FACE THE NATION
FTN: Security more important than personal liberties?
CNN-IBN
Published on Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 07:02, Updated on Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 11:09 in India section
The United States and the United Kingdom have introduced full-body scanners and racial and religious profiling of passengers following a botched Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian man on a Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit.
However, civil society voices say such security measures are nothing but racism.
The new security measures call for inspecting baggage and patting down US-bound passengers from four countries – Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria – that the US government considers state sponsors of terrorism and 10 other "countries of interest." They include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.
Passengers from other countries heading for the US could also face random checks, pat-downs or baggage checks.
CNN-IBN show Face The Nation debated: Is racial profiling the need of the hour?
US racial profiling measures irk Muslims
On the panel of experts to debate the issue were former additional director of RAW B Raman, former diplomat KC Singh and South Asia Bureau Chief of Al Arabiya Dr Wael Awwad.
When the US makes a list of countries that are almost declared as terrorist countries and it says that all nationals from these countries will be checked, doesn’t this confirm official racism?
Raman began the debate by clarifying that it is not just nationals of these countries but also those who have visited these countries before going to the US who will be subjected to special security checks.
"Yes, there is a possibility of doing it in a better way by focusing on the individual like in the case of the Nigerian whose father had complained about him. But unfortunately the checks that he should have been subjected to were not done," Raman said.
However, Wael Awwad asked why are Islamist terrorists attacking the US and the UK? "It is because of their wrongdoing in the Middle East," he reasoned.
But other panelists argued that it is not just about Muslims because countries with big Muslim population like Indonesia and India are not in the list.
"The whole idea of putting countries like this in a list is that they (US) should admit that there is a failure in the system. Why is it that Japan and China are not in this list? It proves that this trouble is their own creation," Awwad said.
Isn’t this is a systematic infringement of the personal liberties of those who live in these 14 countries? After all political beliefs are not a crime. One should not be dubbed a terrorist just because one follows a hardliner religious law.
To which KC Singh said, "What the initial thought was that Barack Obama will bring in a fresh approach. Two things that have affected the reputation of the US in the last seven years – one is Guantanamo Bay and the second was the interrogations that took place. Now Obama apparently has overreacted because he comes under attack from the Republicans. The point is that you cannot target citizens of certain countries because you are turning all of them into suspects and therefore helping the terrorists as it will help in creating further disaffection."
Through this entire episode, Obama came across as someone who was not prepared to handle such situations. Perhaps his speech at Cairo University has not reached out and not healed hearts and minds.
Agreeing Singh said, "You can’t have a sledgehammer approach and we saw that in India also. Headley case happened and look at the corrections they had to make in the visa policy. Initial reaction for every security agency when it is caught in the wrong foot is to say ban everything. But you have to create a balance and a smart policy which serves your purpose and yet not create disaffection."
"The policy is likely to cause anger and unhappiness but nobody can question the reason behind the policy as security needs to be tightened up. So one cannot totally blame the Obama administration but yes, it could have been done it in a wise manner," Raman said.
Does this new list indicate that the world is accepting that this is where terrorism is emanating from?
"I do not mind the checking if it is done on an equal basis to all the members of a flight. More anger among people should not be created by taking such steps. After this why should any one of the Arab countries open a red carpet for any American official?" Awwad asked.
He also believed that Syria should not have been in the list. "It is the last secular country in the Arab world. The US is after Syria to change its policy towards Israel. It has nothing to do with terrorism. So it is a politically-motivated list," he added.
Disagreeing Raman said, "It is not a politically motivated list. It was prepared on the basis of the assessments made by intelligence agencies of the US. They made the list based on where terrorist training camps are located. So it is about being careful just as we are careful about Pakistanis. Those Pakistanis who come to India have to present themselves in a police station. No other citizen has to undergo this procedure. So just like we have a right to protect our people, the Americans have that right too."
If a list is being made of countries from where terrorism is emanating then why is UK not in this list? Or is UK an American ally and so it cannot be in the list?
"With UK I suppose they have sufficient confidence that there will be adequate screening at the UK end. You will find later that some of these countries will be taken out (of the list) if they can certify adequate screening. There has to be greater harmonisation of standards of international airports because al-Qaeda has shown a special preference for singling out civil aviation as a means of a terrorist attack. So everyone has to be careful," Singh explained.
The need of the hour is to sharpen up counter-terrorism. The objective is only to kill so then isn’t it necessary to take as many measures as you can?
"Absolutely. It is the responsibility of every country to protect but not by singling out certain citizens. Everybody should be on the same boat and then we should fight it out," Awwad said.
Raman concluded the debate by saying, "Protecting lives of its people is very important and no government can shed that responsibility. If a government comes to a conclusion that certain restrictions are necessary then it must take steps."
Final results of the SMS/web poll:
Yes – 56 per cent
No – 44 per cent
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
AL QAEDAS & AL QAEDAS
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.606
B.RAMAN
Unless a terrorism analyst poses to himself the right questions and seeks answers to them, he will not be able to understand what is going on in the world of jihadi terrorism and will be repeatedly taken by surprise.
2.There have been many surprises since 9/11---- some of a tactical nature and some of a strategic nature.
3.As examples of tactical surprises, one could mention the July 2006 explosions in Mumbai's suburban trains, the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai and the December 25,2009, attempt by a Nigerian student trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen to blow up a US plane as it approached to land at Detroit.
4.As examples of strategic surprises, one can cite the spectacular come-back of the Afghan Taliban post-2004, the emergence on the scene of the Pakistani Taliban after the raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad by the Pakistan Army in July 2007, the activities of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia, the come-back of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which could turn out to be as spectacular as the come-back of the Afghan Taliban, and indications of new tactical alliances being formed by some of these organisations without any sign of either the Afghan Taliban or the pre-9/11 Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden ( AQ--OBL) having any major influence over them.
5.The periodic messages of Osama bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri are interpreted by many as indicative of their being in total control of the myriad jihadi movements, all having the same strategic objective of humiliating the US, destroying Israel and forming an Islamic Caliphate. These interpretations have not been corroborated by acceptable evidence. Many of the assessments on the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda of OBL seem to be based not on concrete evidence, but on unquestioned pre-conceived ideas.
6.Such pre-conceived ideas, which come in the way of an objective analysis, are many. They are not subjected to intense scrutiny. One such pre-conceived idea presently under circulation is that the spectacular attack on the CIA's Chapman forward base near Khost in Afghanistan on December 30,2009, must have been carried out by the Haqqani network of Afghanistan operating from North Waziristan. Why? Because, Khost is its area of operation, where it has operated with success in the past.
7.Any scrutiny of this supposition should have given rise to the following questions/arguments:
The Haqqani network is supposed to be close to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Would the ISI have wanted its strategic asset to massacre seven CIA officers and one officer of the Jordanian intelligence related to the King, who is close to Pakistan's military leadership?
While criticising pro forma the increased Drone strikes by the CIA on the hide-outs of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, the Pakistani political and military leadership has not come in the way of these strikes, which have been helping in their own operations against the Pakistani Taliban. Would it have been in the interest of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to help the Jordanian double agent in wiping out a forward CIA base which was playing an important role in facilitating the Drone strikes against the Pakistani Taliban?
8.If the Haqqani network could not be responsible, who else could be? The Afghan Taliban has ruled itself out of the credit line by making premature claims of having been responsible without being able to give any evidence in support of its claim.
9.The only claims, which cannot be dismissed as implausible, have come from the Pakistani Taliban. While the Afghan Taliban projected it as a pentration operation through one of its members in the Afghan National Army, the Pakistani Taliban, in its initial statement itself, projected it as a penetration operation through a foreign ( non-Afghan) double agent. Its second claim identifying the foreign agent as a Jordanian might have been made after the US media had identified the agent, but no details had appeared in the media when it made its first claim. It is this which makes its claim difficult to dismiss easily.
10.There have been reports of a claim by Al Qaeda of OBL too. It is difficult to say presently whether this claim could be authentic. If there is an Al Qaeda involvement, the possibility is more of the involvement of Al Qaeda of Iraq ( or Mesapatomia) because of the past links of the Jordanian double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi with Al Qaeda of Iraq. Even when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda of Iraq, was alive, there were reports of differences between him and Al Qaeda of OBL and Zawahiri. There were reports and indications that he was not amenable to the influence of bin Laden and was waging his jihad against the Americans according to his own lights and his own reading of the situation on the ground, while ostensibly proclaiming his loyalty to bin Laden. The followers of Zarqawi, including Al-Balawi, had stronger reasons to avenge the death of their Iraqi Sheikh than the followers of bin Laden in the Af-Pak region. The possibility that the idea of the operation against the CIA officers was a brain-child of al-Balawi and not of any unit of Al Qaeda cannot be easily dismissed.
11.The premature claims of the Afghan Taliban clearly show that the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans do not have a common command and control. Even earlier, this was obvious from the fact that while the Afghan Taliban looked upon the Pakistani Army as its guardian angel, the Pakistani Taliban looked upon it as its hated enemy. There were many indicators that the Afghan Taliban was not happy with the repeated attacks of the Pakistani Taliban on the Army and the ISI. Similarly, the Afghan Taliban has never supported the projection by Zawahiri of the Pakistani Army as anti-Islamic.Recent messages emanating from bin Laden and Zawahiri do not show much enthusiasm for the attempts of Zarqawi's followers in Iraq to stage a come-back.
12. I had often mentioned in the past that as a jihadist movement, the Taliban is not a monolithic phenomenon. There are Talibans and Talibans each calling for a different strategy by the international community to deal with the threat, Recent events in Fort Hood, Detroit, Chapman, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq show that there are now Al Qaedas and Al Qaedas.It no longer seems to be a monolithic movement. Myriad Al Qaedas have bloomed and continue to bloom. What one requires is not a single strategy which can deal with all of them, but a mix of strategies suited to different groups. This makes counter-terrorism even more complicated and difficult than it has been. (7-1-10)
( 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
Unless a terrorism analyst poses to himself the right questions and seeks answers to them, he will not be able to understand what is going on in the world of jihadi terrorism and will be repeatedly taken by surprise.
2.There have been many surprises since 9/11---- some of a tactical nature and some of a strategic nature.
3.As examples of tactical surprises, one could mention the July 2006 explosions in Mumbai's suburban trains, the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai and the December 25,2009, attempt by a Nigerian student trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen to blow up a US plane as it approached to land at Detroit.
4.As examples of strategic surprises, one can cite the spectacular come-back of the Afghan Taliban post-2004, the emergence on the scene of the Pakistani Taliban after the raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad by the Pakistan Army in July 2007, the activities of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia, the come-back of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which could turn out to be as spectacular as the come-back of the Afghan Taliban, and indications of new tactical alliances being formed by some of these organisations without any sign of either the Afghan Taliban or the pre-9/11 Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden ( AQ--OBL) having any major influence over them.
5.The periodic messages of Osama bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri are interpreted by many as indicative of their being in total control of the myriad jihadi movements, all having the same strategic objective of humiliating the US, destroying Israel and forming an Islamic Caliphate. These interpretations have not been corroborated by acceptable evidence. Many of the assessments on the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda of OBL seem to be based not on concrete evidence, but on unquestioned pre-conceived ideas.
6.Such pre-conceived ideas, which come in the way of an objective analysis, are many. They are not subjected to intense scrutiny. One such pre-conceived idea presently under circulation is that the spectacular attack on the CIA's Chapman forward base near Khost in Afghanistan on December 30,2009, must have been carried out by the Haqqani network of Afghanistan operating from North Waziristan. Why? Because, Khost is its area of operation, where it has operated with success in the past.
7.Any scrutiny of this supposition should have given rise to the following questions/arguments:
The Haqqani network is supposed to be close to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Would the ISI have wanted its strategic asset to massacre seven CIA officers and one officer of the Jordanian intelligence related to the King, who is close to Pakistan's military leadership?
While criticising pro forma the increased Drone strikes by the CIA on the hide-outs of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, the Pakistani political and military leadership has not come in the way of these strikes, which have been helping in their own operations against the Pakistani Taliban. Would it have been in the interest of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to help the Jordanian double agent in wiping out a forward CIA base which was playing an important role in facilitating the Drone strikes against the Pakistani Taliban?
8.If the Haqqani network could not be responsible, who else could be? The Afghan Taliban has ruled itself out of the credit line by making premature claims of having been responsible without being able to give any evidence in support of its claim.
9.The only claims, which cannot be dismissed as implausible, have come from the Pakistani Taliban. While the Afghan Taliban projected it as a pentration operation through one of its members in the Afghan National Army, the Pakistani Taliban, in its initial statement itself, projected it as a penetration operation through a foreign ( non-Afghan) double agent. Its second claim identifying the foreign agent as a Jordanian might have been made after the US media had identified the agent, but no details had appeared in the media when it made its first claim. It is this which makes its claim difficult to dismiss easily.
10.There have been reports of a claim by Al Qaeda of OBL too. It is difficult to say presently whether this claim could be authentic. If there is an Al Qaeda involvement, the possibility is more of the involvement of Al Qaeda of Iraq ( or Mesapatomia) because of the past links of the Jordanian double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi with Al Qaeda of Iraq. Even when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda of Iraq, was alive, there were reports of differences between him and Al Qaeda of OBL and Zawahiri. There were reports and indications that he was not amenable to the influence of bin Laden and was waging his jihad against the Americans according to his own lights and his own reading of the situation on the ground, while ostensibly proclaiming his loyalty to bin Laden. The followers of Zarqawi, including Al-Balawi, had stronger reasons to avenge the death of their Iraqi Sheikh than the followers of bin Laden in the Af-Pak region. The possibility that the idea of the operation against the CIA officers was a brain-child of al-Balawi and not of any unit of Al Qaeda cannot be easily dismissed.
11.The premature claims of the Afghan Taliban clearly show that the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans do not have a common command and control. Even earlier, this was obvious from the fact that while the Afghan Taliban looked upon the Pakistani Army as its guardian angel, the Pakistani Taliban looked upon it as its hated enemy. There were many indicators that the Afghan Taliban was not happy with the repeated attacks of the Pakistani Taliban on the Army and the ISI. Similarly, the Afghan Taliban has never supported the projection by Zawahiri of the Pakistani Army as anti-Islamic.Recent messages emanating from bin Laden and Zawahiri do not show much enthusiasm for the attempts of Zarqawi's followers in Iraq to stage a come-back.
12. I had often mentioned in the past that as a jihadist movement, the Taliban is not a monolithic phenomenon. There are Talibans and Talibans each calling for a different strategy by the international community to deal with the threat, Recent events in Fort Hood, Detroit, Chapman, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq show that there are now Al Qaedas and Al Qaedas.It no longer seems to be a monolithic movement. Myriad Al Qaedas have bloomed and continue to bloom. What one requires is not a single strategy which can deal with all of them, but a mix of strategies suited to different groups. This makes counter-terrorism even more complicated and difficult than it has been. (7-1-10)
( 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, January 5, 2010
OBAMA FACES CRITICISM FOR INTELLIGENCE SETBACKS
B.RAMAN
In an article published by "The Sun " of New York titled "Stop Terror's Next Act" in its issue of July 21,2008, Nibras Kazimi, its contributing columnist, had criticised then Senator Barack Obama for playing down the threat from Al Qaeda in Iraq. The article is available at http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stop-terrors-next-act/82252/ . Its text is annexed for easy reference.
2. In that article, he had referred to the writings of one Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani visualising the emergence of Iraq as the centre of a global Islamic Caliphate. Kazimi wrote: " Going back to Afghanistan is an abhorred historical regression, and certainly the pride of the Zarqawists, the most radical and once most successful of the jihadists, will not allow them to hide away in some cave in Waziristan after they had attempted a project as historically grand as the new caliphate in Baghdad. They will come back bigger, deadlier and far more audacious, as is their style, the next time around. Mr. Obama and his European hosts need to update what they think they know about the enemy before the enemy catches its breath."
3. Quoting Taliban sources, Al Jazeera has now reported that Khurasani is identical with Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian suicide bomber coming from the same village as the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who killed seven officers of the CIA and one of the Jordanian Intelligence in the Khost area of Afghanistan on December 30,2009.
4. In the very first year of Obama's tenure as the President, the US intelligence community has faced two embarrassing setbacks. Denis Blair, his nominee as the Director, National Intelligence, has come under criticism for the failure of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) set up in 2004 to co-ordinate follow-up action on the information provided by the father of a Nigerian student to the US Embassy and the CIA officer in Nigeria about the radicalisation of his son. This was a month before his son unsuccessfully tried to blow up a plane of the US North-West Airlines from Amsterdam to Detroit as it was approaching Detroit on Christmas Day. Al Qaeda in Yemen has claimed responsibility for this attempt. The Nigerian student had been trained by it and provided with a concealed explosive device which could not be detected at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. The Obama Administration has been criticised on two counts---- for failing to cancel the US visa issued to the student in June,2008, despite the adverse report of his father and for allowing him to board the US-bound aircraft at Schiphol. The NCTC, which co-ordinates follow-up action on terrorism-related information, works under Blair, who reports directly to the President.
5. Within a week of the Detroit set-back, the CIA has come in for strong criticism for walking into a trap of the Pakistani Taliban in the Khost area of Afghanistan, resulting in the death of seven of its officers at the hands of a Jordanian suicide bomber with past links to Al Qaeda. The CIA had recruited him on the recommendation of the Jordanian intelligence without proper verification of his antecedents. He was brought into the CIA office in the Khost area without making him go through a metal detector or frisking him.
6. Leon Panetta, a controversial appointee as the Director of the CIA by Obama, has been facing even stronger criticism than Blair. One of his media critics has accused the CIA of "screwing up" the operation. The two embarrassing setbacks are likely to be the subjects of detailed enquiries by the relevant Congressional committees later this month. (5-1-10)
( The writer is Additiopnal Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
Stop Terror's Next Act
By NIBRAS KAZIMI
July 21, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stop-terrors-next-act/82252/
Senator Obama has some explaining to do: what does he mean by saying that he would end the war in Iraq? Whereas some aspects of the war seem to indicate that America is at war with itself as the Iraq debate rages in a charged partisan atmosphere, yet it is often the case that wars usually involve more than one side. So who is America at war with in Iraq? And is the enemy willing to end the war, and under what conditions?
Then there is another existential conundrum that Mr. Obama needs to contend with: how does one go about ending a war that, for all intents and purposes, is already over. The enemy has been defeated before it and its aims have been defined; now that's quite an auspicious outcome. But it is also a dangerous one, since important lessons need to be learned before the enemy regroups and reengages on newer fronts.
It is quite unusual that after five years of war, the American discourse concerning Iraq continues to be disinterested in the identity and aims of the enemy, as if the casualties and terror that had unfolded there were one-sided — pegged by some on the left of the political spectrum as America's fault.
It so happens that the principal enemy that America had faced in Iraq, the so-called Zarqawist wing of worldwide jihad, named after its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for more than 60% of the insurgency's output at its height. Irrespective of whether the jihadists were operative in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, it was Zarqawi and his followers who chose Iraq as the newest jihadist battleground from which to resume their open-ended war against America.
Zarqawi didn't start out as a member of Al Qaeda, for Osama bin Laden's leadership was not radical enough for his tastes. When Zarqawi took the fight to Iraq he was embarking on a far more ambitious endeavor that had not been attempted before by the jihadists: waging war from the center of the Middle East against the world's mightiest military power. Mr. bin Laden would not have the audacity for such a thing; it took a new generation of jihadists, of whom Zarqawi was to be their poster child, to take jihad to the next level.
Zarqawi only joined Al Qaeda after he had turned his endeavor in Iraq into a success story. He did so hoping that eventually he would supplant Mr. bin Laden as the leader of global terror. Nevertheless, Zarqawi only had use for the Al Qaeda franchise for a year or so and then proceeded to expand his Iraqi and regional operations under other names.
Even though Zarqawi was killed in June 2006, his successors inherited his audacity and gall: in October 2006 they proceeded to declare the so-called "Islamic State of Iraq." It was at this point that America's apathy regarding Iraq reached its nadir just as the jihadists were thinking that they were about to turn a corner towards victory for Islam. That was the reason why America's commentators on Iraq, running the gamut from Baghdad-based journalists to Washington-based analysts, missed the crucial import behind the newfound jihadist state: the jihadists had laid the foundation stone for the state of the caliphate that would rule, once again, the Islamic lands spanning the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. They even went as far as to pick a caliph, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who they called the "Commander of the Faithful" — a caliphal title.
And it isn't as if they were being too discreet about it either: they published a 100-page book in Arabic under the title of "Informing the People About the Birth of the State of Islam" and they pulled such stunts as keeping Mr. Baghdadi's identity secret but made a great hullabaloo about his ancestry, going to the length of specifying exactly how is descended from the tribe of Quraysh, a prerequisite in a caliph.
Unfortunately, due to the general unawareness that pervades the ranks of the self-styled Iraq experts back in America, these signs were misinterpreted: the "Islamic State of Iraq" was dismissed as an Al Qaeda façade when it designed by the Zarqawists to supersede Al Qaeda. Another illogical talking point that may have stemmed from jihadist disinformation and regurgitated by these experts had it that Baghdadi himself was a fictitious character.
There are a couple of "official" jihadist propaganda outlets on the Internet — their main channel for disseminating information — and one such discussion board is called Al-Hesbah where a certain pseudonymous Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani is active. Only a limited number of jihadist writers are allowed to post their views there and Mr. Khurasani is one of them.
In November 2007, Mr. Khurasani posted a mini-play of several acts; the opening scene takes us to the year 2025 to show Baghdadi surveying the capital of his empire, the city of Baghdad. After reminiscing about Zarqawi's last dying moments, Baghdadi receives a call on his cell phone from the "Chief of Staff of the Army of the Caliphate." Another scene is set in a classroom where a teacher asks his pupils "What was the Arabian Peninsula called before it was liberated by the Commander of the Faithful Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2010?" The students grapple with the answer before one of them blurts out that it used to be called Saudi Arabia.
Yet another scene showcases an Al-Jazeera TV-like program where the topic of discussion is the dictatorship of Edward the Third in Britain — remember the year is 2025 — and the leader of the British opposition movement, who has adopted Mr. Baghdadi's Baghdad as his city of refuge, is identified as "Peter," the fictitious son of Tony Blair.
Fantastical as this may all seem, it was exactly where the jihadists thought they would be in a couple of decades. They thought they were building an empire in Iraq, the caliphate that Mr. bin Laden was always harping on about but never got the nerve to attempt. It was to be the realization of their dream, the same vision for which they launched the September 11, 2001, attacks and the mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq.
And now that they have been defeated in Iraq — anyone saying otherwise is either clueless or being purposely mendacious — America has in fact achieved something far greater than a military victory: America's soldiers have smashed the nascent state of the caliphate; the dream is no more. This is a fate far worse than death for the jihadists, who enthusiastically embrace dying for their cause of resurrecting an Islamic empire as a noble act of martyrdom. Should Mr. bin Laden be killed or captured, then he would remain an undiminished hero in their eyes; while Americans may think that this would count as victory, the jihadists may simply shrug it off. However, seeing their state collapse in Iraq is their own nadir of demoralization and ideological defeat.
I wonder if Mr. Obama understands all of that. Keeping troops in Iraq is not an end unto itself, yet victory is. Stationing more troops than are necessary to maintain the fruits of victory was never one of America's war aims. Victory is easily defined as having a democratic and independent state of Iraq (check) and preventing another "Islamic State of Iraq" (check).
Prime Minister Maliki recently welcomed Mr. Obama's withdrawal plan with caveats and this sent the usual pundits a-twitter, but whereas Mr. Obama was thinking in terms of retreat, Mr. Maliki on the other hand was suggesting the natural outcome of victory: that America's soldiers, who had fought a hard won yet incidental battle against the ultimate jihadist aim of resurrecting an Islamic Empire, could go home with laurels and to acclaim.
I also wonder whether the European crowds cheering Mr. Obama and giving him a super-star's welcome this week understand the implications of victory in Iraq. Sadly for them, the jihadists are not going to give up especially now that they have something more to prove after the humiliation of losing their state: the jihadists intend to hit the reset button on worldwide jihad by launching painful attacks on Europe, and these painful attacks will involve whatever weapons of mass destruction they can get their hands on.
How do I know this? Well, I read the jihadist Internet forums where they casually discuss the prospects of killing some 90,000 to 200,000 Europeans, maybe in a country where its free press had run cartoons or broadcast documentaries found offensive to Islam, say Denmark or Sweden or Holland, as a double act of retaliation and deterrence. The jihadist thinking is that once they do something of this magnitude, the west will back off and allow them to build their empire once again somewhere in the Middle East.
Never mind that the jihadists have Spain, Greece, Italy, the Balkans, and parts of southern France on their "must-eventually-reoccupy" to-do list.
Going back to Afghanistan is an abhorred historical regression, and certainly the pride of the Zarqawists, the most radical and once most successful of the jihadists, will not allow them to hide away in some cave in Waziristan after they had attempted a project as historically grand as the new caliphate in Baghdad. They will come back bigger, deadlier and far more audacious, as is their style, the next time around. Mr. Obama and his European hosts need to update what they think they know about the enemy before the enemy catches its breath.
Mr. Kazimi is a contributing editor to the New York Sun.
In an article published by "The Sun " of New York titled "Stop Terror's Next Act" in its issue of July 21,2008, Nibras Kazimi, its contributing columnist, had criticised then Senator Barack Obama for playing down the threat from Al Qaeda in Iraq. The article is available at http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stop-terrors-next-act/82252/ . Its text is annexed for easy reference.
2. In that article, he had referred to the writings of one Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani visualising the emergence of Iraq as the centre of a global Islamic Caliphate. Kazimi wrote: " Going back to Afghanistan is an abhorred historical regression, and certainly the pride of the Zarqawists, the most radical and once most successful of the jihadists, will not allow them to hide away in some cave in Waziristan after they had attempted a project as historically grand as the new caliphate in Baghdad. They will come back bigger, deadlier and far more audacious, as is their style, the next time around. Mr. Obama and his European hosts need to update what they think they know about the enemy before the enemy catches its breath."
3. Quoting Taliban sources, Al Jazeera has now reported that Khurasani is identical with Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian suicide bomber coming from the same village as the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who killed seven officers of the CIA and one of the Jordanian Intelligence in the Khost area of Afghanistan on December 30,2009.
4. In the very first year of Obama's tenure as the President, the US intelligence community has faced two embarrassing setbacks. Denis Blair, his nominee as the Director, National Intelligence, has come under criticism for the failure of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) set up in 2004 to co-ordinate follow-up action on the information provided by the father of a Nigerian student to the US Embassy and the CIA officer in Nigeria about the radicalisation of his son. This was a month before his son unsuccessfully tried to blow up a plane of the US North-West Airlines from Amsterdam to Detroit as it was approaching Detroit on Christmas Day. Al Qaeda in Yemen has claimed responsibility for this attempt. The Nigerian student had been trained by it and provided with a concealed explosive device which could not be detected at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. The Obama Administration has been criticised on two counts---- for failing to cancel the US visa issued to the student in June,2008, despite the adverse report of his father and for allowing him to board the US-bound aircraft at Schiphol. The NCTC, which co-ordinates follow-up action on terrorism-related information, works under Blair, who reports directly to the President.
5. Within a week of the Detroit set-back, the CIA has come in for strong criticism for walking into a trap of the Pakistani Taliban in the Khost area of Afghanistan, resulting in the death of seven of its officers at the hands of a Jordanian suicide bomber with past links to Al Qaeda. The CIA had recruited him on the recommendation of the Jordanian intelligence without proper verification of his antecedents. He was brought into the CIA office in the Khost area without making him go through a metal detector or frisking him.
6. Leon Panetta, a controversial appointee as the Director of the CIA by Obama, has been facing even stronger criticism than Blair. One of his media critics has accused the CIA of "screwing up" the operation. The two embarrassing setbacks are likely to be the subjects of detailed enquiries by the relevant Congressional committees later this month. (5-1-10)
( The writer is Additiopnal Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
Stop Terror's Next Act
By NIBRAS KAZIMI
July 21, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stop-terrors-next-act/82252/
Senator Obama has some explaining to do: what does he mean by saying that he would end the war in Iraq? Whereas some aspects of the war seem to indicate that America is at war with itself as the Iraq debate rages in a charged partisan atmosphere, yet it is often the case that wars usually involve more than one side. So who is America at war with in Iraq? And is the enemy willing to end the war, and under what conditions?
Then there is another existential conundrum that Mr. Obama needs to contend with: how does one go about ending a war that, for all intents and purposes, is already over. The enemy has been defeated before it and its aims have been defined; now that's quite an auspicious outcome. But it is also a dangerous one, since important lessons need to be learned before the enemy regroups and reengages on newer fronts.
It is quite unusual that after five years of war, the American discourse concerning Iraq continues to be disinterested in the identity and aims of the enemy, as if the casualties and terror that had unfolded there were one-sided — pegged by some on the left of the political spectrum as America's fault.
It so happens that the principal enemy that America had faced in Iraq, the so-called Zarqawist wing of worldwide jihad, named after its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for more than 60% of the insurgency's output at its height. Irrespective of whether the jihadists were operative in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, it was Zarqawi and his followers who chose Iraq as the newest jihadist battleground from which to resume their open-ended war against America.
Zarqawi didn't start out as a member of Al Qaeda, for Osama bin Laden's leadership was not radical enough for his tastes. When Zarqawi took the fight to Iraq he was embarking on a far more ambitious endeavor that had not been attempted before by the jihadists: waging war from the center of the Middle East against the world's mightiest military power. Mr. bin Laden would not have the audacity for such a thing; it took a new generation of jihadists, of whom Zarqawi was to be their poster child, to take jihad to the next level.
Zarqawi only joined Al Qaeda after he had turned his endeavor in Iraq into a success story. He did so hoping that eventually he would supplant Mr. bin Laden as the leader of global terror. Nevertheless, Zarqawi only had use for the Al Qaeda franchise for a year or so and then proceeded to expand his Iraqi and regional operations under other names.
Even though Zarqawi was killed in June 2006, his successors inherited his audacity and gall: in October 2006 they proceeded to declare the so-called "Islamic State of Iraq." It was at this point that America's apathy regarding Iraq reached its nadir just as the jihadists were thinking that they were about to turn a corner towards victory for Islam. That was the reason why America's commentators on Iraq, running the gamut from Baghdad-based journalists to Washington-based analysts, missed the crucial import behind the newfound jihadist state: the jihadists had laid the foundation stone for the state of the caliphate that would rule, once again, the Islamic lands spanning the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. They even went as far as to pick a caliph, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who they called the "Commander of the Faithful" — a caliphal title.
And it isn't as if they were being too discreet about it either: they published a 100-page book in Arabic under the title of "Informing the People About the Birth of the State of Islam" and they pulled such stunts as keeping Mr. Baghdadi's identity secret but made a great hullabaloo about his ancestry, going to the length of specifying exactly how is descended from the tribe of Quraysh, a prerequisite in a caliph.
Unfortunately, due to the general unawareness that pervades the ranks of the self-styled Iraq experts back in America, these signs were misinterpreted: the "Islamic State of Iraq" was dismissed as an Al Qaeda façade when it designed by the Zarqawists to supersede Al Qaeda. Another illogical talking point that may have stemmed from jihadist disinformation and regurgitated by these experts had it that Baghdadi himself was a fictitious character.
There are a couple of "official" jihadist propaganda outlets on the Internet — their main channel for disseminating information — and one such discussion board is called Al-Hesbah where a certain pseudonymous Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani is active. Only a limited number of jihadist writers are allowed to post their views there and Mr. Khurasani is one of them.
In November 2007, Mr. Khurasani posted a mini-play of several acts; the opening scene takes us to the year 2025 to show Baghdadi surveying the capital of his empire, the city of Baghdad. After reminiscing about Zarqawi's last dying moments, Baghdadi receives a call on his cell phone from the "Chief of Staff of the Army of the Caliphate." Another scene is set in a classroom where a teacher asks his pupils "What was the Arabian Peninsula called before it was liberated by the Commander of the Faithful Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2010?" The students grapple with the answer before one of them blurts out that it used to be called Saudi Arabia.
Yet another scene showcases an Al-Jazeera TV-like program where the topic of discussion is the dictatorship of Edward the Third in Britain — remember the year is 2025 — and the leader of the British opposition movement, who has adopted Mr. Baghdadi's Baghdad as his city of refuge, is identified as "Peter," the fictitious son of Tony Blair.
Fantastical as this may all seem, it was exactly where the jihadists thought they would be in a couple of decades. They thought they were building an empire in Iraq, the caliphate that Mr. bin Laden was always harping on about but never got the nerve to attempt. It was to be the realization of their dream, the same vision for which they launched the September 11, 2001, attacks and the mayhem and bloodshed in Iraq.
And now that they have been defeated in Iraq — anyone saying otherwise is either clueless or being purposely mendacious — America has in fact achieved something far greater than a military victory: America's soldiers have smashed the nascent state of the caliphate; the dream is no more. This is a fate far worse than death for the jihadists, who enthusiastically embrace dying for their cause of resurrecting an Islamic empire as a noble act of martyrdom. Should Mr. bin Laden be killed or captured, then he would remain an undiminished hero in their eyes; while Americans may think that this would count as victory, the jihadists may simply shrug it off. However, seeing their state collapse in Iraq is their own nadir of demoralization and ideological defeat.
I wonder if Mr. Obama understands all of that. Keeping troops in Iraq is not an end unto itself, yet victory is. Stationing more troops than are necessary to maintain the fruits of victory was never one of America's war aims. Victory is easily defined as having a democratic and independent state of Iraq (check) and preventing another "Islamic State of Iraq" (check).
Prime Minister Maliki recently welcomed Mr. Obama's withdrawal plan with caveats and this sent the usual pundits a-twitter, but whereas Mr. Obama was thinking in terms of retreat, Mr. Maliki on the other hand was suggesting the natural outcome of victory: that America's soldiers, who had fought a hard won yet incidental battle against the ultimate jihadist aim of resurrecting an Islamic Empire, could go home with laurels and to acclaim.
I also wonder whether the European crowds cheering Mr. Obama and giving him a super-star's welcome this week understand the implications of victory in Iraq. Sadly for them, the jihadists are not going to give up especially now that they have something more to prove after the humiliation of losing their state: the jihadists intend to hit the reset button on worldwide jihad by launching painful attacks on Europe, and these painful attacks will involve whatever weapons of mass destruction they can get their hands on.
How do I know this? Well, I read the jihadist Internet forums where they casually discuss the prospects of killing some 90,000 to 200,000 Europeans, maybe in a country where its free press had run cartoons or broadcast documentaries found offensive to Islam, say Denmark or Sweden or Holland, as a double act of retaliation and deterrence. The jihadist thinking is that once they do something of this magnitude, the west will back off and allow them to build their empire once again somewhere in the Middle East.
Never mind that the jihadists have Spain, Greece, Italy, the Balkans, and parts of southern France on their "must-eventually-reoccupy" to-do list.
Going back to Afghanistan is an abhorred historical regression, and certainly the pride of the Zarqawists, the most radical and once most successful of the jihadists, will not allow them to hide away in some cave in Waziristan after they had attempted a project as historically grand as the new caliphate in Baghdad. They will come back bigger, deadlier and far more audacious, as is their style, the next time around. Mr. Obama and his European hosts need to update what they think they know about the enemy before the enemy catches its breath.
Mr. Kazimi is a contributing editor to the New York Sun.
Monday, January 4, 2010
CIA FELL INTO A JOINT TRAP OF ZARQAWI’S FOLLOWERS & PAK TALIBAN ?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.605
B.RAMAN
The reputation of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has shot up in the Pashtun belt following reports that it played an important role in the assassination of seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an officer of the Jordanian Intelligence related to the royal family of Jordan in a suicide attack launched on December 30,2009, by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Al Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan. He was reportedly arrested by the Jordanian intelligence over a year ago and persuaded to work for the Jordanian intelligence and collect intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region. He was sent to Afghanistan and told to work under the control of a person who has been named by the Jordanian media as Ali bin Zeid. He has since been identified as a well-placed officer of the Jordanian intelligence related to the royal family. The Jordanian media has reported his death in action in Afghanistan without saying that he was killed along with the CIA officers.
2. It is understood that al-Balawi, who was infiltrated into the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan earlier last year, was in direct touch with Ali bin Zeid, who used to visit Khost periodically to debrief him. About 20 days prior to the suicide bombing, he had informed Ali bin Zeid that he had some information regarding the location of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No.2, and sought a meeting to convey the information. Bin Zeid flew to Khost and made arrangements for receiving him at the CIA base. He was brought to the base after he had crossed the border into Afghanistan. It is not clear as to how he managed to enter the base without going through the metal detector which everbody working in the base is required to cross. Apparently, he did not have to and blew himself up as soon as he was with the CIA officers.
3. This would appear to be a joint operation by the followers of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Pakistani Taliban followers of the late Baitullah Mehsud to jointly avenge the death of Zarqawi in Iraq and Baitullah in South Waziristan. They blamed the CIA for the death of their leaders. al Balawi, it is said, was a great admirer of Zarqawi, who was from the same village as Balawi. He initially approached the Jordanian intelligence with an offer to help in the collection of intelligence about Zawahiri, who was not on good terms with Zarqawi. After having won the confidence of the Jordanian intelligence and the CIA,he approached the Pakistani Taliban after the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US Drone strike in August last with an offer to carry out a suicide attack against the CIA. His offer was accepted by the TTP and he was trained and given a suicide vest.
4.Latest reports indicate that Balawi may be identical with diehard Al Qaeda member by name Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani, who was very active in jihadi web sites associated with Al Qaeda.Both the Jordanian Intelligence and the CIA seem to have totally failed in checking the antecedents of Balawi before accepting his offer to collect intelligence about Zawahiri.
5. While it is clear that the Pakistani Taliban had not kept the Afghan Taliban informed about this operation, it is not yet clear whether the followers of Zarqawi in Iraq had kept Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri informed. This appears to have been an operation mounted by Al Qaeda of Iraq with the collaboration of the Pakistani Taliban. ( 5-1-10)
( 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 reputation of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has shot up in the Pashtun belt following reports that it played an important role in the assassination of seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an officer of the Jordanian Intelligence related to the royal family of Jordan in a suicide attack launched on December 30,2009, by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Al Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan. He was reportedly arrested by the Jordanian intelligence over a year ago and persuaded to work for the Jordanian intelligence and collect intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region. He was sent to Afghanistan and told to work under the control of a person who has been named by the Jordanian media as Ali bin Zeid. He has since been identified as a well-placed officer of the Jordanian intelligence related to the royal family. The Jordanian media has reported his death in action in Afghanistan without saying that he was killed along with the CIA officers.
2. It is understood that al-Balawi, who was infiltrated into the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan earlier last year, was in direct touch with Ali bin Zeid, who used to visit Khost periodically to debrief him. About 20 days prior to the suicide bombing, he had informed Ali bin Zeid that he had some information regarding the location of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No.2, and sought a meeting to convey the information. Bin Zeid flew to Khost and made arrangements for receiving him at the CIA base. He was brought to the base after he had crossed the border into Afghanistan. It is not clear as to how he managed to enter the base without going through the metal detector which everbody working in the base is required to cross. Apparently, he did not have to and blew himself up as soon as he was with the CIA officers.
3. This would appear to be a joint operation by the followers of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Pakistani Taliban followers of the late Baitullah Mehsud to jointly avenge the death of Zarqawi in Iraq and Baitullah in South Waziristan. They blamed the CIA for the death of their leaders. al Balawi, it is said, was a great admirer of Zarqawi, who was from the same village as Balawi. He initially approached the Jordanian intelligence with an offer to help in the collection of intelligence about Zawahiri, who was not on good terms with Zarqawi. After having won the confidence of the Jordanian intelligence and the CIA,he approached the Pakistani Taliban after the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US Drone strike in August last with an offer to carry out a suicide attack against the CIA. His offer was accepted by the TTP and he was trained and given a suicide vest.
4.Latest reports indicate that Balawi may be identical with diehard Al Qaeda member by name Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani, who was very active in jihadi web sites associated with Al Qaeda.Both the Jordanian Intelligence and the CIA seem to have totally failed in checking the antecedents of Balawi before accepting his offer to collect intelligence about Zawahiri.
5. While it is clear that the Pakistani Taliban had not kept the Afghan Taliban informed about this operation, it is not yet clear whether the followers of Zarqawi in Iraq had kept Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri informed. This appears to have been an operation mounted by Al Qaeda of Iraq with the collaboration of the Pakistani Taliban. ( 5-1-10)
( 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 )
CIA: PAK TALIBAN COMES HOME CALLING
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--- PAPER NO. 604
B.RAMAN
Forward Operating Base Chapman is located on the Khost airfield, which is about 4 kms from the Khost town in Afghanistan and 32 kms from the Pakistani border. This field, which was constructed by the Soviets in the 1980s for use against the Afghan Mujahideen, is now reportedly being used by the US for its air operations against Al Qaeda and against the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. It has been reported that it is one of the bases from which the unmanned Drone flights of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are periodically launched to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The base, which is named after Nathan Chapman, the first US soldier killed in Afghanistan after US forces went into action against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban after 9/11, reportedly houses a unit of the US State Department, which monitors reconstruction work in the Khost area. It is learnt that an unspecified number of officers belonging to the US intelligence work under the cover of State Department staff in this unit. Seven CIA officers working in this unit, including a woman officer, who was their head, were killed in a suicide blast on December 30,2009.
2. There were three claims of responsibility after the blast---- one from the Afghan Taliban and the other two from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the Pakistani Taliban is known. The claim on behalf of the Afghan Taliban was made by telephone to journalists on December 31,2009, by one Zabiullah Mujahid, who claimed to be a spokesman of the Afghan Taliban. He was quoted by the media as saying:" The Taliban (Afghan) took responsibility for the attack.Yesterday evening on a base near the old airport in Khost city a suicide bomber by the name of Samiullah committed a suicide attack by detonating his vest and killed 16 Americans." His claim has not been corroborated so far.
3.Another person described as a senior commander connected to the Afghan Taliban was reported to have claimed on January 2, 2010, that the bombing was in retaliation for the U.S. Drone strikes in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. He added: "We attacked this base because the team there was organizing Drone strikes in Loya Paktia and surrounding area." The area mentioned by him is in Afghan terrritory near Khost. His claim has not been corroborated either.
4.A correspondent of the Associated Press claimed to have met Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior commander of the TTP, who is in charge of its suicide squad and its suicide bomber training centre in South Waziristan, on January 1,2010. Qari Hussain reportedly told him as follows: The TTP had been searching for a way to damage the CIA's ability to launch missile strikes on the Pakistani side of the border. A"CIA agent" contacted Pakistani Taliban commanders and said he'd been trained by the agency to take on militants, but that he was willing to attack the U.S. intelligence operation on the Taliban's behalf. He did not specify the nationality of the "agent." "Thank God that we then trained him and sent him to the Khost air base. The one who was their own man, he succeeded in getting his target."
5. On January 3,2010, sections of the media received an E-mail message purporting to be from Hakimullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, identifying the suicide bomber as a Jordanian national. The message reportedly said: " We claim the responsibility for the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan.It was a revenge for the killing of Baitullah Mehsud and the killing of Al Qaeda's Abdullah by CIA.The suicide bomber was a Jordanian national. This will be admitted by the CIA and the Jordanian Government." It is not yet known who he was referring to as Abdullah of Al Qaeda.
6.Sections of the Jordanian and US media, including the "Washington Post, have identified the suicide bomber as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Al Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by the Jordanian intelligence over a year ago and persuaded to work for the Jordanian intelligence and collect intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region. He was sent to Afghanistan and told to work under the control of a person who has been named by the Jordanian media as Ali bin Zeid. The nationality of the handler is not clear. Was he an officer of the Jordanian Intelligence working with the CIA at the Chapman base? Possibly, but there is no confirmation.
7.It would seem that this joint operation by the CIA and the Jordanian Intelligence had been going on for nearly a year. At some point during this period, al-Balawi was reported to have contacted the Pakistani Taliban and offered to help them in retaliating against the CIA base. The Pakistani Taliban accepted his offer and played him back on the CIA after training him as a suicide bomber. It is reported that the suicide attack of December 30,2009, killed the seven CIA officers, the bomber himself and his handling officer, who had taken him to the CIA base for debriefing. Since he had been meeting the CIA officers for some time in the past and had apparently won their confidence, he was not frisked. The TTP seems to have decided to use him to wipe out the CIA officers after ascertaining from the bomber that the CIA was not in the habit of frisking him whenever he went to the base.
8. The disaster, which has struck the CIA, underlines the dangers of joint operations and over-trusting sources, however productive they may be. The CIA had apparently gone by the assessment of the Jordanian intelligence regarding the dependability of al-Balawi without having the Jordanian assessment verified independently either by CIA's sources or through the intelligence agencies of Israel, which would have been in a good position to verify his dependability. The practice of not frisking him has proved to be suicidal. The dangers of his being won over by the Taliban or his volunteering to assist the Taliban seem to have been overlooked.
9. The account of the circumstances under which the TTP managed to penetrate the CIA base through a Jordanian national, if correct, speak well of the operational capabilities of the TTP and the weaknesses of the US agencies while operating against a Muslim adversary. The conflicting claims of the Afghan Taliban show that the Pakistani Taliban and its Afghan counterpart are not always on the same wavelength and do not necessarily keep each other informed of their operations. (5-1-10)
(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
Forward Operating Base Chapman is located on the Khost airfield, which is about 4 kms from the Khost town in Afghanistan and 32 kms from the Pakistani border. This field, which was constructed by the Soviets in the 1980s for use against the Afghan Mujahideen, is now reportedly being used by the US for its air operations against Al Qaeda and against the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. It has been reported that it is one of the bases from which the unmanned Drone flights of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are periodically launched to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The base, which is named after Nathan Chapman, the first US soldier killed in Afghanistan after US forces went into action against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban after 9/11, reportedly houses a unit of the US State Department, which monitors reconstruction work in the Khost area. It is learnt that an unspecified number of officers belonging to the US intelligence work under the cover of State Department staff in this unit. Seven CIA officers working in this unit, including a woman officer, who was their head, were killed in a suicide blast on December 30,2009.
2. There were three claims of responsibility after the blast---- one from the Afghan Taliban and the other two from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the Pakistani Taliban is known. The claim on behalf of the Afghan Taliban was made by telephone to journalists on December 31,2009, by one Zabiullah Mujahid, who claimed to be a spokesman of the Afghan Taliban. He was quoted by the media as saying:" The Taliban (Afghan) took responsibility for the attack.Yesterday evening on a base near the old airport in Khost city a suicide bomber by the name of Samiullah committed a suicide attack by detonating his vest and killed 16 Americans." His claim has not been corroborated so far.
3.Another person described as a senior commander connected to the Afghan Taliban was reported to have claimed on January 2, 2010, that the bombing was in retaliation for the U.S. Drone strikes in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. He added: "We attacked this base because the team there was organizing Drone strikes in Loya Paktia and surrounding area." The area mentioned by him is in Afghan terrritory near Khost. His claim has not been corroborated either.
4.A correspondent of the Associated Press claimed to have met Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior commander of the TTP, who is in charge of its suicide squad and its suicide bomber training centre in South Waziristan, on January 1,2010. Qari Hussain reportedly told him as follows: The TTP had been searching for a way to damage the CIA's ability to launch missile strikes on the Pakistani side of the border. A"CIA agent" contacted Pakistani Taliban commanders and said he'd been trained by the agency to take on militants, but that he was willing to attack the U.S. intelligence operation on the Taliban's behalf. He did not specify the nationality of the "agent." "Thank God that we then trained him and sent him to the Khost air base. The one who was their own man, he succeeded in getting his target."
5. On January 3,2010, sections of the media received an E-mail message purporting to be from Hakimullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, identifying the suicide bomber as a Jordanian national. The message reportedly said: " We claim the responsibility for the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan.It was a revenge for the killing of Baitullah Mehsud and the killing of Al Qaeda's Abdullah by CIA.The suicide bomber was a Jordanian national. This will be admitted by the CIA and the Jordanian Government." It is not yet known who he was referring to as Abdullah of Al Qaeda.
6.Sections of the Jordanian and US media, including the "Washington Post, have identified the suicide bomber as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Al Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by the Jordanian intelligence over a year ago and persuaded to work for the Jordanian intelligence and collect intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Af-Pak region. He was sent to Afghanistan and told to work under the control of a person who has been named by the Jordanian media as Ali bin Zeid. The nationality of the handler is not clear. Was he an officer of the Jordanian Intelligence working with the CIA at the Chapman base? Possibly, but there is no confirmation.
7.It would seem that this joint operation by the CIA and the Jordanian Intelligence had been going on for nearly a year. At some point during this period, al-Balawi was reported to have contacted the Pakistani Taliban and offered to help them in retaliating against the CIA base. The Pakistani Taliban accepted his offer and played him back on the CIA after training him as a suicide bomber. It is reported that the suicide attack of December 30,2009, killed the seven CIA officers, the bomber himself and his handling officer, who had taken him to the CIA base for debriefing. Since he had been meeting the CIA officers for some time in the past and had apparently won their confidence, he was not frisked. The TTP seems to have decided to use him to wipe out the CIA officers after ascertaining from the bomber that the CIA was not in the habit of frisking him whenever he went to the base.
8. The disaster, which has struck the CIA, underlines the dangers of joint operations and over-trusting sources, however productive they may be. The CIA had apparently gone by the assessment of the Jordanian intelligence regarding the dependability of al-Balawi without having the Jordanian assessment verified independently either by CIA's sources or through the intelligence agencies of Israel, which would have been in a good position to verify his dependability. The practice of not frisking him has proved to be suicidal. The dangers of his being won over by the Taliban or his volunteering to assist the Taliban seem to have been overlooked.
9. The account of the circumstances under which the TTP managed to penetrate the CIA base through a Jordanian national, if correct, speak well of the operational capabilities of the TTP and the weaknesses of the US agencies while operating against a Muslim adversary. The conflicting claims of the Afghan Taliban show that the Pakistani Taliban and its Afghan counterpart are not always on the same wavelength and do not necessarily keep each other informed of their operations. (5-1-10)
(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 )
AF-PAK: PSYWAR BY US CONTINUES TO BE POOR
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.603
B.RAMAN
The New Year began on a disastrous note for the people of village Shah Hassankhel and surrounding areas in the Lakki Marwar District of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. These villagers, who had been co-operating with the Pakistani authorities in countering the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), paid a heavy price for their co-operation when a pick-up van driven by a suicide bomber drove into a local volleyball ground when a friendly match was being played and blew up killing a large number of those who had assembled to watch the match and all the players of the two teams. Eighty people were killed on the spot and another 25 succumbed to their injuries in hospitals.
2.Surprisingly, 25 members of the area Peace Committee, who were holding a meeting in a nearby building, escaped unhurt. The dead included two policemen and six members of the para-military Frontier Constabulary (FC). The members of the Peace Committee have blamed the Government for failing to protect the people of the area despite their co-operation to the Government in its anti-Taliban operations
3. The brutal attack on the New Year’s Day came a little more than a fortnight after a denial by Al Qaeda that it had been attacking civilians in Pakistan. In a statement purported to have been issued on December 12,2009, by Adam Gadahn, who heads the As Sahab, the propaganda wing of Al Qaeda, it denied it was behind bombings in Pakistan that killed hundreds of civilians during 2009. It described such attacks as un-Islamic. The statement also alleged that Al Qaeda was being framed by the US and Pakistani intelligence services in order to discredit it. The statement further alleged: “The mercenaries of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Intelligence Agency or Blackwater are the real culprits behind these senseless and un-Islamic bombings.”
4.A statement purported to have been issued on December 14,2009, by Azam Tariq, who was described as a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also denied the involvement of the Pakistani Taliban in the attacks on the civilians and described the attacks on the civilians as an attempt by the state’s secret agencies to defame the jihadi organisations. He was also reported to have telephoned “The News”, the English daily, to make a similar denial. At the same time, he reportedly warned religious scholars of the country to be careful while issuing Fatwas against “Mujahideen” and their suicide bombings in Pakistan. He said religious scholars before issuing such Fatwas against the “Mujahideen” and suicide bombings should have visited the affected areas like Swat, Khyber, Mohmand, Bajaur, Orakzai, Kurram, South and North Waziristan and seen for themselves the destruction caused by the excessive bombings by Pakistani fighter planes. He alleged that even mosques and madrassas were flattened in the military operations in these areas.
5.There were 15 attacks caused often by suicide car bombers during 2009 indiscriminately killing civilians, including women and children. These attacks have particularly been deadly since September 18, 2009. Between January 1 and September 17, there were eight indiscriminate attacks on civilians killing 82 persons. Between September 18 and December 31,2009, there were seven attacks killing 328 persons, many of them women and children shopping in the markets.
6.These indiscriminate attacks on civilians, which were apparently in retaliation for the military operations against the TTP in the Swat Valley of the NWFP and in South Waziristan, caused some revulsion amongst the Pashtuns on whom Al Qaeda and the TTP are dependent for their safehaven and logistic support. Concerned by this, the two statements blaming the intelligence agencies of the US, Pakistan and India for the indiscriminate killing of civilians were disseminated.
7.Surprisingly, despite these denials, there has been another indiscriminate massacre of civilians . The indications are that the TTP carried out the massacre on New Year’s Day in retaliation for the co-operation of the villagers with the security forces in their anti-Taliban operations.
8.While Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban lose no opportunity to exploit the deaths of civilians in the drone strikes by the US and in the air strikes by the Pakistani military to whip up public anger against the US and Pakistan, neither the US nor Pakistan has been adequately keeping the spotlight on the indiscriminate and wanton killings of civilians by Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to discredit them. While the civilians killed by the drone strikes were collateral fatalities, the civilians are being deliberately targeted by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
9.After taking over as President’s special envoy for the Af-Pak region earlier last year, Richard Holbrooke had referred to the poor state of the USA’s psywar machinery and its inability to use its soft power against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This deficiency continues. (4-1-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariart, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
INDISCRIMINATE TARGETING OF CIVILIANS BY THE PAK TALIBAN DURING 2009
February 17 At least three people were killed by a car bomb which exploded outside the home of a government official in the suburb of Bazidkhel near Peshawar. He survived but several passersby were killed or injured.
March 16 At least 14 people were killed and 17 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a busy bus stand of Rawalpindi at Pirwadhai.
March 26 At least 10 people were killed and 25 others injured in a suicide attack at a restaurant near Jandela in South Waziristan.
April 6 Police found the bullet-riddled bodies of four local aid workers, including three women, in the Shinkiari area of the Manshera District in the NWFP.
May 16 Two successive bomb blasts rocked Peshawar leaving 13 people dead and 34 others injured. A powerful car-bomb killed 12 people and wounded 31 others, including schoolchildren and women, in the Barisco area, while a low intensity device ripped through a garments store in the packed Gora Bazaar in Peshawar Saddar, killing a minor girl and injuring three others
May 22 At least 10 people were killed and 75 injured when a powerful car bomb went off outside a cinema hall in Peshawar.
June 14 Nine people were killed and over 40 injured when a powerful explosion ripped through a busy market in Dera Ismail Khan.
August 17 Seven people were killed and eight others injured when a bomb placed in a vehicle exploded at a gas filling station in the Shabqadar area of Charsadda in the NWFP.
September 18 At least 40 people were killed and 80 others injured when a bomber blew up an explosive-laden vehicle in a market on the Kohat-Hangu road In the NWFP.
October 9 A suicide attack at the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar killed 52 people and injured 148. The blast occurred when a car packed with explosives rammed into a public transport bus.
October 28 At least 118 people were killed and over 200 injured by a car bomb in a market in Peshawar. The market mostly sold women’s garments. Many of those killed were women and children.
November 10 At least 34 people were killed and nearly 100 others injured by a car bomb in a Charsadda bazaar Many of those killed were women and children
December 7 Two powerful bomb blasts in the Moon Market of Lahore killed 54 people.
December 15 A car bomb in a market of Dera Ghazi Khan killed 27 people.
December 22 A suicide bomber blew himself up in Peshawar, outside a club for journalists, killing at least 3 people and injuring 10 others.
B.RAMAN
The New Year began on a disastrous note for the people of village Shah Hassankhel and surrounding areas in the Lakki Marwar District of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. These villagers, who had been co-operating with the Pakistani authorities in countering the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), paid a heavy price for their co-operation when a pick-up van driven by a suicide bomber drove into a local volleyball ground when a friendly match was being played and blew up killing a large number of those who had assembled to watch the match and all the players of the two teams. Eighty people were killed on the spot and another 25 succumbed to their injuries in hospitals.
2.Surprisingly, 25 members of the area Peace Committee, who were holding a meeting in a nearby building, escaped unhurt. The dead included two policemen and six members of the para-military Frontier Constabulary (FC). The members of the Peace Committee have blamed the Government for failing to protect the people of the area despite their co-operation to the Government in its anti-Taliban operations
3. The brutal attack on the New Year’s Day came a little more than a fortnight after a denial by Al Qaeda that it had been attacking civilians in Pakistan. In a statement purported to have been issued on December 12,2009, by Adam Gadahn, who heads the As Sahab, the propaganda wing of Al Qaeda, it denied it was behind bombings in Pakistan that killed hundreds of civilians during 2009. It described such attacks as un-Islamic. The statement also alleged that Al Qaeda was being framed by the US and Pakistani intelligence services in order to discredit it. The statement further alleged: “The mercenaries of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Intelligence Agency or Blackwater are the real culprits behind these senseless and un-Islamic bombings.”
4.A statement purported to have been issued on December 14,2009, by Azam Tariq, who was described as a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also denied the involvement of the Pakistani Taliban in the attacks on the civilians and described the attacks on the civilians as an attempt by the state’s secret agencies to defame the jihadi organisations. He was also reported to have telephoned “The News”, the English daily, to make a similar denial. At the same time, he reportedly warned religious scholars of the country to be careful while issuing Fatwas against “Mujahideen” and their suicide bombings in Pakistan. He said religious scholars before issuing such Fatwas against the “Mujahideen” and suicide bombings should have visited the affected areas like Swat, Khyber, Mohmand, Bajaur, Orakzai, Kurram, South and North Waziristan and seen for themselves the destruction caused by the excessive bombings by Pakistani fighter planes. He alleged that even mosques and madrassas were flattened in the military operations in these areas.
5.There were 15 attacks caused often by suicide car bombers during 2009 indiscriminately killing civilians, including women and children. These attacks have particularly been deadly since September 18, 2009. Between January 1 and September 17, there were eight indiscriminate attacks on civilians killing 82 persons. Between September 18 and December 31,2009, there were seven attacks killing 328 persons, many of them women and children shopping in the markets.
6.These indiscriminate attacks on civilians, which were apparently in retaliation for the military operations against the TTP in the Swat Valley of the NWFP and in South Waziristan, caused some revulsion amongst the Pashtuns on whom Al Qaeda and the TTP are dependent for their safehaven and logistic support. Concerned by this, the two statements blaming the intelligence agencies of the US, Pakistan and India for the indiscriminate killing of civilians were disseminated.
7.Surprisingly, despite these denials, there has been another indiscriminate massacre of civilians . The indications are that the TTP carried out the massacre on New Year’s Day in retaliation for the co-operation of the villagers with the security forces in their anti-Taliban operations.
8.While Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban lose no opportunity to exploit the deaths of civilians in the drone strikes by the US and in the air strikes by the Pakistani military to whip up public anger against the US and Pakistan, neither the US nor Pakistan has been adequately keeping the spotlight on the indiscriminate and wanton killings of civilians by Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to discredit them. While the civilians killed by the drone strikes were collateral fatalities, the civilians are being deliberately targeted by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
9.After taking over as President’s special envoy for the Af-Pak region earlier last year, Richard Holbrooke had referred to the poor state of the USA’s psywar machinery and its inability to use its soft power against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This deficiency continues. (4-1-10)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariart, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
INDISCRIMINATE TARGETING OF CIVILIANS BY THE PAK TALIBAN DURING 2009
February 17 At least three people were killed by a car bomb which exploded outside the home of a government official in the suburb of Bazidkhel near Peshawar. He survived but several passersby were killed or injured.
March 16 At least 14 people were killed and 17 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a busy bus stand of Rawalpindi at Pirwadhai.
March 26 At least 10 people were killed and 25 others injured in a suicide attack at a restaurant near Jandela in South Waziristan.
April 6 Police found the bullet-riddled bodies of four local aid workers, including three women, in the Shinkiari area of the Manshera District in the NWFP.
May 16 Two successive bomb blasts rocked Peshawar leaving 13 people dead and 34 others injured. A powerful car-bomb killed 12 people and wounded 31 others, including schoolchildren and women, in the Barisco area, while a low intensity device ripped through a garments store in the packed Gora Bazaar in Peshawar Saddar, killing a minor girl and injuring three others
May 22 At least 10 people were killed and 75 injured when a powerful car bomb went off outside a cinema hall in Peshawar.
June 14 Nine people were killed and over 40 injured when a powerful explosion ripped through a busy market in Dera Ismail Khan.
August 17 Seven people were killed and eight others injured when a bomb placed in a vehicle exploded at a gas filling station in the Shabqadar area of Charsadda in the NWFP.
September 18 At least 40 people were killed and 80 others injured when a bomber blew up an explosive-laden vehicle in a market on the Kohat-Hangu road In the NWFP.
October 9 A suicide attack at the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar killed 52 people and injured 148. The blast occurred when a car packed with explosives rammed into a public transport bus.
October 28 At least 118 people were killed and over 200 injured by a car bomb in a market in Peshawar. The market mostly sold women’s garments. Many of those killed were women and children.
November 10 At least 34 people were killed and nearly 100 others injured by a car bomb in a Charsadda bazaar Many of those killed were women and children
December 7 Two powerful bomb blasts in the Moon Market of Lahore killed 54 people.
December 15 A car bomb in a market of Dera Ghazi Khan killed 27 people.
December 22 A suicide bomber blew himself up in Peshawar, outside a club for journalists, killing at least 3 people and injuring 10 others.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
INDIA & JIHADI TERRORISM DURING 2009
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.602
B.RAMAN
For the first time since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December,1992, we did not have any act of jihadi terrorism in Indian territory outside J&K during 2009----either by indigenous or by Pakistan-based terrorists. I would attribute it to the following reasons:
(a). The good investigation of the acts of terrorism involving the Indian Mujahideen (IM) in 2007 and 2008 by the police of Karnataka, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra and the arrest of most of those involved.
(b). The neutralisation of the cells of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) by the police of the above States and Madhya Pradesh.
(c). As a result of these actions, the IM and the SIMI have not been able to reconstitute their cells and command and control.
(d). The more sensitive handling of the grievances and anger of the alienated sections of the Indian Muslim community by the Government of Manmohan Singh. The anti-State anger in the Indian Muslim community is less.
(e). The strengthening of the intelligence and counter-terrorism machinery by P.Chidambaram since he took over as the Home Minister after the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.
(f). The greater co-operation between the counter-terrorism communities of India and the US.
(g). The sustained pressure exercised by the US on the Pakistani political and military leadership to see that 26/11 is not repeated. The US continues to be reluctant to take punitive action against the State of Pakistan for not acting against the anti-India terrorist infrastructure. At the same time, it is anxious to ensure that there is no more 26/11 in Indian territory outside J&K by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists lest uncontrollable tensions between India and Pakistan come in the way of its operations in Afghanistan..
(h). After 26/11, there is growing international concern over the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). Consequently, it is under watch by the intelligence agencies of the US and many other countries.
2. One must remember that while there were no acts of jihadi and Pakistani-sponsored terrorism in Indian territory outside J&K, the Pakistan-based organisations, with the nod of the ISI, continued to attack Indian interests in Afghanistan during 2009. There was a second major act of terrorism outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul during 2009.
3. There has been no change in the jihadi objective of making India bleed. We should be prepared for more surprises, but try to prevent them by following the present policy of sustained revamping of the Intelligence and counter-terrorism machinery, continued attention to the grievances and sensitivities of the Indian Muslims, continued pressure on Pakistan to act against the anti-Indian terrorist infrastructure in its territory and continued co-operation with the US, despite our periodic unhappiness with Washington DC over matters such as not allowing us to interrogate David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the LET. Indo-US counter-terrorism co-operation will be mutually beneficial. If it wants and decides to, the US is the only country in a position to make Pakistan behave. We should use the US skilfully. Occasional anti-US breast-beating is necessary, but overdoing it could be counter-productive. ( 3-1-10)
( 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
For the first time since the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December,1992, we did not have any act of jihadi terrorism in Indian territory outside J&K during 2009----either by indigenous or by Pakistan-based terrorists. I would attribute it to the following reasons:
(a). The good investigation of the acts of terrorism involving the Indian Mujahideen (IM) in 2007 and 2008 by the police of Karnataka, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra and the arrest of most of those involved.
(b). The neutralisation of the cells of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) by the police of the above States and Madhya Pradesh.
(c). As a result of these actions, the IM and the SIMI have not been able to reconstitute their cells and command and control.
(d). The more sensitive handling of the grievances and anger of the alienated sections of the Indian Muslim community by the Government of Manmohan Singh. The anti-State anger in the Indian Muslim community is less.
(e). The strengthening of the intelligence and counter-terrorism machinery by P.Chidambaram since he took over as the Home Minister after the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.
(f). The greater co-operation between the counter-terrorism communities of India and the US.
(g). The sustained pressure exercised by the US on the Pakistani political and military leadership to see that 26/11 is not repeated. The US continues to be reluctant to take punitive action against the State of Pakistan for not acting against the anti-India terrorist infrastructure. At the same time, it is anxious to ensure that there is no more 26/11 in Indian territory outside J&K by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists lest uncontrollable tensions between India and Pakistan come in the way of its operations in Afghanistan..
(h). After 26/11, there is growing international concern over the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). Consequently, it is under watch by the intelligence agencies of the US and many other countries.
2. One must remember that while there were no acts of jihadi and Pakistani-sponsored terrorism in Indian territory outside J&K, the Pakistan-based organisations, with the nod of the ISI, continued to attack Indian interests in Afghanistan during 2009. There was a second major act of terrorism outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul during 2009.
3. There has been no change in the jihadi objective of making India bleed. We should be prepared for more surprises, but try to prevent them by following the present policy of sustained revamping of the Intelligence and counter-terrorism machinery, continued attention to the grievances and sensitivities of the Indian Muslims, continued pressure on Pakistan to act against the anti-Indian terrorist infrastructure in its territory and continued co-operation with the US, despite our periodic unhappiness with Washington DC over matters such as not allowing us to interrogate David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the LET. Indo-US counter-terrorism co-operation will be mutually beneficial. If it wants and decides to, the US is the only country in a position to make Pakistan behave. We should use the US skilfully. Occasional anti-US breast-beating is necessary, but overdoing it could be counter-productive. ( 3-1-10)
( 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 )
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