SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 1, July 22, 2002

India

Now that the prospect of an India-Pakistan nuclear conflagration has vanished off the front pages of newspapers, the international community seems to have decided it can safely go back to pretending nothing is particularly amiss in Jammu & Kashmir.

Two leitmotifs have dominated recent western diplomatic activity in New Delhi and Islamabad. First, Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, must be made to further realise his promises to end cross-border terrorism. Second, India must recognise the efforts made by Musharraf, and pull back the troops massed on its western borders. All of this is premised on the assumption that Musharraf is at least half-serious about de-escalating violence in Jammu & Kashmir, a conviction that a section of the Indian diplomatic and security community seems to share.

Publicly-available data does nothing to affirm this happy belief. In January, India's Army chief General S. Padmanabhan had announced, in the wake of the previous month's terrorist attack on Parliament, that his troops were ready to go to war. From that month to the end of June, well after Musharraf made his promises, 456 civilians were killed in terrorist-related violence, up from 445 during the same six months of 2001. Fewer police officers and troops were killed by terrorists, but the number of attacks on Indian security forces did not decline significantly.

Neither was there any meaningful reduction in overall levels of terrorist violence.

Comparative Levels of Violence, 2001-2002

Key to the debate is whether or not Musharraf is committed to stopping the movement of terrorists from their training camps in Pakistan across the Line of Control. At first glance, Indian intelligence estimates do seem to suggest a sharp fall in the numbers of terrorists making their way into Jammu & Kashmir [see Statistical Review]. These statistics seem to have shaped the thinking both of western diplomats, as well as much of the Indian media and several important political figures.

Three points, however, seem little understood. First, estimates of trans-border movement are exactly what they purport to be: estimates. Collated from fire contact, sightings, source reports and interrogations, infiltration estimates can and are routinely revised days and even weeks after they are issued. The presence of new groups who have crossed the Line of Control may become known only when they surface in interior regions of Jammu & Kashmir. As such, intelligence estimates cannot be used to accurately gauge short-term trends, much less the strategic intent of Pakistan's intelligence community.

Second, there is little sign that Musharraf is indeed committed to actually terminating the activities of terrorist groups based in Pakistan. Only two leaders of terrorist groups active in Jammu & Kashmir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba's Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed and the Jaish-e-Mohammad's Masood Azhar, are under arrest. Both of them have been held for domestic dissent directed at Musharraf, not the terrorism charges India has long demanded they be tried for. The 14-member United Jihad Council which coordinates the terrorist campaign in Jammu & Kashmir, continues to function freely. Its chairperson, the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin's Mohammad Yusuf Shah, better known by his nom de guerre Syed Salahuddin, and al-Umar's Mushtaq Zargar, have both issued media-delivered threats against those who might wish to participate in the coming elections in Jammu & Kashmir. Zargar is believed to have ordered the recent assassination of the centrist political figure Abdul Gani Lone, after the latter engaged with the Indian government in a dialogue on possible participation in the elections.

Third, it seems to have escaped notice that the fall in infiltration detected through June was preceded by unusually high levels of cross-border movement from March to May. The number of terrorists now present on ground, the figures on violence indicate, allow Pakistan's intelligence establishment to sustain violence in Jammu & Kashmir at levels it believes can sufficiently serve its military purposes. It is also important to note that signals traffic from control stations in Pakistan continues more or less unabated. The sharp fall in the numbers of terrorists killed by Indian security forces suggests efforts are being made to avoid fire contact in order to conserve cadre for larger objectives.

What might this larger objective be? The figures again tell the tale. It is no coincidence that the killings of civilians have escalated to new heights. Many of the victims have been middle-level political functionaries of the pro-India political party which holds power in Jammu & Kashmir, the National Conference. Functionaries and supporters of other pro-India organisations have also been targeted for assassination. So too have those who won seats in village-level local bodies which were held in phases from mid-2000. In short, there is a systematic effort to intimidate civil society ahead of the elections, scheduled to be held in October. This alone renders absurd the debate on whether those elections will be fair or unfair: no election can be truly fair when participation entails a credible risk of getting killed.

Unless there is a demonstrable ground-level reduction in killings, the entire debate on whether or not cross-border movement has declined, and whether or not training camps have been closed or relocated, will remain pointless. This, sadly, is profoundly unlikely to occur. The contours of international engagement with India and Pakistan this summer have affirmed Musharraf's convictions that there is no substantial price to be paid for backing terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir. The General's pronouncements in a series of recent interviews have made transparent his belief that Pakistan's nuclear capabilities will deter a full-scale Indian military response. As such, the Pakistan military-intelligence establishment remains content to tie down Indian troops, drain its resources, and hope continued violence will eventually leverage a settlement in its favour.

The July 13 massacre of 28 workers and their families near Jammu city has been interpreted as the work of those who wish to spark off an India-Pakistan war. It could, just as easily, be read as an enterprise to determine how India might now react to a major outrage of the kind that nearly led it to war this summer. This time, India did nothing. Sooner or later, however, some government is bound to discover that the political price of inaction outweighs the indisputably calamitous risks of war. The best way of making sure this outcome is never realised is for the world to ensure that Musharraf reins in the Islamic Right's storm troopers: the sooner, the better. Whether it has the will, the vision or the ability to do that is, of course, another question altogether.

Sri Lanka

Negotiating to Negotiate
G. H. Peiris
Senior Professor, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and Senior Fellow, International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

The Norwegian brokered Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/Tigers) on February 22, 2002, brought about a formal suspension of the campaign of war and terrorism conducted by the LTTE since the mid-1980s with the declared objective of establishing a sovereign Tamil nation state in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka.

There could be no doubt whatever that the LTTE’s principal impulse in entering into a cease-fire was the global tide against terrorism that arose in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the US. In a dramatically changed political milieu, the LTTE’s international operations suffered a major setback. In USA, where the LTTE had already been proscribed, enforcement agencies intensified vigilance over LTTE front organisations, especially after disclosures of LTTE links with Islamic militant groups such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen of Pakistan and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front of the Philippines. Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, important operational bases of the LTTE, imposed a similar, albeit less effective, ban. There was also a concurrent hardening of the Indian government’s stance towards the Tigers.

To the LTTE, these external changes meant, apart from all else, a drastic reduction in the inflow of funds – a curtailment of clandestine income-generating operations including revenue derived through extortion from Tamil expatriates. The LTTE had also incurred substantial losses of fighting cadres and weaponry in its 1999-2001 military offensives. The recovery from these setbacks needed respite – time for the memory of its past atrocities to fade, time for transformation of its image, time for its new propaganda onslaught to take effect, and, above all, time for rebuilding its military strength.

To the government and the people of Sri Lanka, the need for a respite from war and terrorism was even more intense. The country was reeling under the impact of several military setbacks and terrorist attacks. In most parts of the ‘north-east’, even basic social services had been disrupted or destroyed. Foreign investment had been reduced to a trickle, and conditions attached to aid were becoming increasingly stringent. With the seemingly ineffective war effort absorbing well over 40 per cent of total government revenue, economic progress had virtually ceased, resulting in both inflation and increasing unemployment. The only redemption, it appeared, lay in a peace settlement with the LTTE.

The current cease-fire is not the first of its kind. There have been three earlier episodes – the cease-fire of mid-1985, a prelude to the ‘Thimpu Talks’ sponsored by the Government of India; 1989-90, which accompanied a direct dialogue between the government of President Premadasa and the LTTE; and the negotiations of 1994-95, when Chandrika Bandaranaike assumed office, first as Prime Minister and then as the President of Sri Lanka. All these negotiations failed primarily because of the intransigent centrality of ‘Eelam’ as the eventual goal of the Tamil demands. This left little space for manoeuvre towards a compromise that could be acceptable to the country’s ethnic majority – the Sinhalese (75 per cent of the population). Significantly, all these episodes enabled the LTTE to emerge as a much stronger force than before, both in its capacity to mobilise support from outside Sri Lanka, and to wage war and engage in terrorism within the country. Past experience demonstrates, above all else, that the LTTE has nothing to lose, but potentially much to gain, in periodic ‘peace negotiations.’

Since the signing of the current agreement there have been many reported violations of its terms. By July 1, 2002, there were about 174 complaints against the government, and 340 complaints against the LTTE, lodged with the Scandinavian Monitoring Mission that is supervising the peace. The main allegation against the government was that its armed forces continue to occupy public buildings in the northern and eastern areas, which were to have been evacuated. Complaints also occasionally include allegations of misdeeds by the Army directed against LTTE cadres and Tamil civilians. Charges of violations against the LTTE include fund-raising through extortion and kidnapping, forced conscription of children into fighting cadres, attacks on activists of other Tamil political groups, and persistent efforts to increase military strength. Large-scale military training by the LTTE is still being conducted. There has also been at least one major operation of clandestine arms procurement from overseas sources. Perhaps the most outrageous among these violations was the abduction, by the LTTE, of two Norwegian peace monitors on July 14, 2002.

There are other ominous developments, including the sharply escalated rivalry and tension between Tamils and Muslims of the Eastern Province over the past months. These two groups constitute, respectively, about 40 and 35 per cent of the population of the province. There is a history of clashes here, and there was a massive conflagration of communal violence in June-July 2000 in the East after attempts by the LTTE to eliminate resistance to its authority in Muslim-majority areas. The Muslim political leadership has now become more vehement in its demands for the political rights of their community which have been marginalised in the government’s preoccupation with negotiations.

Under the terms of the MOU, the LTTE has been permitted to engage in political activities outside its area of military control in ‘Vanni’, the northern interior. This has been utilised by LTTE cadres to organise spectacular pro-Eelam political rallies in several townships of the north-east as part of a Pongu Thamil movement, which draws its inspiration from the vision of ‘Tamil awakening’ embodied in certain poetic works written during the heyday of Tamil cultural nationalism in India. The LTTE-directed Pongu Thamil demonstrations have been characterised by nationalist rhetoric and ritualistic associations with belligerence, such as the mass performance of the ‘Nazi salute’ to Prabhakaran’s cardboard icons.

The LTTE has also established an almost total hegemony over Tamil politics with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), the foremost Tamil political party of the past, announcing that the government should regard the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamils in the impending peace negotiations. Leaders of various Tamil political groups have often been summoned to LTTE headquarters in Vanni to issue political directions or to castigate them for failures to fulfil demands, and intimidation is employed to curb the political activities of these groups in Tamil majority areas.

Despite the MOU stipulation that direct negotiations between the government and the LTTE must begin by August 2, 2002, there are no signs yet of this deadline being kept. The Government of Thailand has evidently indicated its willingness to provide a negotiation venue. The Sri Lanka government has met some of the demands made by the LTTE as preconditions for negotiations, including recognition de facto of the LTTE as the sole political representative of the Tamils, the total lifting of all restrictions on the movement of non-military goods to the LTTE-held areas, and the tacit acceptance of the principle of an interim administration for the north-east headed by the LTTE. The government has also indicated that the existing proscription of the LTTE would be lifted as soon as a definite date is set for negotiations. Mainly in order to avert a derailment of the ‘peace process’, spokesmen for the government have been trivialising the MOU violations by the LTTE. The LTTE, on the other hand has remained evasive with regard to the fixing of a preliminary time-schedule for negotiation on the grounds that the government is yet to fulfil its MOU pledges.

Meanwhile, on April 10, 2002, the LTTE leader Prabhakaran, accompanied by Anton Balasingham (ideologue and international spokesman for the Tigers), Thamil Chelvam (the leader of the LTTE ‘political wing’), and two of his senior military commanders (Karuna and Pathuman), staged a much publicised press conference in the presence of an estimated 400 journalists from Sri Lanka and abroad – Prabhakaran’s first appearance at a press conference after 12 years. This became the venue for the re-statement of the LTTE’s ‘core demands’: the recognition of a Tamil homeland comprising the Northern and Eastern provinces; the acceptance of the Tamils as a distinct nationality; and the recognition of the Tamils’ right to self-determination. These, of course, are the ‘core demands’ against which negotiations foundered at Thimpu seventeen years ago, and at several negotiations thereafter. If formal negotiations take place at all, it seems that the response of the Government of Sri Lanka will also be the same as on earlier occasions. At Thimpu, in 1985, the head of the government delegation stated that, if these demands "are to be taken at their face value and given accepted legal meaning, they are wholly unacceptable to the government, because they constitute the negation of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, they are detrimental to the unity of Sri Lanka, and are inimical to the interests of the several communities, ethnic and religious, in our country." This was obviously the only possible response then. It still so remains.

India

25 civilians massacred in Jammu: In a major terrorist strike on a civilian locality in Kasimpura in Jammu, on July 13, unidentified terrorists killed approximately 25 persons (three more succumbed to injuries later) including 12 women and a child and injured 35 others. Daily Excelsior, July 14, 2002

Nine tribals massacred by NDFB terrorists in Assam: Suspected National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) terrorists massacred nine tribals and injured another three at a relief camp in the Kokrajhar district of Assam on July 15. Sentinel Assam, July 16, 2002.

DHD terrorists kill seven SF personnel in Assam: Seven security force (SF) personnel were killed and a civilian injured in an ambush, allegedly laid by suspected Dima Halim Daogah (DHD) terrorists near Diyungmukh, a local market in the North Cachar Hills district of Assam, on July 18.Assam Tribune, July 19, 2002.

India to fight terrorism on its own: Speaking during a debate in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Indian Parliament) on July 16, on the Jammu terrorist attack, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani said India would meet the challenge of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism without counting on US support. He said, by declaring Pakistan as a terrorist state, the US could have played a major role in containing the terror campaign being run from Pakistan. The Times of India, July 17, 2002.

PWG withdraws from peace talks in Andhra Pradesh: On July 19, a day before the date set for direct talks between leaders of the left-wing extremist—Naxalite—group, the People’s War Group (PWG) and Andhra Pradesh government representatives, the Naxal group withdrew from the peace talks, citing ‘insincerity’ of the State government as the main reason. The PWG also warned that it would counter the alleged repression by the government since the peace talks began on May 10, 2002. Earlier, on July 15, the State government decided to further extend the proscription on the PWG by another year. The Times of India; The Hindu. July 20, 2002.

Pakistan

Death sentence for Daniel Pearl’s Killer: An Anti-Terrorism Court in Hyderabad, on July 15, awarded death sentence to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three co-accused in the Daniel Pearl abduction-cum-murder case. Omar Sheikh, a front ranking terrorist of the proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) was prime accused in the Pearl case. Dawn July 16, 2002.

Sri Lanka

Truce violation by LTTE: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) took hostage two naval monitors of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in the Iranaitivu seas near Mannar on July 13 in a serious violation of the ongoing truce. The Sri Lankan Navy, apprehending smuggling of arms by the LTTE, has been restricting sea-movement while the LTTE has been demanding free access to the seas. Alleging that naval troops fired at them and had demanded the surrender of the vessel as well as cadres, the LTTE took the Monitors hostage, fled to safety, and, then, set the monitors free. www.tamilnet.com; www.dailynews.lk, July 14, 2002.

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