INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.564
B.RAMAN
This is only a tentative assessment on the daring commando-style attack on the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army at Rawalpindi for which responsibility has been claimed on behalf of a so-called Amjad Farooqi detachmentof the Pakistani Taliban known asthe Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Sixteen hours after the attack started around mid-day on October 10,2009, the Pakistani Army,including its Special Services Group (SSG), are still engaged in an attempt to flush out at least two to four terrorists, who managed to gain entry into the premises and take at least 20 to 30 inmates of the premises as hostages to negotiate their demands. An Army spokesman has claimed that 22 of these hostages have since been got released and that the operation is coming to a successful conclusion, but this is not confirmed by independent sources so far.
2.It is understood that the terrorists have put forward a number of demands such as the release of all those captured by the Army during the operations in the Swat Valley and the rest of the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the calling-off of the reported plans to start a military offensive in South Waziristan,immediate stoppage of aerial strikes by the Pakistani Army in the tribal areas and of the Drone strikes by the US intelligence, the termination of all counter-terrorism co-operation with the US and the trial of PervezMusharraf on a charge of treason. The terrorists have reportedly been projecting their successful attack as in reprisal for the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the then Amir of the TTP, in a US drone attack in South Waziristan on August 5,2009.
3.The facts are still sketchy and confusing. From the available facts, one could attempt the following reconstruction. A group of at least four terrorists, wearing the uniform of SSG commandoes, drove up to the Security Gate No.1 of the GHQ premises. There was an exchange of fire lasting about 45 minutes between them and the security picket at Gate No.1. During the exchange, a Brigadier, who was in charge of the physical security of the premises, a Lt.Col assisting him and four other military personnel and all the four terrorists who came by the vehicle were killed.
4. As the exchange of firing was going on in Gate No.1, the members of the security picket guarding Gate No.2 rushed to Gate No. 1 to help the security picket there. Taking advantage of the unmanned Gate No.2, two to four other terrorists----also wearing the SSG uniform----managed to enter the premises, rush to the Army library and take hostage a number of persons who were there. It is not known whether they have been kept by the terrorists in the library itself or whether they have been taken to some other building. It is also not known whether the terrorists have captured any other person in the GHQ premises.Also not clear is whether this second group came by the same vehicle or reached the GHQ independently.
5. The identities of the hostages have not been revealed by the Army. The commando-style attack on the GHQ---like the commando-style terrorist attack in Mumbai in November last year--- has the imprint of the operational methods of the SSG. The terrorists in the GHQ have had the benefit of the kind of training and expertise, which is available in the SSG. The reported death of Ilyas Kashmiri of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) in a recent Drone strike brought out in Pakistani media accounts the fact that he was a trained officer of the SSG, who had gravitated to the world of jihadi terrorism and joined the HUJI.
6. There are possibly other SSG officers---serving and retired---- who have similarly gravitated to the world of terrorism. As a result of this,knowledge of commando-style operations seems to be widespread in Pakistan's jihadi world. Till now, the international focus has been on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as the sponsor and trainer of jihadi groups. Indications of a similar role being played by at least some elements in or of the the SSG---- possibly in tandem with the ISI --- are coming to the fore now. ( 11-10-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: sevenbtyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, October 10, 2009
WHO WAS AMJAD FAROOQI IN WHOSE NAME PAK GHQ HAS BEEN RAIDED?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.563
B.RAMAN
A news agency report says as follows: "The Tehreek-e-Taliban has claimed responsibility for the brazen attack on the Pakistan Army's Headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday, which left four of its militants and eight soldiers dead. The outfit has again demanded a halt in the ongoing military campaign in the NWFP. The Amjad Farooqi group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) umbrella grouping claimed that it was behind the audacious attack and demanded that former President Pervez Musharraf be put on trial. The group took the responsibility in a telephone call made to Geo News. They also asked for closure of all Western NGOs and expulsion of US private security firm Blackwater."
2. Who was Amjad Farooqi? Reproduced below is an article dated September 29,2004, under the title "AMJAD FAROOQI: THE UNTOLD STORY" written by me which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers12%5Cpaper1129.html .
( 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 )
AMJAD FAROOQI: THE UNTOLD STORY
The Pakistani security agencies claimed to have killed on September 26, 2004, Amjad Hussain Farooqi alias Mansur Hasnain alias Imtiaz Siddiqui alias Hyder, alias Doctor who, according to them, was the mastermind behind the two abortive attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December last year. According to them, he was killed during an encounter with the para-military forces who had surrounded a rented house in Nawabshah in Sindh, where he along with some others had been living for the last two months.
2. On August 20, 2004, the Pakistani authorities had announced cash rewards amounting to Rs.20 million each (US $ 344800) to anyone who would give information leading to the capture of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a Pakistani national, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan national, said to be belonging to Al Qaeda.Amjad Hussain Farooqi was accused of acting at the instance of the Libyan in his attempts to kill Musharraf.
3. Talking to the media at The Hague on September 27,2004, Musharraf was reported to have stated as follows:" We eliminated one of the very major sources of terrorist attacks. He was not only involved on attacks on me, but also on attacks elsewhere in the country. So a very big terrorist has been eliminated."
4.All accounts from Nawabshah indicate that if the Pakistani authorities had wanted they could have caught him alive and questioned him about the role of Pakistani civilian and military officials in the various terrorist incidents of the last three years, including the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the attempts to kill Musharraf himself and Shaukat Aziz, the Prime Minister, and the attacks directed against American and French targets. But, they did not want him alive.
5.In a report under the heading "Real conspirators in Musharraf case may never be exposed", Kamran Khan, the Pakistani investigative journalist, stated as follows in the "News" of September 28, 2004: "Senior lawyers say that the killing of Amjad Farooqi, the main accused in President Musharraf and Daniel Pearl cases, may also influence the final outcome of the two most important cases. A nationwide military investigation launched after two assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf last year had unveiled that some civilian and low level military individuals were the field operatives while Amjad Farooqi played an anchor in the abortive bids on Gen Musharraf’s life. Because of the most sensitive nature of the probe the principal investigative work was carried out under the supervision of the Commander Corps 10, who received inputs from all federal and provincial law enforcement agencies in the most extensive investigation of a crime case in Pakistan. "It was very important to catch Amjad Farooqi alive," said a senior law-enforcement official. "Farooqi was the key link between the foot soldiers and those who ordered the murder." "Amjad Farooqi is now dead with the most important secret and we still don’t know for sure the real identity of the Pakistani or al-Qaeda or any other foreign elements who had launched Farooqi into action to remove General Musharraf from the scene," said a second senior law-enforcement official. Some circumstantial evidence collected during the investigation of President Musharraf case had cited some connection between Abu Feraj, an al-Qaeda operative of Libyan origin, and Amjad Farooqi, hence the suspicion that al-Qaeda could be behind the murder attempts through Amjad Farooqi.The military investigators had found solid evidence to connect Amjad Farooqi with the suicide bombers involved in December 25 attacks on President Musharraf. Farooqi’s connections were also established with the group of low level Pakistan Air Force technicians who had planted bombs under Lai Bridge for the December 11 bid on the President’s life. The military investigators were also baffled how come the Air Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the PAF, detected no signs that about two dozen PAF men posted at the Chaklala airbase had been attending meetings with religious extremists and in the first week of December were making active preparations at the heart of the PAF base to bomb the presidential motorcade. Pakistani officials, worried that Farooqi’s killing would prevent them from getting the full knowledge about Farooqi’s connections and his actions, said that if captured alive Farooqi could have provided crucial information on the plot to kidnap and murder the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.Pakistani officials believed that, like in the murder attempts against the President, Farooqi was an anchor in the Pearl case. "The gruesome murder of Pearl and its video filming for the world was the work of Amjad Farooqi- Khalid Sheikh Muhammad combine," said a senior intelligence official who did not want to be identified.
6. The truth will now never be known. Somebody in the Pakistani military-intelligence-police establishment did not want the truth to be known. Why? Who was Farooqi? What were his links with the Army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and others in Pakistan? To which organisation he belonged? Read the following.
7.In April,1992, the coalition of Afghan Mujahideen groups, taking advantage of the revolt of Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek Commander, against Najibullah, the then President of Afghanistan, managed to invade and capture Kabul. Najibullah, who was overthrown from power, was taken by the United Nations into its protective custody and kept in its office in Kabul. The efforts of the UN to persuade the Mujahideen to allow Najibullah to go to India, where his family was living, failed.
8. The Mujahideen's success in capturing power was made possible by the assistance of a large number of jihadis from the Pakistani madrasas, who had been trained and armed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and sent into Afghanistan to help the Mujahideen. The Pakistani contingents, which participated in the invasion of Kabul, belonged to the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) was then known, and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). Amjad Farooqi, then an 18-year-old youth, entered Kabul as a member of the contingent of the SSP.
9. In 1994, there was a serious failure of the Pakistani cotton crop, which threatened to bring its textile industry to a standstill. Asif Zardari, the husband of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, flew into Turkmenistan and entered into a contract for the purchase of a large quantity of cotton. The Turkmenistan authorities wanted to send the cotton to Iran and from there ship it to Karachi.
10.Zardari did not agree to it. Instead, he asked them to send the cotton by road via Afghanistan. He had the contract for the road transport of the cotton awarded to a Pakistani crony of his based in Hong Kong. The first two cotton convoys from Turkmenistan were looted by Mujahideen groups operating in the Herat area of Afghanistan.
11. Zardari thereupon sent Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Babbar, Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister, and Pervez Musharraf to Afghanistan to provide protection to the cotton convoys. They asked Mulla Mohammad Omar, who subsequently became the Amir of the Taliban, to collect a large number of students (Talibs) from the madrasas of Pakistan and constitute them into a force for the protection of the cotton convoys. Thus, was the Taliban born.
12.Babbar and Musharraf, who had heard of the exploits of Amjad Farooqi in Kabul in 1992, asked him to help Mulla Omar in organising this convoy protection force. He did so. Babbar himself travelled with the first convoy after this arrangement came into force and Amjad Farooqi and his boys escorted it.
13. A few months later, Mulla Omar deputed Amjad Farooqi to raid Herat and capture it with the help of his boys. He did so without difficulty, to the pleasant surprise of many, including the ISI. Thus, from a cotton convoy protection force, the Taliban became the ruler of Kandahar and Herat and other areas. Assisted by Amjad Farooqi and his associates, it started gradually extending its administrative control to other areas.
14. In the beginning of 1995, Amjad Farooqi left the SSP and joined the HUA. The HUA sent him along with some others into India's Jammu & Kashmir, where they, under the name Al Faran, kidnapped a group of Western tourists. One of the tourists was beheaded and another managed to escape. The fate of the remaining is not known till today. They are believed to have been beheaded and buried, but this has not been confirmed.
15. In October,1995, Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) under Benazir Bhutto, discovered a plot by a group of Army officers headed by Maj.Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi to have him and Benazir assassinated, capture power and proclaim the formation of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Abbasi and his associates in the Army were arrested. They were found to have been plotting in tandem with a group in the HUA led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Abbasi, his associates and the Qari were arrested during the investigation. While Abbasi and his associates were court-martialled and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the Qari was released without any action being taken against him.
16.Before 1990, there were two jihadi organisations called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI). The HUM was headed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil and the HUJI by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Around 1990, the two merged to form the HUA, with Maulana Khalil as the Amir and Qari Akhtar as the Deputy Amir. Amjad Farooqi used to work closely with the Qari.
17. In the late 1980s, Abbasi as a Brigadier was posted in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi as the head of the ISI station in India. The Government of India had him expelled. On his return to Pakistan, he was posted to the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan). In the beginning of the 1990s, without the clearance of the late Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then COAS under Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister, Abbasi organised a raid on an Indian Army post in the Siachen area and was beaten back by the Indian Army with heavy casualties.Janjua had him transferred out and censured. Since then, he had been nursing an anger against the Pakistan Army's senior leadership and hobnobbing with the Qari. A few months after capturing power on October 12,1999, Musharraf had Abbasi released from jail. He formed an anti-US organisation called Hizbollah, which acted in tandem with the HUJI.
18. In September,1996, the Taliban captured Jalalabad and Kabul. A large number of jihadi students from the Pakistani madrasas joined the Taliban unit which invaded and captured Kabul. Amjad Farooqi joined the unit at the head of a contingent of the HUA. After capturing Kabul, Amjad Farooqi and his boys raided the UN office, where Najibullah was living, lynched him and hung him from a lamp-post.
19. When the Taliban, with the help of the madrasa students from Pakistan, captured Jalalabad, Osama bin Laden was living there. He had been permitted by the Burhanuddin Rabbani Government, which was in power in Kabul till September,1996,to enter Afghanistan and take up residence in Jalalabad. It had taken the clearance of the Benazir Bhutto Government to do so. After capturing Jalalabad, the Taliban had bin Laden shifted to Kandahar by Amjad Farooqi and his men.
20.In October,1997, after establishing the involvement of the HUA in the 1995 kidnapping, the US State Department designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation under a 1996 US law. The HUA thereupon dissolved itself and the pre-1990 HUM and HUJI resumed their original existence under their previous names. Qari Saifullah Akhtar took over as the Amir of the HUJI and made Amjad Farooqi his deputy.
21. In February 1998, Osama bin Laden announced the formation of his International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People. Among those who joined it at its inception were the HUM and a Bangladesh branch of the HUJI, identified as HUJI ( B ). The Pakistani branch of the HUJI, the LET and the SSP joined it in 1999. Amjad Farooqi used to represent the Qari at the meetings of the shoora (consultative council )of the IIF.
22. In December 1999, a group of Pakistani hijackers, said to be belonging to the HUM, hijacked an aircraft of the Indian Airlines, which had taken off from Kathmandu, and forced the pilot to fly it to Kandahar. They demanded, inter alia, the release of Omar Sheikh, a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, and Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani Punjabi belonging to the HUM. The Government of India conceded their demands in order to terminate the hijacking.
23. Amongst the hijackers was a Pakistani Punjabi by name Mansur Hasnain. Sections of the Pakistani media reported that this hijacker was none other than Amjad Farooqi. After their release from detention by the Indian authorities, Maulana Azhar and Omar Sheikh went to Pakistan. The return of Azhar led to a split in the HUM. Azhar and his followers formed a new organisation called the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which joined bin Laden's IIF. The formation of the JEM was blessed by the late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, of the Binori madrasa, Karachi, who used to be looked upon as the mentor of bin Laden, Mulla Omar and the Pakistani jihadi leaders.
24. Omar Sheikh took up residence in Lahore and was made in charge of an office run by Al Qaeda in that city. Among other tasks, he was made responsible by bin Laden to procure medicines and other humanitarian relief for the jihadis of the IIF. Azhar and Omar Sheikh, who were working for the ISI before their arrest in India, resumed their contacts with the ISI. Omar Sheikh used to visit Kandahar periodically to meet bin Laden. During one of those visits, he claimed to have come to know of Al Qaeda's plans for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and passed on the information to Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, the present Director-General of the ISI, who was then posted as the Corps Commander in Peshawar,
25. When the USA launched its military operations in Afghanistan in October,2001, the Pakistani components of the IIF called upon their members to proceed to Afghanistan to join in the jihad against the US. Over 30,000 Pakistani volunteers were estimated to have gone into Afghanistan. The largest number of them belonged to the HUJI and were led by Amjad Farooqi. The US air strikes inflicted heavy casualties on them and the survivors, including Amjad Farooqi, fled back into Pakistan. Farooqi took up residence in the Binori madrasa of Karachi where he was sheltered by the late Mufti Shamzai. From his sanctuary in the madrasa, he established contact with Omar Sheikh, who was living in Lahore, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), who was living in Karachi along with Ramzi Binalshibh.
26. On January 12,2002, under pressure from the US in the wake of the attempted terrorist strike on the Indian Parliament at New Delhi in December,2001, Musharraf announced a ban on the LET, the JEM and the SSP and had their leaders arrested or placed under house-arrest. The whole thing was a farce as was seen subsequently. Intriguingly, he did not ban the HUM and the HUJI, which had many supporters in the Army and did not take any action against Qari Saifullah Akhtar and Amjad Farooqi.
27. In January,2002, Daniel Pearl, the correspondent of the USA's "Wall Street Journal" in Mumbai (Bombay) in India, along with his wife Marianne went to Karachi to enquire into the Pakistani links of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. They reportedly stayed at Karachi in the house of an American free-lance journalist of sub-continental origin, who had worked for some time as a free-lancer for the WSJ, where she had come to know Pearl and Marianne. She had gone to Karachi in connection with a book she was writing on the sub-continent.
28. Before going to Karachi, Pearl had contacted many people in Pakistan and the USA in order to get introductions to knowledgeable people in Karachi and elsewhere who might be knowing about the local contacts of Reid. It was alleged that among those whose help he sought were James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Mansoor Ijaz, an American lobbyist of Pakistani origin, who often used to write articles for the US media jointly with Woolsey.
29. Pearl was particularly keen to meet Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), a terrorist organisation based in the USA and the Caribbean with a large following among Afro-Americans. Two of Gilani's four wives are stated to be Afro-Americans. Pearl wanted to talk to him about Richard Reid, since he had reportedly heard that Reid was a member of the JUF and had been trained in a HUM camp in Pakistan in the 1990s.
30. Even before coming to Karachi, Pearl was reportedly in E-mail contact with one Khalid Khwaja, a retired officer of the Pakistani Air Force who had served in the ISI in the late 1980s and one Mohammad Bashir, who later turned out to be none other than Omar Sheikh. It was alleged that Mansoor Ijaz had given Pearl an introduction to Khwaja. It is not known how he came to know of Bashir. According to the Karachi Police, Pearl was keen to meet Gilani and Omar Sheikh. Bashir promised to help him.
31.On January 23, 2002, Pearl went by a taxi driven by one Nasir to the Metropole Hotel of Katrachi. He asked the taxi to stop near the hotel and got out of it. He then went to a car parked nearby in which four persons were waiting. One of them got out, introduced himself and invited Pearl to get in. He willingly did so. The car then went away from there. Subsequently, after the arrest of Omar Sheikh, Nasir identified him as the man who got out of the parked car and invited Pearl to get in. The driver testified during the trial of Omar Sheikh that from the willing manner in which Pearl got in it was apparent that he did not suspect a trap.
32. Subsequently, E-mail messages announcing the kidnapping of Pearl with his photographs started arriving in newspaper offices in Karachi. The Pakistani authorities launched a drive for the recovery of Pearl. There was no success. They started searching for Omar Sheikh after finding out that it was he who, under an assumed name, had laid the trap for Pearl. They took into custody Omar Sheikh's wife and young child in order to force him to surrender. On February 5, 2002,he surrendered to Brig (retd) Ejaz Shah, the Home Secretary of Punjab, who had previously worked in the ISI and was the handling officer of Omar Sheikh. The ISI kept him in its custody till February 12,2002, and then handed him over to the Karachi Police for interrogation. The public announcement about his arrest claimed he was arrested on February 12 and did not refer to the fact that he was in the ISI's custody since February 5, 2002.
33.Omar Sheikh told the Police that the kidnappers operated in three groups. Omar himself and Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif, a resident of Bhawalpur, won the confidence of Pearl and made him come to the hotel for a meeting. They kidnapped him and handed him over to Amjad Hussain Farooqui for keeping him in custody. Omar Sheikh , with the help of Adil Mohammad Sheikh, a member of the staff of the Special Branch of the Sindh Police, and his cousins Suleman Saquib and Fahad Nasim arranged for taking the photograph of Pearl in custody, having it scanned and sending the E-Mail with his photograph to the media and others making their demands. According to the Police, Saquib and Nasim belonged to the JEM, thereby indicating the possibility that the kidnapping might have been jointly planned and carried out by the HUJI, the HUM and the JEM.
34. A few days later, messages arrived announcing the killing of Pearl, along with pictures showing his throat being slit. However, his dead body was not recovered. On May 16, 2002, the Karachi Police claimed to have recovered the remains of an unidentified dead body cut into 10 pieces, which were found buried in a nursery (Gulzare Hijri) on a plot of land in the outlying Gulshan-e-Maymar area of Karachi. They further claimed that the remains were recovered following a tip-off from a human source and that, according to the source, the remains were of Pearl. The local media also reported that there was an improvised shed on the plot where Pearl was suspected to have been held in captivity before his murder and that the plot belonged to Al Rashid Trust of Karachi. DNA tests and other forensic examination determined that the remains were of Pearl.
35.The Al-Rashid Trust, whose accounts were ordered to be frozen under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 because of its suspected links with Al Qaeda, is also closely linked with the JEM. Before Musharraf's ban on the JEM, the offices of the two used to be located in the same buildings in different cities of Pakistan. The two also had common cadres to undertake fund-raising activities for both the organizations.
36.Initially, it was not clear as to who gave the information to the Karachi Police about the burial of these remains in a plot of land belonging to the Al Rashid Trust----a human source as claimed by the Police or by some new suspects who had been picked up by the Police, but whose arrest had not been shown in Police records, lest the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wanted to interrogate them or sought their extradition to the US?
37.The answer came in a report carried by the "News" (May 23, 2002), the prestigious daily of Pakistan, which revealed that the information about the remains was given to the Karachi Police by one Fazal Karim -- a resident of Rahim Yar Khan and a father of five-- who was in Police custody, but had not been shown as arrested. According to the paper,Fazal Karim had identified Lashkar-e- Jhangvi's Naeem Bukhari as the ring leader of the group that also included "three Yemeni-Balochs" (father Yemeni and mother Baloch) who took part in Pearl's kidnapping, his murder and disposal of his body parts. Naeem Bukhari was wanted by police in Punjab and Karachi in more than a dozen cases of anti-Shia killings. Fazal Karim reportedly confirmed Omar Sheikh's role in planning Pearl's kidnapping.
37.According to Karachi Police sources, Amjad Farooqi was also taken into custody on the basis of the tip-off from Fazal Karim, but the ISI ordered them to release him and let him go. Fazal Karim reportedly named one of the Yemeni-Balochs involved in the beheading of Pearl as KSM, but the military regime did not admit this. On the basis of his information, the Police also rounded up some others involved in the kidnapping and murder.
38.Intriguingly, on May 14, 2002, two days before the recovery of the remains of the dead body of Pearl by the Karachi Police, the Punjab Police claimed that Riaz Basra, a long absconding leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the militant wing of the SSP in which Amjad Farooqi had started his career as a terrorist, and three of his associates were killed in an encounter in a Punjab village when they had gone there to kill a Shia leader. Sections of the Pakistani media expressed doubts over the Police version and alleged that Riaz Basra was in the informal custody of the ISI since Pearl's kidnapping in January, 2002, without it taking any action against him and that the Police, for reasons not clear, had shown him as having been killed in an encounter.
39. During the trial of Omar Sheikh and his associates, the defence lawyers drew the attention of the anti-terrorism court to media reports about the arrest of Fazal Karim and others and urged that the court should order a re-investigation of the case in order to determine their responsibility for the offence. The prosecution described the media reports as baseless and opposed any re-investigation. The court rejected the defence plea.
40. The court sentenced Omar Sheikh to death and others to various terms of imprisonment. The appeal against the death sentence filed by Omar Sheikh has not been disposed of by the court so far under some pretext or the other. In the meanwhile, KSM was arrested in Rawalpindi by the Pakistani authorities in March, 2003,and handed over to the FBI, which had him flown out of the country. In an article written in the "Salon", an online journal, in October,2003,the free-lance journalist in whose Karachi house Pearl and his wife had stayed said that Marianne had been informed by the US intelligence that KSM had admitted having personally killed Pearl. The defence lawyers of Omar Sheikh again raised the question of a re-investigation, but their plea was again opposed by the prosecution and rejected by the court.
41. In December, 2003, there were two unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf in Rawalpindi with explosives. In the second incident, suicide bombers were involved. There were strong indications of the involvement of insiders from the Pakistani Army and Police in both the incidents. Till June,2004, Musharraf blamed the JEM for the attempts just as he had initially blamed it in 2002 for the kidnapping and murder of Pearl. Subsequent investigation brought out that it was the HUJI and not the JEM, which was involved. Of all the pro-bin Laden jihadi organisations of Pakistan, the HUJI has the largest following in the Army. The investigation into Pearl's kidnapping and murder had also brought out indicators of a possible HUJI penetration into the Air Force.
42. By the end of January,2004, the investigators had started gathering evidence of the involvement of junior officials of the Army and the Air Force belonging to the HUJI and the Hizbut Tahreer in the two assassination attempts, which, according to them, were orchestrated by Amjad Farooqi at the instance of the Libyan.However, Musharraf did not openly admit this.
43. On June 10, 2004, the Corps Commander of Karachi narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Karachi. With the help of a mobile phone, which the terrorists had left behind at the scene, the Karachi Police established that the attempt was jointly organised by the HUJI and a new organisation called Jundullah (Army of Allah), which had been trained by the Uzbecks and Chechens in the South Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The Police managed to identify and round up the Jundullah members involved in the incident.
44. During their interrogation, they reportedly admitted their involvement and said that they were acting under the leadership of Amjad Farooqi. The Police had kept the arrest and interrogation of the Jundullah members a secret lest Amjad Farooqi be alerted before they got him. But, Sheikh Rashid, the Information Minister, prematurely announced it to the media, thereby alerting Amjad Farooqi before the Police could arrest him. He managed to escape from his Karachi hide-out and fled to Nawabshah.
45. For the first time, Musharraf admitted in an interview to a private TV channel in June, 2004, the involvement of junior officers of the Army and the Air Force in the plot against him and the role of Amjad Farooqi and the Libyan in the plot.
46. A man-hunt for Farooqi and the Libyan was launched by the Police. Before they could get Farooqi alive, someone in the military-intelligence establishment would seem to have ensured that he would not fall alive into the hands of the Police. Who is that somebody?
47.Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the HUJI, was picked up by the Dubai authorities on August 6, 2004, and handed over to the Pakistani authorities, who had him flown to Pakistan the next day. The results of his interrogation are not known so far.
48.One of the most mysterious aspects of the activities of the jihadi organisations in Pakistan is why Musharraf has always been reluctant to or even afraid of taking action against the HUJI. He has avoided banning it even after evidence of its penetration into the Army and the Air Force and its involvement in the plots against him.
B.RAMAN
A news agency report says as follows: "The Tehreek-e-Taliban has claimed responsibility for the brazen attack on the Pakistan Army's Headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday, which left four of its militants and eight soldiers dead. The outfit has again demanded a halt in the ongoing military campaign in the NWFP. The Amjad Farooqi group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) umbrella grouping claimed that it was behind the audacious attack and demanded that former President Pervez Musharraf be put on trial. The group took the responsibility in a telephone call made to Geo News. They also asked for closure of all Western NGOs and expulsion of US private security firm Blackwater."
2. Who was Amjad Farooqi? Reproduced below is an article dated September 29,2004, under the title "AMJAD FAROOQI: THE UNTOLD STORY" written by me which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers12%5Cpaper1129.html .
( 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 )
AMJAD FAROOQI: THE UNTOLD STORY
The Pakistani security agencies claimed to have killed on September 26, 2004, Amjad Hussain Farooqi alias Mansur Hasnain alias Imtiaz Siddiqui alias Hyder, alias Doctor who, according to them, was the mastermind behind the two abortive attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December last year. According to them, he was killed during an encounter with the para-military forces who had surrounded a rented house in Nawabshah in Sindh, where he along with some others had been living for the last two months.
2. On August 20, 2004, the Pakistani authorities had announced cash rewards amounting to Rs.20 million each (US $ 344800) to anyone who would give information leading to the capture of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a Pakistani national, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan national, said to be belonging to Al Qaeda.Amjad Hussain Farooqi was accused of acting at the instance of the Libyan in his attempts to kill Musharraf.
3. Talking to the media at The Hague on September 27,2004, Musharraf was reported to have stated as follows:" We eliminated one of the very major sources of terrorist attacks. He was not only involved on attacks on me, but also on attacks elsewhere in the country. So a very big terrorist has been eliminated."
4.All accounts from Nawabshah indicate that if the Pakistani authorities had wanted they could have caught him alive and questioned him about the role of Pakistani civilian and military officials in the various terrorist incidents of the last three years, including the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the attempts to kill Musharraf himself and Shaukat Aziz, the Prime Minister, and the attacks directed against American and French targets. But, they did not want him alive.
5.In a report under the heading "Real conspirators in Musharraf case may never be exposed", Kamran Khan, the Pakistani investigative journalist, stated as follows in the "News" of September 28, 2004: "Senior lawyers say that the killing of Amjad Farooqi, the main accused in President Musharraf and Daniel Pearl cases, may also influence the final outcome of the two most important cases. A nationwide military investigation launched after two assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf last year had unveiled that some civilian and low level military individuals were the field operatives while Amjad Farooqi played an anchor in the abortive bids on Gen Musharraf’s life. Because of the most sensitive nature of the probe the principal investigative work was carried out under the supervision of the Commander Corps 10, who received inputs from all federal and provincial law enforcement agencies in the most extensive investigation of a crime case in Pakistan. "It was very important to catch Amjad Farooqi alive," said a senior law-enforcement official. "Farooqi was the key link between the foot soldiers and those who ordered the murder." "Amjad Farooqi is now dead with the most important secret and we still don’t know for sure the real identity of the Pakistani or al-Qaeda or any other foreign elements who had launched Farooqi into action to remove General Musharraf from the scene," said a second senior law-enforcement official. Some circumstantial evidence collected during the investigation of President Musharraf case had cited some connection between Abu Feraj, an al-Qaeda operative of Libyan origin, and Amjad Farooqi, hence the suspicion that al-Qaeda could be behind the murder attempts through Amjad Farooqi.The military investigators had found solid evidence to connect Amjad Farooqi with the suicide bombers involved in December 25 attacks on President Musharraf. Farooqi’s connections were also established with the group of low level Pakistan Air Force technicians who had planted bombs under Lai Bridge for the December 11 bid on the President’s life. The military investigators were also baffled how come the Air Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the PAF, detected no signs that about two dozen PAF men posted at the Chaklala airbase had been attending meetings with religious extremists and in the first week of December were making active preparations at the heart of the PAF base to bomb the presidential motorcade. Pakistani officials, worried that Farooqi’s killing would prevent them from getting the full knowledge about Farooqi’s connections and his actions, said that if captured alive Farooqi could have provided crucial information on the plot to kidnap and murder the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.Pakistani officials believed that, like in the murder attempts against the President, Farooqi was an anchor in the Pearl case. "The gruesome murder of Pearl and its video filming for the world was the work of Amjad Farooqi- Khalid Sheikh Muhammad combine," said a senior intelligence official who did not want to be identified.
6. The truth will now never be known. Somebody in the Pakistani military-intelligence-police establishment did not want the truth to be known. Why? Who was Farooqi? What were his links with the Army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and others in Pakistan? To which organisation he belonged? Read the following.
7.In April,1992, the coalition of Afghan Mujahideen groups, taking advantage of the revolt of Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek Commander, against Najibullah, the then President of Afghanistan, managed to invade and capture Kabul. Najibullah, who was overthrown from power, was taken by the United Nations into its protective custody and kept in its office in Kabul. The efforts of the UN to persuade the Mujahideen to allow Najibullah to go to India, where his family was living, failed.
8. The Mujahideen's success in capturing power was made possible by the assistance of a large number of jihadis from the Pakistani madrasas, who had been trained and armed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and sent into Afghanistan to help the Mujahideen. The Pakistani contingents, which participated in the invasion of Kabul, belonged to the anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) was then known, and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). Amjad Farooqi, then an 18-year-old youth, entered Kabul as a member of the contingent of the SSP.
9. In 1994, there was a serious failure of the Pakistani cotton crop, which threatened to bring its textile industry to a standstill. Asif Zardari, the husband of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, flew into Turkmenistan and entered into a contract for the purchase of a large quantity of cotton. The Turkmenistan authorities wanted to send the cotton to Iran and from there ship it to Karachi.
10.Zardari did not agree to it. Instead, he asked them to send the cotton by road via Afghanistan. He had the contract for the road transport of the cotton awarded to a Pakistani crony of his based in Hong Kong. The first two cotton convoys from Turkmenistan were looted by Mujahideen groups operating in the Herat area of Afghanistan.
11. Zardari thereupon sent Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Babbar, Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister, and Pervez Musharraf to Afghanistan to provide protection to the cotton convoys. They asked Mulla Mohammad Omar, who subsequently became the Amir of the Taliban, to collect a large number of students (Talibs) from the madrasas of Pakistan and constitute them into a force for the protection of the cotton convoys. Thus, was the Taliban born.
12.Babbar and Musharraf, who had heard of the exploits of Amjad Farooqi in Kabul in 1992, asked him to help Mulla Omar in organising this convoy protection force. He did so. Babbar himself travelled with the first convoy after this arrangement came into force and Amjad Farooqi and his boys escorted it.
13. A few months later, Mulla Omar deputed Amjad Farooqi to raid Herat and capture it with the help of his boys. He did so without difficulty, to the pleasant surprise of many, including the ISI. Thus, from a cotton convoy protection force, the Taliban became the ruler of Kandahar and Herat and other areas. Assisted by Amjad Farooqi and his associates, it started gradually extending its administrative control to other areas.
14. In the beginning of 1995, Amjad Farooqi left the SSP and joined the HUA. The HUA sent him along with some others into India's Jammu & Kashmir, where they, under the name Al Faran, kidnapped a group of Western tourists. One of the tourists was beheaded and another managed to escape. The fate of the remaining is not known till today. They are believed to have been beheaded and buried, but this has not been confirmed.
15. In October,1995, Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) under Benazir Bhutto, discovered a plot by a group of Army officers headed by Maj.Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi to have him and Benazir assassinated, capture power and proclaim the formation of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Abbasi and his associates in the Army were arrested. They were found to have been plotting in tandem with a group in the HUA led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Abbasi, his associates and the Qari were arrested during the investigation. While Abbasi and his associates were court-martialled and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the Qari was released without any action being taken against him.
16.Before 1990, there were two jihadi organisations called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI). The HUM was headed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil and the HUJI by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Around 1990, the two merged to form the HUA, with Maulana Khalil as the Amir and Qari Akhtar as the Deputy Amir. Amjad Farooqi used to work closely with the Qari.
17. In the late 1980s, Abbasi as a Brigadier was posted in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi as the head of the ISI station in India. The Government of India had him expelled. On his return to Pakistan, he was posted to the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan). In the beginning of the 1990s, without the clearance of the late Gen.Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then COAS under Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister, Abbasi organised a raid on an Indian Army post in the Siachen area and was beaten back by the Indian Army with heavy casualties.Janjua had him transferred out and censured. Since then, he had been nursing an anger against the Pakistan Army's senior leadership and hobnobbing with the Qari. A few months after capturing power on October 12,1999, Musharraf had Abbasi released from jail. He formed an anti-US organisation called Hizbollah, which acted in tandem with the HUJI.
18. In September,1996, the Taliban captured Jalalabad and Kabul. A large number of jihadi students from the Pakistani madrasas joined the Taliban unit which invaded and captured Kabul. Amjad Farooqi joined the unit at the head of a contingent of the HUA. After capturing Kabul, Amjad Farooqi and his boys raided the UN office, where Najibullah was living, lynched him and hung him from a lamp-post.
19. When the Taliban, with the help of the madrasa students from Pakistan, captured Jalalabad, Osama bin Laden was living there. He had been permitted by the Burhanuddin Rabbani Government, which was in power in Kabul till September,1996,to enter Afghanistan and take up residence in Jalalabad. It had taken the clearance of the Benazir Bhutto Government to do so. After capturing Jalalabad, the Taliban had bin Laden shifted to Kandahar by Amjad Farooqi and his men.
20.In October,1997, after establishing the involvement of the HUA in the 1995 kidnapping, the US State Department designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation under a 1996 US law. The HUA thereupon dissolved itself and the pre-1990 HUM and HUJI resumed their original existence under their previous names. Qari Saifullah Akhtar took over as the Amir of the HUJI and made Amjad Farooqi his deputy.
21. In February 1998, Osama bin Laden announced the formation of his International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People. Among those who joined it at its inception were the HUM and a Bangladesh branch of the HUJI, identified as HUJI ( B ). The Pakistani branch of the HUJI, the LET and the SSP joined it in 1999. Amjad Farooqi used to represent the Qari at the meetings of the shoora (consultative council )of the IIF.
22. In December 1999, a group of Pakistani hijackers, said to be belonging to the HUM, hijacked an aircraft of the Indian Airlines, which had taken off from Kathmandu, and forced the pilot to fly it to Kandahar. They demanded, inter alia, the release of Omar Sheikh, a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, and Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani Punjabi belonging to the HUM. The Government of India conceded their demands in order to terminate the hijacking.
23. Amongst the hijackers was a Pakistani Punjabi by name Mansur Hasnain. Sections of the Pakistani media reported that this hijacker was none other than Amjad Farooqi. After their release from detention by the Indian authorities, Maulana Azhar and Omar Sheikh went to Pakistan. The return of Azhar led to a split in the HUM. Azhar and his followers formed a new organisation called the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which joined bin Laden's IIF. The formation of the JEM was blessed by the late Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, of the Binori madrasa, Karachi, who used to be looked upon as the mentor of bin Laden, Mulla Omar and the Pakistani jihadi leaders.
24. Omar Sheikh took up residence in Lahore and was made in charge of an office run by Al Qaeda in that city. Among other tasks, he was made responsible by bin Laden to procure medicines and other humanitarian relief for the jihadis of the IIF. Azhar and Omar Sheikh, who were working for the ISI before their arrest in India, resumed their contacts with the ISI. Omar Sheikh used to visit Kandahar periodically to meet bin Laden. During one of those visits, he claimed to have come to know of Al Qaeda's plans for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and passed on the information to Lt.Gen.Ehsanul Haq, the present Director-General of the ISI, who was then posted as the Corps Commander in Peshawar,
25. When the USA launched its military operations in Afghanistan in October,2001, the Pakistani components of the IIF called upon their members to proceed to Afghanistan to join in the jihad against the US. Over 30,000 Pakistani volunteers were estimated to have gone into Afghanistan. The largest number of them belonged to the HUJI and were led by Amjad Farooqi. The US air strikes inflicted heavy casualties on them and the survivors, including Amjad Farooqi, fled back into Pakistan. Farooqi took up residence in the Binori madrasa of Karachi where he was sheltered by the late Mufti Shamzai. From his sanctuary in the madrasa, he established contact with Omar Sheikh, who was living in Lahore, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), who was living in Karachi along with Ramzi Binalshibh.
26. On January 12,2002, under pressure from the US in the wake of the attempted terrorist strike on the Indian Parliament at New Delhi in December,2001, Musharraf announced a ban on the LET, the JEM and the SSP and had their leaders arrested or placed under house-arrest. The whole thing was a farce as was seen subsequently. Intriguingly, he did not ban the HUM and the HUJI, which had many supporters in the Army and did not take any action against Qari Saifullah Akhtar and Amjad Farooqi.
27. In January,2002, Daniel Pearl, the correspondent of the USA's "Wall Street Journal" in Mumbai (Bombay) in India, along with his wife Marianne went to Karachi to enquire into the Pakistani links of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. They reportedly stayed at Karachi in the house of an American free-lance journalist of sub-continental origin, who had worked for some time as a free-lancer for the WSJ, where she had come to know Pearl and Marianne. She had gone to Karachi in connection with a book she was writing on the sub-continent.
28. Before going to Karachi, Pearl had contacted many people in Pakistan and the USA in order to get introductions to knowledgeable people in Karachi and elsewhere who might be knowing about the local contacts of Reid. It was alleged that among those whose help he sought were James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Mansoor Ijaz, an American lobbyist of Pakistani origin, who often used to write articles for the US media jointly with Woolsey.
29. Pearl was particularly keen to meet Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), a terrorist organisation based in the USA and the Caribbean with a large following among Afro-Americans. Two of Gilani's four wives are stated to be Afro-Americans. Pearl wanted to talk to him about Richard Reid, since he had reportedly heard that Reid was a member of the JUF and had been trained in a HUM camp in Pakistan in the 1990s.
30. Even before coming to Karachi, Pearl was reportedly in E-mail contact with one Khalid Khwaja, a retired officer of the Pakistani Air Force who had served in the ISI in the late 1980s and one Mohammad Bashir, who later turned out to be none other than Omar Sheikh. It was alleged that Mansoor Ijaz had given Pearl an introduction to Khwaja. It is not known how he came to know of Bashir. According to the Karachi Police, Pearl was keen to meet Gilani and Omar Sheikh. Bashir promised to help him.
31.On January 23, 2002, Pearl went by a taxi driven by one Nasir to the Metropole Hotel of Katrachi. He asked the taxi to stop near the hotel and got out of it. He then went to a car parked nearby in which four persons were waiting. One of them got out, introduced himself and invited Pearl to get in. He willingly did so. The car then went away from there. Subsequently, after the arrest of Omar Sheikh, Nasir identified him as the man who got out of the parked car and invited Pearl to get in. The driver testified during the trial of Omar Sheikh that from the willing manner in which Pearl got in it was apparent that he did not suspect a trap.
32. Subsequently, E-mail messages announcing the kidnapping of Pearl with his photographs started arriving in newspaper offices in Karachi. The Pakistani authorities launched a drive for the recovery of Pearl. There was no success. They started searching for Omar Sheikh after finding out that it was he who, under an assumed name, had laid the trap for Pearl. They took into custody Omar Sheikh's wife and young child in order to force him to surrender. On February 5, 2002,he surrendered to Brig (retd) Ejaz Shah, the Home Secretary of Punjab, who had previously worked in the ISI and was the handling officer of Omar Sheikh. The ISI kept him in its custody till February 12,2002, and then handed him over to the Karachi Police for interrogation. The public announcement about his arrest claimed he was arrested on February 12 and did not refer to the fact that he was in the ISI's custody since February 5, 2002.
33.Omar Sheikh told the Police that the kidnappers operated in three groups. Omar himself and Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif, a resident of Bhawalpur, won the confidence of Pearl and made him come to the hotel for a meeting. They kidnapped him and handed him over to Amjad Hussain Farooqui for keeping him in custody. Omar Sheikh , with the help of Adil Mohammad Sheikh, a member of the staff of the Special Branch of the Sindh Police, and his cousins Suleman Saquib and Fahad Nasim arranged for taking the photograph of Pearl in custody, having it scanned and sending the E-Mail with his photograph to the media and others making their demands. According to the Police, Saquib and Nasim belonged to the JEM, thereby indicating the possibility that the kidnapping might have been jointly planned and carried out by the HUJI, the HUM and the JEM.
34. A few days later, messages arrived announcing the killing of Pearl, along with pictures showing his throat being slit. However, his dead body was not recovered. On May 16, 2002, the Karachi Police claimed to have recovered the remains of an unidentified dead body cut into 10 pieces, which were found buried in a nursery (Gulzare Hijri) on a plot of land in the outlying Gulshan-e-Maymar area of Karachi. They further claimed that the remains were recovered following a tip-off from a human source and that, according to the source, the remains were of Pearl. The local media also reported that there was an improvised shed on the plot where Pearl was suspected to have been held in captivity before his murder and that the plot belonged to Al Rashid Trust of Karachi. DNA tests and other forensic examination determined that the remains were of Pearl.
35.The Al-Rashid Trust, whose accounts were ordered to be frozen under the UN Security Council Resolution No.1373 because of its suspected links with Al Qaeda, is also closely linked with the JEM. Before Musharraf's ban on the JEM, the offices of the two used to be located in the same buildings in different cities of Pakistan. The two also had common cadres to undertake fund-raising activities for both the organizations.
36.Initially, it was not clear as to who gave the information to the Karachi Police about the burial of these remains in a plot of land belonging to the Al Rashid Trust----a human source as claimed by the Police or by some new suspects who had been picked up by the Police, but whose arrest had not been shown in Police records, lest the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wanted to interrogate them or sought their extradition to the US?
37.The answer came in a report carried by the "News" (May 23, 2002), the prestigious daily of Pakistan, which revealed that the information about the remains was given to the Karachi Police by one Fazal Karim -- a resident of Rahim Yar Khan and a father of five-- who was in Police custody, but had not been shown as arrested. According to the paper,Fazal Karim had identified Lashkar-e- Jhangvi's Naeem Bukhari as the ring leader of the group that also included "three Yemeni-Balochs" (father Yemeni and mother Baloch) who took part in Pearl's kidnapping, his murder and disposal of his body parts. Naeem Bukhari was wanted by police in Punjab and Karachi in more than a dozen cases of anti-Shia killings. Fazal Karim reportedly confirmed Omar Sheikh's role in planning Pearl's kidnapping.
37.According to Karachi Police sources, Amjad Farooqi was also taken into custody on the basis of the tip-off from Fazal Karim, but the ISI ordered them to release him and let him go. Fazal Karim reportedly named one of the Yemeni-Balochs involved in the beheading of Pearl as KSM, but the military regime did not admit this. On the basis of his information, the Police also rounded up some others involved in the kidnapping and murder.
38.Intriguingly, on May 14, 2002, two days before the recovery of the remains of the dead body of Pearl by the Karachi Police, the Punjab Police claimed that Riaz Basra, a long absconding leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the militant wing of the SSP in which Amjad Farooqi had started his career as a terrorist, and three of his associates were killed in an encounter in a Punjab village when they had gone there to kill a Shia leader. Sections of the Pakistani media expressed doubts over the Police version and alleged that Riaz Basra was in the informal custody of the ISI since Pearl's kidnapping in January, 2002, without it taking any action against him and that the Police, for reasons not clear, had shown him as having been killed in an encounter.
39. During the trial of Omar Sheikh and his associates, the defence lawyers drew the attention of the anti-terrorism court to media reports about the arrest of Fazal Karim and others and urged that the court should order a re-investigation of the case in order to determine their responsibility for the offence. The prosecution described the media reports as baseless and opposed any re-investigation. The court rejected the defence plea.
40. The court sentenced Omar Sheikh to death and others to various terms of imprisonment. The appeal against the death sentence filed by Omar Sheikh has not been disposed of by the court so far under some pretext or the other. In the meanwhile, KSM was arrested in Rawalpindi by the Pakistani authorities in March, 2003,and handed over to the FBI, which had him flown out of the country. In an article written in the "Salon", an online journal, in October,2003,the free-lance journalist in whose Karachi house Pearl and his wife had stayed said that Marianne had been informed by the US intelligence that KSM had admitted having personally killed Pearl. The defence lawyers of Omar Sheikh again raised the question of a re-investigation, but their plea was again opposed by the prosecution and rejected by the court.
41. In December, 2003, there were two unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf in Rawalpindi with explosives. In the second incident, suicide bombers were involved. There were strong indications of the involvement of insiders from the Pakistani Army and Police in both the incidents. Till June,2004, Musharraf blamed the JEM for the attempts just as he had initially blamed it in 2002 for the kidnapping and murder of Pearl. Subsequent investigation brought out that it was the HUJI and not the JEM, which was involved. Of all the pro-bin Laden jihadi organisations of Pakistan, the HUJI has the largest following in the Army. The investigation into Pearl's kidnapping and murder had also brought out indicators of a possible HUJI penetration into the Air Force.
42. By the end of January,2004, the investigators had started gathering evidence of the involvement of junior officials of the Army and the Air Force belonging to the HUJI and the Hizbut Tahreer in the two assassination attempts, which, according to them, were orchestrated by Amjad Farooqi at the instance of the Libyan.However, Musharraf did not openly admit this.
43. On June 10, 2004, the Corps Commander of Karachi narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Karachi. With the help of a mobile phone, which the terrorists had left behind at the scene, the Karachi Police established that the attempt was jointly organised by the HUJI and a new organisation called Jundullah (Army of Allah), which had been trained by the Uzbecks and Chechens in the South Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The Police managed to identify and round up the Jundullah members involved in the incident.
44. During their interrogation, they reportedly admitted their involvement and said that they were acting under the leadership of Amjad Farooqi. The Police had kept the arrest and interrogation of the Jundullah members a secret lest Amjad Farooqi be alerted before they got him. But, Sheikh Rashid, the Information Minister, prematurely announced it to the media, thereby alerting Amjad Farooqi before the Police could arrest him. He managed to escape from his Karachi hide-out and fled to Nawabshah.
45. For the first time, Musharraf admitted in an interview to a private TV channel in June, 2004, the involvement of junior officers of the Army and the Air Force in the plot against him and the role of Amjad Farooqi and the Libyan in the plot.
46. A man-hunt for Farooqi and the Libyan was launched by the Police. Before they could get Farooqi alive, someone in the military-intelligence establishment would seem to have ensured that he would not fall alive into the hands of the Police. Who is that somebody?
47.Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the HUJI, was picked up by the Dubai authorities on August 6, 2004, and handed over to the Pakistani authorities, who had him flown to Pakistan the next day. The results of his interrogation are not known so far.
48.One of the most mysterious aspects of the activities of the jihadi organisations in Pakistan is why Musharraf has always been reluctant to or even afraid of taking action against the HUJI. He has avoided banning it even after evidence of its penetration into the Army and the Air Force and its involvement in the plots against him.
Friday, October 9, 2009
DEAR ALL
I will be entering hospital later next week to undergo a cystoscopy to remove a small wart-like growth in my urinary bladder, which was detected on October 5,2009. According to my doctor, I will have to stay in the hospital for four days followed by five or six days of rest at home. He has advised me to postpone all activities and travels till October 31. He says I should be able to resume my normal activities and travels from November 1, provided the removed wart does not turn out to be malignant.Keeping my fingers crossed.I may not be writing regularly during this period.Warm regards. B.Raman
INDIA'S OPTIONS VIS-A-VIS AFGHANISTAN
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.562
B.RAMAN
Fifteen civilians and two Afghan policemen deployed outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul are reported to have been killed on October 8,2009, when an explosive-laden vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded outside the Embassy. A claim of responsibility was subsequently made through a web site linked with the Neo Taliban (Afghan) stating that the blast was carried out by the Taliban.
2. This was the second blast directed at the Indian Embassy. The first one in July,2008, was more deadly killing about 60 persons ----two of them senior diplomats of the Embassy, one a civilian and the other an officer of the Indian Army. The blast of July,2008, indicated inadequacies in the physical security of the Embassy premises and its ability to withstand the impact of a severe explosion. These deficiencies have since been removed. The fact that the blast of October 8----- though reportedly as powerful as last year's--- could not cause major damages in the Embassy premises and resulted only in injuries to three Indian personnel shows that the fortified Embassy premises was well able to withstand the force of the blast.
3. The blast of last year as well as the latest one indicate weaknesses in access control. The Taliban and its associates such as Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizbe Islami have been targeting for months not only the Indian Embassy, but also the Embassies of Western countries, particularly the US. The fact that the terrorists---whoever they might be--- have so far not been able to get as close to the US and other Western Embassies as they have been able to reach in the case of the Indian Embassy indicates gaps in access control. This has to be discussed by Indian security with their Afghan counterparts, who are responsible for access control and the gaps identified and removed.4. The Indian Embassy has been twice targeted by Taliban elements because it is viewed as the co-ordinator of the various projects undertaken with Indian assistance for the economic development of Afghanistan and for the promotion of democracy. Though the Indian-aided projects have no military significance, Pakistan views these projects, the resulting increase in the Indian presence for the execution of these projects and the developing relations between India and Afghanistan at the Governmental level as detrimental to its interests.
5. There is a convergence of objectives between Pakistan and the Taliban on the need to force India to reverse its policies towards Afghanistan and reduce its presence and activities to a level, which would be acceptable to Pakistan. For more than a year now, Pakistan has mounted a campaign against the Indian presence and activities------ through diplomatic means as well as through its surrogates in Afghanistan such as the Taliban.
6. The objective of the diplomatic campaign is to make the US to bring about a dilution of the Indian role through pressures on the Government of India as well as that of Hamid Karzai. The objective of the use of the surrogates in Afghan territory is to make India pay a bloody price for its presence and intimidate it into re-considering its Afghan presence even if the pressure through the US does not work.
7. The intimidatory attacks on Indian nationals and presence and on Indian establishments in Afghanistan are likely to continue. The Government of India is determined not to be intimidated and this determination has to continue. One could be certain that the Government of India would have evaluated the risks involved by undertaking development and democracy-promotion projects in Afghanistan. One must be prepared to face more such attacks and not to let these attacks come in the way of the implementation of the Indian projects.
8, At the same time, one has to repeatedly make a vulnerabilitry assessment of the Indian projects and the Indian diplomatic and consular missions and constantly upgrade their physical security. Sitting tight, going ahead with our projects whatever be the threats and constantly identifying and removing gaps in physical security, with the co-operation of the Afghan Government, is one of the two options available to India in Afghan territory. The other option is to mobilise the support of the traditionally pro-Indian sections of the Afghan civil society and the pro-India Pashtun elements in Pakistan for the continuance of the Indian projects through various instruments of soft power such as radio, TV, personal interactions etc.
9. There is another dimension----that is, identifying and neutalising the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistani territory from where these attacks are mounted, with the connivance of the Pakistani agencies. This calls for a proactive counter-sanctuaries policy. What are the options available to India to target the sanctuaries and how to implement the ultimately adopted option have to be examined at a high level and necessary directives given to all those who will be invlolved in counter-sanctuaries actions. Until and unless this is done, periodic attacks on Indian nationals and interests in Afghanistan will continue. The primary decision that the time has come for a counter-sanctuaries strategy has to come from the political leadership, which has till now been reluctant to go into the activist mode. ( 10-10-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
SECURITY OF PAK'S NUCLEAR ESTABLISHMENTS: A WAKE-UP CALL
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO. 561
B.RAMAN
On April 1,2009, a pilotless plane (Drone) of the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attacked with a missile the house of Hakimullah Mehsud in the Khadezai area of the Orakzai Agency in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Twelve persons were killed. Hakimullah himself, who was apparently one of the targets, escaped unhurt and warned of a retaliatory strike by the Pakistani Taliban in Islamabad.
2. The retaliation through a suicide bomber came within three days. Late on the evening of April 4,2009, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the barracks of a company of the Frontier Constabulary (FC) from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which was deployed in Islamabad on VIP security duties. At least eight members of the FC were killed by the explosion.The FC consists almost entirely of Pashtuns recruited in the NWFP, the FATA and the Pashtun majority areas of Balochistan. The FC has been in the forefront of the operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pashtun belt.
3.On October 4,2009, Hakimullah Mehsud, who has taken over as the Amir of the TTP after the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a Drone strike on August 5,2009, invited five Pashtun journalists to a hide-out in South Waziristan to dispel rumours spread by the Pakistani authorities after the death of Baitullah that at a shoora of the TTP held to choose the successor to Baitullah, fighting broke out between his followers and those of Waliur Rehman and that Hakimullah was killed in the exchange of fire. These rumours persisted even after two persons claiming to be Hakimullah and Waliur Rehman had rung up some journalists to repudiate these rumours and announce jointly that the TTP had elected Hakimullah as its Amir and Waliur as its Amir for the South Waziristan area. These rumours revived again recently through reports circulating in Pakistan as well as orininating from the US.
4 Talking to these journalists, Hakimullah reportedly pledged to take revenge against the US for the Drone attacks and reiterated the previous TTP claim that the Pakistani Government was cooperating with the US for carrying out the missile strikes by Predators. However, he added that the TTP wasn’t against Pakistan or its people as its fight was with the pro-US rulers of the country.
5.On October 5,2009, at least five UN officials, a foreigner and two women among them, were killed and eight others injured when a suicide bomber dressed as a Frontier Constabulary soldier managed to enter the Islamabad office of the World Food Programme without being checked by security guards from a private company as well as an FC unit deployed in Islamabad to provide security to VIPs and important establishments and blew himself up. The FC personnel guarding the building reportedly came from the same unit which was attacked by a suicide bomber of the TTP on April 4,2009.
6. The "Dawn" of Karachi reported as follows on October 6,2009: "Senior investigation officers said they had not ruled out the possibility that the bomber was an FC man.The investigators detained an FC man on duty and a private security guard posted at the office’s gate. An official said it was premature to say anything about the bomber’s identity, but the possibility that he was a serving or ex-member of the paramilitary force could not be ruled out. Another top security official said if it was established that the attacker belonged to the FC, it might change the entire dynamics of not just the investigation, but the counter-terror operation."
7. If it is established that the suicide bomber was in fact a serving member of the FC, it would be an indicatior of the success of the TTP in penetrating FC units deployed outside the Pashtun tribal belt. In the past, there had been many instances of the TTP penetrating FC units deployed in the tribal belt and winning over its personnel. There had also been instances of FC personnel deployed in the tribal areas deserting from their units and joining the TTP.
8. If the TTP has succeeded in penetrating FC units deployed in Islamabad and other places, it should set an alarm bell ringing because the Pakistan Army uses FC units for physical security duties at nuclear establishments. This could provide an opportunity for the TTP and Al Qaeda to penetrate these establishments with the help of their moles. ( 6-10-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
On April 1,2009, a pilotless plane (Drone) of the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attacked with a missile the house of Hakimullah Mehsud in the Khadezai area of the Orakzai Agency in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Twelve persons were killed. Hakimullah himself, who was apparently one of the targets, escaped unhurt and warned of a retaliatory strike by the Pakistani Taliban in Islamabad.
2. The retaliation through a suicide bomber came within three days. Late on the evening of April 4,2009, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the barracks of a company of the Frontier Constabulary (FC) from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which was deployed in Islamabad on VIP security duties. At least eight members of the FC were killed by the explosion.The FC consists almost entirely of Pashtuns recruited in the NWFP, the FATA and the Pashtun majority areas of Balochistan. The FC has been in the forefront of the operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pashtun belt.
3.On October 4,2009, Hakimullah Mehsud, who has taken over as the Amir of the TTP after the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a Drone strike on August 5,2009, invited five Pashtun journalists to a hide-out in South Waziristan to dispel rumours spread by the Pakistani authorities after the death of Baitullah that at a shoora of the TTP held to choose the successor to Baitullah, fighting broke out between his followers and those of Waliur Rehman and that Hakimullah was killed in the exchange of fire. These rumours persisted even after two persons claiming to be Hakimullah and Waliur Rehman had rung up some journalists to repudiate these rumours and announce jointly that the TTP had elected Hakimullah as its Amir and Waliur as its Amir for the South Waziristan area. These rumours revived again recently through reports circulating in Pakistan as well as orininating from the US.
4 Talking to these journalists, Hakimullah reportedly pledged to take revenge against the US for the Drone attacks and reiterated the previous TTP claim that the Pakistani Government was cooperating with the US for carrying out the missile strikes by Predators. However, he added that the TTP wasn’t against Pakistan or its people as its fight was with the pro-US rulers of the country.
5.On October 5,2009, at least five UN officials, a foreigner and two women among them, were killed and eight others injured when a suicide bomber dressed as a Frontier Constabulary soldier managed to enter the Islamabad office of the World Food Programme without being checked by security guards from a private company as well as an FC unit deployed in Islamabad to provide security to VIPs and important establishments and blew himself up. The FC personnel guarding the building reportedly came from the same unit which was attacked by a suicide bomber of the TTP on April 4,2009.
6. The "Dawn" of Karachi reported as follows on October 6,2009: "Senior investigation officers said they had not ruled out the possibility that the bomber was an FC man.The investigators detained an FC man on duty and a private security guard posted at the office’s gate. An official said it was premature to say anything about the bomber’s identity, but the possibility that he was a serving or ex-member of the paramilitary force could not be ruled out. Another top security official said if it was established that the attacker belonged to the FC, it might change the entire dynamics of not just the investigation, but the counter-terror operation."
7. If it is established that the suicide bomber was in fact a serving member of the FC, it would be an indicatior of the success of the TTP in penetrating FC units deployed outside the Pashtun tribal belt. In the past, there had been many instances of the TTP penetrating FC units deployed in the tribal belt and winning over its personnel. There had also been instances of FC personnel deployed in the tribal areas deserting from their units and joining the TTP.
8. If the TTP has succeeded in penetrating FC units deployed in Islamabad and other places, it should set an alarm bell ringing because the Pakistan Army uses FC units for physical security duties at nuclear establishments. This could provide an opportunity for the TTP and Al Qaeda to penetrate these establishments with the help of their moles. ( 6-10-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, October 3, 2009
SUSPECTED DEATH OF YULDASHEV: GOOD NEWS FOR UZBEKISTAN,CHINA,GERMANY
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.560
B.RAMAN
In its relentless strikes with drones (pilotless planes) on suspected terrorist hide-outs in Pakistan's tribal belt, the US intelligence has been scoring two kinds of successes. The first is the kind of success where the US intelligence knows immediately after a strike whom it has targeted and killed. A good example was the drone strike on the house of the father-in-law of Baitullah Mehsud , the then Amir of thePakistani Taliban known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in South Waziristan on August 5,2009. Immediately after the strike, the US intelligence knew and said with an 80 per cent certainty that it had killed Baitullah. The TTP initially denied the US claim, but subsequently had to admit his death.
2. The second is the kind of success of which the US intelligence becomes aware long after a strike. It attacks a place knowing it to be a terrorist hide-out without being aware of the identity of the inmates. After the strike, it realises through source information that one of the persons killed by it was someone important and becomes aware of his identity.
3. The reported death of Tohir Yuldashev, the Amir of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), would come in this category. On August27,2009, there was a drone strike on a suspected terrorist hide-out at Kanigoram in South Waziristan. At that time, the US intelligence was not aware as to whom it had killed. Much later, on September 29,2009, a man claiming to be Yuldashev's bodyguard reportedly phoned Radio Liberty in Prague to claim that Yuldashev was among those killed in this attack.This has subsequently been corroborated by tribal and Pakistani official sources cited in the Pakistani media, but not yet confirmed by the US intelligence. That is why I have called it a suspected death.
4. If ultimately confirmed, the death of Yuldashev would be the second instance in which drones have killed the Amirs (heads) of two dreaded terrorist organisations. US drones have killed many middle and even senior level leaders of Al Qaeda and other organisations, but not heads of organisations till their two successes in August----the confirmed death of Baitullah on August 5 and the reported, but not yet confirmed death of Yuldashev on August 27.
5.The reported elimination of Yuldashev would be greeted with relief not only by the counter-terrorism agencies of Uzbekistan and China,but also by the agencies of the West European countries faced with threats arising from members of their Muslim diaspora trained by the IMU and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), another Uzbek organisation, in their training camps in North Waziristan. Germany, which was recently threatened repeatedly by Al Qaeda and some of its affiliates, would have particular reason to be happy since some of the Germans of Turkish or Moroccan origin , who pose a threat to German security, had been trained in the camps of the two Uzbek organisations in North Waziristan.
6.The first signs of Islamic fundamentalism appeared in Uzbekistan in December 1991, when some unemployed Muslim youth seized the Communist Party headquarters in the eastern city of Namangan, to protest against the refusal of the local Mayor to permit the construction of a mosque. The protest was organised by Tohir Abdouhalilovitch Yuldashev, a 24-year-old college drop-out, who had become a Mulla, and Jumaboi Ahmadzhanovitch Khojaev, a former Soviet paratrooper who had served in Afghanistan and returned from there totally converted to Wahabism.
7. Yuldashev and Khojaev, who later adopted the alias Juma Namangani, after his hometown, became members of the Uzbekistan branch of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP). Following the IRP's refusal to support their demand for the establishment of an Islamic State in Uzbekistan, they formed their own party called the Adolat (Justice) Party, which was banned by President Islam Karimov. They then fled to Tajikistan. While Namangani fought in the local civil war, Yuldashev went to Chechnya to participate in the jihad there. In 1995, he went toPakistan, where the jihadi organisations gave him shelter in Peshawar. From there, he re-named the Adolat Party as the IMU and was allegedly in receipt of funds from the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. After Osama bin Laden shifted to Jalalabad from Khartoum in Sudan in 1996, Yuldashev crossed over into Afghanistan.
8. After the end of the civil war in Tajikistan, Namangani settled down for a while as a road transport operator. He was also allegedly involved in heroin smuggling from Afghanistan. Subsequently, he too crossed over into Afghanistan and joined the IMU and became its leader. The IMU allegedly earns a major part of its revenue from heroin smuggling.
9. After the Taliban captured Kabul in September, 1996, Namangani and Yuldashev held a press conference at Kabul at which they announced the formation of the IMU with Namangani as the Amir and Yuldashev as its military commander. In 1998, the IMU joined the International Islamic Front (IIF) of Al Qaeda. bin Laden was reportedly greatly interested in the IMU because he was hoping to use it for getting nuclear material and know-how from Russia and other constituent States of the erstwhile USSR.
10. The IMU's initial goal was described as the overthrow of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and the establishment of an Islamic State in Uzbekistan. It changed its name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan (IPT) in June 2001, and called for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and China's Xinjiang province. It has been recruiting members from all these areas, including Uighurs from Xinjiang. Initially, its recruits were trained by the Arab instructors of Al Qaeda in the training camps in Afghan territory and after 9/11 by Chechen and Pashtun instructors of the Taliban in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan. Despite its 2001 change of name as IPT, it continues to be known in Uzbekistan as the IMU. The name IPT is not widely known.
11. After the reported death of Namangani in a US air strike in Afghanistan post-9/11, Yuldashev took over the leadership of the IMU as its Amir and crossed over with the surviving members of the IMU into South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, where he and his Uzbek/Chechen instructors set up a training camp for training jihadi terrorists. In an operation launched by the Pakistani security forces in South Waziristan in March-April, 2004, to smoke out the remnants of Al Qaeda, Yuldashev was reported to have been injured, but he managed to escape.
12.Till March, 2007, Mir Ali in North Waziristan used to be the headquarters of the Islamic Jihad Group, also known as the Islamic Jihad Union. It ran a number of training camps there where jihadis from many Western countries, including Germany, China's Xinjiang, and Pakistan itself were trained by Uzbek and Chechen instructors. The IMU's headquarters used to be in the Azam Warsak area of SouthWaziristan. This area became the scene of violent attacks by sections of the local tribals on the Uzbeks living in the area following the alleged murder of a local tribal personality by an Uzbek resident of the area in the third week of March, 2007. In the ensuing clashes, nearly 100 persons were killed----about 70 Uzbeks and the remaining locals mainly belonging to the Darikhel and the Tojikhel sub-tribes of the Pashtuns. The Yargulkhel sub-tribe led by Noor Islam and his brother Haji Omar, two important pro-Taliban military commanders who had once fought in Afghanistan, supported the Uzbeks in their fight against the Darikhels and the Tojkhels. Some Yargulkhels were also killed. Ultimately, the IMU was forced to evacuate South Waziristan and shift to Mir Ali.
13.Following this, I had reported as follows in my article titled "Mir Ali In North Waziristan- : Under Uzbek Control ", which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers24/paper2317.html : Quote According to well-informed sources in the Police of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is under the effective control of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) headed by Qari Tohir Yuldashev. Small groups of Chechens and Uighurs are also present in the area. They work under the over-all command of Qari Tohir. They were being helped by Maulana Sadiq Noor, a local tribal leader close to the Neo Taliban. The IMU, with the help of Chechen instructors, has set up training camps in the area for training the recruits of the Neo Taliban, the jihadi terrorist organisations of Pakistan and individual jihadis from abroad-particularly from the Pakistani diaspora abroad."
14.After the Pakistani commando raid in the Lal Masjid of Islamabad between July 10 and `13, 2007, the Mehsuds of Baitullah joined hands with the IMU and the Islamic Jihad Group and they started instigating suicide terrorist attacks not only in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), but also outside the tribal belt---even in places like Islamabad and Rawalpindi.Coinciding with the commando raid, the Government of Pervez Musharraf sent reinforcements of security forces to North Waziristan. This was interpreted by sections of the local tribals as a violation of the peace agreement signed with them by the Pakistan Army in September,2006, and as a prelude to attacks on the headquarters of the IMU and the Islamic Jihad Group. They kidnapped nearly 300 members of the para-military forces and threatened to kill them at the rate of three a day if their followers in Government custody were not released and the reinforcements were not withdrawn.
15. Following the arrest in Germany in September,2007, of three German Muslims trained in the camps of the Islamic Jihad Group in the Mir Ali area, who were allegedly planning to attack a US military base in Germany, the Musharraf Government came under increased pressure from the US to act against pro-Al Qaeda jihadis in the Mir Ali area. There was similar pressure from the Chinese, who were concerned over the attacks on Chinese nationals working in Pakistan after the Lal Masjid raid. Even apart from these pressures, the worsening security situation in the tribal belt forced the Pakistani Security Forces to act against the Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs and their local tribal supporters. Reports from the NATO forces in Afghanistan of the presence of increasing numbers of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs with the Neo Taliban forces operating in Afghan territory added to the pressure for action. Responding to these pressures, the Pakistani Government started sending further reinforcements to the area. It was a jihadi attack on one of the convoys carrying these reinforcements which triggered off a new round of deadly clashes.
16.About 200 members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) , the Islamic Jihad Group and the Pashtun tribal group led by Baitullah Mehsud and about a hundred members of the Pakistani Security Forces---mostly para-military personnel--- were killed in violent clashes between pro-Al Qaeda jihadis and the security forces in and around the Mir Ali area from October 6, 2007. The clashes started after the terrorists ambushed a convoy of the security forces in North Waziristan, inflicting an undisclosed number of fatalities and capturing some Pakistani personnel of the security forces.
17. The dead bodies of the some of the security forces personnel were later found abandoned with their throats slit. A Jirga of leading NorthWaziristan clerics led by former Member of the National Assembly from North Waziristan, Maulana Nek Zaman Haqqani, after daylong negotiations, received 30 bodies of the slain soldiers from the jihadis in Khaisur and handed them over to military officials in Mir Ali. The"News", a well-informed daily newspaper, quoted an unidentified jirga member as claiming on October 8, 2007, that the jirga members had recovered 73 bodies of soldiers, majority of which were burnt or badly mutilated, from the Mir Ali villages that they had visited. Malik SherKhan, a local tribal elder, said 45 bodies of soldiers had been handed over to military officials in Mir Ali. Quoting a local Government official,the "News" reported as follows: “Very few of the over 200 soldiers besieged by militants on Sunday (October 7) seem to have survived after the deadliest ever attack on them.” Following the discovery of over a dozen mutilated dead bodies, either beheaded or with their throats slit,of para-military personnel captured earlier by the men of Baitullah Mehsud, the para-military forces ran amok. Some surrendered to the terrorists, others discarded their uniforms and took shelter in the homes of the residents of the area and some others went on a killing spree, indiscriminately killing the local villagers and the Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs..
18.The Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) or the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG), came into being in Pakistani territory post 9/11 as a result of a split in the IMU following the US military strikes in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It describes Osama bin Laden, Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Neo Taliban, and Maulana Samiul Haq, the Amir of a faction of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam Pakistan, as its mentors. It focusses on training volunteers from the Western countries as well as from Uzbekistan.
19. It came to notice for the first time in April 2004 when it claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings around Tashkent and Bukharo in Uzbekistan which killed 47 people. The attacks targeted local government offices, as well as a crowded market. On July 30,2004, it carried out simultaneous bombing attacks on the US Embassy, the Israeli Embassy, and the office of the Uzbek Prosecutor General,killing at least two people and wounding many others.
20. A statement purported to have been disseminated by it said: “A group of young Muslims executed martyrdom operations that put fear in the apostate government and its infidel allies, the Americans and Jews. The mujahidin belonging to Islamic Jihad Group attacked both the American and Israeli embassies as well as the court building where the trials of a large number of the brothers from the Group had begun.These martyrdom operations that the group is executing will not stop, God willing. It is for the purpose of repelling the injustice of the apostate government and supporting the jihad of our Muslim brothers in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, the Hijaz, and in other Muslim countries ruled by infidels and apostates.”
21. On May 26, 2005, the US State Department issued the following statement: "The Department of State on May 25 announced the designation of the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organisation under Executive Order 13224. This designation blocks all property, and interests in property, of the organization that are in the United States, or come within the United States,or the control of U. S. persons. The Secretary of State took this action in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security. The Islamic Jihad Group, active in Central Asia, broke away from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization that is listed by the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee. On July 30, 2004, the Islamic Jihad Group conducted coordinated bombing attacks in Tashkent against the U.S. and Israeli Embassies, and the office of the Uzbek Prosecutor General, killing at least two people and wounding nine. The Islamic Jihad Group claimed responsibility for these attacks and indicated that future attacks are planned. The Islamic Jihad Group continues to target Americans and U.S. facilities overseas and is a dangerous threat to U.S. interests. After an explosion at a safehouse in Bukharo, Uzbekistan, IJG suicide bombers attacked a popular bazaar and other locations in Tashkent in March and April 2004, resulting in the deaths of more than a dozen police officers and innocent bystanders and dozens of injuries. The attackers in the March and April 2004 attacks, some of whom were female suicide bombers, targeted the local government offices of the Uzbekistani and Bukharo police, killing approximately 47 people, including 33 terrorists. These attacks marked the first use of female suicide bombers in Central Asia. Those arrested in connection with the attacks in Bukharo have testified to the close ties between the IJG leaders and Usama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Kazakhstani authorities have declared that IJG members were taught by al-Qaida instructors to handle explosives and to organize intelligence work and subversive activities. Kazakhstan has arrested several IJG members and put them on trial."
22 In October, 2005, the British Government declared it as a terrorist organisation despite strong opposition from human rights groups,which alleged that the Uzbek Government was projecting political dissidents opposed to it as pro-Al Qaeda terrorists.
23.The IJG, which was formed in 2002 to oppose the co-operation extended by the Government of Islam Karimov to the US in its operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, projects the US and Israel as the main enemies of Islam and all Muslim countries co-operating with the US as apostates, which need to be opposed. The IJG, which also has the over-all objective of a global Islamic Caliphate, projects itself as a global jihadi organisation and not a basically Uzbek organisation. It says that since Islam does not recognise nationalities or ethnicities, any Muslim can become its member irrespective of where he or she lives. Since it describes the US and Israel as its principal enemies, it welcomes volunteers from countries where the US and Israel have a large presence.
24. In an interview on May 31, 2007, Ebu Yahya Muhammed Fatih, who describes himself as the Commander of the Islamic Jihad Union,stated as follows:
"After the fall of the Afganistan Islamic Administration,we who shared the same opinions came together and decided to organize groups which will conduct jihad operations against the infidel constitution of cruel Karimov in Uzbekistan. The sole aim of all the emigrant-mujahedeen brothers was to find war-like solutions against the infidel constitution of cruel Karimov. For this aim our Union was established in 2002.
"Our Union's aim is, under the flag of justice and Islam Dominancy, to save our Müslim brothers who have been suffering from the cruelty of pre-Soviet period and Uzbekistan, and to take them out of the swamp of cruelty and infidelity, as well as to help other Müslim brothers all around the world as per God and his Prophet's orders.
"Members of our Union are not members of a specific tribe or a nation. As there is no nationalism and tribalism in Islam, our Union is formed of the believers from all over the world and multi-national emigrants travelling to praise the religion.
"Today we proceed according to our targeted goals with all our means. Muslim youth in the republics of former Soviet Union who found the path of Allah and are ready to fight for their religion have been trained in various fields in the training facilities of the Union. One of the armed forces of the Union is active in Afghanistan. Besides, we have been in contact and also been working on our common targets together with Caucasian mujahedeens. We have also been working together on plans and aims against the infidel regime of Uzbekistan which is one of our major targets."
25. In April, 2007, the US Embassy in Berlin announced that it was strengthening security at US facilities in Germany in response to what it described as an increased threat of terrorism. Mr. August Hanning, a former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency known as the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND), who was the then Deputy Interior Minister, said in an interview that 14 German Islamists had gone to Pakistan for training. He also said that in recent months the Pakistani authorities had detained at least seven German Islamists “who could have been involved in planning attacks”.
26. On September 5, 2007, German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms announced the arrest of three persons and the recovery from them of 700 kilos of chemicals capable of being converted into explosives. German media reports said that they were planning attacks against a US military base in Ramstein and the Frankfurt airport. Two of the arrested persons were described as white converts to Islam, both German nationals, and the third as of Turkish origin. The Federal Prosecutor named the three persons aged 22,28 and 29 as belonging to the German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union. It was reported that seven more members of the cell were still at large.
27.There is another Yuldashev in the jihadi world of Uzbekistan ---- by the first name Akram.In 1992, Akram Yuldashev,then a 29-year-old maths teacher of Andijan, published a pamphlet titled "Yimonga Yul" (Path to faith) on what he projected as the superiority of Islamic moral values. This brought him many supporters and his pamphlet was widely read. In 1998, the authorities arrested him on a charge of possessing narcotics and he was jailed for 30 months. However, he was prematurely released in December 1998.At the time of his arrest, he was working in a furniture company. He was again arrested in February 1999 following explosions in Tashkent, accused of participating in acts of terrorism and sentenced to 17 years in jail. The charge-sheet filed against him described him as the head of a jihadi organisation called Akramia, named after him, whose objective, it was alleged, was to convert Uzbekistan into an Islamic State ruled according to the Sharia.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
B.RAMAN
In its relentless strikes with drones (pilotless planes) on suspected terrorist hide-outs in Pakistan's tribal belt, the US intelligence has been scoring two kinds of successes. The first is the kind of success where the US intelligence knows immediately after a strike whom it has targeted and killed. A good example was the drone strike on the house of the father-in-law of Baitullah Mehsud , the then Amir of thePakistani Taliban known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in South Waziristan on August 5,2009. Immediately after the strike, the US intelligence knew and said with an 80 per cent certainty that it had killed Baitullah. The TTP initially denied the US claim, but subsequently had to admit his death.
2. The second is the kind of success of which the US intelligence becomes aware long after a strike. It attacks a place knowing it to be a terrorist hide-out without being aware of the identity of the inmates. After the strike, it realises through source information that one of the persons killed by it was someone important and becomes aware of his identity.
3. The reported death of Tohir Yuldashev, the Amir of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), would come in this category. On August27,2009, there was a drone strike on a suspected terrorist hide-out at Kanigoram in South Waziristan. At that time, the US intelligence was not aware as to whom it had killed. Much later, on September 29,2009, a man claiming to be Yuldashev's bodyguard reportedly phoned Radio Liberty in Prague to claim that Yuldashev was among those killed in this attack.This has subsequently been corroborated by tribal and Pakistani official sources cited in the Pakistani media, but not yet confirmed by the US intelligence. That is why I have called it a suspected death.
4. If ultimately confirmed, the death of Yuldashev would be the second instance in which drones have killed the Amirs (heads) of two dreaded terrorist organisations. US drones have killed many middle and even senior level leaders of Al Qaeda and other organisations, but not heads of organisations till their two successes in August----the confirmed death of Baitullah on August 5 and the reported, but not yet confirmed death of Yuldashev on August 27.
5.The reported elimination of Yuldashev would be greeted with relief not only by the counter-terrorism agencies of Uzbekistan and China,but also by the agencies of the West European countries faced with threats arising from members of their Muslim diaspora trained by the IMU and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), another Uzbek organisation, in their training camps in North Waziristan. Germany, which was recently threatened repeatedly by Al Qaeda and some of its affiliates, would have particular reason to be happy since some of the Germans of Turkish or Moroccan origin , who pose a threat to German security, had been trained in the camps of the two Uzbek organisations in North Waziristan.
6.The first signs of Islamic fundamentalism appeared in Uzbekistan in December 1991, when some unemployed Muslim youth seized the Communist Party headquarters in the eastern city of Namangan, to protest against the refusal of the local Mayor to permit the construction of a mosque. The protest was organised by Tohir Abdouhalilovitch Yuldashev, a 24-year-old college drop-out, who had become a Mulla, and Jumaboi Ahmadzhanovitch Khojaev, a former Soviet paratrooper who had served in Afghanistan and returned from there totally converted to Wahabism.
7. Yuldashev and Khojaev, who later adopted the alias Juma Namangani, after his hometown, became members of the Uzbekistan branch of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP). Following the IRP's refusal to support their demand for the establishment of an Islamic State in Uzbekistan, they formed their own party called the Adolat (Justice) Party, which was banned by President Islam Karimov. They then fled to Tajikistan. While Namangani fought in the local civil war, Yuldashev went to Chechnya to participate in the jihad there. In 1995, he went toPakistan, where the jihadi organisations gave him shelter in Peshawar. From there, he re-named the Adolat Party as the IMU and was allegedly in receipt of funds from the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. After Osama bin Laden shifted to Jalalabad from Khartoum in Sudan in 1996, Yuldashev crossed over into Afghanistan.
8. After the end of the civil war in Tajikistan, Namangani settled down for a while as a road transport operator. He was also allegedly involved in heroin smuggling from Afghanistan. Subsequently, he too crossed over into Afghanistan and joined the IMU and became its leader. The IMU allegedly earns a major part of its revenue from heroin smuggling.
9. After the Taliban captured Kabul in September, 1996, Namangani and Yuldashev held a press conference at Kabul at which they announced the formation of the IMU with Namangani as the Amir and Yuldashev as its military commander. In 1998, the IMU joined the International Islamic Front (IIF) of Al Qaeda. bin Laden was reportedly greatly interested in the IMU because he was hoping to use it for getting nuclear material and know-how from Russia and other constituent States of the erstwhile USSR.
10. The IMU's initial goal was described as the overthrow of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and the establishment of an Islamic State in Uzbekistan. It changed its name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan (IPT) in June 2001, and called for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and China's Xinjiang province. It has been recruiting members from all these areas, including Uighurs from Xinjiang. Initially, its recruits were trained by the Arab instructors of Al Qaeda in the training camps in Afghan territory and after 9/11 by Chechen and Pashtun instructors of the Taliban in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan. Despite its 2001 change of name as IPT, it continues to be known in Uzbekistan as the IMU. The name IPT is not widely known.
11. After the reported death of Namangani in a US air strike in Afghanistan post-9/11, Yuldashev took over the leadership of the IMU as its Amir and crossed over with the surviving members of the IMU into South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, where he and his Uzbek/Chechen instructors set up a training camp for training jihadi terrorists. In an operation launched by the Pakistani security forces in South Waziristan in March-April, 2004, to smoke out the remnants of Al Qaeda, Yuldashev was reported to have been injured, but he managed to escape.
12.Till March, 2007, Mir Ali in North Waziristan used to be the headquarters of the Islamic Jihad Group, also known as the Islamic Jihad Union. It ran a number of training camps there where jihadis from many Western countries, including Germany, China's Xinjiang, and Pakistan itself were trained by Uzbek and Chechen instructors. The IMU's headquarters used to be in the Azam Warsak area of SouthWaziristan. This area became the scene of violent attacks by sections of the local tribals on the Uzbeks living in the area following the alleged murder of a local tribal personality by an Uzbek resident of the area in the third week of March, 2007. In the ensuing clashes, nearly 100 persons were killed----about 70 Uzbeks and the remaining locals mainly belonging to the Darikhel and the Tojikhel sub-tribes of the Pashtuns. The Yargulkhel sub-tribe led by Noor Islam and his brother Haji Omar, two important pro-Taliban military commanders who had once fought in Afghanistan, supported the Uzbeks in their fight against the Darikhels and the Tojkhels. Some Yargulkhels were also killed. Ultimately, the IMU was forced to evacuate South Waziristan and shift to Mir Ali.
13.Following this, I had reported as follows in my article titled "Mir Ali In North Waziristan- : Under Uzbek Control ", which is available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers24/paper2317.html : Quote According to well-informed sources in the Police of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is under the effective control of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) headed by Qari Tohir Yuldashev. Small groups of Chechens and Uighurs are also present in the area. They work under the over-all command of Qari Tohir. They were being helped by Maulana Sadiq Noor, a local tribal leader close to the Neo Taliban. The IMU, with the help of Chechen instructors, has set up training camps in the area for training the recruits of the Neo Taliban, the jihadi terrorist organisations of Pakistan and individual jihadis from abroad-particularly from the Pakistani diaspora abroad."
14.After the Pakistani commando raid in the Lal Masjid of Islamabad between July 10 and `13, 2007, the Mehsuds of Baitullah joined hands with the IMU and the Islamic Jihad Group and they started instigating suicide terrorist attacks not only in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), but also outside the tribal belt---even in places like Islamabad and Rawalpindi.Coinciding with the commando raid, the Government of Pervez Musharraf sent reinforcements of security forces to North Waziristan. This was interpreted by sections of the local tribals as a violation of the peace agreement signed with them by the Pakistan Army in September,2006, and as a prelude to attacks on the headquarters of the IMU and the Islamic Jihad Group. They kidnapped nearly 300 members of the para-military forces and threatened to kill them at the rate of three a day if their followers in Government custody were not released and the reinforcements were not withdrawn.
15. Following the arrest in Germany in September,2007, of three German Muslims trained in the camps of the Islamic Jihad Group in the Mir Ali area, who were allegedly planning to attack a US military base in Germany, the Musharraf Government came under increased pressure from the US to act against pro-Al Qaeda jihadis in the Mir Ali area. There was similar pressure from the Chinese, who were concerned over the attacks on Chinese nationals working in Pakistan after the Lal Masjid raid. Even apart from these pressures, the worsening security situation in the tribal belt forced the Pakistani Security Forces to act against the Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs and their local tribal supporters. Reports from the NATO forces in Afghanistan of the presence of increasing numbers of Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs with the Neo Taliban forces operating in Afghan territory added to the pressure for action. Responding to these pressures, the Pakistani Government started sending further reinforcements to the area. It was a jihadi attack on one of the convoys carrying these reinforcements which triggered off a new round of deadly clashes.
16.About 200 members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) , the Islamic Jihad Group and the Pashtun tribal group led by Baitullah Mehsud and about a hundred members of the Pakistani Security Forces---mostly para-military personnel--- were killed in violent clashes between pro-Al Qaeda jihadis and the security forces in and around the Mir Ali area from October 6, 2007. The clashes started after the terrorists ambushed a convoy of the security forces in North Waziristan, inflicting an undisclosed number of fatalities and capturing some Pakistani personnel of the security forces.
17. The dead bodies of the some of the security forces personnel were later found abandoned with their throats slit. A Jirga of leading NorthWaziristan clerics led by former Member of the National Assembly from North Waziristan, Maulana Nek Zaman Haqqani, after daylong negotiations, received 30 bodies of the slain soldiers from the jihadis in Khaisur and handed them over to military officials in Mir Ali. The"News", a well-informed daily newspaper, quoted an unidentified jirga member as claiming on October 8, 2007, that the jirga members had recovered 73 bodies of soldiers, majority of which were burnt or badly mutilated, from the Mir Ali villages that they had visited. Malik SherKhan, a local tribal elder, said 45 bodies of soldiers had been handed over to military officials in Mir Ali. Quoting a local Government official,the "News" reported as follows: “Very few of the over 200 soldiers besieged by militants on Sunday (October 7) seem to have survived after the deadliest ever attack on them.” Following the discovery of over a dozen mutilated dead bodies, either beheaded or with their throats slit,of para-military personnel captured earlier by the men of Baitullah Mehsud, the para-military forces ran amok. Some surrendered to the terrorists, others discarded their uniforms and took shelter in the homes of the residents of the area and some others went on a killing spree, indiscriminately killing the local villagers and the Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs..
18.The Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) or the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG), came into being in Pakistani territory post 9/11 as a result of a split in the IMU following the US military strikes in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It describes Osama bin Laden, Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Neo Taliban, and Maulana Samiul Haq, the Amir of a faction of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam Pakistan, as its mentors. It focusses on training volunteers from the Western countries as well as from Uzbekistan.
19. It came to notice for the first time in April 2004 when it claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings around Tashkent and Bukharo in Uzbekistan which killed 47 people. The attacks targeted local government offices, as well as a crowded market. On July 30,2004, it carried out simultaneous bombing attacks on the US Embassy, the Israeli Embassy, and the office of the Uzbek Prosecutor General,killing at least two people and wounding many others.
20. A statement purported to have been disseminated by it said: “A group of young Muslims executed martyrdom operations that put fear in the apostate government and its infidel allies, the Americans and Jews. The mujahidin belonging to Islamic Jihad Group attacked both the American and Israeli embassies as well as the court building where the trials of a large number of the brothers from the Group had begun.These martyrdom operations that the group is executing will not stop, God willing. It is for the purpose of repelling the injustice of the apostate government and supporting the jihad of our Muslim brothers in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, the Hijaz, and in other Muslim countries ruled by infidels and apostates.”
21. On May 26, 2005, the US State Department issued the following statement: "The Department of State on May 25 announced the designation of the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organisation under Executive Order 13224. This designation blocks all property, and interests in property, of the organization that are in the United States, or come within the United States,or the control of U. S. persons. The Secretary of State took this action in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security. The Islamic Jihad Group, active in Central Asia, broke away from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization that is listed by the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee. On July 30, 2004, the Islamic Jihad Group conducted coordinated bombing attacks in Tashkent against the U.S. and Israeli Embassies, and the office of the Uzbek Prosecutor General, killing at least two people and wounding nine. The Islamic Jihad Group claimed responsibility for these attacks and indicated that future attacks are planned. The Islamic Jihad Group continues to target Americans and U.S. facilities overseas and is a dangerous threat to U.S. interests. After an explosion at a safehouse in Bukharo, Uzbekistan, IJG suicide bombers attacked a popular bazaar and other locations in Tashkent in March and April 2004, resulting in the deaths of more than a dozen police officers and innocent bystanders and dozens of injuries. The attackers in the March and April 2004 attacks, some of whom were female suicide bombers, targeted the local government offices of the Uzbekistani and Bukharo police, killing approximately 47 people, including 33 terrorists. These attacks marked the first use of female suicide bombers in Central Asia. Those arrested in connection with the attacks in Bukharo have testified to the close ties between the IJG leaders and Usama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Kazakhstani authorities have declared that IJG members were taught by al-Qaida instructors to handle explosives and to organize intelligence work and subversive activities. Kazakhstan has arrested several IJG members and put them on trial."
22 In October, 2005, the British Government declared it as a terrorist organisation despite strong opposition from human rights groups,which alleged that the Uzbek Government was projecting political dissidents opposed to it as pro-Al Qaeda terrorists.
23.The IJG, which was formed in 2002 to oppose the co-operation extended by the Government of Islam Karimov to the US in its operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, projects the US and Israel as the main enemies of Islam and all Muslim countries co-operating with the US as apostates, which need to be opposed. The IJG, which also has the over-all objective of a global Islamic Caliphate, projects itself as a global jihadi organisation and not a basically Uzbek organisation. It says that since Islam does not recognise nationalities or ethnicities, any Muslim can become its member irrespective of where he or she lives. Since it describes the US and Israel as its principal enemies, it welcomes volunteers from countries where the US and Israel have a large presence.
24. In an interview on May 31, 2007, Ebu Yahya Muhammed Fatih, who describes himself as the Commander of the Islamic Jihad Union,stated as follows:
"After the fall of the Afganistan Islamic Administration,we who shared the same opinions came together and decided to organize groups which will conduct jihad operations against the infidel constitution of cruel Karimov in Uzbekistan. The sole aim of all the emigrant-mujahedeen brothers was to find war-like solutions against the infidel constitution of cruel Karimov. For this aim our Union was established in 2002.
"Our Union's aim is, under the flag of justice and Islam Dominancy, to save our Müslim brothers who have been suffering from the cruelty of pre-Soviet period and Uzbekistan, and to take them out of the swamp of cruelty and infidelity, as well as to help other Müslim brothers all around the world as per God and his Prophet's orders.
"Members of our Union are not members of a specific tribe or a nation. As there is no nationalism and tribalism in Islam, our Union is formed of the believers from all over the world and multi-national emigrants travelling to praise the religion.
"Today we proceed according to our targeted goals with all our means. Muslim youth in the republics of former Soviet Union who found the path of Allah and are ready to fight for their religion have been trained in various fields in the training facilities of the Union. One of the armed forces of the Union is active in Afghanistan. Besides, we have been in contact and also been working on our common targets together with Caucasian mujahedeens. We have also been working together on plans and aims against the infidel regime of Uzbekistan which is one of our major targets."
25. In April, 2007, the US Embassy in Berlin announced that it was strengthening security at US facilities in Germany in response to what it described as an increased threat of terrorism. Mr. August Hanning, a former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency known as the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND), who was the then Deputy Interior Minister, said in an interview that 14 German Islamists had gone to Pakistan for training. He also said that in recent months the Pakistani authorities had detained at least seven German Islamists “who could have been involved in planning attacks”.
26. On September 5, 2007, German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms announced the arrest of three persons and the recovery from them of 700 kilos of chemicals capable of being converted into explosives. German media reports said that they were planning attacks against a US military base in Ramstein and the Frankfurt airport. Two of the arrested persons were described as white converts to Islam, both German nationals, and the third as of Turkish origin. The Federal Prosecutor named the three persons aged 22,28 and 29 as belonging to the German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union. It was reported that seven more members of the cell were still at large.
27.There is another Yuldashev in the jihadi world of Uzbekistan ---- by the first name Akram.In 1992, Akram Yuldashev,then a 29-year-old maths teacher of Andijan, published a pamphlet titled "Yimonga Yul" (Path to faith) on what he projected as the superiority of Islamic moral values. This brought him many supporters and his pamphlet was widely read. In 1998, the authorities arrested him on a charge of possessing narcotics and he was jailed for 30 months. However, he was prematurely released in December 1998.At the time of his arrest, he was working in a furniture company. He was again arrested in February 1999 following explosions in Tashkent, accused of participating in acts of terrorism and sentenced to 17 years in jail. The charge-sheet filed against him described him as the head of a jihadi organisation called Akramia, named after him, whose objective, it was alleged, was to convert Uzbekistan into an Islamic State ruled according to the Sharia.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), 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)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
CONTINUING THREAT FROM INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.559 B.RAMAN
It is one year since the last reported terrorist attack (in New Delhi in September last year) by the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and its mentor the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Not only has there been no jihadi terrorist attack in Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) attributable to the IM for a year now, there has been no propaganda offensive by the IM either during this period. There was no evidence of IM involvement in the spectacular terrorist attack launched by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in Mumbai from November 26 to 29,2008. A message purporting to be from one Deccan Mujahideen claiming responsibility for the Mumbai attack had originated from Pakistan at the time of the attack, but it was believed to have been sent at the instance of the LET set-up in Pakistan to confuse the Indian security agencies.
2. The period between November 2007 and September,2008, saw repeated terrorist strikes with timed improvised explosive devices (IEDs)by a group of jihadis originally belonging to the SIMI, who claimed to be operating as the Indian Mujahideen. These explosions, with many human fatalities, took place in three cities of Uttar Pradesh on the same day in November,2007, in Jaipur in May,2008, in Bangalore andAhmedabad in July,2008 and in New Delhi in September,2008. Messages purporting to be from the IM received by some media outfits claimed responsibility not only for these explosions, but also for some others which had taken place before November,2007, such as the explosions targeting suburban train passengers in Mumbai in July,2006.
3.The attacks between November,2007, and September,2008, were well-planned, well-orchestrated and well-executed and involved the involvement in their planning and execution by some well-educated members of the Indian Muslim community, some of whom had attended so-called secular educational institutions. Some of the educated Muslims involved and arrested by the Mumbai police were adept in the use of information technology (IT). One of them was reportedly working for a reputed IT company.
4.The Indian intelligence agencies and the police of the affected States, which were taken by surprise by these attacks, mobilised their resources and succeeded in arresting many of those involved. The investrigation brought out that long before launching these attacks, the SIMI had been planning for them and holding training camps for those to be used for these attacks in different parts of Indian territory,including in Kerala and Gujarat. The investigation also brought out that prompt follow-up action by the police of different States on the revelations about these training activities contained in the reports of the Madhya Pradesh police on the interrogation of some SIMI cadress arrested by them in the beginning of 2008 might have prevented at least some of these attacks.Unfortunately, the interrogation reports were allegedly not widely disseminated and no alert was sounded. The details of the planning and training came to be known only after the Ahmedabad explosions.
5. The credit for the one-year lull since September,2008, should go to the Indian intelligence agencies and the police of all the states. They have not allowed their preoccupation with detecting and neutralising the cells of the LET, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and other Pakistani organisations come in the way of their hunt for the remnants of the IM and the SIMI, which have escaped attention and arrest so far. Many suspected cells of the SIMI and the IM in Kerala, and other places have been detected and neutralised by them during the last one year.
6. The details out of these detections and arrests as reported by the media periodically indicate that the SIMI and the IM have been re-strategising their operations for the future and biding their time before striking again. The one-year lull in the terrorist strikes of the IM and the SIMI should not be interpreted as indicating any set-back suffered by them. The arrests made during this period of lull indicate continued planning and training for more attacks.
7. The IM and the SIMI continue to be as serious a threat to our internal security as they were in 2008. (30-9-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
It is one year since the last reported terrorist attack (in New Delhi in September last year) by the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and its mentor the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Not only has there been no jihadi terrorist attack in Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) attributable to the IM for a year now, there has been no propaganda offensive by the IM either during this period. There was no evidence of IM involvement in the spectacular terrorist attack launched by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in Mumbai from November 26 to 29,2008. A message purporting to be from one Deccan Mujahideen claiming responsibility for the Mumbai attack had originated from Pakistan at the time of the attack, but it was believed to have been sent at the instance of the LET set-up in Pakistan to confuse the Indian security agencies.
2. The period between November 2007 and September,2008, saw repeated terrorist strikes with timed improvised explosive devices (IEDs)by a group of jihadis originally belonging to the SIMI, who claimed to be operating as the Indian Mujahideen. These explosions, with many human fatalities, took place in three cities of Uttar Pradesh on the same day in November,2007, in Jaipur in May,2008, in Bangalore andAhmedabad in July,2008 and in New Delhi in September,2008. Messages purporting to be from the IM received by some media outfits claimed responsibility not only for these explosions, but also for some others which had taken place before November,2007, such as the explosions targeting suburban train passengers in Mumbai in July,2006.
3.The attacks between November,2007, and September,2008, were well-planned, well-orchestrated and well-executed and involved the involvement in their planning and execution by some well-educated members of the Indian Muslim community, some of whom had attended so-called secular educational institutions. Some of the educated Muslims involved and arrested by the Mumbai police were adept in the use of information technology (IT). One of them was reportedly working for a reputed IT company.
4.The Indian intelligence agencies and the police of the affected States, which were taken by surprise by these attacks, mobilised their resources and succeeded in arresting many of those involved. The investrigation brought out that long before launching these attacks, the SIMI had been planning for them and holding training camps for those to be used for these attacks in different parts of Indian territory,including in Kerala and Gujarat. The investigation also brought out that prompt follow-up action by the police of different States on the revelations about these training activities contained in the reports of the Madhya Pradesh police on the interrogation of some SIMI cadress arrested by them in the beginning of 2008 might have prevented at least some of these attacks.Unfortunately, the interrogation reports were allegedly not widely disseminated and no alert was sounded. The details of the planning and training came to be known only after the Ahmedabad explosions.
5. The credit for the one-year lull since September,2008, should go to the Indian intelligence agencies and the police of all the states. They have not allowed their preoccupation with detecting and neutralising the cells of the LET, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and other Pakistani organisations come in the way of their hunt for the remnants of the IM and the SIMI, which have escaped attention and arrest so far. Many suspected cells of the SIMI and the IM in Kerala, and other places have been detected and neutralised by them during the last one year.
6. The details out of these detections and arrests as reported by the media periodically indicate that the SIMI and the IM have been re-strategising their operations for the future and biding their time before striking again. The one-year lull in the terrorist strikes of the IM and the SIMI should not be interpreted as indicating any set-back suffered by them. The arrests made during this period of lull indicate continued planning and training for more attacks.
7. The IM and the SIMI continue to be as serious a threat to our internal security as they were in 2008. (30-9-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)