MUSHARRAF & TERRORISM: Part II
by B.Raman
(To be read in continuation of earlier article titled
" Musharraf & Terrorism" at www.saag.org/papers3/paper283.html
)
Since the middle of the 1990s, national security and
counter-terrorism experts of the world have been discussing about the
dangers of what has come to be known as the new or catastrophic terrorism,
how to prevent it and how to deal with it if the preventive measures fail.
Since 1995, there have been about 300 seminars on this
subject organised by different think tanks, an equal number of
Congressional committee hearings in the US and parliamentary debates in
other countries, nearly a dozen blue ribbon commissions or study groups,
governmental or non-governmental, in different countries----at least three
in the US alone----- which had studied this subject either partly or
exclusively, about 15,400 articles/papers written by eminent experts, any
number of exercises to identify terrorist attack indicators, at least two
counter catastrophic terrorism "war" games per annum, the last
of them in the US under the code name "Dark Winter" in June,2001
etc.
All these seminars,hearings,commissions, study groups,
articles, papers and "war" games were of no avail in preventing
about 50 determined terrorists from getting together and blowing up the
World Trade Centre in New York and part of the Pentagon in Washington DC.
Thousands of innocent people have died at the hands of
terrorists all over the world, not because there has been a lack of
thinking or ideas as to how to deal with them, but because of lack of
action on the part of the States---action which is as determined and
ruthless as that of the terrorists.
Thousands of innocent people will continue to die at the
hands of terrorists unless and until the international community draws the
right lessons from the tragedy of September 11 and acts on those lessons
without ambivalence or mental reservations.
* LESSON NO.1: Terrorism is an absolute evil
and should be fought absolutely, whatever be the objectives of the
terrorists, their nationality, the nationality of the victims,
etc. One cannot have one kind of language to deplore acts of
terrorism in New York or Washington DC and another to deplore terrorist
attacks in Srinagar, Jerusalem or elsewhere.
* LESSON No.2: A State-sponsor of terrorism is
an equally absolute evil and should be ostracised and punished
absolutely whatever be the so-called strategic importance of the State
and its actual or potential role as a strategic ally.
* LESSON No.3: It is high time to discard
cliches of the past such as "one nation's terrorist is another
nation's freedom-fighter" and "one nation's terrorist State is
another nation's strategic ally " and so on.
When the debates on catastrophic terrorism began in the
middle of the 1990s, it was viewed principally as likely acts of terrorism
involving the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The
definition was subsequently expanded to include catastrophic acts of cyber
terrorism, which may cause serious damage to the economy and acts designed
to create mass panic such as seizing control of nuclear
reactors/power stations and threatening to blow them up or actually
blowing them up.
Of late, the definition has been further expanded to
include even acts involving use of conventional weapons, if they are
designed to cause large casualties or serious damage to the economy and
vital infrastructures.
Experts are now veering round to the definition that
catastrophic terrorism is any act, whatever be the weapon used, that
causes or is likely to cause fatal human casualties of more than 1,000
and/or serious damage of a medium or long-term nature to the national,
regional or global economy and vital infrastructures.
During these discussions of the 1990s, five States of
the world had been cited by many experts as worrisome, from which acts of
catastrophic terrorism were most likely to emanate, either because they
were harbouring or soft in dealing with terrorist groups which would have
no qualms in using catastrophic terrorism or because were
consciously using such groups as a weapon to achieve their strategic
objectives.
These countries were Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Greece. Greece was cited not because of any complicity with the
terrorists, but because of its weak counter-terrorism apparatus.
The report of the bipartisan US National Commission on
Terrorism, headed by Mr. Paul Bremer, former head of the Counter-Terrorism
Division of the State Department, submitted to the Congress on June
5,2000, specifically cited these countries and stated as follows:
"U.S. policies must firmly target all states that support
terrorists. Iran and Syria should be kept on the list of state
sponsors until they stop supporting terrorists. Afghanistan should be
designated a sponsor of terrorism and subjected to all the sanctions
applicable to state sponsors. The President should impose sanctions
on countries that, while not direct sponsors of terrorism, are
nevertheless not cooperating fully on counterterrorism. Candidates
for consideration include Pakistan and Greece."
A report of the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC,
which is ideologically close to the Republican Party, prepared in the
middle of last year, had also recommended that the Taliban Government of
Afghanistan should be declared a State-sponsor of international terrorism
and a warning should be issued to Pakistan that if it did not co-operate
in dealing with Afghanistan-based terrorist groups, it also stood the
danger of similarly being declared.
In fact, since 1992, the annual reports of the State
Department on the Patterns of Global Terrorism have been citing in
increasingly stronger language the activities of Pakistan-based terrorist
groups. President Clinton, after coming to office in January, 1993,
had placed Pakistan in a so-called watch list of suspected State-sponsors
of international terrorism, but removed it after six months on the ground
that the Nawaz Sharif Government had satisfied US demands for the removal
of Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then Director-General of the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), and some other senior officers.
There were three or four instances in which the
military-intelligence establishment in Pakistan had co-operated in
arresting and deporting terrorists threatening or who had acted against US
interests such as Mir Aimal Kansi, Ramzi Yousef etc. Apart from
this, it had avoided co-operating in respect of other terrorists and their
organisations, which were being used by it against India.
It resisted US pressure to ban the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
(HUM--formerly known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) and to co-operate in the
arrest and deportation of Osama bin Laden and other members of the brain
trust of the International Islamic Front For Jehad against the US and
Israel.
This Front and bin Laden had been repeatedly talking of
their religious duty to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction,
particularly chemical weapons, to protect their religion. The
Afghanistan-Pakistan based components of this Front were the only
terrorist organisations of the world which were openly advocating resort
to catastrophic terrorism.
The State Department's annual report on Patterns of
Global Terrorism during 2000 released by Gen. Colin Powell, US Secretary
of State, on April 30,2001, gave the following detailed account of
Pakistani involvement with the terrorist groups in J & K and
Afghanistan:
* "The Government of Pakistan increased its
support to the Taliban and continued its support to militant groups
active in Indian-held Kashmir, such as the Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM),
some of which engaged in terrorism.
* "Islamic extremists from around the
world--including North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and
Central, South, and Southeast Asia--continued to use Afghanistan as a
training ground and base of operations for their worldwide terrorist
activities in 2000. The Taliban, which controlled most Afghan
territory, permitted the operation of training and indoctrination
facilities for non-Afghans and provided logistics support to members of
various terrorist organizations and mujahidin, including those waging
jihads (holy wars) in Central Asia, Chechnya, and Kashmir.
* "Throughout 2000 the Taliban continued to
host Usama Bin Ladin despite UN sanctions and international pressure to
hand him over to stand trial in the United States or a third country.
In a serious and ongoing dialogue with the Taliban, the United States
repeatedly made clear to the Taliban that it would be held responsible
for any terrorist attacks undertaken by Bin Ladin while he is in its
territory.
* "Massacres of civilians in Kashmir during
March and August were attributed to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) and other
militant groups.
* "Pakistan's military government, headed
by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, continued previous Pakistani Government
support of the Kashmir insurgency, and Kashmiri militant groups
continued to operate in Pakistan, raising funds and recruiting new
cadre. Several of these groups were responsible for attacks
against civilians in Indian-held Kashmir, and the largest of the groups,
the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, claimed responsibility for a suicide car-bomb
attack against an Indian garrison in Srinagar in April.
* "In addition, the Harakat- ul-Mujahidin
(HUM), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, continues to be
active in Pakistan without discouragement by the Government of Pakistan.
Members of the group were associated with the hijacking in December 1999
of an Air India (author's comment: it was actually the Indian Airlines)
flight that resulted in the release from an Indian jail of former HUM
leader Maulana Masood Azhar. Azhar since has founded his own
Kashmiri militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and publicly has threatened
the United States.
* "The United States remains concerned
about reports of continued Pakistani support for the Taliban's military
operations in Afghanistan. Credible reporting indicates that Pakistan is
providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical
assistance, and military advisers. Pakistan has not prevented
large numbers of Pakistani nationals from moving into Afghanistan to
fight for the Taliban. Islamabad also failed to take effective
steps to curb the activities of certain madrassas, or religious schools,
that serve as recruiting grounds for terrorism. Pakistan publicly
and privately said it intends to comply fully with UNSCR 1333, which
imposes an arms embargo on the Taliban.
* "In South Asia, the United States has
been increasingly concerned about reports of Pakistani support to
terrorist groups and elements active in Kashmir, as well as Pakistani
support, especially military support, to the Taliban, which continues to
harbor terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan."
Even on the basis of the assessment of its own experts in
the State Department, the Pakistani military junta is as responsible as
the Taliban for harbouring and assisting international terrorist
organisations, which caused the horrendous acts of catastrophic terrorism
in the US on September 11,2001.
Instead of acting firmly against the junta and insisting
on its dismantling the terrorist infrastructure on its territory, the USA
has chosen to reward it by removing even the existing sanctions and
projecting the junta as the USA's strategic ally in the "war"
against terrorism.
Instead of controlling terrorism, this unwise policy
would only further aggravate the threats from Pakistan and
Afghanistan-based terrorists to the rest of the world.
Despite his pretense of co-operation with the
international community in its fight against terrorism, Musharraf follows
his double-faced policy of covertly supporting terrorism to achieve
Pakistan's strategic objective. This is evident from the horrendous
act of terrorism by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad outside the
building of the Legislative Assembly in Srinagar on October 1,2001, which
resulted in the deaths of 40 innocent civilians. His modus operandi
has been exactly the same as before: first, to describe the terrorists as
freedom-fighters; then, when he finds the rest of the world condemning
it as an act of terrorism, to allege that the Indian Security Forces
committed the act in order to discredit the
"freedom-fighters".
So long as he and his junta feel confident that the
international community would not act against them, they would continue to
use terrorism to achieve their objectives and New York--September 11 would
not be the end, but only the beginning of the depredations which the
terrorists from this epicentre would repeatedly cause in the heart of the
US.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
