A Note on Global Terrorism

Introduction

On August 20, 1998 the United States of America bombed Khost and Jalalabad in Afghanistan and what they believed was a chemical weapons factory on the outskirts of Khartoum.  This was in response to the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The targets of the attacks in Afghanistan were the terrorist training camps of Osama bin Laden who the Americans believe masterminded the bombings of the US embassies.  The Americans also claimed they had evidence that Bin Laden’s group was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction from Sudan.

The choice of Khost and Jalalabad as targets is significant. Many of the militants and mercenaries arrested in Jammu and Kashmir identified these two locations as the ones where they received training. Jane's Intelligence Review and the "Independent" of the UK based on investigative field reports identified Khost and Jalalabad as two of the centers where the Harkat-ul Ansar cadres, who are active in Jammu and Kashmir, received training.

Osama bin Laden is a Saudi billionaire, heir to a construction fortune. He was a major financier of the Afghan Mujahideen during their war against the Soviet Union.  After the withdrawal of the Soviet forces, Osama’s ire focused on America and the Saudi Regime, which he accused of having defiled the holy places of Mecca and Medina by permitting the stationing of American troops on Saudi territory. His Saudi nationality was revoked and he fled to Sudan from where he continued to support and finance extremist groups, like the Al Gamaa al Islamiya in Egypt, fighting against what they claimed were non-Islamic governments in their own countries and against western interests. Following the pressure on Sudan after it was declared a state sponsor of terrorism by the USA, Bin Laden was asked to leave Sudan and took refuge under the Taliban in Afghanistan from where he has been operating.  He has been calling for attacks against US interests and giving support to extremist Islamic.

Recently Osama Bin Laden was reported to have created a new umbrella organization, the World Islamic Front, of extremist groups and called for renewed attacks against American interests. The Islamic Army for Liberation of Muslim Holy Sites claimed responsibility for the attacks against the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.  Prior to the bombings, Al Jihad of Egypt, a constituent of Bin Laden’s new organization, had given a warning of attacks following the arrest of his men by the FBI in Albania, leaving the Americans convinced that Bin Laden had engineered the attacks.

Immediately following the bombings four people were arrested in Pakistan. One of them, Mohammed Sadiq Howaida confessed to Pakistani authorities both to having links with Osama Bin Laden and with the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. He also said that some of others involved in the incident had already traveled through Pakistan to Afghanistan.

The role of Pakistan in creating the Taliban: the presence of Pakistani ISI and military advisors and regular army men with the Taliban has been reported by the Pak media, by the international media, by security analysts including of Jane's Defense Review. It has been also officially been stated by the Russian government.

The fact that Osama Bin Laden is being protected by the Taliban who function with Pakistan's support an who are refusing to surrender him and the fact that those who were involved in the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya chose to return to Pakistan en route to Taliban territory in Afghanistan once again highlights the emergence of Pakistan as not only a center for terrorists training but also as a safe sanctuary for extremists and terrorists who have perpetrated violence in different countries.

The following note based on media reports, revelations by arrested terrorists, and reports by security and intelligence analysts gives details of the role of Pakistan in providing a base for international terrorism and a sanctuary to terrorists operating in different countries.

United States of America

In 1993, the World Trade Center in New York was bombed.  The suspect was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef for whom the USA launched a worldwide manhunt.  He was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 where he had taken refuge.  The Americans believed he had links with Osama Bin Laden. Jane's Intelligence Review reported that he had links also with the Harkat-ul-Ansar which is active in Jammu & Kashmir and whose cadres come from the same religious schools (madrassas) and training camps as the Taliban. These schools are run by the Jamiat ul Ulema e Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rahman which is known to have been receiving funds from radical Islamic elements including Osama bin Laden.  Maulana Fazlur Rahman was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of Pakistan during former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s regime.

Mir Aimal Kansi, a Baloch, was convicted in 1997 for the killing of CIA officials outside CIA office in Langley, Virginia in 1993.  He was again, after a worldwide manhunt, caught in Pakistan.  Soon after his arrest, four American employees of the Union Texas Petroleum, along with a Pakistani driver, were killed in Karachi and the Aimal Secret Army  claimed responsibility for the killings.

The US military compound at Dharan and Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia was bombed in 1995, for which the Americans blamed Osama bin Laden.  Media reports from Egypt stated that an Arab, Hassan Al Sarai was arrested in Pakistan and sent to Saudi Arabia for involvement in the bombing.

The Harkat-ul-Ansar, functioning under the name of Al Faran, kidnapped five foreign tourists in Jammu & Kashmir in 1995, including an American national, Donald Hutchins, who managed to escape.  He later told the media that the kidnappers were non-Kashmiris and spoke Urdu and were obviously from Pakistan.  US reports suggested that that the Al Faran was a front for the Harkat-ul-Ansar and US authorities interacted with Maulana Fazlur Rehman the mentor of the Harkat and the Taliban, to have the hostages released. One was beheaded and the others are still missing. The United States Government in 1997 banned the Harkat-ul-Ansar, declaring it a terrorist organization, and in continued reports between 1995 and 1997, the US State Department has been naming the Harkat-ul-Ansar, based in Pakistan, as a terrorist outfit operating in India, Tajikistan, Bosnia and Myanmar.

France

In 1995, bomb attacks took place in Paris.  Investigating into the attacks, the French DST (Direction de Surveillance du Territoire) submitted a report, which stated that extremists had been recruited and sent to military training camps in Pakistan.  Many of those arrested were of Algerian descent.  The DST maintained that a number of extremist youths were taken by religious organizations to Afghanistan and Pakistan and trained in 15 training camps.  Paris Match carried a report on the Pakistani connection to terrorist activity in France on July 25, 1996.

Algeria

Algeria has witnessed continued massacres of civilians since 1992. The Government has been battling the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) whose cadres include the “Afghanis”, Arabs who participated in the Afghan war after receiving training in Pakistan and then went back to fight their own governments in the name of Islamic jihad. Every day there are reports from Algeria of the massacre of large number of people, including women and children, who are found with their throats cut.

Egypt

In 1995, the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad was bombed.  Islamic Jihad and Al Gamaa Al Islamia took the responsibility.  The leader of Islamic Jihad, Aiwan Zahrawi, is a close associate of Osama bin Laden.  In the aftermath of the bombing, the Interior Minister of Egypt accused Pakistan of failing to take action against militants.  Reports in the media indicated that Zahrawi as well as Mohd Ali Maqawi the suspected killer of former Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, were in Pakistan.  The Egyptian media carried a number of reports on the training of terrorists in camps in Pakistan where nearly 2800 Arabs, according to Al Akhbar, were being given terrorist training.  They included 600 Algerians, 600 Egyptians, 400 Jordanians and 400 Libyans.  A total of nearly 20,000 Arab terrorists were reported to have been trained in those camps.  The Egyptians accused the Markaz Al Dawa Al Ershad, which received financing from Saudi Arabia of being the nodal point for such training.  The Markat Al Dawaa has an armed wing, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been calling for a Jihad in Jammu & Kashmir and is reported to have been behind the mass massacres of Kashmiri Pundits this year in Jammu & Kashmir.  The Al Wafd of Egypt stated that even Ramzi Yousef, responsible for the World Trade Center bombing, had links with the Markaz.  Egypt signed an extradition treaty with Pakistan in 1996 and a number of people arrested by Pakistan were sent to Egypt to stand trial.  However, in 1997, following the massacre of foreign tourists at Luxor in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak attacked Afghanistan for emerging as a center for terrorist training.  This was the period when the Taliban, supported by Pakistan, were ascendant in Afghanistan. The Egyptian media during this period had carried a number of articles, focusing on Pakistan as a base for extremist terrorism and narco-terrorism.

China

There have been reports of extremist activity in the Muslim province of Xinjiang of the People's Republic of China by radicals Uighers.  An investigative report in the Far Eastern Economic Review by Ahmed Rashid gave details of Uighers being trained by the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan.  The Jamaat-e-Islami, which is the patron of the Hezb ul Mujahideen who are active in Jammu & Kashmir, had run training camps for Afghan Mujahideen and subsequently for Kashmiri militants.  According to Jane's Defence Weekly, the Chinese were reported to believe that the Taliban were instructing the Uighers.  Media reports indicated that in 1997, Pakistan handed over 12 Uigher militants being trained by the Taliban to the Chinese authorities.

Philippines

Mohammed Sadiq Howaida, who was arrested in Karachi in the aftermath of the bombing of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and who confessed to being an associate of Osama bin Laden and involved in the bombings, was interrogated by the Pakistanis for information on a similar failed operation in the Philippines. He declined to give details.

Earlier, in 1996, investigations by the authorities in Manila had revealed a plot to kill Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Philippines. 15 terrorists were arrested in Manila.  A Pakistani Mian Abid Mahmood was also arrested in connection with the plot. Those arrested were all close associates of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bomb blast who, according to the police investigations, had been visiting Manila and had close links with the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group operating in the Philippines. Yousef’s brother was reported to be one of those arrested. The Abu Sayaf group has been blamed, according to the reports in the Philippine media quoting security sources, for anti Christian violence since 1993.  A police report indicated that this group also received funding from Osama bin Laden. Five Pakistani nationals were separately arrested for possession of explosives. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was believed to have narrowly escaped during the raid by the security forces.

In 1998 again a number of Pakistanis were detained in Manila following a reported tip off by the FBI that they were planning terrorist activities.

Tajikistan

The Government of Tajikistan had filed a formal complaint before the United Nations regarding the role of Pakistan in training Islamic terrorists who were involved in insurgency and terrorist activities in Tajikistan.  It had given a list of 100 mercenaries from different countries trained in Pakistan and arrested in Tajikistan. 

Ethiopia

In 1995 Ethiopia filed a complaint before the Security Council that the people who attacked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa had been trained in Pakistan.

Uzbekistan

Recently, the President of Uzbekistan had, in a press conference, publicly stated that terrorists trained in Pakistan and seeking to spread the fundamentalist Wahabi terrorism were engaged in destabilization Uzbekistan, etc. The Uzbek television has run a number of documentaries based on the investigation of the people they have arrested to support this charge.

India

India has been witnessing terrorist violence since 1980, initially in Punjab and since 1989, in Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of India.  Nearly 20,000 people have been killed in terrorist violence in Jammu & Kashmir, involving both shootings and bombings. 

The 1992 serial bomb blasts in Bombay, masterminded by the Memon family, were one of the major incidents of terrorism in India in recent years.  The bomb blast in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi in 1996 had also resulted in a large number of civilian causalities. There have been many more incidents of bomb blasts in different part s of the country.

It is a well documented fact that leaders of some of the most extremist Sikh terrorist groups are in Pakistan and are continuing to try and motivate Sikh youth from the UK, Canada as well as from Indian Punjab to take recourse to extremist activities.  Wadhawa Singh of the Babbar Khalsa, Paramjit Singh Panjwar of the Khalistan Commando Force (Panjwar), Gajender  Singh of the Dal Khalsa, Pritam Singh Sekhon of the Khalistan Liberation Force, Lakhbir Singh Rode of the International Sikh Youth Federation , are all presently in Pakistan and continue to try and engineer terrorist activity with Pakistani help in India. Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, one of the most wanted people in India for his terrorist activities in Punjab, remained in Pakistan for a long time and then surfaced in Switzerland, seeking asylum. 

Lal Singh Manjit Singh arrested for his role in the bombing of the Air India Boeing ‘Kanishka’ revealed to the authorities in India and Canada the operation of a massive base of Sikh terrorism in Pakistan.  Yousef Bodansky of the United States House Republican Research Committee’s Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare had published a report  “The New Islamist international” which gave details of how Pakistan had been training Sikh and Kashmiri.

The investigations by the Indian authorities and the confession on television of Yaqub Memon in connection with the serial bomb blasts in Bombay in 1992, provided full details of how the Pakistanis had used the known smuggler Dawood Ibrahim and his associates in Pakistan to impart training, provide financing and explosives and subsequently sanctuary to the perpetrators of the bomb blasts.  The entire Memon family was given refuge in Pakistan after the bomb blasts.  While Yaqub Memon was persuaded to return to India and provided full details, including the false documentation given by Pakistan, the eldest brother Ibrahim ‘Tiger’ Abdul Razak Memon remains in Pakistan even today.

The involvement of Pakistan in sponsoring terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir has been documented by the Pakistani media, the international media, the analysts of Jane's Intelligence Review and most importantly, by the US State Department.  In the latest reports on “Patterns of Global Terrorism 1997”, the US State Department says that “ reports continued in 1997, however, Official Pakistan support to militants fighting in Kashmir.  The 1997 report continues to focus on the Harkat-ul-Ansar as a terrorist outfit operating in Jammu & Kashmir.  Earlier reports had also given details of the Jammu & Kashmir Islamic Front, based in Pakistan and supported by it, which had undertaken bomb blasts in Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir and other places in India. 

The Pakistan magazine ‘Herald’ had carried a detailed report on the Lashkar e Taiba, the armed wing of the Markaz al Dawaa wal Arshad, following a congregation held by it at Murdike near Lahore.  At this congregation, details of the Lashkar cadres who had been killed in Jammu & Kashmir had been published.  In addition, there were calls for Jehad against Hindus, against the USA, against India and against democracy.  A similar congregation was held on April 18, 1998 again at Muridke, which was attended by Pakistan’s Minister for Information, Mushahid Hussain, who lauded the activities of the Lashkar.  In 1998, the Lashkar e Taiba has been responsible for the majority of the killings of Kashmir Pundits in Jammu & Kashmir.  While the Lashkar e Taiba appears to be emerging as a the main mercenary outfit being used by Pakistan now, the Harkat-ul-Ansar and Hezb ul Mujahidden are equally active.  The Hezb’s Supreme Commander, Syed Sallauddin, continues to be in Pakistan and frequently gives press conferences and issues statements and attends various congregations for Jihad against India, organized by the Jamaat e Islami.

Narco-Terrorism

The use of revenues from illicit narcotics trafficking can be traced back to the Afghan Mujahideen’s war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.  At that point of time, the supporters of the Afghan Mujahideen turned a blind eye to their narcotics trafficking as a means of financing their operations.  After the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the narcotics pipeline continues to be utilized to finance terrorist operations.  Here again a detailed report, prepared by US Intelligence Agencies in 1992, called ‘Heroin in Pakistan” which was published in the Friday Times of Pakistan gave details of the use of profits from the heroin trade to finance operations of Sikh and other extremist militants in India.  Yossef Bodanski, in his report ‘The New Islamist International’ and subsequent reports has given details of how narcotic connections, developed during the Afghan war, continued to finance Pakistan sponsored terrorist activities in India. 

The former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif made the most significant revelation, when he was out of power, in an interview to the Washington Post. He told the Post that when he was last Prime Minister, his army brass had approached him with a plan to use funds from narcotics trafficking for anti-India operations.  He claimed to have refused to approve the plan.

It is, however, a well-documented fact that despite their avowed piety and belief in strict Islamic values, the Taliban continue to use narcotic profits to finance their war operations. Given their close links with Pakistan's and ISI, and with the mercenary groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir, it is obvious that funds from this source continue to be used to finance terrorist operations in India.

The link between terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir in India and the terrorism against American, Egyptian and other interests is evident from the fact that the cadres that constitute the Taliban and the Harkat-ul-Ansar etc. had their origins in the same training camps. They owe allegiance to the same Pakistani mentors particularly the Jamiat ul Ulema e Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman The financing for these operations comes from radical elements in different countries including Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden has been known to be a major financier of Fazlur Rehman and by association of the Taliban and the Harkat-ul-Ansar.

Source: indianembassy.org

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