30,000, who managed to survive the US air strikes, crossed over into Pakistan and moved over to Karachi, Pakistani Punjab and the POK.

* The survivors of the Uzbeck and Chechen components of the IIF: About 300 have been operating from the FATA.

* The survivors of the South-East Asian (SEA) component: About 200, who had originally crossed over into Pakistan, have since gone back to their respective countries.

* The HEI: About 400 of its cadres have been operating against the Afghan and allied troops in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in the NWFP and Balochistan.

58. I had also given the following qualitative assessment:

* "Presuming he is alive, bin Laden is a relentlessly hunted fugitive and his powers of co-ordination, command and control have been considerably weakened and his ability to communicate with his followers dispersed in Pakistan and elsewhere has been impaired.

* "The responsibility for the co-ordination, command and control of the terrorists operating against the US and other allied troops in Afghanistan has been taken over by Gulbuddin. Though there have been very few fatal casualties suffered by the allied and Afghan forces, the persistence of the hit and run attacks, with some of them taking place even in Kabul, the capital, speak disturbingly of the unimpaired morale of the dregs and the local support enjoyed by them.

* "The responsibility for the co-ordination, command and control of the terrorist operations in Pakistan itself against American and other Western targets and in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and other parts of India against Indian targets has been taken over by the LET due to the damage suffered by the HUM and the LEJ after the arrest of many of their cadres by the Pakistani authorities following the terrorist incidents of last year in Karachi and Islamabad.

* "There has been no evidence of the involvement of any of the Arab survivors of Al Qaeda in the incidents in Afghanistan except in one near Kandahar, in which a Yemeni transporting explosives, along with some Taliban cadres, was reported to have been killed in an accidental explosion.

* "Similarly, there has been no evidence of the involvement of any of the Arab survivors of Al Qaeda in the incidents inside Pakistan itself. Those were carried out mainly by the survivors of the Pakistani components of the IIF. Some Yemeni-Balochis were involved, but they participated as members of the Pakistani components and not of Al Qaeda.

* "Of all the terrorist strikes which have taken place after 9/11 ( in J&K, New Delhi,Gandhinagar and Mumbai in India,Bali in Indonesia, Mombasa in Kenya, Moscow and Chechnya in Russia, Yemen, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Casablanca in Morocco), the direct involvement of the Arab survivors of the Al Qaeda is suspected only in the Riyadh incident. It is assessed that the remaining strikes were carried out by the Pakistani components of bin Laden’s IIF in India and by local elments operating autonomously in other countries, with the surviving Al Qaeda leadership itself playing very little leadership role.

* "The Al Qaeda survivors scattered in Pakistan have been focussing on training the fresh recruits of the Pakistani components of the IIF in their training camps in Punjab, the NWFP, Balochistan and the POK and guiding them in their operations, without actually participating in them.

* "Of the Pakistani components, the LET’s infrastructure in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia has remained largely intact and it is playing an increasingly active role as the standard-bearer of the IIF. It has also been in the forefront of the moves to spread the jihad to Iraq and to intensify it there.

* "The presence of these elements in Pakistani territory and their activities from there continue to pose a serious threat not only to Indian nationals and interests, but also to the nationals and interests of the US and other members of the international community. While Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment has definitely helped the US intelligence community in some of its operations against leading Al Qaeda survivors in Pakistan, it has avoided action against the survivors of the Taliban, the Uzbeck and Chechen components, the HEI and the Pakistani components.

* "In its calculation, it would need the Taliban, the HEI and the Uzbeck and Chechen elements for retrieving the ground lost by it in Afghanistan and the Pakistani components to keep the Indian security forces bleeding. These elements have, at the same time, an agenda extending beyond Afghanistan and India, which includes intensifying the jihad against the US not only in Iraq, but also wherever possible, including in US territory, as evidenced by the arrest of the LET cell in the US.

* "The successes of the US intelligence community in its hunt for the survivors of the Al Qaeda have thus far been limited to the non-tribal areas of Pakistan such as Punjab and Sindh. There has been hardly any success in the tribal belt and in the POK. This has been partly due to the complicity of the local adminstration with the survivors and partly due to the iron curtain imposed by the military-intelligence establishment in these areas to conceal the continued existence of the terrorist infrastructure there, which is meant to serve Pakistan’s strategic objectives against India and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

* "The main focus of the UN Security Council’s resolution No. 1373 was on the need for and urgency of effective action against terrorist funding and sanctuaries. While there has been some action against funding, even if not totally effective, there has been practically no action against the sanctuaries. Presently, the jihadi terrorist groups operating against India, the USA, Israel, the South-East Asian countries and elsewhere in the region have almost all been using sanctuaries in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria. The concerns of the international community relating to the nuclearisation of terrorism also arise from the possible dangers of weapons of mass destruction and related technology getting into the hands of jihadi terrorists from the already declared or yet to be declared state-sponsors of international terrorism. Unless effective action is taken to end these sanctuaries and to make these states accountable for their actions, there will be no respite from terrorism in the Indian sub-continent, the US, Israel and other affected regions."

59. These assessments remain valid today. While there is so far no major evidence of the involvement of the Al Qaeda and the Pakistani components of the IIF in the worsening situation in Afghanistan, these elements have been gravitating towards Iraq via Iran or Saudi Arabia in order to harass the US forces there. There have been widely conflicting estimates of the number who are already involved in acts of terrorism against the US troops and their Iraqi collaborators, varying between about 200 (Pakistani police sources) and about 1,000 ( Israeli sources). I am inclined to accept the lower estimate of 200.Most of those who have gone to Iraq from Pakistan are Yemeni-Balochis and Arab nationals of Chechen ancestry and have been operating in Iraq under the umbrella of the HUM and the LET. This number does not include the sacked Iraqi soldiers and Baathist Party members, who have been operating independently. New charity organisations in Pakistan such as the Al Akhtar Trust, founded by the JEM, have been funding the terrorists not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. The US Treasury Department has since ordered the freezing of its bank accounts on October 16,2003.

60. The jihadi terrorists have been saying that the US is at their mercy, with one leg caught in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq and that they should not miss this opportunity to teach it a lesson.

FLOW OF FUNDS TO TERRORISTS

61.Despite the action taken by many countries under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 to freeze bank accounts, which are suspected to be used for funding terrorism, the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the IIF have not been short of funds. The production of heroin has again emerged as an important source of funds for the terrorist organisations operating from the Afghanisttan-Pakistan region. There has been a steep increase in the production of opium and heroin in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan. In their hunt for the dregs of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the US security forces have been using Afghan warlords of the pre-1992 vintage and narcotics smugglers because of their good knowledge of the topography of the area. It has been alleged that at the request of the US intelligence agencies and security forces, many narcotics barons, undergoing imprisonment in Pakistan, were got released in order to use their services; and action against opium producers and heroin smugglers was given low priority. This has contributed to the increase in the production and smuggling of heroin and in the availability of funds for the terrorist dregs.

62.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 USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (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.

63. 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.

64. The action taken by the Pakistani authorities against all suspected bank accounts in Pakistan continues to be an eye-wash. It is alleged that in many instances the holders of the suspected accounts were alerted beforehand of the impending freezing of their accounts in order to enable them either to transfer the bulk of the balance to other accounts under different names or to withdraw them.As a result, many frozen accounts of even well-known terrorists had paltry balances at the time of freezing.

65. 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 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.

66. 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.

PHASE IV: GOVERNANCE AND RECONSTRUCTION

67. The influence and authority enjoyed by President Hamid Karzai himself and the members of his Council of Ministers in the Pashtun areas of Southern and Eastern Afghanistan continue to be very limited. The warlords initially inducted by the US to help its forces in their hunt for the dregs of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban have become a law unto themselves, showing reluctance to obey the orders of the central Government in Kabul and to share the tax revenue collected by them with the central tax authorities.

68. The situation has been rendered more difficult by the action of the Iranian authorities in maintaining independent channels of communications with Ismail Khan, the ruler of Herat, and often routing their economic assistance directly to him instead of through the central government in Kabul. Of late, Hamid Karzai has been trying to be more assertive and to curtail the powers of the regional heads of administration and enforce fiscal discipline on them.

69. The present Government in Kabul is far from being accepted by the Pashtuns as adequately representing their interests. Having failed thus far in its efforts to find Pashtun political leaders, who would be acceptable to their community and at the same time be attentive to the interests of the West, the US is alleged to be once again attracted by Musharraf's idea of seeking the co-operation of what Musharraf describes as moderate Taliban. Before the Northern Alliance liberated Kabul, Musharraf had floated such an idea to prevent its entry into Kabul, but the US did not accept it at the time.

70. It is said that frustrated with its inability to restore normalcy, the US might now be tempted to give a try to the earlier discarded idea of Musharraf. As a result of the prevailing confusion, the progress towards the drafting of a Constitution and the holding of elections is expected to be slow and may not be completed by next year.

71. Having resisted thus far suggestions for giving the ISAF a role outside Kabul too in order to supplement the efforts of the US-led teams to restore law and order and to promote economic development, the US has now accepted that the NATO-led ISAF could be allowed to operate outside Kabul too and an enabling resolution in this regard has also been passed by the UN Security Council. At the same time, officials associated with the NATO command and control mechanism in Kabul have clarified that the expanded role of the ISAF would be restricted to maintenance of law and order and economic and social development and would not relate to counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan, which would continue to be handled by the US command in the area.

CONCLUSION

72. Since August last, the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating. Increasing numbers of better trained, better equipped and better led Taliban cadres operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan have stepped up their hit and run raids into Southern and Eastern Afghanistan in order to demoralise the newly-raised Army and Police of the Hamid Karzai Government in the hope of thereby inducing large-scale desertions. Their attacks have been focussed on members of the new Afghan Army, Police and other Government departments and foreign aid workers. They have avoided direct confrontations with the US forces, lest they pursue them into Pakistani territory. As a result, while there have been nearly 400 Afghan Government and civilian fatal casualties, the number of fatal American casualties has been only four.The Taliban has also set up a well-run Psychological warfare (PSYWAR) machinery in Pakistan, which is used to add to the anti-US anger in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. While the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Heckmatyar has been operating jointly with the revived Taliban from Pakistani sacntuaries, the survivors of the Al Qaeda and the Pakistani components of the International Islamic Front (IIF) have been focussing on harassing the US troops in Iraq through well-motivated jihadis infiltrated into Iraq through Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Pakistan-based jihadi terrorists owing allegiance to bin Laden through the IIF have been calculating that if they maintain a low, but sustained level of violence in Afghanistan and Iraq without unduly provoking the Americans into massive retaliation, battle fatigue would set in and force the US government to recall its boys home before the campaign for the next year's presidential elections picks up momentum. Though the US has been saying that it is prepared for a longish stay, whatever be the cost in terms of funds and casualties, in both countries, the jihadis view this as mere bravado and have convinced themselves that the closer the elections, the weaker will be the US will to continue the fighting. The USA's continued reluctance to act against Pakistan and make it pay a prohibitive price for helping the jihadi terrorists is coming in the way of an effective counter-terrorism strategy.Encouraged by this US reluctance, the Pervez Musharraf regime continues to keep the jihadi terrorists alive and active in the hope of using them to retrieve the lost Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and achieve its strategic objective of forcing a change in the status quo in India's Jammu & Kashmir.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )

DAWOOD IBRAHIM--THE GLOBAL TERRORIST (19-10-2003 )

2009-04-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

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

ANNEXURE
THE DAWOOD IBRAHIM GANG

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. ( End of extract)

" BANNING THE BANNED" (20-11-2003)

2009-04-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

Between October 12,1999, when he took over as Pakistan's military dictator after the overthrow of Nawaz Sharif, the duly-elected Prime Minister, and August 14, 2001, the only action taken by Gen.Pervez Musharraf under Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act was to get Sharif arrested, prosecuted and convicted by a special court on a charge of hijacking the plane in which Musharraf was returning from Colombo to Karachi.

2. Sharif had allegedly instructed the Karachi airport control tower to divert the plane to another airport and not to let it land. This was held by Musharraf to be an act of hijacking and the court upheld his contention. In the history of hijacking, there have been instances of persons, not on board an aircraft, being convicted of forming part of a conspiracy to hijack a plane, but this was the first instance in which someone, over 1,500 kms away on ground, was charged with hijacking an aircraft.

3. During the trial, Sharif wanted to testify orally on how Musharraf had deceived him on the Kargil conflict. On the advice of the army, the court refused him permission. Thereafter, Sharif dictated a statement on the subject to his lawyer for release to the media. That night, the lawyer was murdered by unknown persons and all his papers, including the statement dictated by Sharif, were stolen. Till today, this case has remained as mysterious as the case relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist.

4. On August 14, 2001, Musharraf banned the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), a Sunni extremist organisation, and Sipah Mohammad (SM), a Shia extremist organisation, under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The two had been killing the followers of each other in dozens. The LEJ, which is a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), had at various times received financial and other assistance from the intelligence agencies of the USA, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as a reward or motivating money for targeting Iranian officials and interests in addition to the Shias of Pakistan. The SM was in receipt of funds from the Iranian intelligence for countering the LEJ.

5. The LEJ remained active despite this ban and has been involved in a number of terrorist strikes against Westerners, Pakistani Christians and Shias throughout last and this year, including in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl.

6. Indian investigators established that the attack on the Indian Parliament House in December,2001,was jointly mounted by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), two Pakistani organisations, which are also members of the IIF. Initially, the US ordered the freezing of their bank accounts and, subsequently, designated them as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs) under a 1996 US law.

7. Under US pressure, Musharraf too banned them under the Anti-Terrorism Act on January 15, 2002. He made the ban order applicable only to Pakistani Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and not to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

8. Their offices were sealed, many of their members including Prof. Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, the Amir of the LET, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the JEM,were arrested or placed under house arrest and their bank accounts were claimed to have been frozen. After some weeks, Pakistani courts ordered their release on the ground that there was no evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory. Their involvement in acts of terrorism in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chechnya and other places was viewed by the courts as participation in "freedom struggles" and not as terrorism.

9. On January 15, 2002, he also banned the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the political wing of the LEJ, and the Tehrik Jaffria Pakistan (TJP), the political front of the SM. To circumvent the ban, all these organisations changed their names and started operating under new names-- the LET as the Jamaat-ul-Dawa (JUD), the JEM as the Khuddam-e-Islam (KEI),the SSP as the Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan (MEIP) and the TJP as the Islami Tehrik-e-Pakistan (ITEP).

10. The arrested leaders and cadres of the SSP and the TJP were not ordered to be released by the courts as they were involved in specific acts of terrorism in Pakistan. After the release of the leaders and cadres of the LET and JEM, the police restored to them their sealed offices. They replaced the old name boards with new ones and started operating under their changed names. They recruited jihadis, held training camps in different parts of Pakistan, ran madrasas for jihadis from foreign countries, collected funds, acquired properties, and their leaders travelled all over Pakistan and addressed public meetings and participated in anti-India, anti-US and anti-Israel processions. They continued infiltrating trained jihadis into Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and other parts of India for indulging in acts of terrorism.

11. During their interactions with the leaders and officials of the US, the Government of India drew their attention to this farce enacted by Musharraf, but to no effect.

12. Before the general elections of October, 2002, Musharraf, in order to bring about the defeat of the pro-Sharif faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), ordered the withdrawal of all cases under the Anti-Terrorism Act registered against some leaders of the Islamic fundamentalist parties to enable them to contest the elections. Another calculation of his was that if the fundamentalists did well in the sensitive NWFP and Balochistan, bordering Afghasnistan, that would send a warning signal to the US that if it exercised too much pressure on him to act against the jihadi terrorists operating against India, there would be a danger of the fundamentalists coming to power in Islamabad too.

13. Amongst those who benefited from the withdrawal of the cases were the arrested leaders of the SSP and TJP. Maulana Azam Tariq,the head of the SSP, who had faced prosecution in more than six cases of terrorism, found all the cases against him withdrawn and got elected to the National Assembly. He has since been assassinated in October. After the release of its members, the TJP joined the six-party pro-Taliban and pro-bin Laden fundamentalist coalition, called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) which was swept to power in the NWFP. The MMA became a member of the ruling coalition in Balochistan.

14. After their victories, the fundamentalist parties, who had promised in their election manifesto, that they would assist the jihad in India, Southern Philippines and Myanmar, helped the Taliban and Al Qaeda to re-group, re-train and re-arm in the territories under their administration and stepped up assistance to the jihadi terrorists operating in India.

15. From February last, reliable reports started coming in from Pakistan that jihadi terrorists belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the LET, the JEM and other groups had started sending their trained cadres to Saudi Arabia under the garb of Haj pilgrims with instructions to infiltrate into Iraq and take up position there for waging a jihad against the US and UK troops if and when they occupied Iraq. After the invasion of Iraq by the US-UK troops, the LET started collecting funds all over Pakistan for supporting the jihad in Iraq and the families of the jihadis who martyred themselves there.

16. At the beginning of this year, the Pakistani authorities, at the instance of the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), detained a Pakistani doctor, who had lived for some years in the USA, and some of his family members on suspicion of their assisting Al Qaeda. They were prosecuted under the Anti-Terrorism Act on a charge of providing medical assistance to members of Al Qaeda.

17. The court threw out the case against them on the ground that the Government had not banned Al Qaeda as a terrorist organisation under the Anti-Terrorism Act and, hence, giving medical assistance to its members was not an offence. For nearly 18 months after Al Qaeda's terrorist strikes in the USA, Washington's "stalwart ally" had not banned the organisation in Pakistan. An embarrassed Government admitted that it had overlooked it and promised that a ban order would be issued. Was it a slip-up or a deliberate omission to help those from Al Qaeda, whose presence and activities in Pakistan had not come to the notice of the USA?

18. After the arrest at Karachi in April of Walid bin Attash,one of the suspects in the case relating to the attack on the US naval ship, USS Cole, at Aden in October, 2000, there were reports that due to the incapacity of bin Laden to co-ordinate the working of the different components of the IIF, the LET has taken over the responsibility in this connection. In June last, the US authorities detected a secret cell of the LET in the US homeland. Its members were arrested and prosecuted and some of them have already been convicted. Despite this, Musharraf still did not effectively enforce the ban on it.

19. In August, the Thai authorities, with US assistance, arrested Hambali, said to be the operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) which had masterminded the Bali bombing of October last year, and handed him over to the FBI for interrogation. It is said that during his interrogation he mentioned that his brother Gungun and some other Indonesian and Malaysian members of the JI were studying in two madrasas of Karachi.

20. One of these madrasas was being run by the LET and when the police went there to make some of the arrests of the students from Indonesia and Malaysia, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Amir of the LET, was taking classes for the foreign jihadis. The police did not arrest him despite the ban on him and his activities.

21. During the same period, the US Treasury Department established that the JEM, despite the ban on its activities, had started an ostensible charity organisation called Al Akhtar Trust, which was funding not only Al Qaeda, but also the jihad in Iraq. By an order issued on October 14, 2003, it froze any accounts it may have in the US and requested the UN to issue similar instructions to all member-countries.

22. The Treasury Department order said in a fact sheet: " AL AKHTAR TRUST was providing a wide range of support to Al-Qaida and Pakistani based sectarian and jihadi groups, specifically Lashkar-e- Tayyiba, Lashkar-I-Jhangvi, and Jaish-e-Mohammed. (All three of these organizations have been designated by the U.S.) These efforts included providing financial and logistical support as well as arranging travel for Islamic extremists. According to information available to the U.S. Government from March 2003, an associate of AL AKHTAR TRUST was attempting to raise funds in order to finance "obligatory jihad" in Iraq (i.e., because fatwas had been issued, Muslims were obligated to support jihad in Iraq)."

23. Testifying before a joint hearing of two sub-committees of the House International Relations Committee at Washington DC on October 29, 2003, Mrs. Christina Rocca, US Assistant Secretary of State in charge of South Asia, praised Pakistan's co-operation with the USA in the war against terrorism and then added: "We continue to monitor actions taken to curb such extremist groups as Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and others. These groups pose a serious threat to Pakistan, the region and the United States. We continue to work with the Government of Pakistan on this challenge. We look to Pakistan to do everything in its power to prevent extremist groups operating from its soil from crossing the Line of Control. The Government of Pakistan has taken many steps to curb infiltration (into India), but we are asking it to redouble its efforts."

24. She faced searching questions from many of the members over the ineffectiveness of the enforcement of the ban on these organisations. They drew her attention to reports that these organisations had been functioning under changed names without the Musharraf Government acting against them.

25. Thereafter, on November 13,2003, while addressing a meeting at Karachi, Mrs. Nancy Powell, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, said: "These groups posed a serious threat to Pakistan, to the United States and to the region. We are particularly concerned that these banned organizations are re-establishing themselves with new names. We will continue to work with Pakistan to monitor how well action to curb extremist groups was working."

26. Significantly, her phraseology closely resembled that used by Mrs. Rocca at the joint hearing. Apparently, after the hearing, the concerns expressed by the House members had been communicated to the US Ambassador by the State Department so that she could take it up with the Musharraf Government. She not only did so, but also gave public expression to the US concerns over these organisations continuing to function under new names. She as well as Mrs. Rocca projected them as posing a threat to the US.

27. Her open expression of the US concerns led to an emergency meeting of the concerned Ministers, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and the provincial Governors presided over by Musharraf on November 15, 2003, following which the Government banned the activities of the JEM, the SSP and the TJP under their new names too and ordered the sealing of their offices and freezing of their accounts. It also ordered the arrest of Allama Sajjid Naqvi, the head of the ITEP (old TJP), in connection with the murder of Maulana Azam Tariq. Surprisingly, the Government did not ban the activities of the LET under its new name. It only placed it on a so-called watch list in order to monitor its activities under its new name of JUD.

28. The offices of the JEM, the SSP and the TJP under their new names in Punjab, Sindh, the NWFP and Balochistan have been sealed, but their leaders and members have not been arrested. No action has been taken against their offices in POK and the Northern Areas, thereby indicating that, as in the case of the previous ban, the present ban too does not apply to these areas where they would be free to act as they pleased. Government spokesmen have also indicated that the Al Akhtar Trust and its predecessor Al Rashid Trust would also be banned shortly and their accounts would be frozen, thereby giving them sufficient time to withdraw their balances from their accounts as happened last year.

29. Of all the pan-Islamic jihadi organisations of Pakistan, the LET,the JEM, the HUM and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al Islami (HUJI) have been the most active in India, the southern Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Apart from setting up a secret cell in the US, the LET is also suspected to have set up a cell in Australia, which has recently banned its activities.

30. The LET has been spearheading the mobilisation of jihadis for fighting against the US in Iraq. Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the leader of the JUD as the LET now calls itself, has been saying that the US is now at the mercy of the jihadis with one leg caught in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq and has been calling upon the Muslims of the world to take advantage of this to defeat the USA. Examples of the kind of speeches he has been delivering all over Pakistasn are given below:

* " We will not accept friendship with India. The holy war in the occupied Kashmir is continuing and suicide attacks will also continue. The holy war will lead to the disintegration of India and people promoting dialogue with India will also be doomed." (Lahore, November 12)

* "Jihad is the only way to counter the nefarious designs of anti-Muslim forces. The Mujahideen are carrying out guerrilla activities to take revenge of killing of Muslims by the anti-Muslim forces. The alliance of anti-Muslim powers has badly failed to suppress Jihad." (Gujranwala).

* "Al Qaeda or Islamic militants were not responsible for the suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed at least 11 people. It is a Jewish and American conspiracy against the Mujahideen and Al Qaeda. America wants to extend its stay in Saudi Arabia as its contract to hold Saudi airbases has expired. The Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Kashmir are fighting for the survival of Pakistan. If jihad in Kashmir is stopped, India could attack Pakistan, and if the Mujahideen lay down their weapons in Afghanistan, America could attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria. The United States could not attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran because the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Iraq are confronting American troops. America is looking to withdraw its troops from these places, but it has no way out. The day is not far when America will be crushed like the USSR by the mujahideen.” (Lahore, November 12)

* "True Muslims are still busy doing jihad in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Iraq and would not let infidels succeed in their goals. The alliance of the United States, India and Israel would face defeat and these countries would leave occupied lands. The governments that had rallied behind the US are hypocrites and would face the wrath of Allah. The Muslims of Sinkyang (Xinjiang) could be pacified through dialogue and there is no need to use force against them. The Taliban’s decision to provide sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden was correct. A new Muslim order would emerge in Central Asia." (Press conference at Islamabad last week)

31. The prestigious "Daily Times" of Lahore reported as follows on November 19, 2003: "The Jamaatul Dawa (JD) is ignoring a government ban and continuing to collect donations for jihad. The federal government recently banned three organisations for violating the prohibition to collect money for jihad. But the JD, which was put on a watch list, continues its fund collection. In Lahore, the JD has several camps in Chauburji, Samanabad, Allama Iqbal Town, Shadman and Baghbanpura. Ramazan is a good time for jihadi groups and seminaries to get donations as a large number of Muslims pay their Zakat (annual charity) and Fitrana (poor dues related to the Eid feast). Many jihadi leaders have visited Lahore this month to boost donation campaigns. The chief of the now banned Tehrik-e-Khuddamul Islam, Maulana Masood Azhar, Jamiatul Furqan chief Maulana Abdullah Shah Mazhar, Al-Rasheed Trust’s Qari Mansoor, too, have visited mosques, seminaries and industrial areas to collect funds, but the JD seems to be the only group to have set up camps. The camps sell JD publications, posters, stickers and other material. “Help the Mujahideen with your money. They are defending your ideological and national frontiers with their blood,” says one poster on display at the camps."

32. The "Dawn" of Karachi of November 18, 2003, quoted the Director-General of the National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema (retired), as stating as follows: " Law-enforcement agencies have sealed about 137 offices and seminaries (madrasas) of the recently-banned extremist outfits throughout the country. No leader or activists of these outfits have so far been detained. We are concentrating on sealing the establishments of the banned groups instead of arresting their leaders."

33. The "Daily Times" reported on November 17, 2003, as follows:" Four more militant groups including two Muslim charities are likely to be banned soon, Daily Times learnt on Sunday. The groups facing a ban are Jamaatul Furqan (JF), a breakaway faction of the Tehrik-e-Kuddamul Islam (the new name of the JEM), Jamaitul Ansar (JA), the new name of Harkatul Mujahideen, Al Rasheed Trust and Al Akhtar Trust. Sources said these groups are working openly in Pakistan. The JF came into existence on September 25 and is led by Commander Abdul Jabbar, Maulana Abdullah Shah Mazhar and Commander Umer Farooq. The JF’s Chief Commander Jabbar is facing charges for an attack on churches and Christian missionaries in Pakistan. The JF has been actively engaged in raising funds during the last two months and in establishing new offices in Pakistan. The JA was not banned by the government but it was the first Pakistani jihadi outfit which the US declared a terrorist organisation in October 2001 and the Government of Pakistan froze its assets in November 2001. Sources said despite pressure from the US the Pakistan government refused to ban Hizbul Mujahideen, Al Badr Mujahideen and Jamaitul Mujahideen."

34. What Musharraf has done under US pressure is to re-ban organisations which have been indulging in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory, but spared the LET which has been mainly active in India, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other countries. He has consistently evaded any action against the HUM and the HUJI. The HUM has been figuring in the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations since October, 1997, and has been involved in acts of terrorism in India, the southern Philippines and Chechnya. So is the HUJI. The HUM was also involved in the terrorist strikes of last year against Western nationals in Pakistani territory and in the 1995 kidnapping of some Western tourists in Kashmir under the name Al Faran. Despite this, he has never banned it. It is surprising that the US Government has taken no notice of this and held him accountable for their acts of terrorism. The continuing insincerity of his actions needs to be brought to the notice of the Monitoring Committee of the UN Security Council, which monitors the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 and the international community.

Notes: "Banning the banned" was the title of a commentary carried by the "News", the largest circulated English daily of Pakistan, on the new ban. Different Pakistani newspapers spell the organisations in different ways. I have retained their spelling.
(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 MAN WHO KNOWS & TALKS TOO MUCH (13-3-2002 )

2009-04-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

On March 12, 2002 a court in Karachi extended the police remand of Omar Shaikh, the British terrorist Of Pakistani origin, who is believed to have masterminded the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist. Pearl was subsequently reported to have been brutally murdered and beheaded, most probably by the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) headed by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, which has always been close to the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment and Gen.Pervez Musharraf.

As already repeatedly pointed out by this writer, the Pakistani authorities have been trying hard to steer the investigation away from the HUJI and to project it as the work of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), one of the five terrorist organisations banned by Musharraf on January 15, 2002. They are afraid that if the HUJI's involvement became public knowledge there could be US demands for banning it.

An interesting thing happened in the court on March 12. When the Karachi Police moved the application for the extension of his Police remand on the ground that his interrogation was incomplete, Omar Shaikh reportedly remarked:" What do they mean by saying the interrogation is incomplete? They stopped interrogating me more than a fortnight ago. I am prepared to talk to them, but they are afraid of my talking."

In fact, reports from independent and usually reliable sources in the Karachi Police say that in the beginning of March, Musharraf ordered the stopping of all interrogation of Omar Shaikh in connection with his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Pearl and other terrorist incidents.

When the Karachi Police took custody of Omar from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on February 12, he started talking to them freely and voluntarily about his activities since he was released by India in the last week of December, 1999 to terminate the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM). He said that:

* He had since then been functioning from Lahore with the knowledge and permission of the ISI. At Lahore, he was in regular touch with Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, who was a Corps Commander there, till his appointment as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on October 8, 2001.

* He was frequently travelling to Kandahar to meet Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden and to Dubai.

* He had personally met Mohammad Atta, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Centre in New York, during one of his visits to Kandahar and knew of the plans for the September 11 strikes. He had told Lt.Gen. Ehsanul-Haq, the present DG of the ISI, who was then a Corps Commander at Peshawar, and Gen. Aziz Khan about it.

* He had personally accompanied Musharraf and Aziz to the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), at Muridke, near Lahore, when they had gone there before Musharraf's India visit in July last to appeal to the LET not to oppose his visit to New Delhi.

* He had orchestrated the attacks on the Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly on October 1, 2001 and on the Indian Parliament at New Delhi on December 13, 2001 and the firing incident outside the American Centre in Kolkata on January 22, 2002. He knew Aftab Ansari, the mafia leader, who is presently under interrogation in India in connection with the Kolkata incident. All these attacks were organised with the knowledge and approval of the ISI.

* Pearl was kidnapped and murdered because he was making enquiries about the links of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment with bin Laden and wanted to meet people who would have knowledge of the present whereabouts of bin Laden. They suspected that Pearl was being used by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to recruit people who might be prepared to betray bin Laden and help in his capture.

* More spectacular terrorist acts against the US were in the offing.

Sindhi Officers of the Karachi Police, who had been extremely resentful of the manner in which Musharraf, a Mohajir, had made them work under the supervision of Army monitors much junior to them in rank, leaked to the media what Omar Shaikh told them about his involvement in the terrorist attacks in India. Kamran Khan of the "News" of Islamabad reported about this in his periodic column. This set off a wave of panic in the GHQ at Rawalpindi and in the ISI headquarters, who tried to discredit Kamran Khan's story by saying that Omar Shaikh had been tutored to say all this about his involvement in the terrorist attacks in India. Though they did not specify who had turored him, the insinuation was that India had tutored him to discredit Pakistan and Musharraf.

They then pressured the owner of "News" to sack the Editor of the paper and three of his journalists, including Kamran Khan, who had been publishing a lot of reports on the Pearl case which cast doubts on Musharraf's sincerity.

Musharraf spoke to the father of Omar Shaikh and requested him to persuade his son not to make such statements which harmed Pakistan's supreme national interest. The father was allowed to talk to his son over phone and, on his appeal, Omar Shaikh agreed to retract his earlier statements and deny ever having said these things.

In fact, in keeping with his promise to his father, he did retract, but subsequently, he again started saying that he stood by whatever he had stated earlier.

Musharraf then ordered the Karachi Police not to interrogate him any longer and to treat him well. The military-intelligence establishment is in a dilemma. It is determined not to extradite him to the USA lest he repeat before the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) what he had told the Karachi Police. At the same time, they don't want to try him in Pakistan either.

Amongst the various options reportedly being considered are to have him declared as insane and unfit for trial and extradition or, if need be, to eliminate him and show him as having been killed when an attempt was made to free him by the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the banned Sunni extremist organisation, which has recently stepped up its anti-Shia activities in Karachi.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )

MUSHARRAF'S BAN: AN ANALYSIS (18-1-2002)

2009-04-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN
"Don't blame the common man if he does not take the government's orders seriously. What happened to the deweaponization ? The paramilitary forces looked on helplessly when the TNSM activists drove past the check points with guns mounted on their vehicles. Why should the common citizens believe this government when it says that it would take concrete steps against religious extremists and then buckles under such pressures, and withdraws plans to bring about procedural amendments in the controversial blasphemy law?

"Mere tough talk will not convince the people. Action speaks louder than words. How will the government liberate the 'great majority of moderate Pakistanis' held hostage by a minority of religious extremists when it cannot liberate itself from the extremists? People remain unconvinced. They say that the establishment has not divorced its religious allies altogether. This is just a separation. There will be a re-union once the situation cools down in Afghanistan. It will continue to need the support of the religious extremist groups for as long as Kashmir issue remains unresolved.

"Notwithstanding their present hibernation, the Jihadi outfits would continue to operate, along the holy war in Kashmir. They would continue to push political goals in Pakistan as well.

"The government says the extremists stand exposed and that it plans to unveil an action plan against them in the next three weeks or so. The taste of the pudding is in eating it. Time will tell how sincere is the administration in taking on religious extremism."

So wrote Mr. M. Ismail Khan, a Pakistani analyst, in the "Dawn" of Karachi on November 29, 2001, in response to the repeated reiteration by Gen.Pervez Musharraf, since September 11, 2001, of his determination to eradicate extremist and terrorist activities from Pakistani soil. The comments were provoked by the action of the military junta in not preventing the crossing- over of thousands of heavily-armed jehadis from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan into Afghanistan, at the height of the US air strikes against the Taliban to join the Taliban in its so-called jehad against the US. Thousands of them got killed by the US air strikes and in the fighting with the Northern Alliance.

If many in Pakistan itself have thus been doubting the sincerity of Musharraf in wanting to make a total break from extremism and terrorism, India is totally justified in adopting a cautious approach to his telecast of January 12 and in wanting to see credible action on the ground against terrorists operating against India before appropriately reciprocating to his speech and the follow-up action.

In pursuance of Musharraf's telecast announcement of January 12, 2002, Lt.Gen. (retd) Moinuddin Haider, Pakistan's Interior Minister, issued a notification on January 15, 2002, formally banning the following five organisations under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, which was got enacted by the then Prime Minister, Mr.Nawaz Sharif, and under which Sharif himself was got prosecuted and jailed by Musharraf after capturing power on October 12, 1999: the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LET), the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JEM), the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Tehreek-e-Jafferia Pakistan (TJP) and the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM). All of them, except the Shia TJP, have a strong Deobandi-Wahabi orientation. On the other hand, the Sunni Tehreek, which is of Barelvi orientation, was placed only under observation and not banned.

According to the notification, Section 11E of the Act provides that where any organisation is proscribed, the required measures against it will include: its offices, if any, shall be sealed; its accounts, if any, shall be frozen; all literature, posters, banners, or printing, electronic and digital or other material shall be seized.

It said: "Publications, printing or dissemination of any press statements, press conferences of public utterances by or on behalf of or in support of a proscribed organisation shall also be prohibited".

"The proscribed organisation shall submit all accounts of its income and expenditure for its political and social welfare activities and disclose all funding sources to the competent authority designated by the government. The provincial governments have been directed by the federal government to take immediate action. The Interior Ministry has also asked the provincial governments to furnish a report in this regard."

Of the five banned organisations, the TJP and the SSP are registered as political parties under the relevant Pakistani law and had been contesting elections. Registered political parties cannot be banned without the concurrence of the Supreme Court. The military junta got over this requirement under the pretext that since these two organisations had contested the 1997 elections under different names and had subsequently changed their names, they should have got themselves freshly registered as political parties, which they had not done.

The TJP had contested the 1997 elections as the Tehreek-e-Fiquah-e-Jafferia Pakistan and the SSP as the Anjuman-e-Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. The TJP and the SSP came into existence after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The TJP was formed at the instance of the Iranian Intelligence to protect the interests of the Shias and was funded by the latter. It extended its activities to the Shia majority areas of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Northern Areas--NA (Gilgit and Baltistan) and started a movement for constituting these Shia majority areas into a separate province of Pakistan to be called the Karakoram province.

In 1988, there was a violent uprising of the Shias in Gilgit, which was ruthlessly suppressed by Musharraf, who was given the task of dealing with the revolt by Zia-ul-Haq. Musharraf had a large number of Sunni Pashtun tribesmen from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) led by Osama bin Laden brought into Gilgit. They carried out a massacre of the Shias in the NA as well as the adjoining NWFP areas. It is believed by many in Pakistan that the crash of the aircraft in which Zia was travelling from Bahawalpur in August 1988 resulting in his death was caused by a Shia airman from Gilgit sympathetic to the TJP in retaliation for this massacre.

To keep the Shias of Gilgit under control, Musharraf encouraged the the SSP, which had come into existence in the Punjab in the early 1980s at the instance of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to extend its activities amongst the Sunni population of Gilgit and to politically organise them against the the TJP. Since then, there have frequently been clashes between the TJP and the SSP followers in Gilgit, the latest outbreak of such violent incidents having taken place in June, 2001, before Musharraf's visit to India for the summit talks with Mr.A.B.Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister.

The SSP, which, as stated above, originally came into existence in the Punjab province of Pakistan and spread from there to Sindh, was funded and used by the ISI and the Saudi intelligence for dealing with the Shias in Pakistan and for assisting the Sunni Balochis in the areas of Iran adjoining Pakistan's Balochistan province. The SSP acted in concert with the Iraqi-funded Mujahideen-e-Khalq in fomenting an anti-Teheran revolt amongst the Sunnis of Iran. The revolt was ultimately crushed by the Iranian authorities.

Towards the end of the 1980s, the SSP, much to the discomfiture of the ISI, started demanding that Pakistan should be proclaimed a Sunni Republic and the Shias declared non-Muslims. This led to violent clashes between the two organisations. The SSP and its militant wing called the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) carried out a massacre of the Shias in Punjab and Sindh. In Karachi, many Shia doctors and other intellectuals were massacred by the SSP. The SSP also carried out murderous attacks on Iranian nationals residing in Pakistan, including an Iranian diplomat in charge of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Lahore, and some Iranian military officers who had come to Pakistan for training.

To protect the Shias, the TJP formed its own militant wing called the Sipah Mohammad (SM). In 1996, the ISI had used the trained cadres of the SSP from the Punjab and Sindh for helping the Taliban in the capture of Jalalabad and Kabul. Hundreds of SSP cadres took part in the successful Taliban assault on Kabul in September, 1996. The SSP became an important component of the Taliban and joined Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel in 1998. It was used by bin Laden and the Taliban for the massacre of the Shias (Hazaras) of Afghanistan.

Concerned over the uncontrollable anti-Shia activities of the SSP and the LEJ in Pakistani territory, Musharraf banned the LEJ and the SM under the Anti-Terrorism Act on August, 14, 2001, but, despite this, the LEJ has continued to be as active as before with the connivance of sympathetic officers of the military-intelligence establishment.

Hundreds of SSP cadres fought along with the Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif, Kunduz and Kabul post-September 11, 2001, and suffered a large number of fatal casualties due to the US air strikes. The survivors have since returned to Pakistan and it is the fear of an anti-US and anti-Musharraf backlash from them which has led to the ban on the SSP.
The TJP or its SM have not indulged in major acts of terrorism. The TJP had refrained from participating in the post-September 11 anti-US demonstrations in Pakistan. But, Musharraf has banned it too lest a ban only on the Sunni organisations cause anger amongst the Sunnis, who constitute about 80 per cent of Pakistan's Muslim population. The USA views the TJP with suspicion because of its perceived proximity to the Iranian intelligence and would, therefore, have reasons to be gratified by the ban on it.

As a result of the policy of divide and rule followed by Musharraf and the ISI since he seized power in October, 1999, one saw for the first time in Pakistan sectarian terrorism inside the Sunni community itself between the Sunnis of the Deobandi faith belonging to the SSP and the LEJ and those of the Barelvi faith belonging to the Sunni Tehreek formed in the early 1990s to counter the growing Wahabi influence on Islam in Pakistan and the Almi Tanzeem Ahle Sunnat formed in 1998 by Pir Afzal Qadri of Mararian Sharif in Gujrat, Punjab, to counter the activities of the Deobandi Army of Islam headed by Gen. Mohammed Aziz, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.

This led to frequent armed clashes between rival Sunni groups in Sindh, the most sensational of the incidents being the gunning down of Maulana Salim Qadri of the Sunni Tehreek in Karachi in May, 2001, by the SSP, which led to a major break-down of law and order in certain areas of Karachi for some days.

While banning the strongly Deobandi SSP, Musharraf has refrained from banning the strongly Barelvi Sunni Tehreek and the Tanzeem. The Deobandis became quite powerful under Zia, himself a devout Deobandi, but numerically they are in a minority in Pakistan's Sunni community. By sparing the Barelvi organisations, Musharraf has sought to ensure that the majority Barelvis would not create trouble for him.

The junta has till now applied the ban only to the activities of the five organisations in Sindh, Punjab, the NWFP and Balochistan and has not yet extended it to the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and the NA, but Government spokesmen have been saying that it will be ultimately extended to those areas too.

The position in the NA is complicated by the fact that the 29-member Northern Areas Legislative Council includes ten legislators belonging to the TJP. Haji Fida Mohammad Noshad, the deputy Chief Executive of the Northern Areas, which is the top most post offered to the Council members by Islamabad, is also a member of the TJP though he contested the election independently and later joined the party. The Northern Areas Cabinet includes two TJP members--- Sheikh Haider and Imran Azeem.

The TNSM (Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Islamic Law. Official slogan: "Shariat or Shahadat"--Islamic law or martyrdom ) led by Mufti Sufi Mohammad is an exlusively Pashtun organisation of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), consisting of the tribal areas adjoining the Peshawar, the Kohat, the Bannu and the Dera Ismail Khan districts and the tribal agencies of Bajaur, Orakzai, Mohmand, Khyber, Kurram, and North and South Waziristan.

The FATA, comprising the territories lying between the administered districts of the NWFP and the 'Durand Line', is spread over an area of 10,510 square miles with a population of a little over three million Pashtuns. It is known as Pakistan's Corsica or Wild West. According to the "Dawn" of Karachi, out of 16,988 registered proclaimed offenders in the NWFP, 99 percent have taken shelter in Darra Adam Khel, Orakzai, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. It has some of the world's largest illegal arms manufacturing and smuggling groups and prosperous narcotics smugglers. The local population has more arms and ammunition than the population of any other Pakistani province or region.

Even though the FATA is supposed to be directly administered by the Federal Government in Islamabad, the local Mullahs and tribal leaders have effective control over the area and its people and had virtually talibanised it long before the Taliban made its appearance in Afghanistan in 1994.

The TNSM first made its appearance in the Malakand area in 1994, when, instigated by the ISI to have the Benazir Bhutto Government discredited, it staged an armed revolt in support of the enforcement of the Shariat. The ISI used it along with the SSP for assisting the Taliban in the capture of Jalalabad and Kabul in September 1996.

Since then, the TNSM, with the ISI's blessings, had established a close working relationship with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. Nearly 2,000 of its armed cadres are reported to have been killed by the US air strikes in Afghanistan. It is widely believed in Pakistan that despite the detention of Sufi Mohammad by the junta since November, 2001, his followers in the FATA have given shelter and protection to the surviving leaders of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, including, according to some, bin Laden himself and his family.

Embarrassed by these reports, Musharraf has found himself constrained to ban this orgasnisation too, but there are as yet no reports of any vigorous action by the military-intelligence establishment to smoke out the Taliban and the Al Qaeda leaders.

There were four Pakistani organisations in the Army of Islam of the Afghan war vintage, which the ISI had diverted from Afghanistan to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) from 1993 onwards---the JEM, the LET, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen HUM) and the Al Badr. Of these, the first two have been very open in their anti-India activities in Pakistani territory, make no secret of their terrorist activities in J&K and have been indulging in acts of terrorism outside J&K too as was demonstrated by their attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on December 13, 2001.

As against this, the HUM and the Al Badr maintain a comparatively low profile in Pakistan and have in recent months kept their acts of terrorism confined to J&K. While banning the JEM and the LET, Musharraf has refrained from banning the HUM and the Al Badr, thereby indicating that he wants to act only against acts of terrorism in other parts of India and not in J & K.

Moreover, he has attributed the ban on these two organisations to their terrorist activities inside Pakistan and not inside India. The JEM was suspected in the assassination of Moinuddin Haider's brother in Karachi in December, 2001. Apart from this, it was not involved in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory. However, it is perceived to be anti-Shia and has had a history of links with the SSP. In fact, its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, started his career as a terrorist under Azam Tariq, the dreaded head of the SSP.

The LET has had no history of acts of terrorism in Pakistan. All its terrorist attacks have been directed against Indian nationals and interests in Indian territory. So far, 1,957 persons belonging to the five banned organisations have been detained and 615 of their offices sealed. Of them, 735 were detained and 336 offices sealed in Punjab; 852 arrested and 180 offices closed in Sindh; 337 detained and 81 offices shut in NWFP; 15 arrested and an equal number of offices sealed in Balochistan; and 18 persons arrested and 3 offices closed in Islamabad.

There has been no action against their leadership, members and infrastructure in the FATA, the POK and the NA. The majority of those arrested belong to the political and administrative cadres of these organisations. There have been practically no arrests of their trained terrorists. They (estimated 5,000) are reported to have either escaped to the FATA, the POK and the NA or gone underground in other parts of Pakistan.

The follow-up action so far has belied expectations that at least this time the junta would give evidence of real sincerity.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director,Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )

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

2009-04-06T20:11:00.000-07:00

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 )

MUSHARRAF, BIN LADEN & THE LASHKAR ( 2-7-2001)

2009-04-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

The report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2000 released by the Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department in April had made detailed references to Pakistan and the Taliban and to the activities of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). It had also, for the first time, identified the HUM as a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the US and Israel.

Subsequently, during a daily press briefing, a spokesman of the State Department had, in response to questions from US pressmen, tried to soften the blow to Pakistan by saying that the details regarding Pakistan and the Taliban given in the report were the assessment of the Clinton Administration and that, since the beginning of this year, the Bush Administration had not come across any fresh evidence in this regard.

It is since learnt that US counter-terrorism experts have been concerned over new evidence that despite Islamabad's repeated denial of any influence over the Taliban and bin Laden and repeated contention that the HUM and the LET are indigenous Kashmiri organisations, which have no presence in Pakistani territory, Pakistani contacts with bin Laden and assistance to the Taliban continue and the HUM and the LET have stepped up their activities in J & K from Pakistani territory.

Independent reports from Islamabad and Peshawar suggest that :

* Bin Laden, who suffers from renal deficiency, has been periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with the knowledge and approval of the Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI) if not of Gen.Pervez Musharraf himself.

* The recent circulation of copies of bin Laden's video cassette showing him and his followers undergoing training in Afghan territory and the interview of Bakr Atyani, a correspondent of the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) with bin Laden and his aides Abu Hafas al-Masri and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Egypt's outlawed Jihad group, were organised by Pakistani military and ISI officers manning the Taliban's newly-created intelligence agency, which has replaced the Khad, the intelligence agency of the Najibullah regime. In this interview, during which bin Laden was present but did not speak, his two aides warned that "the coming weeks will hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests in the world." The interview was reportedly recorded by a camera supplied by the ISI officers of the Taliban's intelligence agency since the correspondent was not allowed to carry any recording equipment when he transited Peshawar on his way to Kandahar to interview bin Laden and his aides.

* In view of the ban on all flights from and to Afghanistan under the UN sanctions, the only way of travelling to and from Kandahar to meet bin Laden is by flying from the Gulf or elsewhere to Peshawar and from there to travel by road. The ISI and the Pakistan Army have been facilitating this mode of travel by the foreign-based cadres of the Al Qaeda and other constituents of the International Islamic Front For Jihad Against the US And Israel.

* In the past, bin Laden used to contact his cadres abroad by satellite telephone from Kandahar. After the US bombing of his training camps in Afghan territory in October,1998, he has stopped telephoning from Afghan territory lest US Cruise missiles zero in on the frequency of his telephone. Since then, all his instructions to his cadres abroad are conveyed from Peshawar by one of his aides, generally al-Zawahiri.
However, the Taliban has questioned the authenticity of the video cassette and the claims of the journalist to have interviewed bin Laden's aides. Despite this, William B. Milam, the outgoing US Ambassador in Islamabad, contacted the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abus Salaam Zaeef , on June 29 and reportedly warned him that in case of a new terrorist attack against American interests by groups associated with bin Laden, Washington would hold the Taliban directly responsible, hinting thereby that any retaliatory strike by the US could be directed against the Taliban's headquarters.

Reports from Islamabad suggest that a similar warning was conveyed by US officials to Mr.Abdul Sattar, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, during the latter's visit to Washington last month. He was reported to have been confronted by US officials with fresh evidence relating to the continued clandestine assistance of Pakistan to the Taliban in violation of the UN sanctions.

The latest position of the Bush Administration seems to be a follow-up of the recommendations made by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank close to the Republican Party, in a paper of July, 2000. The paper had inter alia recommended as follows:

* Even if the United States were fortunate enough to eliminate bin Laden by military means, other Islamic radicals will continue to threaten American security and American allies from Afghan bases as long as the Taliban prevails there.

* "Rather than focusing narrowly on bin Laden, the United States should focus on uprooting the Taliban regime that sustains him and others like him. Washington should develop a regional strategy to halt Pakistan's support of the Taliban, build up Afghan opposition to the Taliban, and encourage defections from its ranks. The ultimate U.S. goal should be a stable, tolerant, inclusive Afghan government that poses no threats to its neighbors or to its own ethnic and religious minorities. To accomplish this, Washington should cooperate with the broad anti-Taliban coalition that surrounds Afghanistan and help to forge a broad anti-Taliban coalition inside Afghanistan."

* " Specifically, the United States should maximize international pressure on the Taliban, including additional United Nations sanctions, to halt its support of terrorism, pressure Pakistan to end its support of the Taliban; and designate the Taliban as a terrorist organization to set the stage for declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism if it continues to support the Taliban. "

US concerns over the Musharraf regime's double game in Afghanistan--overtly claiming to be implementing the sanctions and denying any influence over the Taliban and covertly continuing to assist it--were reflected in the confirmation hearings of the new US Ambassador-designate to Pakistan, Mrs. Wendy Chamberlain, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 26. The new Democratic Chairman of the Sub-Committee on South Asian Affairs, Senator Paul Wellstone, told her: "You have to convey a strong message about America's commitment not only to non-proliferation, but also to democratic values, human rights and opposition to Taliban-inspired militancy. Importantly, the decision by General Musharraf to anoint himself as President, apparently without the knowledge of his own Foreign Minister, is a troubling development. Far more troubling, however, is Pakistan's mistreatment of refugees from Afghanistan, the victims of not only drought, but the cruelty of the Taliban regime that Pakistan itself helps maintain in power."

It has also been noted by US counter-terrorism experts that while Musharraf's spokesmen have been projecting the jihadi organisations as indigenous Kashmiri organisations with no base in Pakistani territory, the HUM and the LET themselves, in their propaganda literature and official web sites, project themselves as Pakistan-based organisations. They give their addresses and telephone/fax numbers in Pakistan and particulars of the Pakistani banks in which their accounts are held to which their supporters should send their contributions.

These details as given in their web sites are shown below:

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Head Office: House No. B-154/, Khayban-i-Sir Sayad, Near C.D.A. Bus Stop, Rawalpindi. Pakistan, Phone/Fax No. 4414810 . Account: Current Account No. 2758-9, Muslim Commercial Bank, Aabpara Branch, Islamabad. Pakistan. Monthly Journal Sada-e-Mujahid Office: I -10 Markaz, Usman Plaza, Islamabad. Pakistan. Phone No. 051-431776. Weekly Al-Hilal News Paper Office: 6 Sumaira Apartment, 2nd Floor Block 13-B, Near K.D.A Bus Stop, Gulshan Iqbal, Karachi. Pakistan. Phone/Fax No. 021-4991819 .

Markaz Dawa al Irshad , the political wing of the LET: 5-Chamberlane Road, Lahore – Pakistan. Tel: (92-42) 7231106

Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, Musharraf's DG of the ISI, was reported to have attended the annual conference of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) held at Muridke from April 13 to 15, which passed a resolution calling on its cadres in India to emulate the example of Mahmood Ghaznavi, capture Hindu temples, destroy the idols and then hoist the flag of Islam on them.

Last year, Musharraf, under pressure from the Clinton Administration, denied the LET permission to hold its annual conference at Muridke in November. This year, anticipating that there would be no similar pressure from the Bush Administration, he initially allowed them to hold the deferred confertence of 2000 in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), but subsequently, when the LET insisted on holding it at Muridke, he let it do so and asked the ISI to ensure that no journalists, Pakistani or foreign, was able to have access.

Despite this, some Pakistani journalists managed to have access. The "News" of April 22 reported as follows: "The Lashkar operates six private military training camps in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir where several thousands of cadre are given both military and religious education…. With more than 2200 unit offices across the country and over two dozen launching camps along the Line of Control (LOC), the Lashkar boasts of the biggest jihadi network in Pakistan… The followers of the Lashkar come from all walks of life from the defence and nuclear establishment to the industrial labour."

The March issue of "Herald", the monthly journal of the "Dawn" group of Karachi, quoted Dr.Khalid Mehmood Soomro, Secretary-General of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI), Sindh, based in Larkana, as saying as follows: "Why is the Pakistan Army not fighting for Kashmir? Why are they getting our youth killed there? They are using our young men for their own goals…Let's be clear on one thing. These jihadi groups can't function and survive without official patronage. Is there a single militant training centre in Pakistan which can operate without the consent of the Pakistan Army? All militant groups are created and run by Pakistan's secret agencies. They have mobile phones, land cruisers and weapons. Where are they getting the funds from? Surely, it can't be all funded through public donations. Because if that were so, we would be getting similar donations, if not more."

And yet, Musharraf denies any links of the Pakistan Army and the ISI with the LET and other jihadis. What more, he denies their very presence in Pakistani territory. On June 24, a fortnight after the famous rebuke of the Ulema of June 5, which was more shadow-boxing than reality on the eve of the Washington visit of Mr.Abul Sattar, Major-Gen.Rashid Quereshi, the media spokesman of Musharraf, was asked about the activities of the LET and other jihadi organisations. He replied without batting an eye-lid: " No group operating in Kashmir has any base in Pakistan." ("The Hindu" of June 25).

The LET has totally ignored the June 5 rebuke of Musharraf and has maintained a high level of virulent anti-Indian propaganda and has been reiterating almost daily its determination to continue its jihad against India till India withdraws its troops from J& K. It has been opposing the forthcoming summit on the ground that jihad against non-believers, once started, cannot be discontinued till they surrender and that to discontinue it mid-way would be unislamic.

In the past, Musharraf had been saying that if there was progress on the Kashmir issue in the bilateral talks with India, he might appeal to the jihadis to deescalate their activities. Now, his spokesmen have been saying that since these are indigenous Kashmiri organisations, Pakistan has no influence over them just as they have been telling the US that Pakistan has no influence over the Taliban and bin Laden.

Pamela Constable of the "Washington Post", who was one of the foreign correspondents briefed by Musharraf last week on the forthcoming summit, has reported as follows: "Musharraf brushed aside questions about whether he would rein in armed Islamic groups that support fighters in Kashmir, insisting that the Kashmiri insurgency is "indigenous".

It is, therefore, likely that whatever be the outcome of the forthcoming summit, Pakistan will continue its proxy war against India through its jihadi surrogates even while denying any links with or control over them. Any optimism of a reduction in violence and cross-border terrorism as a result of the summit would be misplaced. Musharraf will continue to play his double game---overtly friendly, warm and seemingly accommodating and covertly continuing to make our security forces bleed. To expect anything different from him and to lower our guard against him could be suicidal. India will continue to pay a heavy price for its failure to evolve and implement consistently an effective counter proxy war policy. The policy of "kabi naram, kabi garam" (sometimes soft, sometimes hard) doesn't pay against Pakistan. It will only confirm Musharraf in his perception that India is a soft State, which lends itself to easy manipulation.

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

PAKISTAN'S INTER-SERVICES INTELLIGENCE (ISI) ( 1-8-2001)

2009-04-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

B.RAMAN

The intelligence community of Pakistan, which was once described by the "Frontier Post" of Peshawar (May 18,1994) as its "invisible government" and by the "Dawn" of Karachi (April 25,1994) as "our secret godfathers" consists of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the ISI. While the IB comes under the Interior Minister, the ISI is part of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Each wing of the Armed Forces has also its own intelligence directorate for tactical MI.

The IB is the oldest dating from Pakistan's creation in 1947. It was formed by the division of the pre-partition IB of British India. Its unsatisfactory military intelligence (MI) performance in the first Indo-Pak war of 1947-48 over Jammu & Kashmir (J & K) led to the decision in 1948 to create the ISI, manned by officers from the three Services, to specialise in the collection, analysis and assessment of external intelligence, military and non-military, with the main focus on India.
Initially, the ISI had no role in the collection of internal political intelligence except in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and the Northern Areas (NA--Gilgit and Baltistan). Ayub Khan, suspecting the loyalty and objectivity of the Bengali police officers in the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) of the IB in Dacca, the capital of the then East Pakistan, entrusted the ISI with the responsibility for the collection of internal political intelligence in East Pakistan.

Similarly, Z.A.Bhutto, when faced with a revolt by Balochi nationalists in Balochistan after the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, suspected the loyalty of the Balochi police officers of the SIB in Quetta and made the military officers of the ISI responsible for internal intelligence in Balochistan.

Zia-ul-Haq expanded the internal intelligence responsibilities of the ISI by making it responsible not only for the collection of intelligence about the activities of the Sindhi nationalist elements in Sindh and for monitoring the activities of Shia organisations all over the country after the success of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but also for keeping surveillance on the leaders of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto and its allies which had started the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in the early 1980s. The ISI's Internal Political Division had Shah Nawaz Bhutto, one of the two brothers of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, assassinated through poisoning in the French Riviera in the middle of 1985, in an attempt to intimidate her into not returning to Pakistan for directing the movement against Zia, but she refused to be intimidated and returned to Pakistan.

Even in the 1950s, Ayub Khan had created in the ISI a Covert Action Division for assisting the insurgents in India's North-East and its role was expanded in the late 1960s to assist the Sikh Home Rule Movement of London-based Charan Singh Panchi, which was subsequently transformed into the so-called Khalistan Movement, headed by Jagjit Singh Chauhan. A myriad organisations operating amongst the members of the Sikh diaspora in Europe, the US and Canada joined the movement at the instigation and with the assistance of the ISI.

During the Nixon Administration in the US, when Dr.Henry Kissinger was the National Security Adviser, the intelligence community of the US and the ISI worked in tandem in guiding and assisting the so-called Khalistan movement in the Punjab. The visits of prominent Sikh Home Rule personalities to the US before the Bangladesh Liberation War in December, 1971, to counter Indian allegations of violations of the human rights of the Bengalis of East Pakistan through counter-allegations of violations of the human rights of the Sikhs in Punjab were jointly orchestrated by the ISI, the US intelligence and some officials of the US National Security Council (NSC) Secretariat, then headed by Dr.Kissinger.

This covert colloboration between the ISI and the US intelligence community was also directed at discrediting Mrs.Indira Gandhi's international stature by spreading disinformation about alleged naval base facilities granted by her to the USSR in Vizag and the Andaman & Nicobar, the alleged attachment of KGB advisers to the then Lt.Gen.Sunderji during Operation Bluestar in the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June, 1984, and so on. This collaboration petered out after her assassination in October,1984.

The Afghan war of the 1980s saw the enhancement of the covert action capabilities of the ISI by the CIA. A number of officers from the ISI's Covert Action Division received training in the US and many covert action experts of the CIA were attached to the ISI to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by using the Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers. Osama bin Laden, Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, US, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistan were the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.

The encouragement of opium cultivation and heroin production and smuggling was also an offshoot of this co-operation. The CIA, through the ISI, promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to make the Soviet troops heroin addicts. Once the Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1988, these heroin smugglers started smuggling the drugs to the West, with the complicity of the ISI. The heroin dollars have largely contributed to preventing the Pakistani economy from collapsing and enabling the ISI to divert the jehadi hordes from Afghanistan to J & K after 1989 and keeping them well motivated and well-equipped.

Even before India's Pokhran I nuclear test of 1974, the ISI had set up a division for the clandestine procurement of military nuclear technology from abroad and, subsequently, for the clandestine purchase and shipment of missiles and missile technology from China and North Korea. This division, which was funded partly by donations from Saudi Arabia and Libya, partly by concealed allocations in Pakistan's State budget and partly by heroin dollars, was instrumental in helping Pakistan achieve a military nuclear and delivery capability despite its lack of adequate human resources with the required expertise.

Thus, the ISI, which was originally started as essentially an agency for the collection of external intelligence, has developed into an agency adept in covert actions and clandestine procurement of denied technologies as well.

The IB, which was patterned after the IB of British India, used to be a largely police organisation, but the post of Director-General (DG), IB, is no longer tenable only by police officers as it was in the past. Serving and retired military officers are being appointed in increasing numbers to senior posts in the IB, including to the post of DG.

In recent years, there has been a controversy in Pakistan as to who really controls the ISI and when was its internal Political Division set up. Testifying before the Supreme Court on June 16,1997, in a petition filed by Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan, former chief of the Pakistan Air Force, challenging the legality of the ISI's Political Division accepting a donation of Rs.140 million from a bank for use against PPP candidates during elections, Gen. (retd) Mirza Aslam Beg, former Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), claimed that though the ISI was manned by serving army officers and was part of the MOD, it reported to the Prime Minister and not to the COAS and that its internal Political Division was actually set up by the late Z.A.Bhutto in 1975.

Many Pakistani analysts have challenged this and said that the ISI, though de jure under the Prime Minister, had always been controlled de facto by the COAS and that its internal Political Division had been in existence at least since the days of Ayub Khan, if not earlier.

The ISI is always headed by an Army officer of the rank of Lt.Gen., who is designated as the Director-General (DG). The present DG is Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed. He is assisted by three Deputy Directors-General (DDGs), designated as DDG (Political), DDG-I (External) and DDG-II (Administration). It is divided into the following Divisions:

* The Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB)---Responsible for all Open Sources Intelligence (OSINT) and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) collection, inside Pakistan as well as abroad.

* The Joint Counter-Intelligence (CI) Bureau: Responsible for CI inside Pakistan as well as abroad.

* The Joint Signals Intelligence Bureau (JSIB): Responsible for all communications intelligence inside Pakistan and abroad.

* Joint Intelligence North (JIN): Responsible for the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir and the control of Afghanistan through the Taliban. Controls the Army of Islam, consisting of organisations such as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Al Badr and Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, presently a Corps Commander at Lahore, is the clandestine Chief of Staff of the Army of Islam. It also controls all opium cultivation and heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistani and Afghan territory.

* Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous (JIM): Responsible for covert actions in other parts of the world and for the clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technologies. Maj Gen (retd) Sultan Habib, an operative of this Division, who had distinguished himself in the clandestine procurement and theft of nuclear material while posted as the Defence Attache in the Pakistani Embassy in Moscow from 1991 to 93, with concurrent accreditation to the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Poland and Czechoslovakia, has recently been posted as Ambassador to North Korea to oversee the clandestine nuclear and missile co-operation between North Korea and Pakistan. After completing his tenure in Moscow, he had co-ordinated the clandestine shipping of missiles from North Korea, the training of Pakistani experts in the missile production and testing facilities of North Korea and the training of North Korean scientists in the nuclear establishments of Pakistan through Capt. (retd) Shafquat Cheema, Third Secretary and acting head of mission, in the Pakistani Embassy in North Korea, from 1992 to 96. Before Maj.Gen. Sultan Habib's transfer to ISI headquarters from Moscow, the North Korean missile and nuclear co-operation project was handled by Maj.Gen.Shujjat from the Baluch Regiment, who worked in the clandestine procurement division of the ISI for five years. On Capt.Cheema's return to headquarters in 1996, the ISI discovered that in addition to acting as the liaison officer of the ISI with the nuclear and missile establishments in North Korea, he was also earning money from the Iranian and the Iraqi intelligence by helping them in their clandestine nuclear and missile technology and material procurement not only from North Korea, but also from Russia and the CARs. On coming to know of the ISI enquiry into his clandestine assistance to Iran and Iraq, he fled to Xinjiang and sought political asylum there, but the Chinese arrested him and handed him over to the ISI. What happened to him subsequently is not known. Capt.Cheema initially got into the ISI and got himself posted to the Pakistani Embassy in North Korea with the help of Col.(retd) Ghulam Sarwar Cheema of the PPP.

* Joint Intelligence X (JIX): Responsible for administration and accounts.

* Joint Intelligence Technical (JIT): Responsible for the collection of all Technical Intelligence (TECHINT) other than communications intelligence and for research and development in gadgetry.

* The Special Wing: Responsible for all intelligence training in the Armed Forces in the Defence Services Intelligence Academy and for liaison with foreign intelligence and security agencies.

Since 1948, there have been three instances when the DG,ISI, was at daggers drawn with the COAS. The first instance was during the first tenure of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister (1988 to 1990). To reduce the powers of the ISI, to re-organise the intelligence community and to enhance the powers of the police officers in the IB, she discontinued the practice of appointing a serving Lt.Gen, recommended by the COAS, as the DG, ISI, and, instead appointed Maj.Gen. (retd) Shamsur Rahman Kallue, a retired officer close to her father, as the DG in replacement of Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul in 1989 and entrusted him with the task of winding up the internal intelligence collection role of the ISI and civilianising the IB and the ISI. Writing in the "Nation" of July 31,1997, Brig.A.R.Siddiqui, who had served as the Press Relations Officer in the army headquarters in the 1970s, said that this action of hers marked the beginning of her trouble with Gen.Beg, the then COAS, which ultimately led to her dismissal in August,1990. Gen.Beg made Maj.Gen.Kallue persona non grata (PNG), stopped inviting him to the Corps Commanders conferences and transferred the responsibility for the proxy war in J & K and for assisting the Sikh extremists in the Punjab from the ISI to the Army intelligence directorate working under the Chief of the General Staff (CGS).

The second instance was during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1990-93), who appointed as the DG,ISI, Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, a fundamentalist Kashmiri officer, though he was not recommended by the COAS for the post. Lt.Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then COAS, made Lt.Gen.Nasir PNG and stopped inviting him to the Corps Commanders conferences. Despite this, Lt.Gen.Janjua returned to the ISI the responsibility for the proxy war in J & K and for assisting the Sikh extremists.

During her second tenure (1993-96), Mrs. Bhutto avoided any conflict with Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar and Gen. Jehangir Karamat, the Chiefs of the Army Staff in succession, on the appointment of the DG,ISI. Her action in transferring part of the responsibility for the operations in Afghanistan, including the creation and the handling of the Taliban, from the ISI to the Interior Ministry headed by Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Babar, who handled Afghan operations in the ISI during the tenure of her father, did not create any friction with the army since she had ordered that Lt.Gen. Pervez Musharraf, then Director-General of Military Operations, should be closely associated by Maj.Gen.Babar in the Afghan operations.

However, sections of the ISI, close to Farooq Leghari, the then President of Pakistan, had Murtaza Bhutto, the surviving brother of Mrs.Benazir, assassinated outside his house in Karachi in September,1996, with the complicity of some local police officers and started a disinformation campaign in the media blaming her and her husband, Asif Zirdari, for the murder. This campaign paved the way for her dismissal by Leghari in November,1996.

The third instance was during the second tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1997-99) when his action in appointing Lt.Gen. Ziauddin, an engineer, as the DG,ISI, over-riding the objection of Gen.Musharraf led to the first friction between the two. Gen.Musharraf transferred Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, the then DDG,ISI, on his promotion as Lt.Gen. to the GHQ as the CGS and transferred the entire Joint Intelligence North (JIN), responsible for covert actions in India and Afghanistan to the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) to be supervised by Lt.Gen.Aziz. It is believed that the JIN continues to function under the DGMI even after the appointment of Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed as the DG, ISI, after the overthrow of Sharif on October 12,1999. Gen.Musharraf, as the COAS, made Lt.Gen.Ziauddin PNG and stopped inviting him to the Corps Commanders' conferences. He kept Lt.Gen.Ziauddin totally out of the picture in the planning and implementation of the Kargil operations. After the Kargil war, Nawaz Sharif had sent Lt.Gen.Ziauddin to Washington on a secret visit to inform the Clinton Administration officials of his concerns over the continued loyalty of Gen.Musharraf. After his return from the US, Lt.Gen.Ziauddin went to Kandahar, as ordered by Sharif, to pressurise Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, to stop assisting the anti-Shia Sipah Sahaba Pakistan and to co-operate with the US in the arrest and deportation of bin Laden. On coming to know of this, Gen. Musharraf sent Lt.Gen.Aziz to Kandahar to tell the Amir that he should not carry out the instructions of Lt.Gen.Ziauddin and that he should follow only his (Lt.Gen.Aziz's) instructions.

These instances would show that whenever an elected leadership was in power, the COAS saw to it that the elected Prime Minister did not have effective control over the ISI and that the ISI was marginalised if its head showed any loyalty to the elected Prime Minister.

In their efforts to maintain law and order in Pakistan and weaken nationalist and religious elements and political parties disliked by the army, the ISI and the army followed a policy of divide and rule. After the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, to keep the Shias of Pakistan under control, the ISI encouraged the formation of ant-Shia Sunni extremist organisations such as the Sipah Sahaba . When the Shias of Gilgit rose in revolt in 1988, Musharraf used bin Laden and his tribal hordes from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to suppress them brutally.

When the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM---now called the Muttahida Qaumi Movement) of Altaf Hussain rose in revolt in the late 1980s in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur in Sindh, the ISI armed sections of the Sindhi nationalist elements to kill the Mohajirs. It then created a split between Mohajirs of Uttar Pradesh origin (in Altaf Hussain's MQM) and those of Bihar origin in the splinter anti-Altaf Hussain group called MQM (Haquiqi--meaning real). In Altaf Hussain's MQM itself, the ISI unsuccessfully tried to create a wedge between the Sunni and Shia migrants from Uttar Pradesh.

Having failed in his efforts to weaken the PPP by taking advantage of the exile of Mrs.Benazir and faced with growing unity of action between Altaf Hussain's MQM and sections of Sindhi nationalist elements, Musharraf has constituted a secret task force in the ISI headed by Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, the DG, and consisting of Lt.Gen.(retd) Moinuddin Haider, Interior Minister, and Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, Deputy Chief of the Army Staff, to break the PPP, the MQM and the Sindhi nationalists.
This task force has encouraged not only religious political organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rahman etc, but also sectarian organisations such as the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi of Riaz Basra, living under the protection of the Taliban and bin Laden in Kandahar in Afghanistan, to extend their activities to Sindh.

These organisations have now practically got out of the control of the ISI. Instead of attacking the PPP, the MQM and the Sindhi nationalists and bringing them to heel as Musharraf had hoped they would, they have taken their anti-Shia jehad to Sindh and have been recruiting a large number of unemployed Sindhi rural youth for service with the Taliban.
Sindh, which was known for its Sufi traditions of religious tolerance, has seen under Musharraf a resurgence of the street power of the JEI and the JUI, which had been practically driven out of the province in the 1980s, by the PPP, the MQM and the Sindhi nationalists, and has seen in recent months anti-Shia massacres of the kind used by Musharraf in Gilgit in 1988. Over 200 Shias have been gunned down, including 30 doctors of Karachi, and the latest victims of the sectarian Frankenstein let loose by Musharraf in Sindh have been Shaukat Mirza, the Managing Director of Pakistan State Oil, and Syed Zafar Hussain Zaidi, a Director in the Research Laboratories of the Ministry of Defence, located in Karachi, who were gunned down on July 28 and 30,2001, respectively. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for both these assassinations.

As a result of the policy of divide and rule followed in Sindh by the ISI under Musharraf, one is seeing in Pakistan for the first time sectarian violence inside the Sunni community between the Sunnis of the Deobandi faith belonging to the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Sunnis of the more tolerant Barelvi faith belonging to the Sunni Tehrik formed in the early 1990s to counter the growing Wahabi influence on Islam in Pakistan and the Almi Tanzeem Ahle Sunnat formed in 1998 by Pir Afzal Qadri of Mararian Sharif in Gujrat, Punjab, to counter the activities of the Deobandi Army of Islam headed by Lt.Gen.Mohammed Aziz, Corps Commander, Lahore.

The Tanzeem has been criticising not only the Army of Islam for injecting what it considers the Wahabi poison into the Pakistan society, but also the army of the State headed by Musharraf for misleading the Sunni youth into joining the jehad against the Indian army in J & K and getting killed there in order to avoid the Pakistani army officers getting killed in the jehad for achieving its strategic objective. The ISI, which is afraid of a direct confrontation with the Barelvi organisations, has been inciting the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to counter their activities .

This has led to frequent armed clashes between rival Sunni groups in Sindh, the most sensational of the incidents being the gunning down of Maulana Salim Qadri of the Sunni Tehrik and five of his followers in Karachi on May, 18,2001, by the Sipah Sahaba, which led to a major break-down of law and order in certain areas of Karachi for some days.
Musharraf, the commando, believes in achieving his objective by hook or by crook without worrying about the means used. In his anxiety to bring Sindh under control and to weaken the PPP, the MQM and the Sindhi nationalists, he has, through the ISI, created new Frankensteins which might one day lead to the Talibanisation of Sindh, a province always known for its sufi traditions of religious tolerance and for its empathy with India.

Musharraf is under pressure from sections of senior army officers concerned over these developments to suppress the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. He and Lt.Gen.Haider have been making the pretence of planning to do so. It is to be seen whether they really would and, even if they did, whether they would or could effectively enforce the ban on them.

In India, there is a point of view in some circles that the only way of effectively countering the ISI activities against India is to have an Indian version of the ISI, with extensive powers for clandestine intelligence collection, technology procurement and covert actions and that the proposed Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) should be patterned after Pakistan's ISI rather than after the DIA of the US and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) of the UK, which are essentially agencies for the analysis and assessment of military intelligence in a holistic manner, with powers for clandestine collection only during times of war or when deployed in areas of conflict and with no powers for covert action.

The principle of civilian primacy in the intelligence community is widely accepted in all successful democracies and the discarding of this principle in Pakistan sowed the seeds for the present state of affairs there. In our anxiety for quick results against the ISI, we should not sacrifice time-tested principles as to how intelligence agencies should function in a democratic society.

In the 1970s,Indian policy-makers wisely decided that the Indian intelligence should not get involved in clandestine procurement of denied technologies since the exposure of any such procurement could damage the credibility and trustworthiness of the Indian scientific and technological community in the eyes of other countries.

This is what has happened to Pakistan. Its intelligence community did some spectacular work in clandestine procurement and theft of technologies abroad. But, once the details of this network were exposed, post-graduate students of Pakistan in scientific subjects, its academics, research scholars and scientists are looked upon with suspicion in Western countries and find it difficult to enter universities and research laboratories for higher studies and research and get jobs in establishments dealing in sensitive technologies and are less frequently invited to seminars etc than in the past. In its anxiety to catch up with India in the short term, Pakistan has damaged its long-term potential in science and technology.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com ) .