WILL TERRORISTS HAVE THE LAST LAUGH?
by B. Raman
Will the terrorists of the world have the last laugh?
That should be the disturbing question in everyone's
mind asMr.George Bush Jr, the US President, and his aides mishandle their
much-trumpeted "war" against terrorism, which seems to have lost
its direction, momentum and credibility even before it began.
Counter-terrorism strikes should be felt and not
seen. They are delivered in stealth and not before TV cameras.
One doesn't go to a "war" against terrorism with the bagpipers
playing Col.Boogey's March and thousands of patriotic citizens waving the
US flag as an armada sets sail.
In an effective counter-terrorism campaign, one thinks
unconventionally, plans unconventionally and strikes
uneconventionally---while all the time having one's feet firmly on the
ground. One avoids bombast and rhetoric and focuses on action based
on ground realities. Lack of professionalism has been the defining
characteristic of the "war" so far.
Initially, it was unwise to have projected it as the
first war of the new millennium, thereby whetting the appetite of the
media and the adeventure-hungry sabre-rattlers. It was a
multilateral campaign against terrorism and should have been projected and
planned as such.
The target should have been clearly identified as the
international terrorist network, its epicentre and its
State-sponsors. Barring the dregs of the ideological terrorist
organisations of the 1960s vintage which are still active in parts of Asia
and Latin America and do not pose as yet a threat to international peace
and security, the most active and lethal network has been the
International Islamic Front for Jehad Against the US and Israel, headed by
Osama bin Laden and consisting of 12 jehadi organisations--- three each of
Egypt and Pakistan, two of Uzbekistan, one each of Xinjiang in China and
the Southern Philippines plus bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the
Pakistan-fathered Taliban.
This network has been a cancer which has been inexorably
eating into the vitals of the world. Its root is in Pakistan and
what one sees in Afghanistan and elsewhere are its external
manifestations. This root is nourished by the Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment.
The most active State-sponsor of international terrorism
in the world today is Pakistan. Till the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment scampered out after September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was a
virtual Pakistani colony, the Taliban its creation, the instructors in the
training camps were Pakistani ex-servicemen and Osama bin Laden its
pampered,clandestine ally in its jehad against India.
The idea of using a hijacked or commandeered aircraft as
a cruise missile to strike at people and objects was first born in the
dark rooms of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the early
1990s and suggested by it to the terrorists from India's Punjab and to the
LTTE. It was at the ISI's suggestion that the LTTE started getting
its Europe and Canada-based cadres trained in flying and in assembling and
operating a microlite aircraft. If the Western intelligence services
search their archives, they would find innumerable reports of LTTE cadres
in the West underegoing flying training, in order to be able to mount a
suicide terrorist operation from the air.
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's self-reinstated Chief
of the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled Chief Executive and self-promoted
President, is the Godfather of this terrorist network. He and Lt.
Gen. Mohammad Aziz,presently a Corps Commander at Lahore, created it in
the 1980s with US blessings, used it effectively against the Soviet troops
in Afghanistan and then diverted it to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in
India after the collapse of the Najibullah Government in Kabul in April,
1992.
Many components of this network have since assumed an
autonomy of functioning and have been operating in various countries, even
though the State of Pakistan has no adversarial relationship with
them. Examples: China, the Philippines, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan,
Russia and now the USA.
The idea of carrying the jehad into US territory was not
born in the mind of Osama bin Laden. It was born in the training
camps of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) in Pakistan. A detailed note
on the HUM, which this writer had disseminated in 1999, is appended for
ready reference.
Of all the jehadi organisations of Pakistani patronage,
the HUM has the strongest links with the military-intelligence
establishment. This came out clearly from the investigations by the
Pakistani authorities into the plot by a group of middle-level Pakistani
Army officers, headed by Maj-Gen.Zahir-ul-Islam Abbasi, to assassinate
Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakar,
the then COAS, in the second half of 1995, seize power and proclaim an
Islamic State.
How many in the US noticed and remember that one of the
officers whom these plotters had in mind as a possible ruler of the new
Islamic State was none other than Musharraf, despite his
non-fundamentalist veneer? How many in the US noticed that since Musharraf
seized power in October, 1999, Abbasi, who was jailed by a court-martial
ordered by Abdul Waheed Kakar, has been a free man and going around
rallying the jehadi organisations and acting as adviser to the HUM? One
does not know whether he has been pardoned by Musharraf or whether he has
completed his punishment.
The US closed its eyes to the activities of the HUM till
it kidnapped five Western tourists in J & K under the name of Al Faran
in 1995. Even then, it hesitated to act against it and its
State-sponsor till October, 1997, when it declared it, under its then name
of Harkat-ul-Ansar, a foreign terrorist organisation, but took care to
spare the rod in the case of its State-sponsor.
The HUM retaliated by joining bin Laden's International
Islamic Front in the beginning of 1998 and signing its fatwa calling for a
jehad against the US and Israel. When the US Cruise missiles attacked what
the US thought were the Al Qaeda's terrorist camps in Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan in October,1998, the destroyed camps turned out to be those of
the HUM and other jehadi organisations from Pakistan operating in J &
K and not of Al Qaeda.
The military junta in Pakistan has resisted repeated US
pressure to ban the HUM and its terrorist activities. Gen.Musharraf
continues to call it an organisation of "freedom-fighters" and
not of terrorists. The HUM leaders were invited by him for
consultations before his July summit with Mr.A.B.Vajpayee,the Indian Prime
Minister, in Agra. The only action he has taken against the
HUM after September 11 is to freeze its bank accounts after Mr.Bush
ordered action against the accounts of a number of individuals, terrorist
organisations and ostensibly non-governmental organisations believed
to be associated with bin Laden's International Front.
Another organisation figuring in Mr.Bush's list is the
Al Rashid Trust of Karachi, a front organisation of the Taliban, which
collects funds from the public ostensibly for providing food assistance to
the poor people of Afghanistan and runs an online journal called
"Dharb-i-Mumin" on behalf of the Taliban. It also has
close links with the Lashkar-e- Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad
(JEM). Following Mr.Bush's orders, Musharraf too has frozen the
Pakistani bank accounts of this Trust, which was originally established by
one Mufti Rashid Ahmed with the approval of the ISI and was recognised by
Islamabad as a charity organisation under the Income Tax Act.
These closures are unlikely to affect the terrorist
activities of these organisations. Terrorist organisations fund their
operations through clandestine money and use open bank accounts only as a
cover to project themselves as humanitarian organisations.
How many in the US know that the Taliban handed over to
the Trust the remnants of the blasted Buddha statue of Bamiyan earlier
this year so that it could sell them to art smugglers in the US and Europe
and use the sale proceeds for its operations? How many noticed that the Al
Rashid Trust transported these remnants to Karachi from Bamiyan with the
knowledge and complicity of the Pakistani authorities?It should not be a
surprise if the investigations turn out that the World Trade Centre in New
York and part of the Pentagon were brought down by the terrorists with the
help of the proceeds from the sale of the remnants of the Buddha of
Bamiyan to art smugglers in the US. That is how terrorist
organisations clandestinely fund their acts of terrorism and not through
open bank accounts.
The Israeli media has described the Makhtab al Khidamat,
another organisation figuring in Mr.Bush's list, as also Pakistan-based,
but this writer does not have any details of it.
Of the 12 foreign members of bin Laden's International
Islamic Front, eight are banned in the countries of their origin---Egypt,
Saudi Arabia (Al Qaeda), Uzbekistan, China and the southern
Philippines. As a matter of routine, China executes every Uighur
suspected of links with this Front. The only organisations not suffering
from any legal curbs on their activities are the three from Pakistan---the
HUM, the LET and the Sipah Sahaba.
The HUM and the LET, though Pakistan-based and almost
totally Pakistani in composition and office-bearers with their
headquarters in Pakistan, are projected by Musharraf as "Kashmiri
freedom-fighters" and given all the help they need. They have
massacred more civilians in J&K since 1992 than the number killed in
New York.
The Sipah Sahaba is an extremist Sunni organisation
calling for the proclamation of Pakistan as a Sunni State and for the
declaration of the Shias as non-Muslims. Musharraf used it along with the
tribal hordes of bin Laden for suppressing the Shias of Gilgit in 1988 and
inducted it thereafter on a permanent basis into the Northern Areas
(Gilgit and Baltistan) to keep the local Shias under control. It was
responsible for the sectariant riots which rocked Gilgit before the Agra
summit. The Taliban used the Sahaba for the massacre of the Shias in
the Hazara areas. Musharraf has recently banned the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the militant wing of the Sahaba, after the murder of a
number of Shia leaders of Karachi, but he has avoided any action against
the Sahaba itself.
During the Presidential election campaign of last year,
Mr.Bush and his advisers had criticised the Clinton Administration for
over-focusing on bin Laden in its counter-terrorism campaign, as if his
end would bring an end to international terrorism. In a paper prepared in
the middle of last year, the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, a think
tank ideologically close to the Republican Party, had also criticised this
over-focus on bin Laden and said that the solution lies in Pakistan, which
only was in a position to end the terrorist activities from Afghan
territory.
If Pakistan sincerely co-operates with the US, the
terrorism from this epicentre could be controlled in three months without
loss of American and other Western lives. Instead of pressurising
Pakistan to act against the terrorist networks in Afghanistan and in
Pakistani territory, the Bush Administration, in its panic reaction to
September 11, has chosen to co-opt Pakistan as a frontline ally against
international terrorism. It is like making a serial murderer the
deputy chief investigating officer of a special team to investigate his
serial acts of murder.
How can the US expect the Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment, many of whose members are hand in
glove with the terrorist networks of this region and have immensely
benefitted financially from narco-terrorism and have a vested interest in
its continuation,to co-operate sincerely with the USA in putting an end to
terrorism of their own creation?
How can the US expect Musharraf to help it in capturing
alive bin Laden lest he reveal during his interrogation the full extent of
his nexus with the General and other members of his junta?
Has the US forgotten how the ISI, then headed by
Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, while pretending to co-operate with the US, undermined
its efforts to buy back the unused Stinger missiles from the Afghan
Mujahideen in 1992, resulting in Mr.Clinton placing Pakistan in a watch
list of suspected State-sponsors of terrorism in January 1993, till
Mr.Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, sacked Lt.Gen.Nasir and other
ISI officers?
How does the US fail to see that all this drama staged
by Musharraf of sending a high-powered team led by Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed,
the present Director-General of the ISI, to Kandahar ostensibly to
persuade Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, to surrender bin
Laden,the subsequent shoora at Kabul which suggested that bin Laden be
requested to leave the country and the latest claim of the Taliban that he
is no longer in Afghan territory were all meant to give Pakistan
sufficient time to withdraw from Afghanistan its serving Army and
intelligence personel and to bin Laden to disperse his followers before
hiding himself?
Has the US forgotten a similar drama staged by Pakistan
and the Taliban in 1999 when, following pressure from the Clinton
Administration to hand over bin Laden, the Taliban announced that he had
left the country on his own; a few months later, after the US pressure had
eased, he re-appeared in Kandahar. He had been hiding in the
Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.
The question of bin Laden escaping to Chechnya or the
Lebanon or elsewhere just does not arise. The safest place for him would
be in Pakistan--either in the FATA, or in the refugee camps of the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) or in the Northern Areas. bin Laden
suffers from kidney insufficiency and has periodically been undergoing
dialysis in the Pakistani military hospital in Peshawar.
Without dialysis, he would be a dead man before the US
closes in upon him. The only place in Afghanistan having dialysis
facilities is Kabul where the doctors are Tadjiks. He,therefore, prefers
to have his dialysis done in Pakistani military hospitals by Sunni
doctors. He is definitely no longer in Kandahar and is most probably
already in Pakistan or in the Afghan territory adjoining the
Afghan-Pakistan border so that in an emergency he could get his dialysis
done.
Any well-informed person on Pakistan's
military-intelligence complex would know that it would not share the
really vital intelligence with the US. Instead, it would keep the
Taliban and bin Laden informed of all the plans of the US and other
forces.
Initially, instead of targetting the terrorist networks
of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US targetted bin Laden. Mr.Bush had
criticised Mr.Clinton last year for making bin Laden, a six-footer, appear
20 feet tall. Now after September 11, Mr.Bush and his aides have
made him appear 100 feet tall, with attributes befitting more one of the
legendary creatures of Hindu mythology than someone in real life---100
feet tall, 20 heads, 40 arms, 40 legs and eyes and ears all over the
body. Compared to bin Laden as projected by Mr.Bush and his aides,
China's fire-emitting dragons and the man-eating dinosaurs of the hoary
past would be lovable domestic pets.
In planning the operations, two basic ground realities
and one vital precaution had been overlooked. The ground realities
are:
* Barring the Taliban's Air Force, its military and
Government have no physical infrastructures worth hitting at. The
Taliban is not a professional army; it is a religious militia, with its
only infrastructure being the mosques and the madrasas. If the US hits
at them, its actions would be viewed as the launching of a religious war
against the Muslims and any call for jehad from the Taliban would find
resonance from many Muslims in other countries, including in the
diaspora inside the US itself.
* The Taliban and the International Islamic Front are
network-dependent and not infrastructure-dependent, with their networks
extending far and wide, right into the heart of the USA.
The vital precaution ignored so far is to smoke out the
potential terrorists in US territory before rushing to smoke out bin Laden
in Afghanistan. For the last few days, one could already discern
healthy signs of a mid-course correction--a lowering of hype, orders to
the bagpipers of the Pentagon to stop playing Col.Boogey's March, dousing
public expectations of a Rambo-style response to bin Laden and his hordes
and a greater focus on better guarding the house before rushing out.
Another possible reason for this sudden break is that the investigations
are showing that the perpetrators of September 11, while being strong
admirers of bin Laden, did not have any direct links with him. That
is why, the US, after having promised to share the evidence against bin
Laden with its allies, is now dragging its feet under the pretext of
operational secrecy.
It is time the US opens its eyes wide to the disturbing
reality-- the jehad is there right in its midst and it will not be able to
deal with it effectively and prevent the loss of more innocent lives
unless and until it removes the root of the cancer from Pakistan.
Hoping to ride to victory on the back of Musharraf would be like
trying to cross a river on the back of a mud horse.
God bless America despite all its follies and save the
lives of its innocent civilians.
(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
HARKAT-UL-MUJAHIDEENAN UPDATE
(To be read in continuation of earlier papers on the
Markaz Dawa Al Irshad and on the recent explosions in Tashkent)
On October 1,1997, Mrs.Madeleine Albright, the US
Secretary of State, notified to the US Congress a list of 30 international
terrorist organisations which the US Government had decided to bring under
the purview of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 1996,
which makes it an offence for any citizen or resident of the US to provide
funds or other assistance to such organisations. The Act also empowers the
US Administration to deny visas to members of such organisations and
prohibits their representatives from operating from US territory.
The Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA) of Pakistan, one of the
organisations so notified, was started in central Punjab in Pakistan in
the early 1980s by certain religious elements under the name the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) with headquarters at Raiwind in Punjab, where
it holds its annual conferences. After the US notification, the HUA has
reverted back to its original name of HUM and, hence, it will hereafter be
referred to as HUM.
Initially, its objective was stated to be to organise
humanitarian relief for the Afghan refugees in the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP) of Pakistan.
It is a Sunni organisation, closer to the Deoband school
of thought and to Wahabism. Like the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad, it holds the
sufi tradition of tolerance of other religions and the importance of the
teacher (guru)-taught (sishya) relationship as the corrupting influence of
Hinduism on Islam. Like the Markaz and the Taliban, it also holds that the
woman’s position is at home and denounces pluralist, parliamentary
democracy and equal rights for women as the corrupting influence of the
West on Islamic societies.
It draws its volunteers from the Tabligi Jamaat (TJ),
which ostensibly carries on missionary and charitable work amongst
Muslims, not only in Pakistan, but also in other countries. Amongst
prominent personalities of Pakistan who had been closely associated with
the TJ are Mohammad Rafique Tarar, presently President of Pakistan, and
Lt.Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, who was the Director-General of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) during Nawaz Sharif’s first tenure as
Prime Minister and who is presently intelligence adviser to Sharif.
Even while in service, Lt.Gen.Nasir was closely
associated with the TJ and he had to be removed by the Government as DG,
ISI, in 1993 when the Clinton Administration placed Pakistan on the
so-called watch-list of suspected state sponsors of international
terrorism. As a condition for removing Pakistan’s name from the list,
the US demanded the removal from the ISI of Lt.Gen.Nasir and a number of
other officers who had reportedly been identified by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) as assisting terrorist groups in India, Egypt,
Algeria and Tunisia.
A few months after its formation, the HUM decided to
send volunteers into Afghanistan for assisting the Afghan Mujahideen
groups. Initially, the recruitment was done in Pakistan and
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). The HUM was estimated to have recruited
about 5,000 volunteers and sent them into Afghanistan. The money came from
Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (Osama bin Laden was an important
contributor), the arms and ammunition from the CIA through the ISI and the
training was given by the Pakistan army.
Subsequently, the HUM recruited volunteers from the
Muslim communities in other countries too. About 6,000 volunteers were
thus recruited from Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Jammu
& Kashmir of India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Philippines. The CIA,
which was aware of this recruitment, closed its eyes to it since the
HUM’s activities served the US purpose of bringing about the defeat of
Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
The initial batch of HUM volunteers was trained in the
use of arms and ammunition and explosives in training camps in the Paktia
province of Afghanistan run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, the leader of the Hezb
Islami (Khalis) Afghan Mujahideen group. Haqqani has since joined the
Taliban. Subsequently, the HUM set up its own training camps in Afghan territory
just across Miran Shah in the NWFP. Some of the best fighters of the
Afghan war came from the HUM training camps. Impressed by their motivation
and prowess, the CIA issued Stinger missiles to them and trained them in
their use for bringing down Soviet planes and helicopters.
After the collapse of the Najibullah Government in April
1992, the CIA wanted the HUM and other Mujahideen groups to return the
unused Stinger missiles for which it offered handsome payments. It also
asked the ISI to pressurise these groups to return the unused missiles.
They refused and Lt.Gen.Nasir allegedly did not co-operate with the CIA in
getting them back.This was one of the reasons for the CIA’s anger
against him and against the HUM.
It demanded and obtained in 1993 the removal of Lt.Gen.Nasir and in
August, 1998, when the Cruise missiles attacked the suspected
infrastructure of bin Laden in Afghanistan, the HUM training camps came in
for focussed attack, apparently to teach the HUM leaders a lesson for
double-crossing the CIA by not returning the unused Stinger missiles. The
HUM was the largest recipient of these missiles before 1992.
After the Afghan Mujahideen captured power in Kabul in
April 1992, the HUM converted itself into an international network of
fighters for defending the rights of the Muslims all over the world. The
name of the organisation was changed as HUA in 1993 and the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, another organisation of Afghan vintage, merged
with it. As already mentioned above, after the US notification of October
1,1997, the HUA has reverted to its original name of HUM.
From 1992, the HUM spread its activities to Jammu &
Kashmir of India, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan,
Myanmar and the Philippines. In an interview to the “News”, a daily
newspaper of Islamabad, on February 13,1995, an unidentified HUM activist,
who had claimed to have fought against the Indian army in Kashmir, said:
“ We try to go wherever our Muslim brothers are terrorised, without any
monetary consideration. Our colleagues went and fought against the
oppressors in Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Burma, the Philippines and, of
course, India. Although Pakistani members of the Harkat are not
participating directly in anti-government armed resistance in Egypt,
Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan, many of the fighters in those countries had
remained our colleagues during the Afghan war and we know one another very
well. We are doing whatever we can to help them install Islamic
governments in those states.”
The daily further quoted the HUM office-bearer as
stating as follows: “ Separate cells look after the training, operations
and funds within the organisation. A typical Harkat sympathiser first
contacts one of its offices and offers his services for jehad anywhere in
the world. The sympathiser, after the necessary in-house security
clearance, is then sent for a ten-day training programme. Later, he is
sent to the relevant Harkat commander, who arranges weapons and selects
routes to transport the Mujahid to the area of operation to work under a
field commander. Each worker volunteers his services for 40 to 120 days.
“ The Mujahid is told in advance that in case of
martyrdom, his body would not be brought back to Pakistan and he would be
buried at the place of the operation. The Harkat takes full care of the
families of the martyrs. Our brave warriors are buried in Kashmir,
Tajikistan, Bosnia, Burma and the Philippines. Muslims in those countries
would never forget these courageous boys from Pakistan. We always tell
those intending to join us that we are devoted to Islamic jehad and, by
joining us, you have chosen a path that may take you to death.”
HUM office-bearers also claimed that amongst the foreign
volunteers trained by them were 16 Afro-American Muslims from the US. They
also claimed that since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in India in
December 1992, the HUM had been receiving funds from some members of the
Indian Muslim community in the UK.
The “News” identified Fazlur Rahman Khalil as the
head of the HUM. However, the US State Department’s Counter-Terrorism
Division identifies the leader of the HUM as Maulana Sadaatullah Khan. It
is believed that while Rahman Khalil heads the HUM for the whole of
Pakistan, Sadaatullah Khan heads its POK unit.
The “News” further reported on March 27,1995, as
follows: “ Official investigation has revealed that dozens of Saudis
committed to jehad all over the world have been visiting the military
training camps inside Afghanistan. Sources estimated that at least 2,000
persons, mostly Pakistanis and Arabs of different nationalities, are
currently engaged in military training in those camps for jehad in Kashmir
and elsewhere in the world.”
It added: “These sources estimated that since the
expulsion of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, at least 10,000
Pakistanis belonging to Islamic parties such as the Jamaat Islami, the
HUA, the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad and the Jamiat Ulema Islam have acquired
training in making bombs, hurling grenades, firing from light and heavy
weapons and in laying mines… The Harkat and all other militant
organisations committed to Islamic jehad all over the world have
acknowledged sending their guerillas to Tajikistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, the
Philippines, Burma and Kashmir.”
The paper concluded: “The Jamaat Islami, the Harkat and other
organisations have never been challenged by the Government in their
campaign to recruit committed Muslims to commit jehad anywhere in the
world. These organisations are also permitted to collect jehad funds
anywhere in the country.”
In an investigative report on the activities of the Abu
Sayaff (meaning Sword-bearer) group, which has been fighting for the
independence of the Muslim-inhabited areas of the southern Philippines,
the “Far Eastern Economic Review” of Hong Kong stated as follows on
March 9,1995: “The Tabligi Jamaat movement in the Philippines has
registered a phenomenal growth. Philippine military intelligence sources
claim it has as many as 300,000 members in the Muslim areas of Mindanao. A
military intelligence document on Islamic fundamentalism further claims
that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was helped by Abu Sayaff’s network to move in
and out of the Philippines. Military intelligence sources say that the Abu
Sayaff group has bought high-powered arms and that Pakistani veterans of
the war in Afghanistan are helping to train its fighters. Sayaff’s
lieutenants are composed mainly of Filipino Muslim volunteers, who joined
the international Islamic brigade which fought the Soviets in Afghanistan,
the military intelligence document asserts.” (Note: Ramzi Yousef was
extradited from Pakistan to the US in March 1995 on charges of complicity
in the World Trade Centre bombing and has since been convicted)
Earlier (February 23,1995), the same journal had
reported as follows: “ Since 1985, groups of the Bangsamoro Islamic
Armed Forces (BIAF), the armed wing of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF), have gained combat experience in Afghanistan. The MILF has tried
to shun publicity as it quietly built up its forces, but some national
media attention came its way last year with reports that it had smuggled
in a large shipment of high-powered weapons. The Government’s National
Intelligence Co-ordinating Agency reported that the weapons included
hundreds of Russian-made rocket-propelled RPG-2 grenades. Also brought in
were six 75mm anti-aircraft guns, American-made B-40 anti-tank rockets and
81mm mortars."
The report of the US State Department on “Patterns of
Global Terrorism” during 1994, submitted to the US Congress in
April,1995, for the first time took note of the activities of the HUM
(HUA) in the following words: “The HUA raised its visibility (during
1994) by kidnapping two British citizens (in India) in June. This group
has recently carried out a number of operations against Indian groups and
civilian targets in Kashmir. The HUA captured Lt.Col. Bhupinder Singh in
January and demanded that Indian forces turn over an HUA commander in
return for Singh’s release. When the Indian authorities refused, the
militants killed Singh. In mid-May, HUA militants conducted two attacks in
Doda district in which they stopped buses, forced the passengers off ,
then singled out individuals for execution-the last victim was a
14-year-old Muslim boy.”
The report added: “The HUA has several thousand armed
members located in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, and in the southern Kashmir
valley and Doda regions of India. The HUA uses light and heavy machine
guns, assault rifles, mortars, explosives and rockets. Membership is open
to all who support the HUA’s objectives and are willing to take the
group’s 40-day training course. It has a core militant group of about
300, mostly Pakistanis and Kashmiris, but includes Afghans and Arab
veterans of the Afghan war. The HUA is based in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan,
but its members have participated in insurgent and terrorist operations in
Kashmir, Burma, Tajikistan and Bosnia. The HUA’s Burma branch, located
in the Arakans, trains local Muslims in weapons handling and guerilla
warfare. In Tajikistan, HUA members have served with and trained Tajik
resistance elements. The first group of HUA militants entered Bosnia in
1992. The source and amount of HUA’s military funding are unknown, but
are believed to come from sympathetic Arab countries and wealthy
Pakistanis and Kashmiris.”
The State Department’s reports for 1995 and 1996
continued to bring on record the terrorist activities of the HUA. In
addition, they also took note of the HUA’s links with the so-called Al
Faran, which captured some Western tourists in July,1995, beheaded one of
them and has been silent on the fate of the others since then. One of them
managed to escape.
The report of the State Department for 1995 released in
May,1996, said: “ The HUA has been linked to the Kashmir militant group
Al Faran that has held four Western hostages in Kashmir since July,1995.
There is no evidence that the HUA ordered the kidnapping.”
The State Department’s report for 1997 released in
April,1998, said that there continued to be credible reports of official
Pakistani support for the Kashmiri extremist groups such as the HUM.
It added: “ Muslims from around the world, including a large number of
Egyptians, Algerians, Palestinians and Saudis continued to use Afghanistan
as a training ground. The Taliban as well as many other combatants in the
Afghan civil war facilitated the training and the indoctrination
facilities for the non-Afghans in the territories they controlled. Several
Afghan factions also provided logistic support, free passage and sometimes
passports to the members of the various terrorist organisations.”
It further said: “These individuals, in turn, were
involved in fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Kashmir,
the Philippines and parts of the Middle East.”
It is necessary to digress a little here and draw
attention to the difficulties faced by Indian counter-terrorism agencies
in the past in dealing with terrorism in the Punjab, Kashmir, Nagaland and
the rest of India due to the attitude of the Western countries.
Some Sikh groups, funded by some members of the Sikh
diaspora, took to terrorism in 1981, with the training and arms assistance
given by the ISI. Till, 1985, no Western Government would take notice of
their acts of terrorism and treat them as terrorist organisations.
But, after some Sikh extremist elements in Canada blew
up the Kanishka aircraft of Air India off the Irish coast in June,1985,
killing a large number of Canadian nationals, the Governments of the UK
and Canada started treating them as terrorist groups. In the same month,
the US authorities uncovered evidence of plans by some Sikh extremists to
indulge in acts of terrorism against Indian visitors in US territory. This
induced a change in the US attitude too towards accepting India’s
contention that these were terrorist groups.
Even thereafter, the continental European countries were
disinclined to treat them as terrorist groups, but their attitude too
changed only after some Sikh extremists kidnapped a Romanian diplomat,
Liviu Radu, in New Delhi in October,1991. One of the arrested suspects
stated during the interrogation that their initial target was a French
diplomat, but since the security outside the French chancery was tight,
they kidnapped a Romanian.
When the world press did not take much notice of the
kidnapping, a Sikh extremist in the US told his counterpart in Pakistan,
who was co-ordinating the operation, over phone that the world was
indifferent because nobody was bothered about the life of a Romanian. He
added that they should have instead kidnapped an American or a West
European. Thereafter, the continental European countries too started
taking action against these terrorist elements in their territory.
Similarly, Kashmiri terrorist groups, the Markaz and the
HUM had been killing hundreds of innocent Kashmiris and other Indians
since 1989, but the US and other Western governments would not treat them
as terrorist groups till one of the Kashmiri extremist groups attacked
some Israeli tourists in the Valley in 1992 and the HUM kidnapped two
British nationals in 1994.
In the perception of the US and other Western
governments, these were not terrorists so long as they kept killing only
Indian nationals, mainly Hindus, but they became terrorist groups the
moment they started killing Western nationals and Jewish persons.
Terrorism has continued to thrive partly because of this
lack of objective standards in assessing and dealing with it. This lack of
objectivity came to the fore once again last year when President Clinton
ordered the bombing of terrorist camps in Afghanistan in reprisal for the
explosions outside the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but he
cautioned India against emulating the US example in dealing with the
anti-India training camps in Pakistani territory.
In the US perception, if the US did it, it was in
exercise of its right of active defence against terrorism, but if India
did it, it would be a threat to regional peace and stability.
If Clinton discharged his responsibility to protect
American lives through proactive measures, it was legitimate and in
accordance with the UN Charter, but if L.K.Advani, India’s Home
Minister, spoke of his responsibility to protect Indian lives from
terrorism through proactive measures, it was jingoistic and contrary to
the UN Charter. That is American logic.
Reverting to the HUM, on September 8,1995, the Pakistani
Customs stopped a car carrying a consignment of heavy arms and ammunition
near Kohat in the NWFP and arrested its driver and Saifullah Akhtar , an
office-bearer of the POK branch of the HUM. On interrogation, they
reportedly told the Customs authorities that the weapons had been procured
by Brig. Mustansar Billa of the Pakistan army at Darra Adamkhel for supply
to the Kashmiri extremist groups.
The Pakistan army then took over the investigation and
arrested a group of 40 army officers and 10 civilians headed by
Maj.Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi, who was previously posted as Military
Attache in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi. He was expelled by
the Government of India in 1989 for indulging in espionage.
The Pakistani authorities alleged that this group had
planned to kill senior military officers and Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then
Prime Minister, seize power and proclaim an Islamic state. They were
secretly tried by a military court and sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment.
M.H.Askari, a well-known columnist, wrote in the
“Dawn” of Karachi of October 18,1995, as follows: “ It is said that
the plotters had close links with the Hizbul Mujahideen and the HUA, which
are known for their involvement in international terrorism. It is also
said that the arrested officers wanted Pakistan to become militarily
involved in the Kashmir freedom struggle.”
The “Nation” of October 20,1995, reported that
Maj.Gen.Abbasi had close contacts with the HUM. The “Khabrain” alleged
that two of the arrested officers belonged to a secret agency (implying
the ISI) and that one of them was the staff officer of Lt.Gen.Nasir when
he was the DG,ISI.
The “Nation” of November 15,1995, reported as
follows: “ Almost all the arrested officers are followers of the Tabligi
Jamaat based in Raiwind.”
The “Herald”, the monthly journal of the “Dawn”
group of publications, in its January 1996 issue, identified Saifullah
Akhtar, who was travelling in the vehicle with the arms and ammunition, as
the patron of the HUM. It added that, mysteriously, the Pakistani army
authorities decided not to prosecute him.
Fortunately, the interception of the vehicle by the
Customs alerted the authorities to the plot to seize power and they were
able to pre-empt it. But, one cannot be certain that the authorities had
identified all the sympathisers of the HUM in the military.
The Markaz and its Lashkar-e-Toiba, the HUM and the TJ
are the non-mainstream extremist organisations which do not believe in
elections and a parliamentary democracy. They advocate a caliphate and the
transfer of nuclear and missile technologies by Pakistan to other Muslim
countries and their eventual use against India to “liberate” the
Muslims of India.
These irrational organisations were pampered by the late
Gen.Zia-ul-Haq and they still have many sympathisers at various levels of
the Pakistan military. To realise this, one has to only note the number of
Pakistani military officers who, after retirement, gravitate towards these
organisations instead of to the traditional democracy-advocating political
parties.
If these organisations succeed one day in seizing power,
the world would be faced with the spectre of international terrorist
organisations, with links to the likes of bin Laden, having their finger
on Pakistan’s nuclear trigger.
On February 17,1998, Abdul Aziz Kamilov, the Foreign
Minister of Uzbekistan, for the first time accused the Markaz, the HUM and
the TJ of fomenting Islamic extremism and violence in Uzbekistan. He
revealed that 400 persons from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were undergoing
training in arms and ammunition in the training centres of these
organisations located in the Karachi, Islamabad, Mardan and Peshawar
areas. He added that the matter had been taken up with the Pakistani
authorities, who, however, subsequently denied the presence of any such
training camps in Pakistani territory.
The Uzbek authorities have so far refrained from blaming
the Pakistani authorities for the activities of these organisations. They
have been saying that either the Pakistani authorities are not aware of
these activities, or, if they are aware, they are unable to control them.
The Markaz and its Lashkar and the HUM have become
members of the International Islamic Front for Jihad against the US And
Israel whose formation was announced by bin Laden in May last year. The
meeting at which the decision to form this Front was taken was attended,
amongst others, by the following:
(a). Sheikh Taseer Abdullah also known as Abu
Hafs Al-Misri also suspected to be identical with Mohammed Atef, whom
the FBI describes as the military commander of bin Laden and for whose
capture it has reportedly announced a reward of US $ 5 million. He acts
as the chief body guard cum personal secretary cum chief adviser of bin
Laden. It is reported that he came to Afghanistan in 1983 from Egypt
where he was a police officer. He joined the Afghan jehad much before
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind
Egyptian cleric presently undergoing imprisonment in the US for his role
in the World Trade Centre bombing of 1993. He accompanied bin Laden to
Saudi Arabia and then Sudan, where he assisted him in running the
training camps. When the Sudanese authorities asked bin Laden to leave
in 1996, Sheikh Taseer accompanied him to Afghanistan.
(b).Dr.Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of the Jamatul Jihad
of Egypt, who acts as the interpreter and press spokesman of bin Laden.
His grand father, Abdul Wahab, used to be the Egyptian Ambassador to
Pakistan.
(c).Mohammad and Abu Asim, sons of Sheikh Omar Abdel
Rahman. They are both associated with the Al-Gama Al-Islamiyyah of
Egypt.
(d). Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Amir of the Markaz and
its Lashkar.
(e). Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the Amir of the HUM.
Addressing a press conference at Islamabad on August
22,1998, after the US bombing of the HUM training camps in Afghanistan,
Fazlur Rahman Khalil denied that bin Laden was indulging in terrorism and
accused the US of killing 50 innocent civilians, including 15 Arabs.
He said that the camps bombed by the US in Afghan
territory had actually been set up by the CIA during the Afghan war and
claimed that these were being used by the HUM for giving education to the
Afghans. He denied that any training in terrorism was going on in these
camps.
He alleged that the Nawaz Sharif Government was privy to
the bombing and said that 40 Cruise missiles had struck three HUM camps in
Afghan territory.
He then warned: “ The USA has proved itself to be the
world’s biggest terrorist by carrying out the attacks on Afghanistan and
the Sudan and I want to convey to the US leadership that we will take
revenge for the attack.”
The US attacked the following HUM camps:
(a). The Salman Fasi camp situated in Jawah, two kms
inside Afghan territory from the Pakistani border post of Saidgai. This
camp was initially started in the 1980s by the Hizbul Mujahideen of
Kashmir with the help of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) of Pakistan. Angered
over the JI’s support to Gulbuddin Heckmatyar, the Taliban expelled
the Hizbul Mujahideen from the Afghan territory and handed over the camp
to the HUM, which re-named it as the Hazrat Amir Mawia camp. When the
HUA changed its name as HUMafter the US notification branding the HUA as
an international terrorist organisation, some members of the HUA, having
differences with the HUM Amir, set up a splinter group called the
Jamaitul Mujahideen under Mufti Bashir. They have their own training
camp in the same area.
(b).The Khalid bin Waleed camp in the Zhavar area near
the Pakistan border: Seven HUM members, including Abu Huraira, an
instructor, were killed.
(c).The Liza camp at Tanai in the Khost area, 40 kms
to the West of the Mawia camp. This was run by another HUM splinter
group called the Harkat Jehad Islami under one Qari Saiful Islam Akhtar.
(d). Another camp close to the Darwanta hydel power
station near Jalalabad. This camp originally belonged to Heckmatyar’s
Hizbe Islami. The Taliban captured it in September
1996, and handed it over to the HUM.
Addressing the Karachi Press Club on August 23,1998,
Azizur Rahman Danish, the head of the Sindh branch of the HUM, warned:
“The US air strikes have drawn a clear dividing line between the Muslim
Ummah and non-believers and this is the beginning of a crusade. The USA
will be paid back in the same coin.”
Addressing a press conference at Peshawar on August 25,
1998, Fazlur Rahman Khalil said that nine HUM members died in the US
attack on its camps in the Khost area, of whom five were killed on the
spot and the remaining succumbed to their injuries in Pakistani hospitals.
In addition, two Tajiks and four Arabs, two of them physically
handicapped, were also killed. According to him, the Cruise missiles
destroyed four mosques, partially damaged another and burnt 200 copies of
the Holy Quran kept in the camps.
He added: “The USA calls Osama a terrorist and
President Clinton is claiming that all terrorist training camps had been
destroyed in the air strikes. Let me tell the Americans that not even one
per cent of the so-called terrorist camps run by Osama have been
destroyed.”
In another warning to the US on September 1,1998, Fazlur
Rahman Khalil said: “The USA has struck us with Tomahawk Cruise missiles
at only two places, but we will hit back at them everywhere in the world,
wherever we find them. We have started a holy war against the US and they
will hardly find a tree to take shelter beneath it.”
Khalid Ahmed, a well-known Pakistani analyst, wrote as
follows in the issue of the “Friday Times”, a Pakistani weekly, for
the week from August 28 to September 3,1998: “The national consensus on
Kashmir often blinds Pakistan to the isolationist compulsions that arise
from it. Internal politics has compelled the removal of Heckmatyar’s
Hizbe Islami from the Afghan jehad and his ally Qazi Hussain Ahamad’s
Hizbul Mujahideen from the Kashmir jehad. The vacuum created by their
ouster has been filled exclusively with Deobandi and Wahabi Mujahideen.
“The Deobandi HUA and the Wahabi Lashkar-e-Toiba are
the main outfits fighting in Kashmir, but their guerilla training is
acquired in Afghanistan. ..That the jehad in Kashmir is dependent on the
Afghan jehad is hidden from no one. That it gives a locus standi to India
in Afghanistan is not clear to most Pakistanis. The Pakistani compulsion
to wage the Kashmiri jehad with the help of Deobandi-Wahabi warriors has
allowed anew religious stringency to prevail in Pakistani society.”
He added: “In 1996, the Lahore High Court openly favoured the Wahabi
jurisprudence as some of the judges were found to be of Ahle Hadith
persuasion. Prime Ministers and Presidents have been attending Deobandi
congregations to demonstrate their new faith. Violent sectarianism is the
offshoot of this social change.”
In an editorial in the issue for the week from August 14
to 20, 1998, the same journal warned: “Pakistan is gradually falling
under the puritanical faith of Deobandi-Wahabi forces that are allied to
the Taliban. In the past two years, for example, Pakistani judges are
increasingly falling prey to Islamic extremism….The Pakistani state will
become hostage to the Taliban Deobandi brand of Islam by continuing to
give succour to the Jamiat Ulema Islam, the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the HUM.”
In an article in the same issue, Ejaz Haider, another
Pakistani analyst, said: “A recent report brought out the linkage
between Deobandi sectarian organisations in Pakistan and the HUA which has
links both with the Taliban and the JUI.” It said that Imams belonging
to these organisations have been saying in their addresses to their
congregations that after consolidating its hold in Afghanistan, the
Taliban would not only “liberate” Kashmir, but also rid Pakistan of
Shias and Brelvi Sunnis.
The HUM has strongly opposed the process for the
normalisation of Indo-Pakistani relations. In a statement before the
recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to Lahore
for talks with Nawaz Sharif, Fazlur Rahman Khalil warned: “More bodies
of Indian officials would be sent in coffins from Kashmir on the days
Vajpayee visits Lahore.” He also said that Islam’s enemity with India
was ideological and not just territorial. He alleged that it was the US
which had pressurised the two Prime Ministers to meet.
The Markaz and its Lashkar and the HUM are determined to
wreck the normalisation process by stepping up their terrorist activities
against India.
