B. RAMAN
On April 1,2010, India and China embarked on a six-month programme to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. S.M.Krishna, the Indian Foreign Minister, is visiting China for four days from April 5 to join the celebrations.
2. Forgotten---at least for the time being--- are the suspicions, distrust and harsh words of last year over the visits of Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh to India’s Arunachal Pradesh State on the Chinese border in the North-East to campaign for local candidates in the elections and of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh at the invitation of the local people. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as its territory and calls it Southern Tibet. It wants India to hand over to China under the border negotiations under way without progress at least Tawang if not the whole of Arunachal Pradesh.
3.The Chinese have a long memory. They have not forgotten that one of the old Dalai Lamas was born in Tawang and that the present His Holiness fled from Tibet into India in 1959 across the border in the Tawang area. They have made it clear that there will be no border agreement unless India transfers at least Tawang to China. That would mean the exodus of the Indian population from the territory handed over to China. No Indian Government, however popular, may be able to sell such a transfer favourable to the Chinese to the Indian Parliament and people.
4.2009 was full of alarming reports about the Chinese further strengthening their military infrastructure in Tibet and Chinese military patrols repeatedly intruding into Indian territory. Faced with opposition criticism of its perceived inaction against the growing trans-border assertiveness of China, the Government of India pressed ahead with an already ongoing programme for strengthening its military infrastructure in the Indian territory. India is many years behind China in developing its infrastructure in the border areas.
5.2009 also saw non-governmental Chinese analysts discussing in seemingly unofficial web sites and blogs the options available to China for teaching India a lesson should it become necessary. A repeat of the humiliating defeat of 1962 was one such option discussed. Taking advantage of the various separatist movements in India in an attempt to balkanize the country was another. An article on possible Indian balkanization by an unknown and insignificant Chinese analyst added to the already strong Indian suspicions of China.
6.China was active and assertive not only in the border areas. It has been equally so right around India’s periphery. Taking advantage of the suspicions and distrust of India in the other States of the South Asian region, China, which is not a South Asian power, has acquired a growing South Asian presence.
7.It continues to help Pakistan in further strengthening its nuclear and missile capabilities which are directed against India. After having completed the construction of the Gwadar commercial port on the Baloch coast, it has promised to develop it further into a modern naval base which would be available for use to the Chinese Navy too.
8.It won the gratitude of Sri Lanka by supplying it arms and ammunition to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and is embarked on the expansion of the Hambantota commercial port, which might one day be developed into a naval base. A grateful Sri Lanka has given a block for gas exploration to a Chinese company without inviting bids. India was given a block for exploration without bids and China was treated on par with India.
9.There are as many Chinese tourists visiting the Maldives as Indian and a Chinese bank has been allowed to operate in the Maldives to meet the foreign exchange needs of the Chinese tourists.
10.In Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, despite her strong friendship for India, has continued with the look East policy of her predecessor Begum Khalida Zia and strengthened the links with China. During her visit to China in March, an agreement was signed with a Chinese company for oil/gas exploration in Bangladesh. She also sought Chinese help for the upgradation of Chittagong into a modern deep sea port. Her Government has sought to calm Indian concerns by reassuring India that India will also be allowed to use the Chittagong port modernized with Chinese help.
11.At least, Sri Lanka and Myanmar have sought to treat India on par with China by granting it equal rights of oil/gas exploration, but Bangladesh has not given any such contracts to India due to strong local opposition to India playing any role in the development of its energy resources.
12.Sheikh Hasina also discussed with the Chinese plans for linking Yunnan with Bangladesh through Myanmar by a modern road. If the Chinese company finds oil or gas in Bangladesh it is only a question of time before the Chinese production facilities in Bangladesh are connected with those in the Arakan area of Myanmar so that oil and gas from Bangladesh can flow direct to Yunnan through the pipeline connecting Arakan with Yunnan now being constructed.
13.In Nepal, China is looking for a road link to connect Nepalese roads with those in Tibet and for an extension of the railway line from Lhasa to Nepal.
14.Thus, the Chinese have been developing their infrastructure of potential military significance around India’s periphery. The Chinese think and plan long-term. Indian response is ad hoc. Just as New Delhi woke up late to the likely threats by land from the North, one realizes belatedly that the threats are from the South, East and West as well.
15.Whatever limited influence India has in South Asia is in danger of being eroded by the Chinese inroads. India is yet to work out a comprehensive response to it. All the sweet words of the 60th anniversary cannot hide this harsh reality. ( 3-4-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary(retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
WAS JIHAD JANE A RECRUIT OF LASHKAR-E-TOIBA?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO. 638
B.RAMAN
The case of Colleen La Rose also known as Jihad Jane and Fatima La Rose, who was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) a fortnight after the arrest of David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in October,2009, and indicted on March 4,2010, on a charge of involvement in a conspiracy to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had drawn a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad in his paper, has not received in India the attention it deserves.
2. Colleen La Rose, a 46-year-old blonde from the Philadelphia area, where Headley used to live for some years before shifting to Chicago, had a troubled personal life. She was a volunteer for jihad who was recruited by an unidentified person in South Asia through the Internet and given the task of killing the Swedish cartoonist, just as Ilyas Kashmiri initially tasked Headley through the Internet to kill the Danish cartoonist, who had published cartoons of the Prophet in a Danish paper in 2005. Headley subsequently met Ilyas in North Waziristan. There is so far no indication that Jihad Jane had met her South Asian recruit to whom she got engaged without ever having met him.
3. Whoever initially recruited Headley and Jihad Jane seems to have done so for two reasons. Firstly, both of them had typical physical features of a White American. They did not look like Muslims and could , therefore, easily evade profiling. Headley looked a typical White despite his Pakistani origin. Jihad Jane is a typical White with no mixed blood. Secondly, both of them are US nationals with valid US passports with which they could travel easily without facing difficulties in obtaining visas and in going through immigration controls.
4. Both of them had been given double tasks. Headley was given the tasks of facilitating the operations of the LET in India and attacking the office of the Danish paper in Copenhagen with the help of sleeper cells in Europe to which Ilyas had given introduction. Headley had played an active role in helping the LET in carrying out the terrorist strikes in Mumbai between November 26 and 29,2008.Jihad Jane had the dual task of killing the Swedish cartoonist with the help of Ireland-based contacts in Europe and organising acts of terrorism in South Asia. In the evidence against her, the reference is to South Asia and not specifically to India.
5. The FBI has revealed the nationalities of her seven accomplices who were picked up in Ireland, but not their identifying particulars.Of the seven arrested in Ireland two are Algerians, two Libyans, a Palestinian, a Croatian, and an American woman married to one of the two arrested Algerians. The FBI documents available so far do not say anything about her South Asian fiancee. They are silent even about his nationality. He has been described as a man who claimed that he knew how to work with bombs and explosives.
6.In June 2008, Jihad Jane had posted a comment on YouTube saying she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” suffering Muslims. According to the FBI indictment, she appears to have been contacted by the jihadis thereafter. The indictment charges that she received a direct order to kill a Swedish resident. She traveled to Sweden and tracked the target with the intent of carrying out the murder. The FBI identified the target as cartoonist Lars Vilks.In an e-mail message to a co-conspirator, she wrote that she would pursue her mission “till I achieve it or die trying,” according to the indictment.The indictment accuses her of agreeing, in March 2009, to marry a co-conspirator from a South Asian country who was trying to obtain residency in Europe.He allegedly urged her to go to Sweden, find the Swedish man "and kill him". The indictment claims she tried to raise money over the internet, lure others to her cause, and lied to FBI investigators.
7. According to US media reports, she is also linked to an online organization Revolutionmuslim.com -- where she was a subscriber, again using the name Jihad Jane. The site is run by an American Muslim, who had made the following posting after she was indicted: "Sisters -- please consider sending her [LaRose] a message of support and hope and let's remind her she isn't alone. It's likely she's the only Muslimah there. As always, use discretion when writing, don't ask pointed questions, and of course don't say anything that could create problems for her or yourselves."
8.She has been accused not only of conspiring to murder the cartoonist, but also of allegedly trying to recruit women with Western passports to marry fellow violent jihadists and of raising money for terrorist causes.
9.The US Department of Justice has issued the following statement regarding her indictment:
"The indictment charges that LaRose (an American citizen born in 1963 who resides in Montgomery County, Pa.) and five unindicted co-conspirators (located in South Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States) recruited men on the Internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad.
"The indictment further charges that LaRose and her unindicted co-conspirators used the Internet to establish relationships with one another and to communicate regarding their plans, which included martyring themselves, soliciting funds for terrorists, soliciting passports and avoiding travel restrictions (through the collection of passports and through marriage) in order to wage violent jihad. The indictment further charges that LaRose stole another individual’s U.S. passport and transferred or attempted to transfer it in an effort to facilitate an act of international terrorism.
"In addition, according to the indictment, LaRose received a direct order to kill a citizen and resident of Sweden, and to do so in a way that would frighten "the whole Kufar [non-believer] world." The indictment further charges that LaRose agreed to carry out her murder assignment, and that she and her co-conspirators discussed that her appearance and American citizenship would help her blend in while carrying out her plans. According to the indictment, LaRose traveled to Europe and tracked the intended target online in an effort to complete her task."
10.Available details regading the indictment do not identify the South Asian "with knowledge of bombs and explosives" with whom she fell in love through the Internet and who recruited her for acts of terrorism in Sweden and South Asia, but the available particulars of the modus operandi of recruiting and using non-Muslim looking Whites for terrorist strikes point the needle of suspicion at the LET.
11.This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article of January 28,2010, titled "Female Headleys in Al Qaeda?" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers37/paper3631.html ( 3-4-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The case of Colleen La Rose also known as Jihad Jane and Fatima La Rose, who was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) a fortnight after the arrest of David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in October,2009, and indicted on March 4,2010, on a charge of involvement in a conspiracy to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had drawn a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad in his paper, has not received in India the attention it deserves.
2. Colleen La Rose, a 46-year-old blonde from the Philadelphia area, where Headley used to live for some years before shifting to Chicago, had a troubled personal life. She was a volunteer for jihad who was recruited by an unidentified person in South Asia through the Internet and given the task of killing the Swedish cartoonist, just as Ilyas Kashmiri initially tasked Headley through the Internet to kill the Danish cartoonist, who had published cartoons of the Prophet in a Danish paper in 2005. Headley subsequently met Ilyas in North Waziristan. There is so far no indication that Jihad Jane had met her South Asian recruit to whom she got engaged without ever having met him.
3. Whoever initially recruited Headley and Jihad Jane seems to have done so for two reasons. Firstly, both of them had typical physical features of a White American. They did not look like Muslims and could , therefore, easily evade profiling. Headley looked a typical White despite his Pakistani origin. Jihad Jane is a typical White with no mixed blood. Secondly, both of them are US nationals with valid US passports with which they could travel easily without facing difficulties in obtaining visas and in going through immigration controls.
4. Both of them had been given double tasks. Headley was given the tasks of facilitating the operations of the LET in India and attacking the office of the Danish paper in Copenhagen with the help of sleeper cells in Europe to which Ilyas had given introduction. Headley had played an active role in helping the LET in carrying out the terrorist strikes in Mumbai between November 26 and 29,2008.Jihad Jane had the dual task of killing the Swedish cartoonist with the help of Ireland-based contacts in Europe and organising acts of terrorism in South Asia. In the evidence against her, the reference is to South Asia and not specifically to India.
5. The FBI has revealed the nationalities of her seven accomplices who were picked up in Ireland, but not their identifying particulars.Of the seven arrested in Ireland two are Algerians, two Libyans, a Palestinian, a Croatian, and an American woman married to one of the two arrested Algerians. The FBI documents available so far do not say anything about her South Asian fiancee. They are silent even about his nationality. He has been described as a man who claimed that he knew how to work with bombs and explosives.
6.In June 2008, Jihad Jane had posted a comment on YouTube saying she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” suffering Muslims. According to the FBI indictment, she appears to have been contacted by the jihadis thereafter. The indictment charges that she received a direct order to kill a Swedish resident. She traveled to Sweden and tracked the target with the intent of carrying out the murder. The FBI identified the target as cartoonist Lars Vilks.In an e-mail message to a co-conspirator, she wrote that she would pursue her mission “till I achieve it or die trying,” according to the indictment.The indictment accuses her of agreeing, in March 2009, to marry a co-conspirator from a South Asian country who was trying to obtain residency in Europe.He allegedly urged her to go to Sweden, find the Swedish man "and kill him". The indictment claims she tried to raise money over the internet, lure others to her cause, and lied to FBI investigators.
7. According to US media reports, she is also linked to an online organization Revolutionmuslim.com -- where she was a subscriber, again using the name Jihad Jane. The site is run by an American Muslim, who had made the following posting after she was indicted: "Sisters -- please consider sending her [LaRose] a message of support and hope and let's remind her she isn't alone. It's likely she's the only Muslimah there. As always, use discretion when writing, don't ask pointed questions, and of course don't say anything that could create problems for her or yourselves."
8.She has been accused not only of conspiring to murder the cartoonist, but also of allegedly trying to recruit women with Western passports to marry fellow violent jihadists and of raising money for terrorist causes.
9.The US Department of Justice has issued the following statement regarding her indictment:
"The indictment charges that LaRose (an American citizen born in 1963 who resides in Montgomery County, Pa.) and five unindicted co-conspirators (located in South Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States) recruited men on the Internet to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe, and recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad.
"The indictment further charges that LaRose and her unindicted co-conspirators used the Internet to establish relationships with one another and to communicate regarding their plans, which included martyring themselves, soliciting funds for terrorists, soliciting passports and avoiding travel restrictions (through the collection of passports and through marriage) in order to wage violent jihad. The indictment further charges that LaRose stole another individual’s U.S. passport and transferred or attempted to transfer it in an effort to facilitate an act of international terrorism.
"In addition, according to the indictment, LaRose received a direct order to kill a citizen and resident of Sweden, and to do so in a way that would frighten "the whole Kufar [non-believer] world." The indictment further charges that LaRose agreed to carry out her murder assignment, and that she and her co-conspirators discussed that her appearance and American citizenship would help her blend in while carrying out her plans. According to the indictment, LaRose traveled to Europe and tracked the intended target online in an effort to complete her task."
10.Available details regading the indictment do not identify the South Asian "with knowledge of bombs and explosives" with whom she fell in love through the Internet and who recruited her for acts of terrorism in Sweden and South Asia, but the available particulars of the modus operandi of recruiting and using non-Muslim looking Whites for terrorist strikes point the needle of suspicion at the LET.
11.This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article of January 28,2010, titled "Female Headleys in Al Qaeda?" at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers37/paper3631.html ( 3-4-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
CHECHEN TERRORISM : AN UPDATE
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO. 637
B.RAMAN
The hasty return of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Moscow from his tour of Siberia speaks of the seriousness with which he views the two suicide bombings in the Moscow Metro on the morning of March 29,2010, for which responsibility is reported to have been claimed by Doku Umarov, the Chechen terrorist leader, who heads an organization called the Martyrs' Battalion Riyadus-Salikhiyn.
2. Umarov initially called himself the President of the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" -- the term the separatists use for a Chechen territory independent of Russia. He assumed this position in 2006 after the then Chechen rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was killed in an encounter with the Russian security forces. The next year, he designated himself the Amir of the Caucasian Islamic Caliphate.
3.Umarov was born in April 1964 in the village of Kharsenoi in southern Chechnya. He graduated from the construction faculty of the Oil Institute in Grozny. He joined the anti-Russian movement in Chechnya in the 1990s and participated in both the Chechen wars in the 1990s. Till he took over the leadership of the movement in 2006, he was opposed to indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Since designating himself as the Amir, he has become as ruthless in killing people indiscriminately as his predecessors and other Chechen terrorists.
4. In a statement issued on August 21,2009, his organization had said that it would no longer confine its battle to the Caucasian region, but would attack Russia's industrial centers, factories and infrastructure. It added: "To carry out these tasks, groups have been created and sent to a host of Russian regions with the aim of carrying out industrial sabotage. The priority targets laid out for them are gas pipelines, oil pipelines, the destruction of electricity stations and high-voltage power lines, and sabotage at factories."
5.The Chechens had been warning from time to time since 1995 of their plans to attack strategic economic targets in Russian territory outside the Caucasian region, including nuclear power stations, but had never carried out their threats. Last year, they had claimed responsibility for an explosion in a Siberian hydel power station, but their claim was refuted by the Russian authorities. According to the Russians, it was an accident for which the Chechens claimed responsibility in order to create panic. The Chechens had repeatedly demonstrated a capability for attacking soft targets such as the Moscow Metro, inter-city trains, a Moscow theatre etc, but had not exhibited a capability for attacking hard targets outside the Caucasian region.
6. They have the habit of making exaggerated claims of their responsibility for terrorist actions. Their claims last year of having caused the derailment of a train from Moscow to St.Petersburg were refuted by Russian officials. They contended that Umarov’s group had the habit of projecting any accident of a spectacular nature as caused by it. It is often difficult to establish the authenticity of its claims.
7.The US and other Western countries had not been viewing the Chechen terrorists with the same seriousness as the Russians and have been dismissing Russian evidence of Chechens’ links with Al Qaeda and the role of Saudi money and Pakistani motivation and training in keeping the Chechen terrorism alive and active. American skepticism over Russian allegations of Chechen links with Al Qaeda is influenced by the fact that no Chechens were captured by the US forces in Afghanistan, there are no Chechen detenus in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba and the Chechens have never threatened Western nationals and interests despite their advocacy of the creation of a Caucasian Islamic Caliphate, which has been inspired by Osama Bin Laden’s objective of a global Islamic Caliphate.
8. Despite the US skepticism, it is a fact that during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister (1990-93), the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, then headed by Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, had taken an active interest in helping the Chechen terrorists through training and other assistance with the help of money provided by the Saudi intelligence and charity organizations. The ISI used the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) for this purpose.
9. It was during his tenure as the DG of the ISI that Lt.Gen.Nasir, in his capacity as Adviser to TJ, drew up plans for the revival of Islam in the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia and Xinjiang in China with the help of the TJ workers and funds from Saudi Arabia. A large number of Pakistani, Saudi and Jordanian workers of the TJ were sent on preaching and proselytising missions to these countries and recruits for clerical posts in these countries were brought to Pakistan for training in Islamic religious practices. Simultaneously, they were also given arms training in the camps of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM ), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They were also sent on proselytising missions to other countries with Pakistani TJ workers to expose them to Muslim communities in the rest of the Ummah. After his removal from the ISI in 1993 under US pressure, Lt.Gen.Nasir himself frequently went on preaching missions to these countries.
10.An idea of the tremendous headway made by the TJ under the guidance of Lt.Gen.Nasir and with Saudi money in promoting Wahabism in these countries could be had from the fact that whereas in 1991, when the USSR collapsed, there was not a single mosque in Chechnya and Dagestan, by 1999 every village had a mosque, allegedly constructed with Saudi money. The TJ also organised visits by selected Muslims from Chechnya and Dagestan to Saudi Arabia on Haj/Umra.
11.Many members of the so-called independent Chechen Cabinet when Boris Yeltsin was the Russian President had been trained in Pakistan by the TJ and, during their annual vacation, used to go on preaching missions for the TJ in Chechnya itself as well as in Dagestan and the CARs.
12.In the last week of June,1995, the Interfax news agency of Moscow had quoted Arkady Volski, the Russian peace negotiator for Chechnya, as claiming that after an incident of kidnapping of 1,500 hostages in the South Russian town of Budennovsk in early June, Shamyl Basayev, the Chechen terrorist leader, had escaped to Pakistan where he had been given asylum. In a statement issued at Moscow on June 27,1995, Tanvir Ahmad Khan, the then Pakistani Ambassador to Russia, had described the claim as false and warned that such allegations would damage Russia's relations with Pakistan.
13.The Russian authorities refuted the statement of the Pakistani Ambassador and alleged that Basayev had been living in Pakistan since 1991 when he had fled there after his involvement in the hijacking of a Russian plane to Turkey and that from Pakistan he had periodically been visiting Chechnya to organise terrorist incidents. In July,1995, Sergei Stepashin, who was in charge of counter-terrorist operations in Chechnya, and Gen. Nikol Ayev, chief of the Russian Border Security Service, alleged in separate statements that Basayev was amongst a group of Chechen terrorists trained in Pakistani camps.
14.Another Chechen terrorist leader reportedly trained in the camps of the HUM in Pakistan and Afghanistan was Salman Raduyev, who led a group of Chechen extremists on a raid into the Dagestan town of Kizlyar in January,1996, and took 2,000 Russian hostages. After this incident, then President Yeltsin alleged that the raiding party under Raduyev included Pakistani mercenaries.
15. The Russian press thereafter carried a number of reports emanating from official sources in Moscow that the extremist elements behind the Islamic revolt in Chechnya had been trained in Pakistan. Strongly refuting these reports, the Pakistani Foreign Office said: " These reports do not serve to promote good ties between Pakistan and Russia which we desire. We hope Russia will also reciprocate our wishes. "
16.In a statement on January 17,1996, the Pakistani Foreign Office strongly denied Russian allegations that Pakistani mercenaries were helping Chechen rebels indulging in acts of terrorism in Dagestan.
17.In a statement on January 13, 1998, the Russian Foreign Office described as inadmissible a statement of Zafarul Haq, Pakistan's Minister For Religious Affairs, expressing Pakistan's support for "the noble cause of the Chechen Muslims". He reportedly made this statement while welcoming a delegation of Chechen separatist leaders in his office in Islamabad.
18.In November, 1998, a high level delegation of the so-called independent Government of Chechnya led by Abdul Wahid Ibrahim in charge of Central Asian and Afghan Affairs in the Chechen Foreign Office, visited Afghanistan for the first time and reached an agreement on the establishment of formal relations between the Taliban-led Government of Kabul and the so-called independent Government of Chechnya.
19.During the same month, the Russian authorities expelled from the Bashkortostan region a delegation of six preachers of the TJ for making anti-Moscow statements during their preachings. A statement of the Federal Security Service said that their statements were "aimed at fuelling ethnic and religious hostility and offending the dignity of other religious groups." The preachers were to go to Chechnya and Dagestan in January, 1999, but their visas were cancelled and they were expelled.
20.After the outbreak of terrorist incidents in Dagestan from August 7,1999, the Russian authorities were repeatedly alleging that the incidents were organised by a raiding party of about 2,000 Chechens from Chechnya jointly led by Basayev and a former Colonel of the Jordanian Army called Khattab, that the Chechens were assisted by a multi-national group of 200 foreign mercenaries led by a Pakistani called Abu Abdulla Jafar, who was in charge of a training camp in Chechnya, that before the raids the raiders participated in a special prayer service in Chechnya conducted by three Pakistani Wahabi preachers called Sheikh Abdul Azim, Junaid Bagadadi and Abdul Omar and that Abdul Omar also read out to the raiders a fatwa received from a group of Saudi muftis calling upon them to establish an Islamic state in Dagestan.
21.Following a denial of these allegations by Mansur Alam, the then Pakistani Ambassador, who wrote a letter on the subject to "Izvestia", the paper quoted Gen.Vladimir Rushailo, the Russian Interior Minister, as saying that "mercenaries from a number of foreign countries, above all Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the UAE, have been taking part in the fighting in Dagestan" and that the Russian security services had concrete information about the involvement of the secret services of some Muslim countries in the Dagestan violence.
22."Izvestia" also identified Abu Abdulla Jafar as a Pashtun who had been residing in Chechnya for some years and running a training camp at a place called Serzhenyurt. The paper also alleged that the activities of the mercenaries in Chechnya and Dagestan were being funded by Osama bin Laden.
24. After the Taliban Government in Kabul formally recognized the so-called independent Chechen Government in November 1998, many Chechens from Chechnya went to Afghanistan and joined a group of members of the Chechen diaspora from Jordan, Turkey and other countries who were assisting the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Shah Masood. These Chechens---indigenous Chechens from Chechnya as well as Arabs of Chechen origin from the diaspora who were called Arab Chechens---- crossed over into the North Waziristan area of Pakistan along with bin Laden and his followers in 2001-02 and started working as instructors in the training camps of different terrorist organizations such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), which is a Pakistani Punjabi organization etc.
25. While no definitive estimate of the number of Chechens operating from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory were available, the Pakistani media periodically carried reports of their presence and activities. It was the Chechen instructors, who motivated the Pashtuns of Pakistan to take to suicide terrorism. Chechen instructors assisted Qari Hussain Mehsud of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in training suicide bombers.
26. The Pakistani media reported on November 19,2008, that three tribal elders, who had escaped from Taliban captivity in the Bajaur Agency, had claimed the presence of a large number of foreigners in the Taliban ranks, including Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Sudanese.
27. On May 22,2009, the Bloomberg news agency reported as follows: “ Pakistani authorities said fighters from Uzbekistan and Chechnya are among foreign forces helping the Taliban battle the army in the northwestern Swat Valley. “There is no doubt that some Uzbeks, Chechens and people of other nationalities were found involved with their designs to create an insurgency in Swat,” Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters yesterday in the capital, Islamabad, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.”
28. It was reported by sections of the Iranian media on October 4,2009, that Pakistan`s intelligence agencies’` preliminary investigation had revealed that `Uzbeks, Chechens and Afghans` were among Al Qaeda suspects held during the army operation in the South Waziristan Agency.The detainees also included an Algerian and some Arabic-speaking nationals, the daily “Dawn” reported.
29.Since 1995, an unestimated number of Arabs have been fighting along with the Chechens in the Caucasian region. The more prominent amongst them were Ibn Khattab, Mohammad bin Abdullah al-Seif and Abu al-Walid, all Saudi nationals, and Abu Hafs al Hurdani, a Jordanian. On September 18, 2002, the Caspian Studies Program had organized a seminar at the Kennedy School of Government in the Harvard University on the Chechen diaspora. Wasfi Kailani, an anthropologist at the University of Yarmouk, who was the main speaker, said that much of the foreign presence in and funding for the Chechen conflict had come from Saudi Arabia. Kailani added that Saudi militants had come to Chechnya to participate in what they saw as a jihad and Saudi missionaries had come to the region to teach Wahhabi Salafism to ex-communists who were embracing Islam after decades of Communist rule in the Soviet Union. He also said that diaspora Chechens were supporting the Chechen movement through a variety of means such as volunteering to fight in Chechnya, running web sites to propagate the Chechen cause etc. According to him, several members of the Taliban and a number of "Arab Afghans" went from Afghanistan to Chechnya in order to join the fight against Russian forces, viewing this as part of their Islamic obligation.
30.Western skepticism about the Russian evidence regarding the links of the Chechen terrorists with Al Qaeda has been coming in the way of strong action against the Chechen terrorists operating from Pakistani sanctuaries with Saudi money. This skepticism can be compared to the US skepticism over Indian evidence regarding the international dimensions of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and its links with Al Qaeda. Only after the LET killed six US nationals in Mumbai during its sea-borne terrorist strikes in the last week of November,2008, did the Americans start admitting that the LET had become as dangerous as Al Qaeda. The Chechen terrorists have till now not targeted US nationals and interests. Hence, the US skepticism continues. This is a short-sighted approach and will weaken the war against global jihadi terrorism. The LET did not target Americans till November,2008. That did not make it any the less dangerous as a terrorist organization. The Chechen terrorists are as ruthless and dangerous as the LET or any other associate of Al Qaeda. The world has to be concerned over their activities before it becomes too late. ( 31-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The hasty return of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Moscow from his tour of Siberia speaks of the seriousness with which he views the two suicide bombings in the Moscow Metro on the morning of March 29,2010, for which responsibility is reported to have been claimed by Doku Umarov, the Chechen terrorist leader, who heads an organization called the Martyrs' Battalion Riyadus-Salikhiyn.
2. Umarov initially called himself the President of the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" -- the term the separatists use for a Chechen territory independent of Russia. He assumed this position in 2006 after the then Chechen rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was killed in an encounter with the Russian security forces. The next year, he designated himself the Amir of the Caucasian Islamic Caliphate.
3.Umarov was born in April 1964 in the village of Kharsenoi in southern Chechnya. He graduated from the construction faculty of the Oil Institute in Grozny. He joined the anti-Russian movement in Chechnya in the 1990s and participated in both the Chechen wars in the 1990s. Till he took over the leadership of the movement in 2006, he was opposed to indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Since designating himself as the Amir, he has become as ruthless in killing people indiscriminately as his predecessors and other Chechen terrorists.
4. In a statement issued on August 21,2009, his organization had said that it would no longer confine its battle to the Caucasian region, but would attack Russia's industrial centers, factories and infrastructure. It added: "To carry out these tasks, groups have been created and sent to a host of Russian regions with the aim of carrying out industrial sabotage. The priority targets laid out for them are gas pipelines, oil pipelines, the destruction of electricity stations and high-voltage power lines, and sabotage at factories."
5.The Chechens had been warning from time to time since 1995 of their plans to attack strategic economic targets in Russian territory outside the Caucasian region, including nuclear power stations, but had never carried out their threats. Last year, they had claimed responsibility for an explosion in a Siberian hydel power station, but their claim was refuted by the Russian authorities. According to the Russians, it was an accident for which the Chechens claimed responsibility in order to create panic. The Chechens had repeatedly demonstrated a capability for attacking soft targets such as the Moscow Metro, inter-city trains, a Moscow theatre etc, but had not exhibited a capability for attacking hard targets outside the Caucasian region.
6. They have the habit of making exaggerated claims of their responsibility for terrorist actions. Their claims last year of having caused the derailment of a train from Moscow to St.Petersburg were refuted by Russian officials. They contended that Umarov’s group had the habit of projecting any accident of a spectacular nature as caused by it. It is often difficult to establish the authenticity of its claims.
7.The US and other Western countries had not been viewing the Chechen terrorists with the same seriousness as the Russians and have been dismissing Russian evidence of Chechens’ links with Al Qaeda and the role of Saudi money and Pakistani motivation and training in keeping the Chechen terrorism alive and active. American skepticism over Russian allegations of Chechen links with Al Qaeda is influenced by the fact that no Chechens were captured by the US forces in Afghanistan, there are no Chechen detenus in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba and the Chechens have never threatened Western nationals and interests despite their advocacy of the creation of a Caucasian Islamic Caliphate, which has been inspired by Osama Bin Laden’s objective of a global Islamic Caliphate.
8. Despite the US skepticism, it is a fact that during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister (1990-93), the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, then headed by Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, had taken an active interest in helping the Chechen terrorists through training and other assistance with the help of money provided by the Saudi intelligence and charity organizations. The ISI used the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) for this purpose.
9. It was during his tenure as the DG of the ISI that Lt.Gen.Nasir, in his capacity as Adviser to TJ, drew up plans for the revival of Islam in the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia and Xinjiang in China with the help of the TJ workers and funds from Saudi Arabia. A large number of Pakistani, Saudi and Jordanian workers of the TJ were sent on preaching and proselytising missions to these countries and recruits for clerical posts in these countries were brought to Pakistan for training in Islamic religious practices. Simultaneously, they were also given arms training in the camps of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM ), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They were also sent on proselytising missions to other countries with Pakistani TJ workers to expose them to Muslim communities in the rest of the Ummah. After his removal from the ISI in 1993 under US pressure, Lt.Gen.Nasir himself frequently went on preaching missions to these countries.
10.An idea of the tremendous headway made by the TJ under the guidance of Lt.Gen.Nasir and with Saudi money in promoting Wahabism in these countries could be had from the fact that whereas in 1991, when the USSR collapsed, there was not a single mosque in Chechnya and Dagestan, by 1999 every village had a mosque, allegedly constructed with Saudi money. The TJ also organised visits by selected Muslims from Chechnya and Dagestan to Saudi Arabia on Haj/Umra.
11.Many members of the so-called independent Chechen Cabinet when Boris Yeltsin was the Russian President had been trained in Pakistan by the TJ and, during their annual vacation, used to go on preaching missions for the TJ in Chechnya itself as well as in Dagestan and the CARs.
12.In the last week of June,1995, the Interfax news agency of Moscow had quoted Arkady Volski, the Russian peace negotiator for Chechnya, as claiming that after an incident of kidnapping of 1,500 hostages in the South Russian town of Budennovsk in early June, Shamyl Basayev, the Chechen terrorist leader, had escaped to Pakistan where he had been given asylum. In a statement issued at Moscow on June 27,1995, Tanvir Ahmad Khan, the then Pakistani Ambassador to Russia, had described the claim as false and warned that such allegations would damage Russia's relations with Pakistan.
13.The Russian authorities refuted the statement of the Pakistani Ambassador and alleged that Basayev had been living in Pakistan since 1991 when he had fled there after his involvement in the hijacking of a Russian plane to Turkey and that from Pakistan he had periodically been visiting Chechnya to organise terrorist incidents. In July,1995, Sergei Stepashin, who was in charge of counter-terrorist operations in Chechnya, and Gen. Nikol Ayev, chief of the Russian Border Security Service, alleged in separate statements that Basayev was amongst a group of Chechen terrorists trained in Pakistani camps.
14.Another Chechen terrorist leader reportedly trained in the camps of the HUM in Pakistan and Afghanistan was Salman Raduyev, who led a group of Chechen extremists on a raid into the Dagestan town of Kizlyar in January,1996, and took 2,000 Russian hostages. After this incident, then President Yeltsin alleged that the raiding party under Raduyev included Pakistani mercenaries.
15. The Russian press thereafter carried a number of reports emanating from official sources in Moscow that the extremist elements behind the Islamic revolt in Chechnya had been trained in Pakistan. Strongly refuting these reports, the Pakistani Foreign Office said: " These reports do not serve to promote good ties between Pakistan and Russia which we desire. We hope Russia will also reciprocate our wishes. "
16.In a statement on January 17,1996, the Pakistani Foreign Office strongly denied Russian allegations that Pakistani mercenaries were helping Chechen rebels indulging in acts of terrorism in Dagestan.
17.In a statement on January 13, 1998, the Russian Foreign Office described as inadmissible a statement of Zafarul Haq, Pakistan's Minister For Religious Affairs, expressing Pakistan's support for "the noble cause of the Chechen Muslims". He reportedly made this statement while welcoming a delegation of Chechen separatist leaders in his office in Islamabad.
18.In November, 1998, a high level delegation of the so-called independent Government of Chechnya led by Abdul Wahid Ibrahim in charge of Central Asian and Afghan Affairs in the Chechen Foreign Office, visited Afghanistan for the first time and reached an agreement on the establishment of formal relations between the Taliban-led Government of Kabul and the so-called independent Government of Chechnya.
19.During the same month, the Russian authorities expelled from the Bashkortostan region a delegation of six preachers of the TJ for making anti-Moscow statements during their preachings. A statement of the Federal Security Service said that their statements were "aimed at fuelling ethnic and religious hostility and offending the dignity of other religious groups." The preachers were to go to Chechnya and Dagestan in January, 1999, but their visas were cancelled and they were expelled.
20.After the outbreak of terrorist incidents in Dagestan from August 7,1999, the Russian authorities were repeatedly alleging that the incidents were organised by a raiding party of about 2,000 Chechens from Chechnya jointly led by Basayev and a former Colonel of the Jordanian Army called Khattab, that the Chechens were assisted by a multi-national group of 200 foreign mercenaries led by a Pakistani called Abu Abdulla Jafar, who was in charge of a training camp in Chechnya, that before the raids the raiders participated in a special prayer service in Chechnya conducted by three Pakistani Wahabi preachers called Sheikh Abdul Azim, Junaid Bagadadi and Abdul Omar and that Abdul Omar also read out to the raiders a fatwa received from a group of Saudi muftis calling upon them to establish an Islamic state in Dagestan.
21.Following a denial of these allegations by Mansur Alam, the then Pakistani Ambassador, who wrote a letter on the subject to "Izvestia", the paper quoted Gen.Vladimir Rushailo, the Russian Interior Minister, as saying that "mercenaries from a number of foreign countries, above all Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the UAE, have been taking part in the fighting in Dagestan" and that the Russian security services had concrete information about the involvement of the secret services of some Muslim countries in the Dagestan violence.
22."Izvestia" also identified Abu Abdulla Jafar as a Pashtun who had been residing in Chechnya for some years and running a training camp at a place called Serzhenyurt. The paper also alleged that the activities of the mercenaries in Chechnya and Dagestan were being funded by Osama bin Laden.
24. After the Taliban Government in Kabul formally recognized the so-called independent Chechen Government in November 1998, many Chechens from Chechnya went to Afghanistan and joined a group of members of the Chechen diaspora from Jordan, Turkey and other countries who were assisting the Taliban in its fight against the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Shah Masood. These Chechens---indigenous Chechens from Chechnya as well as Arabs of Chechen origin from the diaspora who were called Arab Chechens---- crossed over into the North Waziristan area of Pakistan along with bin Laden and his followers in 2001-02 and started working as instructors in the training camps of different terrorist organizations such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), which is a Pakistani Punjabi organization etc.
25. While no definitive estimate of the number of Chechens operating from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory were available, the Pakistani media periodically carried reports of their presence and activities. It was the Chechen instructors, who motivated the Pashtuns of Pakistan to take to suicide terrorism. Chechen instructors assisted Qari Hussain Mehsud of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in training suicide bombers.
26. The Pakistani media reported on November 19,2008, that three tribal elders, who had escaped from Taliban captivity in the Bajaur Agency, had claimed the presence of a large number of foreigners in the Taliban ranks, including Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Sudanese.
27. On May 22,2009, the Bloomberg news agency reported as follows: “ Pakistani authorities said fighters from Uzbekistan and Chechnya are among foreign forces helping the Taliban battle the army in the northwestern Swat Valley. “There is no doubt that some Uzbeks, Chechens and people of other nationalities were found involved with their designs to create an insurgency in Swat,” Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters yesterday in the capital, Islamabad, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.”
28. It was reported by sections of the Iranian media on October 4,2009, that Pakistan`s intelligence agencies’` preliminary investigation had revealed that `Uzbeks, Chechens and Afghans` were among Al Qaeda suspects held during the army operation in the South Waziristan Agency.The detainees also included an Algerian and some Arabic-speaking nationals, the daily “Dawn” reported.
29.Since 1995, an unestimated number of Arabs have been fighting along with the Chechens in the Caucasian region. The more prominent amongst them were Ibn Khattab, Mohammad bin Abdullah al-Seif and Abu al-Walid, all Saudi nationals, and Abu Hafs al Hurdani, a Jordanian. On September 18, 2002, the Caspian Studies Program had organized a seminar at the Kennedy School of Government in the Harvard University on the Chechen diaspora. Wasfi Kailani, an anthropologist at the University of Yarmouk, who was the main speaker, said that much of the foreign presence in and funding for the Chechen conflict had come from Saudi Arabia. Kailani added that Saudi militants had come to Chechnya to participate in what they saw as a jihad and Saudi missionaries had come to the region to teach Wahhabi Salafism to ex-communists who were embracing Islam after decades of Communist rule in the Soviet Union. He also said that diaspora Chechens were supporting the Chechen movement through a variety of means such as volunteering to fight in Chechnya, running web sites to propagate the Chechen cause etc. According to him, several members of the Taliban and a number of "Arab Afghans" went from Afghanistan to Chechnya in order to join the fight against Russian forces, viewing this as part of their Islamic obligation.
30.Western skepticism about the Russian evidence regarding the links of the Chechen terrorists with Al Qaeda has been coming in the way of strong action against the Chechen terrorists operating from Pakistani sanctuaries with Saudi money. This skepticism can be compared to the US skepticism over Indian evidence regarding the international dimensions of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and its links with Al Qaeda. Only after the LET killed six US nationals in Mumbai during its sea-borne terrorist strikes in the last week of November,2008, did the Americans start admitting that the LET had become as dangerous as Al Qaeda. The Chechen terrorists have till now not targeted US nationals and interests. Hence, the US skepticism continues. This is a short-sighted approach and will weaken the war against global jihadi terrorism. The LET did not target Americans till November,2008. That did not make it any the less dangerous as a terrorist organization. The Chechen terrorists are as ruthless and dangerous as the LET or any other associate of Al Qaeda. The world has to be concerned over their activities before it becomes too late. ( 31-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Monday, March 29, 2010
WANTED: INDIA-CHINA-JAPAN-SINGAPORE TASK FORCE ON MARITIME COUNTER-TERRORISM
B.RAMAN
During his forthcoming visit to China for four days from April 5,2010, for talks with the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, S.M.Krishna, the Indian Foreign Minister, should review co-operation in counter-terrorism with China in order to re-focus it on co-operation in maritime counter-terrorism instead of the present focus on co-operation against conventional land-based terrorism. He should explore the possibility of closer cooperation involving the Navies of India, China, Singapore and Japan in ensuring sealane security and in protecting the commercial ships and energy supplies of the four countries from possible attacks by terrorists and pirates operating from Yemen and Somalia.
2. Al Qaeda has extended and strengthened its presence in Yemen and Somalia. While the Somalia-based Al Qaeda elements have not operated beyond Somalia so far, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) as the Yemeni wing of Al Qaeda is called tried unsuccessfully to blow up an American aircraft over Detroit on December 25,2009, through a Nigerian suicide bomber recruited from London and trained in Yemen.
3. Al Qaeda has not so far succeeded in attacking strategic economic targets such as oil and gas production facilities and supplies by sea and commercial shipping despite its talking about it for some years after 9/11. This was partly due to the strengthening of physical security measures against maritime terrorism by the countries of the region after the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole in October 2000 and on the French tanker Limberg in October 2002. Both attacks took place in the Aden area. It was also partly due to the greater-cooperation among the navies of the region in the form of greater intelligence sharing and joint or co-ordinated patrolling. The positive results of these measures have been particularly evident in the Malacca Strait area.
4. Maritime counter-terrorism and anti-piracy measures have not been as effective in the Gulf of Aden area. Despite the deployment of anti-piracy patrols of the Western navies as well as those of India, China, Japan, the ASEAN countries and others, the Somalian pirates continue to be very active hijacking ships carrying valuable and often dangerous cargo such as chemicals and extracting ransom from the ship-owners for releasing their ships. Even China, despite its policy against ransom payments, found itself helpless last year when a Chinese commercial ship was hijacked by the pirates. Ultimately, the Chinese company, with a nod of approval from the Government, had to pay ransom when it found that the Chinese anti-piracy patrol was not in a position to help it.
5. At present, there is no evidence of any linkage between Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups on the one side and the Somalian pirates on the other. Lack of evidence does not mean there canot be any linkages. The kind of attention the possibility of linkages between terrorist organisations and organised land-based crime groups is receiving is not seen to monitor the possibility of linkages developing between the terrorists and the Somalian pirates. It was the realisation of the danger of pro-Al Qaeda organisations such as the Jemaah Islamiya developing linkages with the pirates based in the South-East Asian region and disrupting shipping and jamming choke-points that provided the trigger for the effective co-operation in the Malacca Strait area.
6. Such a trigger has not been there in the case of Somalian piracy. The danger of part of the ransom money being paid to the pirates finding its way into the coffers of Al Qaeda and its associates is real. India, China, Singapore and Japan as the countries that would be most affected if the Somalian piracy remains uncontrolled as it is presently and if Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia join hands with the pirates should take the lead in working out feasible options for dealing with the problem through measures such as intelligence-sharing, having a four-nation task force against piracy and maritime terrorism, mutual assistance in patrolling and joint maritime counter-terrorim exercises.
7. India already has a mechanism for counter-terrorism co-operation with China under which two exercises have been held so far in Yunnan and Karnataka. Sino-Indian co-operation against land-based terrorism would be pointless because of China's close relations with Pakistan from which most of the threats to our security from jihadi terrorists arise. Till the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, China supported Pakistan's contention that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the parent organisation of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), was a charity and not a terrorist organisation. It was China's opposition that came in the way of the JUD being declared a terrorist organisation by the anti-terrorism sanctions committee of the UN Security Council. China and India have no shared perception when it comes to terrorist groups operating from Pakistan. China's policies and acions are largely influenced by the views of Pakistan. Under such circumstances, it would be futile to expect the co-operation mechanism against land-based terrorism to be of any benefit to India. It will be only of public relations value. Nothing more.
8. However, no such differences of perception arise in the case of Somalian piracy and maritime threats from Al Qaeda and its associates in Yemen and Somalia. All the four countries ought to be equally concerned over the persisting and growing threats from the Gulf of Aden area. Any disruption of shipping or energy supplies will damage their economies as they are recovering from the impact of the global economic melt-down. As the victim of a spectacular act of sea-borne terrorism by the LET in November,2008, India should play the leadership role in evolving a co-operative maritime counter-terrorism and anti-piracy mechanism involving the navies of India, China, Singapore and Japan. The reasons for the participation of India, China and Japan are obvious and need no elaboration. Singapore's participation would be beneficial because of the co-operation of the navies of India and Singapore for some years now and Singapre's close relations with China. Singapore will be able to impart to the co-operation a good measure of professionalism. ( 30-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
During his forthcoming visit to China for four days from April 5,2010, for talks with the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, S.M.Krishna, the Indian Foreign Minister, should review co-operation in counter-terrorism with China in order to re-focus it on co-operation in maritime counter-terrorism instead of the present focus on co-operation against conventional land-based terrorism. He should explore the possibility of closer cooperation involving the Navies of India, China, Singapore and Japan in ensuring sealane security and in protecting the commercial ships and energy supplies of the four countries from possible attacks by terrorists and pirates operating from Yemen and Somalia.
2. Al Qaeda has extended and strengthened its presence in Yemen and Somalia. While the Somalia-based Al Qaeda elements have not operated beyond Somalia so far, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) as the Yemeni wing of Al Qaeda is called tried unsuccessfully to blow up an American aircraft over Detroit on December 25,2009, through a Nigerian suicide bomber recruited from London and trained in Yemen.
3. Al Qaeda has not so far succeeded in attacking strategic economic targets such as oil and gas production facilities and supplies by sea and commercial shipping despite its talking about it for some years after 9/11. This was partly due to the strengthening of physical security measures against maritime terrorism by the countries of the region after the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole in October 2000 and on the French tanker Limberg in October 2002. Both attacks took place in the Aden area. It was also partly due to the greater-cooperation among the navies of the region in the form of greater intelligence sharing and joint or co-ordinated patrolling. The positive results of these measures have been particularly evident in the Malacca Strait area.
4. Maritime counter-terrorism and anti-piracy measures have not been as effective in the Gulf of Aden area. Despite the deployment of anti-piracy patrols of the Western navies as well as those of India, China, Japan, the ASEAN countries and others, the Somalian pirates continue to be very active hijacking ships carrying valuable and often dangerous cargo such as chemicals and extracting ransom from the ship-owners for releasing their ships. Even China, despite its policy against ransom payments, found itself helpless last year when a Chinese commercial ship was hijacked by the pirates. Ultimately, the Chinese company, with a nod of approval from the Government, had to pay ransom when it found that the Chinese anti-piracy patrol was not in a position to help it.
5. At present, there is no evidence of any linkage between Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups on the one side and the Somalian pirates on the other. Lack of evidence does not mean there canot be any linkages. The kind of attention the possibility of linkages between terrorist organisations and organised land-based crime groups is receiving is not seen to monitor the possibility of linkages developing between the terrorists and the Somalian pirates. It was the realisation of the danger of pro-Al Qaeda organisations such as the Jemaah Islamiya developing linkages with the pirates based in the South-East Asian region and disrupting shipping and jamming choke-points that provided the trigger for the effective co-operation in the Malacca Strait area.
6. Such a trigger has not been there in the case of Somalian piracy. The danger of part of the ransom money being paid to the pirates finding its way into the coffers of Al Qaeda and its associates is real. India, China, Singapore and Japan as the countries that would be most affected if the Somalian piracy remains uncontrolled as it is presently and if Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia join hands with the pirates should take the lead in working out feasible options for dealing with the problem through measures such as intelligence-sharing, having a four-nation task force against piracy and maritime terrorism, mutual assistance in patrolling and joint maritime counter-terrorim exercises.
7. India already has a mechanism for counter-terrorism co-operation with China under which two exercises have been held so far in Yunnan and Karnataka. Sino-Indian co-operation against land-based terrorism would be pointless because of China's close relations with Pakistan from which most of the threats to our security from jihadi terrorists arise. Till the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, China supported Pakistan's contention that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the parent organisation of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), was a charity and not a terrorist organisation. It was China's opposition that came in the way of the JUD being declared a terrorist organisation by the anti-terrorism sanctions committee of the UN Security Council. China and India have no shared perception when it comes to terrorist groups operating from Pakistan. China's policies and acions are largely influenced by the views of Pakistan. Under such circumstances, it would be futile to expect the co-operation mechanism against land-based terrorism to be of any benefit to India. It will be only of public relations value. Nothing more.
8. However, no such differences of perception arise in the case of Somalian piracy and maritime threats from Al Qaeda and its associates in Yemen and Somalia. All the four countries ought to be equally concerned over the persisting and growing threats from the Gulf of Aden area. Any disruption of shipping or energy supplies will damage their economies as they are recovering from the impact of the global economic melt-down. As the victim of a spectacular act of sea-borne terrorism by the LET in November,2008, India should play the leadership role in evolving a co-operative maritime counter-terrorism and anti-piracy mechanism involving the navies of India, China, Singapore and Japan. The reasons for the participation of India, China and Japan are obvious and need no elaboration. Singapore's participation would be beneficial because of the co-operation of the navies of India and Singapore for some years now and Singapre's close relations with China. Singapore will be able to impart to the co-operation a good measure of professionalism. ( 30-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
AL QAEDA'S CHECHEN HAND IN MOSCOW BLASTS?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO. 636
B.RAMAN
"Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have been closely monitoring the activities of various pro-Al Qaeda groups operating in Xinjiang, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia. Recent reports indicate that the Uzbecks, Chechens and Uighurs trained in Al Qaeda training camps in North Waziristan have started moving towards their home bases in order to step up their jihad against the Governments of these countries and to disrupt the movement of logistic supplies to the US and other NATO troops through their territory. It is the assessment of well-informed Pakistani Police sources in the Pashtun areas that during the last two weeks there has been a decrease in the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan because trained TTP elements have been moving into Afghanistan to help the Afghan Taliban in its operations against the US-UK offensive in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. The TTP cadres are going in replacement of the Uighurs, Uzbeks and Chechens who are being moved towards Central Asia, Xinjiang and Chechnya. This also suits the Pakistan Army since it relieves pressure on it. An upsurge in acts of terrorism in this region is apprehended. Russia cannot afford to be complacent over the situation in Chechnya and Dagestan. As the fighting in Afghanistan escalates, reprisal attacks by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations in areas such as South-East, South and Central Asia and in the Muslim majority regions of Russia is a possibility to be reckoned with. "
---- Extract from my article of August 4,2009, titled " Pro-Al Qaeda Elements Regrouping For Fresh Strikes " at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers34/paper3329.html
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The CNN TV channel of the US has reported that a Web site associated with Chechen separatists has claimed responsibility for the two explosions in two subway stations of Central Moscow on the morning of March 29,2010, which resulted in the death of at least 37 persons. While the authenticity of the claim is yet to be established, jihadi terrorists from Chechnya trained in the past by Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban had till 2004 exhibited a capability for mass casualty suicide or suicidal terrorism in the heart of Moscow.
2. A month before the Madrid blasts of March 2004 by pro-Al Qaeda elements, pro-Al Qaeda Chechens had killed 39 persons by planting an improvised explosive device (IED) in a Moscow Metro station . This was followed by a suspected suicide bombing in the Moscow Metro in August 2004 in which 10 persons died. In November 2004, a Chechen-trained jihadi group from the Caucasian region of Russia planted an IED in an inter-city train from Moscow to St.Petersburg killing 29 persons.
3. While the Russian authorities had claimed to have neutralised the jihadi groups operating in Chechnya and restored normalcy there, Chechens of Afghanistan vintage operating from sanctuaries in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan had maintained their capability for acts of terrorism.Many of them work as instructors in the training camps of different pro-Al Qaeda organisations in the North Waziristan area, including in the training camps of the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,the so-called 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the handling officers of David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), and the islamic Jihad Union (IJU) also known as the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG), a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
4.Since the Uighur uprising in the Xinjiang province of China in July,2009, there were reports from reliable sources that Al Qaeda and its associates have been targeting Russia and the Central Asian Republics as a reprisal for their agreement to allow logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan to move through their territory.
5. The Chechens---- the pro-Al Qaeda jihadis as well as separatists not associated with Al Qaeda-- have also been wanting to prove wrong Russian security agencies, which have been claiming to have crushed the Chechen separatists and restored normalcy in Chechnya. But reports from the Caucasian region of Russia have been indicating that jihadi terrorists continue to be active in the Ingushetia region. In February, at least 20 insurgents were reportedly killed in an operation by Russian security forces in Ingushetia.
6. Many Chechens work as security guards and manual labour in the commercial establishments of Moscow. Often, pro-Al Qaeda Chechens use them for creating sleeper cells in Moscow.
7. If it is established that pro-Al Qaeda Chechens have staged a come-back by organising the two suicide explosions of March 29,2010, in the Moscow Metro, it should be a matter of concern not only to the Russian security agencies, but also to those of the CARs and the Xinjiang province of China. Likelihood of threats to the security of the forthcoming Shanghai Expo from pro-Al Qaeda Chechens or Uighurs or Uzbecks would increase. This has to be factored into in the security drill not only at the Expo, but also in Xinjiang. ( 29-3-2010)
( 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
"Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have been closely monitoring the activities of various pro-Al Qaeda groups operating in Xinjiang, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia. Recent reports indicate that the Uzbecks, Chechens and Uighurs trained in Al Qaeda training camps in North Waziristan have started moving towards their home bases in order to step up their jihad against the Governments of these countries and to disrupt the movement of logistic supplies to the US and other NATO troops through their territory. It is the assessment of well-informed Pakistani Police sources in the Pashtun areas that during the last two weeks there has been a decrease in the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan because trained TTP elements have been moving into Afghanistan to help the Afghan Taliban in its operations against the US-UK offensive in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. The TTP cadres are going in replacement of the Uighurs, Uzbeks and Chechens who are being moved towards Central Asia, Xinjiang and Chechnya. This also suits the Pakistan Army since it relieves pressure on it. An upsurge in acts of terrorism in this region is apprehended. Russia cannot afford to be complacent over the situation in Chechnya and Dagestan. As the fighting in Afghanistan escalates, reprisal attacks by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations in areas such as South-East, South and Central Asia and in the Muslim majority regions of Russia is a possibility to be reckoned with. "
---- Extract from my article of August 4,2009, titled " Pro-Al Qaeda Elements Regrouping For Fresh Strikes " at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers34/paper3329.html
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The CNN TV channel of the US has reported that a Web site associated with Chechen separatists has claimed responsibility for the two explosions in two subway stations of Central Moscow on the morning of March 29,2010, which resulted in the death of at least 37 persons. While the authenticity of the claim is yet to be established, jihadi terrorists from Chechnya trained in the past by Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban had till 2004 exhibited a capability for mass casualty suicide or suicidal terrorism in the heart of Moscow.
2. A month before the Madrid blasts of March 2004 by pro-Al Qaeda elements, pro-Al Qaeda Chechens had killed 39 persons by planting an improvised explosive device (IED) in a Moscow Metro station . This was followed by a suspected suicide bombing in the Moscow Metro in August 2004 in which 10 persons died. In November 2004, a Chechen-trained jihadi group from the Caucasian region of Russia planted an IED in an inter-city train from Moscow to St.Petersburg killing 29 persons.
3. While the Russian authorities had claimed to have neutralised the jihadi groups operating in Chechnya and restored normalcy there, Chechens of Afghanistan vintage operating from sanctuaries in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan had maintained their capability for acts of terrorism.Many of them work as instructors in the training camps of different pro-Al Qaeda organisations in the North Waziristan area, including in the training camps of the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,the so-called 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the handling officers of David Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), and the islamic Jihad Union (IJU) also known as the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG), a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
4.Since the Uighur uprising in the Xinjiang province of China in July,2009, there were reports from reliable sources that Al Qaeda and its associates have been targeting Russia and the Central Asian Republics as a reprisal for their agreement to allow logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan to move through their territory.
5. The Chechens---- the pro-Al Qaeda jihadis as well as separatists not associated with Al Qaeda-- have also been wanting to prove wrong Russian security agencies, which have been claiming to have crushed the Chechen separatists and restored normalcy in Chechnya. But reports from the Caucasian region of Russia have been indicating that jihadi terrorists continue to be active in the Ingushetia region. In February, at least 20 insurgents were reportedly killed in an operation by Russian security forces in Ingushetia.
6. Many Chechens work as security guards and manual labour in the commercial establishments of Moscow. Often, pro-Al Qaeda Chechens use them for creating sleeper cells in Moscow.
7. If it is established that pro-Al Qaeda Chechens have staged a come-back by organising the two suicide explosions of March 29,2010, in the Moscow Metro, it should be a matter of concern not only to the Russian security agencies, but also to those of the CARs and the Xinjiang province of China. Likelihood of threats to the security of the forthcoming Shanghai Expo from pro-Al Qaeda Chechens or Uighurs or Uzbecks would increase. This has to be factored into in the security drill not only at the Expo, but also in Xinjiang. ( 29-3-2010)
( 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, March 28, 2010
OBAMA IN KABUL: DENYING VICTORY TO TALIBAN & DEFEATING AL QAEDA
B.RAMAN
Denying victory to the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans by not allowing them to prevail militarily on the ground and defeating Al Qaeda by continuing to go after its leaders and sanctuaries threatening the US Homeland from Pakistani territory will be the two main objectives of President Barack Obama in the remaining three years of his Presidency before the next Presidential elections are due in 2012.
2. This became clear from his remarks to the US troops at Bagram in Afghanistan and after his meeting with President Hamid Karzai at Kabul during a surprise unannounced visit to Afghanistan on the night of March 28,2010. It was not just a morale-boosting and publicity-earning visit. It was a proactive visit meant to convey a message to the Talibans, Al Qaeda, the Afghan people and the regional players such as Pakistan that the US will to prevail in the Af-Pak region is not weakening.
3. He told the US troops: " You are here to keep America safe and secure..... The US had been attacked viciously on 9/11, and Al Qaeda leaders and their Taliban allies are still in the region and have to be defeated....The US aimed to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven and reverse the Taliban's momentum. The (US) troops are being backed up by a clear mission and the right strategy and they would have the support to get the job done. ...I'm confident all of you here are going to get the job done in Afghanistan."
4.Obama sought to remove two misperceptions which have come to cloud his Af-Pak policy. The first misperception is about alleged creeping defeatism in Washington DC resulting in misgivings as to whether the US can prevail over the Afghan Taliban and whether it wants to prevail. The proceedings and decisions of the recently-held London conference on Afghanistan have unfortunately created an impression as if the US will in Afghanistan is weakening and as if Obama is looking for an honourable way out----if necessary, even by making a deal with some sections of the Afghan Taliban at the expense of Karzai. The second misperception is about alleged creeping disenchantment with Karzai. Though this disenchantment was attributed to Karzai's perceived failure to provide a clean and effective administration to the Afghan people and to make satisfactory progress in raising the Afghan National Army to the level of being able to ensure peace and security when the US troops ultimately leave Afghanistan, many misinterpreted his attitude to Karzai lacking in warmth as indicating that he might be prepared to ditch him should that become necessary for peace-making in Afghanistan.
5. Obama has sought to remove these misperceptions by inviting Karzai to Washington in May for talks and by an open endorsement of Karzai in the following words: "The American people are encouraged by the progress that's been made. I hope to see more improvement on governance, anti-corruption efforts and judicial process."He reiterated his belief of a linkage between peace and security in the Af-Pak region and homeland security. Whereas Iraq throws no shadow on the US homeland security, the Af-Pak region does. This has been a constant factor in Obama's thinking from the days of his Presidential campaign in 2008. Unless the Talibans are weakened beyond recovery through military and political means and unless Al Qaeda's leaders and sanctuaries operating from Pakistani territory are decisively defeated, the threat to the US homeland security from the Pashtun belt will remain.
6. While the objectives of Obama's Af-Pak mission during the remaining years of his first tenure as the President have been made clear, his remarks in Afghanistan did not elaborate on how he is going to achieve them----apart from his reiterating the US resolve to continue the Drone (pilotless plane) strikes on the hide-outs of the Talibans and Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory. In his remarks in Kabul, Obama made an open and clear-cut enunciation of the continuing need for the Drone strikes. He said: ""We have struck blows against Al Qaeda's leadership as well as the Taliban's.They are hunkered down. They are worried about their own safety. It's harder for them to move and to train and to plot and to attack. All of that makes America safer and we are going to keep them on the run."
7. Interestingly more by coincidence than by design,on March 25,2010, the US Government for the first time offered a legal justification of its Drone strikes as justified by its right to “self-defence” under international law. The Agence France Press (AFP) quoted State Department legal adviser Harold Koh as saying in a speech that the US was in “an armed conflict” with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and its affiliates as a result of the September 11 attacks “and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defence under international law”. “With respect to the subject of targeting, which has been much commented upon in the media and international legal circles, there are obviously limits to what I can say publicly.What I can say is that it is the considered view of this administration – and it has certainly been my experience during my time as legal adviser – that US targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war. In all of our operations involving the use of force the administration was committed by word and deed to conducting ourselves in accordance with all applicable law”.
8. The first public admission of the intensified Drone strikes and the legal justification for them and Obama's reiteration of the US determination to continue them underline the belief in the Obama Administration that while the Pakistan Army might have taken action against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and arrested some leaders of the Afghan Taliban, it cannot be depended upon to act against Al Qaeda and its associates operating from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. Pakistan's interest in co-operating with the US is restricted to its keenness to regain its so-called stratregic depth in Afghanistan, eliminate the Indian presence in Afghanistan with US diplomatic support and to neutralising the threat posed to Pakistan by the TTP. For protecting the US homeland from any more threats arising from the Af-Pak region the US has to rely on its own efforts.
9. US policy-makers must realise that so long as it has not neutralised Al Qaeda and its associates, including the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) operating from Pakistani territory, the US cannot afford to even consider withdrawing from Afghanistan. Hopefully, this realisation must be one of the outcomes of Obama's visit to Kabul. (29-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Denying victory to the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans by not allowing them to prevail militarily on the ground and defeating Al Qaeda by continuing to go after its leaders and sanctuaries threatening the US Homeland from Pakistani territory will be the two main objectives of President Barack Obama in the remaining three years of his Presidency before the next Presidential elections are due in 2012.
2. This became clear from his remarks to the US troops at Bagram in Afghanistan and after his meeting with President Hamid Karzai at Kabul during a surprise unannounced visit to Afghanistan on the night of March 28,2010. It was not just a morale-boosting and publicity-earning visit. It was a proactive visit meant to convey a message to the Talibans, Al Qaeda, the Afghan people and the regional players such as Pakistan that the US will to prevail in the Af-Pak region is not weakening.
3. He told the US troops: " You are here to keep America safe and secure..... The US had been attacked viciously on 9/11, and Al Qaeda leaders and their Taliban allies are still in the region and have to be defeated....The US aimed to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven and reverse the Taliban's momentum. The (US) troops are being backed up by a clear mission and the right strategy and they would have the support to get the job done. ...I'm confident all of you here are going to get the job done in Afghanistan."
4.Obama sought to remove two misperceptions which have come to cloud his Af-Pak policy. The first misperception is about alleged creeping defeatism in Washington DC resulting in misgivings as to whether the US can prevail over the Afghan Taliban and whether it wants to prevail. The proceedings and decisions of the recently-held London conference on Afghanistan have unfortunately created an impression as if the US will in Afghanistan is weakening and as if Obama is looking for an honourable way out----if necessary, even by making a deal with some sections of the Afghan Taliban at the expense of Karzai. The second misperception is about alleged creeping disenchantment with Karzai. Though this disenchantment was attributed to Karzai's perceived failure to provide a clean and effective administration to the Afghan people and to make satisfactory progress in raising the Afghan National Army to the level of being able to ensure peace and security when the US troops ultimately leave Afghanistan, many misinterpreted his attitude to Karzai lacking in warmth as indicating that he might be prepared to ditch him should that become necessary for peace-making in Afghanistan.
5. Obama has sought to remove these misperceptions by inviting Karzai to Washington in May for talks and by an open endorsement of Karzai in the following words: "The American people are encouraged by the progress that's been made. I hope to see more improvement on governance, anti-corruption efforts and judicial process."He reiterated his belief of a linkage between peace and security in the Af-Pak region and homeland security. Whereas Iraq throws no shadow on the US homeland security, the Af-Pak region does. This has been a constant factor in Obama's thinking from the days of his Presidential campaign in 2008. Unless the Talibans are weakened beyond recovery through military and political means and unless Al Qaeda's leaders and sanctuaries operating from Pakistani territory are decisively defeated, the threat to the US homeland security from the Pashtun belt will remain.
6. While the objectives of Obama's Af-Pak mission during the remaining years of his first tenure as the President have been made clear, his remarks in Afghanistan did not elaborate on how he is going to achieve them----apart from his reiterating the US resolve to continue the Drone (pilotless plane) strikes on the hide-outs of the Talibans and Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory. In his remarks in Kabul, Obama made an open and clear-cut enunciation of the continuing need for the Drone strikes. He said: ""We have struck blows against Al Qaeda's leadership as well as the Taliban's.They are hunkered down. They are worried about their own safety. It's harder for them to move and to train and to plot and to attack. All of that makes America safer and we are going to keep them on the run."
7. Interestingly more by coincidence than by design,on March 25,2010, the US Government for the first time offered a legal justification of its Drone strikes as justified by its right to “self-defence” under international law. The Agence France Press (AFP) quoted State Department legal adviser Harold Koh as saying in a speech that the US was in “an armed conflict” with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and its affiliates as a result of the September 11 attacks “and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defence under international law”. “With respect to the subject of targeting, which has been much commented upon in the media and international legal circles, there are obviously limits to what I can say publicly.What I can say is that it is the considered view of this administration – and it has certainly been my experience during my time as legal adviser – that US targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war. In all of our operations involving the use of force the administration was committed by word and deed to conducting ourselves in accordance with all applicable law”.
8. The first public admission of the intensified Drone strikes and the legal justification for them and Obama's reiteration of the US determination to continue them underline the belief in the Obama Administration that while the Pakistan Army might have taken action against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and arrested some leaders of the Afghan Taliban, it cannot be depended upon to act against Al Qaeda and its associates operating from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory. Pakistan's interest in co-operating with the US is restricted to its keenness to regain its so-called stratregic depth in Afghanistan, eliminate the Indian presence in Afghanistan with US diplomatic support and to neutralising the threat posed to Pakistan by the TTP. For protecting the US homeland from any more threats arising from the Af-Pak region the US has to rely on its own efforts.
9. US policy-makers must realise that so long as it has not neutralised Al Qaeda and its associates, including the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) operating from Pakistani territory, the US cannot afford to even consider withdrawing from Afghanistan. Hopefully, this realisation must be one of the outcomes of Obama's visit to Kabul. (29-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
" The Hindu" & Transparency in Media Houses
B.RAMAN
Indian media has always been rightly vocal in criticising the lack of transparency in the functioning of Government departments, instances of nepotism, favouritism and wrong-doing in the Government and attempts of senior Government functionaries to hang on to office, by hook or by crook, long after they have reached the age of superannuation.
2. While they have every right to do so, many of the Indian media houses and journalists are themselves not role models of probity, intellectual integrity, transparency and selfless service in the cause of journalism. There are many instances of wrong-doings by media houses and journalists, but the public does not become aware of them because of the reluctance of our newspapers and journalists to report on each other, however grave their failings may be and even if knowledge of such failings be in public interest. Their reluctance to report on each other and their tendency to cover up failings inside their profession have been creating cynicism in growing sections of the public about the ethical standards---or the lack of them---in the media world.
3. In this context, many who take interest in the goings-on in the media world, would be watching with interest the evolution of the controversy relating to the reported publication by the "Indian Express" and the "Financial Express" of a report regarding alleged differences in the "Hindu" family about the state of affairs in the "Hindu" media house, owned by the members of a single family with little public knowledge of the ownership and of the details of the extent to which the members of the family occupy leading positions in the editorial staff in the headquarters as well as in the reporting staff in the field. The lack of knowledge of such details results in the reading public patronising the "Hindu" not being aware of the fact that a small group of members of the same family decide what should be reported to the public and what views and opinions should be disseminated through the columns of the paper. The reading public has difficulty in knowing who is a relative and who is an independent member of the staff capable of providing an objective point of view uninfluenced by the interests of the family.
4. Shri N.Ram, the Editor-in-chief of the group, who will be becoming a senior citizen later this year by reaching the age of 65, has given notice of a defamation suit against the "Indian Express" and the "Financial Express" for publishing what, according to him, was an inaccurate report relating to some staff changes , which did not involve outsiders and alleged differences among the family members over the propriety and advisability of Shri Ram continuing to be the head of the group even after reaching the age of superannuation.
5. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the merits of the threatened action for defamation. It is for "The Indian Express" and the "Financial Express" to defend themselves by establishing the accuracy of their report and for the court to ultimately decide the maintainability of the defamation suit if it is ultimately filed by Shri Ram.
6. The purpose in writing this piece is merely to pose the following questions: (a). Has the time not come for greater transparency in “The Hindu” group? (b).Has the time not come for the Government to introduce, in consultation with the media houses, a right to information act relating to media houses? (c). Is it not in public interest for the rest of the media to have a debate through their columns on the issues raised by the controversy between “The Hindu” and “The Indian Express”? (d).Are the media houses and journalists holy cows beyond criticism or spotlight?
7. To point out these things is not to defame Shri Ram or his newspaper, but to enhance their reputation further by encouraging habits of humility, openness, accountability and self-criticism. (28-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi )
Indian media has always been rightly vocal in criticising the lack of transparency in the functioning of Government departments, instances of nepotism, favouritism and wrong-doing in the Government and attempts of senior Government functionaries to hang on to office, by hook or by crook, long after they have reached the age of superannuation.
2. While they have every right to do so, many of the Indian media houses and journalists are themselves not role models of probity, intellectual integrity, transparency and selfless service in the cause of journalism. There are many instances of wrong-doings by media houses and journalists, but the public does not become aware of them because of the reluctance of our newspapers and journalists to report on each other, however grave their failings may be and even if knowledge of such failings be in public interest. Their reluctance to report on each other and their tendency to cover up failings inside their profession have been creating cynicism in growing sections of the public about the ethical standards---or the lack of them---in the media world.
3. In this context, many who take interest in the goings-on in the media world, would be watching with interest the evolution of the controversy relating to the reported publication by the "Indian Express" and the "Financial Express" of a report regarding alleged differences in the "Hindu" family about the state of affairs in the "Hindu" media house, owned by the members of a single family with little public knowledge of the ownership and of the details of the extent to which the members of the family occupy leading positions in the editorial staff in the headquarters as well as in the reporting staff in the field. The lack of knowledge of such details results in the reading public patronising the "Hindu" not being aware of the fact that a small group of members of the same family decide what should be reported to the public and what views and opinions should be disseminated through the columns of the paper. The reading public has difficulty in knowing who is a relative and who is an independent member of the staff capable of providing an objective point of view uninfluenced by the interests of the family.
4. Shri N.Ram, the Editor-in-chief of the group, who will be becoming a senior citizen later this year by reaching the age of 65, has given notice of a defamation suit against the "Indian Express" and the "Financial Express" for publishing what, according to him, was an inaccurate report relating to some staff changes , which did not involve outsiders and alleged differences among the family members over the propriety and advisability of Shri Ram continuing to be the head of the group even after reaching the age of superannuation.
5. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the merits of the threatened action for defamation. It is for "The Indian Express" and the "Financial Express" to defend themselves by establishing the accuracy of their report and for the court to ultimately decide the maintainability of the defamation suit if it is ultimately filed by Shri Ram.
6. The purpose in writing this piece is merely to pose the following questions: (a). Has the time not come for greater transparency in “The Hindu” group? (b).Has the time not come for the Government to introduce, in consultation with the media houses, a right to information act relating to media houses? (c). Is it not in public interest for the rest of the media to have a debate through their columns on the issues raised by the controversy between “The Hindu” and “The Indian Express”? (d).Are the media houses and journalists holy cows beyond criticism or spotlight?
7. To point out these things is not to defame Shri Ram or his newspaper, but to enhance their reputation further by encouraging habits of humility, openness, accountability and self-criticism. (28-3-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi )
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