CNN-IBN : Expert Talk: Why Pak is a terror hub?

Expert Talk: Why Pak is a terror hub?

By Ajai Sahni | September 18, 2006

CNN-IBN brings in an elite panel of security experts to analyse the expanding web of terror in and around India.

Pakistan and terror

If you go through a listing of all major events of terrorism that is available with us whether it is Madrid, 9/11 or arrests in France and Germany, wherever incidents of Islamic terrorism have occurred there is a Pakistani footprint.

You will find that either the finance, the training, the recruitment, the co-ordination or the communications have come through Pakistan.

So Pakistan is central to international terrorism. It is also central of course to the Jihad in Kashmir. It is central to all the incidents that have occurred outside Kashmir in the rest of India. Wherever you see, the linkages will take you back to Pakistan.

The most dangerous and powerful terrorist organisation in this part of the world is Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence.

All the other organisations you speak of whether it is the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami, the Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammad, they are all instruments of the ISI. The principal is the ISI.

Implications for India

We must find the determination to confront and neutralise the source of terror. The world strategies and the Indian strategy is the strategy of permanent defense.

We are trying to control terrorism at the point of delivery by beefing up security, by trying to improve intelligence within our own country. But the supply lines of terror are coming from Pakistan.

Unless you stop the supply lines you will only be able to recover some of the supplies. You will have hundreds of arrests but some one or two or three people will get through and then you will have a Varanasi, you will have a Delhi.

So at the end of the day unless you get to the network, you get to the source of terror you will never be able to neutralise it. Unfortunately as far as India is concerned we have not even begun to assess a policy that would help us neutralise the source of terrorism in Pakistan.

The West and Pakistan

There are very very conflicting demands and policies as far as the western orientation towards Pakistan is concerned. On the one hand there has been an enormous increase of international pressure on Pakistan to curb terrorism and that has resulted in a decline on terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, since 9/11 there has been a continuous decline in total fatalities for a multiplicity of reasons including international pressure, western pressure.

At the same time the nature of the Pakistani state has remained what it is. There has been a far greater dispersal of terrorism, so we see more and more terrorist activities outside J&K in the rest of India. This is not sufficiently appreciated by the west.

Qualification here in the end is that this is our war, we will have to fight it. We will have to convince the western world that it is wrong but we cannot rely on the western world to fight our battles. We can seek their co-operation but just as we are not sending our forces into Iraq to fight America’s war over there we must not expect America to fight our war against Pakistan.

Jaish-e-Mohammad and global terror

JeM is a very significant organisation as far as terrorism in India is concerned. However its role has substantially declined since Dec 2003 when some JeM cadres or as they claim some ex-cadres, were found to be involved in the assassination bids on Musharraf. However the organisation has been cleansed and was rehabilitated towards the middle of 2005 and is now again active in India.

Lashkar’s global links

Lashkar-e-Toiba is certainly the most significant organisation operating on Indian soil and increasingly an organisation whose footprint is found on other parts of the world. In the London conspiracy we are finding Let linkages. In the arrests in Lodi in California there were Let linkages, the Virginia arrests had LeT linkages so this is an organisation that is seeking to extend its sphere or network of activities across the world and it is by far one of the most dangerous organisations emerging from South Asia.

FACES OF TERROR

Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed and Pakistan

The Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed has been one of the main stays of terrorism and operates openly in Pakistan. He is the respected leader over there and from time to time they pick him up under some supposed arrest but basically he is under house arrest with very little controls over him. Or he is hosted in a luxury guesthouse by the government of Pakistan and ordinarily after a month or two he is out again. These arrests are done to maintain deniability in the international eyes and tell the world we are acting against terrorism. But no real constraint is placed on the organisation that Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed heads and in fact there are no significant penalties against Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed either.

Maulana Masood Azhar

Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad has undergone a certain decline in prestige after the Dec 2003 attacks on Musharraf but he represents a fairly lethal organisation and once again has been rehabilitated and is enjoying complete freedom of movement in Pakistan.

Syed Salahuddin of Hizbul Mujahideen

Syed Salahuddin is now the principal tool that Pakistan is now trying to use against India because he is projected unlike the Jaish or the Lashkar as a so-called indigenous Indian Kashmiri revolutionary leader. However, he does have his headquarters in Muzaffarabad, he operates openly from there. He receives full military support and receives enormous finance. The entire operation is financed by the Pakistani state, armed by the Pakistani state and given facilities for training on the Pakistani soil.

Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai of Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh

Bangla Bhai was a small time thug who was initially encouraged by the government in Bangladesh to act against the left wing politicians and political activity in the country.

If you see the trajectory of left wing’s so-called terrorism in Bangladesh you will find hundreds of left wing terrorists killed every year but no civilian killings by them and no security force or very few security force killings by them.

Basically Bangla Bhai was an Islamist weapon in the hands of the state to target left wing opponents of the government in Bangladesh. He went out of his hand. He over stepped his brief and he planned and executed that series of 500 odd attacks of low-intensity bombs across Bangladesh.

After that he has obviously fallen out of favour with the establishment and is currently in jail and I think under sentence of death in some of those cases. But there are hundreds of other cases that are still on going and presumably nothing significant is going to happen to him till all those cases are completed which could be 25 years from now.

Asadullah of Harkat-Ul-Jihad Islami

Once again this is an organisation that is becoming more and more visible and it is now among the principle organisations that are being projected outside Bangladesh. They don’t act within Bangladesh, they act outside it. Particularly outside India and you have seen more and more involvement of Harkat-Ul-Jihad Islami cadres in major incidents - in the Delhi, Varanasi bombing, the Hyderabad suicide bombing. So you have seen more and more use of the Harkat carders inside India.

The basic reason goes back to the fact that Bangladesh is beginning to share the ideology both of Islamist extremism and of hostility against India and has formed an alliance between the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh to harm India by all means available and the Harkat-Ul-Jihad Islami is one of the means.

ISI’s game plan

ISI’s game plan as I said before is to harm India in every way possible to weaken India so that it can ensure that its immediate goals in Kashmir are furthered but Kashmir is only a gateway to India as Lashkar-e-Toiba head Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed has described it.

The next stage of the larger objective is what they described as freeing all Muslims from so-called Hindu tyranny in India. Thereafter, it is the reconquest of what they regard the ‘Lost Lands’ or the ‘Lost Islamic Lands’ that were under the Mughal Empire and are no longer in their control or domination.

Pakistan's sheltering India’s most wanted

All these people are not merely being sheltered. They are being used on a continuous basis to carry on with subversive activities in India. Their networks are being used for subversive activities in India.

Whether it is Dawood Ibrahim or his gang or even if it IS the so-called defunct terrorist groups of Punjab their leaders have been given a clear mandate to revive the terrorist movement in Punjab at whatever date possible. It may be 2020 it maybe 2025.

But these resources are being held back and sustained by Pakistan so that whenever the opportunity arises again due to India’s failures or political mismanagement where a movement can be reinitiated in Punjab, they will have a small core of leadership which will once again start acting here.

From time to time this leadership is asked to execute the occasional operation in Punjab using their cadres or in other parts of India as was the case in the Delhi cinema hall bombings. You had the Babbar Khalsa International once again launching terrorist strikes in India.

Pakistan supporting Dawood Ibrahim and Mumbai underworld

Dawood Ibrahim lives in and out of completely protected facilities in Pakistan. His entire operation is being run from a safe haven in Pakistan and is being lent to Pakistan’s intelligence agencies whenever they want to use it. So it is a joint-operation now. Dawood Ibrahim is a joint holding company between Dawood Ibrahim and his own leadership group and the Pakistani state or the intelligence agencies.

Dawood is basically a full-time criminal with some ideological leanings. He has lent himself completely to the Pakistani state and its objectives which are to harm India wherever the opportunity arises and Dawood does whatever he can to further those ends while he continues with his normal financial criminal operations to enrich himself.

Continuing terror attacks

I see the continuance and intensification of a long-standing phase. You see when a few more incidents occur in urban areas people start speaking of a new phase of urban terrorism.

We have had urban terrorism since the 80s, people have forgotten attacks in Delhi which the Khalistanis had initiated. We keep on talking about the new phases because three religious establishments are attacked; we talk about attacks on religious establishments.

A commercial or an economic target is attacked and we think there is a shift. There is no shift; the basic thrust is to cause as much damage as possible.

If it is calculated that communal harmony can be disturbed and wider disturbances can be caused by targeting religious places, then that will be done.

Every target that comes into India, comes with a multiplicity of alternative targets, they don’t just come with one target in mind. And then it is an operational issue - whether it is possible to hit this target or that target.

Whichever target is the target of expediency that is the target that they hit. If you notice the recent trends, they are going towards the softest of soft targets, the easiest areas to hit. This indicated that they have very limited capacities to hurt us or hit us at strategic targets. Any reasonably well protected target is not even being attempted, it is throw a grenade in a crowd, leave a bomb in a train, leave a bomb in a market place that kind of thing.

All these things will continue to be targeted to the degree that is possible because the effort is continuous. If you really see the history of arrests of or disruption of terrorist cells and modules, more than 320 such cells and modules have been detected and neutralised since June 1999. This works out to a cell almost every 12-13 days. Now imagine if all of them had not been caught how many hundreds of more incidents would have taken place.

This is an ongoing continuous war. At some point of time they manage to strike some 5, 7, 10 times in an enclosed proximity.

Then that network is disrupted and then they shift somewhere else that’s why you have this constant thing. You will have two incidents in UP and you will say the center of terrorism has shifted to UP.

Then there have been 2, 3, 4 incidents in Mumbai, we say the center of terrorism has shifted to Maharashtra. Nothing is shifting. If you see the sequence of events and seizures of explosives and other materials, you will see that every part of the country is affected. Consequently every part of the country is a potential target.

The Saudi Connection

The Saudi connection basically runs on two elements. One is ideological in the sense that they have sought through whatever they can do to promote a very hardened extremist version of Wahhabi Islam.

They have done this through the second instrument, which is money. They have put vast quantities of money into trying to mobilise people into this kind of Islam.

A very great proportion of this money is given to Pakistan to use as it thinks it is best to not only further ideological mobilisation but also Islamist terrorism. The financial support comes very strongly from Saudi Arabia.

No new terror fronts

There are no new terror fronts. When you found a new weapon - a cell phone, you started using a cell phone.

When you got an Internet connection, you started using the Internet because it promotes your efficiency. The terrorist is no different; he uses the tools in his environment for his objectives.

You use it to do your job better; he uses it to pursue his objectives better. So whether it is BPOs, whether it is Internet, whether it is communication devices or explosive materials he is constantly trying to find the most efficient and effective ways to acquire more power and to inflict more terror.

Technology and terror

I don’t think there is something called a cyber-war going. There is one more use of an instrument. Three or four elements of communication technologies and the Internet lend themselves to terrorist objectives.

One is disruption of their enemy’s systems of communication – websites. Defacing websites is a crude low-level thing, which has little impact because it can be quickly repaired and restored.

The more important element of the Internet that is being exploited is using it as a tool of totally anonymous communication - transmission of information, data, operational manuals and technology.

Today you can simply download bomb-making equipment from websites in every language in the world. You can download terrorist manuals put up by these organisations from the Internet.

How do I organise an attack, how do I train myself? The essence of the cyber-war is that it is leading to complete de-centralisation of the terrorist organisation.

Today if I believe that Osama Bin Laden is alive and I should act to pursue his objective I can go on to the internet, I can download the information to make a bomb and then go and place a bomb somewhere.

By doing so I would become a part of the Al Qaeda without having a link with Osama Bin Laden or his organisation. That is the most important element of the cyber war and not what people are really talking about that the cyber war will be used to disrupt or destroy the control systems of the societies.

We have still not seen that happen. That would be like you will suddenly enter the government’s control systems, whether it is of the RBI and cause complete chaos in the RBI. Those kinds of classical cyber war scenarios have still not been realised.

What needs to be done to make India safe?

First of all you must realise what has not been done for years and years. We have not invested adequately in security, in policing, in intelligence development.

What needs to be done is to bring the Indian system at par at least with the systems of modern well-governed nation states. India has for instance to take example one of the lowest police-to-population ratios in the civilised world. It is half or a third of the ratios that prevail in Europe or America.

So first of all you have to bring your police strength up to a certain level and then what is the policeman’s profile in India and then compare it with the policeman’s profile in a civilised western country.

Our policeman is someone with a lathi who goes around beating people in the streets. He is not a sophisticated, educated, well-trained asset to a sophisticated law and order management system.

This is a crude neo-colonial system, which we have inherited essentially from the British.

So we have got to invest first simply in expanding the police network. Then enormously improving it, bringing it to scientific policing, giving it the tools, the resources and the wares with all to engage in modern police work and modern intelligence work as against the crude systems that we currently have in place.

Many areas are not even policed today in India’s rural hinterland and you cannot protect the cities unless you secure the rural areas. The networks, the safe havens, the arms caches, all these are in the hinterland, only the delivery points are in the urban areas.

So you may disrupt the networks in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata but as long as the networks are alive outside Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata it is not a difficult job to come in one day and engineer bomb blasts in these areas.

You have to administer the whole country, provide security in the entire country and not just the affluent, urban segments of the country.

(Ajai Sahni is Executive Director of Institute of Conflict Management)