INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.413
B.RAMAN
The Neo Taliban of Afghanistan has demonstrated a dual capability---- as a terrorist organization specializing in suicide terrorism and as a conventional guerilla force capable of conventional set-piece battles involving attack-stand-and fight tactics.
2. Its capability as a terrorist organization has remained unimpaired for the last two years. So far this year, it has already committed 73 acts of suicide terrorism as compared to 137 during the whole of last year.
3. Its acts of suicide terrorism are almost as numerous as those witnessed in Iraq, but not as deadly due to the poor training of the suicide bombers.
4. It demonstrated its capability for set-piece conventional battles involving the engagement of large forces during the fighting season of 2006-07. The Taliban units engaged in many of those battles in Afghan territory were trained, motivated and led by Mulla Dadullah.
5.The death of Mulla Dadullah in Afghan territory in an incident in May,2007, impaired its conventional capability. It faced difficulty in finding a suitable replacement for him. This had an impact on the ground situation during the summer of 2007. The much-threatened (by the Taliban) and much-dreaded (by the NATO forces) summer offensive did not materialize.
6. As the NATO commanders were hoping that the tide has started turning against the Taliban, it is showing signs of a second resurgence of its conventional prowess. One has already seen two instances of this. The first was its audacious attack on the Kandahar prison on June 13,2008, during which it took the NATO and Afghan National Army (ANA) forces totally by surprise and rescued about 400 imprisoned Taliban cadres and took them away in motor vehicles without being intercepted by the Canadian forces deployed for the security of this area.
7. The second instance was on July 13,2008, when an estimated 200 jihadi fighters , who had taken shelter, without being detected, in a village called Wanat in the Kunnar province in Eastern Afghanistan managed to attack and over-run an outpost jointly manned by US and ANA forces, after killing nine US soldiers. The US has since vacated this indefensible area, which has reportedly been occupied by the jihadi fighters.
8.What should be worrying is not the occupation of this area by the jihadis, but their ability to keep their movement, assembling in the village and preparations for the attack a secret and the tenacity with which they reportedly fought despite the US outpost calling for air strikes to disperse them.
9.The identity of the fighters and their commander is not yet certain. The Taliban, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami and Al Qaeda are known to be active in this area-----with greater activity by the Hizbe Islami than others. There have also been reports from tribal sources in Pakistan that the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which has been operating in tandem with Maulana Fazlullah’s Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), has now moved some of its trained cadres to the Kunnar province to fight along with the Hizbe Islami. However, the JEM is essentially a terrorist organization with very little conventional capability.
10.The kind of conventional capability, which was exhibited during the 2006-07 fighting season and is being exhibited now, could come only from either serving or retired Pashtun soldiers of the Pakistani and Afghan armies and those trained by them.
11. In a report carried by it on July 18,2008, the “Financial Times” of London has quoted Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that the July 13’s “well co-ordinated” attack by hundreds of insurgents against a US military outpost near the border with Pakistan demonstrated that the enemy in Afghanistan had “grown bolder, more sophisticated, and more diverse”.
12. He added: “We’re seeing a greater number of insurgents and foreign fighters flowing across the border with Pakistan, unmolested and unhindered. We simply must all do a better job of policing the border region and eliminating the safe havens, which serve today as launching pads for attacks on coalition forces.”
13. An agency report carried by the “News” of Pakistan on July 17,2008, has quoted Admiral Mullen as further saying as follows: “The group that launched the attack trained in safe havens in Pakistan. We see this threat accelerating, almost becoming a syndicate of different groups who heretofore had not worked closely together.”
14. Till recently, Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), another Uzbek group, were content with keeping their role confined to training the jihadis of the Taliban, the various Pakistani organizations and volunteers from outside. They were not participating in actual battles due to their small number, which they wanted to conserve for operations outside this region. There have been reports that their number has now been bolstered by the arrival of not only experienced fighters from Iraq, but also fresh recruits from the Central Asian Republics, Chechnya and Turks and members of the Uighur diaspora from Turkey.
15. The Pentagon is reported to have ordered an enquiry into the July 13 fiasco in order to establish the identity of the jihadi forces which attacked the outpost, how the outpost was taken by surprise and how the intelligence agencies failed to detect the movement and assembling of the jihadis near the outpost. It has been reported that the jihadis managed to plan and carry out the attack within two days of the outpost being set up.
16. The US forces should re-examine their present policy of setting up thinly-manned outposts in apparently indefensible areas. They only hand over a seemingly spectacular victory on a platter to the jihadis. They should reverse this tactics and inveigle the jihadis into setting up their presence in such areas and then attack and kill them with superior force. The objective in such isolated areas should be not territorial control, but inflicting heavy attrition on the jihadis.
17.The jihadi battles presently going on in Pakistan’s tribal belt and in Afghanistan have serious security implications for India. Mehsuds, Wazirs and Afridis were the tribals used by the Pakistan Army in 1947-48 to capture what is now called the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). The Pakistan Army again used them before and during the war of 1965. Zia-ul-Haq used them for suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit in 1988.
18. President Bush often says with some validity that if the US troops withdraw from Iraq without defeating Al Qaeda, the Arab terrorists now operating in Iraq could move over to Europe and the US and step up terrorism.
19. If the US and other NATO forces fail to prevail over the jihadis in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt, these tribals, fresh from their victories in that region, would move over to Kashmir to resume their jihad against India. What we are now seeing in Kashmir is the beginning of the end of one phase of the jihad involving jihadis of the 1980s vintage. We might see the beginning of a new phase involving better-trained and better-motivated jihadis of the latest stock. (20-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and ,presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies.E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, July 19, 2008
KABUL BLAST: WHAT NEXT?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.412
B.RAMAN
The suicide car bomb blast outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, was meant to convey a message to India----thus far and no further in assisting the Hamid Karzai Government.
2.One has to painstakingly collect evidence to identify the originators of the message, but one can even now make a reasonable surmise of their identity. It could have originated only from the Pakistan-backed and Al Qaeda-trained Taliban, which has been acting in tandem with the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Heckmatyar, and the Government of Pakistan itself acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
3.India is in Afghanistan not to fight against jihadi terrorism. It is there to help the legally-elected Afghan Government and people recover from over two decades of continuous strife and put them back on the road to economic recovery, better governance and a better quality of life for the people.
4.But the Taliban and Pakistan do not look at it that way. The Taliban looks on the Indian presence as no different from the presence of the US and other NATO forces--- meant to strengthen the influence of the “infidels” and propagate the ideals of a liberal democracy, which are seen by it as anti-Islam.
5.Pakistan looks upon it as meant to revive the historic relationship between the people of India and Afghanistan to the detriment of the Pakistani interests and influence built up over two decades of jihad----initially against the Soviet presence and now against the Western presence.
6.The Taliban and Pakistan see a convergence of interests and objectives between the two in resisting what they view as the growing Indian presence.
7. There is a convergence of interests and objectives between the Governments of Afghanistan and India too, namely, to resist the spread of religious extremism in this region and the use of the extremist forces by the ISI to destabilise the two countries.
8.The Kabul blast marked the opening of a second front by the Taliban at the instigation of the ISI. Its first front has been against the US and other NATO forces. Its newly-opened second front is against Indian nationals and interests in Afghanistan.
9.The Taliban owes its recovery from the post-9/11 set-back suffered by it during the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom to the protection and patronage extended to it by the ISI. It had its survivors and fresh recruits re-motivated, re-trained and re-armed in Pakistani sanctuaries with the complicity of serving ISI officers and the active assistance of retired officers.
10.It has staged a remarkable come-back since 2005 and has been able to make the US and other NATO forces bleed continuously since then. The US committed a mistake of viewing its on-going war against Al Qaeda and the fight against a resurgent Taliban as two different ball games. So long as Pakistan was collaborating with it against Al Qaeda, it closed its eyes to the ISI’s role in the resurgence of the Taliban.
11.Only now, after six months of mounting NATO casualties in Afghanistan is the realization slowly dawning on the US and other NATO powers that they cannot defeat Al Qaeda without defeating the Taliban and that they cannot prevent the return of the Taliban without acting against its mentor and protector.
12.To realise past mistakes is one thing and to devise new policy options free of the mistakes is another. In an election year, re-crafting new policy options has been a slow process. Moreover, the desire to make Pakistan change without hurting it continues to be a strong motivating factor in US policy-making. Pakistan continues to take advantage of this ambivalence of US policy-makers and strategic thinkers to continue with its policy of seeming action against the Taliban and actual nursing of it.
13.The impact of the Western ambivalence can be seen in Western perceptions of the Pakistani use of the Taliban to counter the Indian presence in Afghanistan. Deplorable, but understandable. That has been the underlying American thinking----whether in Governmental or non-Governmental circles.
14.The West realizes the benign role which India has been playing in Afghanistan. At the same time, it is unable to rid its policy-making of the malign influence of Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as in its sphere of influence where India has no business to be active.
15.Under these circumstances, the second front opened by the Taliban at the nudging of the ISI against India would continue to be a major preoccupation of our policy makers. We should not allow the tragic death of our officers in Kabul to induce second-thoughts on our policy in Afghanistan. The policy is right and to the mutual benefit of the two countries and in the long-term interests of the region.
16.Our ability to press ahead with our policy will depend on our ability to protect our nationals deputed to Afghanistan to carry forward our policy. Their protection is the joint responsibility of the two Governments.
17.How to strengthen the protective security for our nationals and establishments in Afghanistan? This is a question, which deserves the immediate attention of the leaders and the security bureaucracies of the two countries.
18. Protective security alone is not sufficient. It has to be combined with a deterrent capability. The deterrent capability comes from our proclaimed willingness and ability to switch from the mode of passive defence to one of active defence.
19. When terrorists sponsored by another State and operating from sanctuaries in that State attack your nationals and interests , you have the right of self-defence---which can be passive or active. In passive defence, you confine your retaliatory action to your own territory. In active defence, you take the retaliatory action to the territory of the State from where the terrorists are operating, if left with no other way of deterring further acts of terrorism. The US and Israel have a publicly proclaimed doctrine of active defence against State sponsors of terrorism posing a threat to their nationals and interests. The US doctrine was enunciated by George Shultz, the then Secretary of State in the Ronald Reagan Administration, in a public speech after the attack on the US Marines in Beirut in 1983. Many other States have a similar doctrine, but it is not publicly admitted.
20. The doctrine of active defence followed by the US and Israel is applicable whether their nationals and interests are attacked in their homeland or in third countries by terrorists sponsored by a State. Reagan ordered the bombing of terrorist training camps in Libya in 1986 after terrorists sponsored by Libya killed some American soldiers in a West Berlin discotheque. Similarly, Israel has retaliated when its nationals were killed in West Europe.
21. India has had in the past a covert action capability which had been used in active defence in foreign territory for the protection of its nationals and interests, but it never had a publicly proclaimed doctrine of active defence through covert actions for the protection of its nationals and interests from terrorists sponsored by another State.
22. The recent comments of M.K.Narayanan, the National Security Adviser, about evidence being available regarding the involvement of the ISI in the Kabul blast and India’s readiness to go into the active defence mode should it become necessary is the first publicly proclaimed doctrine of active defence since 1947. It is similar in principle to the Shultz doctrine, but not as detailed.
23. While Narayanan’s public proclamation has to be welcomed, it has one important deficiency. It is Pakistan specific and thus does not allow for flexibility. The US and Israeli doctrines are applicable to any State, which uses terrorists against their nationals and interests. Their doctrines do not refer to any country by name. Our nationals and interests face threats from terrorists sheltered and sponsored by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Any doctrine should, therefore, be capable of being applied to both the countries, if necessary, and convey a clear message to them.
24. Publicly proclaiming a doctrine is the easiest part of active defence. The more difficult part is the creation of the required capability for active defence through covert actions. In the past----before 1997--- we had the capability which had served us well, but we did not feel the need for a publicly-proclaimed doctrine. Now, we have a publicly-proclaimed doctrine, but one does not know how good is our capability to enforce this doctrine should it become necessary. Creating or re-creating such a capability and keeping it in a permanent state of readiness to move into the active mode is the next immediate priority. We must have a small core of capability, which is permanent whether we intend using it or not, with a provision for its rapid expansion when the time for action comes.
25. I had made a detailed analysis of active defence through covert actions in my book titled “Intelligence---Past, Present& Future” published by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi in 2001. (19-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The suicide car bomb blast outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, was meant to convey a message to India----thus far and no further in assisting the Hamid Karzai Government.
2.One has to painstakingly collect evidence to identify the originators of the message, but one can even now make a reasonable surmise of their identity. It could have originated only from the Pakistan-backed and Al Qaeda-trained Taliban, which has been acting in tandem with the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Heckmatyar, and the Government of Pakistan itself acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
3.India is in Afghanistan not to fight against jihadi terrorism. It is there to help the legally-elected Afghan Government and people recover from over two decades of continuous strife and put them back on the road to economic recovery, better governance and a better quality of life for the people.
4.But the Taliban and Pakistan do not look at it that way. The Taliban looks on the Indian presence as no different from the presence of the US and other NATO forces--- meant to strengthen the influence of the “infidels” and propagate the ideals of a liberal democracy, which are seen by it as anti-Islam.
5.Pakistan looks upon it as meant to revive the historic relationship between the people of India and Afghanistan to the detriment of the Pakistani interests and influence built up over two decades of jihad----initially against the Soviet presence and now against the Western presence.
6.The Taliban and Pakistan see a convergence of interests and objectives between the two in resisting what they view as the growing Indian presence.
7. There is a convergence of interests and objectives between the Governments of Afghanistan and India too, namely, to resist the spread of religious extremism in this region and the use of the extremist forces by the ISI to destabilise the two countries.
8.The Kabul blast marked the opening of a second front by the Taliban at the instigation of the ISI. Its first front has been against the US and other NATO forces. Its newly-opened second front is against Indian nationals and interests in Afghanistan.
9.The Taliban owes its recovery from the post-9/11 set-back suffered by it during the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom to the protection and patronage extended to it by the ISI. It had its survivors and fresh recruits re-motivated, re-trained and re-armed in Pakistani sanctuaries with the complicity of serving ISI officers and the active assistance of retired officers.
10.It has staged a remarkable come-back since 2005 and has been able to make the US and other NATO forces bleed continuously since then. The US committed a mistake of viewing its on-going war against Al Qaeda and the fight against a resurgent Taliban as two different ball games. So long as Pakistan was collaborating with it against Al Qaeda, it closed its eyes to the ISI’s role in the resurgence of the Taliban.
11.Only now, after six months of mounting NATO casualties in Afghanistan is the realization slowly dawning on the US and other NATO powers that they cannot defeat Al Qaeda without defeating the Taliban and that they cannot prevent the return of the Taliban without acting against its mentor and protector.
12.To realise past mistakes is one thing and to devise new policy options free of the mistakes is another. In an election year, re-crafting new policy options has been a slow process. Moreover, the desire to make Pakistan change without hurting it continues to be a strong motivating factor in US policy-making. Pakistan continues to take advantage of this ambivalence of US policy-makers and strategic thinkers to continue with its policy of seeming action against the Taliban and actual nursing of it.
13.The impact of the Western ambivalence can be seen in Western perceptions of the Pakistani use of the Taliban to counter the Indian presence in Afghanistan. Deplorable, but understandable. That has been the underlying American thinking----whether in Governmental or non-Governmental circles.
14.The West realizes the benign role which India has been playing in Afghanistan. At the same time, it is unable to rid its policy-making of the malign influence of Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as in its sphere of influence where India has no business to be active.
15.Under these circumstances, the second front opened by the Taliban at the nudging of the ISI against India would continue to be a major preoccupation of our policy makers. We should not allow the tragic death of our officers in Kabul to induce second-thoughts on our policy in Afghanistan. The policy is right and to the mutual benefit of the two countries and in the long-term interests of the region.
16.Our ability to press ahead with our policy will depend on our ability to protect our nationals deputed to Afghanistan to carry forward our policy. Their protection is the joint responsibility of the two Governments.
17.How to strengthen the protective security for our nationals and establishments in Afghanistan? This is a question, which deserves the immediate attention of the leaders and the security bureaucracies of the two countries.
18. Protective security alone is not sufficient. It has to be combined with a deterrent capability. The deterrent capability comes from our proclaimed willingness and ability to switch from the mode of passive defence to one of active defence.
19. When terrorists sponsored by another State and operating from sanctuaries in that State attack your nationals and interests , you have the right of self-defence---which can be passive or active. In passive defence, you confine your retaliatory action to your own territory. In active defence, you take the retaliatory action to the territory of the State from where the terrorists are operating, if left with no other way of deterring further acts of terrorism. The US and Israel have a publicly proclaimed doctrine of active defence against State sponsors of terrorism posing a threat to their nationals and interests. The US doctrine was enunciated by George Shultz, the then Secretary of State in the Ronald Reagan Administration, in a public speech after the attack on the US Marines in Beirut in 1983. Many other States have a similar doctrine, but it is not publicly admitted.
20. The doctrine of active defence followed by the US and Israel is applicable whether their nationals and interests are attacked in their homeland or in third countries by terrorists sponsored by a State. Reagan ordered the bombing of terrorist training camps in Libya in 1986 after terrorists sponsored by Libya killed some American soldiers in a West Berlin discotheque. Similarly, Israel has retaliated when its nationals were killed in West Europe.
21. India has had in the past a covert action capability which had been used in active defence in foreign territory for the protection of its nationals and interests, but it never had a publicly proclaimed doctrine of active defence through covert actions for the protection of its nationals and interests from terrorists sponsored by another State.
22. The recent comments of M.K.Narayanan, the National Security Adviser, about evidence being available regarding the involvement of the ISI in the Kabul blast and India’s readiness to go into the active defence mode should it become necessary is the first publicly proclaimed doctrine of active defence since 1947. It is similar in principle to the Shultz doctrine, but not as detailed.
23. While Narayanan’s public proclamation has to be welcomed, it has one important deficiency. It is Pakistan specific and thus does not allow for flexibility. The US and Israeli doctrines are applicable to any State, which uses terrorists against their nationals and interests. Their doctrines do not refer to any country by name. Our nationals and interests face threats from terrorists sheltered and sponsored by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Any doctrine should, therefore, be capable of being applied to both the countries, if necessary, and convey a clear message to them.
24. Publicly proclaiming a doctrine is the easiest part of active defence. The more difficult part is the creation of the required capability for active defence through covert actions. In the past----before 1997--- we had the capability which had served us well, but we did not feel the need for a publicly-proclaimed doctrine. Now, we have a publicly-proclaimed doctrine, but one does not know how good is our capability to enforce this doctrine should it become necessary. Creating or re-creating such a capability and keeping it in a permanent state of readiness to move into the active mode is the next immediate priority. We must have a small core of capability, which is permanent whether we intend using it or not, with a provision for its rapid expansion when the time for action comes.
25. I had made a detailed analysis of active defence through covert actions in my book titled “Intelligence---Past, Present& Future” published by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi in 2001. (19-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Friday, July 18, 2008
BACKGROUNDER ON SHELFARI FROM WIKIPEDIA
Shelfari is a social cataloging website where members can catalog, tag, review, and discuss books.. Shelfari is the first product from Taste Makers, Inc., a company created by Josh Hug, Kevin Beukelman, and Mark Williamson. Shelfari was launched on October 11, 2006.Individuals are able to sign up for free and register an unlimited number of books.
Shelfari users build virtual bookshelves of the titles they own or have read, and can rate, review, and tag their books. Shelfari's use of dimension in its books and shelves is intended to bring a real-world feel to the experience.
Commercial tie-ins
In February 2007, Amazon.com reportedly invested $1 million in Shelfari. In May 2007, Shelfari partnered with BookExpo America (BEA) to create Lit Insiders, combining the online Shelfari experience with an event at BEA.
On June 7, 2007, Shelfari updated the "Book pages" to increase the social aspect of the site and user experience.In September 2007, Shelfari introduced its updated blog widget, which allows bloggers display the books from their Shelfari account. The widget comes in two forms: a graphical shelf widget in three styles (wood grain, ebony, and steel/cherry), and a text widget that adopts the styles of the page it is on.
External Criticisms
Shelfari has received bad press for its "Invite Friends" page. Jesse Wegman, writing in The New York Observer in October 2007, complained that because he had "accidentally failed to uncheck the approximately 1,500 names in my Gmail address book that Shelfari had helpfully pre-checked", the system caused invitations to be sent, contrary to his intentions but "ostensibly" from his own address, to his entire network of contacts. In November 2007, Shelfari was accused of astroturfing by Tim Spalding, the creator of LibraryThing, a competing social networking book site. In a comment on another blog critical of Shelfari (primarily critcizing the "invitations" system), Josh Hug, the CEO, blamed the astroturfing on an intern not knowing better, and said that it had stopped.
Shelfari users build virtual bookshelves of the titles they own or have read, and can rate, review, and tag their books. Shelfari's use of dimension in its books and shelves is intended to bring a real-world feel to the experience.
Commercial tie-ins
In February 2007, Amazon.com reportedly invested $1 million in Shelfari. In May 2007, Shelfari partnered with BookExpo America (BEA) to create Lit Insiders, combining the online Shelfari experience with an event at BEA.
On June 7, 2007, Shelfari updated the "Book pages" to increase the social aspect of the site and user experience.In September 2007, Shelfari introduced its updated blog widget, which allows bloggers display the books from their Shelfari account. The widget comes in two forms: a graphical shelf widget in three styles (wood grain, ebony, and steel/cherry), and a text widget that adopts the styles of the page it is on.
External Criticisms
Shelfari has received bad press for its "Invite Friends" page. Jesse Wegman, writing in The New York Observer in October 2007, complained that because he had "accidentally failed to uncheck the approximately 1,500 names in my Gmail address book that Shelfari had helpfully pre-checked", the system caused invitations to be sent, contrary to his intentions but "ostensibly" from his own address, to his entire network of contacts. In November 2007, Shelfari was accused of astroturfing by Tim Spalding, the creator of LibraryThing, a competing social networking book site. In a comment on another blog critical of Shelfari (primarily critcizing the "invitations" system), Josh Hug, the CEO, blamed the astroturfing on an intern not knowing better, and said that it had stopped.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
MUSLIMS & THE PRE-ELECTION POLITICAL SCENE
B.RAMAN
As the date (July 22,2008) for the vote of confidence from the Lok Sabha in the Manmohan Government nears and as the possibility of a premature election to the Lok Sabha looms large, a question often debated is the attitude of the Indian Muslims to the Indo-US nuclear deal. Do they regard it as anti-Muslim because of the perceived anti-Muslim policies of the administration of President George Bush? That is the question which has been raised again and again by the critics of the deal and of Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh.
2. In this connection, it would be pertinent to take note of the attitude of the Muslims in the Ummah as a whole since that could have an impact on the attitude of the Indian Muslims. The strongest criticism of India's developing relations with the US came from sections of the Muslims of the Ummah immediately after the visit of Bush to India in March,2006. The criticism was not specific relating to the nuclear deal. It was more in relation to what they saw as India's co-operation with the US and Israel in the war against jihadi terrorism. They noted with anger and surprise the reluctance of different political formations in India---in the rulling alliance as well as in the opposition--- to criticise the allegedly inhuman conditions in which Muslims arrested in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba and denied the basic human rights and the benefits of the due process of the law. Even the former Tony Blair Government of the UK, which was very supportive of the policies of the Bush Administration, expressed its discomfort over the conditions in which the Muslim detenus were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and in May 2006 publicly called for winding up the Centre and transfering the detenus to the custody of the American civilian authorities from the custody of the military authorities. A similar demand has been voiced by many other democratic countries, by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by all human rights organisations of the West without exception. India's silence in this matter as well as over the repeated air strikes by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed a large number of civilians, was an important source of anger. This silence was seen as the inevitable outcome of the growing Indo-US strategic relatioinship.
3. It was in this context that in the last week of April,2006, Osama bin Laden projected the global jihad being waged by Al Qaeda as directed against a joint conspiracy of the Crusaders, the Jewish people and the Hindus against Islam and the Muslims. However, this characterisation has not been repeated by him since then and the anger over India's silence has not found renewed expression. However, one could not conclude from this that the anger has dissipated.
4.Similarly, the silence of the leftist parties---particularly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)--- over the renewed campaign of repression by the Chinese authorities against the Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province bordering Pakistan is being discussed by the various Muslim chat groups in the Internet. They have noted that not only the leftist parties, but even the Indian political class as a whole and the Indian elite have maintained a silence over the recent public execution of two Uighurs, the arrest of about 80 others and the forcible closure of 40 mosques by the Chinese on the ground that they had been started without permission and had become the den of terrorist elements despite the fact that many of these details were carried by the State-controlled media of China. One can legitimately justify this silence on the ground that this was an internal matter of China, but they have noted the energetic manner in which Indian public opinion reacted to the repression of the Tibetans, but maintained a discreet silence on the repression of the Muslims.
5. If the unabated concerns of Israel over Iran's nuclear programme leads to an Israeli air strike against Iran's nuclear establishments with Iranian retaliation against Israel, the consequences of this clash could have an impact of the forthcoming election campaign in India due to a surge of anger in the Indian Muslim community. Al Qaeda and other pro-Al Qaeda Sunni organisations have kept silent over the dangers of a US military strike against Iran. In his messages of last year, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No.2, implied that Iran, which colluded with the US in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, cannot expect the Sunnis to come to its help against the US.
6. However, if Israel---and not the US--- attacks Iran, the Sunnis could rally to the support of Iran. The Indian Muslim community is unlikely to remain untouched by the anger of the Ummah against Israel. India's close strategic relations with Israel built up over the years by the previous as well as the present Governments could affect the attitude of the Muslims, upsetting the electoral calculations of different political formations.
7. In this connection, one notices that the Government of India has already taken a strong stand earlier this week against any military action against Iran . (17-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
As the date (July 22,2008) for the vote of confidence from the Lok Sabha in the Manmohan Government nears and as the possibility of a premature election to the Lok Sabha looms large, a question often debated is the attitude of the Indian Muslims to the Indo-US nuclear deal. Do they regard it as anti-Muslim because of the perceived anti-Muslim policies of the administration of President George Bush? That is the question which has been raised again and again by the critics of the deal and of Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh.
2. In this connection, it would be pertinent to take note of the attitude of the Muslims in the Ummah as a whole since that could have an impact on the attitude of the Indian Muslims. The strongest criticism of India's developing relations with the US came from sections of the Muslims of the Ummah immediately after the visit of Bush to India in March,2006. The criticism was not specific relating to the nuclear deal. It was more in relation to what they saw as India's co-operation with the US and Israel in the war against jihadi terrorism. They noted with anger and surprise the reluctance of different political formations in India---in the rulling alliance as well as in the opposition--- to criticise the allegedly inhuman conditions in which Muslims arrested in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba and denied the basic human rights and the benefits of the due process of the law. Even the former Tony Blair Government of the UK, which was very supportive of the policies of the Bush Administration, expressed its discomfort over the conditions in which the Muslim detenus were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and in May 2006 publicly called for winding up the Centre and transfering the detenus to the custody of the American civilian authorities from the custody of the military authorities. A similar demand has been voiced by many other democratic countries, by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by all human rights organisations of the West without exception. India's silence in this matter as well as over the repeated air strikes by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed a large number of civilians, was an important source of anger. This silence was seen as the inevitable outcome of the growing Indo-US strategic relatioinship.
3. It was in this context that in the last week of April,2006, Osama bin Laden projected the global jihad being waged by Al Qaeda as directed against a joint conspiracy of the Crusaders, the Jewish people and the Hindus against Islam and the Muslims. However, this characterisation has not been repeated by him since then and the anger over India's silence has not found renewed expression. However, one could not conclude from this that the anger has dissipated.
4.Similarly, the silence of the leftist parties---particularly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)--- over the renewed campaign of repression by the Chinese authorities against the Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province bordering Pakistan is being discussed by the various Muslim chat groups in the Internet. They have noted that not only the leftist parties, but even the Indian political class as a whole and the Indian elite have maintained a silence over the recent public execution of two Uighurs, the arrest of about 80 others and the forcible closure of 40 mosques by the Chinese on the ground that they had been started without permission and had become the den of terrorist elements despite the fact that many of these details were carried by the State-controlled media of China. One can legitimately justify this silence on the ground that this was an internal matter of China, but they have noted the energetic manner in which Indian public opinion reacted to the repression of the Tibetans, but maintained a discreet silence on the repression of the Muslims.
5. If the unabated concerns of Israel over Iran's nuclear programme leads to an Israeli air strike against Iran's nuclear establishments with Iranian retaliation against Israel, the consequences of this clash could have an impact of the forthcoming election campaign in India due to a surge of anger in the Indian Muslim community. Al Qaeda and other pro-Al Qaeda Sunni organisations have kept silent over the dangers of a US military strike against Iran. In his messages of last year, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No.2, implied that Iran, which colluded with the US in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, cannot expect the Sunnis to come to its help against the US.
6. However, if Israel---and not the US--- attacks Iran, the Sunnis could rally to the support of Iran. The Indian Muslim community is unlikely to remain untouched by the anger of the Ummah against Israel. India's close strategic relations with Israel built up over the years by the previous as well as the present Governments could affect the attitude of the Muslims, upsetting the electoral calculations of different political formations.
7. In this connection, one notices that the Government of India has already taken a strong stand earlier this week against any military action against Iran . (17-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Sunday, July 13, 2008
COUNT-DOWN TO BEIJING OLYMPICS---II
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.411
B.RAMAN
With less than a month to go for the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities are showing increasing signs of nervousness over possible acts of terrorism by the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (IMET) either in the Olympic venues or in Xinjiang or in any of the Central Asian Republics or in Pakistan. This nervousness has been reflected in the forcible closure of nearly 40 allegedly illegal mosques in Xinjiang, more arrests of alleged terrorists and the execution of the death sentences awarded by the courts in the past against alleged Uighur terrorists. The Chinese do not seem to have taken into consideration the danger that such acts by themselves may provoke the Uighur dissidents to retaliate against them.
2. The forcible closure of the so-called unauthorised mosques seems to have been triggered off by fears that some of these mosques may turn out to be the Lal Masjids of Xinjiang. The Lal Masjid of Islamabad became the base of the activities of pro-Al Qaeda and pro-Taliban Pashtun student extremists last year, forcing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to order the Army commandoes to raid the Masjid in July last year to wrest control of the Masjid from the extremists. He ordered this raid after the students kidnapped some Chinese women working in local beauty and massage parlours and accused them of leading an immoral life.
3. The Chinese have been closely monitoring the situation in the tribal belt of Pakistan and having frequent interactions with the Pakistani authorities in order to prevent any act of terrorism mounted from the Pakistani territory before or during the Olympics.
4.On July 9,2008, the Chinese authorities announced the public execution of two Uighurs whose names (Chinese version, not their original ethnic names) were given out by them as Muheteer Setiwalidi and Abdulwaili Yiming after they had been convicted by a Kashgar court on November 9,2007, on charges of separatist activities, attending a terrorist training camp and manufacturing explosives. According to the announcement, the court had awarded three other Uighurs suspended death sentences and sentenced 12 other Uighurs to various terms of imprisonment. All of them were accused of being members of the IMET. They were reported to have joined the IMET in August 2005 and were arrested by the Police in January,2007.
5.The public announcement of the sentences awarded to the 17 Uighurs came a day after the police of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, forcibly entered a flat to arrest 15 Uighurs, who were also projected as members of the IMET. Five of them were killed by the police when they allegedly resisted arrest.
6. While the observance of the birthday of the Dalai Lama on July 6,2008, passed off without any incident in Tibet and other Tibetan-inhabited areas of China, there were reports of unrest and protest meetings by Tibetan nomads in the Lithang area of the Sichuan province when the Chinese banned the holding of the traditional annual horse-racing festival by the nomads. The observance of the festival in the beginning of August last year led to acts of violence when the local police arrested some nomads for shouting slogans praising the Dalai Lama. The Chinese apparently did not want to face the risk of a similar incident this year just a few weeks before the Olympics. They played it safe by banning the festival. The People's Liberation Army was able to bring the protests under control without difficulty, but 600 troops have been sent to the area to reinforce the local security forces.
7.Meanwhile, 116 Tibetans arrested during the anti-Beijing uprising in March last are now being tried by courts in Lhasa on charges of arson, robbery and attacks on public servants. Forty-two of them have already been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The trial of the remaining is continuing. The Chinese authorities have not ruled out the possibility that some of the remaining may be sentenced to death and executed.
8. There have been no reports of fresh arrests in Tibet. Though the Chinese officials of Tibet have kept up their patriotic re-education classes, they have been a little more careful to avoid excesses against the Tibetans because of the widespread support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause in the international community. At a time when the movement for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Olympics has stopped with many world leaders, including President George Bush, re-affirming their decision to attend the inaugural function, the Chinese have been avoiding any ham-handed action against the Tibetans.
9. They are not observing a similar caution in respect of the Uighurs, who do not have an iconic leader like the Dalai Lama. Moreover, by projecting every Uighur dissident arrested as a member of the pro-Al Qaeda IMET, which is treated as a terrorist organisation by the US, the Chinese have been able to ensure that their actions in Xinjiang do not become the focus of international scrutiny in the days preceding the Olympics.
10. The Chinese are really nervous about the dangers of an act of jihadi terrorism during the Olympics. The international community, which too is nervous, has been giving the benefit of doubt to the Chinese and is not criticising the action taken by the Chinese against the Muslim Uighurs in the same manner as it criticised their action against the Buddhist Tibetans.
11. The anger in Xinjiang and in the Uighur and Uzbek communities in Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics over the Chinese actions and the perceived silence of the international community because the victims were Muslims might increase the dangers of an act of jihadi terrorism before or during the Olympics either by the Uighurs or by their co-religionists.
12. Meanwhile, the second round of the resumed dialogue between Chinese officials and two representatives of the Dalai Lama in Beijing in the first week of July,2008, did not see any forward movement. Though the Chinese agreed to a third round in October next, the Dalai Lama's reprsentatives have come back with the impression that there has been no change in the Chinese position of refusing to discuss with the representatives of the Dalai Lama their demand for genuine autonomy in Tibet. They feel that the Chinese are just biding their time till the Olympics are over and that once the games are over, the Chinese will go after those in Tibet and other areas, who continue to support the Dalai Lama.
13. The Chinese have been firm that there is no question of any dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives on the political set-up in Tibet and on any political role for the Dalai Lama and that the dialogue will be confined to the Dalai Lama's role as a religious leader. According to them, the Tibetan diaspora will not have any political role, which will be confined to the Tibetan members of the Chinese Communist Party. (13-7-08)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
With less than a month to go for the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities are showing increasing signs of nervousness over possible acts of terrorism by the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (IMET) either in the Olympic venues or in Xinjiang or in any of the Central Asian Republics or in Pakistan. This nervousness has been reflected in the forcible closure of nearly 40 allegedly illegal mosques in Xinjiang, more arrests of alleged terrorists and the execution of the death sentences awarded by the courts in the past against alleged Uighur terrorists. The Chinese do not seem to have taken into consideration the danger that such acts by themselves may provoke the Uighur dissidents to retaliate against them.
2. The forcible closure of the so-called unauthorised mosques seems to have been triggered off by fears that some of these mosques may turn out to be the Lal Masjids of Xinjiang. The Lal Masjid of Islamabad became the base of the activities of pro-Al Qaeda and pro-Taliban Pashtun student extremists last year, forcing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to order the Army commandoes to raid the Masjid in July last year to wrest control of the Masjid from the extremists. He ordered this raid after the students kidnapped some Chinese women working in local beauty and massage parlours and accused them of leading an immoral life.
3. The Chinese have been closely monitoring the situation in the tribal belt of Pakistan and having frequent interactions with the Pakistani authorities in order to prevent any act of terrorism mounted from the Pakistani territory before or during the Olympics.
4.On July 9,2008, the Chinese authorities announced the public execution of two Uighurs whose names (Chinese version, not their original ethnic names) were given out by them as Muheteer Setiwalidi and Abdulwaili Yiming after they had been convicted by a Kashgar court on November 9,2007, on charges of separatist activities, attending a terrorist training camp and manufacturing explosives. According to the announcement, the court had awarded three other Uighurs suspended death sentences and sentenced 12 other Uighurs to various terms of imprisonment. All of them were accused of being members of the IMET. They were reported to have joined the IMET in August 2005 and were arrested by the Police in January,2007.
5.The public announcement of the sentences awarded to the 17 Uighurs came a day after the police of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, forcibly entered a flat to arrest 15 Uighurs, who were also projected as members of the IMET. Five of them were killed by the police when they allegedly resisted arrest.
6. While the observance of the birthday of the Dalai Lama on July 6,2008, passed off without any incident in Tibet and other Tibetan-inhabited areas of China, there were reports of unrest and protest meetings by Tibetan nomads in the Lithang area of the Sichuan province when the Chinese banned the holding of the traditional annual horse-racing festival by the nomads. The observance of the festival in the beginning of August last year led to acts of violence when the local police arrested some nomads for shouting slogans praising the Dalai Lama. The Chinese apparently did not want to face the risk of a similar incident this year just a few weeks before the Olympics. They played it safe by banning the festival. The People's Liberation Army was able to bring the protests under control without difficulty, but 600 troops have been sent to the area to reinforce the local security forces.
7.Meanwhile, 116 Tibetans arrested during the anti-Beijing uprising in March last are now being tried by courts in Lhasa on charges of arson, robbery and attacks on public servants. Forty-two of them have already been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The trial of the remaining is continuing. The Chinese authorities have not ruled out the possibility that some of the remaining may be sentenced to death and executed.
8. There have been no reports of fresh arrests in Tibet. Though the Chinese officials of Tibet have kept up their patriotic re-education classes, they have been a little more careful to avoid excesses against the Tibetans because of the widespread support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause in the international community. At a time when the movement for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Olympics has stopped with many world leaders, including President George Bush, re-affirming their decision to attend the inaugural function, the Chinese have been avoiding any ham-handed action against the Tibetans.
9. They are not observing a similar caution in respect of the Uighurs, who do not have an iconic leader like the Dalai Lama. Moreover, by projecting every Uighur dissident arrested as a member of the pro-Al Qaeda IMET, which is treated as a terrorist organisation by the US, the Chinese have been able to ensure that their actions in Xinjiang do not become the focus of international scrutiny in the days preceding the Olympics.
10. The Chinese are really nervous about the dangers of an act of jihadi terrorism during the Olympics. The international community, which too is nervous, has been giving the benefit of doubt to the Chinese and is not criticising the action taken by the Chinese against the Muslim Uighurs in the same manner as it criticised their action against the Buddhist Tibetans.
11. The anger in Xinjiang and in the Uighur and Uzbek communities in Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics over the Chinese actions and the perceived silence of the international community because the victims were Muslims might increase the dangers of an act of jihadi terrorism before or during the Olympics either by the Uighurs or by their co-religionists.
12. Meanwhile, the second round of the resumed dialogue between Chinese officials and two representatives of the Dalai Lama in Beijing in the first week of July,2008, did not see any forward movement. Though the Chinese agreed to a third round in October next, the Dalai Lama's reprsentatives have come back with the impression that there has been no change in the Chinese position of refusing to discuss with the representatives of the Dalai Lama their demand for genuine autonomy in Tibet. They feel that the Chinese are just biding their time till the Olympics are over and that once the games are over, the Chinese will go after those in Tibet and other areas, who continue to support the Dalai Lama.
13. The Chinese have been firm that there is no question of any dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives on the political set-up in Tibet and on any political role for the Dalai Lama and that the dialogue will be confined to the Dalai Lama's role as a religious leader. According to them, the Tibetan diaspora will not have any political role, which will be confined to the Tibetan members of the Chinese Communist Party. (13-7-08)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
AL QAEDA & NUCLEAR WASTE IN NWFP
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.410
B.RAMAN
Coinciding with the first anniversary of the Pakistan Army's commando raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad, there has been a fresh wave of jihadi terrorism in Pakistan, which has reversed the declining trend seen after the new Government headed by Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani came to office in the last week of March,2008.
2. This new wave started even before the first anniversary with the an Al Qaeda-admitted act of suicide terrorism outside the Danish Embassy in Islamabad on June 2,2008. It has picked up momentum since then-----particularly since July 3,2008, which marked the first anniversary of the siege of the Lal Masjid by the Pakistani security forces and ultimately led to the raid into the Lal Masjid.
3. This new wave has affected tribal as well as non-tribal areas, but the tribal areas more than non-tribal areas till now. In the tribal areas, it has affected the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which are directly controlled from Islamabad with the help of the Army, as well as the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which is ruled by a coalition headed by the reputedly secular Awami National Party (ANP). The ANP has been trying to deal with the situation with the help of the Frontier Corps (FC), a para-military organisation of Pashtun tribals trained and supervised by the Army.
4.The NWFP was badly affected even last year. Of the 56 attacks of suicide terrorism during 2007, 23 were in the FATA, 21 in the NWFP, including four in the Swat Valley, nine in Punjab, two in Balochistan and one in Sindh. Of the 23 in the FATA, only two were in North Waziristan and one in the Bajaur Agency, where, according to the US, the terrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda is located. The remaining 20 were in South Waziristan, where there are no confirmed reports of any Al Qaeda infrastructure. All the attacks in South Waziristan came from areas which are controlled by the Mehsuds. In the areas controlled by other tribes, there were no incidents of suicide terrorism. Two cantonments saw repeated suicide strikes--- Rawalpindi (5), where the General Headquarters of the Army are located, and Kohat (3) in the NWFP where an Army cadet school is located.
5. The Ministry of the Interior of the Government of Pakistan has not so far come out with official statistics relating to suicide and non-suicide terrorism this year, but according to Hamid Mir, the highly-respected Pakistani journalist, who works for the GeoTV, a private TV channel,there have been 25 acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistan during the first six months of 2008, resulting in 332 fatalities. However, in his analysis carried by "News" of July 10,2008, he does not indicate how many of these incidents took place before the new Government came to office and how many thereafter. According to official figures released by the Interior Ministry at the end of last year, there were only four acts of suicide terrorism during the first six months of 2007. This shot up to 56 after the Lal Masjid raid. According to my collation, there were 17 acts of suicide terrorism this year before the Gilani Government came to office, and there have been only eight since then, but the number is showing an upward trend.
6. According to Hamid Mir, Afghanistan had 160 suicide bombings in 2007 with 836 people dead and it has had 76 suicide bombings in the first six months of 2008 with 466 dead. There were seven suicide attacks in Afghanistan in March 2008 compared to 17 in March 2007.There was a sudden increase in the attacks in June 2008 with 17 suicide bombings compared to just seven suicide bombings in June 2007. Suicide bombings slightly increased in areas close to the Iranian border. Kandahar and Helmand are close to Pakistan while Nimroz and Farah are close to Iran. There were 15 suicide attacks in Kandahar in 2008 compared to 26 in 2007. There were 15 suicide attacks in Helmand in 2008 compared to 22 in 2007. There were only three attacks in Nimroz in 2007 but eight attacks in the first six months of 2008. Farah is close to the Iranian border and had just five suicide attacks in 2007 but this province saw six suicide attacks in 2008. The increasing number of attacks in areas closer to the Iranian border than to the Pakistani border is intriguing and has thus far remained without a satisfactory explanation.
7.In 2007, one saw acts of suicide terrorism as well as conventional attacks not involving suicide terrorism in the tribal areas. The conventional style attacks were more in the FATA than in the NWFP, except in the Swat Valley, which is the stronghold of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Mulla Fazlullah. Even though official statistics of conventional style attacks are not available, one can see that there has been an increase in conventional style attacks in other areas of the NWFP too. What one has been seeing is that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other jihadi groups in the tribal belt not associated with the TTP, have been emulating the tactics of the Taliban of Afghanistan, which consist of a mix of suicide terrorism and conventional guerilla-style attacks. An insurgency-like situation is developing in the tribal belt in the FATA and the NWFP, similar to the situation which has been prevalent in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
8. There has been a deterioration in the control exercised by the ANP-led Government, the army and the para-military forces in the NWFP. This weakening of control is evident in Peshawar too, where the Taliban and pro-Taliban groups are slowly nibbling at the outlying areas bordering the FATA. The worsening situation in the NWFP should be a matter of concern to the international community since many of the areas where Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission stores its nuclear waste are located there. If these sites come under the control of the jihadi terrorists, Al Qaeda's search for a dirty bomb capability could be facilitated. ( 13-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
Coinciding with the first anniversary of the Pakistan Army's commando raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad, there has been a fresh wave of jihadi terrorism in Pakistan, which has reversed the declining trend seen after the new Government headed by Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani came to office in the last week of March,2008.
2. This new wave started even before the first anniversary with the an Al Qaeda-admitted act of suicide terrorism outside the Danish Embassy in Islamabad on June 2,2008. It has picked up momentum since then-----particularly since July 3,2008, which marked the first anniversary of the siege of the Lal Masjid by the Pakistani security forces and ultimately led to the raid into the Lal Masjid.
3. This new wave has affected tribal as well as non-tribal areas, but the tribal areas more than non-tribal areas till now. In the tribal areas, it has affected the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which are directly controlled from Islamabad with the help of the Army, as well as the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which is ruled by a coalition headed by the reputedly secular Awami National Party (ANP). The ANP has been trying to deal with the situation with the help of the Frontier Corps (FC), a para-military organisation of Pashtun tribals trained and supervised by the Army.
4.The NWFP was badly affected even last year. Of the 56 attacks of suicide terrorism during 2007, 23 were in the FATA, 21 in the NWFP, including four in the Swat Valley, nine in Punjab, two in Balochistan and one in Sindh. Of the 23 in the FATA, only two were in North Waziristan and one in the Bajaur Agency, where, according to the US, the terrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda is located. The remaining 20 were in South Waziristan, where there are no confirmed reports of any Al Qaeda infrastructure. All the attacks in South Waziristan came from areas which are controlled by the Mehsuds. In the areas controlled by other tribes, there were no incidents of suicide terrorism. Two cantonments saw repeated suicide strikes--- Rawalpindi (5), where the General Headquarters of the Army are located, and Kohat (3) in the NWFP where an Army cadet school is located.
5. The Ministry of the Interior of the Government of Pakistan has not so far come out with official statistics relating to suicide and non-suicide terrorism this year, but according to Hamid Mir, the highly-respected Pakistani journalist, who works for the GeoTV, a private TV channel,there have been 25 acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistan during the first six months of 2008, resulting in 332 fatalities. However, in his analysis carried by "News" of July 10,2008, he does not indicate how many of these incidents took place before the new Government came to office and how many thereafter. According to official figures released by the Interior Ministry at the end of last year, there were only four acts of suicide terrorism during the first six months of 2007. This shot up to 56 after the Lal Masjid raid. According to my collation, there were 17 acts of suicide terrorism this year before the Gilani Government came to office, and there have been only eight since then, but the number is showing an upward trend.
6. According to Hamid Mir, Afghanistan had 160 suicide bombings in 2007 with 836 people dead and it has had 76 suicide bombings in the first six months of 2008 with 466 dead. There were seven suicide attacks in Afghanistan in March 2008 compared to 17 in March 2007.There was a sudden increase in the attacks in June 2008 with 17 suicide bombings compared to just seven suicide bombings in June 2007. Suicide bombings slightly increased in areas close to the Iranian border. Kandahar and Helmand are close to Pakistan while Nimroz and Farah are close to Iran. There were 15 suicide attacks in Kandahar in 2008 compared to 26 in 2007. There were 15 suicide attacks in Helmand in 2008 compared to 22 in 2007. There were only three attacks in Nimroz in 2007 but eight attacks in the first six months of 2008. Farah is close to the Iranian border and had just five suicide attacks in 2007 but this province saw six suicide attacks in 2008. The increasing number of attacks in areas closer to the Iranian border than to the Pakistani border is intriguing and has thus far remained without a satisfactory explanation.
7.In 2007, one saw acts of suicide terrorism as well as conventional attacks not involving suicide terrorism in the tribal areas. The conventional style attacks were more in the FATA than in the NWFP, except in the Swat Valley, which is the stronghold of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Mulla Fazlullah. Even though official statistics of conventional style attacks are not available, one can see that there has been an increase in conventional style attacks in other areas of the NWFP too. What one has been seeing is that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other jihadi groups in the tribal belt not associated with the TTP, have been emulating the tactics of the Taliban of Afghanistan, which consist of a mix of suicide terrorism and conventional guerilla-style attacks. An insurgency-like situation is developing in the tribal belt in the FATA and the NWFP, similar to the situation which has been prevalent in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
8. There has been a deterioration in the control exercised by the ANP-led Government, the army and the para-military forces in the NWFP. This weakening of control is evident in Peshawar too, where the Taliban and pro-Taliban groups are slowly nibbling at the outlying areas bordering the FATA. The worsening situation in the NWFP should be a matter of concern to the international community since many of the areas where Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission stores its nuclear waste are located there. If these sites come under the control of the jihadi terrorists, Al Qaeda's search for a dirty bomb capability could be facilitated. ( 13-7-08)
(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 )
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