TERRORIST PEARL HARBOUR
by B Raman
The USA has a well-oiled security management system with
an efficient crisis management capability.
In the wake of the unprecedented terrorist attacks by
air in New York and Washington and possibly also near Pittsburgh on
September 11, the crisis management, the preventive and the investigative
mechanisms would have immediately gone into action.
The objectives of the crisis management system would be
to save the lives of those still trapped in the debris, organise medical
attention for those injured and ensure that normal activity, governmental
and non-governmental, is resumed as quickly as possible.
The preventive system would focus on the identification
and arrest of the accomplices of the responsible terrorist groups still
present in the US before they escape or commit more terrorist acts,
protection of American lives and interests abroad in terrorism-vulnerable
areas and evacuation of any foreign humanitarian voluntary workers still
working in Afghanistan. Protection of American lives and interests
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh would be a matter of
priority in view of the activities of the jehadis in this region.
Similar priority would be given to protective measures in the West Asian
and the Gulf countries.
Another priority for the preventive mechanism would be
to reinforce physical and aerial security measures at and around nuclear
establishments in the US, particularly reactors and power stations, and
large oil storage facilities.
The investigative mechanism would look into all
possibilities without ruling out any, however remote it may seem
initially. The questions to which answers would be sought are:
* Which group might have been responsible? Initial focus
would be on the International Islamic Front For Jehad against the US and
Israel led by the Kandahar-based Osama bin Laden; the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM ) of Pakistan, which is a member of bin
Laden's Front and which was declared by the US as an international
terrorist organisation in October, 1997; the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra, another
Pakistan-based extremist organisation with a known presence in the US,
but with no previously-known links with bin Laden; the various
Palestinian groups; and individual, indigenous copy cat elements similar
to Timothy McVeigh, who was recently executed for his responsibility for
the Oklahoma bombing of 1995.
* What circumstantial evidence is available presently?
Pointing the needle of suspicion at bin Laden's Front is its anti-US
motivation, its demonstrated capability of the past for the
orchestration of widespread attacks, its wide network extending to even
North America and the fact that the final judgement in the trial
involving bin Laden's supporters for their role in the bombing outside
the US Embassy in Nairobi in August,1998, was reportedly due on
September 12 and that the Federal court, which was to pronounce the
judgement, was near the World Trade Centre. Pointing the suspicion
at the HUM would be its membership of bin Laden's Front and its known
past presence in the US. Suspicion against Timothy-type irrational
elements would be due to the fact that the New York World Trade Centre,
apart from being a commercial complex, also housed a large number of New
York branches of the Federal Government. If the attacks are viewed
as directed not against US national power vis-à-vis the rest of the
world, but against the US Federal bureaucracy, Timothy-like copy cats
would attract attention. However, ruling out such elements would
be the fact that they generally do not undertake suicide attacks.
There is presently very little circumstantial evidence implicating the
Fuqra.
* Where did the terrorist pilots/navigators come from?
No commercial pilot would let himself be intimidated into crashing his
aircraft against buildings. If he was forced by the terrorists to
crash, he would have crashed into the sea. Hence, it seems likely
that pilots/navigators with experience of flying wide-bodied planes had
been used for the suicide crashes. None of the Islamic terrorist
groups was previously known to have pilots with such expertise.
There must have been a minimum of eight terrorists employed for these
attacks--- a pilot and a navigator each for each aircraft. Where
did they recruit the pilots and navigators from? In the US or elsewhere?
* The terrorists seem to have deactivated the alert
mechanism in the aircraft, which automatically alerts ground control
immediately after a plane is hijacked. How did they do it? When an
unidentified plane approaches sensitive buildings in Washington DC, the
US Air Force is immediately alerted and its aircraft scramble. How
this did not happen? In the past too, there was an instance in which a
small plane managed to reach the White House vicinity without the Air
Force alert detecting it.
If the investigations rule out the involvement of
indigenous groups or individuals and point the finger of suspicion
strongly, even if not conclusively, at Afghanistan/Pakistan/West Asia
based groups, public and Congressional opinion in the US would force the
Government to act much more strongly than in the past against those
elements and wipe them out. The Bush Administration had repeatedly
warned the Taliban that if bin Laden strikes against US interests again,
the USA's retaliatory attacks would be directed against him as well as the
Taliban leadership.
Despite open pronouncements in favour of international
co-operation against terrorism, there was always an ambivalence in such
co-operation in the past due to political factors. Both the HUM and the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) are associated with bin Laden. While the US
acted against the HUM because it threatened American lives, it was
reluctant to act against the LET, which did not. Pakistan acted
against terrorists in Pakistani territory threatening American lives, but
supported those threatening Indian lives. It was not prepared to
co-operate with the US against the Taliban and bin Laden.
Unless terrorists are treated as terrorists, whatever be
their cause, and unless State-sponsors of terrorism such as Pakistan and
the Taliban Government are treated as such and not shown any forbearance
for political reasons, the world community would not be able to
effectively end this menace.
A paper of the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC
prepared last year had strongly argued for declaring Pakistan a
State-sponsor of international terrorism for not co-operating with the US
against bin Laden and the Taliban. The possibility of such a
declaration would be strengthened now.
The Pakistan-Afghanistan based supporters of bin Laden
view the US, Israel and India as the principal enemies of Islam. The
Government of India is reported to have already strengthened security for
US Govt establishments in India and its own establishments in New
Delhi. The security of our nuclear establishments and oil facilities
such as Mumbai High should also be strengthened.
Attached are extracts from our previous papers titled
"International Islamism" (27-11-00) and "Musharraf and bin
Laden" (1-7-01), the texts of which are available at www.saag.org
.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
INTERNATIONAL ISLAMISM (EXTRACTS)---27-11-00
Practically all the Islamic extremist and terrorist
movements of today, whether they be in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the
Central Asian Republics (CARs), the Chechnya and Dagestan areas of Russia,
the Xinjiang area of China, the J&K State of India and in Southern
Philippines were born out of ideas conceived in the battle-fields of
Afghanistan of the 1980s and spread from the mosques and madrasas of
Pakistan subsequently.
These movements could not have maintained the intensity
and the ruthlessness of their activities without the support, instigation
and encouragement received by them from the soil of Pakistan and
Afghanistan. And such support, instigation and encouragement from
Pakistani soil would not have been possible without the active involvement
of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in the case of the
terrorist movements directed against India and without its complicity or
acquiescence in the case of terrorism directed against other countries.
While one is not surprised by its active involvement in
the terrorist movements directed against India, the tolerance by the
Pakistani military-intelligence establishment of the operations of the
movements directed against the other countries---and particularly against
Saudi Arabia and China-- defies logic and understanding.
The tolerance is partly a quid pro quo for their role in
assisting the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in its efforts
to keep the Indian security forces bleeding at no cost to Pakistan's Armed
Forces and partly out of fear that any strong action against their
activities directed against other countries might make them turn against
the military-intelligence establishment.
It is mistaken to think that the terrorist movements
directed against other countries could be attributed to the Taliban
only. Today, Afghanistan is nothing but a veritable colony of
Pakistan and the Taliban, despite its retrogade concepts in matters such
as women's rights much to the embarrassment of the Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment, is nothing but an appendage of
Pakistan.
The idea for the creation of the Taliban to use it to
achieve Pakistan's strategic objectives in Afghanistan was the brainwave
of Maj.Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Baber, the Interior Minister in the Cabinet
of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who was the
Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) under her, and Lt.Gen.
Mohammad Aziz, now one of the two Corps Commanders in Lahore, who was then
the Deputy Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and
in charge of the ISI's operations in India and Afghanistan.
It suits the present military regime in Islamabad that
the international community blames the Taliban and not Pakistan for what
is happening in countries other than India. It should not be allowed
to get away with this. The international community should hold
Islamabad squarely responsible for what has been happening elsewhere too.
The Taliban's militia is officered, trained and guided
by Pakistani ex-servicemen. The Administration in the Taliban-controlled
areas is largely run by retired Pakistani bureaucrats. The budget of the
Taliban Government, which has no source of revenue except heroin, is
heavily subsidised by the Pakistani exchequer.
The solidarity of the extremists and terrorists of
International Islamism has not been matched by a solidarity of the
victim-States in confronting them effectively. There has been a
mushrooming of intelligence-sharing mechanisms in the form of Joint
Working Groups, the Shanghai Five etc. But, the ineffectiveness of
the victim-States in dealing with this menace cannot be blamed only on
inadequate intelligence.
A more important factor has been a lack of lucid
analysis of the dimensions of the menace and the absence of a political
will to strike at the source of the menace through individual and joint
operations.
MUSHARRAF & BIN LADEN (EXTRACTS) ---1-7-01
Independent reports from Islamabad and Peshawar
suggest that :
* bin Laden, who suffers from renal deficiency, has been
periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with
the knowledge and approval of the Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI) if
not of Gen.Pervez Musharraf himself.
* The recent circulation of copies of bin Laden's
video cassette showing him and his followers undergoing training in
Afghan territory and the interview of Bakr Atyani, a correspondent of
the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) with bin Laden and his
aides Abu Hafas al-Masri and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Egypt's
outlawed Jihad group, were organised by Pakistani military and ISI
officers manning the Taliban's newly-created intelligence agency, which
has replaced the Khad, the intelligence agency of the Najibullah
regime. In this interview, during which bin Laden was present but
did not speak, his two aides warned that "the coming weeks will
hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests
in the world." The interview was reportedly recorded by a camera
supplied by the ISI officers of the Taliban's intelligence agency since
the correspondent was not allowed to carry any recording equipment when
he transited Peshawar on his way to Kandahar to interview bin Laden and
his aides.
* In view of the ban on all flights from and to
Afghanistan under the UN sanctions, the only way of travelling to and
from Kandahar to meet bin Laden is by flying from the Gulf or elsewhere
to Peshawar and from there to travel by road. The ISI and the Pakistan
Army have been facilitating this mode of travel by the foreign-based
cadres of the Al Qaeda and other constituents of the International
Islamic Front For Jihad Against the US And Israel.
* In the past, bin Laden used to contact his cadres
abroad by satellite telephone from Kandahar. After the US bombing
of his training camps in Afghan territory in October,1998, he has
stopped telephoning from Afghan territory lest US Cruise missiles zero
in on the frequency of his telephone. Since then, all his instructions
to his cadres abroad are conveyed from Peshawar by one of his aides,
generally al-Zawahiri.
However, the Taliban has questioned the authenticity of
the video cassette and the claims of the journalist to have interviewed
bin Laden's aides……….
It is likely that whatever be the outcome of the
forthcoming summit (at Agra), Pakistan will continue its proxy war against
India through its jihadi surrogates even while denying any links with or
control over them. Any optimism of a reduction in violence and
cross-border terrorism as a result of the summit would be misplaced.
Musharraf will continue to play his double game---overtly friendly, warm
and seemingly accommodating and covertly continuing to make our security
forces bleed. To expect anything different from him and to lower our
guard against him could be suicidal. India will continue to pay a
heavy price for its failure to evolve and implement consistently an
effective counter proxy war policy. The policy of "kabi naram, kabi
garam" (sometimes soft, sometimes hard) doesn't pay against
Pakistan. It will only confirm Musharraf in his perception that
India is a soft State, which lends itself to easy manipulation.
