India’s Fragile Security Ten Years After 9/11 Attacks

September 12, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Neelam Deo and Akshay Mathur*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

MUMBAI (IDN) – On September 12, 2001, a day after 9/11, the Times of India published a story titled, ‘India hopes US will now pressurise Pak’. At the time, this relayed a common national sentiment – India may finally get the United States to become a close ally against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, and help India in eradicating terrorism.

Ten years hence, neither has the U.S. taken a position against Pakistan, nor has India prepared itself better to fight terrorism and insurgency on its home ground. A massive explosion at the Delhi High Court this week (September 7) left at least 14 dead and some 60 injured. It served as a horrific reminder that India continues to be at the receiving end of terrorism.

This is the third major terrorist attack in Delhi since 9/11, following the one on Parliament on December 2001 and another at the Sarojini Nagar Market in October 2005. Mumbai has seen similar attacks with the serial blasts in March 1993, train bombings in July 2006, the 26/11 attacks of November 2008 and coordinate attacks of July 2011. Many more such incidents have taken place across the country in smaller cities like Jaipur and Pune.

Yet, rather than designing and executing ways to secure our borders, we remain enamoured with the effects of 9/11 and anniversaries of attacks in London, Madrid, and elsewhere. The government’s response is the same – they had some intelligence, law enforcement was in a state of alert, but there was no actionable intelligence, and of course somewhere along the chain of command between the Home Minister and the constable on the street, our counter-terrorism strategy was never converted into skills or systems that would prove useful.

The usually communicative, media-friendly politicians have no comment to give, reflecting only their incapability or worse, indifference. The media gives it due importance for 24 hours, then in the absence of any new information from the government or the public, moves on to other news-worthy items.

While 9/11 did not get the U.S. to change their position, it did force them to change their rhetoric. Having become a victim of the international terror network, it no longer described India’s terrorism as a response to domestic events – the tearing down of the Babri Masjid, unresolved problems of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the Godhra outrage – all of which were used emphatically in the earlier decades.

Of course, a position against Pakistan is still unlikely given the reality of U.S. objectives in the region. But considering that the U.S. is leaving the Af-Pak region even more militant than before 2001 with direct implications for India, the refusal to acknowledge the role of the state in organizing terrorist incidents across the border is egregiously insulting.

Where India has had over 15 attacks in the last 5 years, most of which remain unresolved, the U.S. has managed to protect its homeland and not allow a single terrorist attack on its soil since 9/11. One planned for New York in 2010 was foiled successfully by the law enforcement agencies reflecting the swift and effective response by the anti-terrorism units.

The Washington Post reported last year that more than 1,200 hundred government organizations and almost 2,000 companies were working on programmes related to counter-intelligence, homeland security and intelligence in the U.S. These are mostly geared to preventing outsiders coming into the U.S. and undertaking terrorist attacks in pursuance of political objectives overseas.

Worse Off

Do we even need anything comparable when many of our incidents are perpetrated by our own people indoctrinated and trained usually in Pakistan? Even if by some miracle we were to attain such organizational structures, our poor coordination abilities would derive us no benefit.

That explains one part of our failure. We still seem to think that hi-tech gadgets, such as CCTV’s will somehow hide the lack of coordination and training that has seeped through our system. Our Home Minister is often in Washington and continues to look for coordination with the U.S.’s Homeland Security department. But imitating American-style security by purchasing sophisticated equipment won’t work without the security apparatus and training that goes with it.

The other part is the denial that terrorism has increasingly become a home-grown issue and that there is little political will to fight this battle across the three-tier legislative system of central, state and community governments. Groups such as the Indian Mujahideen and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) have become entrenched in the criminal and undercover terror network, and we don’t have a deep counter-intelligence team that can camouflage themselves within communities to pick up alerts at the design stage or swift teams that can foil attacks before the bombs go off.

The dangerous political polarity, a paralysed ruling coalition, a fractured opposition, a popular distaste for a corrupt polity and complicit bureaucracy, and a slowing economy, has handicapped any progress towards this issue. If the terrorists are more agile, sophisticated and meticulous in their planning now, and Indian forces remain under-trained, ill-equipped and tactical, then, unfortunately, we are simply worse off than we were in 2001 by sheer relativity.

The 9/11 attacks transformed our world too. The revenge invasion and devastation of Afghanistan and later Iraq changed our neighbourhood completely. An already hostile Pakistan became even more implacable with stepped-up military aid and political backing from Washington. Although now the West is coming to terms with the duplicity of Pakistan, it is still not able to get off that tiger. When the West leaves Afghanistan and Iraq, according to its own political timetable and as dictated by its economically straitened circumstances, India will have to deal with the consequences.

Statements Just Don’t Reassure

Are we prepared? Look at what’s around us: an economically weakened U.S. and EU but militarily aggressive NATO, a much-strengthened and aggressive China, a dangerously weakened and unstable Pakistan, the risk of the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and heightened Shia-Sunni strife in the Gulf. These are playing out simultaneously and close by.

As this article goes to print (on September 10), the National Integration Council is meeting for the 15th time since it was first established in 1962 by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to fight the evils of communalism, casteism, regionalism, linguism and narrow-mindedness. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s public statement that India must strengthen its investigative agencies and intelligence apparatus is clear. But with the dangerous developments in world affairs and lack of progress at home, his statements just don’t seem reassuring.

*Neelam Deo is Director, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, and former Ambassador, Denmark and Ivory Coast. Akshay Mathur is the Geo-economics Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai. This article first appeared on September 10 on http://www.gatewayhouse.in. [IDN-InDepthNews - September 11, 2011]

2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Asia, Featured, Geopolitics, Security, Terrorism Tagged With: , , ,

EXPLOSION IN OSLO

July 22, 2011 by

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 732

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B.RAMAN

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, a large bomb blast has hit near government headquarters in the Norwegian capital Oslo, killing at least one person. The offices of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were damaged extensively, but he was described by a government spokeswoman as safe.

2.Police said a number of people were injured in the city centre explosion. Television footage from the scene showed rubble and glass from shattered windows in the streets – smoke was rising from some buildings. The wreckage of at least one car was on one street.

3.All roads into the city centre have been closed, said national broadcaster NRK, and security officials evacuated people from the area, fearing another blast. "Police can confirm there were deaths and injuries following the explosion in the government quarter this afternoon," the police said in a statement.

4.Oistein Mjarum, head of communications for the Norwegian Red Cross, said  fires were burning in the  17-storey building housing the Prime Minister’s office. An NRK journalist, Ingunn Andersen, said the headquarters of tabloid newspaper VG had also been damaged.

5.A message of  Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s then No. 2, who has taken over as the head of Al Qaeda after OBL’s death on May 2,2011, in a US Commando attack at Abbottabad in Pakistan, broadcast by Al Jazeera on May 21, 2003, had called for reprisal attacks against the US and some of its allies   for occupying Iraq.

6. The message, inter alia, said: "O Muslims, take matters firmly against the embassies of America, England, Australia, and Norway and their interests, companies, and employees.  Burn the ground under their feet, as they should not enjoy your protection, safety, or security.  Expel those criminals out of your countries.  Do not allow the Americans, the British, the Australians, the Norwegians, and the other crusaders who killed your brothers in Iraq to live in your countries. Wreak havoc on them."

7. While the calls for attacks on the US, the UK and Australia were not a surprise, the call for reprisals against Norway was, since Norway was not one of the  allies of the US in Iraq. It was not clear why Zawahiri included Norway in the list.

8.The Norwegian police announced on July 8,2010, the arrest of three men suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda on charges of preparing terrorist attacks. One of them was a Norwegian citizen of Uighur origin. The other two were permanent residents in Norway of Uzbek and Iraqi-Kurdish origin. Two of them (the Uzbek and the Uighur) were reported to have been arrested in Norway and the third (Iraqi-Kurd with a permanent residence permit of Norway) in Germany.  The Norwegian police had been keeping them under surveillance for investigation for about a year. The arrests appeared to have been made even though the investigation had not yet been completed because of the leakage of the news about the investigation against them to the media. They apparently decided to arrest them before the media came out with the news.

9.  Media reports indicated that the arrested persons were suspected of involvement in plots for terrorist strikes in Norway and of having links with some terrorist suspects under investigation in the US and the UK. It was not clear whether the arrested belonged to Al Qaeda or its ally the Islamic Jihad Union , which has many Uzbek and Uighur members.

9.It is not clear whether the targeting of Norway has anything to do with its role in Afghanistan as a member of the NATO forces fighting against the Taliban.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com   . Twitter : @SORBONNE75)

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the permission of the original author or copyright holder.


Filed Under: Europe, Report, Security, Terrorism Tagged With: , , ,

LINKS BETWEEN HARKAT-UL-MUJAHIDEEN (HUM) & BIN LADEN/ AL QAEDA

June 26, 2011 by

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO 730

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B.RAMAN

The Harkut ul-Mujahideen (HuM), also known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), the Jamiat-ul-Ansar (JUA) and Al Faran, is reported to have denied a report published by the “New York Times” on June 24,2011, alleging that it had links with Osama bin Laden and was part of his Pakistan support network. According to the “NY Times”, investigations by the US authorities into a mobile phone used by bin Laden’s courier are said to have given rise to suspicion that OBL had contact with the HUM. The mobile set of the courier was reportedly recovered during the raid by US naval commandos into the house of OBL at Abbottabad in Pakistan on May 2.

2. The first evidence of links between Al Qaeda and the HUM came after the US Cruise missile attacks on suspected Al Qaeda camps in Afghan territory on August 20,1998, in reprisal for Al Qaeda’s truck-bombing outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam earlier that month. Many of the camps destroyed by the Cruise missiles, which ,the US thought, were run by Al Qaeda turned out to be those of the HUM. The HUM had apparently been permitted by Al Qaeda and the Taliban to locate its training camps in the same area in which Al Qaeda had set up its camps.

3. Addressing a press conference at Islamabad on August 22,1998, after the US bombing of the HUM training camps in Afghanistan, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, its then Amir, denied that bin Laden was indulging in terrorism and accused the US of killing 50 innocent civilians, including 15 Arabs.

4.He said that the camps bombed by the US in Afghan territory had actually been set up by the CIA during the Afghan war and claimed that these were being used by the HUM for giving education to the Afghans.  He denied that any training in terrorism was going on in those camps. He alleged that the Nawaz Sharif Government, which was then in power in Islamabad, was privy to the bombing and said that 40 Cruise missiles had struck three HUM camps in Afghan territory.  

5.He then warned: “ The USA has proved itself to be the world’s biggest terrorist by carrying out the attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan and I want to convey to the US leadership that we will take revenge for the attack.”

6. Addressing a meeting at the Karachi Press Club on August 23,1998, Azizur Rahman Danish, the then head of the Sindh branch of the HUM, warned: “The US air strikes have drawn a clear dividing line between the Muslim Ummah and non-believers and this is the beginning of a crusade. The USA will be paid back in the same coin.”

7.Addressing a press conference at Peshawar on August 25, 1998, Fazlur Rahman Khalil said that nine HUM members died in the US attack on its camps in the Khost area, of whom five were killed on the spot and the remaining succumbed to their injuries in Pakistani hospitals.   In addition, two Tajiks and four Arabs, two of them physically handicapped, were also killed.  According to him, the Cruise missiles destroyed four mosques, partially damaged another and burnt 200 copies of the Holy Quran kept in the camps.

8.He added: “The USA calls Osama a terrorist and President Clinton is claiming that all terrorist training camps had been destroyed in the air strikes.  Let me tell the Americans that not even one per cent of the so-called terrorist camps run by Osama have been destroyed.”

9.In another warning to the US on September 1,1998, Fazlur Rahman Khalil said: “The USA has struck us with Tomahawk Cruise missiles at only two places, but we will hit back at them everywhere in the world, wherever we find them.  We have started a holy war against the US and they will hardly find a tree to take shelter beneath it.”

10. Writing in the "Friday Times" (August 18-24,2000) of Lahore, Khalid Ahmed, the well-known Pakistani analyst, said:

"The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen formally announced itself as a new             organization in June 1996 in Muzaffarabad.  In January 2000, Masood Azhar of Harkat-ul Mujahideen was sprung from an Indian jail after the Kathmandu hijack.  Masood Azhar had gone into India through ‘proper channels’, as a journalist endorsed by Islamabad (that is, the ISI).  He was a follower of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founder of the anti-Iran and anti-Shia organization Sipah-e-Sahaba, who was killed  in 1990.

"After his release, Masood Azhar wished to revive the legacy of his master.  By this time Harkat had become a major Deobandi organization in Pakistan.  Its main strength remained the militants of Punjab who not long ago had been the militants of Sipah-e-Sahaba.

"His return, therefore, caused an upheaval which climaxed in a grand split in the Harkat.  The split was soon followed by the assassination of Maulana Yusuf Ludhianvi, a key figure in the Deobandi movement because of his status as a spiritual guide to two important Deobandi leaders, his Khalifas: Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI and Maulana Azam Tariq of Sipah-e-Sahaba.

"The split  in Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was caused by the militants in Punjab. Masood Azhar and his Punjabi following isolated the Harkat leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil.  The formation of Jaish-e-Muhammad as a new organization was announced, but Masood Azhar and Fazlur Rehman Khalil began to fight over the Harkat assets.

"On 19 March 2000, the two submitted to a hakam (arbitration) of  their elders.  Harkat was represented by Muhammad Farooq Kashmiri and Jaish was represented by Maulana Abdul Jabbar (a key figure in the Kathmandu hijack) on the pledge given that they would abide by the hakam. The verdict was given by three elders: Mufti Rasheed Ahmed of     Zarb-i-Momin Jihadi militia, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Binori  Town complex and Dr Sher Ali Shah of Waziristan.  The decision was that all offices of the Harkat, occupied by Jaish in Punjab, would be returned to the Harkat, which in turn would pay the Jaish Rs 40 lakh as its share of the division of assets.

"The implementation of the hakam, however, was not so smooth.  The vehicles and offices returned by Jaish to Harkat were in such bad repair that Harkat refused to accept them and thus also refused to pay the stipulated 40 lakhs.

"In Pakistan the Jaish emerged as the more  radical and more sectarian part of the Harkat because of its Sipah-e-Sahaba background.  Maulana Yusuf Ludhianvi, it is said, inclined to their creed more than to Harkat’s moderate view.  Mufti Shamzai seemed to vacillate between the two splinter groups, thus allowing the Harkat’s over-all leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil to be eclipsed.

"Finding himself thus isolated, Khalil is said to have gone to Osama bin Laden and made up some of his losses by getting from him 12 new double-cabin pick-up trucks to replace those ruined by the Jaish in Punjab.

11. Maulana  Fazlur Rahman Khalil is a founding member of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), subsequently renamed in 1997 as the Harkat-uk-Mujahideen (HUM) after the US designated the HUA as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in October,1997, and then re-named again as the Jamiat-ul-Ansar (JUA) after President  Pervez Musharraf banned the HUM on January 15,2002, under US pressure.

12.He was also a founding member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders  and the Jewish People formed in 1998.  Apart from its activities in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and other parts of India, the HUM was also active in training and arming the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front of Southern Philippines, the Rohingya Jihadi organisations of Myanmar, the Chechens and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Since 1995, it  was also  recruiting and training black Muslims from the US in its camps in Pakistani territory.

13.A wing of the HUM called HUM–Al Alami, meaning HUM-International, participated in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in Karachi in January-February,2002. The incident was master-minded by Omar Sheikh, who was one of those released by the Indian authorities in December,1999, following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by the HUM. The interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) of Al Qaeda by the US authorities reportedly brought out that while Omar Sheikh had orchestrated the kidnapping of Pearl, his killing was done by KSM. Thus, the HUM-Al Alami and Al Qaeda had jointly organised the kidnapping and murder of Pearl.

14. Since 2004, the Afghan authorities had been complaining to Pakistan that the terrorists of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s  Hizbe Islami, who had stepped up their attacks on Afghan and US troops in Afghan territory, were being trained in clandestine training camps  run by the JUA in Balochistan and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan under the supervision of Fazlur Rahman Khalil. The Pakistani authorities initially denied the allegations, but subsequently took Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil into custody when the Karzai Government shared with them a copy of the interrogation report  of one Sohail of the Taliban who had given details of the training camps run by Khalil, in one of which he (Sohail) was trained.

15.They released him after eight months in custody on the ground that there was no evidence against him warranting his further detention. His name again cropped up during the investigation of a case in California. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was  reported to have uncovered an Al Qaeda sleeper cell in Lodi , near Sacramento in California .  All of those  arrested in this connection —- one Hamid and his father Umer Hayat, Muhammed Adil Khan, Shabbir Ahmed Mohammed  and Khan’s son Hassan Adil – were Pakistanis or American nationals of Pakistani origin. Hamid admitted to have attended an Al Qaeda  training camp at a place called Tamal  near Rawalpindi in 2003-04.He gave the name of the in-charge of the training camp as Fazlur Rahman, which was then assessed as probably identical with Fazlur Rahman Khalil. It was reported that following the admission of Hamid, the FBI  requested the Pakistani authorities to arrest Khalil once again and hand him over to the FBI for interrogation. The Pakistani authorities claimed that Khalil had gone underground and was not traceable.

16.The "Daily Times" of Lahore reported as follows on  June 13, 2005:  ‘ Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, former chief of Jamiatul Ansar (JA), has gone into hiding after the arrest of Hamid Hayat and Umer Hayat who told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they received training from a Pakistani Al Qaeda camp allegedly run by Khalil. Security agencies have begun efforts to arrest Khalil after Hamid Hayat and Umer Hayat were arrested in Lodi, California. Sources said he (Khalil) was earlier released by security agencies after eight months’ detention. “Khalil was released on the condition that he separate himself from his militant activities but after this new development security agencies have resumed efforts for his arrest,” sources said. Khalil was arrested from his house by security agencies on May 20, 2004, but sources said security agencies found no evidence of his involvement in militant activities in Afghanistan."

17.The same paper reported further on September 22, 2005, as follows:   " Law enforcing agencies have pressed the leadership of the Herkatul Mujahideen cover-named Jamiatul Ansar to disclose the whereabouts of its former commander Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, Daily Times has learnt. Sources said the law enforcers were in touch with Farooq Kashmiri, a prominent figure at the Jamiatul Ansar, seeking the information about Khalil who went underground three months back. They said the agencies might re-arrest Khalil to investigate about his alleged links with the Taliban leadership. Farooq Kashmiri, who had been working with Khalil since the organisation set forth, had told the law enforcers that he was not aware of where Khalil was. The sources said Khalil had also contacted Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the opposition leader in the National Assembly, seeking his help to make a deal with the agencies. “Khalil approached the opposition leader following his name was echoed during the investigation of Hamid Hayat and Umer Hayat who were arrested in the US. Both of them were allegedly trained as militants at a camp run by Khalil in Rawalpindi,” the sources said. The US was pressurising Pakistan to enhance the scope of investigation into the terror acts, they said, and that Khalil wanted the opposition leader to broker a deal with the government. They said Khalil had sent a message to Maulana Fazlur Rehman that he was in crisis and needed his help, urging him to mediate with the government. They said that Maulana had also talked with the agencies on the matter and defended Khalil, saying that he was not involved in any terrorist activities in or outside the country."

18. Before the visit of then President George Bush to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan from March 1 to 3,2006, the Karzai Government had told the Pakistani authorities that fresh information received by them indicated that Khalil and his JUA continued to train the jihadi terrorists of the Taliban, the Hizbe Islami and the IMU. They requested for his arrest and handing over to them for interrogation. They also brought this information to the notice of President Bush, who subsequently brought it to the notice of Musharraf.

19. In its issue of March 30,2006, the "Daily Times" of Lahore  reported as follows:  " Six people on Tuesday evening picked up Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil, the former chief of banned militant group Harkatul Mujahideen, from Tarnol, thrashed him and dumped him on Fateh Jang road. They also severely beat up Abdur Rehman, Khalil’s driver , said Sultan Zia, the information secretary of the banned organisation. Golra police have registered an FIR against unidentified men. “Six unidentified people badly thrashed Maulana Khalil and his driver with rifle butts inflicting serious head injuries to them, Zia said. Maulana Kahlil left his residence along with his driver on Tuesday evening to attend a congregation at Tarnol, sources said. He made a stopover to offer Maghrib prayers near Tarnol railway crossing, where unidentified men put cloth over the heads of Khalil and his driver, tied them up with rope and took them to Fateh Jang road in a vehicle. Later, the men started beating them. Khalil was severely injured and received wounds on his head and other parts of his body, the sources added. They said at midnight on Tuesday, when Khalil returned to his senses, he made a phone call to his home."

20.After this incident, I had written as follows: “ It is suspected that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had itself instigated the attack on Khalil in order to have him killed to avoid handing him over to the FBI for interrogation. He seems to have survived the serious injuries sustained by him. The FBI should insist on his being immediately handed over to it so that it could have him flown out for medical treatment and interrogation.  He may be able to give them information not only about the training camps and the HUM’s sleeper cells in the US, but also about bin Laden.”

21.On the basis of information from well-placed Pakistani sources, I had reported as follows in INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.160 of December 5,2006:

“Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil,  of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), who is a close associate of Osama bin Laden and  who had disappeared from public circulation since March last, is back in circulation. He has been visiting mosques and madrasas controlled by the HUM in Pakistan and addressing religious congregations. He has been appealing to the Muslims to step up the jihad against the American and British forces in Iraq, against the NATO forces in Afghanistan and against the Indian security forces in India’s Jammu and Kashmir. He has been claiming that Osama bin Laden is hale and hearty and preparing another major terrorist strike in the US homeland. He has been calling for a united jihad against the NATO forces in Afghanistan under the leadership of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban.

“It is learnt from reliable sources that the Maulana was kept all these months in a safe house of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and was released on November 19, 2006.  According to the "Post", a daily of Peshawar, ( November 21, 2006), "with a new vigour, his followers plan to regroup themselves for helping their Afghan brothers and free the neighbouring Islamic State from the US-led NATO forces." With the HUM joining the Taliban, Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami and Al Qaeda, an intensification of acts of jihadi terrorism, including suicide terrorism, in Afghanistan is likely. The HUM is also expected to assist the Hizbul Mujahideen in J&K in stepping up acts of terrorism.”

25-6-11

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com .Twitter: @SORBONNE75  )

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the permission of the original author or copyright holder.


Filed Under: Asia, History, Politics, Report, Terrorism Tagged With: , , , , ,

AL-ZAWAHIRI: ADVOCATE OF GLOBAL JIHADI INTIFADA

June 16, 2011 by

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 728

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B. Raman

Six weeks after the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2,2011, Al Qaeda’s General Command has announced the appointment of Ayman al-Zawahiri, of Egypt, who was OBL’s No.2, as the new  head of Al Qaeda. A statement announcing his appointment was posted on a  website associated with Al Qaeda. It was attributed to the General Command. It said: "Sheikh Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God guide him, assumed responsibility as the group’s Amir [leader]". It vowed that under Zawahiri, Al Qaeda would pursue jihad  against the US and Israel "until all invading armies leave the land of Islam".

2. Earlier, on May 18,2011, quoting Pakistani security sources, Al Jazeera had reported that  Al Qaeda had appointed  Saif al-Adel, formerly of the Egyptian Army, as its interim leader and Mohammed Mustafa al-Yemeni as its operations chief .Al Jazeera had said: "According to the sources, the decision (on the appointments) was made at a meeting on May 10 on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

3.According to Al Jazeera, Adnan al-Khairi al-Masri was named as Al Qaeda’s general command head,  Mohammed Nasser al-Wahshi as its Africa chief, Mohammed Adam Khan, an Afghan, as in charge in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Fahd al-Iraqi as in charge of  the Afghan-Pakistani border region.

4. Since the earlier report had emanated from Pakistani sources there was some doubt about its reliability. The latest statement regarding the appointment of Zawahiri as the head was posted in one of the web sites used by Al Qaeda for such announcements and hence appears to be more authentic.

5. Saif al-Adel was said to have been a critic of OBL’s arbitrary ways of taking important operational decisions and had reportedly questioned the wisdom of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US Homeland since those strikes, according to him, enabled the US to mobilise the international community against Al Qaeda.

6. The latest statement of Al Qaeda regarding the appointment of Zawahiri is silent on the earlier appointments as announced by Al Jazeera on the basis of information provided by Pakistani sources.

7.Zawahiri has been advocating since February 12,2007, a global jihadi Intifada, which would cover all lands in the world, which rightfully belong to Islam.

8.However, he specifies certain areas, which he thinks should receive special attention first. Of these, he gives the topmost priority to Afghanistan and Iraq. He says the future of Islam and of the global Intifada itself will be decided in those countries. If they can defeat the Americans there, the jihadis’ victory in the rest of the lands will be assured. After mentioning these two countries, he mentions certain other areas specifically. He believes that the victory of the jihadis in these areas would also be crucial for the ultimate victory of Islam. These areas are Palestine, including Gaza, the Lebanon, Somalia, Algeria and Chechnya in Russia. He describes Somalia as the Southern garrison of Islam and Algeria as its Western garrison.

9. His past statements had included Jammu and Kashmir as among historic Muslim lands under occupation by non-Muslims and hence to be “liberated”. He had drawn the attention of the Pakistani people to the danger of Gen.Pervez Musharraf colluding with the Hindus if he was not removed from power. However, he had not spoken of the Muslims living in other parts of India outside J&K.

10.By Jihadi Intifada, he means a kind of struggle in which the role of motivated individual Muslims will become more important than that of organisations so that the weakening or collapse of an organisation does not result in a collapse of the Intifada. He wants the Intifada to acquire a momentum of its own as a result of the sacrifices of individual Muslims.

11.He said in his message of January 22, 2007: "Every Muslim today is directly responsible for defending Islam, Islam’s homeland and the Islamic Ummah and he is responsible for the efforts to liberate the Muslim captives foremost of whom is Sheikh Omar Abdl al-Rahman from the prisons of the crusaders and their helpers and we reaffirm to the families of the Guantanamo captives who are demonstrating these days in Cuba, that we –with God’s permission– have not and will not forget our captives and that their liberation is a debt on our necks and that the Americans must expect to pay the price for everything they have done to them."

12. In his past statements, he downplayed the importance of a central command and control in keeping the Intifada going. The motivation of individual Muslims was more important than any centralised command and control.

13.He also projects the Intifada as a mix of military and non-military struggles. He says in his message of December 20, 2006: "We must bear arms. And if we are unable to bear them, then we must support those who carry them. This support comes in many forms and guises, so we must exploit all Da’wah, student and union activities to back the Jihadi resistance……. The Muslim Ummah must exploit all methods of popular protest, like demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes, refusing to pay taxes, preventing cooperation with the security forces, refusing to provide the Crusaders with fuel, hitting traders who supply the Crusader forces, boycotting Crusader and Jewish products, and other ways of popular protest."

14. The importance of the role of individual Muslims has been re-emphasised in a video circulated by the propaganda wing of Al Qaeda on June 8,2011.This video is a collation of messages issued by Zawahiri, Adam Gadahn, the American convert to Islam, who heads the propaganda wing, Atiya Abdel Rahman (Libyan operations chief of Al Qaeda, who was allegedly a key aide to bin Laden when he was hiding in Abbottabad)and  Abu Laith Al-Libi.

15. In his message, Adam Gadahn , who spoke in English, said: “Muslims living in the US  are perfectly placed to play an important and decisive part in the jihad against the Zionists and Crusaders.” He told them how easy it was to buy automatic assault weapons at gun shows without any identification.

16. Hinting at a policy of targeted individual assassinations of important Governmental and non-Governmental leaders, he said: “It’s important that we weaken our cowardly enemies’ will to fight by targeting influential public figures in Crusader and Zionist government, industry and media.”

17.Zawahiri’s past statements highlighted his disenchantment with the PLO, Al Fatah and the Hamas. He asked the Palestinians to take over the responsibility for the Intifada in their own hands. He said in his  message of February 12, 2007: "The Muslims in the area should work for the establishment of an Islamic state in Palestine, instead of supporting an individual faction or political party. I’m not asking them to join HAMAS, Islamic Jihad or al-Qaida, but rather, I’m asking them to return to Islam, in order to fight for the establishment of an Islamic state over all of Palestine, and not for the establishment of a secularist state which will please America on crumbs of Palestine."

18.He wanted the Palestinians as well as the Muslims of the Lebanon to categorically reject all UN Resolutions and international agreements relating to these lands of Islam. He told the Lebanese people: "I ask my brothers in Islam and Jihad in Lebanon not to give in to Resolution 1701, nor accept the pushing back of the Lebanese border 30 kilometers, nor accept the presence of the international Crusader forces in the south as a barrier between them and Occupied Palestine, even if that resolution is agreed to by all official political forces licensed by the Lebanese government, on the basis of international balances and foreign connections." 

19.In a message of December 20, 2006, Zawahiri said: "Brothers in Islam and Jihad in Somalia: know that you are on the southern garrison of Islam, so don’t allow Islam to be attacked from your flank, and know that we are with you, and that the entire Muslim Ummah is with you. So don’t lose heart, or fall into despair, for you must dominate if you are true in faith. And know that you are fending off the same Crusade which is fighting your brothers in Islam in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. So be resolute, be patient and be optimistic, for by Allah beside whom there is no other god, even if your enemies possess thousands of tons of iron and explosives, in their chests lie the hearts of mice. So be severe against them like Muhammad was. "

20.He also said: "I also send my greetings and those of my brothers to our steadfast brothers in Algeria in the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the guards of Islam’s western garrison. I ask Allah to accept their sacrifices, perseverance and resoluteness, to send down on them His victory which He promised His believing worshippers, and to conquer with them His enemies, the Crusaders and secularist sons of France. And I give them the good news that the winds of victory are blowing, that the Ummah has risen up, and that the era of humiliation has come to a close. So stand firm."

21.His increased interest in Algeria could be attributed to his desire partly to bring about the rule of the Sharia in Algeria and partly to use Algeria as a rear base for spreading the Intifada to France, Spain and Portugal.  Al Qaeda and its International Islamic Front have been using the Afghanistan-Pakistan region as a rear base for their Jihadi Intifada against the US and the UK. It has not been possible to use it as a rear base against France, Spain and Portugal. They are hoping that an active Jihadi Intifada in Algeria will help in overcoming this deficiency.

22. In a reference to Chechnya, Zawahiri said in his message of December 20, 2006: "And I send my greetings and those of my brothers to the Chechen people, in Jihad against the Russian Crusade for 400 years. O sons of Imam Shamil, know that you are not alone in confronting the Crusade against Islam. You are at the throats of the Russians and their helpers, and we are at the throats of the Americans and Jews and their followers. So stand firm."

23. Under the ideological guidance of Zawahiri, Al Qaeda had also been calling  upon the Muslims of the world to follow the command of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban. It was part of his efforts to remove the impression that Wahabi Arabs were in the forefront of the Jihadi Intifada. He has been trying to emphasis that all Muslims are in the Intifada irrespective of their ethnic origin or nationality. He said in a  message of 2007: "Nationalists split the Muslim Ummah into Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Turks, Afghans and others, then split the Arabs into Egyptians, Moroccans, Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Saudis, Yemenis and others and thus provided the best possible service to the crusade invading the Islamic world and instead of the Ummah uniting to confront the colonialist campaign, as it previously united to face the crusade and Mongol invasions, the Ummah fell apart and fought itself." There was an attempt by Zawahiri to give Mulla Omar an iconic status as a non-Arab commander of the Jihadi Intifada. (16-6-11)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

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Al-Zawahiri Named New Al-Qaeda Chief

June 16, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Correspondents*

DOHA, Jun 16, 2011 (IPS/Al-Jazeera) – Al-Qaeda has named Ayman al-Zawahiri as its new chief following the killing of Osama bin Laden, the group has said in a statement issued in the name of the group’s general command.

"The general command of al-Qaeda announces, after consultations, the appointment of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri as head of the group," the statement, posted online on Thursday, said.

US special forces killed bin Laden in a raid on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

Al-Qaeda under the new leadership of al-Zawahiri will pursue its fight against the US and Israel, the group said in the statement.

"We seek with the aid of God to call for the religion of truth and incite our nation to fight … by carrying out jihad against the apostate invaders … with their head being crusader America and its servant Israel, and whoever supports them," it said.

Al-Zawahiri has been al-Qaeda’s number two for years.

$25m bounty

His whereabouts are unknown but he is widely believed to be hiding along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States is offering a $25m reward for any information leading to his capture or conviction.

"Only a few weeks ago when the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was here in Pakistan she reportedly gave Pakistan what’s been described as a hitlist", Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Islamabad, said.

"It listed five names and Zawahiri’s name was on the list. Whether that means the new al-Qaeda leader is here we don’t know for sure, but it certainly raises some questions".

Believed to be in his late 50s, al-Zawahiri met bin Laden in the mid-1980s when both were in Pakistan to support fighters battling the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Al-Zawahiri, who was born in Egypt, vowed earlier this month to press ahead with al-Qaeda’s campaign against the US and its allies, in what appeared to be his first public response to bin Laden’s death.

"The Sheikh [bin Laden] has departed, may God have mercy on him, to his God as a martyr, and we must continue on his path of jihad to expel the invaders from the land of Muslims and to purify it from injustice," he said in a video message posted online.

"Today, and thanks be to God, America is not facing an individual or a group … but a rebelling nation which has awoken from its sleep in a jihadist renaissance challenging it wherever it is."

In Thursday’s statement, al-Qaeda voiced its "support [to] the uprisings of our oppressed Muslim people against the corrupt and tyrant leaders who have made our nation suffer in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya Yemen, Syria and Morocco."

The group urged those involved in the uprisings to continue their "struggle until the fall of all corrupt regimes that the West has forced onto our countries."

But Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Cairo where a popular uprising toppled longtime President Hosni Mubarak in February, said the so-called "Arab Spring" has undermined al-Qaeda in many Arab countries.

"This has been a significant blow to the ideology of al-Qaeda", he said. "Many believe al-Qaeda has lost a great deal of momentum and support across the Arab world because these revolutions were able to deliver change without the use of violence."

* Published under an agreement with Al-Jazeera.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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DEATH OF A JIHADI FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER

May 4, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B.RAMAN

( Written at the request of the Editor of the “Economic Times”, New Delhi )

Osama bin Laden (OBL), the head of Al Qaeda,  was killed by the US Special Forces during a past midnight  chopper-borne raid on his hide-out at Abbotabad, a garrison town, about 100 kms from Islamabad, on May 1. He influenced thousands of young Muslims , who grew to adulthood in the 1980s and the 1990s, to take to jihadi terrorism as a weapon of defiance. He wanted them to use this weapon to correct what he looked upon as the historic injustices done to the Ummah by the non-Islamic world.  

Among such instances of historic injustices to the Muslims, he cited the Jewish occupation of Palestine and the occupation of lands, which, according to him, had historically belonged to the Muslims by non-Islamic forces. He also wanted the Muslims to take to arms against ideological influences that tended to corrupt Islam.

He initially fought against the corrupting influence of the Marxist ideology in Afghanistan against the Soviet and Afghan troops in the 1980s. He saw nothing wrong in accepting the assistance of  Western ideological forces for countering Marxism and to force it to quit Afghanistan.

He might not have acquired the iconic image which he developed subsequently but for  the use of him by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIAS) and the agencies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia which projected him as a jihadi fighter par excellence in order to use him for mobilising Muslim youth of the Arab world for the jihad against the Soviet troops and the Marxist ideology.

With the assistance of these agencies, he  forced the Soviet troops to withdraw from Afghanistan and helped to bring Afghanistan  under the control of medieval Islamic forces in the form of the Taliban. His medieval version of Islam, which is condemned today by the US, was encouraged by the US in the 1980s to use it as a strategic weapon against Marxism .

Having tasted success in Afghanistan, he and his force of Arab youth, trained and armed with the help of these agencies in secret camps in Pakistan turned against their Western benefactors and mentors and transformed their jihad against Marxism into a new jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish people in the 1990s. The icon of the 1980s, toasted by the US because of his success against the Marxists,  became the dreaded  Frankenstein’s monster of the 1990s and thereafter.

This jihadi Frankenstein’s monster, jointly created by the agencies of the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, became the world’s most dreaded terrorist who spread death and destruction across the world through his Al Qaeda and International Islamic Front (IIC) starting from 1996. The 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US Homeland made the US realize that the reach of this monster of its own creation had extended up to the US.

The slaying of this monster became the driving force of the so-called war against international terrorism. It has taken nearly 10 years and an expenditure of billions of dollars to slay this monster. At the end, the death of this monster came at the place where it was  born , namely, in Pakistan. After 10 years of search the monster was traced .

The monster was found hiding in the place where the Pakistan Army was born and where its new officer-recruits are trained every year. Abbotabad is the cradle of the Pakistan Army and in that cradle was found the monster. There were indicators of a cosy relationahip between the monster and one of its original creators—-the Pakistani Army and intelligence.

The death of the jihadi Frankenstein’s monster  in the cradle of the Pakistan Army has thrown the spotlight even more intensely than till now on another Frankenstein’s monster—- namely, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan.

Since the 1980s,the ISI was  was pampered, fed and fattened by the US along with the Pakistan Army. The US, which closed its eyes to the pernicious role played by this State Frankenstein’s monster in sponsoring terrorism of various kinds against India, Afghanistan and other countries, is confused and does not know how to act against this State Frankenstein’s monster after having killed the non-State monster.

The end of OBL will not be the end of international jihadi terrorism. The non-state head of international jihadi terrorism may be dead, but the State of Pakistan, which continues to use this terrorism,  lives in a denial mode. Neither the State of Pakistan nor its civil society is prepared to admit that Al Qaeda and its surviving leaders have managed to escape arrest, prosecution or death so far, because of the support extended to them  by the State of Pakistan. The same is the case with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and other jihadi affiliates of Al Qaeda.

Unless the US and other members of the international community are prepared to draw the right lessons from the discovery that OBL had been living and surviving in an important garrison town of Pakistan and force the State of Pakistan to stop using terrorism as a weapon of the State, OBL’s death may not mark the beginning of the end of international jihadi terrorism.

OBL may be dead but jihadi terrorism in some form or the other will survive so long as it enjoys the support of the State of Pakistan.( 3-5-2011)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India)

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

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Pakistan Responds With Disbelief

May 4, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, May 4, 2011 (IPS) – The once elusive Osama bin Laden may be dead, but the way he was killed, the secrecy surrounding the covert mission, and the haste with which the body was buried at sea have provided grist for the rumour mill.

Pakistani journalists and activists are raising questions and finding it hard to believe the official U.S. government account of the operation that cornered and killed bin Laden.

Syed Talat Hussain, veteran host of a popular current affairs programme on the private television channel Dawn News said, "Elements of the narrative just don’t come together. Exceedingly implausible that an operation was conducted on Pakistani soil, a very serious intrusion at that, and remained undetected," said Hussain, shaking his head in utter disbelief.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced that bin Laden had been shot and killed Sunday by U.S. forces in a mansion in Abbottabad, a quiet town 150 kilometres north of the capital Islamabad. News reports say bin Laden’s body was taken to Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and then buried at sea.

Shehrbano Taseer, a journalist and daughter of the former governor of Punjab Salman Taseer, said she is confused by the secrecy surrounding the operation. "I’d like to have seen the body for myself to believe he is actually dead," she told IPS over the phone from the eastern city of Lahore. She fails to understand the hurried burial at sea.

"My father always believed Osama bin Laden had been dead for years and would be produced whenever the need arose," said Taseer, who reports for Newsweek magazine.

"I’m happy Laden is dead because it was his ideology that killed my father," said Taseer, whose father was assassinated in January by his own security guard, who disagreed with the governor’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

But getting rid of bin Laden, she said, does not mean his ideology dies with him. "The poison is in the scorpion’s tail, and new leaders will graduate to take his place and it will be the same," she added.

Some Pakistanis have been questioning the veracity of the operation. A recent photo is being circulated of a wounded bin Laden. "Maybe the U.S. special forces’ operation was just an exclusive Adobe Photoshop operation," wrote Zulfiqar Khan on the PressPakistan online group.

"Very improbable that with all those wounds, his turban stayed on. He may be one of Osama’s many doubles!" said Ambareen Kazim on the same online group.

The U.S. account seems to suggest that bin Laden eluded Pakistani army or intelligence agencies all this time. But journalists point out that five of Al-Qaeda’s top leaders had been captured from Pakistan cities by Pakistani forces.

Ramzi bin al Shibh, a Yemeni detained at Guantanamo Bay and accused of being a key facilitator in the 9/11 attacks in the United States, was captured in 2002 from the southern port city of Karachi.

Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi Arabian who is also being held in Guantanamo, was arrested the same year in Faisalabad in Punjab province.

In 2003, Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly the brains behind the 9/11 attacks, in Rawalpindi, the twin city of the federal capital, Islamabad.

In 2005, Abu Faraj al Libi from Libya, a senior member of Al-Qaeda, was arrested again by the ISI from Mardan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Abu Musab also known as Mustafa bin Abd al Qadir Sitt Maryam Nasar, was arrested from Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, by security forces, also in 2005.

"Our government has taken so much money, over the years, from the U.S. to capture (bin Laden) dead or alive, and they didn’t know he was living, all these years, so near the military academy and just two hours away from the capital? It’s a bit hard to chew," said Ibrash Pasha of Khwendo Kor, an organisation working for the empowerment of women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"For all we know he may have been killed somewhere else and they (the U.S.) staged this drama here, a place free of Taliban to score some points with the Pakistan army," Pasha said. But he added that he doesn’t know what the U.S. wanted to prove if the operation on May 2 was indeed hatched.

Pasha is convinced, however, that terrorists could not move around in urban centres without the army and intelligence knowing about it or getting wind of it. "It just doesn’t work that way," he said.

Arfeen Mehdi, a young investigative journalist working with the private TV channel Geo, echoes this sentiment. "The intelligence agencies know about these people and are watching them very closely, so this whole operation, to me looks quite dubious," he told IPS.

"The operation went on for over 40 minutes, during which a helicopter exploded, and yet there was no movement from our end?" argued Hussain. He also found it highly suspicious that the U.S. forces jammed Pakistan’s radar system during that period.

Hussain believes the timing couldn’t have been better for U.S. President Barack Obama. "A dream covert capture of a terrorist," is how he looks at the whole episode, which he terms "fake" and "too comical" to believe.

The TV host also believes the Pakistani government was "in the know," as was the Pakistani army. "We have given the biggest trophy into Obama’s hand and reason for him to be re-elected." The U.S. President recently announced he is standing for re-election next year.

Those are reasons enough for the U.S. to be "nice to us," according to Hussain. "Why do you think they are soft on us and not rapping at our door and holding us accountable for harbouring terrorists?"

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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Osama the Symbol Not So Easy to Vanquish

May 4, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By David Elkins

WASHINGTON, May 3, 2011 (IPS) – Far from concluding the war on terror, both Western and Muslim-majority countries – many emerging or still embroiled in months of popular protests – will continue to face a threat from extremist ideology after the United States’ decade-long campaign to capture or kill Osama bin Laden has come to an end, most analysts say.

The U.S. will now position its tactical focus and key intelligence assets to defeat those members of al Qaida’s (AQ) network of global affiliates who remain elusive.

The hunt for bin Laden was costly, resulting in wars both in Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming the lives of over 100,000 civilians and 5,000 U.S. military personnel, and draining 1.3 trillion dollars from state funds since Sep. 11, 2001.

However, as President Barack Obama made clear in his speech on Sunday night, bin Laden’s death, while an important moment for U.S. morale, does not herald the end of the U.S. campaign against extremist ideology nor does it greatly reduce the potential for more terrorist attacks, according to analysts.

"He’s been a source of ideology and a symbol and those are roles that can be played by a dead man, as well as a live one… These [attacks] will happen regardless of bin Laden," former CIA analyst Dr. Paul R. Pillar told IPS.

———-   
A movement in decline

In the broader historical context however, AQ’s narrative of violent extremism is in a state of decline and has lost a significant number of its direct supporters and sympathisers, according to some regional experts.

"The Sunni movement is not specifically linked to al- Qaeda as an organization, but it’s much more of a historical revival of Sunni Islam. It will run its course like a fever," former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency official Lt. Gen. Patrick Lang told IPS.

"Revivalism crops up every 100 to 150 years and sets out to conquer the human spirit for Islam and takes a lot of casualties in the process and then kind of dies down…It’s a kind of cyclic phenomenon and Islamic terrorism will die out after a while," Lang added.

Earlier examples of alternative or revivalist Islamic movements – those that offered a fundamentalist alternative to the mainstream Sunni interpretations of sacred texts and Islamic law – were significant because of their eventual irrelevance to the contemporaneous understandings of Islam as practiced in the day to day lives of the majority of Muslims, and marked the continuation of a boom and bust pattern in general religiosity.

Dating back to the 11th century, the Almoravid dynasty in the Maghreb, or the teachings of Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah, Ahmad Sirhindi’s Naqshabandi order in South Asia – which focused on mystical interpretations of Islam rather violent religious conservatism – were all pertinent examples of reactionary strains in this cyclical trend of pre- modern Islamic tradition.

But it was not until the encroachment of Western imperialism that reactionary groups began incorporating violent messages into their ideologies – Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Sayyid Qtub emphasised an exclusionary and coercive fundamentalism in much of their most influential writing.
———-

A decentralised network

Since news of the death of al Qaeda’s figurehead broke over Washington Sunday night, there has been almost universal consensus that it will do little to strange the group’s operational capacity, given its decentralised leadership and diffuse bases of operation.

The most recent attempts on U.S. targets – Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s "underwear" bombing of a Detroit-bound commercial airliner and Faisal Shazad’s car packed with faulty explosives in New York’s Times Square – were attributed to the Yemeni-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and are highly indicative of this trend.

"External operations (AQ’s attacks against the West) are not likely to be impacted. [Bin Laden] really only got involved in ops planning to approve spectaculars, particularly those using a new means of attack or against a new target," Leah Farrall, a former senior counterterrorism analyst with the Australian Federal Police, wrote on her blog, "All Things Counter Terrorism."

"Second-tier leaders deal with external operations for the most part. Aside from communications disruptions (which do little to disrupt those already deployed) this section will continue on business as usual," Farrall added.

While bin Laden’s death marks a significant loss for the organisation’s strategic guidance, its ability to coalesce and focus the energies of disparate extremist groups into terrorising on both a local and global scale, and in promoting its grotesque model of inspirational authority, according to some analysts, AQ’s organisational leadership is structured to allow others such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, AQ’s putative but far less capable heir-apparent, or Anwar al-Awlaki, AQAP’s chief of operations to continue attacks, albeit with less cohesiveness.

As recently as Apr. 30, in a bombing thought to have been perpetrated by AQIM, 16 Western tourists were killed in Morocco.

Along with other organisations that espoused violence as a means to create an Islamic utopia, using as religious justification various fundamentalist interpretations such as al-Wahhab and Egyptian born- Sayyid Qtub’s, AQ succeeded in exploiting particular world events beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s to elicit a violent response from a few hundred like-minded individuals – burdening, in the process, an overwhelming majority of Muslims who did not have, nor wanted to have any association with bin Laden’s violent variant of anti-imperialism.

Despite bin Laden’s questionable religious authority, he was extremely adept at melding political sentiments that stood up against the historical and modern legacies of Western imperialism, the Middle Eastern autocrats of pan-Arab nationalism – as well as Arab monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s birthplace – with messages of social justice for all Muslims and a incitement of jihad against Western targets throughout the world.

Since the U.S.’s failed attempts to kill bin Laden under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations – the 1998 missile attack on a compound near Khost, Afghanistan and the 2001 firefight in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region – the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division and the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command as well as other intelligence agencies have, in a frustrating, at points disappointing campaign, targeted AQ’s leadership with tenacious zeal.

President Obama stated in his announcement on Monday night that bin Laden’s death "should be welcomed by all who believe in human peace and dignity." But his movement is far from being defeated wholesale.

The pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East have reiterated what has long been a formal rejection of the extremist narrative in the mainstream public opinion of Muslim-majority countries, and they indicate a further shift away from the latest version of fundamentalist revivalism – religious identity was but a peripheral component that motivated the forces for change in both Egypt and Tunisia.

"[E]ven before bin Laden’s death, analysts had begun to argue that al-Qaida was rapidly becoming irrelevant," Richard A. Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator at the National Security Council wrote in a New York Times op- ed on Tuesday.

"But such rejoicing would be premature. To many Islamist ideologues, the Arab Spring simply represents the removal of obstacles that stood in the way of establishing the caliphate. Their goal has not changed, nor has their willingness to use terrorism," Clarke added.

Regardless of any continued threat AQ and its affiliates may pose, most would agree that Osama’s death will encourage the West, if only symbolically, to move away from its preoccupation with radical Islam and focus on the real concerns and aspirations in those countries where its existence has had the most devastating impact.

"It is time to declare extreme Islamism a failed ideology, renounce the culture of fear, and get on with the new world of Middle East politics," Dr. Gary Sick, a regional expert wrote in his blog "Gary’s Choices" on Tuesday.

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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A Fork in the Road of U.S.-Pakistani Ties

May 4, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON, May 3, 2011 (IPS) – The U.S. discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden in a compound some 50 kilometres from Islamabad is a "defining moment" for a U.S.-Pakistan relationship fraught with duplicity and dashed expectations.

U.S. and Pakistani officials and foreign policy experts struggled Tuesday to find something positive to say about the relationship following bin Laden’s dramatic denouement. Some suggested that Pakistan would now have to be more forthcoming in rolling up remaining al Qaeda elements in the country and cutting back on sanctuary for Afghan militants.

Concerns mounted, however, that the fact that the al Qaeda leader had found sanctuary in Abbottabad for as long as six years would destroy what little trust remains between the two countries and dash hopes to forge a long-term relationship anchored by 7.5 billion dollars in U.S. economic aid over 10 years.

U.S. officials have not explicitly accused Pakistan of harbouring bin Laden but said that it strains credulity to believe that the Saudi fugitive – who had a 25-million-dollar price on his head – could have stayed in an Islamabad suburb that is also home to Pakistan’s most prestigious military academy and numerous military retirees without, as President Barack Obama’s intelligence adviser John Brennan put it Monday, "some kind of support system".

On Tuesday, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters, "It’s kind of hard to imagine the [Pakistani] military or police did not have ideas about what was going on inside [the compound]."

The president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, denied the allegations in a Washington Post op-ed, calling it "baseless speculation". But given the historic power of the military and Pakistani intelligence services compared to elected civilian governments, it is possible, even likely, that Zardari and much of the rest of his cabinet had no knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts until U.S. Navy Seals entered his hiding place.

Shaukat Aziz, a former Pakistani prime minister, said Tuesday at a conference of the Atlantic Council in Washington that this is a "defining moment" for relations and that Pakistani officials must get to the bottom of the bin Laden affair and find out "what went right and what went wrong".

He said the "trust deficit" between the U.S. and Pakistan was at "its highest level" since Pakistan’s independence in 1947 and that it was crucial to repair ties so that Pakistan could meet its enormous economic and political challenges.

Pakistan, with 100 million of its 170 million people under the age of 25, needs a growth rate of six to eight percent to provide jobs, Aziz said. Its current growth rate is only two to three percent and the country has suffered devastating floods as well as domestic terrorist attacks that have killed thousands of civilians, soldiers and police over the past few years.

The Obama administration has sought to bolster ties with a programme for long-term aid. However, Dov Zakheim, a former undersecretary of defence and comptroller of the Pentagon under the George W. Bush administration, warned Tuesday that unless Pakistan showed more cooperation in the fight against al Qaeda and in Afghanistan, "Congress will cut back on the money."

"Congress has never really liked the Pakistanis," Zakheim told the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank. By way of illustration, he described how, after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, he was told by then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to find a way to give funds to Pakistan, which the U.S. needed as a base to attack Afghanistan and topple the Taliban who had harboured the al Qaeda plotters.

Zakheim said he approached then Jordanian ambassador to Washington Marwan Muasher and asked if he could tie aid to Pakistan to legislation appropriating U.S. funds to Jordan, a much more popular recipient of U.S. largesse on Capitol Hill. Muasher agreed.

"I never would have gotten to first base with Pakistan [without tying aid to Jordan]," Zakheim said. Without better cooperation from Pakistan on terrorism, the U.S. Congress will decide that the Pakistanis "are totally part of the problem and you’ll see a real backlash there."

Yet if Congress were to cut off aid to Pakistan, the United States would be repeating a pattern of engagement and abandonment that has helped make the relationship so dysfunctional. It would also be jeopardising its exit strategy from Afghanistan.

The U.S. was Pakistan’s major external ally after independence, providing military support to balance India, long a Soviet ally. The U.S. sided with Pakistan in a 1971 war with India that led to the loss of East Pakistan, which became the independent nation of Bangladesh. The U.S. cut back aid, however, when it became apparent that Pakistan was trying to match India and develop nuclear weapons.

In the 1980s, the U.S. reversed course to use Pakistan as a base to fund jihadists battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Sanctions were slapped back on after the Pakistanis followed India and tested a nuclear weapon in 1998 and then abruptly lifted again after 9-11.

Former Prime Minister Aziz called Pakistan "the most allied ally and the most sanctioned ally" of the United States.

Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst, said that while "there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about U.S.-Pakistani relations," it might be possible to use the bin Laden discovery as leverage to gain fuller cooperation against remaining al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan – such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s presumed successor – and members of the Haqqani group of Afghan militants who have caused numerous U.S. casualties in Afghanistan.

"They owe us something," Pillar said of the Pakistanis.

Pillar, a former national intelligence officer for the Middle East under the Bush administration, speculated that most Pakistani officials might not have known about bin Laden’s whereabouts because they chose not to know.

"My guess is that various layers of Pakistani officialdom were not wanting to know and not making efforts to find out," he said.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Featured, Foreign Affairs, Security, Terrorism, United States Tagged With: , ,

PAK PERFIDY WILL HAVE NO ENDURING IMPACT ON ITS TIES WITH US

May 4, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B.RAMAN

At the worst, there was collusion between Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex and Osama bin Laden which enabled him to live safely till May 1,2011, at Abbotabad, the cradle of the Pakistan Army.

2. At the best, the military-intelligence complex was aware of his presence in Abbotabad —possibly as a privileged and protected guest of Pakistani jihadi organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)— and chose to close its eyes to it in order not to provoke OBL’s jihadi allies in Pakistan.

3. No third explanation is  available or possible for the fact of OBL having lived  for many months or years in the cradle of the Army without any harm coming to him.

4. The US is disturbed. Even angry and has been posing  tough questions to Pakistan as one could see from the media briefings of  John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, on May 2 .

5. Does it mean enduing US disillusionment with Pakistan? Une fois pour toutes (Once and for all)? Does it mean a tougher US policy towards Pakistan? Does it presage a greater US understanding of the Indian assessments since 1981, when Pakistan started using terrorism against India, that jihadi terrorism survives and flourishes because of the State sustenance from Pakistan.

6.No. And  No. And  No.

7. There is already an exercise on in the US State Department to respect the sensitivities of Pakistan, to spare it of any undue embarrassment and to avoid any punitive action against it.

8. Yes, tough questions are being asked. They will continue to be asked. Pakistan is embarrassed, but not unduly worried over these tough questions because it knows from the long history of its relationship with the US that tough questions are rarely followed by tough action against the State of Pakistan.

9. Yes. Some actions were taken in the past  against some individual officers on the insistence of the US. As against Lt.Gen. Javed Nasir, the Director-General of the ISI, in 1993, who was sacked because of his alleged collusion with the Afghan Mujahideen. As against Lt. Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, another DG of the ISI, in 2001 because of his suspected collusion with the Afghan Taliban. Nasir was sacked by Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister. Ahmed was shifted out of the ISI by Gen.Pervez Musharraf.

10. That is all. Once action was taken against senior officers of the ISI, US-Pakistan relations were back to their normal state of pampering.

11.History is going to repeat itself now after the death of OBL at Abbotabad. One or two senior officers of the Army and the ISI will be identified by the US as responsible for the collusion. The US will ask for their heads. Pakistan will happily offer their heads.

12. The State-to-State relations will be back to their sickening normalcy. The pamperiong of Pakistan will resume. The exercise to feed and fatten  the Pakistani Army and intelligence will resume.

13. India and Indians, who are now gloating over the discomfiture of Pakistan, will find that they have become a sucker once again. As we became in 1993 when Nasir’s collusion with the Mujahideen was discovered. As we became in 2001 when Ahmed’s collusion with the Afghan Taliban was discovered.

14, Let us guard ourselves against unwarranted euphoria over Pakistan’s discomfiture. Let us think hard what we should do and how to do it.Let us not indulge in pathetic talk of what the US should do for us.

15.The dramatic US success was made possible by a dramatic improvement in the US HUMINT capability and by its spectacular covert action capability.

16. We have neither. Our HUMINT capability is average, but not extraordinary. Our covert action capability has been non-existent since 1997.Let us revamp both—urgently and visibly. Let a message radiate from Delhi that we want peace with Pakistan, but we are prepared to act on our own in our own way and through our own capabilities should  covert action on the ground become necessary.

17. Pakistan has been waging its terrorist campaign against India  relentlessly because it knows we have neither the political will nor the covert action capability to retaliate. Let  the political will be born again which will make Indira Gandhi proud of us in high heaven. Let our covert action capability be re-created. To hell with what the world thinks of our actions.

18. I proudly contributed to the building up of India’s covert action capability. I proudly headed it for some years till my retirement in August 1994. I cry every day when I see the way it has been wound up for 14 years now and our citizens continue to be slaughtered here, there and everywhere by the jihadi terrorists. (4-5-2011)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies.E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the permission of the original author or copyright holder.


Filed Under: Asia, Foreign Affairs, Opinion, Security, Terrorism Tagged With: , , , ,
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