B.RAMAN
When Robert Gates, the present US Defence Secretary, was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), George Bush, the then President (1988-92), had visited the CIA headquarters and addressed its officers. In his speech welcoming the President, Gates described the CIA officers as risk-takers and not risk-seekers. This quote from his welcome address is inscribed at the entrance to the CIA building to inspire and motivate future entrants to the CIA.
2. The Soviet, Russian and West European intelligence agencies too have the reputation of being risk-takers. A risk-taking external intelligence agency posts its officers for intelligence collection in remote areas and danger spots and the officers willingly go to such places. Risk-avoiding agencies keep their officers confined to the safe precincts of diplomatic and consular missions, where the risks faced are minimal.
3. The best professionals of the CIA are posted in areas of conflict and not in areas of comfort. There is never a shortage of volunteers to serve in areas of conflict. They are generally attached to US military units deployed in such areas and use the protection provided by such units to do their intelligence collection and special operations work. The CIA keeps rotating them frequently so that its officers are not required to serve in dangerous areas for a long time. The officers, who volunteer for such posts, also have the confidence that their Agency will look after their families during their absence from the US and will not keep them in dangerous areas for too long.
4. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has published a collation of CIA officers who were known to have been killed since 1965 in the performance of their duty. A total of 35 were killed---two in Washington DC and the remaining 33 abroad. The two in Washington DC were killed outside the CIA headquarters in January,1993, by a disgruntled Pakistani Mir Aimal Kansi. He had allegedly worked for the CIA against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and had some grievances relating to his rehabilitation after the Soviet withdrawal. He went to the entrance of the CIA headquarters and indiscriminately opened fire as the staff were coming to work in the morning and then managed to escape to Pakistan. He was arrested by the Pakistani authorities and extradited to the US. He was sentenced to death by a US court. The sentence was carried out in the US and the body returned to his relatives for burial. He was given a heroes’ burial in his home village by the local Pakistanis.
5. Of the 33 CIA personnel who were killed abroad while performing their duty since 1965, two were the staff of a contractor working for the CIA in Afghanistan and the remaining 31 were regular members of the staff of the Agency. Since 1965, the CIA has suffered the largest number of fatalities in Afghanistan---- a total of 11, nine of them regular members of its staff and the remaining two employees of a CIA contractor. The two deaths in Washington DC were also Afghanistan-related. Thus, the CIA’s role in Afghanistan has resulted in the deaths 13 of the 35 officers killed since 1965.
6.Next to Afghanistan, duties in the Lebanon resulted in the death of nine officers in the 1980s, including that of the then station chief of the CIA in Beirut. The war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the deaths of seven officers. The remaining six officers were killed in a plane crash in Africa while allegedly helping the anti-communist insurgents in Angola. Surprisingly, there are no known fatalities incurred by the CIA in Iraq since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
7. The absence of CIA fatalities in Iraq and the large number of fatalities incurred by the CIA in Afghanistan could be attributed to the following reasons:
(a). The CIA personnel posted in Iraq totally depend on the US forces for their physical security while performing their duties. They do not depend on Iraqi personnel. In Afghanistan, they depend largely on American personnel, but there is also a limited involvement of Afghan personnel in protecting them.
(b).In Iraq, the intelligence agencies of the US Defence Department play a more active role in intelligence collection and special operations. The casualties incurred in Iraq are essentially those of the agencies of the Pentagon. In Afghanistan, CIA officers play a very active role in intelligence collection and in facilitating the unmanned Drone strikes in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.
( c ). Individual anti-US officers of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has had a long history of co-operation with the CIA, know how to identify CIA officers working clandestinely under cover. They expose their identity to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
8. The latest incident in the Khost area of Afghanistan involving the death of seven CIA officers at the hands of an Afghan suicide bomber would be a major loss to the CIA at a critical time in the “war” against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The CIA officers succeeding them would have to start literally from the scratch in building up a new network of contacts. The contacts of the officers, who have been killed, would now be under a question mark due to suspicion regarding the role of any of them in facilitating the suicide bombing.
( 2-1-10)
( 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 )
Friday, January 1, 2010
TOI--JANG BHAI,BHAI
B.RAMAN
There is a Tamil saying: “chozhiyan kudumi summa aadathu.”
Roughly paraphrased, it means: “ If one finds a Brahmin’s tuft moving up and down, one should not presume it must be due to the breeze. There could be a hidden reason for it. One should look deeper.”
I was reminded of this saying on New Year’s Day as I noticed that the Times of India has started an Indians-Pakistanis bhai bhai ( Indians and Pakistanis Are Brothers) campaign under the theme “Aman Ki Asha” ( The Desire For Peace) in association with the Jang group of Pakistan.
The desire for peace one can understand.
The desire for closer people-to-people contacts one can equally understand , but the sudden love of the Times of India for the Jang group one cannot.
If the TOI had joined hands with the Dawn group of Karachi, that would have made some sense. No other media group of Pakistan enjoys as much respect among the people of Pakistan and in the international community as the Dawn group does.
But, no other media group of Pakistan has been as much controversial and as money-minded as the Jang group has been over the years.
And no other media group of Pakistan has been more opportunistic in its editorial policies than the Jang group.
It is alleged in Pakistan: Look where the money is. One will find Jang there.
The sudden love of the TOI for Pakistan and the Jang group is as mysterious as the sudden love of L.K.Advani for Mohammad Ali Jinnah some years ago and as the sudden admiration of Jaswant Singh for Jinnah last year.
Nobody can question the ardent wish of the TOI leadership for peace with Pakistan.
We all want peace with Pakistan.
We all like the people of Pakistan---- whether they are Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochs, Seraikis or Pashtuns.
As I had pointed out in an article on India’s relations with Pakistan and China sometime ago, the civil societies of India and Pakistan have greater positive vibrations for each other than the civil societies of India and China.
And yet there has never been genuine peace between India and Pakistan.
What is the reason?
Not Kashmir.
Not Balochistan.
Not the Lashksar-e-Toiba and the myriad terrorist organizations to which the State and civil society of Pakistan have given birth.
Barring China, no other country in the world thinks and talks well of Pakistan and its people.
No other country in the world triggers more negative vibrations in the hearts and minds of people than Pakistan.
There are various reasons for it.
Because of the distorted interpretations of Islam in Pakistan ever since it was born in 1947. One does not come across such distorted interpretations anywhere else in the Ummah.
Because of the cruelty and barbarity which have come to be associated with Islam in Pakistan. One does not come across such cruelty and barbarity anywhere else in the Ummah.
Because of the perfidious nature of the Pakistani statecraft.
Because of so many other reasons.
Why all the jihadi terrorists of the world flock to Pakistan?
Not merely because of its sanctuaries.
Not merely because of the sponsorship of the ISI.
It is also because irrational individuals with a distorted mindset find themselves more comfortable in Pakistan than anywhere else in the Ummah.
One must call a spade a spade.
One must face the truth.
To point out all this does not mean one wishes ill of Pakistan and wants it to perish.
Quite the contrary.
The real well-wishers of Pakistan and its people are those who have the honesty and courage to draw attention to the negative features of Pakistan and call on the Pakistani society to rid themselves of these features.
We all want good relations with Pakistan and its people.
The TOI-Jang Bhai Bhai is not the way of doing it.
It has to be done through honest debate promoted and moderated by people, who will not be suspected of having any ulterior interest in their sudden-found leave for Aman between the two countries.( 1-1-10)
( 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 )
There is a Tamil saying: “chozhiyan kudumi summa aadathu.”
Roughly paraphrased, it means: “ If one finds a Brahmin’s tuft moving up and down, one should not presume it must be due to the breeze. There could be a hidden reason for it. One should look deeper.”
I was reminded of this saying on New Year’s Day as I noticed that the Times of India has started an Indians-Pakistanis bhai bhai ( Indians and Pakistanis Are Brothers) campaign under the theme “Aman Ki Asha” ( The Desire For Peace) in association with the Jang group of Pakistan.
The desire for peace one can understand.
The desire for closer people-to-people contacts one can equally understand , but the sudden love of the Times of India for the Jang group one cannot.
If the TOI had joined hands with the Dawn group of Karachi, that would have made some sense. No other media group of Pakistan enjoys as much respect among the people of Pakistan and in the international community as the Dawn group does.
But, no other media group of Pakistan has been as much controversial and as money-minded as the Jang group has been over the years.
And no other media group of Pakistan has been more opportunistic in its editorial policies than the Jang group.
It is alleged in Pakistan: Look where the money is. One will find Jang there.
The sudden love of the TOI for Pakistan and the Jang group is as mysterious as the sudden love of L.K.Advani for Mohammad Ali Jinnah some years ago and as the sudden admiration of Jaswant Singh for Jinnah last year.
Nobody can question the ardent wish of the TOI leadership for peace with Pakistan.
We all want peace with Pakistan.
We all like the people of Pakistan---- whether they are Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochs, Seraikis or Pashtuns.
As I had pointed out in an article on India’s relations with Pakistan and China sometime ago, the civil societies of India and Pakistan have greater positive vibrations for each other than the civil societies of India and China.
And yet there has never been genuine peace between India and Pakistan.
What is the reason?
Not Kashmir.
Not Balochistan.
Not the Lashksar-e-Toiba and the myriad terrorist organizations to which the State and civil society of Pakistan have given birth.
Barring China, no other country in the world thinks and talks well of Pakistan and its people.
No other country in the world triggers more negative vibrations in the hearts and minds of people than Pakistan.
There are various reasons for it.
Because of the distorted interpretations of Islam in Pakistan ever since it was born in 1947. One does not come across such distorted interpretations anywhere else in the Ummah.
Because of the cruelty and barbarity which have come to be associated with Islam in Pakistan. One does not come across such cruelty and barbarity anywhere else in the Ummah.
Because of the perfidious nature of the Pakistani statecraft.
Because of so many other reasons.
Why all the jihadi terrorists of the world flock to Pakistan?
Not merely because of its sanctuaries.
Not merely because of the sponsorship of the ISI.
It is also because irrational individuals with a distorted mindset find themselves more comfortable in Pakistan than anywhere else in the Ummah.
One must call a spade a spade.
One must face the truth.
To point out all this does not mean one wishes ill of Pakistan and wants it to perish.
Quite the contrary.
The real well-wishers of Pakistan and its people are those who have the honesty and courage to draw attention to the negative features of Pakistan and call on the Pakistani society to rid themselves of these features.
We all want good relations with Pakistan and its people.
The TOI-Jang Bhai Bhai is not the way of doing it.
It has to be done through honest debate promoted and moderated by people, who will not be suspected of having any ulterior interest in their sudden-found leave for Aman between the two countries.( 1-1-10)
( 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 )
Thursday, December 31, 2009
COUNTER-PENETRATION & COUNTER-SANCTUARIES
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO 600
B.RAMAN
There can be no effective counter-terrorism without effective counter-penetration and counter-sanctuaries techniques and capabilities.
2.Penetration refers to one’s capability to penetrate the set-up of a terrorist organization to collect human and technical intelligence about its future plans. The impressive success rate of the unmanned Drone flights of the US in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan since August,2008, spoke of a significant improvement in the penetration operations of the US intelligence community in their continuing fight against Al Qaeda and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.
3. Similarly, the impressive number of instances of detection and neutralization of indigenous and Pakistan-sponsored terrorist cells by the Indian intelligence community and police during 2009 was the outcome of an improvement in their penetration operations----after the series of explosions in the urban areas organized by the so-called Indian Mujahideen since November,2007, and after the 26/11 terrorist strikes by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in Mumbai.
4. Effective penetration is important for successful counter-terrorism, but the gains made by effective penetration can be diluted if it is not accompanied by effective counter-penetration.
5.Counter-penetration refers to one’s ability to thwart the attempts of the terrorists to penetrate one’s set-up-----sometimes to collect the intelligence required for planning their operations and sometimes for the planning and execution of their terrorist strikes.
6. A weak counter-penetration capability facilitates a terrorist strike. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capability of the Indian counter-terrorism community were brought out by the ease with which David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the LET managed to obtain visas from the Indian Consulate-General in Chicago without a proper scrutiny of their visa applications and the equal ease with which they repeatedly managed to pass through the Indian immigration manned by intelligence officers without a proper scrutiny of their passports and their landing and departure cards.
7.The success of Headley in visiting different places in India in order to collect operational information, staying in hotels and making a network of contacts without being suspected even once by the police Special Branches in different states showed the disturbing state of our counter-penetration capability. One of the principal tasks of the police Special Branches and the regional offices of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) all over the country is to detect and neutralize attempts of indigenous and foreign terrorist organizations to penetrate our set-up. The fact that neither the passport-visa section of the Ministry of External Affairs nor the airport set-ups of the IB and the R&AW nor the Special Branches of different States and the regional offices of the IB and R&AW suspected Headley and Rana even once till they were ultimately arrested by the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in October,2009, speaks poorly of them.
8. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capabilities of the US in the US homeland were brought out by an incident in a US military base in Fort Hood, Texas, on November 6, 2009.Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist of the US Army born to Palestinian migrants to the US from Jordan, suddenly went on a killing spree killing 13 soldiers with a handgun before he was injured and overpowered. Initially, it was presumed to be an isolated attack of an angry Muslim individual in the US Army, but subsequent enquiries have brought out worrisome details of his alleged contacts with Anwar Al Awlaki, an extremist cleric born in the US, who has been living in Yemen since 2002. Many regard Awlaki as an ideologue of Al Qaeda in Yemen. There were adverse indicators about Major Hasan in the past, but these were either not noticed or, if noticed, not taken seriously.
9.Even now, there is a reluctance in the Obama Administration to admit that the case of Major Hasan indicates a possible success of Al Qaeda in penetrating the US Army and was made possible by a weak counter-penetration capability in the US homeland. This is similar to the reluctance of the Government of India to admit weaknesses in our counter-penetration set-up, which were exploited by Headley and Rana.
10. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capabilities of the US in the Af-Pak region have now been revealed by the ease with which the Afghan Taliban penetrated the Afghan National Army (ANA) by having one of its members recruited into it and used him to kill seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed near the Pakistan border in the Khost province of Afghanistan through an act of suicide terrorism.
11. Details available till now indicate that the CIA set-up in the Khost area was playing an important role in facilitating the Drone strikes in the FATA. If this is correct, the Afghan Taliban not only managed to identify the CIA set-up in Afghan territory, which was behind the increasing successes of the Drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but also managed to penetrate it without its penetration efforts being thwarted by the counter-penetration capabilities of the US intelligence community.
12. Counter-penetration is a difficult task in an operational area such as Jammu & Kashmir in India’s fight against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism or in the Af-Pak region in the USA’s fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Failures are bound to be there despite the best efforts at counter-penetration. One should keep admitting and analysing those failures in order to identify and close gaps in counter-penetration security.
13. Counter-penetration failures in non-operational areas such as in the Indian hinterland in the case of Headley and Rana and in the US homeland in the case of Major Hasan should be a matter of serious concern. In the case of India, the failures lasted nearly three years before they were noticed after the arrest of Headley and Rana by the FBI in October,2009.
14. If such failures have to be reduced, if not prevented, in future, one must have the political courage to admit them and go into them thoroughly. One does not find evidence of such courage either in Washington DC or in New Delhi. The reflexes in the two capitals are similar---- play down the gravity of the failures and avoid a thorough probe.
15. The post-1967 escalation in terrorism by organisations such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Abu Nidal Group, the Hizbollah, the set-up of Carlos, the Baader-Meinhof of the then West Germany, the Red Army factions of West Germany and Japan, the Irish Republican Army etc was made possible partly by the support received by them from the Muslim States such as Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Iran and partly by the support from the USSR and other communist states.
16. While the PLO, the Abu Nidal Group and the Hizbollah were the beneficiaries of support from the Muslim States, the other organisations received the backing of the communist states in East Europe, North Korea and Cuba. In both cases, the support consisted of not only money, training, arms and ammunition and false documentation, but also, more importantly, sanctuaries.
17. It was the realisation that no counter-terrorism fight against a foreign-sponsored terrorist organisation can be effective unless action is taken against the guilty State, which motivated the US Congress in the late 1970s to make it mandatory for the US Administration to act against foreign state-sponsors of terrorism. The post-1991 collapse of the Communist States in East Europe practically brought an end to the activities of the ideologically-oriented leftist terrorist groups. Without sanctuaries and other assistance from countries such as the then East Germany and Yugoslavia, they could not survive.
18. It was again the pressure exercised by the US against States such as Syria and the Sudan, which made organisations such as Al Qaeda shift their sanctuaries to the Af-Pak region. It is the present reluctance of successive US administrations to act as vigorously against Muslim States sponsoring or aiding jihadi terrorism in foreign territories as they used to act against communist states in the past which should account for the continuing successes of organisations such as Al Qaeda and the LET.
19. India paid a heavy price on 26/11 for the continuing inaction against Pakistan’s state-sponsorship of jihadi terrorism. The US almost paid a similar price at Detroit on 25/12 when a Nigerian terrorist, trained in a sanctuary in Yemen, narrowly failed in his attempt to blow up an American plane over Detroit. Whereas Pakistan has been using terrorism as a strategic weapon to advance its foreign policy objectives, there is no reason to believe that Yemen is doing the same. But Yemen’s inability to act effectively against the sanctuaries in its territory is posing the same threat to the security of the US homeland as Pakistan’s active complicity with the terrorists is posing to the security of the Indian and US homelands.
20.Unless effective counter-penetration and counter-sanctuaries strategies are devised and enforced vigorously, we will all continue to bleed at the hands of the jihadi terrorists.
(1-1-10)
( 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
There can be no effective counter-terrorism without effective counter-penetration and counter-sanctuaries techniques and capabilities.
2.Penetration refers to one’s capability to penetrate the set-up of a terrorist organization to collect human and technical intelligence about its future plans. The impressive success rate of the unmanned Drone flights of the US in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan since August,2008, spoke of a significant improvement in the penetration operations of the US intelligence community in their continuing fight against Al Qaeda and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.
3. Similarly, the impressive number of instances of detection and neutralization of indigenous and Pakistan-sponsored terrorist cells by the Indian intelligence community and police during 2009 was the outcome of an improvement in their penetration operations----after the series of explosions in the urban areas organized by the so-called Indian Mujahideen since November,2007, and after the 26/11 terrorist strikes by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in Mumbai.
4. Effective penetration is important for successful counter-terrorism, but the gains made by effective penetration can be diluted if it is not accompanied by effective counter-penetration.
5.Counter-penetration refers to one’s ability to thwart the attempts of the terrorists to penetrate one’s set-up-----sometimes to collect the intelligence required for planning their operations and sometimes for the planning and execution of their terrorist strikes.
6. A weak counter-penetration capability facilitates a terrorist strike. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capability of the Indian counter-terrorism community were brought out by the ease with which David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the LET managed to obtain visas from the Indian Consulate-General in Chicago without a proper scrutiny of their visa applications and the equal ease with which they repeatedly managed to pass through the Indian immigration manned by intelligence officers without a proper scrutiny of their passports and their landing and departure cards.
7.The success of Headley in visiting different places in India in order to collect operational information, staying in hotels and making a network of contacts without being suspected even once by the police Special Branches in different states showed the disturbing state of our counter-penetration capability. One of the principal tasks of the police Special Branches and the regional offices of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) all over the country is to detect and neutralize attempts of indigenous and foreign terrorist organizations to penetrate our set-up. The fact that neither the passport-visa section of the Ministry of External Affairs nor the airport set-ups of the IB and the R&AW nor the Special Branches of different States and the regional offices of the IB and R&AW suspected Headley and Rana even once till they were ultimately arrested by the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in October,2009, speaks poorly of them.
8. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capabilities of the US in the US homeland were brought out by an incident in a US military base in Fort Hood, Texas, on November 6, 2009.Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist of the US Army born to Palestinian migrants to the US from Jordan, suddenly went on a killing spree killing 13 soldiers with a handgun before he was injured and overpowered. Initially, it was presumed to be an isolated attack of an angry Muslim individual in the US Army, but subsequent enquiries have brought out worrisome details of his alleged contacts with Anwar Al Awlaki, an extremist cleric born in the US, who has been living in Yemen since 2002. Many regard Awlaki as an ideologue of Al Qaeda in Yemen. There were adverse indicators about Major Hasan in the past, but these were either not noticed or, if noticed, not taken seriously.
9.Even now, there is a reluctance in the Obama Administration to admit that the case of Major Hasan indicates a possible success of Al Qaeda in penetrating the US Army and was made possible by a weak counter-penetration capability in the US homeland. This is similar to the reluctance of the Government of India to admit weaknesses in our counter-penetration set-up, which were exploited by Headley and Rana.
10. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capabilities of the US in the Af-Pak region have now been revealed by the ease with which the Afghan Taliban penetrated the Afghan National Army (ANA) by having one of its members recruited into it and used him to kill seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed near the Pakistan border in the Khost province of Afghanistan through an act of suicide terrorism.
11. Details available till now indicate that the CIA set-up in the Khost area was playing an important role in facilitating the Drone strikes in the FATA. If this is correct, the Afghan Taliban not only managed to identify the CIA set-up in Afghan territory, which was behind the increasing successes of the Drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but also managed to penetrate it without its penetration efforts being thwarted by the counter-penetration capabilities of the US intelligence community.
12. Counter-penetration is a difficult task in an operational area such as Jammu & Kashmir in India’s fight against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism or in the Af-Pak region in the USA’s fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Failures are bound to be there despite the best efforts at counter-penetration. One should keep admitting and analysing those failures in order to identify and close gaps in counter-penetration security.
13. Counter-penetration failures in non-operational areas such as in the Indian hinterland in the case of Headley and Rana and in the US homeland in the case of Major Hasan should be a matter of serious concern. In the case of India, the failures lasted nearly three years before they were noticed after the arrest of Headley and Rana by the FBI in October,2009.
14. If such failures have to be reduced, if not prevented, in future, one must have the political courage to admit them and go into them thoroughly. One does not find evidence of such courage either in Washington DC or in New Delhi. The reflexes in the two capitals are similar---- play down the gravity of the failures and avoid a thorough probe.
15. The post-1967 escalation in terrorism by organisations such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Abu Nidal Group, the Hizbollah, the set-up of Carlos, the Baader-Meinhof of the then West Germany, the Red Army factions of West Germany and Japan, the Irish Republican Army etc was made possible partly by the support received by them from the Muslim States such as Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Iran and partly by the support from the USSR and other communist states.
16. While the PLO, the Abu Nidal Group and the Hizbollah were the beneficiaries of support from the Muslim States, the other organisations received the backing of the communist states in East Europe, North Korea and Cuba. In both cases, the support consisted of not only money, training, arms and ammunition and false documentation, but also, more importantly, sanctuaries.
17. It was the realisation that no counter-terrorism fight against a foreign-sponsored terrorist organisation can be effective unless action is taken against the guilty State, which motivated the US Congress in the late 1970s to make it mandatory for the US Administration to act against foreign state-sponsors of terrorism. The post-1991 collapse of the Communist States in East Europe practically brought an end to the activities of the ideologically-oriented leftist terrorist groups. Without sanctuaries and other assistance from countries such as the then East Germany and Yugoslavia, they could not survive.
18. It was again the pressure exercised by the US against States such as Syria and the Sudan, which made organisations such as Al Qaeda shift their sanctuaries to the Af-Pak region. It is the present reluctance of successive US administrations to act as vigorously against Muslim States sponsoring or aiding jihadi terrorism in foreign territories as they used to act against communist states in the past which should account for the continuing successes of organisations such as Al Qaeda and the LET.
19. India paid a heavy price on 26/11 for the continuing inaction against Pakistan’s state-sponsorship of jihadi terrorism. The US almost paid a similar price at Detroit on 25/12 when a Nigerian terrorist, trained in a sanctuary in Yemen, narrowly failed in his attempt to blow up an American plane over Detroit. Whereas Pakistan has been using terrorism as a strategic weapon to advance its foreign policy objectives, there is no reason to believe that Yemen is doing the same. But Yemen’s inability to act effectively against the sanctuaries in its territory is posing the same threat to the security of the US homeland as Pakistan’s active complicity with the terrorists is posing to the security of the Indian and US homelands.
20.Unless effective counter-penetration and counter-sanctuaries strategies are devised and enforced vigorously, we will all continue to bleed at the hands of the jihadi terrorists.
(1-1-10)
( 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 )
CHINA’S INTEREST IN NAVAL BASE: GWADAR OR HAMBANTOTA OR ELSEWHERE?
B.RAMAN
Ships from the Chinese Navy patrolling the seas on anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden area for over a year now could not go to the rescue of De Xin Hai a Chinese bulk carrier with a Chinese crew of 25 members transporting coal which was hijacked by a group of Somali pirates 400 miles North-East of Seychelles and taken to the waters off Somalia in October last.
2. Their demand for ransom was initially resisted by the Chinese. How can China, which views itself as a power on par with the US, pay ransom? The Government-controlled media in China gave its people very few details of the hijacking, but those, who had been following the incident through the Internet, were certain that the Chinese would not cave in. They were hoping and expecting that the Chinese Navy would emulate the example of the US, Dutch and French Navies, whose special forces had rescued their seamen from the custody of the pirates during 2009. The US Navy’s Sea Air Land Commandoes (SEAL) had rescued the master of the US ship “Maersk Alabama” in an operation on April 4,2009. There were similar instances of intervention by the naval special forces of Holland and France.
3. Independent experts outside China were not hopeful of the Chinese Navy’s ability to intervene. They were certain that the Chinese Navy would ultimately have to cave in to the demands of the Somali pirates. The Jamestown Foundation, a prestigious American think-tank based in Washington DC, had predicted that China was unlikely to use its special forces in a rescue operation because it had too few ships in the area and its ships had no combat experience, especially in dealing with pirates. Moreover, there was the danger that while a botched-up operation could embarrass the Chinese Navy, a successful operation might worry Asian nations who have territorial disputes with China.
4. While Chinese Internet surfers and bloggers were eagerly waiting for news of the rescue of the Chinese bulk carrier and its crew by the Chinese Navy vessels patrolling in the area, news came from international shipping circles, which monitor the activities of the pirates, that the Chinese authorities managed to get back their ship and crew from the pirates on December 28,2009, after air-dropping sacks containing US $ four million on board the ship from a helicopter. The pirates collected the money and left the hijacked ship, which is now reported to be on its way back home.
5. The Chinese Government has so far not told its people that it paid a ransom in order to get the ship and its crew back. The “China Daily” News merely told its readers that the ship had been “successfully rescued”.
6. Their embarrassing experience with this incident has brought home to the Chinese the limitations from which their Navy suffers. One of the lessons mentioned by their experts is that the Chinese Navy could not hope to be the equal of its US counterparts unless it had overseas bases in areas of concern. Another lesson is that their ships on anti-piracy patrol feel handicapped due to the absence of a base in the area being patrolled by them where they can go periodically for refueling and re-stocking and for rest and recreation for their crew.
7. In an interview over the State radio on December 28,2009, Rear Admiral Yin Zhou, an expert of the Chinese Navy, said: “"I believe that a relatively stable, relatively solid base for resupply and repair would be appropriate. Such a base would provide a steady source of fresh food, along with facilities for communications, ship repair and recreation. Any definite decision to establish such a base would have to be taken by the Communist Party. Supplying and maintaining the ( Chinese) fleet off Somalia was challenging without such a base. Other nations were unlikely to object.”
8. He did not say where such a base could be located, if the Party ultimately accepted his suggestion. China already has two options before it---- Gwadar on the Balochistan coast in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. It has already constructed for Pakistan a commercial port at Gwadar, which is now being managed by a Singapore company. During a second stage, it is proposed to construct a naval base for the Pakistan Navy there. This could serve the purposes of the Chinese Navy too. The Chinese are helping Sri Lanka in the construction of a modern commercial port at Hambantota. There is presently no talk of a naval base there.
9. Pakistan would be only too happy to respond positively to any Chinese request for naval base facilities at Gwadar. The only inhibiting factor for China would be the bad security situation in the area due to the ongoing Baloch freedom struggle. From the point of view of security, Hambantota could be ideal for the Chinese, but would the Sri Lankan Government agree to any such proposal if it comes from Beijing? (31-12-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Ships from the Chinese Navy patrolling the seas on anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden area for over a year now could not go to the rescue of De Xin Hai a Chinese bulk carrier with a Chinese crew of 25 members transporting coal which was hijacked by a group of Somali pirates 400 miles North-East of Seychelles and taken to the waters off Somalia in October last.
2. Their demand for ransom was initially resisted by the Chinese. How can China, which views itself as a power on par with the US, pay ransom? The Government-controlled media in China gave its people very few details of the hijacking, but those, who had been following the incident through the Internet, were certain that the Chinese would not cave in. They were hoping and expecting that the Chinese Navy would emulate the example of the US, Dutch and French Navies, whose special forces had rescued their seamen from the custody of the pirates during 2009. The US Navy’s Sea Air Land Commandoes (SEAL) had rescued the master of the US ship “Maersk Alabama” in an operation on April 4,2009. There were similar instances of intervention by the naval special forces of Holland and France.
3. Independent experts outside China were not hopeful of the Chinese Navy’s ability to intervene. They were certain that the Chinese Navy would ultimately have to cave in to the demands of the Somali pirates. The Jamestown Foundation, a prestigious American think-tank based in Washington DC, had predicted that China was unlikely to use its special forces in a rescue operation because it had too few ships in the area and its ships had no combat experience, especially in dealing with pirates. Moreover, there was the danger that while a botched-up operation could embarrass the Chinese Navy, a successful operation might worry Asian nations who have territorial disputes with China.
4. While Chinese Internet surfers and bloggers were eagerly waiting for news of the rescue of the Chinese bulk carrier and its crew by the Chinese Navy vessels patrolling in the area, news came from international shipping circles, which monitor the activities of the pirates, that the Chinese authorities managed to get back their ship and crew from the pirates on December 28,2009, after air-dropping sacks containing US $ four million on board the ship from a helicopter. The pirates collected the money and left the hijacked ship, which is now reported to be on its way back home.
5. The Chinese Government has so far not told its people that it paid a ransom in order to get the ship and its crew back. The “China Daily” News merely told its readers that the ship had been “successfully rescued”.
6. Their embarrassing experience with this incident has brought home to the Chinese the limitations from which their Navy suffers. One of the lessons mentioned by their experts is that the Chinese Navy could not hope to be the equal of its US counterparts unless it had overseas bases in areas of concern. Another lesson is that their ships on anti-piracy patrol feel handicapped due to the absence of a base in the area being patrolled by them where they can go periodically for refueling and re-stocking and for rest and recreation for their crew.
7. In an interview over the State radio on December 28,2009, Rear Admiral Yin Zhou, an expert of the Chinese Navy, said: “"I believe that a relatively stable, relatively solid base for resupply and repair would be appropriate. Such a base would provide a steady source of fresh food, along with facilities for communications, ship repair and recreation. Any definite decision to establish such a base would have to be taken by the Communist Party. Supplying and maintaining the ( Chinese) fleet off Somalia was challenging without such a base. Other nations were unlikely to object.”
8. He did not say where such a base could be located, if the Party ultimately accepted his suggestion. China already has two options before it---- Gwadar on the Balochistan coast in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. It has already constructed for Pakistan a commercial port at Gwadar, which is now being managed by a Singapore company. During a second stage, it is proposed to construct a naval base for the Pakistan Navy there. This could serve the purposes of the Chinese Navy too. The Chinese are helping Sri Lanka in the construction of a modern commercial port at Hambantota. There is presently no talk of a naval base there.
9. Pakistan would be only too happy to respond positively to any Chinese request for naval base facilities at Gwadar. The only inhibiting factor for China would be the bad security situation in the area due to the ongoing Baloch freedom struggle. From the point of view of security, Hambantota could be ideal for the Chinese, but would the Sri Lankan Government agree to any such proposal if it comes from Beijing? (31-12-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
SECTARIAN TERRORISM IN PAKISTAN DURING 2009
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.599
B.RAMAN
The year 2009 ended with two attacks by suicide bombers on processions to mark the culmination of the period of Muhurrum observed by the Shias of Pakistan. Fifteen persons were killed in the first incident at Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), on December 27. Forty-two were killed in the second incident in Karachi on December 28.
2. Sectarian clashes between Shias and Sunnis occur frequently in the Northern Areas consisting of Gilgit and Baltistan, where the Shias constitute the largest single sectarian group. To counter the growing influence of Shia sectarian organizations such as the Tehrik-e-Jaffria Pakistan and its militant wing called the Sipah Mohammad, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had over the years encouraged and helped Sunni extremist organizations such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) to set up a presence in the Gilgit area. This has led to periodic clashes between the two communities.
3. The POK itself, where the Shias are in a very small minority, was till now relatively free of anti-Shia incidents. The attack on a Shia procession in Muzzafarabad has, therefore, comes as a surprise. One possible reason could be the anger of the Sunni organizations of the POK over the recent decision of the Government of President Asif Ali Zardari to upgrade the political status of the Northern Areas in order to make it a de facto separate province without giving it the de jure status of a separate province. This amounted to a rejection of the long-standing demand of the Sunni leaders and political organizations of the POK to merge the Northern Areas with the POK. The Shias were strongly opposed to it. It is quite likely that the attack on the Muhurrum procession at Muzzafarabad was in retaliation for this decision of the Zardari Govt to virtually recognize the separate status of the Kashmiri Shias in Pakistan.
4. Anti-Shia incidents and targeted assassinations of Shia professionals in Karachi have been a frequent occurrence ever since Pakistan became independent in 1947. When Pervez Musharraf was in power, a large number of Shia doctors were killed in Karachi by Sunni extremists. Sindh and the Baloch majority districts of Balochistan are the only areas of Pakistan where the extremist ideology of the Deobandi-Wahabi sects have spread the least. The majority of the Sunnis in these areas follow even today the more tolerant Barelvi sect and have kept away from the Deobandi/Wahabi groups. The Barelvis have more cordial relations with the Shias than the Deobandis and Wahabis. This has made both the Barelvi Sunnis and Shias of these areas the targets of periodic attacks by organizations such as the LEJ and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). In 2006, the entire leadership of the Barelvi Sunni Tehrik in Karachi was wiped out in a terrorist attack by a Sunni suicide bomber.
5. Since 2007, the sectarian strife in Pakistan has been rendered more virulent by certain developments such as the following:
(a). In an interview disseminated in December,2007, by As-Sahab, the propaganda wing of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, its No.2, accused Iran of stabbing the Ummah in the back by allegedly colluding in the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iran. He said: “Iran stabbed the Muslim Ummah in the back and recorded a historic mark of shame against itself and against the Shites who follow it. The effects of this stab will stay in the memory of Muslims for a long time to come.”
(b). Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban suspected that the Pashtun Shias of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and the Dera Ismail Khan area of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) were colluding with the Americans in their operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They nursed similar suspicion against the Hazaras of Balochistan, who are Shias.
6.This resulted in Al Qaeda joining hands with the Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi organizations such as the LEJ and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) in attacking the Shias in the Kurram Agency of the FATA, where there are a large number of Shias and in the Dera Ismail Khan area of the NWFP.
7.The "Post", a Pakistani daily published from Peshawar,, reported as follows on December 31, 2007: "A delegation of notables from Kurram Agency has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf and Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani to stop the ongoing violence that has resulted in the loss of more than 100 lives and billions of rupees' worth of property. Haji Latif Hussain, President, Kurram Welfare Society, said the residents had been fighting the Taliban infiltrating from Afghanistan, North and South Waziristan and Al Qaeda operatives in the area who were thousands in number. He added over 70 people had been killed in furious clashes during the last 45 days. "The armed forces of Pakistan are playing the role of silent spectators instead of countering the attackers and protecting the residents under attack," he said. Latif Hussain said Al Qaeda fighters had occupied various areas of Kurram Agency and blocked the main road from Peshawar to Parachinar, resulting in a shortage of basic commodities. "There is an acute shortage of medicines, food, electricity and water," he added. The Kurram Welfare Society President said that as a result of the war, hundreds of women, children and the elderly had taken refuge in Peshawar while over a hundred students who were unable to move to their native areas because of the war had been forced to stay in Islamabad. Mehdi Ghulam from Kurram Agency said Alizai, Balyamin, Tangi Amro Khail, Arravali, Santikot, Singk, Burqi and Pevar were under Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks while dozens of injured were waiting for their death in the Parachinar hospital owing to a shortage of medicines.”
8.Muhammad Hussain Turi, Secretary of the Ittehad-e-Ummat Committee, said: "We are not only fighting for our lives and the area but also for the sovereignty of our country. We are fighting the international war against terrorism on our borders by shedding our blood but, instead of helping us, everyone is creating trouble for us by trying to stop us from defending our area." Turi appealed to the President and the Chief of the Army Staff to issue a directive to the army to intervene to save the lives of thousands of people. The Turis of Kurram, like the Hazaras of Afghanistan and Balochistan, are Shias.
9.Gull Ishrat, member, Kurram Welfare Society, said: "We are fighting the battle of the Pakistan Army against those who managed to escape from Swat, Bajaur, North and South Waziristan and Afghanistan and are involved in furious attacks on the Pakistan Army."
10.The clashes picked up fresh intensity since the beginning of July, 2008, reportedly resulting in over a thousand fatalities on both sides. The Shia leaders of Karachi strongly protested against the failure of the Pakistan Government and Army to protect the Shias in these areas. On September 1,2008, the Shias of Karachi held a large demonstration to protest against the attacks on the Shias of Kurram and Dera Ismail Khan by Al Qaeda and the Taliban and threatened to take out a long march of the Shias from Karachi to these areas if the Govt. did not stop the atrocities on the Shias in those areas by Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the LEJ.
11.This made matters worse for the Shias all over Pakistan and particularly in the Pashtun tribal belt with many murderous acts of terrorism against the Shias during 2009. Among the major acts of terrorism against the Shias during 2009 before the Muzzafarabad and Karachi attacks were the following:
• January 4 : At least seven people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the Government Polytechnic College near a Shia imambargah on Multan Road in Dera Ismail Khan.
• January 26 : At least five people were killed in a bomb blast in Dera Ismail Khan. Hussain Ali Yousafi, Chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, was shot dead in Quetta.
• February 5: 32 people were killed when a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up amidst a crowd of Shia worshippers outside a Dera Ghazi Khan mosque. Police said the blast targeted dozens of people converging on the Shia Al Hussainia Mosque after dark, shortly before a religious gathering.
• February 20: A curfew was imposed in Dera Ismail Khan and the army called in to quell riots immediately after a suicide bomber killed at least 30 Shias and injured another 157 who were attending a funeral in southern Dera Ismail Khan district. Witnesses said police ran away when gunfire broke out after the blast at the funeral of Shia leader Sher Zaman – who was gunned down a day earlier.
• March 2: A suicide bomber killed five and injured 12 people at a Shia girls’ religious school in the Pishin District of Balochistan.
• March 5: One person was killed and 19 others injured when a hand-grenade hurled by unidentified elements at the worshippers exploded in the Ameer Hamza mosque in Dera Ismail Khan. In Peshawar, unidentified elements blew up the mausoleum of the most-revered mystic poet of the Pakhtun land Rahman Baba.
• March 27: 76 persons were killed and over 100 injured in an apparent suicide attack on a mosque on the Peshawar-Torkham Highway in Jamrud in the Khyber Agency.
• April 5 : A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shia religious gathering in an Imambargah in Chakwal , killing at least 22 people and wounding 60.
• June 5: At least 40 people were killed and another 70 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in Hayagai Sharqai village in the Upper Dir District.
• June 12: A leading Sunni Barelvi cleric, Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi with anti-Taliban views, and six others were killed by a suicide bomber at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa on the Allama Iqbal Road in the Garhi Shahu area of Lahore. In Nowshera, five worshippers were killed and 105 others injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden van into a mosque in the Cantonment area on the Grand Trunk Road. The TTP claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks in Lahore and Nowshera.
• December 18: A suicide bombing occurred just outside a mosque in Taimergara in Lower Dir District.At least 12 people, most of them policemen, were killed and 28 wounded.
12. Jihadi terrorism in Pakistan was the outgrowth of anti-Shia terrorism encouraged by Zia ul-Haq after the success of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 in order to intimidate the Shias. Most of the jihadi terrorist leaders of Pakistan occupying important positions in the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the JEM had initially been members of the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the LEJ. After it captured power in Kabul in 1996 with the help of the ISI, the Afghan Taliban under Mulla Mohammad Omar indulged in a wave of violence against the Hazaras. The Shura of the Afghan Taliban, which now operates from the Pashtun majority areas of Balochistan, including Quetta, its capital, has been trying to intimidate the Hazaras of Balochistan.
13.The Mohajir Shias of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh are largely migrants from India’s Uttar Pradesh, the then undivided province of Bombay and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and their descendants. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the ISI tried to weaken the leadership of Altaf Hussain, the Mohajir leader, who now lives in exile in the UK, by making overtures to the Mohajir Shias, but when they remained loyal to Altaf the ISI instigated the Sunni extremist organizations to attack the Shias. When the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) did well in the elections of December 1988 after the death of Zia, the Army then headed by Gen.Mirza Aslam Beg and the ISI then headed by Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul opposed Benazir Bhutto from becoming the Prime Minister on the ground that her mother Nusrat Bhutto was a Shia. Ultimately, she became the Prime Minister on strong US backing.
14. The post-2007 escalation in anti-Shia violence has been due to Al Qaeda, the TTP and the LEJ, which is now allied with Al Qaeda. It is difficult to explain the Army’s silence and inaction in the face of this escalation. No campaign against jihadi terrorism in Pakistan can succeed unless anti-Shia terrorism is eliminated. Hardly any attention is paid to it by any Government----whether headed by the Army or by the political parties. (31-12-09)
( 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 )
B.RAMAN
The year 2009 ended with two attacks by suicide bombers on processions to mark the culmination of the period of Muhurrum observed by the Shias of Pakistan. Fifteen persons were killed in the first incident at Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), on December 27. Forty-two were killed in the second incident in Karachi on December 28.
2. Sectarian clashes between Shias and Sunnis occur frequently in the Northern Areas consisting of Gilgit and Baltistan, where the Shias constitute the largest single sectarian group. To counter the growing influence of Shia sectarian organizations such as the Tehrik-e-Jaffria Pakistan and its militant wing called the Sipah Mohammad, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had over the years encouraged and helped Sunni extremist organizations such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) to set up a presence in the Gilgit area. This has led to periodic clashes between the two communities.
3. The POK itself, where the Shias are in a very small minority, was till now relatively free of anti-Shia incidents. The attack on a Shia procession in Muzzafarabad has, therefore, comes as a surprise. One possible reason could be the anger of the Sunni organizations of the POK over the recent decision of the Government of President Asif Ali Zardari to upgrade the political status of the Northern Areas in order to make it a de facto separate province without giving it the de jure status of a separate province. This amounted to a rejection of the long-standing demand of the Sunni leaders and political organizations of the POK to merge the Northern Areas with the POK. The Shias were strongly opposed to it. It is quite likely that the attack on the Muhurrum procession at Muzzafarabad was in retaliation for this decision of the Zardari Govt to virtually recognize the separate status of the Kashmiri Shias in Pakistan.
4. Anti-Shia incidents and targeted assassinations of Shia professionals in Karachi have been a frequent occurrence ever since Pakistan became independent in 1947. When Pervez Musharraf was in power, a large number of Shia doctors were killed in Karachi by Sunni extremists. Sindh and the Baloch majority districts of Balochistan are the only areas of Pakistan where the extremist ideology of the Deobandi-Wahabi sects have spread the least. The majority of the Sunnis in these areas follow even today the more tolerant Barelvi sect and have kept away from the Deobandi/Wahabi groups. The Barelvis have more cordial relations with the Shias than the Deobandis and Wahabis. This has made both the Barelvi Sunnis and Shias of these areas the targets of periodic attacks by organizations such as the LEJ and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). In 2006, the entire leadership of the Barelvi Sunni Tehrik in Karachi was wiped out in a terrorist attack by a Sunni suicide bomber.
5. Since 2007, the sectarian strife in Pakistan has been rendered more virulent by certain developments such as the following:
(a). In an interview disseminated in December,2007, by As-Sahab, the propaganda wing of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, its No.2, accused Iran of stabbing the Ummah in the back by allegedly colluding in the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iran. He said: “Iran stabbed the Muslim Ummah in the back and recorded a historic mark of shame against itself and against the Shites who follow it. The effects of this stab will stay in the memory of Muslims for a long time to come.”
(b). Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban suspected that the Pashtun Shias of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and the Dera Ismail Khan area of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) were colluding with the Americans in their operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They nursed similar suspicion against the Hazaras of Balochistan, who are Shias.
6.This resulted in Al Qaeda joining hands with the Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi organizations such as the LEJ and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) in attacking the Shias in the Kurram Agency of the FATA, where there are a large number of Shias and in the Dera Ismail Khan area of the NWFP.
7.The "Post", a Pakistani daily published from Peshawar,, reported as follows on December 31, 2007: "A delegation of notables from Kurram Agency has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf and Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani to stop the ongoing violence that has resulted in the loss of more than 100 lives and billions of rupees' worth of property. Haji Latif Hussain, President, Kurram Welfare Society, said the residents had been fighting the Taliban infiltrating from Afghanistan, North and South Waziristan and Al Qaeda operatives in the area who were thousands in number. He added over 70 people had been killed in furious clashes during the last 45 days. "The armed forces of Pakistan are playing the role of silent spectators instead of countering the attackers and protecting the residents under attack," he said. Latif Hussain said Al Qaeda fighters had occupied various areas of Kurram Agency and blocked the main road from Peshawar to Parachinar, resulting in a shortage of basic commodities. "There is an acute shortage of medicines, food, electricity and water," he added. The Kurram Welfare Society President said that as a result of the war, hundreds of women, children and the elderly had taken refuge in Peshawar while over a hundred students who were unable to move to their native areas because of the war had been forced to stay in Islamabad. Mehdi Ghulam from Kurram Agency said Alizai, Balyamin, Tangi Amro Khail, Arravali, Santikot, Singk, Burqi and Pevar were under Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks while dozens of injured were waiting for their death in the Parachinar hospital owing to a shortage of medicines.”
8.Muhammad Hussain Turi, Secretary of the Ittehad-e-Ummat Committee, said: "We are not only fighting for our lives and the area but also for the sovereignty of our country. We are fighting the international war against terrorism on our borders by shedding our blood but, instead of helping us, everyone is creating trouble for us by trying to stop us from defending our area." Turi appealed to the President and the Chief of the Army Staff to issue a directive to the army to intervene to save the lives of thousands of people. The Turis of Kurram, like the Hazaras of Afghanistan and Balochistan, are Shias.
9.Gull Ishrat, member, Kurram Welfare Society, said: "We are fighting the battle of the Pakistan Army against those who managed to escape from Swat, Bajaur, North and South Waziristan and Afghanistan and are involved in furious attacks on the Pakistan Army."
10.The clashes picked up fresh intensity since the beginning of July, 2008, reportedly resulting in over a thousand fatalities on both sides. The Shia leaders of Karachi strongly protested against the failure of the Pakistan Government and Army to protect the Shias in these areas. On September 1,2008, the Shias of Karachi held a large demonstration to protest against the attacks on the Shias of Kurram and Dera Ismail Khan by Al Qaeda and the Taliban and threatened to take out a long march of the Shias from Karachi to these areas if the Govt. did not stop the atrocities on the Shias in those areas by Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the LEJ.
11.This made matters worse for the Shias all over Pakistan and particularly in the Pashtun tribal belt with many murderous acts of terrorism against the Shias during 2009. Among the major acts of terrorism against the Shias during 2009 before the Muzzafarabad and Karachi attacks were the following:
• January 4 : At least seven people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the Government Polytechnic College near a Shia imambargah on Multan Road in Dera Ismail Khan.
• January 26 : At least five people were killed in a bomb blast in Dera Ismail Khan. Hussain Ali Yousafi, Chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, was shot dead in Quetta.
• February 5: 32 people were killed when a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up amidst a crowd of Shia worshippers outside a Dera Ghazi Khan mosque. Police said the blast targeted dozens of people converging on the Shia Al Hussainia Mosque after dark, shortly before a religious gathering.
• February 20: A curfew was imposed in Dera Ismail Khan and the army called in to quell riots immediately after a suicide bomber killed at least 30 Shias and injured another 157 who were attending a funeral in southern Dera Ismail Khan district. Witnesses said police ran away when gunfire broke out after the blast at the funeral of Shia leader Sher Zaman – who was gunned down a day earlier.
• March 2: A suicide bomber killed five and injured 12 people at a Shia girls’ religious school in the Pishin District of Balochistan.
• March 5: One person was killed and 19 others injured when a hand-grenade hurled by unidentified elements at the worshippers exploded in the Ameer Hamza mosque in Dera Ismail Khan. In Peshawar, unidentified elements blew up the mausoleum of the most-revered mystic poet of the Pakhtun land Rahman Baba.
• March 27: 76 persons were killed and over 100 injured in an apparent suicide attack on a mosque on the Peshawar-Torkham Highway in Jamrud in the Khyber Agency.
• April 5 : A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shia religious gathering in an Imambargah in Chakwal , killing at least 22 people and wounding 60.
• June 5: At least 40 people were killed and another 70 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in Hayagai Sharqai village in the Upper Dir District.
• June 12: A leading Sunni Barelvi cleric, Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi with anti-Taliban views, and six others were killed by a suicide bomber at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa on the Allama Iqbal Road in the Garhi Shahu area of Lahore. In Nowshera, five worshippers were killed and 105 others injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden van into a mosque in the Cantonment area on the Grand Trunk Road. The TTP claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks in Lahore and Nowshera.
• December 18: A suicide bombing occurred just outside a mosque in Taimergara in Lower Dir District.At least 12 people, most of them policemen, were killed and 28 wounded.
12. Jihadi terrorism in Pakistan was the outgrowth of anti-Shia terrorism encouraged by Zia ul-Haq after the success of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 in order to intimidate the Shias. Most of the jihadi terrorist leaders of Pakistan occupying important positions in the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the JEM had initially been members of the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the LEJ. After it captured power in Kabul in 1996 with the help of the ISI, the Afghan Taliban under Mulla Mohammad Omar indulged in a wave of violence against the Hazaras. The Shura of the Afghan Taliban, which now operates from the Pashtun majority areas of Balochistan, including Quetta, its capital, has been trying to intimidate the Hazaras of Balochistan.
13.The Mohajir Shias of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh are largely migrants from India’s Uttar Pradesh, the then undivided province of Bombay and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and their descendants. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the ISI tried to weaken the leadership of Altaf Hussain, the Mohajir leader, who now lives in exile in the UK, by making overtures to the Mohajir Shias, but when they remained loyal to Altaf the ISI instigated the Sunni extremist organizations to attack the Shias. When the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) did well in the elections of December 1988 after the death of Zia, the Army then headed by Gen.Mirza Aslam Beg and the ISI then headed by Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul opposed Benazir Bhutto from becoming the Prime Minister on the ground that her mother Nusrat Bhutto was a Shia. Ultimately, she became the Prime Minister on strong US backing.
14. The post-2007 escalation in anti-Shia violence has been due to Al Qaeda, the TTP and the LEJ, which is now allied with Al Qaeda. It is difficult to explain the Army’s silence and inaction in the face of this escalation. No campaign against jihadi terrorism in Pakistan can succeed unless anti-Shia terrorism is eliminated. Hardly any attention is paid to it by any Government----whether headed by the Army or by the political parties. (31-12-09)
( 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 )
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
COUNTER-TERRORISM: LESSONS FROM DETROIT
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.598
B.RAMAN
One has to await the findings of the enquiries ordered by President Barack Obama and the hearings to be held next month by the Congressional Oversight Committees on the human, systemic and technological failures which enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, a 23-year-old Al Qaeda trained Nigerian student, to get into a flight of the North-West Airlines of the US at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam with a concealed explosive device and unsuccessfully try to blow it up as it was about to land at Detroit on December 25,2009.
2. The human and systemic failures resulted in his being allowed to board the aircraft at the Schiphol airport despite the fact that his father, a reputed banker of Nigeria, who had reportedly come to know of his son’s presence in Yemen since August,2009, had met separately an official of the US State Department and of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) posted in Nigeria and shared with them his concerns over the religious radicalisation of his son. However, he apparently did not tell them that his son was in Yemen. Had he done so, they might have possibly shown greater concern over the information than they seem to have done.
3. The officers of the State Department and the CIA did what was expected of them. It has been reported that the State Department official immediately conveyed the information to his headquarters in Washington DC and the CIA officer to his headquarters . Both the headquarters passed the information on to the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) under the Director, National Intelligence.
4. While the information conveyed by the father of the Nigerian was thus promptly shared by everyone who was in receipt of it with all those responsible for counter-terrorism in Washington DC, the failure still occurred because none of those in receipt of the information subjected it to an action-oriented analysis and assessment in order to decide what action was called for on that information. Did it call for the cancellation of a two-year visa issued to the student by the US Embassy in London in June 2008? Did it call for an advisory to the North-West Airlines and to the security authorities at the Schiphol airport not to let him board the flight and to subject him to a special physical security check?
5. It would appear that neither the State Department nor the CIA nor the NCTC posed these questions to each other and examined what follow-up action was called for. All they did was to add the information to their database of 550000 names of persons who had come to adverse notice but against whom the evidence was not strong enough to warrant non-issue or the cancellation of the visa and/or the denial of permission to board a flight to the US.
6. The lesson: Information alone serves only a limited purpose unless it is subjected to an action oriented analysis and assessment followed by joint action by all concerned. The absence of joint action oriented analysis and assessment of terrorism-related information was one of the major deficiencies in the US system pointed out by the National Commission which went into the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland. One of the reasons the NCTC was set up in 2004 was to address this deficiency. Despite the NCTC being in position for five years now, this deficiency has again come to notice.
7. The second lesson relates to the need for proper scrutiny of a visa application. This has been repeatedly stressed by counter-terrorism experts since 9/11. Despite this, one keeps coming across instances of poor scrutiny. The poor scrutiny of the visa applications of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) by the Indian Consulate-General in Chicago enabled them to obtain a visa for coming to India and prepare the ground for the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. Similarly, a poor scrutiny of the visa application of Abdulmuttalab by the US visa officer would appear to have resulted in his obtaining a US visa despite his reputation as someone sympathetic to the Taliban. Around the same time, he had applied to the British for a renewal of his student visa to enable him to continue studying in the UK. The British visa officer, who scrutinised his application, immediately noticed that he had given a false particular about his educational institution and rejected his request.
8. The third lesson relates to the inadequacies of the technological means presently available to the physical security officials which come in the way of their detecting explosive devices concealed in private parts of the body. In the past, narcotics and gold smugglers used to evade detection by concealing the narcotics or gold in their private parts. Now, terrorists have started doing so with explosive devices. How to deal with this? This is a question needing urgent attention by physical security experts and scientists. ( 30-12-09)
( 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 )
B.RAMAN
One has to await the findings of the enquiries ordered by President Barack Obama and the hearings to be held next month by the Congressional Oversight Committees on the human, systemic and technological failures which enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, a 23-year-old Al Qaeda trained Nigerian student, to get into a flight of the North-West Airlines of the US at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam with a concealed explosive device and unsuccessfully try to blow it up as it was about to land at Detroit on December 25,2009.
2. The human and systemic failures resulted in his being allowed to board the aircraft at the Schiphol airport despite the fact that his father, a reputed banker of Nigeria, who had reportedly come to know of his son’s presence in Yemen since August,2009, had met separately an official of the US State Department and of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) posted in Nigeria and shared with them his concerns over the religious radicalisation of his son. However, he apparently did not tell them that his son was in Yemen. Had he done so, they might have possibly shown greater concern over the information than they seem to have done.
3. The officers of the State Department and the CIA did what was expected of them. It has been reported that the State Department official immediately conveyed the information to his headquarters in Washington DC and the CIA officer to his headquarters . Both the headquarters passed the information on to the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) under the Director, National Intelligence.
4. While the information conveyed by the father of the Nigerian was thus promptly shared by everyone who was in receipt of it with all those responsible for counter-terrorism in Washington DC, the failure still occurred because none of those in receipt of the information subjected it to an action-oriented analysis and assessment in order to decide what action was called for on that information. Did it call for the cancellation of a two-year visa issued to the student by the US Embassy in London in June 2008? Did it call for an advisory to the North-West Airlines and to the security authorities at the Schiphol airport not to let him board the flight and to subject him to a special physical security check?
5. It would appear that neither the State Department nor the CIA nor the NCTC posed these questions to each other and examined what follow-up action was called for. All they did was to add the information to their database of 550000 names of persons who had come to adverse notice but against whom the evidence was not strong enough to warrant non-issue or the cancellation of the visa and/or the denial of permission to board a flight to the US.
6. The lesson: Information alone serves only a limited purpose unless it is subjected to an action oriented analysis and assessment followed by joint action by all concerned. The absence of joint action oriented analysis and assessment of terrorism-related information was one of the major deficiencies in the US system pointed out by the National Commission which went into the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland. One of the reasons the NCTC was set up in 2004 was to address this deficiency. Despite the NCTC being in position for five years now, this deficiency has again come to notice.
7. The second lesson relates to the need for proper scrutiny of a visa application. This has been repeatedly stressed by counter-terrorism experts since 9/11. Despite this, one keeps coming across instances of poor scrutiny. The poor scrutiny of the visa applications of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) by the Indian Consulate-General in Chicago enabled them to obtain a visa for coming to India and prepare the ground for the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. Similarly, a poor scrutiny of the visa application of Abdulmuttalab by the US visa officer would appear to have resulted in his obtaining a US visa despite his reputation as someone sympathetic to the Taliban. Around the same time, he had applied to the British for a renewal of his student visa to enable him to continue studying in the UK. The British visa officer, who scrutinised his application, immediately noticed that he had given a false particular about his educational institution and rejected his request.
8. The third lesson relates to the inadequacies of the technological means presently available to the physical security officials which come in the way of their detecting explosive devices concealed in private parts of the body. In the past, narcotics and gold smugglers used to evade detection by concealing the narcotics or gold in their private parts. Now, terrorists have started doing so with explosive devices. How to deal with this? This is a question needing urgent attention by physical security experts and scientists. ( 30-12-09)
( 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 )
Monday, December 28, 2009
OBAMA: AL QAEDA COMES HOME CALLING
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO. 597
B.RAMAN
According to the NEFA Foundation of the US, a non-Governmental organization which closely monitors the activities of Al Qaeda, “Al-Qaida's network in Yemen (otherwise known as "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula") has issued an official communique claiming responsibility for the failed terrorist bomb plot targeting a Delta/Northwest airliner traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day. The communique included original photographs of would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab grinning in front of an Al-Qaida banner. The group acknowledged that the device had failed to properly detonate, but promised that it would "continue on this path until we achieve success." The statement also congratulated Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan and urged fellow Muslims to follow in his footsteps and kill American soldiers. “
2.According to the same Foundation, “Al-Qaida's network in Yemen has issued an official response to the airstrike earlier this week on a suspected Al-Qaida gathering in the region of Shabwah that reportedly killed up to 30 people, including a number of senior Al-Qaida operatives. The group threatened that it would not allow "the slaughter of Muslim women and children to pass without taking vengeance for them, Allah willing. We call upon all Yemeni tribes... and the people of the Arabian Peninsula to confront the crusaders and their clients in the Arabian Peninsula by attacking military bases, embassies, intelligence agents, and naval fleets occupying the waters of the Arabian Peninsula."
3.There is so far no reason to doubt the authenticity of these claims which show that the attempt to blow up a plane of the North-West Airlines on December 25,2009 as it was approaching to land at Detroit was part of a wider conspiracy of Al Qaeda orchestrated from Yemen and not the isolated act of an individual as sought to be made out by some officials of the Obama Administration. They also show that the massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas by Maj.Malik Nidal Hasan of the US Army on November 6,2009, was an act of Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism and not an act of irrational anger of a Muslim serving in the Army.
4.The Obama Administration now faces a two-front “war” against Al Qaeda---- one in the Af-Pak region and the other in the Yemen-Saudi axis. Its success or failure in this “war” will determine the security of Americans in their homeland in the months to come. These developments clearly show that Obama’s overtures to the Arabs through his Cairo address earlier this year and his marking his distance from the Israeli Government and the Jewish people since coming to office on January 20,2009, have had no impact on Al Qaeda, which is as determined as ever to make the Americans bleed. It is to be hoped that these developments will mark the beginning of the end of Obama’s illusions relating to how to counter jihadi terrorism. There is no soft option in dealing with Al Qaeda and its associates whether in the Af-Pak region or in other areas.
5.Al Qaeda’s jihad against the US started in 1992 in Yemen , from where bin Laden’s father had migrated to Saudi Arabia. That year, suspected members of Al Qaeda bombed a hotel in Aden used by U.S. troops going to Somalia, killing two civilians. This was followed by the October 2000, suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden that killed 17 U.S. sailors
6.In 2007, remnants of the Saudi branch of Al Qaeda, who had survived an anti-Al Qaeda offensive by the Saudi security forces in the wake of the post-2004 incidents involving Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, fled into Yemen and took sanctuary there just as Osama bin Laden and other remnants of Al Qaeda had fled in 2002 from Afghanistan into North Waziristan of Pakistan and took sanctuary there. This was followed by a car bomb attack on Spanish tourists killing eight of them and the assassination of two Belgians. During 2008, there was a failed mortar attack on the US Embassy in Sana’a. Later, 17 Yemenis, including seven terrorists, died in a twin car- explosion near the US Embassy.
7.Like the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, Yemen, with its mountainous terrain dotted with caves and other natural hide-outs, provides an ideal shelter and launching pad for Al Qaeda. The widespread poverty and the lack of facilities for modern education drive a large number of youth into the arms of Al Qaeda. It has nearly 4000 madrasas, which are the breeding ground of fundamentalist ideological beliefs. Yemen had contributed a large number of volunteers for the jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Many of them returned to Yemen after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops. Some of them were rehabilitated by being recruited to the Police and the security forces. Others took to a new jihad--- this time against the US and Israel. Those rehabilitated in the security forces and those, who had joined Al Qaeda, remained in contact with each other having fought shoulder to shoulder against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
8.In January, 2009,Al Qaeda announced the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of the organization under the leadership of Yemeni Nasir al-Wahishi, with a Saudi Said Ali al-Shihri, as his No.2. al-Shihri used to be detained by the US in its detention centre at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The group called itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
9. In March, 2009 a suicide bomber killed four South Korean tourists near the eastern town of Shibam. Another then targeted a convoy of South Korean security officials and the families of the victims while they were on their way to the airport of Sana’a, the capital. On March 28, 2009,four policemen died in clashes with persons believed to be from Al Qaeda in the south of the country.
10. The Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi, who is in charge of Security and Defence, told his parliament on March 23, 2009, that he suspected that Al Qaeda had managed to infiltrate the Yemeni security services. The suspicion that it had penetrated the security services was strengthened by the precision attack of Al Qaeda on the South Korean convoy to the airport. It was apparently aware of the proposed route of the convoy and the time at which it would be moving to the airport.
11. The merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al Qaeda and the activities of the AQAP rang the alarm bell in the US and Saudi Arabia. Barbara Starr, the CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, reported on February 5,2009, as follows:"There are strong indications of heightened activity in Yemen," one U.S. official told CNN. "There is real concern in the U.S. government that al Qaeda is trying to mount attacks in Yemen." The United States continues to worry about attacks against the US Embassy or other U.S. business interests in Yemen, the official said. But there are also growing concerns that a renewed al Qaeda network in Yemen could plan attacks against Saudi oil infrastructure or the massive cargo shipping operations that run through the immediate region -- potentially disrupting an already shaky world economy. The official said there is a flow of intelligence information in recent weeks backing up that assessment. "There are clear indications al Qaeda is placing emphasis on Yemen as a place to conduct operations and train operatives." The official said the United States has been watching closely and is seeing 'gatherings' of al Qaeda operatives and communication among them. There have also been signs of communication between al Qaeda in Yemen and the al Qaeda leadership believed to be hiding in Pakistan, an official said.”
12.The US authorities feared the emergence of a Yemeni Waziristan, which could become a new launching pad for Al Qaeda operations abroad. US concerns were multiplied by the fact that there were about 100 Yemenis among the terrorist suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay. If President Barack Obama closed down this centre, how to prevent these detenus from joining the AQAP?
13. John Brennan, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, visited Yemen in March,2009, to discuss this with President Ali Abdallah Saleh. General David Petraeus, commander of the US Central Command, told a Congressional hearing on April 1, 2009, that the inability of the Yemeni Government to exercise control over all of its territory was offering Al Qaeda a “safe haven in which to plan, organize and support terrorist operations.”
14. Saudi concerns over the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen and the activities of the AQAP were strengthened when a suicide terrorist deputed from Yemen with an explosive device reportedly concealed in the rectum area narrowly missed killing the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister in August 2009. The concealment technique worked, but he did not succeed in killing the Deputy Minister presumably because the remote control device was activated prematurely before he was within killing range of the Deputy Minister.
15.The Obama Administration’s plans to neutralize Al Qaeda set-up, with the co-operation of the Yemeni security authorities, took shape only after reports emerged in November,2009, that Major Nidal Malik Hasan of the US Army was in touch with Anwar Al Awlaki, an extremist cleric born in the US, who has been living in Yemen since 2002. Many regard Awlaki as an ideologue of Al Qaeda in Yemen.
16.The US authorities do not as yet regard the massacre of fellow soldiers by Major Hasan as an act of terrorism, but Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and others have cited the connection between Hasan and Al-Awlaki as proof that the Fort Hood shooting was a terrorist attack. Their suspicions were strengthened by Al-Awlaki’s open approval of the act of Major Hasan. Al Jazeera quoted al-Awlaki as saying in an interview: “My support to the operation was because the operation that brother Nidal carried out was a courageous one, and I endeavored to explain my position regarding what happened because many Islamic organizations and preachers in the West condemned the operation.” While approving post-facto Major.Hasan’s action, he refrained from saying anything which might create a suspicion that he had prior knowledge of what the Major intended doing
17. While continuing to treat Major Hasan’s act as not amounting to terrorism, the Obama Administration decided to act against the camps of the AQAP in Yemen. There were two major air raids----supposedly by Yemeni planes, but actually by US aircraft------ which reportedly killed 30 members of Al Qaeda. Reports that some senior leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, including its No.1 and 2, might have been killed have not been confirmed so far. The second of these raids took place on December 24,2009, a day before the Detroit attempt and the first a week earlier.
18.There is no reason to believe, despite the claims of the AQAP, that the Detroit attempt was triggered off by these raids because according to the Nigerian authorities, the Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit itinerary of Abdulmutallab had been finalized and the tickets for the to and fro journey bought from the KLM office in Accra on December 16. This was before these air raids.
19.However, after the first of these raids, Al Qaeda was reported to have held a protest rally of its local supporters in Southern Yemen at which speeches were made threatening retaliation against the US . The speakers also reportedly said that their jihad was against the US and not against the Yemeni army.
20. My assessment on the basis of the available details is that the Detroit conspiracy involving the use of the Nigerian was planned by Al Qaeda much before the US decided to go into action against Al Qaeda in Yemen, that Abdulmuttalab was in Yemen between August and December,2009, for being trained and that Al Qaeda’s ability to attempt a repeat of the December 25 plan would depend on the availability of another volunteer with a valid visa for the US.
21.The concerns for the US authorities would be the possibility that Major Hasan and Abdulmuttalab could be the tips of an Al Qaeda iceberg and that unless they identify the rest of the iceberg and neutralize it, they cannot be certain of the security of their homeland. The interrogation of Abdulmuttalab should theoretically enable US officials to get information about other anti-US assets of Al Qaeda and its future plans against the US, but, unfortunately, the capture of senior Al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan in the past such as Abu Zubaidah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and others did not appear to have yielded any worthwhile information about the future targets and plans of Al Qaeda. My own impression is that they came out with a lot of details about the past, but hardly said anything or knew anything about the future. Al Qaeda’s restrictive security is quite strong. As a result, information regarding its future plans known to those captured is not very significant. (29-12-09)
( 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 )
B.RAMAN
According to the NEFA Foundation of the US, a non-Governmental organization which closely monitors the activities of Al Qaeda, “Al-Qaida's network in Yemen (otherwise known as "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula") has issued an official communique claiming responsibility for the failed terrorist bomb plot targeting a Delta/Northwest airliner traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day. The communique included original photographs of would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab grinning in front of an Al-Qaida banner. The group acknowledged that the device had failed to properly detonate, but promised that it would "continue on this path until we achieve success." The statement also congratulated Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan and urged fellow Muslims to follow in his footsteps and kill American soldiers. “
2.According to the same Foundation, “Al-Qaida's network in Yemen has issued an official response to the airstrike earlier this week on a suspected Al-Qaida gathering in the region of Shabwah that reportedly killed up to 30 people, including a number of senior Al-Qaida operatives. The group threatened that it would not allow "the slaughter of Muslim women and children to pass without taking vengeance for them, Allah willing. We call upon all Yemeni tribes... and the people of the Arabian Peninsula to confront the crusaders and their clients in the Arabian Peninsula by attacking military bases, embassies, intelligence agents, and naval fleets occupying the waters of the Arabian Peninsula."
3.There is so far no reason to doubt the authenticity of these claims which show that the attempt to blow up a plane of the North-West Airlines on December 25,2009 as it was approaching to land at Detroit was part of a wider conspiracy of Al Qaeda orchestrated from Yemen and not the isolated act of an individual as sought to be made out by some officials of the Obama Administration. They also show that the massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas by Maj.Malik Nidal Hasan of the US Army on November 6,2009, was an act of Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism and not an act of irrational anger of a Muslim serving in the Army.
4.The Obama Administration now faces a two-front “war” against Al Qaeda---- one in the Af-Pak region and the other in the Yemen-Saudi axis. Its success or failure in this “war” will determine the security of Americans in their homeland in the months to come. These developments clearly show that Obama’s overtures to the Arabs through his Cairo address earlier this year and his marking his distance from the Israeli Government and the Jewish people since coming to office on January 20,2009, have had no impact on Al Qaeda, which is as determined as ever to make the Americans bleed. It is to be hoped that these developments will mark the beginning of the end of Obama’s illusions relating to how to counter jihadi terrorism. There is no soft option in dealing with Al Qaeda and its associates whether in the Af-Pak region or in other areas.
5.Al Qaeda’s jihad against the US started in 1992 in Yemen , from where bin Laden’s father had migrated to Saudi Arabia. That year, suspected members of Al Qaeda bombed a hotel in Aden used by U.S. troops going to Somalia, killing two civilians. This was followed by the October 2000, suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden that killed 17 U.S. sailors
6.In 2007, remnants of the Saudi branch of Al Qaeda, who had survived an anti-Al Qaeda offensive by the Saudi security forces in the wake of the post-2004 incidents involving Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, fled into Yemen and took sanctuary there just as Osama bin Laden and other remnants of Al Qaeda had fled in 2002 from Afghanistan into North Waziristan of Pakistan and took sanctuary there. This was followed by a car bomb attack on Spanish tourists killing eight of them and the assassination of two Belgians. During 2008, there was a failed mortar attack on the US Embassy in Sana’a. Later, 17 Yemenis, including seven terrorists, died in a twin car- explosion near the US Embassy.
7.Like the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, Yemen, with its mountainous terrain dotted with caves and other natural hide-outs, provides an ideal shelter and launching pad for Al Qaeda. The widespread poverty and the lack of facilities for modern education drive a large number of youth into the arms of Al Qaeda. It has nearly 4000 madrasas, which are the breeding ground of fundamentalist ideological beliefs. Yemen had contributed a large number of volunteers for the jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Many of them returned to Yemen after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops. Some of them were rehabilitated by being recruited to the Police and the security forces. Others took to a new jihad--- this time against the US and Israel. Those rehabilitated in the security forces and those, who had joined Al Qaeda, remained in contact with each other having fought shoulder to shoulder against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
8.In January, 2009,Al Qaeda announced the merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of the organization under the leadership of Yemeni Nasir al-Wahishi, with a Saudi Said Ali al-Shihri, as his No.2. al-Shihri used to be detained by the US in its detention centre at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The group called itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
9. In March, 2009 a suicide bomber killed four South Korean tourists near the eastern town of Shibam. Another then targeted a convoy of South Korean security officials and the families of the victims while they were on their way to the airport of Sana’a, the capital. On March 28, 2009,four policemen died in clashes with persons believed to be from Al Qaeda in the south of the country.
10. The Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi, who is in charge of Security and Defence, told his parliament on March 23, 2009, that he suspected that Al Qaeda had managed to infiltrate the Yemeni security services. The suspicion that it had penetrated the security services was strengthened by the precision attack of Al Qaeda on the South Korean convoy to the airport. It was apparently aware of the proposed route of the convoy and the time at which it would be moving to the airport.
11. The merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al Qaeda and the activities of the AQAP rang the alarm bell in the US and Saudi Arabia. Barbara Starr, the CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, reported on February 5,2009, as follows:"There are strong indications of heightened activity in Yemen," one U.S. official told CNN. "There is real concern in the U.S. government that al Qaeda is trying to mount attacks in Yemen." The United States continues to worry about attacks against the US Embassy or other U.S. business interests in Yemen, the official said. But there are also growing concerns that a renewed al Qaeda network in Yemen could plan attacks against Saudi oil infrastructure or the massive cargo shipping operations that run through the immediate region -- potentially disrupting an already shaky world economy. The official said there is a flow of intelligence information in recent weeks backing up that assessment. "There are clear indications al Qaeda is placing emphasis on Yemen as a place to conduct operations and train operatives." The official said the United States has been watching closely and is seeing 'gatherings' of al Qaeda operatives and communication among them. There have also been signs of communication between al Qaeda in Yemen and the al Qaeda leadership believed to be hiding in Pakistan, an official said.”
12.The US authorities feared the emergence of a Yemeni Waziristan, which could become a new launching pad for Al Qaeda operations abroad. US concerns were multiplied by the fact that there were about 100 Yemenis among the terrorist suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay. If President Barack Obama closed down this centre, how to prevent these detenus from joining the AQAP?
13. John Brennan, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, visited Yemen in March,2009, to discuss this with President Ali Abdallah Saleh. General David Petraeus, commander of the US Central Command, told a Congressional hearing on April 1, 2009, that the inability of the Yemeni Government to exercise control over all of its territory was offering Al Qaeda a “safe haven in which to plan, organize and support terrorist operations.”
14. Saudi concerns over the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen and the activities of the AQAP were strengthened when a suicide terrorist deputed from Yemen with an explosive device reportedly concealed in the rectum area narrowly missed killing the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister in August 2009. The concealment technique worked, but he did not succeed in killing the Deputy Minister presumably because the remote control device was activated prematurely before he was within killing range of the Deputy Minister.
15.The Obama Administration’s plans to neutralize Al Qaeda set-up, with the co-operation of the Yemeni security authorities, took shape only after reports emerged in November,2009, that Major Nidal Malik Hasan of the US Army was in touch with Anwar Al Awlaki, an extremist cleric born in the US, who has been living in Yemen since 2002. Many regard Awlaki as an ideologue of Al Qaeda in Yemen.
16.The US authorities do not as yet regard the massacre of fellow soldiers by Major Hasan as an act of terrorism, but Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and others have cited the connection between Hasan and Al-Awlaki as proof that the Fort Hood shooting was a terrorist attack. Their suspicions were strengthened by Al-Awlaki’s open approval of the act of Major Hasan. Al Jazeera quoted al-Awlaki as saying in an interview: “My support to the operation was because the operation that brother Nidal carried out was a courageous one, and I endeavored to explain my position regarding what happened because many Islamic organizations and preachers in the West condemned the operation.” While approving post-facto Major.Hasan’s action, he refrained from saying anything which might create a suspicion that he had prior knowledge of what the Major intended doing
17. While continuing to treat Major Hasan’s act as not amounting to terrorism, the Obama Administration decided to act against the camps of the AQAP in Yemen. There were two major air raids----supposedly by Yemeni planes, but actually by US aircraft------ which reportedly killed 30 members of Al Qaeda. Reports that some senior leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, including its No.1 and 2, might have been killed have not been confirmed so far. The second of these raids took place on December 24,2009, a day before the Detroit attempt and the first a week earlier.
18.There is no reason to believe, despite the claims of the AQAP, that the Detroit attempt was triggered off by these raids because according to the Nigerian authorities, the Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit itinerary of Abdulmutallab had been finalized and the tickets for the to and fro journey bought from the KLM office in Accra on December 16. This was before these air raids.
19.However, after the first of these raids, Al Qaeda was reported to have held a protest rally of its local supporters in Southern Yemen at which speeches were made threatening retaliation against the US . The speakers also reportedly said that their jihad was against the US and not against the Yemeni army.
20. My assessment on the basis of the available details is that the Detroit conspiracy involving the use of the Nigerian was planned by Al Qaeda much before the US decided to go into action against Al Qaeda in Yemen, that Abdulmuttalab was in Yemen between August and December,2009, for being trained and that Al Qaeda’s ability to attempt a repeat of the December 25 plan would depend on the availability of another volunteer with a valid visa for the US.
21.The concerns for the US authorities would be the possibility that Major Hasan and Abdulmuttalab could be the tips of an Al Qaeda iceberg and that unless they identify the rest of the iceberg and neutralize it, they cannot be certain of the security of their homeland. The interrogation of Abdulmuttalab should theoretically enable US officials to get information about other anti-US assets of Al Qaeda and its future plans against the US, but, unfortunately, the capture of senior Al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan in the past such as Abu Zubaidah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and others did not appear to have yielded any worthwhile information about the future targets and plans of Al Qaeda. My own impression is that they came out with a lot of details about the past, but hardly said anything or knew anything about the future. Al Qaeda’s restrictive security is quite strong. As a result, information regarding its future plans known to those captured is not very significant. (29-12-09)
( 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 )
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