US & PAK TERRORISM: IN PERSPECTIVE
There has been considerable surprise and disappointment in India over the fact that not
only the US State Department, but also South Asia experts such as Mr.Michael Krepon of the
Stimson Centre, Washington, Dr. Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, Washington,
and Mrs. Teresita Schaffer of the Centre For Strategic and International Studies,
Washington, ("Outlook", January 17) have reacted negatively (Dr.Cohen even
sarcastically) to India's renewal of its complaint against Pakistan as a State-sponsor of
international terrorism after the recent hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar
by hijackers of the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) to demand the release of
Maulana Masood Azhar, Secretary-General of the HUM and close associate of Osama bin Laden,
who was involved in the murder of US marines in Somalia and the dragging of their dead
bodies through the streets in 1993, and two others..
Questions have been raised as to how the Govt. of India could
establish they were Pakistani nationals, how it could secure their photos so fast, what
evidence it has of the involvement of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan in
the incident as alleged by it and, if this was so, how would it explain the action of the
Pakistani authorities in refusing the plane permission to land at Lahore at the first
instance.
The Govt. of India established the identity of the hijackers from
the interrogation of some Pakistani members of the HUM in Mumbai who were in telephonic
contact with the hijackers in Kandahar and their photos were secured from the files of the
Mumbai airport immigration and Police. Every Pakistani national entering India is required
to register a copy of his photo with his particulars with the immigration on arrival at
the airport and with the police of the area where he would be staying.
Once identities are established, securing the photos is,
therefore, a five-minute job. The HUM members arrested in Mumbai said that all the
hijackers were Pakistani nationals and that their leader was Ibrahim Azhar, the younger
brother of Maulana Masood Azhar.
The Govt. of India's statement that Ibrahim Azhar was the leader
has been independently corroborated by two Pakistani journalists of the "Herald"
of Karachi (January) and the "Asiaweek" (January 14) of Hong Kong. While the
"Herald" story was based on an interview of the Taliban Foreign Minister,
Mr.Wakil Ahmed Muttawakkil, to the BBC Pushtoo service, the "Asiaweek"
correspondent was one of the only three foreign journalists present in Kandahar during the
drama. The "Asiaweek" correspondent has reported that, in his presence, the
leader of the hijackers identified himself as the brother of Masood Azhar to the UN
representative who had gone to Kandahar from Islamabad.
In law, if a material fact of a statement by the prosecution is
proved to be correct through independent corroboration, the other material facts of the
statement are also presumed to be correct unless proved otherwise by the defence. From
this, the independent corroboration of the identity of the leader by Pakistani witnesses
strengthens the credibility of the Indian evidence that all the hijackers were Pakistani
nationals.
The fact that all of them belonged to the Pakistan-based HUM has
also been corroborated by the "Herald" which wrote: "In the first few days
of the hijacking, the HUM tried to distance itself from the events in Kandahar, but once
the hijacking saga was over, senior members of the HUM in Muzaffarabad were willing to
admit that all hijackers belonged to their group."
In its annual reports on the "Patterns of Global
Terrorism", the Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department has been
telling the US Congress every year that the HUM is Pakistan-based, that it has been
involved in acts of terrorism in India and other countries, that it had signed the fatwa
issued by bin Laden in February, 1998, calling for attacks on US and Israeli nationals and
that it was suspected in the kidnapping of five Western tourists in Kashmir under the name
Al Faran in 1995 and in the murder of some American nationals in Karachi during the second
tenure of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto as the Prime Minister.
The State Department had declared it as one of the 30
international terrorist organisations, along with the LTTE, on October 1,1997, under the
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. This categorisation was renewed in
October last.
Despite this, the Pakistan Government has not banned this
organisation or even controlled its activities and the court-martial of some Pakistani
army officers arrested in 1995 for plotting to overthrow the Government of Mrs. Bhutto
brought out the close nexus between the HUM and the Pakistan army. In fact, one of the
arrested officers was found travelling with Saifullah Akhtar, the patron of the HUM, at
the time of his arrest. The "Herald" (January 1996) reported that while the army
court-martialled its officers, it mysteriously decided not to prosecute Akhtar.
If an organisation raised, trained, armed and motivated by the
ISI and the Pakistan army commits a hijacking and if the Pakistan army avoids the arrest
of the hijackers just as the Zia-ul-Haq regime avoided the arrest and the prosecution of
the Dal Khalsa hijackers of 1981 till the US warned it of the consequences of its inaction
in 1984, is there not a reasonable presumption under law that the hijacking was sponsored
by the Pakistani official agencies?
According to preliminary indications, the hijacking was sponsored
by Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmad, former Commander of the 10th Corps at Rawalpindi, who
played a key role in transporting the supporters of bin Laden to Kargil in February last
year and in the overthrow of Mr.Nawaz Sharif on October 12,1999. He was subsequently
appointed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Chief Executive, as the ISI Director-General.
It is said that Lt.Gen. Ahmad had the hijacking carried out
through Brig.Salahuddin Satti, who, as the head of the 111 Brigade, captured the TV and
radio stations on October 12, arrested Mr.Sharif and took him to an army guest house at
Chaklala. Brig Satti, who had served with the Special Services Group (SSG) in Siachen, had
also functioned as Chief of Staff of the 10th Corps and as Brigade Major under
Gen. Musharraf. He was promoted as Major-General on December 7,1999.
It is also said that for a week after their entry into Pakistan
from Kandahar, the hijackers were kept in the same Chaklala guest house in which Mr.Sharif
was kept before he was shifted to Karachi. Their present whereabouts are not known.
Well-informed sources claim that the ISI's instruction to the
hijackers was to take the aircraft, after hijacking, directly to Kandahar, but the
hijackers got confused and instead asked the pilot to go to Lahore. This caused an
apprehension amongst Pakistani officials that permission to land in Lahore might expose
the ISI involvement as the 1984 permission to the Sikh hijackers did. They, therefore,
asked the Lahore airport not to let it land. When the plane again came from Amritsar, they
had to let it land as it had no fuel left for the journey to Kandahar or Kabul.
Dr. Cohen compares the activities of the Pakistan-sponsored
terrorists to the alleged activities of the LTTE from Indian territory, but he forgets
that hundreds of Indian soldiers died trying to help Sri Lanka end LTTE terrorism and that
Rajiv Gandhi paid with his life for assisting Sri Lanka root out LTTE terrorism.
In the past, there had been instances of assistance to the
insurgents of India's North-East from China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, but India
dealt with them bilaterally and not internationally because none of them instigated any of
these groups to take to acts of terrorism such as hijacking, hostage-taking, genocide of
minorities, political assassinations etc. The lecture notes recovered from the Naga and
Mizo hostiles in the 1960s and 1970s after they had returned from China contained
instructions on subjects such as how to confine attacks only to combatants, the importance
of avoiding resort to terrorism, the need to win the love and affection of the people by
avoiding any hardship to non-combatants etc.
As against this, the lecture notes recovered from ISI-trained
Sikh, Kashmiri and other terrorists contained instructions on subjects such as preparation
of hit lists, how to carry out assassinations, how to hijack an aircraft, the importance
of avoiding Air India planes lest foreign concern be aroused, the importance of
eliminating the Hindus from Jammu and the Buddhists from Ladakh, how to destroy the
off-shore oil installations in Bombay High and so on. It was because of this that the
Government of India decided in the early 1990s to sensitise world public opinion to the
State-sponsorship of terrorism by Pakistan and to press the US to declare Pakistan as a
State-sponsor of international terrorism under its laws.
Interestingly, this idea emanated not from Indian experts, but
from some West European experts who were convinced from their own independent evidence of
the role of Pakistan. They told their Indian counterparts that during their interactions
with US experts in the margins of NATO meetings, they got the impression that while the US
experts too were convinced of the Pakistani role, the State Department was unwilling to
act against Pakistan just as it was disinclined to act against China and Pakistan on the
basis of the reports of their experts on their repeated violations of nuclear and missile
non-proliferation regimes.
The West European experts, therefore, advised that the matter be
taken up directly with the State Department instead of through US experts. The first
dossier prepared by India was rejected by the State Department under the pretext that much
of the evidence was based on interrogation reports, which they could not accept in view of
the alleged use of torture during interrogation in India.
In 1992, Lal Singh, alias Manjit Singh of the International Sikh
Youth Federation (ISYF), Canada, who figured in the wanted list of the FBI, was arrested
by the Gujarat police after he entered India from Pakistan, where he had been living since
1985. West European experts advised their Indian counterparts to invite the US experts to
come to India and interrogate him as they felt that the State Department would find it
difficult to dismiss their interrogation reports as based on torture just as it was
rejecting the interrogation reports of Indian officials.
The State Department advised the US experts not to accept the
Indian invitation and the US decided not to pursue the case against Lal Singh. The State
Department was apparently afraid that if its own experts reported after their
interrogation that India's dossier against Pakistan was correct, it would be difficult to
avoid action against Pakistan.
The only occasion when the US almost took a decision to act
against Pakistan was in the second half of 1992. The first organised group of Israeli
tourists had come to Kashmir. The Indian media covered its visit prominently. The ISI
informed the Kashmiri terrorists that these tourists were actually Israeli
counter-terrorism experts who were coming to Srinagar to assist the Indian security
forces. It, therefore, asked them to attack the Israelis.
One Israeli was killed and another kidnapped by the terrorists. A
large number of Jewish journalists from the US and Israel rushed to India to cover the
event and, even though India had not yet established diplomatic relations with Israel,
senior Israeli officials also rushed to the scene.
This resulted in wide publicity in Jewish-controlled media all
over the world to Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism in India and to the reluctance of
Washington to act against Pakistan. This was in the middle of the presidential and
congressional election campaign in the US.
Under the pressure of the Jewish voters who were very sympathetic
to India's predicament, Mr.George Bush, the then US President, ordered a re-examination of
India's dossier against Pakistan. The very same State Department officials, who had
earlier rejected the dossier, suddenly found a lot of merit in it and advised Mr.Bush that
there were strong grounds for action against Pakistan.
By that time, Mr.Bush had lost the election. He, therefore, left
the dossier to his successor, Mr.Bill Clinton, for decision. Mr.Clinton placed Pakistan on
the so-called watch list of suspected State-sponsors of international terrorism, instead
of declaring it to be so.
Two other developments of 1993 further strengthened the Indian
dossier. The first was the report of the US experts who had visited the scene of the
Mumbai blasts in March that one of the timers recovered was of US origin supplied to the
Pakistan army. The second was a report from US intelligence officials that the arms and
ammunition found on the LTTE ship carrying Kittu, which was intercepted by the Indian
Navy, were actually given to the LTTE by Pakistan's narcotics barons in return for the
LTTE's help in transporting narcotics consignments to Western ports in its ships
registered in Greece and that these arms and ammunition were loaded into the ship at
Karachi under the supervision of the ISI and the Pakistan Navy.
The ISI's action totally defied logic since Islamabad was having
close relations with Colombo and the LTTE was massacring the Muslims of the Eastern
Province. Mr.Sharif was shocked when this information was brought to his notice by the US
Embassy in Islamabad. The ISI had kept him informed of its terrorist operations in India,
but not of its links with the LTTE and its assistance to the narcotics barons.
It was this, which ultimately made Mr.Sharif succumb to
Washington's pressure to remove Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then DG, ISI, and other officers
suspected of promoting terrorism. It looked as though the State Department might, at long
last, declare Pakistan a state-sponsor of international terrorism.
By then, Mr.Sharif's troubles with Mr.Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the then
President, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff, had started and
it was evident his days were numbered. Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, the then Leader of the
Opposition, sent urgent messages to the White House through her American friends such as
Mr.Peter Galbraith that it should not take any action on India's dossier and that if she
returned to power in the expected elections, she would stop the ISI activities.
US officials removed Pakistan from the watch list in July 1993,
and told New Delhi that they expected Mrs. Bhutto to return to power and that they were
hopeful she would stop the ISI activities. After coming back to power, she did co-operate
with the US in action against narcotics barons and against terrorists wanted by the US,
but went back on her word to stop the ISI activities against India.
When the HUM, under the name Al Faran, kidnapped the Western
tourists in 1995, she asked Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jammat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) to
persuade it to release them. When it did not do so, she appealed to it to at least release
the American national as she was apprehensive that any harm to him might come in the way
of the dilution of the Pressler Amendment through the Brown Amendment. The HUM agreed and
let him go.
It was given out by him as well as US officials that he had
managed to escape from the clutches of the Al Faran. The fact was that the HUM allowed him
to go in response to Mrs.Bhutto's appeal. The other tourists were allegedly executed.
The US did not take any action against the HUM at that time. It
acted against it only in October 1997, after evidence surfaced of its involvement in the
murder of some US nationals in Karachi during Mrs. Bhutto's second tenure.
It would thus be apparent that the more the evidence India
presented against Pakistan, the more the pretexts the US used for not acting against
Pakistan. Why this US reluctance to act against Pakistan?
First, despite its strong pronouncements against terrorism, the
US acts only when its own nationals are threatened and not otherwise. Year after year,
India has been presenting to the world clinching evidence of the involvement of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba, backed by the ISI, in acts of terrorism. It has brutally massacred
hundreds of Hindus in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The US has refrained from any action
against it because, despite its anti-US rhetoric, it has refrained from attacks on US
nationals. In Tamil Nadu, there is a Muslim terrorist organisation called the Al Ummah,
which is a purely local phenomenon with, as yet, no proved all-India or international
ramifications. India has, therefore, never taken up with the US its activities. Al Ummah
has never uttered any threat against the US or other countries. Despite this, it finds
mention on Pages 89 and 90 of the annual Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1998
submitted by the State Department to the Congress in May 1999. Why? Because, in 1998, it
had placed a crude explosive device in the Gemini Circle, an important traffic junction of
Chennai. Its aim was to get some publicity by creating some traffic dislocation, but the
place where the device was planted was in front of the US Consulate. Since then, the US
has been taking its activities seriously.
Second, the USA's strategic interests in Pakistan, gratitude for
Pakistan's co-operation with Washington during the cold war, particularly against the
Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and a feeling of guilt for having contributed to Pakistan's
present dysfunctional state because of its co-operation with the US in Afghanistan.
Third, there is a more disquieting reason. In an interview in the
late 1980s, the late Count Alexandre de Marenches, the Chief of the SDECE, as the French
external intelligence agency was then known, from 1974 to 1982, had stated that during a
visit to Washington he had proposed to the late Bill Casey, the then Director, CIA, that
the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies should help the Afghan Mujahideen produce
heroin so that the Soviet army could be destroyed through drug addiction.
According to the Count, Casey, who liked the idea, took him to
Mr.Ronald Reagan, the then President, who was enthusiastic like a child and wanted the
idea to be immediately implemented. However, the Count claimed, it was abandoned due to
strong opposition from sections of the CIA.
The real fact was, it was not abandoned as claimed by the Count.
It was implemented vigorously by Pakistan-based CIA officers with the ISI's help. They
trained the Afghan Mujahideen not only in guerilla warfare, but also in methods of
improving poppy cultivation and opium refining.
The drugs produced under the CIA's guidance were initially
smuggled to the Soviet troops, but, when the Mujahideen and the ISI officers found that
there was more money to be made by smuggling to the USA and West European countries, they
started doing so in large quantities.
The CIA lost control over the narcotics barons of its own
creation just as it lost control over the terrorists of its own creation and these barons
started threatening the lives and careers of thousands of American children.
The CIA has two types of experts--- those of its
counter-terrorism division who have not had much involvement in Pakistan of the 1980s and
hence have no problem in recommending action against Pakistan, and those of the area
(operational) division, many of whom won their professional spurs in Pakistan of the 1980s
and were closely involved in the production of terrorists and narcotics barons.
These experts and the State Department officials are worried over
the possibility of the CIA's role in the promotion of the narcotics trade in the 1980s
coming to light if they acted against Pakistan. And, Islamabad uses this possibility as a
blackmailing argument to deter Washington from declaring it a state-sponsor of
international terrorism.
It is, therefore, unlikely that the US would ever declare
Pakistan as a state-sponsor of international terrorism. But, that should not deter us from
pursuing our dossier against Pakistan.
Pakistan is waging a covert war against India since
1981---initially in Punjab, then in Kashmir from 1989 and later from other parts of India
too. Covert aggressors are not defeated through open means, openly discussed. The response
has to be initially overt (diplomatic and strengthening defensive security) and, if this
does not work, covert.
Pakistani political leaders and military dictators often describe
Kashmir as the jugular vein of Pakistan. One does not know whether it is really the
jugular vein, but anyone, even with rudimentary knowledge of Pakistan, would know that
Karachi is its scrotum. One day, when our patience is exhausted due to the unsympathetic
attitude of the US, we have to catch that scrotum and crush it till Pakistan stops its
sponsorship of terrorism against India.
That day may be approaching. Just as Mrs. Indira Gandhi patiently
and painstakingly prepared her case for teaching Pakistan a lesson in December 1971, we
have to similarly prepare the diplomatic groundwork before catching hold of its scrotum.
B.RAMAN
(20-1-00)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India,and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai.
E-Mail:corde@vsnl.com)
