MUMBAI 26/11 : A DAY OF INFAMY

May like to see http://news.rediff.com/special/2009/nov/05/local-involvement-in-2611-needs-attention-says-b-raman.htm

26/11 : HEIGHTENED ALERT

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.572

B.RAMAN

As the first anniversary of the 26/11 terrorist strike by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Mumbai approaches, there is a heightened alert by the secuity agencies to prevent any major terrorist strike coinciding with the anniversary by the LET itself or by other Pakistani and/or Indian organisations such as the Indian Mujahideen (IM) or the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) . The terrorists would be calculating that a successful strike around the anniversary would damage the credibility of the Indian State in the eyes of its own people and the international community and strengthen their support base.

2. While it is primarily the responsibility of the State's security agencies to thwart in time any fresh conspiracy by the terrorists, the public will have a useful role to play by sharing with the agencies any information or suspicious activity coming to its notice. The state agencies should create an awareness of the kind of role the public can play and as to how to convey any information or suspicions to the State agencies. Successful counter-terrorism depends on effective State-public co-operation.

3. We have not had any terrorist strike by the IM and SIMI for 14 months now and by the LET and other Pakistani organisations in the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir for almost 12 months now. The credit for this should go to our intelligence and physical security agencies and the police. It is not that fresh conspiracies were not being hatched in Indian and Pakistani territories. They were, but these were thwarted by the success of the intelligence agencies and the police in identifying and neutralising the cells which might have played a role in the execution of these conspiracies.

4.The recent arrests of two persons resident in Chicago by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on a charge of trying to assist the LET and Ilyas Kashmiri, a former officer of Pakistan's Special Services Group (SSG), who has emerged as another Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), in carrying out a terrorist strike in Denmark and a repeat of 26/11 in India show that the conspiracies are not confined to the sub-continent. They extend to Europe and North America where there is a large diaspora of migrants from Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world and some local converts to Islam, who are prepared to assist Al Qaeda, the LET and their associates in carrying out their plans.

5.Even in 2003, the LET had wanted to mount a terrorist strike in India by using recruits in the US, but its plans were detected and foiled in time by the FBI. India has reasons to be thankful to the US agencies for their alertness and for their co-operation in preventing fresh strikes. Strengthened, active and discreet Indo-US co-operation in counter-terrorism has been a significant post-26/11 feature. The US may be still reluctant to act against the Government of Pakistan for continuing to use terrorism against India, but it has given indications of its determination to help India in preventing a repeat of 26/11 in whatever way it can. The strong technical capability of the US agencies and the ground capability of the Indian agencies for human intelligence should help in the efforts to prevent a repeat of 26/11.

6.In counter-terrorism, it is important to avoid over-confidence and self-complacency. Any planning should factor into it the possibility that despite all the precautions and enhanced vigilance by the intelligence agencies, some terrorist conspiracies may still escape detection by the intelligence agencies. As the post 9/11 cliches goes, in counter-terrorism the agencies know what they know, but they don't know what they don't know.

7. While the agencies will be making every effort to reduce the zone of "what they don't know", it will not be possible to eliminate it altogethrer. That is where the importance of vulnerability perceptions and reviews comes in. Vulnerability perceptions help in denying success to the terrorists even if one doesn't detect in time terrorist conspiracies. Capacity-building, physical security and alertness play an important role in this. The foiled attacks on the Indian Parliament House in December,2001, and on Ahmedabad's Akshardam temple in September 2002 are good examples of how success can be denied to terrorists through effective physical security based on vulnerability perceptions.

8. Physical security reviews based on vulnerability perceptions have to be an on-going process. Vulnerability identification and follow-up action to plug gaps in physical security become a difficult exercise in India because of its large size and the hundreds of potentially soft targets available in our metro cities. Despite this, a constantly updated vulnerability map is a must to prevent a repeat of 26/11.

9.A continuous modus operandi (MO) review is as important as a vulnerability review. The terrorists oprerating in the Af-Pak region keep changing the MO to make their terrorist strikes more lethal and to take the security agencies by surprise. The MO used by them after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a mix of the old and the new----use of hand-held weapons and improvised explosive devices, commando-style attacks, simultaneous or orchestrated attacks of a complex nature on multiple targets, suicidal (fedayeen) and suicide attacks and so on. The training and re-training of our security agencies and police must enable them to meet the changing MO of the terrorists.

10. IEDs did not play as important a role in the 26/11 terrorist strikes as they did in the July,2006, terrorist attacks on Mumbai suburban trains.Of course, the IM and the SIMI relied largely on IEDs, but the Pakistani associates of Al Qaeda were using more and more complex commando-style attacks with hand-held weapons, the most spectacular of which were the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier this year and the recent attack on the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army at Rawalpindi. Some of the terrorist attacks in the Af-Pak region after the GHQ attack show that the terrorists are shifting once again to vehicular bombs involving large quantities of explosives. These attacks show the continuing availability of large quantities of explosives to the terrorists operating in the sub-continent.

11.While the Indian and US security agencies have a welcome record of increasing successes in detecting and neutralising terrorist cells before they can go into action, they have had little success in detecting and neutralising potential sources of supply of explosive material. This is a weak point in our counter-terrorism capability which needs the individual and joint attention of the Indian and US agencies.

12. Pre-conceived ideas and facile assumptions have no place in counter-terrorism such as the following---- the next attack may also come from the sea, the potential targets mentioned by terrorists under interrogation such as the National Defence College reportedly mentioned by the two Chicago suspects may be the real targets etc. Al Qaeda, the LET and their associates train their recruits and volunteers in ways of misleading the security agencies and the police when caught.

13.These are some of the points needing attention as we strengthen our alertness on the eve of the 26/11 anniversary. It is important for the Government to set in place a scenario-anticipation group to evaluate continuously the likely scenarios to improve our preparedness. ( 5-11-09)

( 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 )

MUMBAI 26/11: A DAY OF INFAMY

May like to see http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/nov/02/b-raman-takes-a-look-at-2611.htm

HILLARY CLINTON'S PLAIN-SPEAKING IN PAKISTAN

B.RAMAN

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, needs to be complimented for her plain-speaking on Pakistani inaction againat Al Qaeda during the course of a public interaction in Lahore during her visit to Pakistan from October 28 to 30,2009.

2. She expressed in an unmistakable manner US skepticism over the Pakistani sincerity in hunting for the remnants of Al Qaeda which have taken shelter in Pakistani territory. In the past, US officials refrained from giving public expression to this skepticism lest it affect whatever co-operation Pakistan was extending to the US in the search for Al Qaeda remnants.

3.The publicly-expressed US exasperation with Pakistan has to be seen in the light of the fact that after the exit of Pervez Musharraf from office as the President last year, even the co-operation which Pakistan was extending to the US in its search for Al Qaeda leaders seems to have stopped. The Musharraf Government did help the US in the arrest of some important members of Al Qaeda such as Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi Binalshibh,Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu-Faraj al-Libi and others. Compared to that, since the present elected Government came to office last year, there has been hardly any capture of any notable remnant of Al Qaeda by the Pakistani Security Forces.

4.Of course, the Government of President Asif Ali Zardari has closed its eyes to the increasing strikes by US drones against terrorist hide-outs in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) while making pro forma protests over them in public, but these strikes are increasingly targeted against elements of the Pakistani Taliban, which pose a threat to the Pakistani Army. The Pakistani Army has reasons to be grateful to the US for these strikes which help it in its operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

5. While benefiting from the US action, the present Pakistani Government has failed to reciprocate by extending to the US even the limited co-operation against Al Qaeda that it was getting from the Musharraf Government. Expectations that the coming into office of an elected civilian Government would improve the co-operation against Al Qaeda have been belied so far.

6. The Government of President Barack Obama has been even more generous to the Islamabad Government than the previous Bush Administration in respect of civilian and military assistance, but such assistance has not motivated the Pakistani authorities to change their policy of inaction against Al Qaeda and collusion with the Afghan Taliban and the anti-India jihadi terrorist organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET).

7. The Pakistani leaders-----political and military---- and large sections of its civil society think that by virtue of its strategic location Pakistan has a moral right to expect and receive such assistance from the US without any quid pro quo from its side. Unless this Pakistani impression that its strategic location and nuclear capability give it a hold over US policy-making is removed from their mind, the US is unlikely to make any progress against the Afghan Taliban and against Al Qaeda in Pakistan.The bloated impression in the minds of Pakistani leaders that Pakistan is indispensable to US interests in the region has to be removed.

8.Even if one understands the US reluctance under the previous Bush Administration as well as under the Obama Administration to take punitive action against Pakistan, one fails to understand the continuing US propensity to pamper Pakistan with more and more assistance in the fond hope that such pampering could finally make Pakistan act sincerely against Al Qaeda and other terrorists. Hillary Clinton's public expression of the US exasperation has not created any concerns in Pakistani policy-making circles because they are confident that the US will not ultimately act against Pakistan.

9.Plain-speaking alone will not do.The time has come for plain action which will carry the unmistakable message to the Pakistani leaders that it is not as indispensable as they seem to think it is. ( 1-11-09)

( 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 )

LET REVIVES 2003 PLAN TO USE US AS LAUNCHING PAD FOR TERRORISM IN INDIA

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.572

B.RAMAN

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the US has arrested and produced before a court in Chicago two local Muslim residents on a charge of conspiring with three others in Pakistan to carry out a Mumbai 26/11 style terrorist strike in Copenhagen and another strike in India.

2. The two arrested persons are David Coleman Headley ( aged 49 ) also known as Daood Gilani, an American citizen, who is a white convert to Islam, and Tahawar Hussain Rana (aged 48), a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, who has been running an immigration services office in Chicago with branches in Toronto and New York. He has also been running a company which was supplying meat to Muslims.

3. Headley was arrested on October 3,2009, and produced before the court on October 11.His arrest was kept a secret with the permission of the court for eight days to facilitate further investigation. The FBI arrested him at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as he was about to board a flight to Philadelphia for an onward trip to Denmark. According to the FBI, he was allegedly carrying a copy of a newspaper (not specified), a street guide for Copenhagen, a list of phone numbers and a computer memory stick with ten short video recordings of the offices of a Danish newspaper, which had published in 2005, a cartoon depicting the Holy Prophet, and the entrance to a military barracks in Copenhagen.

4.It was reported by the local media that Headley had "waived his rights" and made voluntary statements to the FBI about his connection to Pakistani terror groups.The authorities said the plot against the Danish newspaper, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, was referred to as the "Mickey Mouse Project" in communications between Headley and his contact in Pakistan. Headley had already traveled to Copenhagen in January and visited two different offices of the newspaper, the FBI said. Rana had allegedly reservations to fly to Copenhagen on Oct0ber 29. He was arrested on October 18 and produced before the court the next day

5.During his visit to Denmark in January last, Headley allegedly flew to Pakistan and met with his contact there, according to the FBI's affidavit filed with the court. The texts of the two affidavits filed by the FBI against the two arrested persons are available at http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/Headley%20Complaint.pdf and http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/Rana%20Complaint2.pdf .

6. The FBI authorities have identified the contact as Ilyas Kashmiri, a former Commando of the Special Services Group(SSG) of Pakistan, who gravitated to the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Pakistan and subsequently to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). He was one of the suspects in Al Qaeda-inspired plots to kill Pervez Musharraf in December,2003, and other terrorist strikes.He was recently reported to have been killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan in September, but this was subsequently reported to have been incorrect. He himself contacted some Pakistani journalists to prove that he was still alive. According to the FBI's affidavit, Headley was introduced to Ilyas Kashmiri by an individual referred to as Individual A during a visit to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in July-August 2008. A persual of the two FBI affidavits would indicate that Headley's subsequent communications with Ilyas Kashmiri were through this individual and not direct.

7.In the past there were conflicting versions of the organisational affiliation of Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri. While some reports described him as the Amir of the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) branch of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), other reports described him as the head of a splinter group of the HUJI of Pakistan headed by its Amir Qari Saifullah Akhtar, which had split from it and was operating independently in Jammu & Kashmir of India from sanctuaries in the POK.

8. Ilyas Kashmiri was among those arrested by the Pakistani authorities in January,2004, in connection with the investigation into the two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December,2003. While some of the others arrested, including some junior Air Force officers, were prosecuted and convicted, Ilyas Kashmiri himself was released for want of evidence of his involvement. It was claimed by sections of the Pakistani media at that time that Ilyas was released on the intervention of Syed Salauddin, the Amir of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the head of the United Jihad Council for Kashmir, who reportedly managed to convince the Police that Ilyas had nothing to do with the two attempts to kill Musharraf.

9. Ilyas was subsequently reported to have closed down the camp of his set-up in the POK and shifted to North Waziristan from where he was operating in the non-tribal belt of Pakistan. In a despatch of May 24,2009, Amir Mir, the well-informed Pakistani journalist, who writes for the "News" and other papers said: "Commander Ilyas Kashmiri was recently named in a charge sheet filed by the Islamabad police in the November 2008 gruesome murder of Major General (retd) Amir Faisal Alvi, the former General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the elite Special Services Group (SSG). The 12-page charge sheet submitted by the Rawalpindi police in an anti-terrorism court on May 12, 2009 stated that the former SSG commanding officer was killed to avenge the role he had played in the fight against Taliban linked militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The charge-sheet prepared by the Koral police station states that those involved and already arrested in the murder included Major (retd) Haroon Rasheed, a resident of Azad Kashmir; Mohammad Nawaz Khan of Peshawar and Ashfaq Ahmed of Okara. The charge sheet says the murder of Major General Amir Faisal Alvi was carried out on the instructions of Commander Ilyas Kashmiri who had provided funds and weapons.The charge sheet pointed out that Ilyas Kashmiri had already been named by the intelligence agencies for involvement in the October 2008 kidnapping for ransom of Satish Anand, a Karachi-based renowned film producer and distributor and the real uncle of Juhi Chawla, a well known Bollywood actress. After Satish Anand was recovered in the last week of April 2009 and the kidnappers arrested, it transpired during interrogations that one of them - Major Haroon Rasheed alias Abu Khattab – was a former Pakistani Army officer and involved in the murder of General Alvi. According to the murder charge sheet, the three accused – Haroon, Ashfaq and Nawaz followed Alvi when he left his residence in Bharia Town in Rawalpindi for his private office in Islamabad and killed him and his driver near the PWD Colony. Once considered close to General Pervez Musharraf, Amir Faisal Alvi was the first General Officer Commanding of the elite Special Services Group, and had also commanded the elite Group as a Brigadier. The first Pakistani Major General to have captained the Armed Forces Skydiving Team (AFST) as a GOC, Faisal Alvi was forcibly retired from the Army on disciplinary grounds ‘for conduct unbecoming’ by then Army Chief General Musharraf in August 2005."

10. Ilyas Kashmiri reportedly had his own training camp in the Razmak area of North (?) Waziristan and was collaborating with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

11.According to the FBI affidavit, "in July and August 2009, Headley exchanged a series of e-mails with LeT Member A, including an exchange in which Headley asked if the Denmark project was on hold, and whether a visit to India that LeT Member A had asked him to undertake was for the purpose of surveilling targets for a new terrorist attack.These e-mails reflect that LeT Member A was placing a higher priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack in India than on completing the planned attack in Denmark."

12.Although the affidavit named Ilyas Kashmiri, it did not identify two other Pakistan-based members involved in the plot, referring to them merely as LeT member A and Individual A. It said the LeT member A “has substantial influence and responsibility within the organization” and his “identity is known to the government.”

13. It is not clear what the FBI affidavit meant by saying that the LET member's identity is known to the Government. Which Government---the Government of Pakistan? If so, what action has been taken by the FBI to have him picked up by the Pakistani authorities and handed over to the FBI for interrogation and further investigation? The FBI has been silent on this till now.

14. The idea of using the US territory as a launcing pad for terrorist attacks in India had figured in the plans of the LET in 2003.On June 27,2003, the FBI had charged seven men in the Washington area and an eighth in Philadelphia with stockpiling weapons and conspiring to wage "jihad" against India in support of a terrorist group in Kashmir. The FBI's charge-sheet against them described them as members of the LET. It also said that three others involved in the case were absconding and were believed to be in Saudi Arabia.

15. Although the FBI officials said that there was no evidence of a plot against the US, the members of the group had pledged support for pro-Muslim violence overseas, hoarded high-powered rifles and received military training in Pakistan. Nine of the 11 accused were American citizens, and three had served in the US armed forces for some time in the past. The charge-sheet said that seven members of the group had travelled to Pakistan in the last several years, and some received military training in small arms, machine guns, grenade launchers and other weaponry at a camp in northeast Pakistan connected to the LET.

16. The 41-count indictment charged the 11 accused with conspiracy, firearms violations and plotting against a friendly nation — namely, India. US officials connected with the investigation were quoted by the media as saying that there was no evidence that the accused were considering an attack within the United States or had ties to Al Qaeda.

17. However, the officials charged that the men conspired to help Muslims abroad in violent jihad not only in India, but also in Chechnya, the Philippines and other countries. The men, the indictment said, obtained AK-47s and other high-powered weaponry and practised small-unit military tactics in Virginia.

18. The indictment charged that the accused pledged their willingness to die as martyrs in support of the Muslim cause and gathered in private homes and at an Islamic center in suburban Washington to hear lectures "on the righteousness of jihad" in Kashmir, Chechnya and elsewhere. They also watched videotapes showing Muslim fighters engaged in jihad. They had also organised a function to celebrate the crashing of the space shuttle Columbia. One of the astronauts killed in the crash was of Indian origin. A message read out on the occasion had described the USA "as the greatest enemy of the Muslims."

19. According to the indictment, one of the accused Masoud Ahmed Khan, a Maryland resident, had a document titled "The Terrorist's Handbook," with instructions on how to manufacture and use explosives and chemicals as weapons, as well as a photograph of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington.

20. At least two of the 11 accused were described as of Pakistani origin. One of them, Mohammed Aatique, 30, was a work (H-1) visa holder while Khawja Mahmood Hasan, 27, was a naturalized US citizen born in Pakistan. But at least one more suspect, Masoud Ahmad Khan, 31, also had a Pakistani sounding name although his nationality was not disclosed. The other accused were Randall Todd Royer, 30; Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi, a Yemeni national and non-resident alien; Yong Ki Kwon, 27, a naturalized US citizen born in Korea; Seifullah Chapman, 30; Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35; Donald Thomas Surratt, 30; Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem, 29, and Sabri Benkhala, 28. Chapman, Hasan and Benkhala were stated to be living in Saudi Arabia.

21.Earlier, on June 20, 2003 FBI officials had disclosed that they had arrested in April Iyman Faris, also known as Mohammad Rauf, originally a resident of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), who had migrated to the US in 1994 and was working as a truck driver in Ohio and charged him with having links with Al Qaeda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, said to be Osama bin Laden's operations chief, who is believed to have co-ordinated the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, in the US. Khalid was arrested in the house of a women's wing leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Pakistan at Rawalpindi in March, 2003, by the Pakistani authorities and handed over to the FBI.

22. According to FBI officials, as quoted in the US media, Faris had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan a number of times between 2000 and 2002, met Osama bin Laden and worked with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, in organising and financing jihad causes. After returning to the US from Pakistan in late 2002, officials said, he began examining the Brooklyn Bridge and discussing via coded messages with Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan ways of using blow torches to sever the suspension cables.

23. "The plotting continued through March, as Faris sent coded messages to operatives in Pakistan. One such message said that the "weather is too hot. "FBI officials were quoted as saying that meant that Faris feared the plot was unlikely to succeed---apparently because of security and the bridge's structure-- and should be postponed. He was arrested soon thereafter. Sources in Pakistan described Faris, aged 34, as a Punjabi ex-serviceman settled in POK, before he migrated to the US.

24. The above-mentioned details of LET activities in the US have been covered in my latest book titled "Mumbai--26/11 : A Day of Infamy" released for sale by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi on October 26,2008 (www.lancerpublishers.com ).

25.The plans of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa , the parent organisation of the LET, to carry out terrorist strikes in foreign territory against those insulting the Holy Prophet came to notice from the following report carried by the Pakistani journal "Ausaf" in its issue dated September 18,2006:"Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawa has issued a Fatwa asking the Muslim community to kill Pope Benedict for his blasphemous statement about Prophet Mohammad. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa has declared death to Pope Benedict and said that in today's world blasphemy of the Holy Koran and the Prophet has become a fashion. The leaders of the Jamaat were speaking at a Martyrs' Islamic Conference in Karachi. Prominent Jamaat leader Hafiz Saifullah Khalid said that in the present circumstances, jehad has become obligatory for each Muslim. Muslims are being declared terrorists and our battle for survival has already started. The Muslim world has rejected the Pope's apology and decided to continue protests and demonstrations in big cities. The Pope's apology is just a drama and no political leader has any power to pardon him. It is part of a crusade initiated by the US in the name of terrorism. Instead of accepting fake apologies, Muslims should realise Europe's enemity towards Islam and Muslim Ummah shou ld prepare itself to defend its faith. Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Abdur Rahman Makki said the West and Europe have started a campaign against the Holy Koran and the Prophet and have abused jehad. We should take appropriate steps to deal with the champions of crusade. It is time for Muslim leaders to open their eyes and understand that the West had never been a friend of the Muslims and will never be so."

26. A perusal of the FBI affidavits indicates the following: Headley was a self-motivated jihadi who volunteered his services for the LET and Ilyas Kashmiri. He seems to have come into contact with the jihadi world in Pakistan by frequenting an Internet chat group of "Abdelians" ---- meaning former cadets of the Punjab Government's military cadet college at Hasan Abdal, 40 kms to the north of Rawalpindi, set up in 1954 to prepare young boys aspiring to join the armed forces. He had established independent contacts with an LET operative and Ilyas Kashmiri. While the LET operative was interested in using him to prepare the ground for a terrorist strike in India, Ilyas Kashmiri was interested in using him for a terrorist strike in Denmark.He had visited Denmark at least once to study the ground conditions there, but there is no indication of his having visited India. The role of Rana seems to have been to provide Headley with a business cover for his travels to Denmark and Pakistan. The two had discussed the operational plans of Headley during a long drive together in the US.

27.Al Qaeda, the LET and their jihadi associates are like homing pigeons. Once they draw up a plan for a terrorist strike, they focus on carrying it out whatever be the difficulties. It came out during the investigation of the November, 2008, terrorist strike in Mumbai that the LET had originally planned to carry it out in September, but postponed it---presumably because security had been tightened up at the hotels which it was planning to attack. It attacked on November 26, when the security had become slack.Its plans for a terrorist strike in India from US territory in 2003 with the help of White and other converts to Islam holding US and other Western passports were foiled in time by the FBI, but it did not give up this idea and has once again tried to give it shape.Despite its failure for a second time, it will continue looking for another opportunity. (30-10-09)

( 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 )

PAKISTAN: FROM BAD TO WORSE

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO 571

B.RAMAN

"While the Pakistan Army has prepared itself well for the counter-insurgency style operations in South Waziristan, its ability to prevent attacks behind its back in the NWFP and Punjab is doubtful. Despite the spurt in suicide and commando-style terrorism in the NWFP and Punjab and even in supposedly well-guarded cantonments since the Lal Masjid raid in July,2007, the Pakistani counter-terrorism machinery has not re-fashioned and re-tooled itself to meet this threat. ....There is a danger of the NWFP and Punjab becoming the failed provinces of Pakistan if the Army's offensive does not succeed." ---- Extract from my article of October 17,2009, titled THE PAK ARMY OFFENSIVE IN SOUTH WAZIRISTAN available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers35/paper3466.html-------------------------------

Over 90 innocent civilians----many of them women and children---- were killed in a timed or remotely-controlled car bomb explosion in a busy market area of Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, on October 28,2009. Reports from Peshawar indicate that the car packed with explosives had been left unattended by two men wearing police uniform near a Shia mosque about three hours before the explosion. The unattended car did not attract the suspicion of the policemen on duty in the market area.

2. This has been the second deadliest terrorist strike in Pakistan-----the first being the suicide explosion in Karachi at the time of Benazir Bhutto's return from exile on October 17,2007, in which nearly 180 persons were killed.This has been the deadliest terrorist strike in the history of Peshawar and the third strike this month. The previous two took place on October 9 in which over 50 persons were killed in a suicide explosion in a market place and on October 16 involving 16 fatalities.

3. The local police had claimed to have identified and arrested the ringleaders of the previous incidents. Despite this, the attack of October 28 took place. This calls into question the credibility of the police claim.

4. There has so far been no claim of responsibility for the latest explosion. On the contrary, Pakistani electronic media have quoted alleged sources in Al Qaeda and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as denying responsibility and condemning the explosion as the work of anti-Muslim elements.

5.The denials need not necessarily be true. The public outrage over the wanton killings of women and children would have made it unwise for the perpetrators to admit responsibility.

6. The fact that the explosion coincided with the visit of Mrs.Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State, to Pakistan, gave the explosion a political colour as meant to express the protest of the perpetrators against the continuing US drone strikes on Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in the tribal belt and against Pakistan's continuing co-operation with the US in counter-terrorism. The current military operations by the Pakistani Army against the Mehsud component of the TTP in South Waziristan is viewed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements as undertaken at the behest of the US.

7. The NWFP is the traditional homeland of the Pashtuns and the cradle of the Pashtun culture. Over the years, it has had pockets of secular thinking and traditions nurtured initially by Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, and maintained subsequently by his successors in the Awami National Party (ANP), which has been in power in the province as part of a coalition since the elections of last year. It has also been supporting the ruling coalition in Islamabad and has managed to maintain good relations with President Asif Ali Zardari.

8. In recent months,there have been reports that the US, which in the past kept away from the ANP due to a perception that it was a leftist, pro-communist party, has started interacting with its leaders and inviting some of them to visit the US. The fact that the Pashtun followers of the ANP have remained steadfast in their loyalty to the ANP and its secular ideology and have kept away from the Afghan as well as Pakistani Taliban has been a sore point with the TTP leadership.

9. Despite this, will the TTP target the Pashtun followers of the ANP and indulge in an orgy of killings of Pashtun civilians in Peshawar and other places? The TTP attacks in the Malakand Division, including the Swat Valley, largely targeted the security forces, but in Peshawar the perpetrators have been targeting Pashtun civilians as well as the security forces. There is also an anti-Shia angle to these attacks because the Shia Pashtuns support the ANP, which is seen by them as a protector of the Shias.

10. Sources in the ANP seem to believe that the repeated attacks on civilians in Peshawar are being carried out by elements in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), another Uzbek group, both allied to Al Qaeda. This serves the purpose of discrediting the ANP-led Government in the NWFP and at the same time sparing the TTP of unpopularity for slaughtering innocent Pashtun civilians.

11. What should be of special concern to the US and other members of the international community in the light of the deteriorating situation in the NWFP is the danger of the growing anarchy in the province enabling Al Qaeda to lay hand on Pakistan's nuclear waste stored in the province for being used in a dirty bomb. (29-10-09)

( 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 )

Hi All

The biopsy report was received today. It has confirmed high-grade malignancy in the urinary bladder--prostrate region.The doctors say they are not yet certain who is the enemy. They have prescribed one more test today. Results will come on Nov.3. Thereafter, the urologists, who have been treating me till now, will consult cancer specialists and decide on the course of the treatment, which may have to be aggressive. Regards. B.Raman. 28-10-09