B.RAMAN
Despite differences over strategies and tactics in the fight against global jihadi terrorism, there is a convergence of views between theoutgoing administration of President George Bush and the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama as to what should bethe ultimate objective of the US war against global terrorism.
2. They are both agreed that the ultimate objective should be to prevent another 9/11 in the US homeland by Al Qaeda and an act ofcatastrophic terrorism involving either the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material or devastating attacks on the criticalinfrastructure.
3. In their view, of all the terrorist organisations operating from the Pakistani territory, only Al Qaeda has the capability for launching another9/11 in the US homeland and for organising an act of catastrophic terrorism. Hence, the first priority of the Bush administration was to thewar against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, its ideological ally. This priority will continue under Obama too. During the election campaign,Obama's criticism of the policies of Bush was not because of the focus on the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but because of what helooked upon as the inadequacy of that focus as illustrated by the perceived failure of the Bush administration to have Osama bin Laden andhis No.2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri killed or captured and the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal belt destroyed.
4. He attributed the inadequacy of that focus and the failure of the Bush Administration to destroy or even seriously weaken Al Qaeda towhat he looked upon as the unnecessary US involvement in Iraq, which took resources and attention away from the war against Al Qaeda inthe Pakistan-Afghanistan region. According to him, the real threat to the US homeland comes from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and notfrom Iraq and hence there should have been no diversion of the attention and resources from there. He said during the election campaign:"We are fighting on the wrong battlefield. The terrorists who attacked us and who continue to plot against us are resurgent in the hillsbetween Afghanistan and Pakistan. They should have been our focus then. They must be our focus now.” In a speech at the Wilson Centre inWashington DC on August 1,2007, he said: “When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won…The first step must be getting offthe wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
5.Anoher point on which there has been a convegence between the views of the two is over th importance of Pakistan in the war againstglobal terrorism. Both feel that the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban cannot be won without th co-operation of Pakistan, which,essentially means the Pakistani Army. Obama said during the campaign: "Success in Afghanistan requires action in Pakistan. While Pakistanhas made some contributions by bringing some al Qaeda operatives to justice, the Pakistani government has not done nearly enough to limitextremist activity in the country and to help stabilize Afghanistan. I have supported aid to Pakistan in the Senate and ... I would continuesubstantial military aid if Pakistan takes action to root out the terrorists." He also said when Pervez Musharraf was still the President: “If wehave actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will. I firmly believe that if we know thewhereabouts of bin Laden and his deputies and we have exhausted all other options, we must take them out.”
6. His proclaimed determination to act unilaterally against high-value targets of Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory is no different from the policypursued by the Bush Administration in the last year of its presidency. Unmanned Predator aircraft of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)carried out over 30 strikes on suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory during 2008 as against 10 in 2006 and2007. These strikes were carried out despite protests by the Pakistan Government and Army and resulted in the deaths of eight middle-levelArab operatives of Al Qaeda and Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, who was related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, theAmir of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM).
7. Even if Obama wants the CIA to further step up its Predator attacks, their effectiveness would depend on a further improvement in theflow of human and technical intelligence. Obama has avoided specific pronouncements on his willingness to order land-based strikes on thesanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory. Under the Bush administration, the US special forces did try a land-basedstrike in South Waziristan in September,2008, which was not successful. It did not launch any more land-based strikes following a furore inPakistan. While the Asif Ali Zardari Government is avoiding any action to resist the Predator strikes despite its open condemnation of them,there seems to be a fear in Washington that if the US continues to undertake land-based strikes, public pressure could force the PakistanGovernment and the Army to resist them resulting in an undesirable confrontation between the armies of the two countries.
8. Obama is likely to face the same dilemma as Bush faced. The sporadic successes of the Predator strikes alone will not be able toeffectively destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory. To be effective, land-based strikes wouldalso be necessary. However, the political consequences of repeated land-based strikes would be unpredictable. There is alreadyconsiderable anger in the tribal belt against the Pakisan army for co-operating----even half-heartedly--- with the US in its war against AlQaeda and the Taliban. How to make up for this unsatisfactory co-operation by the Pakistan Army by stepping up unilateral US covertactions in the Pakistani territory without adding to the public anger against the Zardari Government? That is a question to which theadvisers of Bush were not able to come up with a satisfactory answer. Even the advisers of Obama do not seem to have an answer to this sofar.
9. A recommendation of Gen.David Petraeus, the Commander of the US Central Command, to induct another 30,000 US troops intoAfghanistan in the coming months to counter the activities of the Taliban has already been approved by Bush. This decision has the supportof Obama. But, more troops alone to step up the operations against the Afghan Taliban in Afghan territory would not serve the purposeunless accompanied by action to choke the supplies of men and material from the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Pakistaniterritory and the flow of funds from the once again flourishing heroin trade in Afghanistan.
10. No terrorist organisation in Pakistan can exist without State complicity if not sponsorship, sanctuaries and funds. Not only Al Qaeda andthe Taliban, but also the largely Punjabi terrorist organisations of Pakistan operating against India in Indian territory enjoy these threeessential elements of survival in Pakistan.A ground reality not realised in Washington DC is that all the jihadi terrorist organisations basedin Pakistan make available to each other the use of their hide-outs, sanctuaries and training centres. One recently saw the instance ofRashid Rauf of the JEM being killed in a Predator strike on an Al Qaeda hide-out. There have been reports in the Pakistan media of twoPunjabi terrorists belonging to what they have described as the Punjabi Taliban being killed in a Predator attack on an Al Qaeda vehicle inSouth Waziristan on January 1,2009. The Predator strike targeted and killed Osama al-Kini alias Fahid Mohammad Ally Masalam, describedas responsible for Al Qaeda operations in Pakistan including the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 21,2008, and hisNo. 2 Sheik Ahmed Salim Swedan. Both were Kenyan nationals. In addition to the two of them, the Predator strike also reportedly killed twomembers of the JEM, who were also in the same vehicle. One would recall that in March,2002, Abu Zubaidah, the Palestinian member of AlQaeda, was caught in a hide-out of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab.
11. From such instances, it should be clear that one cannot make a distinction between sanctuaries of Al Qaeda, those of the Taliban andthose of the anti-India organisations. All sanctuaries have to be attacked and destroyed irrespective of to which organisation theybelonged. The Bush Administration was not prepared to follow such a clear-cut policy and tried to make an operational distinction betweenanti-US terrorism and anti-Indian terrorism. Pakistan fully exploited this ambivalence.
12. From the various statements of Obama and his advisers, there is not much reason for India to hope that this ambivalence woulddisappear under him. The double standards vis--vis anti-US and anti-India terrorism, which have been the defining characteristics of UScounter-terrorism policies since 1981, will continue to come to the rescue of Pakistan. It would be futile for India to expect any majorchange under Obama. We should deal with the terrorism against our nationals and interests emanating from Pakistani territory in our ownway, through our own means and on our own terms. So far as India's fight against terrorism is concerned, the advent of Obama as the nextPresident of the US is not going to make any major difference.
13. At the same time, even if he succeeds in damaging if not destroying the capabilities of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, India will have somebeneficial fall-out, but it will not be the end of Pakistani use of terrorism against India. We should wish him well and help him in whateverway we can professionally without accepting any political interference by the US in matters such as Jammu & Kashmir and India's presencein Afghanistan. We should not accept any US overlordship in the region under the pretext of a regional approach to the problem ofterrorism.(15-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
HIT, BUT STEALTHILY---WHAT I WROTE IN DECEMBER , 2001
B.RAMAN
After the attack on the Indian Parliament House by a joint team of terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and theJaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) on December 13,2001, there was a clamour in the New Delhi-based strategic community for military strikesagainst Pakistan.A former chief of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), who held me in some esteem, had called me to Delhi for adiscussion on the options before India. I told him that it would be totally unwise for India to launch military strikes on Pakistan. . After adiscussion lasting more than an hour, he asked me to put down my thoughts in writing and send it to him after I returned to Chennai. I did so.He never told me what he did with my paper. I did not ask him either. I took his permission and sent the paper to the South Asia AnalysisGroup (SAAG), New Delhi, who were kind enough to carry it on their web site on December 27,2001, athttp://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers4/paper383.html.
2. I take the liberty of reproducing that article below without any change. I still largely stand by what I stated in that article. (14-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
HIT, BUT STEALTHILY
by B.Raman
Direct military action against a State-sponsor of terrorism waging a proxy war against us by using terrorism through surrogates as alow-cost weapon without the direct involvement of its Armed Forces would be counter-productive and messy.
While there could be no doubt about India's ultimate success in a military conflict, the final cost of the conflict would further retard India'seconomic development.
Direct military action should be a weapon of last resort when there is no other way of protecting our unity and territorial integrity. We arefar, far away from such a desperate situation.
Despite its strong anti-Castro rhetoric, the US has generally avoided any direct military action against Cuba which it has, in the past,accused of sponsorship of terrorism or insurgency in Latin America because of concerns that such action could lead to a messy situationat its door step. What it can afford to do to far-away Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan, it cannot to its across-the-sea neighbour.
Avoidance of direct military action against Pakistan is dictated by its being our next-door neighbour, the suspected presence of irrationalelements in its military, intelligence and scientific establishment and the concerns of the international community over the nuclear factor. India has a common interest with the rest of the world in ensuring that Pakistan's nuclear and missile arsenal does not fall into the hands ofirrational elements.
Public and political opinion should refrain from creating a situation similar to the one created before 1962 when the clamour for a macho response to China's nibbling at our territory led to unwise decisions.
To talk of limited military action in the form of hot pursuit of terrorists, hit and run raids and air strikes on their training camps in Pakistani territory is to exhibit a surprising and worrisome ignorance of ground realities and a lack of understanding of a proxy war despite India beinga victim of it for nearly two decades now.
Legally, India has the right of hot pursuit, but it works only when armed groups indulge in hit and run raids from rear bases in a foreignterritory across the border. It cannot be used against suicide squads of foreign mercenaries operating from safe sanctuaries in our territoryprovided by alienated elements in our own population.
Destruction of training camps would be a meaningless exercise because terrorists do not have a permanent training infrastructure likeKhadakvasla or Dehra Dun or West Point. Their infrastructures are improvised and shifting and come into life whenever they manage to get asufficient number of recruits for training.
If air strikes and cross-border raids on training camps and safe havens could effectively end terrorism, Israel should be free offoreign-sponsored terrorism today. The fact that even after 30 years of a macho counter-terrorism policy, Israeli blood continues to flowshould show the ineffectiveness of its strategy.
The US bombing of the training camps in Afghanistan in August 1998 did not prevent the attack on a US naval ship in Aden in October, 2000or the terrorist strikes of September 11,2001, in the US.
When terrorism is used by a State as a low-cost weapon to achieve its strategic objective, what works against it is the ability and thedetermination of the victim State to hurt the interests of the State-sponsor in order to make it a high-cost weapon for the wielder.
State-sponsored terrorism withers away when the villain State is made to realise that it will have to pay a heavy price for its sponsorship. The US bombing of Libya in 1986 and its economic sanctions against it produced more enduring results than its bombing of the trainingcamps in Afghanistan in 1998 because it hit at the vital interests of the State-sponsor (Libya); whereas in Afghanistan, it hit only at thetraining camps without hurting the Taliban-run State.
If the current "war" against terrorism produces enduring results, it would be more due to the severe damages inflicted by the US on theTaliban State and its overthrow.
The ideologically-oriented terrorist groups of West Europe, including many inspired by Carlos, withered away after the collapse of EastGermany, the erstwhile USSR and Yugoslavia and the US pressure against Syria, Yemen and Sudan deprived them of any State-sponsor.
Egypt was able to control the activities of the Al Gama Al Islamiya and other similar groups only after the US pressure on the Sudan deprivedthem of sustenance from the Sudanese State.
If Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir is not abating, it is partly because of the reluctance of the US to exercise similarpressure on it and partly because of our unwillingness and inability to make the State of Pakistan pay a price for its sponsorship. When apuppeteer uses puppets to hurt you, you have to disable the puppeteer; otherwise, the more the puppets you destroy the more the numberthat will crop up.
Other options, which need to be tried first before even contemplating the direct military option, are political, economic and non-militarycovert actions. The political option relates to intensifying our pressure on the international community in general and the US in particular toact against Pakistan. The US is as opposed now as it was in the past to calling Pakistan to order, but one could see from the US media thatgrowing sections of public opinion there do not take as benign a view of Islamabad as the Administration does. One must take advantage of this wind of change.
India has a much stronger case against Pakistan than the US has had against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. We have had difficulty in sellingour case because of the USA's strategic interest in Pakistan and the nostalgic links of the military-intelligence establishments of the twocountries. Loyalty to USA's allies, past and present, has been a recurring theme in President Bush's pronouncements before and after hiselection.
It would, therefore, be unrealistic to expect the US to come down on Pakistan heavily. We cannot expect more than proforma admonitionsaddressed to Pervez Musharraf. However, this should not be an argument for not keeping up our diplomatic pressure to confine Pakistan tothe dog house.
The junta will not give in as easily to US pressure vis-a-vis India as it did apropos Afghanistan. In its perception, the proxy war has brought itvery close to its objective of a change of status quo in J & K. It thinks that if it relents in the proxy war in response to US pressure, it maynot get for decades a similar opportunity to change the status quo. In its eyes, keeping the Indian security forces preoccupied with internalsecurity duties is also meant to neutralise the quantitative and qualitative advantage enjoyed by the Indian military.
The only way, short of a military conflict, of making it relent in its proxy war is by making the perceived low-cost weapon into a high-cost one. Economic warfare, through overt and covert means, could be one way of doing this. However, such economic warfare would have produced better results before September 11, but today its cash flow position has improved with its foreign exchange reserves more than tripling in three months. And yet, sustained economic warfare could neutralise the temporary reprieve which the Pakistani economy has gained.
Political, diplomatic and economic actions by themselves would not make the junta relent unless simultaneously accompanied byhard-hitting covert actions directed at Pakistan's neurologic spots carefully identified. A covert action is defined as a clandestine anddeniable action, armed or unarmed, not involving the use of the Armed Forces, which a State undertakes in a situation where the use of theconventional diplomatic or military option is considered as not feasible or advisable.
Successful covert actions demand the required professional capability in the intelligence community, objective allies in the targetted territory and consistency on the part of the political leadership in their implementation.
Consistency in our policy towards Pakistan has not been a hallmark of our national security management. It must be said to the credit of Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment that it has exhibited remarkable consistency in its hatred of India and in its urge to hurt us wherever and whenever it can.
Our policy of "kabi garam, kabi naram" (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) creates confusion and uncertainty in the minds of our own securitybureacracy and makes our objective allies across the border hesitant to co-operate with us in covert actions.
The need of the hour is a counter proxy war doctrine incorporating its political, diplomatic, economic and covert components and itsimplementation in a determined and consistent manner. The results would not come dramatically, but slowly and almost imperceptibly.
After the attack on the Indian Parliament House by a joint team of terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and theJaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) on December 13,2001, there was a clamour in the New Delhi-based strategic community for military strikesagainst Pakistan.A former chief of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), who held me in some esteem, had called me to Delhi for adiscussion on the options before India. I told him that it would be totally unwise for India to launch military strikes on Pakistan. . After adiscussion lasting more than an hour, he asked me to put down my thoughts in writing and send it to him after I returned to Chennai. I did so.He never told me what he did with my paper. I did not ask him either. I took his permission and sent the paper to the South Asia AnalysisGroup (SAAG), New Delhi, who were kind enough to carry it on their web site on December 27,2001, athttp://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers4/paper383.html.
2. I take the liberty of reproducing that article below without any change. I still largely stand by what I stated in that article. (14-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
HIT, BUT STEALTHILY
by B.Raman
Direct military action against a State-sponsor of terrorism waging a proxy war against us by using terrorism through surrogates as alow-cost weapon without the direct involvement of its Armed Forces would be counter-productive and messy.
While there could be no doubt about India's ultimate success in a military conflict, the final cost of the conflict would further retard India'seconomic development.
Direct military action should be a weapon of last resort when there is no other way of protecting our unity and territorial integrity. We arefar, far away from such a desperate situation.
Despite its strong anti-Castro rhetoric, the US has generally avoided any direct military action against Cuba which it has, in the past,accused of sponsorship of terrorism or insurgency in Latin America because of concerns that such action could lead to a messy situationat its door step. What it can afford to do to far-away Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan, it cannot to its across-the-sea neighbour.
Avoidance of direct military action against Pakistan is dictated by its being our next-door neighbour, the suspected presence of irrationalelements in its military, intelligence and scientific establishment and the concerns of the international community over the nuclear factor. India has a common interest with the rest of the world in ensuring that Pakistan's nuclear and missile arsenal does not fall into the hands ofirrational elements.
Public and political opinion should refrain from creating a situation similar to the one created before 1962 when the clamour for a macho response to China's nibbling at our territory led to unwise decisions.
To talk of limited military action in the form of hot pursuit of terrorists, hit and run raids and air strikes on their training camps in Pakistani territory is to exhibit a surprising and worrisome ignorance of ground realities and a lack of understanding of a proxy war despite India beinga victim of it for nearly two decades now.
Legally, India has the right of hot pursuit, but it works only when armed groups indulge in hit and run raids from rear bases in a foreignterritory across the border. It cannot be used against suicide squads of foreign mercenaries operating from safe sanctuaries in our territoryprovided by alienated elements in our own population.
Destruction of training camps would be a meaningless exercise because terrorists do not have a permanent training infrastructure likeKhadakvasla or Dehra Dun or West Point. Their infrastructures are improvised and shifting and come into life whenever they manage to get asufficient number of recruits for training.
If air strikes and cross-border raids on training camps and safe havens could effectively end terrorism, Israel should be free offoreign-sponsored terrorism today. The fact that even after 30 years of a macho counter-terrorism policy, Israeli blood continues to flowshould show the ineffectiveness of its strategy.
The US bombing of the training camps in Afghanistan in August 1998 did not prevent the attack on a US naval ship in Aden in October, 2000or the terrorist strikes of September 11,2001, in the US.
When terrorism is used by a State as a low-cost weapon to achieve its strategic objective, what works against it is the ability and thedetermination of the victim State to hurt the interests of the State-sponsor in order to make it a high-cost weapon for the wielder.
State-sponsored terrorism withers away when the villain State is made to realise that it will have to pay a heavy price for its sponsorship. The US bombing of Libya in 1986 and its economic sanctions against it produced more enduring results than its bombing of the trainingcamps in Afghanistan in 1998 because it hit at the vital interests of the State-sponsor (Libya); whereas in Afghanistan, it hit only at thetraining camps without hurting the Taliban-run State.
If the current "war" against terrorism produces enduring results, it would be more due to the severe damages inflicted by the US on theTaliban State and its overthrow.
The ideologically-oriented terrorist groups of West Europe, including many inspired by Carlos, withered away after the collapse of EastGermany, the erstwhile USSR and Yugoslavia and the US pressure against Syria, Yemen and Sudan deprived them of any State-sponsor.
Egypt was able to control the activities of the Al Gama Al Islamiya and other similar groups only after the US pressure on the Sudan deprivedthem of sustenance from the Sudanese State.
If Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir is not abating, it is partly because of the reluctance of the US to exercise similarpressure on it and partly because of our unwillingness and inability to make the State of Pakistan pay a price for its sponsorship. When apuppeteer uses puppets to hurt you, you have to disable the puppeteer; otherwise, the more the puppets you destroy the more the numberthat will crop up.
Other options, which need to be tried first before even contemplating the direct military option, are political, economic and non-militarycovert actions. The political option relates to intensifying our pressure on the international community in general and the US in particular toact against Pakistan. The US is as opposed now as it was in the past to calling Pakistan to order, but one could see from the US media thatgrowing sections of public opinion there do not take as benign a view of Islamabad as the Administration does. One must take advantage of this wind of change.
India has a much stronger case against Pakistan than the US has had against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban. We have had difficulty in sellingour case because of the USA's strategic interest in Pakistan and the nostalgic links of the military-intelligence establishments of the twocountries. Loyalty to USA's allies, past and present, has been a recurring theme in President Bush's pronouncements before and after hiselection.
It would, therefore, be unrealistic to expect the US to come down on Pakistan heavily. We cannot expect more than proforma admonitionsaddressed to Pervez Musharraf. However, this should not be an argument for not keeping up our diplomatic pressure to confine Pakistan tothe dog house.
The junta will not give in as easily to US pressure vis-a-vis India as it did apropos Afghanistan. In its perception, the proxy war has brought itvery close to its objective of a change of status quo in J & K. It thinks that if it relents in the proxy war in response to US pressure, it maynot get for decades a similar opportunity to change the status quo. In its eyes, keeping the Indian security forces preoccupied with internalsecurity duties is also meant to neutralise the quantitative and qualitative advantage enjoyed by the Indian military.
The only way, short of a military conflict, of making it relent in its proxy war is by making the perceived low-cost weapon into a high-cost one. Economic warfare, through overt and covert means, could be one way of doing this. However, such economic warfare would have produced better results before September 11, but today its cash flow position has improved with its foreign exchange reserves more than tripling in three months. And yet, sustained economic warfare could neutralise the temporary reprieve which the Pakistani economy has gained.
Political, diplomatic and economic actions by themselves would not make the junta relent unless simultaneously accompanied byhard-hitting covert actions directed at Pakistan's neurologic spots carefully identified. A covert action is defined as a clandestine anddeniable action, armed or unarmed, not involving the use of the Armed Forces, which a State undertakes in a situation where the use of theconventional diplomatic or military option is considered as not feasible or advisable.
Successful covert actions demand the required professional capability in the intelligence community, objective allies in the targetted territory and consistency on the part of the political leadership in their implementation.
Consistency in our policy towards Pakistan has not been a hallmark of our national security management. It must be said to the credit of Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment that it has exhibited remarkable consistency in its hatred of India and in its urge to hurt us wherever and whenever it can.
Our policy of "kabi garam, kabi naram" (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) creates confusion and uncertainty in the minds of our own securitybureacracy and makes our objective allies across the border hesitant to co-operate with us in covert actions.
The need of the hour is a counter proxy war doctrine incorporating its political, diplomatic, economic and covert components and itsimplementation in a determined and consistent manner. The results would not come dramatically, but slowly and almost imperceptibly.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
MUMBAI TERRORIST ATTACK: SOME ASPECTS
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.490
B.RAMAN
(This is an elaboration of some points made extempore by me in continuation of my paper on terrorism at the Regional Outlook 2009 Forumof the Institute of South-East Asian Studies, Singapore, on January 7,2009. The paper is available athttp://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers31/paper3007.html )
"Terrorists are increasingly technology-savvy, but not technology-slavish. They do not hesitate to revert to old technologies and oldinstruments of destruction if they find that security agencies, in their preoccupation with countering the use of new technologies and newinstruments by the terrorists, relax their vigilance against the possible re-use of old technologies and old instruments by them."
--------Extract from my article dated 17-2-2000 titled TERRORISM: THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers2/paper104.html
---------------------------------
In the terrorist attack by 10 Pakistani terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Mumbai from November 26 to 29, 2008, there were 163fatalities. Five of these fatalities were caused by explosives and the remaining 158 by hand-held weapons (assault rifles andhand-grenades).
2. There had been commando-style attacks with hand-held weapons by terrorists in the Indian territory even in the past---in Punjab by theKhalistani terrorists in the 1980s and the early 1990s, in Jammu & Kashmir by the Kashmiri and Pakistani terrorists since 1989 and inother parts of the country by the jihadi terrorists from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as by the Maoists from Central India. However,attacks with hand-held weapons by the jihadi terrorists in the Indian territory outside J&K were mainly against armed static guards of thesecurity forces outside imporant establishments. Examples: The attack on the Indian Parliament House at New Delhi in December,2001, theattack on the police guards outside the US Consulate in Kolkata in January,2002, the attack on the guards outside an important Hindutemple at Ahmedabad in September 2002, the attack on a training centre of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)at Rampur in UttarPradesh in the early morning hours of January 1,2008 etc.
3. For attacks on unguarded soft targets in public places, the jihadi terrorists had mostly preferred timed or remotly-controlled improvisedexplosive devices (IEDs). After the Rampur attack, jihadi terrorists from a group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen (IM) had carried outattacks on soft targets in Jaipur (May), Bangalore (July), Ahmedabad (July) and Delhi ( September). All these involved timed IEDs. There wasone minor attack with a rifle by a terrorist of the LET on the participants in a conference of scientists at Bangalore in December,2005, killingone participant. The terrorist managed to escape to Pakistan.
4. The Mumbai attack of November 26 to 29,2008, was the first act of mass casualty terrorism by the jihadi terrorists against innocentcivilians using hand-held weapons. The previous two acts of mass casualty terrorism with fatalities of more than 150 were carried out withtimed IEDs ----- in March 1993 and in July 2006, both in Mumbai.
5. The increasing use of IEDs by the terrorists since 9/11 had led to strict anti-explosive checks even by private establishments such ashotels, company offices etc. The killing with IEDs tends to be indiscriminate with no way of pre-determining who should be killed.Moreover,the publicity earned from IED attacks tends to be of short duration--- hardly of one or two hours. As was seen during the attack on theParliament House, the visual impact of TV-transmitted images of attacks with hand-held weapons as they are taking place tends to be moredramatic. In an attack with hand-held weapons, the terrorists can pre-determine whom they want to die and kill with precision.
6. In Mumbai, 72 people were killed in the terrorist attacks in two hotels and in the Nariman House where a Jewish religious-cum-culturalcentre is located and 86 innocent civilians in public places such as the main railway terminus through which an estimated 2.8 millionpassengers pass daily, a hospital, a cafe etc. The attacks in the public places by two terrorists on the move lasted less than an hour, butcaused more fatalities. The static armed confrontation in the hotels and the Nariman House lasted about 60 hours, but caused lessfatalities. In terms of publicity, the static armed confrontation got the terrorists more publicity than the attacks by the two terrorists on themove in public places. By the time TV , radio and other media crew came to know what was happenuing in the public places and rushedthere, the attacks were already over. There was hardly any live coverage. The only live visuals were from the closed circuit TV camerasinstalled at the railway station. In the hotels and the Nariman House, the media crew were able to provide a live coverage of almost theentire confrontation.
7. Within a few hours of the start of the confrontation, the security staff of the hotels reportedly switched off the cable transmissions to therooms. The terrorists were, therefore, not in a position to watch on the TV what was happening outside, but their mobile communicationsenabled them to get updates on the deployments of the security forces outside from their controllers in Pakistan who, like the rest of theworld, were able to watch on their TV what was happening outside. This could have been prevented only by jamming all mobile telephones.Such jamming could have proved to be counter-productive. It would have prevented the terrorists from getting guidance and updates fromtheir controllers in Pakistan. At the same time, it might have prevented the security agencies from assessing the mood and intentions of theterrorists and could have come in the way of any communications with the terrorists if the security agencies wanted to keep them engagedin a conversation till they were ready to raid.
8. The Mumbai attack poses the following questions for examination by all the security agencies of the world:
Presently, the security set-ups of private establishments have security gadgets such as door-frame metal detectors, anti-explosive devices, closed-circuit TV etc, but they do not have armed guards. It would not be possible for the police to provide armed guards to all private establishments. How to strengthen the physical security of vulnerable private establishments and protect them from forced intrusions by terrorists wielding hand-held weapons?
What kind of media control will be necessary and feasible in situations of the type witnessed in Mumbai? This question had also figured after the Black September terrorist attack on Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics of 1972. Since then, the position has become more complex and difficult due to the mushrooming of private TV channels and private FM radio stations.
How to ensure that mobile telephones do not unwittingly become a facilitator of on-going terrorist strikes without creating operational handicaps for the security agencies? The Israelis, who have taken military action against the Hamas in Gaza, have severely curtailed media access to Gaza. The Hamas has sought to overcome this by having visuals of the fighting transmitted to foreign TV channels through mobiles. Copy-cats of this are likely in future.
9. The LET terrorists, who attacked Mumbai, had a three-point agenda:
An anti-Indian agenda to create fears in the minds of foreign businessmen about the security of life and property in India and in the minds of the Indian public about the competence of the Indian security agencies to protect them.
An anti-Israeli and an anti-Jewish agenda whose objectives coincided with those of Al Qaeda.
An anti-US agenda and an anti-NATO agenda, whose objectives coincided with those of Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Of the 25 foreigners killed, nine were either Israelis or Jewish persons, 12 were from countries which have contributed troops to the NATO force in Afghanistan and four were from other countries. Nationals of European countries, which are not participating in the war against terrorism in Afghasnistan, were not targeted.
10. All these agendas coincide with the agenda of the global jihad as waged by the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against theCrusaders and the Jewish People formed by Al Qaeda in 1998. From 1998 till April 2006, Osama bin Laden projected the global jihad asdirected against the Crusaders (Christians) and the Jewish people. In an audio message disseminated by him in April,2006, after the visit ofPresident George Bush to India, he expanded the objectives of the global jihad and projected it as directed against the Crusaders, theJewish People and the Hindus. The Mumbai attack targeted these three proclaimed adversaries of the IIF, of which the LET is a member.
11. Since 2003, there have been indications that following a weakening of the command and control of Al Qaeda because of the US militaryoperations in Afghanistan, the LET had started playing the role of a standby co-ordinator of the IIF on behalf of Al Qaeda. The Mumbaiattack brought out the increased capabilities of the LET for the planning and execution of simultaneous commando-style attacks againstmultiple targets. The LET now poses a serious threat not only to India as it was doing in the past, but to other countries as well. It is a newand major threat to international peace and security which has to be fought by the united efforts of the international community.
12. The last point I want to highlight is about the role of Pakistan. Since the terrorist attack lasted 60 hours and the lives of the nationals ofmany countries were in danger, the intelligence agencies of India, Israel, the US and the UK ----and possibly of other countries too---- weremonitoring through technical means the conversations of the terrorists holed up in the two hotels and in the Jewish centre with each otherand with their controllers in Pakistan. Thus, a substantial volume of independent technical intelligence exists--- collected by the intelligenceagencies of these countries independently of each other.
13. All this independent evidence clearly shows that the terrorist attack was mounted by the LET from the Pakistani territory with the helpof 10 Pakistanis specially recruited and trained for this operation in training camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and then in Karachi. Onthe basis of the evidence gathered by the Indian investigators and shared by the intelligence agencies of other countries with India, theGovernment of India has demanded three things from Pakistan: firstly, the arrest and handing over to India for interrogation and prosecutionof the Pakistan-based ring leaders of the conspiracy as named by Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only surviving perpetrator, who was caught by theMumbai police; secondly, the arrest and handing over to India of 20 other accused in terrorism related cases pending before Indian courtswho have been given shelter in Pakistan; and thirdly, the dismantling of the Pakistan-based terrorist infrastructure of the LET.
14. As other Pakistani Governments had done in the past, the present Government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari too has refused toextend mutual legal assistance to India as required by the conventions followed by the Interpol and by the UN Security Council ResolutionNo.1373 adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly after the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US. It first even denied that the terroristcaptured by the Mumbai Police is a Pakistani national despite Kasab's father identifying him as his son in an interview to the "Dawn", theprestigious daily of Karachi. Under mounting pressure from the US, it has now reluctantly admitted that he is a Pakistani national, butcontinues to question the credibility of the evidence collected by India. It has made clear that there is no question of handing over anyPakistani national to India for trial .
15. Since Pakistan became independent in 1947, it has never handed over to India any Muslim----Pakistani or Indian--- who had committed anoffence in Indian territory----whether the offence is terrorism or theft or robbery or rape or child sex or narcotics smuggling or any otheroffence. The attitude of non-cooperation adopted by the present Government should not, therefore, be a matter of surprise.
16. The international community should not allow Pakistan to get away with its brazen defiance of all international conventions relating toaction against terrorists. If it manages to do so due to the reluctance of the international community to act against Pakistan, this won'tbode well for the success of the war against terrorism. (13-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
(This is an elaboration of some points made extempore by me in continuation of my paper on terrorism at the Regional Outlook 2009 Forumof the Institute of South-East Asian Studies, Singapore, on January 7,2009. The paper is available athttp://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers31/paper3007.html )
"Terrorists are increasingly technology-savvy, but not technology-slavish. They do not hesitate to revert to old technologies and oldinstruments of destruction if they find that security agencies, in their preoccupation with countering the use of new technologies and newinstruments by the terrorists, relax their vigilance against the possible re-use of old technologies and old instruments by them."
--------Extract from my article dated 17-2-2000 titled TERRORISM: THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers2/paper104.html
---------------------------------
In the terrorist attack by 10 Pakistani terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Mumbai from November 26 to 29, 2008, there were 163fatalities. Five of these fatalities were caused by explosives and the remaining 158 by hand-held weapons (assault rifles andhand-grenades).
2. There had been commando-style attacks with hand-held weapons by terrorists in the Indian territory even in the past---in Punjab by theKhalistani terrorists in the 1980s and the early 1990s, in Jammu & Kashmir by the Kashmiri and Pakistani terrorists since 1989 and inother parts of the country by the jihadi terrorists from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as by the Maoists from Central India. However,attacks with hand-held weapons by the jihadi terrorists in the Indian territory outside J&K were mainly against armed static guards of thesecurity forces outside imporant establishments. Examples: The attack on the Indian Parliament House at New Delhi in December,2001, theattack on the police guards outside the US Consulate in Kolkata in January,2002, the attack on the guards outside an important Hindutemple at Ahmedabad in September 2002, the attack on a training centre of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)at Rampur in UttarPradesh in the early morning hours of January 1,2008 etc.
3. For attacks on unguarded soft targets in public places, the jihadi terrorists had mostly preferred timed or remotly-controlled improvisedexplosive devices (IEDs). After the Rampur attack, jihadi terrorists from a group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen (IM) had carried outattacks on soft targets in Jaipur (May), Bangalore (July), Ahmedabad (July) and Delhi ( September). All these involved timed IEDs. There wasone minor attack with a rifle by a terrorist of the LET on the participants in a conference of scientists at Bangalore in December,2005, killingone participant. The terrorist managed to escape to Pakistan.
4. The Mumbai attack of November 26 to 29,2008, was the first act of mass casualty terrorism by the jihadi terrorists against innocentcivilians using hand-held weapons. The previous two acts of mass casualty terrorism with fatalities of more than 150 were carried out withtimed IEDs ----- in March 1993 and in July 2006, both in Mumbai.
5. The increasing use of IEDs by the terrorists since 9/11 had led to strict anti-explosive checks even by private establishments such ashotels, company offices etc. The killing with IEDs tends to be indiscriminate with no way of pre-determining who should be killed.Moreover,the publicity earned from IED attacks tends to be of short duration--- hardly of one or two hours. As was seen during the attack on theParliament House, the visual impact of TV-transmitted images of attacks with hand-held weapons as they are taking place tends to be moredramatic. In an attack with hand-held weapons, the terrorists can pre-determine whom they want to die and kill with precision.
6. In Mumbai, 72 people were killed in the terrorist attacks in two hotels and in the Nariman House where a Jewish religious-cum-culturalcentre is located and 86 innocent civilians in public places such as the main railway terminus through which an estimated 2.8 millionpassengers pass daily, a hospital, a cafe etc. The attacks in the public places by two terrorists on the move lasted less than an hour, butcaused more fatalities. The static armed confrontation in the hotels and the Nariman House lasted about 60 hours, but caused lessfatalities. In terms of publicity, the static armed confrontation got the terrorists more publicity than the attacks by the two terrorists on themove in public places. By the time TV , radio and other media crew came to know what was happenuing in the public places and rushedthere, the attacks were already over. There was hardly any live coverage. The only live visuals were from the closed circuit TV camerasinstalled at the railway station. In the hotels and the Nariman House, the media crew were able to provide a live coverage of almost theentire confrontation.
7. Within a few hours of the start of the confrontation, the security staff of the hotels reportedly switched off the cable transmissions to therooms. The terrorists were, therefore, not in a position to watch on the TV what was happening outside, but their mobile communicationsenabled them to get updates on the deployments of the security forces outside from their controllers in Pakistan who, like the rest of theworld, were able to watch on their TV what was happening outside. This could have been prevented only by jamming all mobile telephones.Such jamming could have proved to be counter-productive. It would have prevented the terrorists from getting guidance and updates fromtheir controllers in Pakistan. At the same time, it might have prevented the security agencies from assessing the mood and intentions of theterrorists and could have come in the way of any communications with the terrorists if the security agencies wanted to keep them engagedin a conversation till they were ready to raid.
8. The Mumbai attack poses the following questions for examination by all the security agencies of the world:
Presently, the security set-ups of private establishments have security gadgets such as door-frame metal detectors, anti-explosive devices, closed-circuit TV etc, but they do not have armed guards. It would not be possible for the police to provide armed guards to all private establishments. How to strengthen the physical security of vulnerable private establishments and protect them from forced intrusions by terrorists wielding hand-held weapons?
What kind of media control will be necessary and feasible in situations of the type witnessed in Mumbai? This question had also figured after the Black September terrorist attack on Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics of 1972. Since then, the position has become more complex and difficult due to the mushrooming of private TV channels and private FM radio stations.
How to ensure that mobile telephones do not unwittingly become a facilitator of on-going terrorist strikes without creating operational handicaps for the security agencies? The Israelis, who have taken military action against the Hamas in Gaza, have severely curtailed media access to Gaza. The Hamas has sought to overcome this by having visuals of the fighting transmitted to foreign TV channels through mobiles. Copy-cats of this are likely in future.
9. The LET terrorists, who attacked Mumbai, had a three-point agenda:
An anti-Indian agenda to create fears in the minds of foreign businessmen about the security of life and property in India and in the minds of the Indian public about the competence of the Indian security agencies to protect them.
An anti-Israeli and an anti-Jewish agenda whose objectives coincided with those of Al Qaeda.
An anti-US agenda and an anti-NATO agenda, whose objectives coincided with those of Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Of the 25 foreigners killed, nine were either Israelis or Jewish persons, 12 were from countries which have contributed troops to the NATO force in Afghanistan and four were from other countries. Nationals of European countries, which are not participating in the war against terrorism in Afghasnistan, were not targeted.
10. All these agendas coincide with the agenda of the global jihad as waged by the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against theCrusaders and the Jewish People formed by Al Qaeda in 1998. From 1998 till April 2006, Osama bin Laden projected the global jihad asdirected against the Crusaders (Christians) and the Jewish people. In an audio message disseminated by him in April,2006, after the visit ofPresident George Bush to India, he expanded the objectives of the global jihad and projected it as directed against the Crusaders, theJewish People and the Hindus. The Mumbai attack targeted these three proclaimed adversaries of the IIF, of which the LET is a member.
11. Since 2003, there have been indications that following a weakening of the command and control of Al Qaeda because of the US militaryoperations in Afghanistan, the LET had started playing the role of a standby co-ordinator of the IIF on behalf of Al Qaeda. The Mumbaiattack brought out the increased capabilities of the LET for the planning and execution of simultaneous commando-style attacks againstmultiple targets. The LET now poses a serious threat not only to India as it was doing in the past, but to other countries as well. It is a newand major threat to international peace and security which has to be fought by the united efforts of the international community.
12. The last point I want to highlight is about the role of Pakistan. Since the terrorist attack lasted 60 hours and the lives of the nationals ofmany countries were in danger, the intelligence agencies of India, Israel, the US and the UK ----and possibly of other countries too---- weremonitoring through technical means the conversations of the terrorists holed up in the two hotels and in the Jewish centre with each otherand with their controllers in Pakistan. Thus, a substantial volume of independent technical intelligence exists--- collected by the intelligenceagencies of these countries independently of each other.
13. All this independent evidence clearly shows that the terrorist attack was mounted by the LET from the Pakistani territory with the helpof 10 Pakistanis specially recruited and trained for this operation in training camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and then in Karachi. Onthe basis of the evidence gathered by the Indian investigators and shared by the intelligence agencies of other countries with India, theGovernment of India has demanded three things from Pakistan: firstly, the arrest and handing over to India for interrogation and prosecutionof the Pakistan-based ring leaders of the conspiracy as named by Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only surviving perpetrator, who was caught by theMumbai police; secondly, the arrest and handing over to India of 20 other accused in terrorism related cases pending before Indian courtswho have been given shelter in Pakistan; and thirdly, the dismantling of the Pakistan-based terrorist infrastructure of the LET.
14. As other Pakistani Governments had done in the past, the present Government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari too has refused toextend mutual legal assistance to India as required by the conventions followed by the Interpol and by the UN Security Council ResolutionNo.1373 adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly after the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US. It first even denied that the terroristcaptured by the Mumbai Police is a Pakistani national despite Kasab's father identifying him as his son in an interview to the "Dawn", theprestigious daily of Karachi. Under mounting pressure from the US, it has now reluctantly admitted that he is a Pakistani national, butcontinues to question the credibility of the evidence collected by India. It has made clear that there is no question of handing over anyPakistani national to India for trial .
15. Since Pakistan became independent in 1947, it has never handed over to India any Muslim----Pakistani or Indian--- who had committed anoffence in Indian territory----whether the offence is terrorism or theft or robbery or rape or child sex or narcotics smuggling or any otheroffence. The attitude of non-cooperation adopted by the present Government should not, therefore, be a matter of surprise.
16. The international community should not allow Pakistan to get away with its brazen defiance of all international conventions relating toaction against terrorists. If it manages to do so due to the reluctance of the international community to act against Pakistan, this won'tbode well for the success of the war against terrorism. (13-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Sunday, January 11, 2009
45 DAYS AFTER MUMBAI
B.RAMAN
Forty-five days after the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 26 to 29,2008, India has failed to convince large sections of the internationalcommunity that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had orchestrated the terrorist strike in Mumbai by 10 terrorists of theLashkar-e-Toiba (LET). That is my conclusion after interactions with a wide spectrum of foreign counter-terrorism experts----governmental aswell as non-governmental.
2. The experts of the various countries whose nationals died at the hands of the terrorists are convinced on the basis of their ownsubstantial independent technical intelligence that the terrorist attack was carried out by 10 Pakistani nationals belonging to the LET, whocame to Mumbai by boat from Karachi for carrying out the strike. They are also convinced on the basis of the voluminous evidence in theirarchives about the privileged relationship between the ISI and the LET. But they claim not to have seen any conclusive evidence so far toshow that the ISI----or at least its present leadership---- had orchestrated the Mumbai terrorist attack. A question, which they pose, which islogical and compelling, is whether the terrorists would have killed nationals of the US, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Australiaif they had been deputed by the ISI to indulge in the carnage.
3. Some of these experts, who were earlier convinced of the ISI hand behind the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul in the first week ofJuly, 2008, when Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj, the present Corps Commander at Gujranwala, was the ISI Director-General, are prepared to allow forthe possibility that Lt.Gen.Taj, before he was removed from the ISI on September 30,2008, allegedly under US pressure by Gen.PervezAshfaq Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), might have also planned the Mumbai attack by the LET and got its cadres chosenfor the attack trained. In this connection, it is significant that Ajmal Amir, the Pakistani in the custody of the Mumbai Police, had reportedlystated during his interrogation that the attack was planned for September 26, but was postponed. These experts point out that Taj was stillthe DG of the ISI on September 26.
4. The Americans had allegedly got Taj removed because of their conviction that his was the brain behind the Kabul attack and that Taj,who has a reputation of being rabidly anti-Indian and anti-US, had leaked out some information shared by the Americans with him to theTaliban. It was generally presumed till now on the basis of some past reports in sections of the Pakistani media about Taj being related toGen.(retd) Pervez Musharraf that he must be a Mohajir, but some Western experts claim that he is actually a Punjabi-speaking Kashmiri. Ifthis is so, in its history the ISI had been headed by Punjabi-speaking Kashmiris twice. The earlier Kashmiri DG of the ISI was Lt.Gen.(retd)Javed Nasir, who headed the ISI during Nawaz Sharif's first tenure as the Prime Minister (1990-93). The Mumbai blasts of March,1993,were orchestrated by him. He was removed by Sharif from the ISI under US pressure because of his perceived non-cooperation in the USattempts to buy back the unused Stinger missiles from the Afghan Mujahideen. It was during his tenure that the Bill Clinton Administrationhad declared Pakistan as a suspected State-sponsor of terrorism. This designation was removed after six months after Sharif had removedfrom the ISI Nasir and some other officers disliked by the US.
5. While thus some American experts have an open mind on the possibility of the involvement of Taj in the Mumbai carnage, they areprepared to give the benefit of doubt to Lt.Gen.Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has been the DG of the ISI since September 30,2008. He enjoys agood reputation in the West as a balanced person, who would not indulge in this type of operation, particularly when it is partly directedagainst Western nationals and Jewish civilians.
6. Every country, whose nationals died during the terrorist attack, has been making a detailed analysis of why its nationals were targetedand killed. For example, in addition to the Israelis and the nationals of the countries mentioned above, the terrorists also killed the nationalsof three countries in South-East Asia. One of them was a Chinese woman from Singapore. According to one version that one heard inSingapore, the terrorists forced her to ring up her Foreign Office in Singapore and request it to urge the Government of India not to send thesecurity forces into the hotels. According to the version prevalent in Singapore, when the Singapore Foreign Office refused to intercede inthis matter, the terrorists shot her dead. Why did they do so? What is the reason for their apparent anger against Singapore? This is aquestion, which kept propping up.
7. Apart from the way the attack was planned and executed, the most significant aspect of the attack was the targeting of foreignnationals----particularly the cream of the foreign business community who frequent these hotels. It was because of this that the technicalintelligence agencies of the Western countries diverted all their capabilities to cover the conversations between the terrorists and theirhandlers in Pakistan. It is said that the US moved one of its communication satellites over Mumbai during the 60 hours that the drama lastedin order to cover these conversations.
8. After the drama was over and the National Security Guards (NSGs) had rescued the surviving hostages, the Western countries had alltheir surviving nationals quietly flown to Europe where they were thoroughly debriefed by special teams from their intelligence agencies. Itis said that the French even sent a special plane for evacuating the French and other Western survivors from Mumbai to Paris. Westernexperts are surprised that neither the Mumbai Police nor the central intelligence agencies showed interest in detaining the survivingforeign hostages in India in order to debrief them thoroughly. If they had done so, the details collected by them would have formed animportant part of the dossier prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs and disseminated to foreign Governments. It is said that such details,which could have been obtained by debriefing the foreign survivors, hardly figure in the dossier.
9. According to foreign experts, the Mumbai Police and the central intelligence agencies were so excited by the capture alive of one of thePakistani perpetrators that they seem to have devoted all their attention to interrogating him and getting as many details as possible, whichcould help them to fix Pakistan. They complain that other important aspects which might have helped them in reconstructing the terroristattack, drawing the right lessons from it and preventing a repetition of similar attacks in future have not received much attention.
10. Pakistan's argument that the Government of India has been trying to divert attention from the colossal failure of its counter-terrorismmachinery in Mumbai by focussing on the alleged involvement of the ISI has started having some takers abroad due to the unprofessionalmanner in which the sequel to the terrorist strike has been handled by the Govt.of India. It is important to hold Pakistan accountable for using terrorism against India through concrete evidence. At the same time, it is equally important to identify the deficiencioes in ourcounter-terrorism machinery and act quickly to remove them. This is not being done.
11. The Mumbai carnage has caused great concern in the Western countries for two reasons. Firstly, the jihadi terrorists in India, who had inthe past showed an increasing preference for explosives over hand-held weapons, have gone back to hand-held weapons for attackingprivate establishments such as hotels, which have anti-explosive checks, but no armed guards to foil an attack with hand-held weapons. Ofthe 163 fatalities in Mumbai, only five were reportedly caused by explosives. The remaining 158 were caused by hand-held weapons (assaultrifles and hand-grenades). This trend of the jihadi terrorists going back to hand-held weapons was first noticed in the Anbar province of Iraqafter 1993 when Al Qaeda killed a number of Americans and others with hand-held weapons. It was noticed in Pakistan in 2007. When thejihadis failed to kill Benazir Bhutto with an explosive device at Karachi in October,2007, they used a mix of a hand-held weapon and anexplosive to successfuly kill her at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007. This trend was noticed in Afghanistan in 2008. While there wasreportedly an one-third increase in the use of explosive devices in Afghanistan, there was a simultaneous increase in the use of hand-heldweapons for precision killings. This trend has now spread to the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir.
12. Secondly, many Western experts feel that there was an Al Qaeda hand in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attack and that suchprecision planning and execution would not have been possible without the involvement of some local Muslims. While Indian experts havebeen able to quantify reasonably well the threat which they would continue to face in J&K, they have not been able to quantify in a similar manner the threat from sections of the Indian Muslim youth outside J&K because of a fear in political circles that such an exercise forquantification might have an adverse effect on the Muslim votes in the forthcoming parliamentary elections..
13. US Congressional committees and professional counter-terrorism organisations in the West are already examining the details of theMumbai carnage in order to draw lessons for themselves and to prevent a Mumbai-style attack in their country. Surprisingly, such anexercise is hardly to be seen in India. All the debate till now has been on what are the options against Pakistan. There has hardly been anypublic debate on what are the options against the terrorists in order to prevent another major attack. ( 12-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretasry (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.cm )
Forty-five days after the Mumbai terrorist strike of November 26 to 29,2008, India has failed to convince large sections of the internationalcommunity that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had orchestrated the terrorist strike in Mumbai by 10 terrorists of theLashkar-e-Toiba (LET). That is my conclusion after interactions with a wide spectrum of foreign counter-terrorism experts----governmental aswell as non-governmental.
2. The experts of the various countries whose nationals died at the hands of the terrorists are convinced on the basis of their ownsubstantial independent technical intelligence that the terrorist attack was carried out by 10 Pakistani nationals belonging to the LET, whocame to Mumbai by boat from Karachi for carrying out the strike. They are also convinced on the basis of the voluminous evidence in theirarchives about the privileged relationship between the ISI and the LET. But they claim not to have seen any conclusive evidence so far toshow that the ISI----or at least its present leadership---- had orchestrated the Mumbai terrorist attack. A question, which they pose, which islogical and compelling, is whether the terrorists would have killed nationals of the US, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Australiaif they had been deputed by the ISI to indulge in the carnage.
3. Some of these experts, who were earlier convinced of the ISI hand behind the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul in the first week ofJuly, 2008, when Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj, the present Corps Commander at Gujranwala, was the ISI Director-General, are prepared to allow forthe possibility that Lt.Gen.Taj, before he was removed from the ISI on September 30,2008, allegedly under US pressure by Gen.PervezAshfaq Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), might have also planned the Mumbai attack by the LET and got its cadres chosenfor the attack trained. In this connection, it is significant that Ajmal Amir, the Pakistani in the custody of the Mumbai Police, had reportedlystated during his interrogation that the attack was planned for September 26, but was postponed. These experts point out that Taj was stillthe DG of the ISI on September 26.
4. The Americans had allegedly got Taj removed because of their conviction that his was the brain behind the Kabul attack and that Taj,who has a reputation of being rabidly anti-Indian and anti-US, had leaked out some information shared by the Americans with him to theTaliban. It was generally presumed till now on the basis of some past reports in sections of the Pakistani media about Taj being related toGen.(retd) Pervez Musharraf that he must be a Mohajir, but some Western experts claim that he is actually a Punjabi-speaking Kashmiri. Ifthis is so, in its history the ISI had been headed by Punjabi-speaking Kashmiris twice. The earlier Kashmiri DG of the ISI was Lt.Gen.(retd)Javed Nasir, who headed the ISI during Nawaz Sharif's first tenure as the Prime Minister (1990-93). The Mumbai blasts of March,1993,were orchestrated by him. He was removed by Sharif from the ISI under US pressure because of his perceived non-cooperation in the USattempts to buy back the unused Stinger missiles from the Afghan Mujahideen. It was during his tenure that the Bill Clinton Administrationhad declared Pakistan as a suspected State-sponsor of terrorism. This designation was removed after six months after Sharif had removedfrom the ISI Nasir and some other officers disliked by the US.
5. While thus some American experts have an open mind on the possibility of the involvement of Taj in the Mumbai carnage, they areprepared to give the benefit of doubt to Lt.Gen.Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has been the DG of the ISI since September 30,2008. He enjoys agood reputation in the West as a balanced person, who would not indulge in this type of operation, particularly when it is partly directedagainst Western nationals and Jewish civilians.
6. Every country, whose nationals died during the terrorist attack, has been making a detailed analysis of why its nationals were targetedand killed. For example, in addition to the Israelis and the nationals of the countries mentioned above, the terrorists also killed the nationalsof three countries in South-East Asia. One of them was a Chinese woman from Singapore. According to one version that one heard inSingapore, the terrorists forced her to ring up her Foreign Office in Singapore and request it to urge the Government of India not to send thesecurity forces into the hotels. According to the version prevalent in Singapore, when the Singapore Foreign Office refused to intercede inthis matter, the terrorists shot her dead. Why did they do so? What is the reason for their apparent anger against Singapore? This is aquestion, which kept propping up.
7. Apart from the way the attack was planned and executed, the most significant aspect of the attack was the targeting of foreignnationals----particularly the cream of the foreign business community who frequent these hotels. It was because of this that the technicalintelligence agencies of the Western countries diverted all their capabilities to cover the conversations between the terrorists and theirhandlers in Pakistan. It is said that the US moved one of its communication satellites over Mumbai during the 60 hours that the drama lastedin order to cover these conversations.
8. After the drama was over and the National Security Guards (NSGs) had rescued the surviving hostages, the Western countries had alltheir surviving nationals quietly flown to Europe where they were thoroughly debriefed by special teams from their intelligence agencies. Itis said that the French even sent a special plane for evacuating the French and other Western survivors from Mumbai to Paris. Westernexperts are surprised that neither the Mumbai Police nor the central intelligence agencies showed interest in detaining the survivingforeign hostages in India in order to debrief them thoroughly. If they had done so, the details collected by them would have formed animportant part of the dossier prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs and disseminated to foreign Governments. It is said that such details,which could have been obtained by debriefing the foreign survivors, hardly figure in the dossier.
9. According to foreign experts, the Mumbai Police and the central intelligence agencies were so excited by the capture alive of one of thePakistani perpetrators that they seem to have devoted all their attention to interrogating him and getting as many details as possible, whichcould help them to fix Pakistan. They complain that other important aspects which might have helped them in reconstructing the terroristattack, drawing the right lessons from it and preventing a repetition of similar attacks in future have not received much attention.
10. Pakistan's argument that the Government of India has been trying to divert attention from the colossal failure of its counter-terrorismmachinery in Mumbai by focussing on the alleged involvement of the ISI has started having some takers abroad due to the unprofessionalmanner in which the sequel to the terrorist strike has been handled by the Govt.of India. It is important to hold Pakistan accountable for using terrorism against India through concrete evidence. At the same time, it is equally important to identify the deficiencioes in ourcounter-terrorism machinery and act quickly to remove them. This is not being done.
11. The Mumbai carnage has caused great concern in the Western countries for two reasons. Firstly, the jihadi terrorists in India, who had inthe past showed an increasing preference for explosives over hand-held weapons, have gone back to hand-held weapons for attackingprivate establishments such as hotels, which have anti-explosive checks, but no armed guards to foil an attack with hand-held weapons. Ofthe 163 fatalities in Mumbai, only five were reportedly caused by explosives. The remaining 158 were caused by hand-held weapons (assaultrifles and hand-grenades). This trend of the jihadi terrorists going back to hand-held weapons was first noticed in the Anbar province of Iraqafter 1993 when Al Qaeda killed a number of Americans and others with hand-held weapons. It was noticed in Pakistan in 2007. When thejihadis failed to kill Benazir Bhutto with an explosive device at Karachi in October,2007, they used a mix of a hand-held weapon and anexplosive to successfuly kill her at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007. This trend was noticed in Afghanistan in 2008. While there wasreportedly an one-third increase in the use of explosive devices in Afghanistan, there was a simultaneous increase in the use of hand-heldweapons for precision killings. This trend has now spread to the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir.
12. Secondly, many Western experts feel that there was an Al Qaeda hand in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attack and that suchprecision planning and execution would not have been possible without the involvement of some local Muslims. While Indian experts havebeen able to quantify reasonably well the threat which they would continue to face in J&K, they have not been able to quantify in a similar manner the threat from sections of the Indian Muslim youth outside J&K because of a fear in political circles that such an exercise forquantification might have an adverse effect on the Muslim votes in the forthcoming parliamentary elections..
13. US Congressional committees and professional counter-terrorism organisations in the West are already examining the details of theMumbai carnage in order to draw lessons for themselves and to prevent a Mumbai-style attack in their country. Surprisingly, such anexercise is hardly to be seen in India. All the debate till now has been on what are the options against Pakistan. There has hardly been anypublic debate on what are the options against the terrorists in order to prevent another major attack. ( 12-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretasry (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.cm )
Monday, January 5, 2009
CAN INDIA EMULATE ISRAEL'S ACTION IN GAZA?
B.RAMAN
Ever since Israel started its military strikes in Gaza a week ago to put down the acts of terrorism of the Hamas, there have been demands from sections of analysts and the general public in our country that India should emulate Israel and retaliate in a similar manner against Pakistan for its complicity in the terrorist attack by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Pakistani terrorist organisation, in Mumbai from November 26 to 29,2008.
2. Nobody can question Israel's exercise of its right of self-defence to protect the lives and property of its citizens from rocket attacks from Gaza by the Hamas for weeks and months now. As the Deputy Permanent Representative of the US to the United Nations said in a press interview after the US had refused to join in the condemnation of Israel's action by the UN Security Council: " Israel, like all other members of the UN, has the right of self-defence. This right is not negotiable."
3. Like Israel and other members of the UN, India too has the right of self-defence against acts of terrorism emanating from Pakistani territory and sponsored by the State of Pakistan and has the right to retaliate against Pakistan and the duty to do so to protect the lives and property of its citizens.
4. The question is not whether we should retaliate. We should if we want Pakistan and the horde of terrorists nursed by it to take us seriously. The question is whether a direct military strike will be the wise and appropriate way of retaliating against Pakistan or should we do it through political and diplomatic measures, followed by deniable covert actions if those measures do not make Pakistan change its ways.
5. For many years, Israel has been the victim of acts of terrorism by organisations such as the Hamas and the Hizbollah sponsored mainly by Syria and Iran. Its retaliation has been directed against these terrorist organisations and not against their State-sponsors. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973 Israel has indulged in military strikes in the territory of a sovereign state and a member of the UN only on two occasions---- against the Osirak nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq in the early 1980s and against the Hizbollah's infrastructure in the Lebanese territory in 2006. In the past,Israeli armed forces had operated in Lebanese territory on other occasions too.
6. Its action against Osirak in Iraq was a success, but its action in the Lebanon in 2006 against the Hizbollah was not. Despite its concerns over the nuclear sites in Iran for the production of enriched uranium, Israel has till now avoided any military strikes on these sites despite public pressure from sections of the Israeli people to do so. It did launch an attack on a suspected nuclear site in Syria last year, but as a deniable covert action and not as an admitted military strike.It has also indulged in covert actions against suspected Hamas operatives based in Syria.
7. It is able to indulge in openly admitted military strikes against the Hamas in Gaza because Gaza is not part of any sovereign State. In the past, Israel's retaliatory military strikes have been against terrorist organisations posing a threat to Israeli citizens and property and not against the States sponsoring them. Its actions against States sponsoring terrorism have been in the form of covert actions and not direct military strikes.
8. Practically all States facing the problem of terrorism have a covert action capability because it gives you a third option if political and diplomatic measures fail. If you don't have this capability, the only option you have if political and diplomatic actions fail is a military retaliation, which could be messy when used against a next door neighbour. If you don't use military strikes and if you don't have a covert action capability, the state-sponsor and the terrorists sponsored by it develop a contempt for you.
9. The US has bombed Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan in retaliation for their perceived anti-US acts, but it never does it against Cuba, its next door neighbour. It has declared Cuba a state-sponsor of terrorism and constantly keeps trying to undermine Cuba's political stability and economy, but avoids direct military action against it despite its being a super power because it knows it could be messy.
10. It is hoped the Government draws the right lessons from its dilemma after Mumbai and tries to revive quikly our covert action capability, which was discarded more than a decade ago as an ill-conceived unilateral gesture to Pakistan.
(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 ) Reply Reply to all Forward
Ever since Israel started its military strikes in Gaza a week ago to put down the acts of terrorism of the Hamas, there have been demands from sections of analysts and the general public in our country that India should emulate Israel and retaliate in a similar manner against Pakistan for its complicity in the terrorist attack by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Pakistani terrorist organisation, in Mumbai from November 26 to 29,2008.
2. Nobody can question Israel's exercise of its right of self-defence to protect the lives and property of its citizens from rocket attacks from Gaza by the Hamas for weeks and months now. As the Deputy Permanent Representative of the US to the United Nations said in a press interview after the US had refused to join in the condemnation of Israel's action by the UN Security Council: " Israel, like all other members of the UN, has the right of self-defence. This right is not negotiable."
3. Like Israel and other members of the UN, India too has the right of self-defence against acts of terrorism emanating from Pakistani territory and sponsored by the State of Pakistan and has the right to retaliate against Pakistan and the duty to do so to protect the lives and property of its citizens.
4. The question is not whether we should retaliate. We should if we want Pakistan and the horde of terrorists nursed by it to take us seriously. The question is whether a direct military strike will be the wise and appropriate way of retaliating against Pakistan or should we do it through political and diplomatic measures, followed by deniable covert actions if those measures do not make Pakistan change its ways.
5. For many years, Israel has been the victim of acts of terrorism by organisations such as the Hamas and the Hizbollah sponsored mainly by Syria and Iran. Its retaliation has been directed against these terrorist organisations and not against their State-sponsors. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973 Israel has indulged in military strikes in the territory of a sovereign state and a member of the UN only on two occasions---- against the Osirak nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq in the early 1980s and against the Hizbollah's infrastructure in the Lebanese territory in 2006. In the past,Israeli armed forces had operated in Lebanese territory on other occasions too.
6. Its action against Osirak in Iraq was a success, but its action in the Lebanon in 2006 against the Hizbollah was not. Despite its concerns over the nuclear sites in Iran for the production of enriched uranium, Israel has till now avoided any military strikes on these sites despite public pressure from sections of the Israeli people to do so. It did launch an attack on a suspected nuclear site in Syria last year, but as a deniable covert action and not as an admitted military strike.It has also indulged in covert actions against suspected Hamas operatives based in Syria.
7. It is able to indulge in openly admitted military strikes against the Hamas in Gaza because Gaza is not part of any sovereign State. In the past, Israel's retaliatory military strikes have been against terrorist organisations posing a threat to Israeli citizens and property and not against the States sponsoring them. Its actions against States sponsoring terrorism have been in the form of covert actions and not direct military strikes.
8. Practically all States facing the problem of terrorism have a covert action capability because it gives you a third option if political and diplomatic measures fail. If you don't have this capability, the only option you have if political and diplomatic actions fail is a military retaliation, which could be messy when used against a next door neighbour. If you don't use military strikes and if you don't have a covert action capability, the state-sponsor and the terrorists sponsored by it develop a contempt for you.
9. The US has bombed Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan in retaliation for their perceived anti-US acts, but it never does it against Cuba, its next door neighbour. It has declared Cuba a state-sponsor of terrorism and constantly keeps trying to undermine Cuba's political stability and economy, but avoids direct military action against it despite its being a super power because it knows it could be messy.
10. It is hoped the Government draws the right lessons from its dilemma after Mumbai and tries to revive quikly our covert action capability, which was discarded more than a decade ago as an ill-conceived unilateral gesture to Pakistan.
(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 ) Reply Reply to all Forward
Sunday, January 4, 2009
LTTE: ONE MORE Q & A
B.RAMAN
Q.It was really interesting to read your recent article (LTTE after Klinochchi –Q&A) as well as past articles. But I would be happy if you can send me answer for my question. The War will mark major turn if the LTTE air men strike Kamikaze type attack on Colombo or other important places and military bases in Sri Lanka?
A.I am sure the LTTE must be examining the various options available to it. At present, it has very little opportunity for offensive action in the North when it is relentlessly under pressure from the Sri Lankan Army. However, it has the option of unconventional offensive strikes in other fronts far removed from the North. One such front could be Colombo. Another Trincomallee. The third Hambantota where the Chinese are reportedly constructing a modern port for Sri Lanka. Very often, turning points in unconventional warfare come when the terrorists start attacking the economic infrastructure. One saw this in the British fight against the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Mrs.Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister in the 1980s, took a very strong line against the IRA and waged a no-holds-barred campaign against it in Northern Ireland. The IRA managed to carry the fight to London and carried out some explosions in London's finance district where the offices of leading British banks are located. This led to a more nuanced policy towards the IRA instead of relying exclusively on brute force. One of the objectives of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in attacking Mumbai on November 26-29 was to try to damage India's economic growth. The LTTE must be trying hard for mounting kamikazee type attacks on military---particularly Air Force ---targets in Colombo similar to its raid on the SLAF base in Anuradhapura. The fact that it has not succeeded so far would indicate that the physical security for such establishments is strong and that the LTTE is facing shortages of the required materials for such attacks. One notices that the LTTE has not yet used all the weapons in its arsenal. It has apparently retained for itself an element of ultimate surprise.
Q.It was really interesting to read your recent article (LTTE after Klinochchi –Q&A) as well as past articles. But I would be happy if you can send me answer for my question. The War will mark major turn if the LTTE air men strike Kamikaze type attack on Colombo or other important places and military bases in Sri Lanka?
A.I am sure the LTTE must be examining the various options available to it. At present, it has very little opportunity for offensive action in the North when it is relentlessly under pressure from the Sri Lankan Army. However, it has the option of unconventional offensive strikes in other fronts far removed from the North. One such front could be Colombo. Another Trincomallee. The third Hambantota where the Chinese are reportedly constructing a modern port for Sri Lanka. Very often, turning points in unconventional warfare come when the terrorists start attacking the economic infrastructure. One saw this in the British fight against the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Mrs.Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister in the 1980s, took a very strong line against the IRA and waged a no-holds-barred campaign against it in Northern Ireland. The IRA managed to carry the fight to London and carried out some explosions in London's finance district where the offices of leading British banks are located. This led to a more nuanced policy towards the IRA instead of relying exclusively on brute force. One of the objectives of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in attacking Mumbai on November 26-29 was to try to damage India's economic growth. The LTTE must be trying hard for mounting kamikazee type attacks on military---particularly Air Force ---targets in Colombo similar to its raid on the SLAF base in Anuradhapura. The fact that it has not succeeded so far would indicate that the physical security for such establishments is strong and that the LTTE is facing shortages of the required materials for such attacks. One notices that the LTTE has not yet used all the weapons in its arsenal. It has apparently retained for itself an element of ultimate surprise.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
LTTE AFTER KILINOCHCHI---Q & A
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.489
B.RAMAN
I have received many questions in response to my article on the capture of Kilinochchi, the so-called administrative capital of the LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), by the Sri Lankan Army on January 2,2008. I will attempt to answer some of the questions:
Q.What will be the next move of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA)?
A.One of the reasons for the continuing success of the SLA during the last two years has been its ability to deny to the LTTE an opportunityfor an offensive action. It has consistently forced the LTTE to fight a defensive battle in one piece of territory after another-----whether in theEast or the North. Succession of defensive battles with no opportunity for taking the offensive anywhere saps the morale. That moment hasnot yet come for the LTTE, but it could and it will if the SLA manages to continue to deny to the LTTE an opportunity for an offensive action.From the reports coming out of the North, one gets an impression that the SLA is not giving itself a pause after its success at Kilinochchi. Itis pressing its offensive against the LTTE and has started moving towards Mulaithivu, which has now become the principal target of thebombings by the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF). The objective of the SLA is to keep the LTTE bleeding and not to allow it to re-group itself.
Q.In the past against the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) as well as the SLA subsequently, the LTTE had repeatedly bounced back from seemingly hopeless situations and recovered lost territory. Will it be able to do it again?
A.The LTTE's morale and motivation remain strong, but strong morale and motivation alone cannot win battles in the absence ofresources----human and material resources. In respect of both, the law of diminishing returns has already set in for the LTTE. One cannottotally rule out the kind of spectacular come-backs the LTTE had staged in the 1990s, but the objective conditions in the post-9/11 world aredifferent from those in the pre-9/11 world. There was a certain amount of acceptance of the legitimacy of terrorism/insurgency for achievinga political objective if left with no other option pre-9/11. Hence, the LTTE had a free run of the world collecting funds and clandestinelyprocuring materials. One of the consequences of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US is the acceptance by the international community thatterrorism is an absolute evil and cannot be accepted whatever be the reason for it. The LTTE today is a terrorist organisation in the eyes ofthe international community. It no longer has a free run. Its source of funds and equipment are being choked off one after the other. Before9/11, another important source of replenishment of arms and ammunition for the LTTE was the capture from the SLA. In defensive battlesthis also dries up. The ground realities today are much more strongly against the LTTE than they were pre-9/11. It will be a miracle if it isable to repeat its pre-/9/11 comebacks, but one should not act on the assumption that it will not be able to stage a come-back.It particularlycan if the SLA, in over-confidence or over-exuberance, creates serious tactical or strategic mistakes.
Q.But even in the post-9/11 world, Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda forces in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan staged a come-back?
A. Yes, they did due to two reasons----- the availability of sanctuaries and assistance for the pro-Al Qaeda forces from Iran and Syria and thesimilar availability for the Taliban from the Pakistani Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The LTTE is a banned terroristorganisation in India and its leader Prabakaran is a wanted assassin in India wanted for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Hence, the LTTEmay not be able to get sanctuaries and assistance from elements in Tamil Nadu. It has to fight with its back to the sea with no possibility ofescape beyond the sea.
Q. But even under the IPKF the LTTE managed to stage a come-back despite being denied sanctuaries and assistance in Indian territory?
A.As I have already mentioned, the pre-9/11 objective conditions were different from the post-9/11. Moreover, the IPKF did not indulge in aruthless application of India's air power against the LTTE. If it had done so, as the SLAF has been doing now, the LTTE might not have beenable to stage a come-back.
Q. Does it mean, the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils has become hopeless?
A. Their cause was not hopeless till 2003. It enjoyed a lot of international support. Prabakaran made it hopeless by a series of errors ofjudgement and tactical and strategic blunders. He continues to live in a make-believe world of his own, nursing an illusion that theinternational opinion might once again change in favour of the Tamils. Yes, it might, but only if Prabakaran is removed from the leadership ofthe LTTE along with his close associates. As I have been saying and writing for the last two years, he has become a liability for the Tamilcause and should be removed by the Tamils themselves or by his associates in the LTTE leadership who realise the damage he has causedto the Tamil cause.
Q. How will the end of Prabakaran come?
A. Either in an air strike by the SLAF or through suicide or through one of his own men turning against him. I would not be surprised if one ofthese days the SLAF manages to kill him as it managed to kill Tamilselvan, his political adviser, in 2006. As I wrote in the past, he has to belucky every time,but the SLAF has to be lucky only once.
Q. What are the chances of he and his cadres taking shelter in India?
A. The Governments of India and Tamil Nadu will not allow it.However, one has to be alert to the possibility that the Maoists (Naxalites) inthe tribal belt of central India who have some territorial control in the jungles might help him and give him shelter in return for theassistance which the LTTE had allegedly given them in the past. If he manages to reach the Maoists controlled territory, the ability of oursecurity forces to get at him may be limited. In the case of the LTTE cadres, some of them might succeed to come over to India as refugees.This would call for stricter vetting of the refugee flow in order to identify and arrest such elements.
Q. What would happen to the arms and ammunition and the planes at the disposal of the LTTE?
A. They might try to cache them in the jungles in the Northern Province or bring some of them to India and give them to the Maoists forpossible use or safe custody. We have to be alert enough to prevent this.
Q.If the SLA ultimately manages to defeat the LTTE, will it be peace in Sri Lanka?
A.Most probably not. It might be the end of classical insurgency, but it will not be the end of terrorism till the aspiratiions of the Tamils areaddressed without weakening the unity of Sri Lanka.
Q. India has been accused of double standards---taking a strong line against terrorism as seen after Mumbai, but at the same time critical ofthe strong measures taken by the SL Government?
A.There are no double standards. We take a strong line against the ISI-sponsored Pakistani terrorists, who have no business to be in ourterritory. We follow a no-holds-barred policy towards them to eradicate them. Our policy towards our own people----separatists, ideologicalterrorists or jihadi terrorists--- is more nuanced. Our policy towards them is graduated with a mix of political and the law and ordercomponents. We have never hesitated to talk to them. We look upon indigenous movements not as a conflict between one community andanother, but as a conflict between the Government and aggrieved elements in a community. Some of the strongest supporters of thehuman rights of the aggrieved communities have come from the majority Hindu community. In Sri Lanka, there are no foreign terroristsoperating. All the insurgents and terrorists are their own people. The counter-terrorism strategy of the Mahinda Rajapakse Governmentlacks the kind of sophistication and nuances we have. It treats the Sri Lankan Tamils as if they are foreigners while paying lip service totheir being citizens with equal rights. This has made the conflict in Sri Lanka not only between the Government and aggrieved sections ofthe Tamils, but also between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil communities. How many Sinhalese moulders of public opinionhave come forward to support the human rights of the Tamils? How many of them have criticised the use of the Air Force against the civilianTamil population? Even if the SLA is able to defeat the LTTE, it will take years for the SL society to heal the divide between the Sinhaleseand the Tamils caused by the policies of the Rajapakse Government and the intemperate pronouncements of Lt.Gen. Sarath Fonseka, theCommander of the SLA. (4-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStrudues, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
I have received many questions in response to my article on the capture of Kilinochchi, the so-called administrative capital of the LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), by the Sri Lankan Army on January 2,2008. I will attempt to answer some of the questions:
Q.What will be the next move of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA)?
A.One of the reasons for the continuing success of the SLA during the last two years has been its ability to deny to the LTTE an opportunityfor an offensive action. It has consistently forced the LTTE to fight a defensive battle in one piece of territory after another-----whether in theEast or the North. Succession of defensive battles with no opportunity for taking the offensive anywhere saps the morale. That moment hasnot yet come for the LTTE, but it could and it will if the SLA manages to continue to deny to the LTTE an opportunity for an offensive action.From the reports coming out of the North, one gets an impression that the SLA is not giving itself a pause after its success at Kilinochchi. Itis pressing its offensive against the LTTE and has started moving towards Mulaithivu, which has now become the principal target of thebombings by the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF). The objective of the SLA is to keep the LTTE bleeding and not to allow it to re-group itself.
Q.In the past against the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) as well as the SLA subsequently, the LTTE had repeatedly bounced back from seemingly hopeless situations and recovered lost territory. Will it be able to do it again?
A.The LTTE's morale and motivation remain strong, but strong morale and motivation alone cannot win battles in the absence ofresources----human and material resources. In respect of both, the law of diminishing returns has already set in for the LTTE. One cannottotally rule out the kind of spectacular come-backs the LTTE had staged in the 1990s, but the objective conditions in the post-9/11 world aredifferent from those in the pre-9/11 world. There was a certain amount of acceptance of the legitimacy of terrorism/insurgency for achievinga political objective if left with no other option pre-9/11. Hence, the LTTE had a free run of the world collecting funds and clandestinelyprocuring materials. One of the consequences of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US is the acceptance by the international community thatterrorism is an absolute evil and cannot be accepted whatever be the reason for it. The LTTE today is a terrorist organisation in the eyes ofthe international community. It no longer has a free run. Its source of funds and equipment are being choked off one after the other. Before9/11, another important source of replenishment of arms and ammunition for the LTTE was the capture from the SLA. In defensive battlesthis also dries up. The ground realities today are much more strongly against the LTTE than they were pre-9/11. It will be a miracle if it isable to repeat its pre-/9/11 comebacks, but one should not act on the assumption that it will not be able to stage a come-back.It particularlycan if the SLA, in over-confidence or over-exuberance, creates serious tactical or strategic mistakes.
Q.But even in the post-9/11 world, Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda forces in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan staged a come-back?
A. Yes, they did due to two reasons----- the availability of sanctuaries and assistance for the pro-Al Qaeda forces from Iran and Syria and thesimilar availability for the Taliban from the Pakistani Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The LTTE is a banned terroristorganisation in India and its leader Prabakaran is a wanted assassin in India wanted for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Hence, the LTTEmay not be able to get sanctuaries and assistance from elements in Tamil Nadu. It has to fight with its back to the sea with no possibility ofescape beyond the sea.
Q. But even under the IPKF the LTTE managed to stage a come-back despite being denied sanctuaries and assistance in Indian territory?
A.As I have already mentioned, the pre-9/11 objective conditions were different from the post-9/11. Moreover, the IPKF did not indulge in aruthless application of India's air power against the LTTE. If it had done so, as the SLAF has been doing now, the LTTE might not have beenable to stage a come-back.
Q. Does it mean, the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils has become hopeless?
A. Their cause was not hopeless till 2003. It enjoyed a lot of international support. Prabakaran made it hopeless by a series of errors ofjudgement and tactical and strategic blunders. He continues to live in a make-believe world of his own, nursing an illusion that theinternational opinion might once again change in favour of the Tamils. Yes, it might, but only if Prabakaran is removed from the leadership ofthe LTTE along with his close associates. As I have been saying and writing for the last two years, he has become a liability for the Tamilcause and should be removed by the Tamils themselves or by his associates in the LTTE leadership who realise the damage he has causedto the Tamil cause.
Q. How will the end of Prabakaran come?
A. Either in an air strike by the SLAF or through suicide or through one of his own men turning against him. I would not be surprised if one ofthese days the SLAF manages to kill him as it managed to kill Tamilselvan, his political adviser, in 2006. As I wrote in the past, he has to belucky every time,but the SLAF has to be lucky only once.
Q. What are the chances of he and his cadres taking shelter in India?
A. The Governments of India and Tamil Nadu will not allow it.However, one has to be alert to the possibility that the Maoists (Naxalites) inthe tribal belt of central India who have some territorial control in the jungles might help him and give him shelter in return for theassistance which the LTTE had allegedly given them in the past. If he manages to reach the Maoists controlled territory, the ability of oursecurity forces to get at him may be limited. In the case of the LTTE cadres, some of them might succeed to come over to India as refugees.This would call for stricter vetting of the refugee flow in order to identify and arrest such elements.
Q. What would happen to the arms and ammunition and the planes at the disposal of the LTTE?
A. They might try to cache them in the jungles in the Northern Province or bring some of them to India and give them to the Maoists forpossible use or safe custody. We have to be alert enough to prevent this.
Q.If the SLA ultimately manages to defeat the LTTE, will it be peace in Sri Lanka?
A.Most probably not. It might be the end of classical insurgency, but it will not be the end of terrorism till the aspiratiions of the Tamils areaddressed without weakening the unity of Sri Lanka.
Q. India has been accused of double standards---taking a strong line against terrorism as seen after Mumbai, but at the same time critical ofthe strong measures taken by the SL Government?
A.There are no double standards. We take a strong line against the ISI-sponsored Pakistani terrorists, who have no business to be in ourterritory. We follow a no-holds-barred policy towards them to eradicate them. Our policy towards our own people----separatists, ideologicalterrorists or jihadi terrorists--- is more nuanced. Our policy towards them is graduated with a mix of political and the law and ordercomponents. We have never hesitated to talk to them. We look upon indigenous movements not as a conflict between one community andanother, but as a conflict between the Government and aggrieved elements in a community. Some of the strongest supporters of thehuman rights of the aggrieved communities have come from the majority Hindu community. In Sri Lanka, there are no foreign terroristsoperating. All the insurgents and terrorists are their own people. The counter-terrorism strategy of the Mahinda Rajapakse Governmentlacks the kind of sophistication and nuances we have. It treats the Sri Lankan Tamils as if they are foreigners while paying lip service totheir being citizens with equal rights. This has made the conflict in Sri Lanka not only between the Government and aggrieved sections ofthe Tamils, but also between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil communities. How many Sinhalese moulders of public opinionhave come forward to support the human rights of the Tamils? How many of them have criticised the use of the Air Force against the civilianTamil population? Even if the SLA is able to defeat the LTTE, it will take years for the SL society to heal the divide between the Sinhaleseand the Tamils caused by the policies of the Rajapakse Government and the intemperate pronouncements of Lt.Gen. Sarath Fonseka, theCommander of the SLA. (4-1-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStrudues, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
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