PUNISHMENT
TERRORISM:
Questions
& Answers
This
important article by India's most respected security-expert is
your single source to learn A to Z on punishment terrorism !!! |
What is retributive punishment
terrorism?
Punishment terrorism is an act
of terrorism consciously committed to punish a wrong-doer, who may
be a State, a society, a community, a religious group, an economic
organization, an individual etc. It is retributive in nature and
does not have any other objective or demand to be achieved beyond
the act of retribution. It is the use of terrorism as a weapon to
give vent to anger and not to achieve any strategic objective or
tactical demand. Whereas objective or demand terrorists generally
identify themselves (example: Hamas, the various terrorist groups in
Jammu & Kashmir) and claim responsibility or credit for their
acts of terrorism, punishment terrorists don't. Objective or demand
terrorists want that their followers, their community and the
international public opinion should know that they were behind the
act of terrorism. For them, terrorism is one way of creating an
awareness of their objective and demand. Objective terrorists too
undertake punishment terrorism, but they look upon it as retaliatory
in nature and not retributive.
What kind of terrorist groups
resort to punishment terrorism?
Generally, religious terrorist
groups, but examples are not wanting of ideological, ethnic and
other non-religious groups and even individuals resorting to
punishment terrorism.
What are the major examples of
punishment terrorism by religious groups?
The blowing up of the Kanishka
aircraft of the Air India off the Irish coast, the explosion at the
Narita airport in Tokyo and the synchronised transistor radio
explosions in New Delhi, all in 1985 by Sikh terrorists as acts of
retribution for the alleged sacrilege of the Golden Temple in
Amritsar by the Indian Army in June,1984; the World Trade Centre
explosion in New York in February, 1993, by some Muslim extremist
elements who felt aggrieved over what they perceived as the
betrayal by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after having
used them to achieve US objectives against the Soviet troops in
Afghanistan; the synchronised explosions in Mumbai (Bombay) in
March, 1993, by Muslims associated with Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia
leader, as retribution for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in
December, 1992, and for the alleged massacre of Muslims that
followed in Mumbai without the Police protecting them; the explosion
in the RSS office in Chennai in August,1993, allegedly by elements
close to the Al Ummah again because of anger over the demolition of
the Babri Masjid;the explosions on many railway trains in North
India in December,1993, allegedly by elements belonging to the
Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) to mark the first
anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid;the explosions
outside the US barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 by unidentified
elements; the synchronised explosions in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu in
February, 1998, allegedly by the Al Ummah as a retribution for
police excesses against the Muslims the previous year; the
explosions outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in
August, 1998, allegedly by the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden; the
attack on the US naval ship "USS Cole" in Aden in October,
2000, possibly by the Al Qaeda; the terrorist strikes against the
World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC on
September 11, 2001; the kidnapping and the beheading of Daniel
Pearl, the American journalist of the "Wall Street
Journal", by terrorists associated with bin Laden in
January-February, 2002; and the grenade attack on a church
congregation in Islamabad on March 17,2002, suspected to be by
fundamentalist elements in the Pakistan Army to punish the National
Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA of the USA. It is alleged that
Milton Green, who was injured in the grenade attack, was the head of
an NSA team attached to the US Embassy in Islamabad for intercepting
the communications of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and that his wife Barbara, who was
killed along with their daughter, was an officer of the CIA attached
to the Personnel Department of the US Embassy.
What are the examples of
punishment terrorism carried out by non-religious groups and
individuals?
The assassination of Rajiv
Gandhi, former Indian Prime Minister, by the LTTE in May,1991;
the assassination of two CIA officers in Langley, Washington DC, by
Mir Aimal Kansi of Pakistan in January,1993, who felt angry over the
CIA's failure to keep up its promise to get him the US citizenship
and a lucrative job in return for the services rendered by him
against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan; and the explosion at
the federal office building in Oklahoma in 1995 by Timothy McVeigh,
who felt angry against the Federal Government for various reasons.
The blowing-up of a Pan Am aircraft off Lockerbie in 1989 is viewed
as an act carried out by the Libyan State as a retribution for the
US bombing of Libya in 1986.
Is there really an organisation
called Al Qaeda and why are the Al Qaeda and the other organisations
associated with it in the International Islamic Front For Jihad
Against the US and Israel considered the most dreaded of the
punishment terrorism organisations?
It is doubtful whether bin
Laden calls his organisation Al Qaeda, as alleged by the USA. The
name Al Qaeda, which means "The Base", does not figure in
any of the fatwas, documents or statements known to have emanated
from bin Laden. In their telephone and Internet communications, the
followers of bin Laden use the domestic codes "al Qaeda",
the "company", the "corporate house", the
"CEO" etc while referring to him without mentioning him by
name in order to conceal his identity. From this, the CIA seems to
have come to the incorrect conclusion that bin Laden's organisation
is called "Al Qaeda", that it has a cor[orate-like
structure, that he runs it like a CEO etc. It is believed that bin
Laden has not given any name to his Saudi-centric organisation just
as Carlos had not given any to his. He only uses the title
International Islamic Front which he has given to his United Front
of like-minded Islamic groups again just as Carlos called his United
Front the International Front of Revolutionaries. During its war
against International Communism, the CIA disseminated a large number
of fabricated documents purporting to come from Moscow. Similarly,
it has been disseminating a large number of fabricated documents
purporting to be from the Al Qaeda. A typical example is the
so-called training manual of the Al Qaeda.It has been fabricating
documents, planting them in different places in Afghanistan and
letting them be discovered by journalists in order to give them an
air of seeming credibility. The Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)
has similarly been using ostensibly independent think tanks
allegedly funded by it and the "academics" working for
them for carrying on a disinformation campaign about the Al Qaeda
and other organisations associated with it.
Does it mean that the Al Qaeda
and the International Islamic Front are not as dangerous as they are
projected by the US to be?
No. It would not be correct to
say so. The Al Qaeda or by whatever name bin Laden calls his
organisation and his associates in the International Islamic Front
are the most ruthless terrorist organisations in the world today,
which practise retributive punishment terrorism. But, reports about
the extent of their penetration in various countries, particularly
in South-East Asia, their organisational set-up, training methods
etc being spread by the CIA and the DIA with the help of compliant
US journalists and academics need to be carefully verified
before acceptance. The USA seems to be using such stories spread by
it as a means for the return of the US troops to the South-East
Asian region on a permanent basis.
What is catastrophic or new
terrorism?
There is no commonly accepted
definition of catastrophic or new terrorism. However, there is
growing convergence amongst professional counter-terrorism experts
that catastrophic or new terrorism has one or more of the following
components: Use of or threat to use a weapon of mass destruction (WMD);
use of or threat to use a weapon of mass disruption such as a
computer virus or hacking (WMDIS); capture of or threat to
capture an installation dealing with WMD such as a nuclear power
station in order to cause mass panic; and use of or threat to
use conventional weapons or instruments in an unconventional manner
to cause fatal human casualties of 1,000 or more.
What is the significance of the
terrorist strikes of September 11,2001, in New York and Washington
DC?
Firstly, it was the first act
of catastrophic punishment terrorism in recent history;
secondly, it was the first use of a conventional instrument ( a
commercial airliner) in a hitherto unthought of unconventional
manner to cause human casualties of catastrophic proportions;
thirdly, it was successfully carried out in US territory despite the
commonly-assumed competence of the US intelligence and security
apparatus; fourthly, it demonstrated the ease with which determined
punishment terrorists have managed to penetrate the State despite
its powerful security apparatus as compared to the difficulty which
the State faces in penetrating the terrorist apparatus; fifthly, it
demonstrated dramatically to the public the frightening mix of
irrationality and rationality (mental lucidity) which is the
defining characteristic of all terrorism and particularly punishment
terrorism; sixthly, it was a catastrophic act of terrorism watched
live by millions of TV viewers all over the world, which posed a
visible challenge to the credibility of the State, whether the State
be in the US, Russia, China, India, Singapore, Australia or
elsewhere and called for an equally visible and ruthless State
response with all the might that the State is capable of in order to
restore its credibility in the eyes of the people. The
irrationality of the punishment terrorists was seen in their
willingness to kill thousands of innocent people to give vent to
their anger without worrying about the revulsion which it
might cause in the minds of the public or without asking themselves
whether their act of retribution was in proportion to their anger
over the perceived wrong-doing against them. Their rationality
or mental lucidity was frighteningly seen in the manner in which
they planned and carried out their act of terrorism in a
precision-like manner. It showed a mass destruction mindset,
which was able to think of new ways of mass destruction or mass
disruption that do not occur to a normal mindset and is prepared to
carry them out whatever be the costs involved. It made the
world realise that what it is confronted with is not a new or
catastrophic terrorism, but a new breed of terrorists for whom
terrorism is their viagra, which gives them a feeling of potence, of
power, of invincibility. The normal counter-terrorism methodology
which involves equal attention to the political, economic, social,
religious and security aspects of terrorism would not work against
them. Even if all the political and other non-security aspects
are dealt with, the new breed of terrorists would still indulge in
their punishment terrorism, if they had the opportunity and the
motivation, using some pretext or the other.
Was the international coalition
led by the US right in the manner in which it hit back at the new
breed of punishment terrorists with overwhelming use of military
force?
Initially, in a
series of articles, this writer had been critical of this
overwhelming military response. Now, in retrospect, he has
concluded that there was no other option available to the
civilised world if the credibility of the State was to be restored
and preserved in the eyes of the law-abiding people. But after
six months of this war against terrorism, the time has come for the
coalition to examine the methodology followed so far since October
7, 2001, to see what mid-course corrections are called for and to
implement them. The most positive outcome of September 11 was
the realisation by the international community that terrorism is an
absolute evil and has to be combated as such, whatever be the
objective of the terrorists and whether they were domestic or
international terrorists. Another positive outcome was the
realisation that the world cannot effectively deal with this new
breed of terrorists without effective international co-operation.
The networking of the terrorists has to be confronted by an equally
determined networking of the political leaderships and professional
experts of the civilised world. One has seen the emergence of
such networking, but one is yet to see this axis of the civilised
world being given an appropriate shape and structure so that it is
able to deter effectively future acts of punishment terrorism.
(For the sake of
convenience, the writer will continue to call Osama bin Laden's
organisation "Al Qaeda" as he had been doing in the past,
even though bin Laden himself does not use this name for his
organisation and has been using "Al Qaeda" purely as a
domestic code)
What is the set-up of bin Laden
like?
Before answering this question,
one has to go back to the Afghan war of the 1980s to understand what
is happening since 1998. The success of the Islamic Revolution in
Iran in 1979 and the international jihad against the Soviet troops
in Afghanistan promoted by the covert action division of the USA's
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with the help of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, then ruled by
Gen.Zia-ul-Haq, led to many negative consequences, which
ultimately contributed to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region emerging
as the epicentre of punishment terrorism of the most ruthless kind
motivated by pan-Islamic ideas. Firstly, the emergence of the Sunni
extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), which was funded by
the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,Iraq and the
USA--each for its own reason.Pakistan and Saudi Arabia backed it to
counter the increasingly assertive Shias.Iraq assisted it to create
disaffection amongst the Sunni Balochis of Iran. The CIA backed it
to use it against Iran as well as the then USSR. Secondly, the large
flow of Saudi money into Pakistan and the encouragement of the
pan-Islamic Deobandi groups by Zia as well as the CIA led to the
mushrooming of Wahabi-Deobandi madrasas all over Pakistan and the
marginalisation of the more tolerant and soft Barelvis who, despite
being in a numerical majority in Pakistan, found themselves without
political and financial influence. Thirdly, to rally round the
Muslims of the world against the USSR, the CIA consciously
encouraged religious fanaticism and pan-Islamism. The intelligence
agencies of the US and the West European countries encouraged
jobless Muslims in many countries to go to Pakistan, undergo
military training in the newly sprung-up Wahabi-Deobandi madrasas
and join the Afghan Mujahideen. Between 6,000 and 10,000 Muslims,
the majority of them Arabs, went and fought against the Soviet
troops in Afghanistan, with Saudi Arabia funding them, the ISI
training and motivating them and the CIA and other Western
intelligence agencies equipping them. Osama bin Laden, then a
blue-eyed boy of the CIA, played an active role in the training and
motivation of these mercenaries and led them to battle against the
Soviet troops.In addition to the Arabs, jobless Muslims from the
Jammu & Kashmir State of India, Bangla Desh, the Arakan area of
Myanmar, Southern Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia were also
encouraged by the CIA to join this mercenary brigade. Fourthly,
faced with the increasing difficulties encountered by its Slav
troops in countering the CIA-instigated pan-Islamic mercenaries,
Moscow started sending to Afghanistan the Muslim members of its
Armed Forces recruited from the Central Asian Republics (CARs),
Chechnya and Dagestan. These troops got infected by the pan-Islamism
of the CIA's mercenaries. Fifthly, a number of new pan-Islamic
organisations of Wahabi-Deobandi-Ahle Hadith orientation sprang up
in Pakistani soil and these were given the leadership role by the US
for leading the mercenary brigade to battle. The most important
amongst them were the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). The
HUM and the HUJI were born out of the SSP and shared its anti-Shia
orientation. All these organisations were favoured by Zia and
his ISI. The HUM, which produced some of the best fighters of the
Afghan war, was favoured by the CIA and got the lion's share of the
Stinger missiles, explosives and other equipment. Towards the end of
the 1980s, the HUM and the HUJI merged to form the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA)
and separated again in 1998 after the USA designated the HUA as a
foreign terrorist organisation under a 1996 law in October,1997. The
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) was formed in the beginning of 2000 by a
split in the HUM. Sixthly, after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops
in 1988, the USA lost interest in Afghanistan and left the mercenary
brigade in the lurch. Promises made to these jobless Muslims at the
time of their recruitment that after the war in Afghanistan was
over, they would be helped to re-settle in the USA with lucrative
jobs were not kept up. Some of these mercenaries went back to their
country of origin and joined the fundamentalist groups in fighting
against their Governments (examples: Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt).
Others stayed behind and were diverted to J&K by the ISI. The
HUM and the HUJI were used by the ISI to rally round the dregs of
the war of the 1980s and divert them to India. They did so very
successfully. But, at the same time, they promoted jihad in Chechnya
and Dagestan in Russia, Xinjiang in China, in the newly-independent
CARs, in Bangladesh, in the Arakan area of Myanmar and in the
Southern Philippines. The HUJI took over the leadership of the
jihadi elements in Bangladesh and the HUM in the rest of the world,
including the USA.HUM cadres fought actively against the US Marines
in Somalia. Not having learnt any lessons from the sequel to its
policy of encouraging fanaticism and pan-Islamism in Afghanistan and
despite the humiliation inflicted on the US troops in Somalia by the
HUM in 1993, the CIA asked the ISI to divert part of the dregs of
the HUM and the HUJI to Bosnia to assist the Muslims there in their
fight against the Serbs. The transfer to Bosnia was funded by the
Saudi Intelligence, the arms and ammunition were given by the
Iranian Intelligence and the leadership and motivation were provided
by serving and retired officers of the ISI and the Turkish
intelligence. Omar Sheikh, who masterminded the kidnapping of Daniel
Pearl of the "Wall Street Journal", had his jihadi
inoculation in Bosnia just as bin Laden had his in
Afghanistan.From Bosnia, they were diverted to Kosovo by the CIA and
thereafter again left in the lurch after they had done the USA's
hatchet job in the Balkans. After the withdrawal of the Soviet
troops from Afghanistan, bin Laden had spent some time in Saudi
Arabia and then took up residence in Khartoum in the Sudan from
where he was asked to leave in the beginning of 1996 by the
Sudanese Government under US pressure. He approached Burhanuddin
Rabbani, the then President of Afghanistan, to permit him to move
over to Afghanistan. Rabbani persuaded Benazir Bhutto, the then
Prime Minister of Pakistan, to let bin Laden shift to Afghanistan.
She agreed to this after consulting Washington DC and bin Laden flew
to Peshawar and took up residence in Jalalabad. Gen.Pervez Musharraf,
her Director-General of Military Operations, supervised the
transfer.After the Taliban captured Jalalabad and Kabul in
September, 1996, it shifted him to Kandahar. He gathered around him
all the dregs of the Afghan war of the 1980s as well as the new
jihadis from Chechnya, Dagestan, the CARs, Xinjiang and the southern
Philippines and formed in 1998 his International Islamic Front For
Jihad Against the US and Israel. The USA was aware of the presence
and activities of bin Laden in Afghan territory since July 1996, but
did not move vigorously against him as long as it was hopeful of
getting the assistance of the Taliban for the construction of the
oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through the Herat
area of Afghanistan by UNOCAL, the powerful American company. It
moved seriously against bin Laden only after UNOCAL withdrew from
the project and after he had formed the International Islamic Front
and issued in 1998 his first fatwa against the US, which was signed,
amongst others, by Fazlur Rahman Khalil of the HUM.
bin Laden wears two hats. He is
the head of the Al Qaeda,which is an exlusively Arab and
Saudi-centric organisation, with a strength of not more than 500 to
600 hard-core members, as well as of the International Islamic
Front, which is a united front of five pan-Islamic organisations
from Pakistan (the HUM, the HUJI, the LET, the JEM and the SSP),
three from Egypt, two from Uzbekistan, one from Xinjiang, the Abu
Sayyaf of the Southern Philippines and the Taliban. Other
nationalities, which have been fighting in Afghanistan such as the
Chechens, the Rohinga Muslims of Myanmar, the Bangladeshis, the
Malaysians and the Indonesians fight as members of the HUM or the
HUJI and not as separate components of the International Islamic
Front. The Front has a total of about 20,000 plus trained cadres at
its disposal in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as well as
outside.Of all the pan-Islamic organisations of Pakistan, the HUM
has had a very active networking relationship with the jihadi
elements in South-East Asia through the Abu Sayyaf as well as the
Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan, which has been periodically
sending Tablighis to South-East Asia, ostensibly to teach the Holy
Koran and to train the Ulema.
To maintain effective internal
security in the Al Qaeda and its 055 Brigade, bin Laden does not
allow non-Arabs into it. It performs the following tasks: it ensures
the personal security of bin Laden; it prevents the penetration of
bin Laden's set-up by foreign intelligence agencies; deputes Arab
instructors to the training camps of the HUM, the HUJI, the LET, the
JEM and the SSP as well as to those of other components of the
International Islamic Front; plans and carries out all the anti-US
operations of bin Laden, taking local help from the other components
of the Front where necessary. However, the other components are not
taken into confidence regarding the details of the Al Qaeda
operations.
The organisations associated
with bin Laden share the following characteristics:
extra-territorial loyalty; recognition of only the borders of the
Ummah and not of national borders; and willingness to acquire and
use weapons of mass destruction (WMD), if considered necessary to
protect Islam.
How come bin Laden's Al Qaeda
has not so far mounted any major act of punishment terrorism against
Israel?
The Palestine Liberation
Organisation of Yasser Arafat and its allied groups realise
that the PLO would not be able to ultimately achieve its objective
without the backing of the US. They, therefore, feel that any
impression that they have been taking the help of the Al Qaeda might
prove counter-productive and harm their cause. At the same
time, it needs to be underlined that the Israeli factor had
influenced his selection of some of the targets. He chose
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam for his terrorist strikes of August,1998,
partly because of his assessment that the intelligence and security
apparatus there was weak and partly because of the long years of
co-operation of the local intelligence and security agencies with
their counterparts in Israel. He has not forgotten the role
allegedly played by Kenya in facilitating the Entebbe raid of the
Israeli security agencies in the 1970s to release the Israeli
passengers of a hijacked Air France aircraft. Similarly, his
interest in organising a terrorist strike in Singapore is not merely
due to the visible US corporate and naval presence there and
the frequent visits of US naval ships to Singapore, but also because
of the reports of the close co-operation of the local intelligence
and security agencies with those of Israel.
How come Al Qaeda has similarly
not mounted any major act of retributive punishment terrorism in
Jammu& Kashmir and in other parts of India, either against India
or against Israel or against the USA? What explains its concentrated
anger against the US, apart from the Palestine issue?
Four of the components of bin
Laden's International Islamic Front are active in J & K and
other parts of India--the HUM, the HUJI, the JEM and the LET.
They are essentially Pakistani organisations and are responsible for
most of the cross-border terrorism in India. Even they have
not so far mounted any major act of punishment terrorism due to the
following reasons: Firstly, like the Palestinians,the indigenous
Kashmiri groups, whose local support is necessary for a major
terrorist strike, feel that they cannot achieve their objective
without US support and , therefore, do not want any Al Qaeda
operation against the US or Israel in Indian territory. The
Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), presently the most active indigenous
Kashmiri group, has scrupulously kept away from the Al Qaeda and the
Taliban. The latter too do not like the HM because of its past
association with Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami.
Secondly, to be able to mount a successful terrorist strike against
the USA or Israel in other parts of India, Al Qaeda would need local
support. In Pakistan and other Islamic countries, particularly
of West Asia, the political, military and intelligence
establishments had generally been pro-USA, but large sections of the
population have been anti-American. The reverse is the case in
India. Thirdly, the non-Pakistani components of the
International Islamic Front from Egypt, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang and the
Philippines do not look upon India as anti-Islam despite the anger
of the Indian Muslim community over the demolition of the Babri
Masjid and the alleged massacre of Muslims in Mumbai in
December,1992, and in Ahmedabad in February-March,2002.
Because of this, past attempts of the Pakistani components to have
the Front re-named as the International Islamic Front For Jihad
Against the US, Israel and India did not succeed despite the support
of bin Laden for such a move. Foreign Muslims note that
despite the large casualties suffered by India in J&K since 1989
(nearly 14,000 innocent civilians and 3,500 security forces
personnel killed), India had not resorted to air strikes, destroyed
or damaged mosques, madrasas and the Holy Koran, forcibly shaved off
the beards of arrested terrorists, seized their copies of the Holy
Koran due to fears that they might be using them as secret code
books and substituted them with Holy Koran printed by the Army,
prevented the Muslim detenus from praying in a group, or tried them
in camera before military tribunals as, according to them, the
USA has been doing in Afghanistan. They also note that during
the recent massacre of Muslims in Ahmedabad, it is the Indian print
and electronic media and large sections of the Indian elite,
including Hindu leaders, who highlighted the massacre and went to
the help of the Muslims. In contrast, since October 7,2001,
practically the entire US elite, including its academics, have been
observing a strange silence over what the Muslims regard as the
atrocities committed by the US towards those arrested in
Afghanistan. They compare the active role played by the US
media and academic elite in bringing to light the atrocities
committed by the US troops against the Vietnamese in the 1960s and
1970s with its conscious inactivism since October 7,2001, and allege
that this inactivism is because the victims now are Muslims for whom
the US society as a whole feels no sympathy.
Does it mean that India does
not have to fear any major act of retributive punishment terrorism?
No. It would be incorrect to
come to such conclusion. There is considerable anger against
the Government of India amongst the dregs of the second Afghan
war over its alleged support to the Northern Alliance. Past
anger amongst Indian Muslims over the demolition of the Babri Musjid
has been aggravated by the recent massacres in Ahmedabad.
There had been massacres of the members of the minority communities
(Sikhs and Muslims) during communal riots in the past too, but what,
in the perception of the Muslims, distinguishes the recent
happenings in Ahmedabad from those of the past is the total
insensitivity of the local administration to the feelings of the
Muslims and what they regard as its conscious inactivism and the
absence of even a modicum of effort by the Government towards a
healing touch. There is, therefore, a strong possibility of a
major act of retributive punishment terrorism in Gujarat in the
coming months. It need not necessarily come from bin Laden's
outfit. There is a greater possibility that it would come from
enraged sections of the local Muslims. An encore of Mumbai--March
1993 is on the cards.
What provoked Osama bin Laden's
terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001?
The September 11 terrorist
strikes as well as the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole in
October, 2000, were viewed by bin Laden's set-up as direct
retribution for the US Cruise missile strikes of August, 1998, on a
factory allegedly owned by bin Laden in the Sudan which was
described by the US as a chemicals factory and on the training camps
of the Al Qaeda in Taliban-controlled territory in Eastern
Afghanistan. Bin Laden's set-up strongly denied that the
bombed factory in the Sudan was producing chemical weapons and
claimed that it was actually manufacturing anti-malaria tablets for
the Sudanese people. The Pakistani media reported that
terrorist training camps belonging to Pakistani organisations such
as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI)
etc were destroyed by the Cruise missile strikes, but there was no
serious damage to the Al Qaeda's infrastructure. The HUM and
other components of bin Laden's International Islamic Front For
Jihad Against the US and Israel, however, claimed that what was
destroyed were madrasas being run by these organisations for
teaching the Holy Koran to Afghan and Pakistani children. They
alleged that the US strikes destroyed four mosques, severely damaged
another and destroyed 200 copies of the Holy Koran kept in the
madrasas. They described this as an act of sacrilege by the US
against Islam and as marking the beginning of a new Crusade.
During sermons in mosques and madrasas in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, they warned that this act of sacrilege would not go
unpunished, that they would pay the US back in the same coin and
attack the US wherever they could, including in the US itself. In
the forefront of the orchestrated demand for an act of retributive
terrorism against the US to punish it for the August,1998, missile
strikes was the HUM, which has a presence in the US and had trained
at least 16 Afro-American Muslims in the past in order to carry the
jihad to US territory.
Was bin Laden directly involved
in the planning and execution of the attack on USS Cole and of the
September 11 strikes in the US?
No definitive evidence is
available with regard to the attack on Cole, but with regard to the
September 11 strikes, it is clear from the vidio recording of a
conversation of bin Laden with his lieutenants after September 11,
which was given to the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and which was
subsequently released by the US to the media, that bin Laden had an
active role to play in the conceptualisation and planning of the
strikes in the US. For security reasons, bin Laden does not
generally come into direct contact with those trained in his camps.
He used to leave the training, motivation, tasking, briefing and
debriefing to Mohammed Atef (since dead in November, 2001) and Ayman-al-
Zawahiri. It was also his style to avoid too much of
centralised guiding, planning and execution. Those chosen for
suicide missions used to be told the adversary to be attacked, where
and the type of targets to be attacked, but the actual selection of
the target and the manner of execution of the plan used to be left
to the discretion and judgement of a ground co-ordinator, assisted
by one or more persons. The ground co-ordinator and his staff,
as in the case of the LTTE, used to be different from those who
actually carried out the suicide mission. The LTTE employs two
teams for each operation. The first team selects the target,
recees it, studies the security measures in and around the target,
draws up the plan of operation, carries out sand model exercises and
discussions to satisfy itself that the plan would work and then
trains the second team of suicide volunteers, briefs it and sends it
on the mission. On the other hand, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET)
and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), both members of bin Laden's
International Islamic Front, which have carried out 43 suicide
missions in Jammu & Kashmir and New Delhi, use only one team. It
is the suicide squad which does all the work from the initial
selection of the target, receeing to final execution of the plan.
This should explain the less spectacular successes of the JEM and
the LET, as compared to those of the LTTE and the Al Qaeda.
From the video recording mentioned above, it was apparent that bin
Laden was involved in the details of the September 11 strikes, but
it is not clear whether he employed a two-team or one-team modus
operandi (MO). But from the precision planning and execution
of four synchronised hijackings and strikes, of which three were
successful and the fourth failed due to unexpected reasons of
resistance from some of the passengers, one could infer with
reasonable accuracy that the two-team modus operandi (MO) must have
been followed. There must have been another team of ground
controllers and co-ordinators, who knew all the 19 persons involved
in the air strikes and co-ordinated their planning and execution.
This team must have consisted only of Arabs since bin Laden did not
depend upon non-Arabs for such operations designed to have
spectacular surprise and impact and any assistance taken from the
non-Arab components such as the HUM sleepers in the US must have
been of a logistics nature without the non-Arabs knowing any details
of the operation. This team of ground controllers and co-ordinators
is still at large and has managed to evade arrest. It is
unlikely that it is still in the US. It must have dispersed to
other countries, most probably to Pakistan.
What provoked the punishment
terrorism against Daniel Pearl, the journalist of the "Wall
Street Journal" of the US, who was kidnapped on January 23,
2002, and killed subsequently?
Firstly, the perception (right
or wrong, one does not know) in the jihadi circles in Pakistan and
in Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment that the WSJ was
pro-India and anti-Pakistan. Secondly, the fact that he was
operating from Mumbai (Bombay) in India, where he was based as the
head of the South Asian Bureau of the WSJ. Pakistani jihadis
and military-intelligence circles look with suspicion on India-based
foreign journalists visiting Pakistan as probably having contacts
with the Indian intelligence. Thirdly, the fact that he was
Jewish and that his parents were Israeli citizens based in the US.
This made the jihadis and military-intelligence circles suspect that
he was also working for the Mossad, the Israeli external
intelligence agency. It is alleged that while the US media did
not reveal his Jewish background till after the confirmation of his
death and the departure of his wife from Pakistan, some Israeli
newspapers were indiscreet and irresponsible and revealed his Jewish
background and the Israeli citizenship of his parents immediately
after his kidnapping and before his death. Fourthly, he was
investigating not only the suspected contacts of Richard Reid, the
so-called shoe bomber, with organisations in Pakistan, but also the
contacts of Gen.Pervez Musharraf and Gen.Mohammed Aziz Khan, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, with Osama bin
Laden and making enquiries regarding the whereabouts of bin Laden
and Mulla Mohammed Omer, the Amir of the Taliban. This set off
alarm bells in the jihadi circles and the military-intelligence
establishment, who suspected that he was being used by the CIA to
smoke out bin Laden and Mulla Omer. After his excution, while
talking to the media during the SAARC Information Ministers'
conference at Islamabad in March, 2002, Musharraf accused Pearl of
being over-intrusive in his investigation methods and insinuated
that this invited the terrorists' wrath on him. Jihadi and
military-intelligence circles have been alleging that a New
Delhi-based correspondent of the "USA Today" has been
similarly over-intrusive in his investigation methods. There
is anger over his reported attempts to investigate the links between
bin Laden's set-up and Gen.Mohammed Aziz Khan, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Committee.
Was it the Al Qaeda itself
which carried out his kidnapping and beheading?
There is so far no evidence to
show any direct involvement of the Al Qaeda. The Musharraf
Government had from the beginning been claiming that this was an
operation by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which was designated by
President Bush as a foreign terrorist organisation in December,
2001, and which was banned by Musharraf on January 15, 2002, but the
kidnapping and murder bore the signature of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
(HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), both members of bin
Laden's International Islamic Front since its inception in
February,1998. The HUM, in particular, specialises in
kidnapping and in the brutal treatment of its victims. It cuts
their throat, lets them bleed to death and then beheads them.
That is what it did to the Norwegian tourist kidnapped by it under
the name Al Faran in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in 1995.
When it hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December,
1999, it slit the throat of Rupen Katyal, a newly-married Indian who
was returning from a honeymoon in Kathmandu with his young wife, and
let him slowly bleed to death in the business class of the aircraft
while the HUM hijackers sat around him and read from the Holy Koran.
That is what it did to Pearl. All foreign terrorist
organisations trained by the HUM or HUJI such as the Abu Sayyaf of
the Philippines and those of Chechnya similarly specialise in
kidnapping and treat their victims brutally. All available
evidence shows that Pearl was kidnapped, his throat slit and he was
beheaded by a HUM group led by Sheikh Omar, presently under trial in
Karachi and whom the military regime has refused to extradite to the
US lest he tell his US interrogators about his involvement, at the
instance of the ISI, in the terrorist strikes on the J&K
Legislative Assembly on October 1, 2001, on the Indian Parliament on
December 13, 2001, and on the security personnel outside the
American Centre in Kolkata (Calcutta) on January 22, 2002, and about
his links with bin Laden with the knowledge of the ISI, including
his prior knowledge of the plans for the September 11 terrorist
strikes which he had conveyed to the ISI.
The Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment has been desperately trying to
steer the investigation away from the HUM and the HUJI, both of
which and particularly the latter have many supporters in the Army.
The HUJI, which had plotted with its supporters in the Army led by
Maj. Gen. Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi to capture power in 1995 and
proclaim Pakistan as an Islamic Caliphate, had envisaged making
Musharraf the head of the new dispensation. The plot was
discovered in time by the Benazir Bhutto Government and crushed.
Amongst those with whom Pearl
was in contact before his kidnapping were Sheikh Omar, who
belonged to the HUM and not to the JEM, Arif alias Hashim, a member
of the HUM, and Khalid Khawaja, a retired Air Force officer who had
worked in the ISI and who is related to Sheikh Mubarak Ali
Shah Gilani, leader of the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), a terrorist
organisation with a wide presence in the USA and the Caribbean and
with a large following amongst Afro-American Muslims. It was
reportedly Pearl's desire for an interview with Gilani which landed
him in the trap laid down by the HUM.
In its issue for February,
2002, the "Newsline", the prestigious monthly of Pakistan,
reported as follows: " During his stay in Islamabad, Pearl also
contacted Khalid Khawaja, a retired Pakistani Air Force officer, who
had worked with the ISI in an effort to get an interview with Gilani.
Rabidly anti-American, Khawaja is related to Gilani through
marriage. He developed a close affinity with Islamic militants
during his intelligence work. Khawaja was detained a few days
after the kidnapping. A bearded man who lives in a sprawling
house in Rawalpindi, Khawaja fought as a mujahid besides Osama
against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. That
brought him in close contact with various Islamic militant groups in
volved in the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In an
interview with CBS News in July last year, Khawaja said:
"America is a very vulnerable country. The White House is
the most vulnerable target. It is very simple just to get
it." Khawaja is believed to have strong Islamic views as
many of his former colleagues in the ISI had. In an interview
in October, he told a journalist that the war in Afghanistan was
just the beginning of an international jihad. Pearl spoke on
the phone to Khawaja several times, but never met him in
person."
Well-informed Pakistani sources
say that Khawaja had kept Gen.Mohammad Aziz as well as
Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, the DG of the ISI, informed of his telephonic
discussions with Pearl and of the latter's plans to meet Gilani.
Has Musharraf told the USA the
complete truth about the Pearl case?
According to the Pakistani
authorities, Sheikh Omar was arrested at Lahore by the local
Police on February 12 after Musharraf had reached the US on his
bilateral visit, but Sheikh Omar reportedly told the Karachi court
that he had himself voluntarily surrendered to the Lahore military
authorities on February 5, three days before Musharraf left
Islamabad for the US, to prevent the harassment of his wife and baby
son by the Lahore Police. Independent reports indicated that
the Lahore Police had rounded up all his relatives except his
wife and child in order to force him to surrender. When he did not
do so, they issued a warning that they would detain his wife too,
thereby leaving the baby with nobody to look after it. He
thereupon surrendered himself to a retired Army officer living in
Lahore who had worked under Aziz in the ISI. He did not want
to surrender to the Lahore Police due to fears of torture.
This officer reportedly informed Aziz in Islamabad who had
intitially Sheikh Omar questioned by officers of the ISI before
handing him over to the Police on February 12. It is
speculated that Aziz wanted to make it certain that Sheikh Omar
would not tell the Karachi police during his interrogation about the
contacts of Musharraf and Aziz with bin Laden.
Did Aziz alert Musharraf and
Lt.Gen.(retd)Moinuddin Haider, the Interior Minister,
who was co-ordinating the investigation, about the surrender of Omar
Sheikh
immediately after it took place? If so, did Musharraf immediately
inform the US
authorities about it and associate them with the interrogation?
No definitive answers are
available. Either way, l'affaire Daniel Pearl and Sheikh Omar
tends to confirm India's perception of Musharraf as an untrustworthy
person. If Aziz had informed him on February 5 itself and
Musharraf had deliberately kept the US in the dark, it shows him as
perfidious. If Aziz had kept Musharraf in the dark, it shows
Musharraf as not in effective control of the
military-intelligence establishment in Pakistan.
Why Musharraf has resisted
US pressure to extradite Sheikh Omar?
The answer to this is found in
a report carried by the "News" of Islamabad on February
18, 2002, which said: "Claiming that his "brothers"
were making their presence felt and will continue to do so "on
every inch of Indian landscape", Omar has shocked his
investigators by narrating his role and that of his "Jihadi
colleagues", in the bomb explosion outside state parliament
building in Srinagar in October last and shooting incidents in the
compound of Indian parliament in New Delhi and outside the American
Centre building in Kolkata in December and January last.
"While speaking to various
police officials here (Karachi) and in Lahore over the past one
week, Sheikh Omar not only briefed his police interrogators on his
role in the Pearl Kidnapping case and on the terrorist strikes in
India, but also provided police officials specific details of his
travel to Afghanistan "a few days after September 11" to
have a personal meeting with Osama bin Laden near Jalalabad.
"Omar doesn't hide, police
officials said, his ties with several other Arab associates of Osama.
Several independent reports and interrogation of two other suspects
in Daniel Pearl Kidnapping case have independently confirmed Omar's
deep connections in Taliban leadership and his status as a guerrilla
warfare instructor in one of the key training facilities in
Afghanistan.
"Salam Saqib and Sheikh
Adil, two key suspects who had played the central role in sending
two e-mails attached with the photographs of the kidnapped Wall
Street Journal reporter, have told the police that Sheikh Omar was
widely respected in Afghanistan and was considered a role model even
for the most famous warriors in the Pakistani Jihadi community.
"Sheikh Omar provided
police with unsolicited specific details about his connections and
relationship with Aftab Ansari — chief suspect in Kolkata shooting
case. Giving details of his communications with Aftab Ansari
to police investigators, just a few days before the shooting
incident in Kolkata, Sheikh said he had cultivated Ansari, while
they were both jailed in Tihar prison in New Delhi in late nineties.
"Discussing the shooting
incident inside the Indian parliament building which had left 17
people including five unidentified attackers killed on December 13,
Sheikh Omar is understood to have offered police officials the real
identities of the Kashmiri militants who had stormed the Indian
parliament with an aim at making Indian parliamentarians hostage to
seek the release of all Kashmiri freedom fighters from Indian
prisons.
"Sheikh Omar said the
militant who gave his life while exploding a bomb-laden car just
outside the state parliament building in Srinagar on October 2 was
"more than a brother to me". Omar said the deceased
suicide bomber was a Pakistani who had devoted his life to the
freedom struggle in Kashmir.
"Throughout his
interrogation Sheikh Omar continued to repeat that "thousands
of people were now ready in India and Pakistan to sacrifice their
lives to free Kashmir from India and to turn Pakistan into an ideal
Islamic state."
"In a remarkable
coincidence, Pir Mubarrak Ali Gillani, who was earlier thought to be
a suspect in the Pearl kidnapping case, had recounted his services
for the state security services before being released by the police
in Karachi.
"Omar feels that Mansur
Hasnain alias Hyder -- who was also involved in the hijacking of
Indian airliner in the end of December 1999 may only have definite
information about the present whereabouts of the dead or alive
Daniel Pearl," the report concluded.
The ISI exercised pressure on
the Editor of the newspaper not to publish this , but he rejected
their pressure and published it. The ISI then pressurised the
owner of the newspaper to sack the Editor, who has run away to the
US fearing a threat to his life from the ISI. It also forced
the officers of the Karachi Police to deny that Sheikh Omar
had made any such confessions.
What provoked the grenade
attack on a church congregation in Islamabad on March 17?
It was an anti-American and not
an anti-Christian attack. The principal target of the attack
was Milton Green, who is believed to be from the USA's National
Security Agency (NSA). He was the head of an NSA team attached
to the US Embassy in Islamabad, which was responsible for
intercepting the communications of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the
ISI. He escaped with injuries, but his wife Barbara, who is
stated to be a CIA officer attached to the Personnel Division of the
US Embassy, was killed along with their daughter. It is
believed that many of the 10 other Americans injured in the attack
were also either intelligence officers or related to intelligence
officers. It was an act of retribution for the role of the NSA
and the CIA in Afghanistan and particularly in the death of Mohammad
Atef, bin Laden's chief of operations who was in charge of his
personal security too, in November, 2001.
Who was responsible for the
attack?
Till now, the needle of
suspicion points to lower level officers of the
military-intelligence establishment who were close to the HUJI.
The Musharraf regime is trying to divert the suspicion away from the
HUJI . There has been no progress in the investigation.
How did the assailants come to
know of the real identity of Milton Green?
According to Pakistani sources,
only Musharraf himself, Mohammad Aziz, Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, DG, ISI,
his principal staff officer whose name is not known, and
Maj.Gen.Rasheed Quereshi, the press spokesman of Musharraf, knew the
real identity of Green as from the NSA. The suspicion is
Mohammad Aziz tipped off the terrorists.
What are the positive results
so far of the US-led war against terrorism?
* Firstly, the Taliban has been
replaced by a modern-minded, forward-looking interim
administration led by Hamid Karzai.
* Secondly, the command and
control of the Al Qaeda and the other components of the
International Islamic Front are in disarray. They are no
longer in a position to co-ordinate their operations outside the
Afghanistan-Pakistan region as effectively as before.
* Thirdly, the training and
logistics infrastructure of the International Islamic Front in
Afghan territory has been severely damaged, if not destroyed.
* Fourthly, effective action
against terrorist funding by all the UN member-countries except
Pakistan under the UN Security Council Resolution No 1373 has
dried up the flow of legitimate funds for the terrorist
organisations, but not clandestine funds.
* Fifthly, the effective
networking of the intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies of
the coalition has led to the unearthing of hitherto
not-so-well-known networks of the International Islamic Front all
over the world and particularly in West Europe and South-East
Asia.
* Sixthly, there has been a
greater flow of actionable intelligence than before October 7,
2001, from the interrogation of captured terrorists and documents
recovered during the operations in Afghanistan.
What are the negative results of
Operation Enduring Freedom so far?
* Firstly, out of the 42
members of the brainstrust of the Al Qaeda, only six have been
killed so far and four others captured. The remaining 32,
including possibly Osama bin Laden, are at large and have found
new sanctuaries not only in the bordering tribal areas of Pakistan
such as Balochistan, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA, but also even in
Punjab as was demonstrated by the arrest of Abu Zubaida, stated to
be bin Laden's No.3, and 19 other Al Qaeda members (but not
members of its brainstrust) in Faislabad on March 28 and 29, 2002.
* Secondly, at least 14 of
the principal leaders of the Taliban, including its Amir Mulla
Mohammad Omar, are still at large---again sheltered by the tribals
on the Pakistani side of the Pakistan-Afghan border.
* Thirdly, while about 8,000
trained cadres of the Pakistani components of the International
Islamic Front were killed or captured, about 20,000 plus are still
at large and are presently regrouping in Pakistani territory.
They played an important role in the battle against the Americans
in the Shahi-Kot area of Eastern Afghanistan (Op ANACONDA) in
March, 2002, which was not such a success for the Americans as
they made it out to be. The Pakistani components are the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI),
the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).
* Fourthly, while it is not
possible to quantify the casualties suffered by the Al Qaeda and
the Taliban and the surviving cadres still at their disposal, OP
ANACONDA showed that the morale and motivation of the surviving
dregs of the AL Qaeda, the Taliban and the other components of the
International Islamic Front remain high despite the reverses
suffered by them since October 7, 2001. While their
capability for co-ordination outside the Afghanistan-Pakistan
epicentre of punishment terrorism has been damaged, at least
temporarily, due to the damage to their command and control, they
continue to exhibit surprising co-ordination within the epicentre.
* Fifthly, there has been no
major recovery of arms and ammunition by the coalition, thereby
indicating that the International Islamic Front had successfully
cached their weapon holdings in secret hide-outs in Afghanistan
and Pakistan beyond the reach of the coalition forces.
* Sixthly, there has been no
significant destruction of the heroin infrastructure in Afghan
territory, no major killing or capture of the Pakistani heroin
barons who were running this infrastructure and no major capture
of heroin stocks. Before October 7, 2001, there was general
agreement amongst professionals that the Pakistani heroin barons
had a secret reserve of at least two years' market requirement of
heroin cached in Afghanistan. It is believed that between
September 11 and October 7, 2001, most of these reserves were
moved largely into Pakistan and, in a smaller measure, into the
Central Asian Republics (CARs). With these reserves still
available to them, the terrorists should be able to maintain a
high level of activity despite the freezing of their bank
accounts.
* Seventhly, there are
disturbing reports from reliable sources in Afghanistan that this
marked lack of success in the heroin front is due to the fact that
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the USA, which encouraged
these heroin barons during the Afghan war of the 1980s in order to
spread heroin-addiction amongst the Soviet troops, is now using
them in its search for bin Laden and other surviving leaders of
the Al Qaeda, by taking advantage of their local knowledge and
contacts. These Pakistani heroin barons and their Afghan
lieutenants are reported to have played an important role in
facilitating the induction of Hamid Karzai into the Pashtun areas
to counter the Taliban in November, 2001. It is alleged that
in return for the services rendered by them, the USA has turned a
blind eye to their heroin refineries and reserves.
* Eighthly, the nexus between
Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment and the various
components of the International Islamic Front, including the
Taliban and the Al Qaeda, remains as strong as ever.
Gen.Pervez Musharraf's ostensible co-operation with the coalition
has been far from straightforward. While pretending to
co-operate with the coalition, he has, at the same time, been
helping the surviving dregs in whatever way he can.
What are the disturbing indicators
which don't bode well for the future?
* Firstly, the inability of
Hamid Karzai to win the respect and support of large sections of
the population. His writ still does not run outside Kabul.
Even in Kabul, his control over the Government is tenuous.
He is largely viewed as the USA's mascot. His ambition to
have himself continued in power after the end of the initial six
months of the interim administration, with the USA's support, has
not been well received. He has been spending more time
travelling around the world than doing his job in Kabul.
Since taking over as the head of the interim administration in
December, 2001, he has moved out of Kabul inside Afghanistan only
on three days for hit-and-run visits to places such as Herat,
Kandahar and Jalalabad. Despite being a Durrani Pashtun
himself, he does not command the support of even the Pashtun
tribes.
* Secondly, the brutal murder
of Dr. Abdul Rahman, the Minister for Civil Aviation, at the Kabul
airport earlier this year, the reported attempt to murder
Muhammed Qasim Fahim, the Tadjik Defence Minister and successor of
Ahmed Shah Masood as the leader of the Northern Alliance, at
Jalalabad on April 8, 2002, the arrest of over 150 persons in
Kabul, described as supporters of the anti-US Gulbuddin Heckmatyar,
in the beginning of April, 2002, on charges of plotting against
the Government, and the death of eight opium farmers due to police
firing in Helmand on April 8, 2002, show the worsening
under-current of instability. According to Professor
Mohiuddin Dareez, from Kabul University's Department of Political
Sciences, the attack on Fahim's convoy was likely to have been a
protest against foreign presence in Afghanistan. "The attack
can more likely be attributed to those who are against the US
military presence and this US-backed government, rather than
ethnic or factional reasons," he said in an interview on
April 8, 2002.
* Thirdly, there is no sense
of gratitude in the Pashtun areas in Southern and Eastern
Afghanistan and in the adjoining Pakistani areas of Balochistan,
the NWFP and the FATA over the removal of the Taliban by the US.
The liberation of Kabul from the Taliban was greeted by the local
population with wild scenes of jubilation, but there were so such
scenes when the Taliban was driven out of the Pashtun areas of the
South and the East. On the contrary, the anger against the
US is more than it was before October 7, 2001. Amongst the
factors which have contributed to this anger are the large
civilian casualties and damages to mosques due to the US
air-strikes and reports of lack of respect for Islam as evidenced
by the actions of US troops such as forcibly shaving off the
beards of arrested Al Qaeda suspects, seizing their copies of the
Holy Koran due to fears that they may be used for coding and
decoding and replacing them with Holy Koran printed by the US
Army, preventing the detenus from praying in a group, not
permitting them to clean themselves and cover their head during
the prayers etc. The image of the "Ugly American"
from the days of the Vietnam war has been resurrected. The
Bush Administration might be able to deny or conceal such
perceived anti-Muslim excesses from the rest of the world with the
help of the CNN and other compliant sections of the American
media, but it cannot conceal them from the population of the
affected areas in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan, who are
seething with anger. It is from such angry people that the
new recruits to the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other components of
the International Islamic Front are coming and it is this added
anger which would generate new acts of retributive punishment
terrorism. Surprisingly and interestingly, this redoubled
anger is directed mainly against the US and not against the other
members of the coalition. Not even against the UK despite
the active role played by Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister,
to rally support for the war against terrorism. The lack of
any critical comments in the non-governmental sections of US
society over the way the US has been handling the war has made the
angry elements see the US society as a whole as anti-Islam and as
accomplices in the commission of acts of sacrilege against Islam.
The desire for revenge against the US has acquired added force.
* Fourthly, in Pakistan,
there was always a strong sense of anti-Americanism in the public
mood despite the pro-US policies of past leaderships--political or
military. This anti-Americanism has been given added fuel by
the surviving dregs of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the other
components of the International Islamic Front who have taken
shelter in Pakistan and by the uncritical support of Washington DC
to Musharraf and its silence in the face of his blatant violations
of the Pakistan Constitution in order to continue in power.
The USA is misreading the situation in Pakistan as badly as it
misread the situation in Iran before the public outburst against
the Shah of Iran in 1978-79 led to his being driven out of power.
It has convinced itself, more wrongly than rightly, that there is
no alternative to Musharraf if it has to win the war against
terrorism and prevent the terrorists from getting hold of
Pakistan's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Consequently,
its policy has become Musharraf, right or wrong. It does not
seem to realise that under the pretext of co-operating with the US
in the war against terrorism, he has been perfidiously undermining
it.
* Fifthly, the evidence of
the spread of anti-Americanism and pan-Islamism amongst sections
of the Muslim population of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the
Philippines. bin Laden has no ideology. His actions
are motivated by sheer anger. The ideological underpinnings
of his International Islamic Front come not from his brain, but
from the brains of the five Pakistani components of his Front, who
advocate a new Islamic Caliphate consisting of three Islamic
confederations--one in South-East Asia, the second in South Asia
and the third in Central Asia. It is they who have been
projecting for years Pakistan's atomic bomb as the Ummah's and
advocating the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims
to acquire WMD and to use them, if necessary, to protect their
religion. bin Laden's language and rhetoric are not his own.
Those have been ingrained in him by his long association with
these Deobandi-Wahabi pan-Islamic organisations of Pakistan.
What are the mid-course
corrections that are called for?
* Firstly, a shift away
from the overt military response, which was initially justified,
to a more covert response. Counter-terrorism is a fight
against the invisible force of the terrorists, who act with
stealth and cunning. To be effective, the State's response
has to be equally invisible, with equal stealth and cunning.
How counter-productive an over-reliance on an overt military
response can be could be seen from the Israeli actions in
Palestine.
* Secondly, a realisation that
in order to make terrorism wither away, it has to be denied not
only funds, arms and ammunition and sanctuaries, but also---and
more importantly--new reservoirs of fresh recruits. Its
motivation has to be diluted. The greater the anger in the
community from which the terrorists have arisen, the greater the
flow of new recruits and the stronger the motivation. It is,
therefore, important to ensure that the way counter-terrorism
operations are conducted does not add to the already existing
anger. Counter-terrorism is a fight of the civilised force
of the State against the uncivilised force of the terrorists.
If the unwise actions of the State make the community perceive it
as no different from the uncivilised force of the terrorists, half
the battle against the terrorists is already lost. bin Laden
does not go round looking for recruits. Enraged elements in
the Islamic world go to Pakistan and Afghanistan looking for bin
Ladens and their ilk to help them in giving vent to their anger
appropriately.
* Thirdly, greater pressure
on the military-intelligence establishment in Pakistan to cut off
its links with terrorists of various hues and to effectively
co-operate with the coalition, instead of merely making a pretense
of doing so.
* Fourthly, insistence on the
Pakistani military regime adhering to its commitment to restore
democracy in Pakistan and going back to the barracks instead of
taking advantage of what it looks upon as the post-September 11
dependence of the US on its co-operation for prolonging the
military rule. Whenever an elected political leadership was
in power in Pakistan, the activities of the pan-Islamic forces
were less than under military rule. All the existing
pan-Islamic organisations of Pakistan were brought into existence
by Zia-ul-Haq with the help of Musharraf and Gen. Mohammad
Aziz Khan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, for
using them to undermine the non-religious political parties and
particularly Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and as
a strategic weapon to achieve Pakistan's strategic objectives
vis-a-vis Afghanistan and India. It would, therefore, be
naive and futile to expect Musharraf, the joint creator of these
organisations, to really help the US in putting an end to them.
Since 1971, there have been seven hijackings of Indian aircraft by
Pakistan-sponsored terrorists. All of them took place when
the Army was in power. There was not a single hijacking when
an elected political leadership was in power. The
effective antidote to extremism and terrorism is genuine democracy
and not prolonged military rule. All the military rulers of
Pakistan have used religious fanaticism to serve their own
purposes and never acted against them. Musharraf is and
would be no exception.
What are the future possibilities
of punishment terrorism?
As worrisome as before October
7, 2001. September 11, 2001, marked the culmination of the
uncontrolled activities of the surviving dregs of the first Afghan
war of the 1980s. The kidnapping and brutal murder of Daniel
Pearl, the journalist of the Wall Street Journal, in Karachi marked
the beginning of a new wave of terrorism arising from the dregs of
the second Afghan war, which started on October 7, 2001. The
world will be seeing more and more acts of international terrorism,
largely directed against the US and deriving their inspiration from
bin Laden, dead or alive, and the surviving dregs of the Pakistani
pan-Islamic organisations. The pre-September 11 wave of
international terrorism originating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan
epicentre was largely the work of the Arab dregs of the first Afghan
war, assisted by their Pakistani supporters. The
post-September 11 wave of terrorism will be largely the work of the
Pakistani dregs, reinforced by the Arabs and the angry elements from
South-East Asia, which could emerge as the new epi-centre of
international terrorism. bin Laden and his ilk will operate
against the US wherever they think objective conditions for their
success exist in the form of a weak intelligence and security
apparatus and inadequate counter-terrorism capability.
Presuming bin Laden is still
alive, what would be his likely targets and what modus operandi (MO)
is he likely to follow keeping in view the tightened security
apparatus in most countries?
His priorities would be another
attack on a US naval ship, particularly on a US aircraft-carrier and
a September 11-like strike in US territory itself. The MO
likely to be used could include use of a microlite aircraft filled
with explosives, his men joining a flying club, taking off on a
training flight and crashing on the target and infiltrating his men
into the crew of commercial airliners and corporate houses owning
aircraft and crashing the aircraft on to the target. The use
of the first two MO had in the past been examined by the LTTE, but
not actually used. The second one had been suggested to the
Sikh terrorists by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in
the early 1990s. It had asked them to join the Mumbai (Bombay)
flying club, take off on a training flight and crash the aircraft on
to the Bombay High off-shore oil production facilities. They
did not carry it out since they did not believe in suicide
terrorism.
What is the likelihood of the
use of WMD in an act of punishment terrorism?
One cannot rule out the
possibility. The Al Qaeda and the Pakistani components of his
International Islamic Front have, in the past, stressed upon the
right and the religious obligation of Muslims to acquire and use WMD
to protect their religion, if necessary. They have been trying to
acquire a WMD capability, but there is no evidence of their having
succeeded so far. One of the Al Qaeda cadres arrested in 2000
had reportedly spoken about training lessons in the use of pottasium
cynaide mixed with a strong acid for producing poisonous fumes to
kill and spread panic.
What are the pre-requisites
for effective prevention of terrorism?
* Firstly, an effective
security apparatus which, through effective physical security
measures, would be in a position to frustrate the plans of the
terrorists even in the absence of timely intelligence.
* Secondly, an effective
intelligence apparatus to collect timely strategic and tactical
(preventive) intelligence. This is easier said than done.
While technical intelligence (TECHINT) has been an important
source of preventive intelligence, TECHINT alone would not be
sufficient in many cases. Human intelligence (HUMINT) is
necessary. Preventive HUMINT requires an ability to
penetrate a terrorist organisation, either by recruiting an
outside person and motivating him to enter the inner core of a
terrorist organisation or by recruiting a person who is already in
the inner core. Such penetration poses ethical problems
since it involves conniving at an act of terrorism by the
intelligence officer in order to enable the recruit win the
confidence of the leader of the organisation. In view of
such difficulties, there would always be gaps in HUMINT and this
has to be kept in mind while strengthening the physical security
measures.
* Thirdly, an effective
analytical and assessment machinery. Terrorism is an
unconventional war. Conventional tools of analysis would not
suffice. Every intelligence collection and assessment organisation
should have a set of officers, who are able to place themselves in
the position of a terrorist and think, analyse and assess the
various possibilities as an angry and irrational terrorist
would do instead of merely as a calm and rational being would.
* Fourthly, a good linguistic
capability---particularly in Arabic, Urdu and Pashtun. It is
important to closely monitor all newspapers in these languages,
which often carry more news on terrorism-related developments than
the English media.
* Fifthly, a capability for a
thorough monitoring of the World Wide Web, which is increasingly
and effectively used by the terrorists for propaganda, motivation,
interaction and clandestine communication purposes.
* Sixthly, constantly updated
database on various aspects of terrorism.
* Seventhly, an effective and
alert crisis management machinery to deal with acts of terrorism
when they take place despite the best preventive efforts of the
intelligence and security apparatus.
* Eighthly, a well-informed
and lucid political leadership.
(Mr.
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.
of India, and, recently, Director, Institute For Topical
Studies, Chennai, India. )
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