SECURITY FOCUS ON HUAWEI IN INDIA
B.RAMAN
There has been an increasing focus by the Indian counter-intelligence agencies on the expanding presence, activities and business of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which is stated to have the largest mobile telephone business network in the world after Ericsson. Ever since the 1990s, there have been concerns in the Western countries over the suspected links of the company with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese intelligence agencies. The concerns initially started from the fact that the head of the company is a retired officer of the PLA. There were subsequent suspicions and allegations that many of its employees not only in China, but also in its overseas offices were either serving or retired officers of the PLA or the Chinese intelligence.
2. In fact,on the basis of the allegations made by the "Washington Times" in 2007, the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) made a review of the security implications of business deals between Huawei and some American companies. It called for a report on the subject from the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
3.Huawei, which greatly values its business in the US, took note of the security-related concerns being increasingly voiced in the US about the dangers of doing business with it and allowing it to acquire US companies, and reportedly volunteered to employ US citizens to supervise its contracts, which could have security implications. This offer was made following reports that it might be interested in acquiring a unit of the Motorola.
4. Wikipedia gives the following instances of security-related fears and enquiries relating to Huawei in different countries:
* A report of the US Government's Strategic Studies Institute on Argentina published in September 2007 described Huawei as "known to bribe and trap clients". The report further detailed its alleged unfair business practices, such as customers being given "full-paid trips" to China and monetary "presents".
* In February 2009, President of Indonesian mobile carrier Excelcomindo Pratama confirmed a data theft attempt by a visiting Huawei employee who "snuck in to General Manager's Network Planning Office"..
* In 2005, the possibility of Huawei's bid on British telecommunications company Marconi led to a request from the Conservative Party to the British Government to "consider the implications for Britain's defense security". Marconi was later acquired by Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson.
* In a 2008 Military Report to the Congress, the Pentagon stated that Huawei "maintains close ties" to the PLA. In the same year, the proposed acquisition of US-based communications company 3COM Corp by Huawei led to a US Congress investigation and a subsequent determination by the Director of National Intelligence that "3Com-Huawei merger would undermine U.S. national security".
* In March 2009, Alex Allan, the Chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, briefed members of the British Cabinet about the "threat", allegedely posed by Huawei's equipment in the British national telecom network BT. ( My comment: The British media reported that the JIC Chairman had told the Cabinet at a special briefing that "Huawei components that form key parts of BT's new network might already contain malicious elements that could be activated by China and which could remotely disrupt or even permanently disable the network. Such action would have a significant impact on critical services such as power and water supplies, food distribution, the financial system and transport, which were dependent on computers using the communications network to operate." )
* In September 2009, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation started investigating the alleged links between local Chinese Huawei employees and the Chinese military. ( My comment: This enquiry was started following complaints made to the Australian Government by some serving and former Australian employees of the Chinese company about its alleged suspicious activities).
5.In the US and other Western countries, the intelligence and security agencies keep a close watch on its activities. At the same time, this has not been allowed to come in the way of its legitimate business. This would be evident from the way it has been able to expand its business in the US and Europe despite all security-related fears and enquiries. Western countries follow a policy of allowing it to operate freely in areas and fields where there are no security-related concerns and curbing its activities where such concerns exist.
6. The suspicions and fears of the Indian intelligence agencies regarding the expanding presence and activities of the Chinese company arise from the results of the enquiries faced by the company in other countries, allegations of its close links with the PLA which cannot be dismissed lightly, the dangers of allowing it to operate from sensitive places such as Bangalore where it has an expanding research and development centre and the vulnerability to which our critical infrastruture could be exposed in times of a possible military conflict with China if we depend on hard and software supplied by Chinese companies.
7. One should not forget that Saddam Hussein lost his first Gulf War with the US in 1991 even before it started because the US from which he had procured most of his communication hardware and software managed to paralyse them before its troops went in . The headquarters of Saddam's army in Baghdad was totally cut off from all communications with its units in other parts of the country.
8. Prudence demands that in our enthusiam for expanding our economic ties with China, we should not allow suspect companies such as Huawei a free run of our country and access to our communications network, which could facilitate their collection of intelligence in times of peace and war and paralyse our critical infrastructure during any military conflict.
9. The Indian intelligence agencies have done the right thing in sounding the wake-up call. Instead of taking their warnings seriously and examining what mid-course corrections are called for in our policy of giving a free run to Chinese telecommunication companies, Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State For Environment, has chosen to ridicule the intelligence agencies and the Ministry of Home Affairs for imposing what he has described as needless restrictions and for being paranoid about Chinese investments. He has been quoted as saying: " We are imagining demons where there are none."
10.One could not think of a more unfortunate, ill-informed and worrisome remark. ( 9-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies . E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
THE SURROGATE JIHADIS IN US
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.646
B.RAMAN
The Agence France Presse (AFP) has quoted Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, as warning Pakistan in a recorded TV interview for the CBS Channel to be telecast on May 9,2010, that it would face " very severe consequences" if a terror plot like the failed Times Square bombing of May 1 was traced to that country. She said:"We've made it very clear that if -- heaven-forbid-- an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences." However, she added: "We've gotten more cooperation and it's been a real sea change in the commitment we've seen from the Pakistan Government.We want more. We expect more."
2. Her warning has received greater attention in India than in Pakistan. The lack of an impact in Pakistan could be attributed to two reasons. Firstly, a careful reading of her remarks shows that her so-called warning is not with reference to the failed attempt by Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, on May 1,2010, to cause an incendiary car bomb explosion in the Times Square of New York, but with reference to any future attack that might be successful. What she meant was that if there was a successful attack in future and the investigation traced it back to Pakistan, it would face severe consequences. Secondly, comments emanating from White House spokesmen, Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, and Gen.David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, after the May 1 attempt show continued appreciation of the operations mounted by the Pakistan Army against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Swat Valley of the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province and in South Waziristan and seek to project the Pakistani co-operation against terrorism in positive colours. Mrs.Clinton also projected it in positive colours, but added a warning as to what could happen in future. The White House and the Pentagon have refrained from uttering any such warning.
3. This has been interpreted by the Pakistani authorities as indicating that Islamabad continues to enjoy the support of the White House and the Pentagon despite the unsuccussful attempt by Faisal. The Pakistani reaction to the identification of Faisal as the perpetrator of the attempt has been typical. Firstly,to assure all co-operation to the US in the investigation of the case. Secondly, to round up about about 20 persons in Karachi, Peshawar and other places, including four alleged members of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). Thirdly, to point out that Faisal is an American and not a Pakistani citizen and hence causes for his radicalisation are to be found in the US and not in Pakistan. And fourthly, to start releasing those arrested one after the other on grounds of lack of evidence. The ultimate outcome of the investigation at the Pakistan end is zero.
4.Cases detected in the US during the last two years or so show a trend which should be of concern to the US. Individual Muslims resident in the US, most of them of Pakistani origin, have been going to Pakistan in small groups to assist the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in their operations in the Af-Pak territory. Their original intention when they left the US for Pakistan was not to indulge in acts of terrorism in the US Homeland. They wanted to attack US nationals and interests in the Af-Pak region.Al Qaeda, the myriad Talibans in Pakistan and Punjabi terrorist organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the JEM and the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri with whom they came into contact in Pakistani territory, played them back into the US.
5. What, in effect, these organisations told the American Muslims was: "We can handle the jihad in the Af-Pak region. You will better serve the cause of Islam by going back to the US and starting a jihad in the US Homeland. We will give you the necessary training for this." This has come out very clearly in the testimonies in the US case against Najibullah Zazi, a US resident of Afghan origin, and two others, who had been motivated by Al Qaeda and the JEM to mount an attack in the New York subway system similar to the Madrid bombing of March 2004 and the London bombing of July,2005.
6. Al Qaeda, the Talibans and their associates have been trying to turn these US Muslims going to Pakistan in the hope of fighting in the Af-Pak region into surrogarte jihadis who will fight for them in the US Homeland. US officials and non-Governmental analysts have been playing down the threats of the TTP to indulge in reprisal attacks in the US Homeland on the ground that the TTP has no known presence in the US and does not have such a long reach. The TTP and others are not trying to create a presence for themselves in US territory, but are trying to manipulate American Muslims going to Pakistan to wage a jihad to go back to the US and wage a hihad in the US Homeland instead,
7.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Police in different US cities have till now succeeded in thwarting the attempts of these surrogate jihadis. Luck has also favoured them. But so long as more and more surrogate jihadis keep coming back to the US after having been motivated and trained in the training camps in Pakistani territory, there will always be a danger of one or more planned attacks being successful.
8. This danger will continue to confront the US so long as the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistani territory continues. The US has to act pre-emptively against the jihadi infrastructure instead of acting only if there is a successful terrorist strike in the US Homeland launched from Pakistan. All US warnings and admonitions have no effect on the Pakistani authorities because of their conviction that the importance of Pakistan for US policies in Afghanistan would protect Pakistan from any reprisals by the US and that anyhow, whatever the State Department might think and say, the Pentagon would oppose any action against Pakistan.
9. This conviction in the minds of the Pakistani leaders has to be removed and the Pakistani Army made to act against all jihadi infrastrcture whether directed against India, the US or anyone else and wherever it is located--- whether in North Waziristan, the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province, Punjab, Sindh or Balochistan. Unless this is done now, more and more surrogate jihadis will keep going back to the US to start a jihad in the US Homeland. There is a need for a clear-cut enunciation of the US policy articulated by President Barack Obama himself. (9-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The Agence France Presse (AFP) has quoted Mrs.Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, as warning Pakistan in a recorded TV interview for the CBS Channel to be telecast on May 9,2010, that it would face " very severe consequences" if a terror plot like the failed Times Square bombing of May 1 was traced to that country. She said:"We've made it very clear that if -- heaven-forbid-- an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences." However, she added: "We've gotten more cooperation and it's been a real sea change in the commitment we've seen from the Pakistan Government.We want more. We expect more."
2. Her warning has received greater attention in India than in Pakistan. The lack of an impact in Pakistan could be attributed to two reasons. Firstly, a careful reading of her remarks shows that her so-called warning is not with reference to the failed attempt by Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, on May 1,2010, to cause an incendiary car bomb explosion in the Times Square of New York, but with reference to any future attack that might be successful. What she meant was that if there was a successful attack in future and the investigation traced it back to Pakistan, it would face severe consequences. Secondly, comments emanating from White House spokesmen, Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, and Gen.David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, after the May 1 attempt show continued appreciation of the operations mounted by the Pakistan Army against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Swat Valley of the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province and in South Waziristan and seek to project the Pakistani co-operation against terrorism in positive colours. Mrs.Clinton also projected it in positive colours, but added a warning as to what could happen in future. The White House and the Pentagon have refrained from uttering any such warning.
3. This has been interpreted by the Pakistani authorities as indicating that Islamabad continues to enjoy the support of the White House and the Pentagon despite the unsuccussful attempt by Faisal. The Pakistani reaction to the identification of Faisal as the perpetrator of the attempt has been typical. Firstly,to assure all co-operation to the US in the investigation of the case. Secondly, to round up about about 20 persons in Karachi, Peshawar and other places, including four alleged members of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). Thirdly, to point out that Faisal is an American and not a Pakistani citizen and hence causes for his radicalisation are to be found in the US and not in Pakistan. And fourthly, to start releasing those arrested one after the other on grounds of lack of evidence. The ultimate outcome of the investigation at the Pakistan end is zero.
4.Cases detected in the US during the last two years or so show a trend which should be of concern to the US. Individual Muslims resident in the US, most of them of Pakistani origin, have been going to Pakistan in small groups to assist the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in their operations in the Af-Pak territory. Their original intention when they left the US for Pakistan was not to indulge in acts of terrorism in the US Homeland. They wanted to attack US nationals and interests in the Af-Pak region.Al Qaeda, the myriad Talibans in Pakistan and Punjabi terrorist organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the JEM and the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri with whom they came into contact in Pakistani territory, played them back into the US.
5. What, in effect, these organisations told the American Muslims was: "We can handle the jihad in the Af-Pak region. You will better serve the cause of Islam by going back to the US and starting a jihad in the US Homeland. We will give you the necessary training for this." This has come out very clearly in the testimonies in the US case against Najibullah Zazi, a US resident of Afghan origin, and two others, who had been motivated by Al Qaeda and the JEM to mount an attack in the New York subway system similar to the Madrid bombing of March 2004 and the London bombing of July,2005.
6. Al Qaeda, the Talibans and their associates have been trying to turn these US Muslims going to Pakistan in the hope of fighting in the Af-Pak region into surrogarte jihadis who will fight for them in the US Homeland. US officials and non-Governmental analysts have been playing down the threats of the TTP to indulge in reprisal attacks in the US Homeland on the ground that the TTP has no known presence in the US and does not have such a long reach. The TTP and others are not trying to create a presence for themselves in US territory, but are trying to manipulate American Muslims going to Pakistan to wage a jihad to go back to the US and wage a hihad in the US Homeland instead,
7.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Police in different US cities have till now succeeded in thwarting the attempts of these surrogate jihadis. Luck has also favoured them. But so long as more and more surrogate jihadis keep coming back to the US after having been motivated and trained in the training camps in Pakistani territory, there will always be a danger of one or more planned attacks being successful.
8. This danger will continue to confront the US so long as the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistani territory continues. The US has to act pre-emptively against the jihadi infrastructure instead of acting only if there is a successful terrorist strike in the US Homeland launched from Pakistan. All US warnings and admonitions have no effect on the Pakistani authorities because of their conviction that the importance of Pakistan for US policies in Afghanistan would protect Pakistan from any reprisals by the US and that anyhow, whatever the State Department might think and say, the Pentagon would oppose any action against Pakistan.
9. This conviction in the minds of the Pakistani leaders has to be removed and the Pakistani Army made to act against all jihadi infrastrcture whether directed against India, the US or anyone else and wherever it is located--- whether in North Waziristan, the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province, Punjab, Sindh or Balochistan. Unless this is done now, more and more surrogate jihadis will keep going back to the US to start a jihad in the US Homeland. There is a need for a clear-cut enunciation of the US policy articulated by President Barack Obama himself. (9-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Friday, May 7, 2010
TERROR IN NY: A JEM LINK?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.645
B.RAMAN
Najibullah Zazi , a 25-year-old Afghan citizen with permanent resident status in the US, was arrested by the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2009 on a charge of belonging to an Al Qaeda motivated and trained cell, which was allegedly planning suicide bombings in the New York City subway system. He pleaded guilty along with one of two other co-conspirators. The third co-conspirator did not plead guilty. The case is reserved for judgement in June.
2.According to the prosecution, the three had planned to attack the subway system at the instance of Saleh al-Somali, Al-Qaeda's head of external operations, and Rashid Rauf, who was described by the prosecution as an Al-Qaeda operative. Rashid Rauf, who was reportedly killed in a US Drone (pilotless plane) strike in North Waziristan in November,2008, belonged to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) of Pakistan and was related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the JEM.
3. Zarein Ahmedzay, a 25-year-old former New York taxi driver, one of the three co-conspirators, who pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, claimed the three had bought ingredients to make explosives similar to those used in the July 7 2005 bombings in London which killed 52 people on three tube trains and a bus. Ahmedzay told the court that he travelled to Pakistan with Najibullah Zazi and Adis Medunjanin in the summer of 2008. They went to a training camp in North Waziristan and volunteered to join the Taliban and fight the US forces in Afghanistan, but were told they would be "more useful if we returned to New York City... to conduct operations."Asked by the judge what kind of operations, he said: "Suicide-bombing operations.” Zazi told the court:"During the training, al Qaeda leaders asked us to return to the United States and conduct a martyrdom operation. We agreed to this plan." It was reported on April 13,2010, that a fourth suspect in the case----not yet named as a co-conspirator---had been arrested in Pakistan and that the US authorities were trying to get him to the US for interrogation.
4.Rashid Rauf, who motivated them, was from a Mirpuri family of Birmingham. The Mirpuris are the Punjabi-speaking residents of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). He disappeared from the UK in 2002 after the British Police suspected him in connection with the murder of one of his relatives in Birmingham. On August 9, 2006, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed to have picked him up from a house in Bhawalpur, southern Punjab, which he had bought after coming to Pakistan in 2002. The Pakistani authorities claimed that he was in close touch with Al Qaeda and that it was his arrest that gave them an inkling regarding the imminence of the plot of a group of jihadi extremists based in the UK to blow up a number of US-bound planes. The discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of many UK-based suspects of Pakistani origin were then announced by the British Police.
5.Despite his alleged involvement in the August 2006 plot to blow up a number of US-bound planes with liquid explosives, the Pakistani authorities avoided handing him over to the British Police for interrogation. The Government of Pakistan told a court on October 30, 2006, that Rashid Rauf had been detained under the Security of Pakistan Act. A Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorism Judge, Justice Safdar Hussain Malik, passed orders on November 21, 2006, approving his judicial custody in the Adiala jail. This ruled out his early transfer to the British Police for interrogation. He escaped from custody under mysterious circumstances on December, 16,2007, while being taken back to jail from the court. Many alleged that the ISI had allowed him to escape to avoid pressure from the British Police to hand him over for interrogation.
6. Quoting an unnamed senior Pakistani security official, an Islamabad datelined report of the Agence France Press (AFP) stated as follows on November 22, 2008: "The alleged mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot was killed in a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan early Saturday (November 15, 2008) .The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan early Saturday," a senior security official told AFP. The Al-Qaeda operative killed in the strike was identified as Abu Zubair al-Misri, the official added. He and the Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative were killed along with at least two other militants in a US drone attack on the house of a local tribesman in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, officials said. The missile strike came days after another US drone attack which killed six rebels, including an Arab Al-Qaeda operative. That attack prompted Taliban militants based in the rugged tribal territory bordering Afghanistan to warn of reprisal attacks across Pakistan if there were more strikes by the US. "
7.According to the “Daily Telegraph”,Rauf had been suspected of involvement in almost every significant terrorist plot in Britain since his escape to Pakistan in 2002, including the explosions of July 7, 2005 in London, the failed attacks of July 21, 2005 in London and the plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic.He was also behind an alleged plan to attack shopping centres in Manchester during Easter 2008.
8.Maulana Masood Azhar used to be a leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a founding member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front For Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formed in 1998. Its then Amir, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, was a signatory of bin Laden’s first fatwa calling for attacks against the US. Azhar had fought as a member of bin Laden’s group in Somalia in the early 1990s. In 1994, he entered India and was arrested by the Police and kept in custody in Jammu & Kashmir. He was one of those released by the Government of India in December,1999, to secure the release of the passengers of a plane of the Indian Airlines hijacked by the HUM to Kandahar to demand the release of Azhar and others. After his return to Pakistan from Kandahar, Azhar developed differences with Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, left the HUM and formed his own organization in January 2000 called the JEM. bin Laden failed in his efforts to patch up the differences between the two. He then switched his support from the HUM to the JEM.
9. The JEM was very active in J&K and was suspected of involvement in the attempted attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on December 13,2001. Unlike the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which never indulges in an act of terrorism in Pakistani territory and against Pakistani targets, the JEM has been involved in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory. It was suspected of involvement, along with Al Qaeda, in the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December,2003.It supported the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in its operations against the Pakistan Army in the Swat Valley and then in South Waziristan. It is now believed to have its training camps in North Waziristan along with those of Ilyas Kashmiri of the 313 Brigade.
10. Since Rashid Rauf joined it in 2002, the JEM has been training members of the Pakistani diaspora in the UK. The Zazi’s case was the first indication that it may be training jihadi volunteers from the US too. As part of the investigation into the attempted incendiary attack in Times Square of New York by Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, on May 1,2010, four suspected members of the JEM in Pakistan are reported to have been detained by the Pakistani authorities. Among those detained is one Muhammed Rehan, a suspected associate of Shahzad who allegedly has links to the JEM. According to a senior Pakistani official, Rehan made possible a meeting between Shahzad and at least one senior Taliban official. He alleged that Rehan drove Shahzad on July 7, 2009, to Peshawar. They also went to the Waziristan region, where they met with one or more senior Taliban leaders.
11. The suspected involvement of the JEM in the training of Faisal, if proved correct, would indicate, in the wake of its involvement in the motivation and training of the Zazi cell, a possible link between the members of the Zazi cell and Faisal. It would also indicate the possibility that like Zazi, Faisal was not acting alone. The JEM is becoming as worrisome as the LET as a surrogate of Al Qaeda using angry elements in the Pakistani diaspora for acts of terrorism not only in the UK as it had done in the past, but also in the US now. ( 7-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
Najibullah Zazi , a 25-year-old Afghan citizen with permanent resident status in the US, was arrested by the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2009 on a charge of belonging to an Al Qaeda motivated and trained cell, which was allegedly planning suicide bombings in the New York City subway system. He pleaded guilty along with one of two other co-conspirators. The third co-conspirator did not plead guilty. The case is reserved for judgement in June.
2.According to the prosecution, the three had planned to attack the subway system at the instance of Saleh al-Somali, Al-Qaeda's head of external operations, and Rashid Rauf, who was described by the prosecution as an Al-Qaeda operative. Rashid Rauf, who was reportedly killed in a US Drone (pilotless plane) strike in North Waziristan in November,2008, belonged to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) of Pakistan and was related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the Amir of the JEM.
3. Zarein Ahmedzay, a 25-year-old former New York taxi driver, one of the three co-conspirators, who pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, claimed the three had bought ingredients to make explosives similar to those used in the July 7 2005 bombings in London which killed 52 people on three tube trains and a bus. Ahmedzay told the court that he travelled to Pakistan with Najibullah Zazi and Adis Medunjanin in the summer of 2008. They went to a training camp in North Waziristan and volunteered to join the Taliban and fight the US forces in Afghanistan, but were told they would be "more useful if we returned to New York City... to conduct operations."Asked by the judge what kind of operations, he said: "Suicide-bombing operations.” Zazi told the court:"During the training, al Qaeda leaders asked us to return to the United States and conduct a martyrdom operation. We agreed to this plan." It was reported on April 13,2010, that a fourth suspect in the case----not yet named as a co-conspirator---had been arrested in Pakistan and that the US authorities were trying to get him to the US for interrogation.
4.Rashid Rauf, who motivated them, was from a Mirpuri family of Birmingham. The Mirpuris are the Punjabi-speaking residents of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). He disappeared from the UK in 2002 after the British Police suspected him in connection with the murder of one of his relatives in Birmingham. On August 9, 2006, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed to have picked him up from a house in Bhawalpur, southern Punjab, which he had bought after coming to Pakistan in 2002. The Pakistani authorities claimed that he was in close touch with Al Qaeda and that it was his arrest that gave them an inkling regarding the imminence of the plot of a group of jihadi extremists based in the UK to blow up a number of US-bound planes. The discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of many UK-based suspects of Pakistani origin were then announced by the British Police.
5.Despite his alleged involvement in the August 2006 plot to blow up a number of US-bound planes with liquid explosives, the Pakistani authorities avoided handing him over to the British Police for interrogation. The Government of Pakistan told a court on October 30, 2006, that Rashid Rauf had been detained under the Security of Pakistan Act. A Rawalpindi Anti-Terrorism Judge, Justice Safdar Hussain Malik, passed orders on November 21, 2006, approving his judicial custody in the Adiala jail. This ruled out his early transfer to the British Police for interrogation. He escaped from custody under mysterious circumstances on December, 16,2007, while being taken back to jail from the court. Many alleged that the ISI had allowed him to escape to avoid pressure from the British Police to hand him over for interrogation.
6. Quoting an unnamed senior Pakistani security official, an Islamabad datelined report of the Agence France Press (AFP) stated as follows on November 22, 2008: "The alleged mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot was killed in a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan early Saturday (November 15, 2008) .The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan early Saturday," a senior security official told AFP. The Al-Qaeda operative killed in the strike was identified as Abu Zubair al-Misri, the official added. He and the Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative were killed along with at least two other militants in a US drone attack on the house of a local tribesman in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, officials said. The missile strike came days after another US drone attack which killed six rebels, including an Arab Al-Qaeda operative. That attack prompted Taliban militants based in the rugged tribal territory bordering Afghanistan to warn of reprisal attacks across Pakistan if there were more strikes by the US. "
7.According to the “Daily Telegraph”,Rauf had been suspected of involvement in almost every significant terrorist plot in Britain since his escape to Pakistan in 2002, including the explosions of July 7, 2005 in London, the failed attacks of July 21, 2005 in London and the plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic.He was also behind an alleged plan to attack shopping centres in Manchester during Easter 2008.
8.Maulana Masood Azhar used to be a leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a founding member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front For Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formed in 1998. Its then Amir, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, was a signatory of bin Laden’s first fatwa calling for attacks against the US. Azhar had fought as a member of bin Laden’s group in Somalia in the early 1990s. In 1994, he entered India and was arrested by the Police and kept in custody in Jammu & Kashmir. He was one of those released by the Government of India in December,1999, to secure the release of the passengers of a plane of the Indian Airlines hijacked by the HUM to Kandahar to demand the release of Azhar and others. After his return to Pakistan from Kandahar, Azhar developed differences with Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, left the HUM and formed his own organization in January 2000 called the JEM. bin Laden failed in his efforts to patch up the differences between the two. He then switched his support from the HUM to the JEM.
9. The JEM was very active in J&K and was suspected of involvement in the attempted attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on December 13,2001. Unlike the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which never indulges in an act of terrorism in Pakistani territory and against Pakistani targets, the JEM has been involved in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory. It was suspected of involvement, along with Al Qaeda, in the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December,2003.It supported the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in its operations against the Pakistan Army in the Swat Valley and then in South Waziristan. It is now believed to have its training camps in North Waziristan along with those of Ilyas Kashmiri of the 313 Brigade.
10. Since Rashid Rauf joined it in 2002, the JEM has been training members of the Pakistani diaspora in the UK. The Zazi’s case was the first indication that it may be training jihadi volunteers from the US too. As part of the investigation into the attempted incendiary attack in Times Square of New York by Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, on May 1,2010, four suspected members of the JEM in Pakistan are reported to have been detained by the Pakistani authorities. Among those detained is one Muhammed Rehan, a suspected associate of Shahzad who allegedly has links to the JEM. According to a senior Pakistani official, Rehan made possible a meeting between Shahzad and at least one senior Taliban official. He alleged that Rehan drove Shahzad on July 7, 2009, to Peshawar. They also went to the Waziristan region, where they met with one or more senior Taliban leaders.
11. The suspected involvement of the JEM in the training of Faisal, if proved correct, would indicate, in the wake of its involvement in the motivation and training of the Zazi cell, a possible link between the members of the Zazi cell and Faisal. It would also indicate the possibility that like Zazi, Faisal was not acting alone. The JEM is becoming as worrisome as the LET as a surrogate of Al Qaeda using angry elements in the Pakistani diaspora for acts of terrorism not only in the UK as it had done in the past, but also in the US now. ( 7-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
TERROR IN NY: Q & A
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO 644
B.RAMAN
Q. There has been some criticism in the US media of the handling of the case relating to the attempt to cause an incendiary explosion in Times Square, New York, on the evening of May 1,2010, by Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin. To what extent is the criticism justified?
A.The intervention and forensic procedures worked very well from the moment a T-shirt vendor alerted a policeman that smoke was coming out of the Nissan Pathfinder vehicle. The people in the area were evacuated in an orderly manner. The area was sealed. The explosives expert of the NY Police defused the explosive device in the car. The forensic experts, who took over at this stage, did a quick job in establishing that the car had recently changed ownership, tracing the previous owner and with her help establishing Faisal Shahzad as the present owner. There was a slip-up in the follow-up thereafter. A police surveillance team, which was tailing Faisal, lost him. The Emirates Airlines at the JFK airport failed to notice that there was an alert from the US authorities to all airlines issued on the forenoon of May 3 not to let Faisal board any flight. However, the US Customs noticed his name in the passenger manifest sent to them after all passengers had boarded, the doors of the aircraft had closed and it had started moving away from the departure gate. They brought the aircraft back and the police arrested Faisal. Thus, the only slip-up by US officials was in missing him during the surveillance. Such slip-ups do occur during surveillance unless it was a bumper-to-bumper surveillance, which would be meaningless.
Q. Why did the police keep him under surveillance instead of arresting him immediately after he was identified?
A. They probably wanted to identify his associates, if he had any.
Q.Why did Faisal stay on in the US for 48 hours instead of fleeing immediately after parking the car with the incendiary device in Times Square?
A. It is intriguing why he did not flee immediately. Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani who killed two CIA officers in Washington DC in January 1993, and Ramzi Yousef, another Pakistani, who was involved in the attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in NY in February,1993, flew out of the US immediately after committing the crime. Faisal stayed on for 48 hours. If he had gone to the airport after leaving the vehicle in Times Square and left the US, he would have escaped for the time being. He did not do so. Instead, he went back to Connecticut, his city of residence, by train and tried to flee only after coming to know that the police had identified him. He appears to have been not a very well trained jihadi. He left a trail everywhere. He entered into e-Mail correspondence with the previous owner of the vehicle. He gave her the number of his disposable mobile telephone. He left in the Nissan vehicle a key bunch containing the key of his apartment and of another car which he owned. He lingered on in the US for 48 hours after making the attempt to cause an incendiary attack.This dos not speak highly of his security consciousness.
Q. Was he a self-motivated or an externally-motivated jihadi?
A. He appears to have been a self-motivated jihadi----a volunteer for jihad and not a recruit. This is apparent from the preparations made by him for leaving the US once for all. He had stopped making the mortgage payments on an apartment which he had bought with a bank loan, taken his wife and two children to Pakistan and left them there and left his job as a financial analyst with a local company.
Q. What does the incident speak of the quality of his motivation?
A. Not very high. He was angry against the US, but not angry enough to volunteer for an act of suicide terrorism. He was attached to his wife and children. He wanted to commit an act of terrorism against the US. At the same time, he did not want to "martyr" himself. He wanted to live. Being an educated person, he did not apparently believe in the jihadi brain-washing stuff that suicide bombers will go direct to heaven where many virgins would be waiting for them. Whoever trained him could not succeed in converting him into a do or die jihadi. He was totally different from the three Pakistani suicide bombers, who carried out the suicide bombings in Lndon in July 2005. They had been trained by Al Qaeda, which had made a good job of the training by converting them into highly-motivated suicide bombers.
Q. Why did the incendiary device fail?
A. It was noticed promptly by a vendor. The Police intervened promptly. The connections were loose. The detonation took a longer time to take place than it does normally. This gave the police time to defuse it. The alertness of the vendor, the professionalism of the police and luck contributed to the failure.
Q. It has been reported by some sections of the US media that the fertiliser which Faisal had used was a harmless type which would not have caused an explosion?
A. Ever since the jihadi terrorists started using nitrogenous fertilisers as an explosive material, the authorities in Western countries have been persuading fertiliser manufacturers to change the chemical composition of the fertiliser produced by them to ensure that they cannot be used as an explosive material. Most of the fertilisers now being sold in the West do not explode. Faisal and his trainers were probably not aware of this. He bought a fertiliser without knowing it would not explode.
Q. It has been reported that the car owner who sold the Nissan to Faisal did not know his name. She gave a physical description of him. After that, the police showed her some pics. One of them was of Faisal and she identified him as the person who bought her car. How did the police zero in on him so fast?
A. This is an intriguing aspect of the case. This creates a suspicion in one's mind that the FBI knew Faisal before in some connection. He was probably not a stranger to them. I would not be surprised if like David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) Faisal had also been in touch with the FBI.
Q. Was Faisal acting alone or did he have accomplices?
A. It has been reported that he has been claiming that he acted alone. His accomplices were probably in Pakistan and not in the US. It would seem that almost all the phone calls made by him in the days before the attempt were to numbers in Pakistan and not to numbers in the US.
Q. He is reported to have admitted that he received training in bomb-making in the Waziristan area of Pakistan. Who might have trained him?
A. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the incident, but the quality of the training given to him appears rather low, but the TTP's training is of high quality like the training imparted by Al Qaeda to the London suicide bombers.
Q.The Pakistani jihadis of the diaspora in the UK seem to have had more successes in carrying out acts of terrorism than those of the US? How to explain it?
A.Most of the migration from Pakistan to the UK took place from the uneducated or ill-educated rural milieu-----landless workers, poor peasants, manual workers and others.Even though they were the more moderate Barelvis when they migrated, many of them have become fierce Deobandis/Wahabis. Their motivation is strong and they are easily impressed by the brain-washing of the Pakistani Mullas.Most of the migration to the US came from the big cities and medium and small towns. They have remained Barelvis even after migrating to the US. The Deobandi-Barelvi impact on the Pakistani diaspora in the US is still weak. Fundamentalist Mullas do not have the same influence on the Pakistani diaspora in the US as they have in the UK.
Q. What is the ethnic background of Faisal?
A. Some Pakistani sources have described him as a Kashmiri from Nowshera. Others have described him as a Pashtun. It is interesting to note that when news of his arrest by the FBI broke in the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa (Old NWFP) province, many described it as a US conspiracy against the Pashtuns.
Q. What is the lesson for the US from this episode?
A. The importance of action against the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistan----consisting of extremist madrasas and the training camps of various jihadi organisations whether located in the tribal belt or Punjab or elsewhere. The equal importance of action against terrorist sanctuaries. Pervez Musharraf took millions of dollars of governmental and non-governmental funds from the US promising to stop the use of the madrasas as jihad factories, but did nothing. The present Government has been taking billions of dollars and military equipment from the US without any action against the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistani territory. The Pakistani rulers---whether civilian or military---- have learnt the art of making an ass of the US by promising to act against terrorism from Pakistani territory without doing anything. The second lesson is that jihadi terrorists---whether Arabs or Pakistanis or others---- are determined to have another successful act of terrorism in the US homeland. They have been unlucky twice, but they will continue trying.
Q.Any other interesting aspect of the case?
A. It has been reported that some of the messages pertaining to reprisal attacks against the US purporting to be from the TTP were uploaded from Connecticut? Who did so? Faisal himself or somebody else? ( 6-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
Q. There has been some criticism in the US media of the handling of the case relating to the attempt to cause an incendiary explosion in Times Square, New York, on the evening of May 1,2010, by Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin. To what extent is the criticism justified?
A.The intervention and forensic procedures worked very well from the moment a T-shirt vendor alerted a policeman that smoke was coming out of the Nissan Pathfinder vehicle. The people in the area were evacuated in an orderly manner. The area was sealed. The explosives expert of the NY Police defused the explosive device in the car. The forensic experts, who took over at this stage, did a quick job in establishing that the car had recently changed ownership, tracing the previous owner and with her help establishing Faisal Shahzad as the present owner. There was a slip-up in the follow-up thereafter. A police surveillance team, which was tailing Faisal, lost him. The Emirates Airlines at the JFK airport failed to notice that there was an alert from the US authorities to all airlines issued on the forenoon of May 3 not to let Faisal board any flight. However, the US Customs noticed his name in the passenger manifest sent to them after all passengers had boarded, the doors of the aircraft had closed and it had started moving away from the departure gate. They brought the aircraft back and the police arrested Faisal. Thus, the only slip-up by US officials was in missing him during the surveillance. Such slip-ups do occur during surveillance unless it was a bumper-to-bumper surveillance, which would be meaningless.
Q. Why did the police keep him under surveillance instead of arresting him immediately after he was identified?
A. They probably wanted to identify his associates, if he had any.
Q.Why did Faisal stay on in the US for 48 hours instead of fleeing immediately after parking the car with the incendiary device in Times Square?
A. It is intriguing why he did not flee immediately. Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani who killed two CIA officers in Washington DC in January 1993, and Ramzi Yousef, another Pakistani, who was involved in the attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in NY in February,1993, flew out of the US immediately after committing the crime. Faisal stayed on for 48 hours. If he had gone to the airport after leaving the vehicle in Times Square and left the US, he would have escaped for the time being. He did not do so. Instead, he went back to Connecticut, his city of residence, by train and tried to flee only after coming to know that the police had identified him. He appears to have been not a very well trained jihadi. He left a trail everywhere. He entered into e-Mail correspondence with the previous owner of the vehicle. He gave her the number of his disposable mobile telephone. He left in the Nissan vehicle a key bunch containing the key of his apartment and of another car which he owned. He lingered on in the US for 48 hours after making the attempt to cause an incendiary attack.This dos not speak highly of his security consciousness.
Q. Was he a self-motivated or an externally-motivated jihadi?
A. He appears to have been a self-motivated jihadi----a volunteer for jihad and not a recruit. This is apparent from the preparations made by him for leaving the US once for all. He had stopped making the mortgage payments on an apartment which he had bought with a bank loan, taken his wife and two children to Pakistan and left them there and left his job as a financial analyst with a local company.
Q. What does the incident speak of the quality of his motivation?
A. Not very high. He was angry against the US, but not angry enough to volunteer for an act of suicide terrorism. He was attached to his wife and children. He wanted to commit an act of terrorism against the US. At the same time, he did not want to "martyr" himself. He wanted to live. Being an educated person, he did not apparently believe in the jihadi brain-washing stuff that suicide bombers will go direct to heaven where many virgins would be waiting for them. Whoever trained him could not succeed in converting him into a do or die jihadi. He was totally different from the three Pakistani suicide bombers, who carried out the suicide bombings in Lndon in July 2005. They had been trained by Al Qaeda, which had made a good job of the training by converting them into highly-motivated suicide bombers.
Q. Why did the incendiary device fail?
A. It was noticed promptly by a vendor. The Police intervened promptly. The connections were loose. The detonation took a longer time to take place than it does normally. This gave the police time to defuse it. The alertness of the vendor, the professionalism of the police and luck contributed to the failure.
Q. It has been reported by some sections of the US media that the fertiliser which Faisal had used was a harmless type which would not have caused an explosion?
A. Ever since the jihadi terrorists started using nitrogenous fertilisers as an explosive material, the authorities in Western countries have been persuading fertiliser manufacturers to change the chemical composition of the fertiliser produced by them to ensure that they cannot be used as an explosive material. Most of the fertilisers now being sold in the West do not explode. Faisal and his trainers were probably not aware of this. He bought a fertiliser without knowing it would not explode.
Q. It has been reported that the car owner who sold the Nissan to Faisal did not know his name. She gave a physical description of him. After that, the police showed her some pics. One of them was of Faisal and she identified him as the person who bought her car. How did the police zero in on him so fast?
A. This is an intriguing aspect of the case. This creates a suspicion in one's mind that the FBI knew Faisal before in some connection. He was probably not a stranger to them. I would not be surprised if like David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) Faisal had also been in touch with the FBI.
Q. Was Faisal acting alone or did he have accomplices?
A. It has been reported that he has been claiming that he acted alone. His accomplices were probably in Pakistan and not in the US. It would seem that almost all the phone calls made by him in the days before the attempt were to numbers in Pakistan and not to numbers in the US.
Q. He is reported to have admitted that he received training in bomb-making in the Waziristan area of Pakistan. Who might have trained him?
A. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the incident, but the quality of the training given to him appears rather low, but the TTP's training is of high quality like the training imparted by Al Qaeda to the London suicide bombers.
Q.The Pakistani jihadis of the diaspora in the UK seem to have had more successes in carrying out acts of terrorism than those of the US? How to explain it?
A.Most of the migration from Pakistan to the UK took place from the uneducated or ill-educated rural milieu-----landless workers, poor peasants, manual workers and others.Even though they were the more moderate Barelvis when they migrated, many of them have become fierce Deobandis/Wahabis. Their motivation is strong and they are easily impressed by the brain-washing of the Pakistani Mullas.Most of the migration to the US came from the big cities and medium and small towns. They have remained Barelvis even after migrating to the US. The Deobandi-Barelvi impact on the Pakistani diaspora in the US is still weak. Fundamentalist Mullas do not have the same influence on the Pakistani diaspora in the US as they have in the UK.
Q. What is the ethnic background of Faisal?
A. Some Pakistani sources have described him as a Kashmiri from Nowshera. Others have described him as a Pashtun. It is interesting to note that when news of his arrest by the FBI broke in the Khyber-Pakhtunkwa (Old NWFP) province, many described it as a US conspiracy against the Pashtuns.
Q. What is the lesson for the US from this episode?
A. The importance of action against the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistan----consisting of extremist madrasas and the training camps of various jihadi organisations whether located in the tribal belt or Punjab or elsewhere. The equal importance of action against terrorist sanctuaries. Pervez Musharraf took millions of dollars of governmental and non-governmental funds from the US promising to stop the use of the madrasas as jihad factories, but did nothing. The present Government has been taking billions of dollars and military equipment from the US without any action against the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistani territory. The Pakistani rulers---whether civilian or military---- have learnt the art of making an ass of the US by promising to act against terrorism from Pakistani territory without doing anything. The second lesson is that jihadi terrorists---whether Arabs or Pakistanis or others---- are determined to have another successful act of terrorism in the US homeland. They have been unlucky twice, but they will continue trying.
Q.Any other interesting aspect of the case?
A. It has been reported that some of the messages pertaining to reprisal attacks against the US purporting to be from the TTP were uploaded from Connecticut? Who did so? Faisal himself or somebody else? ( 6-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
TERROR IN NY: A PAKISTANI HAND?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO 643
B.RAMAN
A US citizen of Pakistani origin, who still retains his Pakistani citizenship after having acquired US citizenship, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the JFK airport of New York on the evening of May 3,2010, in connection with their investigation into the attempted incendiary attack in the Times Square of New York on the evening of May 1,2010. He had boarded a Dubai-bound flight of the Emirate Airlines after having passed through security and immigration controls. The doors of the aircraft had been closed and it had started moving away from the departure gates when the FBI ordered it to come back to the departure gates and took him into custody. He was to be produced before a local court on May 4.
2. The FBI has taken over the responsibility for the investigation of the case from the New York Police, thereby indicating that the authorities suspected that the attempted incendiary attack could have links with international terrorism. The name of the arrested suspect has been given by sections of the US media as Shahzad Faisal , but Mr.Eric Holder, the US Attorney-General, gave his name as Faisal Shahzad.
3. He is stated to be 30 years old and has been described by some reports as an information technology expert. It is not known whether he is a Pashtun, but some reports say he is married to a lady from Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, who had studied in the UK before migrating to the US. It is not known when Faisal Shahzad migrated to the US, but he was naturalized as a US citizen on April 17 2009. He traveled to Dubai in June 2009, and returned to Connecticut, his city of residence, in April 2010.During this period, he is believed to have spent about five months in Pakistan. It is not known where he spent the remaining period.
4. The breakthrough in the investigation came after the police established that the Nissan Pathfinder vehicle which was used for the failed incendiary attack had been bought by a Hispanic or Middle-Eastern looking man from a woman of Connecticut three weeks ago for US $ 1800 paid in cash. The police had established her as the original owner of the car with the help of the identification number. The suspect had erased the number from the dashboard, but not from the engine. She had advertised for the sale of the car in one of the Internet sites for the sale/purchase of used cars.
5. She did not recall the name of the purchaser, but identified Faisal as the buyer from his picture shown to her by the FBI. It is not clear how the FBI zeroed in on him. There are two possibilities: Either he was already under watch by the FBI or he was one of the Pakistani-origin residents of Connecticut who had recently returned after a longish visit to Pakistan and hence appeared in the database of the FBI, which keeps track of residents of Pakistani origin spending a long period in Pakistan.
6.It is not clear why the FBI immediately did not flash his name to the airport security in all airports. The fact that he was able to pass through the security and immigration controls at the JFK airport and board the aircraft shows that at the time he passed through the controls they had no adverse information about him. Luckily, after he had boarded the aircraft, the authorities realized he was on board the aircraft and brought it back to arrest him.
7. The investigating authorities do not know as yet whether he was a lone wolf terrorist or whether he had accomplices. They seem to be conducting their investigation on the presumption that there could be accomplices. The FBI has till now identified him only as the person who had purchased the Nissan Pathfinder vehicle and not as the person who drove the vehicle to the Times Square and left it there with the timed incendiary device inside. They are enquiring whether it was he who left the vehicle or someone else.
8. The claim made by Qari Hussain Mehsud of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) regarding responsibility for the attempt is now being taken a little more seriously by the FBI because the message making the claim had been recorded before the incident. The FBI is also taking seriously a separate message of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, warning of reprisal strikes in the US, which had also been recorded before May 1.
9.Both the TTP and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) have been angry against the US over its Drone strikes in North and South Waziristan. The TTP has been angry because of the death of Baitullah Mehsud, its then Amir, following a Drone strike in August last, and the subsequent injury to Hakimullah in another strike in January,2010. The IJU is angry because of the alleged death of its leader Najmiddin Jalolov in a Drone strike.
10. According to some speculation, the Nissan vehicle was parked near the offices of Viacom Inc., which owns the theatre Comedy Central. It reportedly recently staged an episode of the animated show "South Park", which was strongly criticized by a group called the Muslim Revolution for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohammad. Was this also a possible motive? It is not yet clear. ( 4-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
A US citizen of Pakistani origin, who still retains his Pakistani citizenship after having acquired US citizenship, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the JFK airport of New York on the evening of May 3,2010, in connection with their investigation into the attempted incendiary attack in the Times Square of New York on the evening of May 1,2010. He had boarded a Dubai-bound flight of the Emirate Airlines after having passed through security and immigration controls. The doors of the aircraft had been closed and it had started moving away from the departure gates when the FBI ordered it to come back to the departure gates and took him into custody. He was to be produced before a local court on May 4.
2. The FBI has taken over the responsibility for the investigation of the case from the New York Police, thereby indicating that the authorities suspected that the attempted incendiary attack could have links with international terrorism. The name of the arrested suspect has been given by sections of the US media as Shahzad Faisal , but Mr.Eric Holder, the US Attorney-General, gave his name as Faisal Shahzad.
3. He is stated to be 30 years old and has been described by some reports as an information technology expert. It is not known whether he is a Pashtun, but some reports say he is married to a lady from Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, who had studied in the UK before migrating to the US. It is not known when Faisal Shahzad migrated to the US, but he was naturalized as a US citizen on April 17 2009. He traveled to Dubai in June 2009, and returned to Connecticut, his city of residence, in April 2010.During this period, he is believed to have spent about five months in Pakistan. It is not known where he spent the remaining period.
4. The breakthrough in the investigation came after the police established that the Nissan Pathfinder vehicle which was used for the failed incendiary attack had been bought by a Hispanic or Middle-Eastern looking man from a woman of Connecticut three weeks ago for US $ 1800 paid in cash. The police had established her as the original owner of the car with the help of the identification number. The suspect had erased the number from the dashboard, but not from the engine. She had advertised for the sale of the car in one of the Internet sites for the sale/purchase of used cars.
5. She did not recall the name of the purchaser, but identified Faisal as the buyer from his picture shown to her by the FBI. It is not clear how the FBI zeroed in on him. There are two possibilities: Either he was already under watch by the FBI or he was one of the Pakistani-origin residents of Connecticut who had recently returned after a longish visit to Pakistan and hence appeared in the database of the FBI, which keeps track of residents of Pakistani origin spending a long period in Pakistan.
6.It is not clear why the FBI immediately did not flash his name to the airport security in all airports. The fact that he was able to pass through the security and immigration controls at the JFK airport and board the aircraft shows that at the time he passed through the controls they had no adverse information about him. Luckily, after he had boarded the aircraft, the authorities realized he was on board the aircraft and brought it back to arrest him.
7. The investigating authorities do not know as yet whether he was a lone wolf terrorist or whether he had accomplices. They seem to be conducting their investigation on the presumption that there could be accomplices. The FBI has till now identified him only as the person who had purchased the Nissan Pathfinder vehicle and not as the person who drove the vehicle to the Times Square and left it there with the timed incendiary device inside. They are enquiring whether it was he who left the vehicle or someone else.
8. The claim made by Qari Hussain Mehsud of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) regarding responsibility for the attempt is now being taken a little more seriously by the FBI because the message making the claim had been recorded before the incident. The FBI is also taking seriously a separate message of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, warning of reprisal strikes in the US, which had also been recorded before May 1.
9.Both the TTP and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) have been angry against the US over its Drone strikes in North and South Waziristan. The TTP has been angry because of the death of Baitullah Mehsud, its then Amir, following a Drone strike in August last, and the subsequent injury to Hakimullah in another strike in January,2010. The IJU is angry because of the alleged death of its leader Najmiddin Jalolov in a Drone strike.
10. According to some speculation, the Nissan vehicle was parked near the offices of Viacom Inc., which owns the theatre Comedy Central. It reportedly recently staged an episode of the animated show "South Park", which was strongly criticized by a group called the Muslim Revolution for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohammad. Was this also a possible motive? It is not yet clear. ( 4-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Monday, May 3, 2010
NY TERRORIST ATTEMPT:PAK TALIBAN & ISLAMIC JIHAD UNION AMONG SUSPECTS
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO 642
B.RAMAN
While the New York Police are still to reach any conclusion regarding the responsibility for the attempted incendiary attack in the Times Square of New York on the evening of May 1,2010, tribal sources in Pakistan suspect that it was a joint attempt by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), also known as the Islamic Jihad Group.
2. The TTP has already claimed responsibility for the attempt through a message purporting to be from Qari Hussian Mehsud, the head of the suicide terrorism training wing of the TTP, disseminated through the Internet on May 2, but its claim has not been taken seriously by the US investigating authorities till now.The IJU, which has remained silent so far, is a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). It projects itself as a global jihadi group and not as an etnic Uzbeck group and has in its ranks recruits from Germany, including White converts to Islam, and the US, including some Pakistanis born of mixed marriages like David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba. In the past it had come to notice for planning terrorist attacks against German and US targets in Germany, which did not, however, materialise.
3.While the US authorities are looking into all angles----including the possibility of the involvement of non-Muslim irrational elements in the US---- the possibility that jihadi elements of either local or extrernal origin might have been invloved started receiving some attention on May 3. While their skepticism about the claim of the TTP is understandable, it will be unwise to reject it without proper verification. (4-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
While the New York Police are still to reach any conclusion regarding the responsibility for the attempted incendiary attack in the Times Square of New York on the evening of May 1,2010, tribal sources in Pakistan suspect that it was a joint attempt by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), also known as the Islamic Jihad Group.
2. The TTP has already claimed responsibility for the attempt through a message purporting to be from Qari Hussian Mehsud, the head of the suicide terrorism training wing of the TTP, disseminated through the Internet on May 2, but its claim has not been taken seriously by the US investigating authorities till now.The IJU, which has remained silent so far, is a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). It projects itself as a global jihadi group and not as an etnic Uzbeck group and has in its ranks recruits from Germany, including White converts to Islam, and the US, including some Pakistanis born of mixed marriages like David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba. In the past it had come to notice for planning terrorist attacks against German and US targets in Germany, which did not, however, materialise.
3.While the US authorities are looking into all angles----including the possibility of the involvement of non-Muslim irrational elements in the US---- the possibility that jihadi elements of either local or extrernal origin might have been invloved started receiving some attention on May 3. While their skepticism about the claim of the TTP is understandable, it will be unwise to reject it without proper verification. (4-5-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
THE IMPORTANCE OF KASAB CAUGHT ALIVE
( Article written for “Mumbai Mirror” at their request)
B. RAMAN
A terrorist caught alive is not deniable. One can deny oral, documentary and technical intelligence as fabricated, but one cannot deny someone caught in flesh and blood.
By catching Ajmal Kasab alive and in flesh and blood, the Mumbai Police made certain that neither the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) nor Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the LET’s handler, will be able to deny convincingly the LET’s involvement in the 26/11 terrorist strike in Mumbai. He is the living proof of the involvement of the LET.
And the journalist, who photographed him moving around with his accomplice in the railway terminus killing people with his gun, recorded undeniably his role in the perpetration of the dastardly crime.
If Kasab’s capture and his interrogation proved the involvement of the LET in the terrorist strike, the photographs proved his involvement in killing dozens of innocent civilians.
His interrogation enabled the police not only to re-construct the entire conspiracy mounted by the LET and its handlers in Pakistan, but also identify the conspirators based in Pakistan headed by Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, the Amir of the LET.
The monitoring of the telephone conversations between the perpetrators in Mumbai and their handlers in Pakistan produced a wealth of technical evidence about the role played by the Pakistan-based conspirators in the orchestration of the terrorist strike. But without the corroborating details provided by Kasab, it might not have been possible to identify them by name and force Pakistan to arrest them.
If Kasab had not been caught alive and interrogated, Pakistan might have rejected the intercepted telephone conversations as unlinkable to specific individuals. It is Kasab’s interrogation that provided the link between the recorded voices and the persons to whom those voices belonged. Kasab knew those persons and recognized their voices.
The reconstruction of the crime and the identification of the Pakistan-based conspirators by the Mumbai Police with the help of Kasab forced Pakistan to arrest and prosecute the persons identified by Kasab.
A group of 10 fedayeen (suicidal attackers) from Pakistan had mounted the attack. The instructions to them by the LET were not to get caught alive. Nine of them died during the execution of their attack. If Kasab had also died, the Mumbai police might still be struggling to successfully investigate the case.
There was total confusion in Pakistan when they heard that Kasab had been caught alive thereby depriving them of the protection of deniability. Even then, they tried to deny their involvement by claiming that Kasab was not Pakistani. But after some journalists in Pakistan traced the family of Kasab in his home village in Pakistani Punjab and interviewed them, even this fig leaf of a deniability was not available to them. They had to admit that the terrorist strike had been mounted from Pakistan by the LET.
The interrogation of Kasab provided the police and the intelligence agencies with a lot of information as to when and how the terrorist strike was planned, who were the people recruited, where were they trained, what kind of training they received, who were the people involved in training them, what instructions were given to them before they left Karachi for Mumbai etc.
Such details would have enabled the investigating and intelligence agencies to strengthen their data base on the LET and to understand better how it functions.
But Kasab was only a foot jihadi----trained to carry out a terrorist strike and die in the process. He was not from the leadership core of the LET. His knowledge was confined to details of the terrorist strike of 26/11. He had no knowledge of the future plans of the LET and of its sleeper cells in India, including the identities of the Indian Mujahideen members in India helping the LET.
While he was helpful in the investigation and reconstruction of the terrorist attack of 26/11, he was of no use in detecting and neutralizing the sleeper cells of the LET and the Indian Mujahideen. His utility in anticipating and thwarting the LET’s future strikes will be almost nil.
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi)
B. RAMAN
A terrorist caught alive is not deniable. One can deny oral, documentary and technical intelligence as fabricated, but one cannot deny someone caught in flesh and blood.
By catching Ajmal Kasab alive and in flesh and blood, the Mumbai Police made certain that neither the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) nor Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the LET’s handler, will be able to deny convincingly the LET’s involvement in the 26/11 terrorist strike in Mumbai. He is the living proof of the involvement of the LET.
And the journalist, who photographed him moving around with his accomplice in the railway terminus killing people with his gun, recorded undeniably his role in the perpetration of the dastardly crime.
If Kasab’s capture and his interrogation proved the involvement of the LET in the terrorist strike, the photographs proved his involvement in killing dozens of innocent civilians.
His interrogation enabled the police not only to re-construct the entire conspiracy mounted by the LET and its handlers in Pakistan, but also identify the conspirators based in Pakistan headed by Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, the Amir of the LET.
The monitoring of the telephone conversations between the perpetrators in Mumbai and their handlers in Pakistan produced a wealth of technical evidence about the role played by the Pakistan-based conspirators in the orchestration of the terrorist strike. But without the corroborating details provided by Kasab, it might not have been possible to identify them by name and force Pakistan to arrest them.
If Kasab had not been caught alive and interrogated, Pakistan might have rejected the intercepted telephone conversations as unlinkable to specific individuals. It is Kasab’s interrogation that provided the link between the recorded voices and the persons to whom those voices belonged. Kasab knew those persons and recognized their voices.
The reconstruction of the crime and the identification of the Pakistan-based conspirators by the Mumbai Police with the help of Kasab forced Pakistan to arrest and prosecute the persons identified by Kasab.
A group of 10 fedayeen (suicidal attackers) from Pakistan had mounted the attack. The instructions to them by the LET were not to get caught alive. Nine of them died during the execution of their attack. If Kasab had also died, the Mumbai police might still be struggling to successfully investigate the case.
There was total confusion in Pakistan when they heard that Kasab had been caught alive thereby depriving them of the protection of deniability. Even then, they tried to deny their involvement by claiming that Kasab was not Pakistani. But after some journalists in Pakistan traced the family of Kasab in his home village in Pakistani Punjab and interviewed them, even this fig leaf of a deniability was not available to them. They had to admit that the terrorist strike had been mounted from Pakistan by the LET.
The interrogation of Kasab provided the police and the intelligence agencies with a lot of information as to when and how the terrorist strike was planned, who were the people recruited, where were they trained, what kind of training they received, who were the people involved in training them, what instructions were given to them before they left Karachi for Mumbai etc.
Such details would have enabled the investigating and intelligence agencies to strengthen their data base on the LET and to understand better how it functions.
But Kasab was only a foot jihadi----trained to carry out a terrorist strike and die in the process. He was not from the leadership core of the LET. His knowledge was confined to details of the terrorist strike of 26/11. He had no knowledge of the future plans of the LET and of its sleeper cells in India, including the identities of the Indian Mujahideen members in India helping the LET.
While he was helpful in the investigation and reconstruction of the terrorist attack of 26/11, he was of no use in detecting and neutralizing the sleeper cells of the LET and the Indian Mujahideen. His utility in anticipating and thwarting the LET’s future strikes will be almost nil.
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi)
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