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SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 35, March 17, 2003
Data and
assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form
with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the
South Asia Terrorism Portal
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The Deepening Imprint
of Terror
K.P.S. Gill
President, Institute for Conflict Management
If any doubts
existed regarding the direction and future intensity of
the Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist assault in India,
incidents over the past week will put these to rest. With
Iraq consuming the preponderance of the world's attention
and interest, and with the extraordinary licence enjoyed
by the Musharraf regime in Pakistan as a result of its 'special
status' in America's 'global war against terror', the space
for terrorism in South Asia has suddenly and considerably
been enlarged.
In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), summer is the season of terror,
as the snows melt, opening up passes from Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir (PoK), and providing easier access to armed infiltrators,
most of whom hibernate in Pakistani camps through winter.
This year, however, the killings are beginning to escalate
much before the snows begin to melt.
Portents of a bloody summer came late in the night of March
15-16, when an extraordinarily large group (at least 50
men, on preliminary estimates) of heavily armed terrorists
attacked a remote police post in Ind village in district
Udhampur in the Jammu region. 11 persons, including at least
nine policemen, were killed in the attack, the armoury was
looted and destroyed, and several houses and a hospital
torched. In another departure from recent trends, as many
as four terrorist groupings - the Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM)
the Jamait-ul-Mujahiddeen (JuM),
the Tehreek-ul-Mujahiddeen and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami
(HuJI)
- have, according to initial reports, been quick to claim
credit for this 'joint operation'. After 9/11, by and large,
most terrorist organisations have been eager to avoid open
association with incidents of extremist violence for fear
of attracting international attention and sanctions against
their parent organisations and their state sponsors. These
inhibitions, however, now appear to be substantially diminished
in view of the greater 'tolerance of terror' reflected in
Western - and particularly American - perspectives towards
South Asia.
This was the worst of a succession of attacks in J&K over
just the past one week. Earlier on March 15, an entire village
in the Rajouri-Poonch belt was set on fire, though there
were no casualties. On March 14, two Security Forces' (SF)
personnel - including a Deputy Superintendent of Police
- and three civilians were killed in a fidayeen (suicide
terrorist) attack in Poonch. The fidayeen, affiliated to
the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT),
was killed in the subsequent SF operation. The original
target of the attack is believed to have been Shias participating
in a muharram procession nearby, but the terrorist is believed
to have panicked and opened fire when confronted by the
SF personnel. On March 13, two persons, including a six-year
old child, were killed, and another 33 injured in a powerful
explosion in a passenger bus in Rajouri. Another three persons
were killed and eight others injured on March 11, in an
explosion inside a shop at City Chowk, Rajouri.
J&K did not, however, exhaust the ambit of escalating Islamist
terrorism in India. On March 13, a powerful bomb exploded
in a crowded local train at the suburban Mulund Railway
Station in Mumbai - India's 'financial capital' - killing
12 persons and injuring another 71. India's Home Minister,
L.K. Advani, has identified the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad
(JeM)
and the proscribed Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)
as being responsible for this attack. This was the second
major terrorist operation in Mumbai this year, the first
being a powerful explosion on January 27, in the up-market
Vile Parle area, in which a woman was killed, and another
25 persons injured. A second explosive with a timer device
was detected and defused a few hours later. December last
year had also seen two major explosions in Mumbai: on December
6, 2002, 25 persons were injured in an explosion at a fast-food
outlet at Mumbai Central Railway Station; and on December
2, 2002, three persons were killed and another 32 injured
in a powerful blast in a public bus outside the Ghatkopar
local station in Mumbai.
On March 14, 2002, the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh
Police killed a terrorist of the JeM in an encounter at
NOIDA, one of the satellite townships of the National Capital
Region. Police sources indicated that Manzoor Dar @ Sirajuddin
Khan, was a JeM 'Area Commander' from Baramulla in J&K.
Dar had been pursued and engaged on the basis of information
secured after the arrest of three Kashmiri students and
members of the Jaish - Mehraj Hasan, Ejaz Hasan Jan and
Sajjad Hasan Jan - from the Choudhury Charan Singh University
in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Their interrogation indicated
that Dar had been charged to plan and execute attacks on
a number of targets, including the Indian Parliament, India
Gate, Red Fort, the Qutab Minar Complex, railway stations,
stock exchanges and other crowed areas in Delhi.
Ironically, this is precisely the time when India's Opposition
parties have chosen to launch a broadside against the Prevention
of Terrorism Act (POTA),
2002, the only operative law that India has against terrorism.
The Party spokesman for the Congress, the largest Opposition
Party at the Centre, declared that this 'draconian law'
should be scrapped in its entirety because of its 'potential
for abuse'. Criticism of POTA was revived in the wake of
the Union Government's decision to set up a Commission to
inquire into cases of its misuse by political parties in
power against their opponents. This debate is expected to
heat up considerably as speculation about an early General
Election rises, and various political parties seek to seduce
their 'vote banks' by striking populist postures on emotive
issues. At roughly the same time, a vigorous foreign-funded
campaign has been initiated to secure amnesty for a Punjab
terrorist - Devender Pal Singh Bhullar - condemned to death
for the 1993 bombing that targeted a Youth Congress leader,
and that actually ended up killing nine bystanders and injuring
another 29. This campaign has also secured limited support
from a number of Indian 'human rights' groups and activists
that have remained wedded to a range of issues closely connected
with obstructing legal action against terrorist groups.
There are grave dangers here. The approach to an impending
election is inevitably a time of mass political lunacy,
but the national interest - and what is, today, widely acknowledged
as a collective international objective - in containing
and neutralizing terrorism is one that must not be lost
sight of in the heat of the electoral competition. The present
and escalating terror in an ever-widening sphere comes as
a warning that democracies must learn to protect themselves
against a lawless, opportunistic and utterly merciless and
unrelenting enemy, lest they succumb to the machinations
of the rising international and state sponsored terrorism
that targets their vulnerabilities. There are, certainly,
abuses of the anti-terrorism law, and these must be swiftly
identified and punished - POTA contains clearly defined
and harsh penalties for its abuse and for malicious prosecution
under the Act. The setting up of a Commission to identify
cases of politically motivated abuse of such laws is, to
this extent, a step in the right direction. Allegations
of such abuse must not, however, be allowed to undermine
the efficacy and legitimacy of legal action against terrorism.
An urgency must, moreover, attend the task of assessing
the recent spate of terrorist incidents at various locations
across the country to determine the origin, cause and motive
for this sudden escalation, and also to review the state's
strategies of response. It is clear that the states and
agencies who have, over the past two decades, engineered
an international campaign of terrorism - despite their own
current difficulties - have far from abandoned this method
as a strategy and a tactic to pursue their geopolitical
ambitions. The neutralization of this abundant source of
terror must lie at the core of India's strategies of response
if a permanent solution to this enduring affliction is to
be found.
Assam: 'Defeated'
ULFA Demonstrates its Power
Wasbir Hussain
Associate Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New
Delhi; Consulting Editor, The Sentinel, Guwahati
Security
agencies engaged in anti-insurgency operations in Assam
were rattled last fortnight after receiving hard intelligence
inputs that the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom
(ULFA)
might try and abduct a group of Russian oil experts from
the Moscow-based company, LARGE, engaged in a state-of-the-art
hydrocarbons survey near Duliajan in the State. And even
as they reacted to throw an additional security ring around
the 15 Russian experts hired by the state-run Oil India
Limited (OIL), the Army was putting 'Operation Shamsheer'
into place, to flush out insurgent cadres belonging to an
assortment of groups, including the ULFA, from the Assam-Meghalaya-Bangladesh
tri-junction. The Operation, in collaboration with the Assam
and Meghalaya Police, was a pincer attack that began in
the first week of this month in the East and West Garo Hills
districts of Meghalaya, overlooking the Bangladesh plains.
The area is a known resting place for the insurgents, and
considered a strategic location.
Nothing significant has yet been achieved by this new operation,
except that the rebels may have dispersed or crossed over
into Bangladesh. The Army has said that the group of rebels
they were actually targeting were operating from safe houses
in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, until recently. Just
about two pistols, some grenades and stocked rations were
seized by the troops from around Atiabari, the main focus
of the operation.
This offensive as well as the reports of a possible ULFA
attempt to abduct the Russians came ahead of the rebel group's
'Sainik Divas' or 'Army Day' on March 16. Not much was heard
about the ULFA observing 'Sainik Divas' in any big way in
the past, although the rebel group has always sought to
step up its offensive around its foundation day on April
7 each year, as well as around important Indian national
days such as Independence Day (August 15) and Republic Day
(January 26). This time round though, intelligence reports
that the ULFA might resort to a string of attacks to coincide
with its 'Sainik Divas' have proved to be true.
Shortly before midnight on March 7, the ULFA fired two mortars
at a petrol storage depot of the Indian Oil Corporation's
(IOC) Digboi Refinery in eastern Assam. The explosions shook
the area and one of the 13 tanks in the storage facility,
less than a kilometer away from the refinery - Asia's oldest
- went up in flames. Nearly five million litres of motor
spirit were to burn away during the next 40 hours, putting
the loss at an estimated Rs. 200 million, inclusive of damage
to the infrastructure and other heads. The same night, ULFA
cadres blew up a gas pipeline of Oil India Limited near
the company's eastern region headquarters in Duliajan. Before
dawn on March 8, the ULFA fired a mortar at the Police Reserve
lines in the western district of Bongaigaon, damaging a
house. The Police armoury was supposed to have been the
actual target, but the mortar fell way off the mark. In
another incident in this series of attacks, three Hindi-speaking
people were shot dead by ULFA cadres at a village in Goalpara,
another western district. Then, on March 16 - ULFA's 'Army
day' - ULFA cadres detonated an IED planted on National
Highway 37 at Bamunkhopa near the Goalpara town and blew
up a bus, killing six persons. The target is supposed to
have been a bus transporting Central Reserve Police Force
(CRPF) personnel, but a packed private bus caught the main
impact of the blast.
ULFA commander-in-chief Paresh Barua had called up newspaper
offices in Guwahati on March 8 to claim responsibility for
the attacks on the oil installations, saying the raids were
carried out by his men in protest against the 'exploitation'
of Assam's natural resources by the Indian government. He
warned, moreover, that such attacks would continue in the
future. As if to prove his point, the ULFA carried out a
grenade attack at the police station in Bongaigaon, 230
kilometers west of Guwahati, on March 12, injuring four
policemen and three civilians.
Significantly, the attack on the refinery, built by the
British in 1901 and a showpiece of India's industrial heritage,
came less than 36-hours after an unprecedented statement
by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi in the State legislature.
Gogoi told the House on March 6 that, should the Union Government
and the ULFA leadership agree, he was prepared to travel
to either Bhutan or Bangladesh to meet with the rebel leaders
and initiate a peace process. The series of attacks commencing
just a day later may suggest the ULFA's rejection of the
idea.
What could the ULFA actually be trying to prove? Security
officials, both from the Army and the police, seem happy
with a simple explanation - the ULFA is 'cornered', and
is, consequently, engaging in 'desperate acts.' Chief Minister
Gogoi, on his part, reiterates that unless the ULFA cadres
are denied sanctuary in Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar,
insurgency in Assam was bound to continue, with the rebels
carrying out their strikes in the State and then returning
to their bases in these countries.
In reality, the ULFA may not be in as bad a shape as one
might be tempted to believe. The spate of recent attacks
indicates that the rebel group has a good stockpile of weapons.
These have also demonstrated that its cadres are mobile
and can strike at places far away from their bases in Bhutan
or Bangladesh. Digboi and Duliajan, where the two attacks
took place last fortnight, are located 600 kilometres away
from the Assam-Bhutan border. Does this mean that the ULFA
is still quite active around Lakhipathar, the dense jungles
near Digboi, where its general headquarters was once located,
until the Army's Operation Bajrang in 1990? The answer could
well be yes. Moreover, the General Officer Commanding of
the Army's IV Corps, Lt. Gen. Mohinder Singh, who heads
the Unified Command in Assam, said on March 13 that the
ULFA rebels who carried out the Digboi Refinery attack may
have come from their bases in Myanmar, which is closer to
the area. Besides, the use of mortars, fired from a distance
of anywhere between 400 metres to 1.5 kilometres, looks
like a new strategy adopted by the ULFA to avoid incurring
casualties in view of the fact that it has lost a sizeable
number of its cadres in recent months. According to General
Singh, as many as 12,000 ULFA cadres have been 'apprehended'
since 1997, and another 1,540 ULFA men have been 'eliminated.'
In view of these statistics, dismissing the latest strikes
by the ULFA as nothing but 'acts of desperation' would be
much too simplistic an assessment. If the ULFA has indeed
lost nearly 14,000 cadres in the past six years and is still
capable of striking at will deep inside the State, this
confirms reports that the group has been engaged in a continuous
recruitment drive. It appears increasingly likely, moreover,
that the insurgent organization is now regrouping its forces
for a renewed offensive.
The fallout of the recent attacks is a series of fresh fire-fighting
measures by the authorities, with the Assam Government asking
New Delhi to rush 30 additional paramilitary companies,
comprising some 3,000 men, for exclusive deployment at oil
installations. It is, however, a re-assessment of the actual
success of the counter-insurgency operations in Assam under
the Unified Command structure of the Army, police and the
paramilitary, that is needed now. Gaps in past operations,
which without doubt would be many, must be bridged if insurgency
is to be contained in the State.
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Weekly Fatalities: Major conflicts
in South Asia
March 10-16, 2003
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Civilian
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Security
Force Personnel
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Terrorist
|
Total
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BANGLADESH
|
2
|
2
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0
|
4
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INDIA
|
46
|
15
|
40
|
101
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Assam
|
6
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0
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3
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9
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Bihar
|
4
|
0
|
0
|
4
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Jammu &
Kashmir
|
21
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12
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26
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59
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Left-wing
Extremism
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3
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0
|
1
|
4
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Uttar Pradesh
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
1
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Maharashtra
|
10
|
2
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0
|
12
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Manipur
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0
|
1
|
6
|
7
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Nagaland
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0
|
0
|
2
|
2
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Tripura
|
2
|
0
|
1
|
3
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SRI LANKA
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0
|
0
|
11
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11
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* Provisional
data compiled from English language media sources.
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BANGLADESH
Two
policemen killed in serial blasts in
Khulna: Two police personnel were
killed and two more injured in a series
of bomb blasts in the Sheikhpara area
of Khulna on March 11, 2003. During
raids following the blasts, police recovered
two shotguns, a rifle and some bullets
from the area.
The Independent,
March 12, 2003.
INDIA
Nine
police personnel and two civilians killed in
J&K: Nine Special Police Officers (SPO)
and two civilians were killed and nine other
persons injured in a terrorist attack on a remote
police post in the Gool area of Udhampur district
of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on March 16, 2003.
The terrorists also abducted four police personnel
and three civilians and looted all the arms
and ammunition before destroying the police
post. Daily
Excelsior, March 17, 2003.
12 persons killed in bomb explosion onboard
local train in Mumbai: 12 persons, including
two women constables, were killed and 70 more
injured in a bomb explosion on March 13, 2003,
inside a compartment of the Karjat-bound local
train at Mulund Railway station in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
The
Hindu, March 14, 2003
Four terrorists and an SF personnel killed
in Manipur: Four Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup
(KYKL) terrorists and a personnel of the Assam
Rifles were killed during an encounter at Oksu
village in the Imphal East district of Manipur
on March 11, 2003. An AK-47 rifle, two other
rifles and an unspecified number of Self-Loading
Rifles (SLR), besides some ammunition, were
recovered from the incident site. Kangla
Online, March 11, 2003.
JeM 'area commander' killed in encounter
in Uttar Pradesh: The Special Task Force
(STF) of Uttar Pradesh Police killed a Kashmir-based
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) 'area commander' identified
as Manzoor Dar alias Sirajudin Khan in an encounter
at Sector 34 of Noida, Uttar Pradesh, on March
12, 2003. An AK-47 rifle, some ammunition and
explosives were recovered from the incident-site.
Times
of India, March 13, 2003
NEPAL
Government,
Maoist insurgents sign 'code of conduct':
Government chief negotiator Narayan Singh Pun
and the Maoist insurgents parallel government
head Baburam Bhattarai signed a 22-point code
of conduct on March 12, 2003. The code has come
into force immediately and will govern the conduct
of the peace talks. The two sides had announced
a cease-fire on January 29, 2003. Pun later
said the code would be fully implemented within
three weeks. However, there is no news yet on
the dates, venue and agenda of the proposed
peace talks. Nepal
News, March 13, 2003
PAKISTAN
Top Al Qaeda
terrorist Yasir al-Jaziri arrested in Lahore:
Pakistani authorities arrested a leading Al
Qaeda terrorist, Moroccan national Yasir al-Jaziri,
in Lahore on March 15, 2003. Reportedly, the
arrest was based on information given by Khalid
Sheikh Mohammad, the suspected mastermind of
9/11 attacks, who was arrested from Rawalpindi
on March 1. "He (al-Jaziri) is less important
than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but he is quite
an important person," Secretary of the Interior
Ministry Tasneem Noorani was quoted as saying.
Dawn,
March 16, 2003.
SRI LANKA
LTTE vessel
sunk off Mullaithivu, 11 cadres killed: The Sri Lankan Navy
(SLN) sunk a vessel of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) killing 11 cadres on March 10, 2003, in the sea off Mullaithivu.
Although the LTTE said it was a merchant vessel, the Defence
Ministry said that the Navy had "credible information… that
an LTTE vessel carrying warlike material was approaching the
Mullaithivu coast with the aim of unloading weapons at mid sea
into small boats". The Navy attacked the LTTE vessel "for the
purpose of protecting vital interests involving the country's
sovereignty and territorial integrity", after LTTE cadres fired
at the naval vessel and damaged its control room. The LTTE termed
the attack as "a grave violation of the cease-fire agreement"
and warned that it "will have far reaching implications for
the peace process". LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham alleged
on March 12 that the Navy was 'determined' to derail the peace
process. However, on March 14, Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister
Vidar Helgesen said the LTTE had conveyed to him that it would
participate in the sixth round of peace talks from March 18,
in Hakone, Japan. Daily
News, March 11, 2003, March 15, 2003; Tamil
News, March 10, 2003
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The South
Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) is a weekly service that
brings you regular data, assessments and news briefs on
terrorism, insurgencies and sub-conventional warfare,
on counter-terrorism responses and policies, as well as
on related economic, political, and social issues, in
the South Asian region.
SAIR is a project
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and the
South
Asia Terrorism Portal.
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