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SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 5, No. 2, July 24, 2006

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


ASSESSMENT


 

 

INDIA
PAKISTAN
USA


Terrorists and their Fellow Travellers
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

There are, it is often remarked, none so blind as those who will not see.

As Indian patience finally reached its limits after the serial attacks on Mumbai's rail system, which killed at least 182 people in near-simultaneous explosions at seven different locations on July 11, 2006, scheduled secretary-level talks between Islamabad and Delhi were indefinitely deferred. India also issued a strong call to Pakistan to fulfil its oft-repeated promise of dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism on its soil. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, travelling to the G-8 Summit at St. Petersburg, declared, "The international community must isolate and condemn terrorists wherever they attack, whatever their cause and whichever country or group provides them sustenance and support", and called for "an approach of zero-tolerance for terrorism".

The 'international community' responded with suitable rhetoric in the G-8's Declaration on Counter-Terrorism, but, while Indian diplomats celebrated its niceties, offered little hope of concrete action against the state sponsors of terrorism, including those who were in clear and demonstrable violation of UN Resolutions on the subject, specifically including Resolution 1373 which imposes specific duties on member states, inter alia, to end support, "active or passive", to terrorist entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, deny safe haven to terrorists, their financiers and planners, and prevent the movement of terrorists across their borders. The UN Resolution 1267, moreover, set up a Committee to identify individuals and entities belonging to or associated with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and required member-states to impose specific sanctions against these. It is significant that at least three groups operating from Pakistan against India, specifically, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and the Harkat-ul-Mujahiddeen (HuM), are on the 1267 Committee's consolidated listing.

Immediate and shrill denials of Pakistani culpability in the Mumbai blasts, and in other acts of terrorism in India, came from two expected sources: Islamabad and Washington. General Musharraf advised India not to "start this blame game" and "give unsubstantiated comments". He also advised India to look within and address its own failings instead of blaming others. These positions were echoed by demands for evidence and immediate restoration of the 'peace process' from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri, and a host of other ministers and officials.

India responded to the calls for 'hard evidence' by demanding the rendition of Syed Salahuddin, the 'chairman' of the Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM), headquartered at Muzaffarabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), and terrorist and ganglord, Dawood Ibrahim, located at Karachi, against whom overwhelming evidence existed, including open source evidence of their continuous presence in and operation from areas within Pakistan or under Pakistani control. 'Immediate action' on this count, the Ministry of External Affairs argued, would help "convince the people of India that we (India and Pakistan) are working together… against terrorism".

It was at this stage that Washington interceded on Pakistan's behalf, as Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher gratuitously advised India to "find the evidence", adding further that "some of the groups that are suspected in these bombings are actually outlawed in Pakistan." Warming up to the theme, he observed further, "no country has done more than Pakistan in the ongoing fight against terrorism.... And no country has lost more people than Pakistan." Boucher's support immediately encouraged Islamabad to summarily reject Delhi's demands for Salahuddin's and Ibrahim's extradition or rendition.

Boucher's observations, however, omitted a great deal of the 'evidence' of terrorist activity emanating from Pakistani soil that is manifestly available to Washington, and which must underlie the State Department's annual reports on terrorism. It is significant that the most recent Country Reports on Terrorism, 2005, issued by the US Secretary of State, identify the LeT, the JeM, the HuM, the HM, the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HuJI), and the Al Badr Mujahideen as 'foreign terrorist organisations'. [The LeT, JeM and the HuM, as already noted, also find mention on the UN 1269 Committee's listing of organisations linked with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, presumably on the basis of evidence available to the 'international community' and to the US].

The Report records, further, that the "Jaish-e-Mohammed continues to operate openly in parts of Pakistan despite President Musharraf's 2002 ban on its activities. The group is well-funded, and is said to have tens of thousands of followers who support attacks against Indian targets…"

With regard to the LeT, the Report observes that "some members (of the LeT) were facilitating the movement of al-Qaida members in Pakistan", and also records that the organization functions under a number of identities including 'Jamaat ud-Dawa' and Al Monsoorian', and that it is "Based in Muridke (near Lahore) and Muzaffarabad" (in PoK).

We are also informed, again on the authority of the US Secretary of State, that "HUJI operatives have received training at Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID)-sponsored camps in Pakistan."

The report is somewhat coy about the location of HM, but we learn that its "location/area of operation" is "Jammu, Kashmir, and Pakistan". The veil is rather thin, and the report goes on to note that the group "has not engaged in terrorist acts outside India"; ergo, it is located in Pakistan, but only engages in terrorist acts in India. It is confirmed, further, that "HM claimed responsibility for numerous attacks within Kashmir", and that "The group is the militant wing of Pakistan's largest Islamic political party, the Jamaat-i-Islami". The Report also notes, quite unambiguously, that the HM is "led by Syed Salahuddin". Of course, Salahuddin's specific location is omitted, but this is information that the State Department can immediately procure from any cub reporter in Pakistan, if it does, indeed, lack such intelligence.

Dawood Ibrahim's location can also be identified from comparable sources, and Boucher would be advised to note that this ganglord has been on the US Treasury's list of designated 'terrorist supporters' since October 2003.

Boucher would also be advised to note that the US has held, and continues to hold, hundreds of 'terrorist suspects' without a shred of evidence, without due process, without trial and without even minimum rights guaranteed by the protocols of war at Guantanamo Bay; and that the US has secretly sought and secured the 'extraordinary rendition' of hundreds of others who have disappeared into secret locations, again without any semblance of due process or legal representation, for what is euphemistically referred to as 'interrogation' by 'allies' who have a reputation for inventive brutality. A large proportions of such renditions originate in Pakistan.

The fact is, the US has had sufficient and continuously mounting evidence since the early 1990s, to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, but it has balked against taking this step on considerations purely of strategic and tactical expediency. The Clinton Administration did, of course, put Pakistan on a list of 'suspected' State-sponsors of terrorism, but all that is now in the past. With no capacities of its own to pursue and neutralize Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Washington has unequivocally 'rehabilitated' Islamabad as its principal ally in its selective 'global war on terrorism' in the South Asian region.

Pakistan, consequently, operates under an implicit US sanction to pursue its limitless ambitions in South Asia and beyond, simultaneously through the twin instrumentalities of diplomacy and terrorism, except where such terrorism targets US interests. It is the impunity conferred by the double standards, guaranteed support and advocacy emanating from Washington, which have allowed Pakistan to continue its campaigns of terror in India.

There is overwhelming evidence of these campaigns, with hundreds of terrorist modules identified and neutralized across India, volumes of intercepted communications, gigantic stores of seized weaponry and explosives. Washington is aware of this evidence, and can seek greater access to it if it needs further reaffirmation. Washington has, moreover, enormous and independent confirmatory flows of such intelligence and evidence from its own assets in the region. It is not 'hard evidence', which Boucher coaxes India to provide, that is lacking; it is, quite simply, the willingness to look at and act on it.

Pakistan's irredeemable leadership will not give up its enterprise of terrorism unless it is left without a choice. In abandoning terrorism, it would need to give up all vestiges of its current and over-extended strategic projections, for it has no other instrumentalities or natural capacities for their attainment. The country is hostage to a dictatorship, an Army, a polity and an elite that have demonstrated no commitment to civilized governance or norms of acceptable international conduct since the creation of this ill-fated nation. Unless this stranglehold is forcibly broken, the ISI will continue to 'manage and deploy' its various 'assets', including the supposedly 'banned' terrorist groups, in its covert war against India and Afghanistan.

The US may find this situation tactically acceptable. But 9/11 has powerful lessons (as have the succession of terrorist arrests on US soil and across the world, thereafter) that are being ignored here. Terrorism does not respect international borders, and the Islamist terrorism that is the principal tool of mobilization in Pakistan's covert war against India, is a universal ideology that recognizes America as one of its foremost enemies. If Islamist terrorism succeeds anywhere in the world, it will repeat itself everywhere. Fortress America has been breached once. Unless the enemy is destroyed in lands currently far from the American imagination and vision, it will be breached again.

The footprint of almost every act of international terrorism since 9/11 (and before) passes inexorably through Pakistan. This is where the enterprise of Islamist terrorism thrives. This is where, now or, at infinitely greater costs, eventually, the threat will have to be neutralized.

INDIA

Northeast: Long Shadows of Subversion
Bibhu Prasad Routray
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

The hunt for the terrorists involved in the Mumbai serial blasts of July 11 reverberated across the northeast with the arrest of a number of Islamist militants. While many of these militants are not known to be directly linked to the Mumbai incidents, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that they represent tiny threads of a larger network that aims to destabilise the country.

On July 19, a confidential official order directed Police Stations and outposts in seven Districts of Assam: Cachar, Karimganj, Hailakandi, Dhubri, Barpeta, Darrang and Sonitpur, to prepare a list of persons suspected to have links with fundamentalist groups, including the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The order specifically asked for information on former SIMI cadres, who had 'quit' the organisation after it was banned on September 27, 2001. Interestingly, police appears to have only anecdotal information on about 5,000 SIMI activists, who have simply disappeared following the organisation's proscription. The chief of SIMI's Guwahati unit, Mohammed Taher, for instance, who used to stay in a rented accommodation in the city's Hedayetpur area and went missing after the Government banned the group, is reportedly hiding in the Barak Valley.

The orders come in the wake of intelligence inputs regarding the threat of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) modules planning to detonate several explosions targeting the rail networks in the State. Specifically, Rangia, Bongaigaon, Tinsukia and Lumding railway stations have been put on a month's alert since July 17. The fact that arrests of Islamist extremists also took place at roughly the same time, adds greater significance to such inputs. On July 16, two SIMI activists, Mohammad Hussain Ali and Mohammad Yasin Nuri, were arrested from Fakiragram in Kokrajhar District, and a revolver and four rounds of live ammunition were recovered from them. A day later, on July 17, the Guwahati city Police arrested Nurul Islam, a leader of the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA) from Ambari locality. Police sources maintained that the arrested MULTA leader was the camp commander of the outfit's training camp in Bangladesh and he was hiding in the city in the guise of a rickshaw puller for the past three years. MULTA is known to have maintained at least two camps in the Chittagong and Cox's Bazar Districts of Bangladesh for the past several years.

On July 18, Imamuddin Ahmed, a 45-year old cleric in a madrassa (seminary) in Chaulkhowa in Dibrugarh District, a practising quack, and also a suspected SIMI cadre, was arrested by Army personnel. 600 grams of 'brown sugar' worth INR 800,000 (about US$ 17,500) and some incriminating documents relating to SIMI activities were found in his possession. Army sources stated, "We have specific inputs that Ahmed was born in Bangladesh and came to Manipur in 1994, where he established and nurtured the SIMI network. After that, he came to Dibrugarh and has since been working as the chief co-ordinator of SIMI for the two states (Assam and Manipur)."

Again, on July 18, five persons, all Muslims, claiming to have hailed from Bihar and Orissa and posing as Army recruitment agents, were picked up from two hotels in Guwahati's Paltan Bazar area. They were found to have checked in to the Hotel under fictitious Hindu identities. During their interrogations it was revealed that they had visited the renowned Kamakhya temple in Guwahati twice in the preceding week. Two electronic toys, with their internal wires removed, were recovered from them, leading the investigators to suspect that the toys were to be used as bombs after being primed with explosives.

Sustained attempts at consolidation by Islamist militant groups in Assam have repeatedly failed over the years. Even though 14 Islamist organisations are said to be operating in the State with active assistance from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Bangladeshi Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the State police has maintained that it is capable of neutralizing their activities. However, past capabilities might prove a handicap in future. Assam, which witnessed the growth of Islamist political parties in the April 2006 Assembly elections, might see a spurt of Islamist extremism. In that eventuality, Muslim majority Districts such as Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta, Nagaon, Karimganj and Hailakandi, in addition to Districts with substantial Muslim populations, such as Cachar, Marigaon and Darrang, would pose serious problems for the security establishment.

The Mumbai blasts have brought further focus on the hidden processes of Islamist consolidation in other States of the northeast. In the first such case in the State, ten militants of the People's United Liberation Front (PULF) were arrested from the commercial town of Dimapur in Nagaland on July 19. The group operates in neighbouring Manipur. Their arrest from Dimapur, a town which, over the years, has witnessed a massive influx of Bangladeshi Muslim migrants (a 2004 estimate put their figures at 200,000), could be a pointer towards the unmonitored Islamist mobilisation that has escaped the attention of the security establishment. Little is known of the vast and isolated areas the Bangladeshi migrants have now come to occupy in Nagaland, and the linkages they may have developed with local and regional militant groups, or the support structure they provide to activities of covert agencies like the ISI. Some elements among the Bangladeshis in areas like Dimapur and Niuland have, thus far, been seen as mere criminals and trouble makers. Highly publicised, yet miserably unsuccessful, 'oust-Bangladeshis campaigns' have been launched by local organisations after the migrants have been involved in criminal activities such as theft and rape. Intelligence and enforcement agencies are now increasingly concerned about the potential of subversive alliances within such constituencies. Little, however, appears to have been learned from incidents like the October 2, 2004, twin blasts that rocked Dimapur, claiming 27 lives.

In Tripura, on July 14, three days after the Mumbai blasts, police arrested 11 Muslim youth from a mosque in the border village of Sonarai in Dhalai District. The youth hailed from Mumbra town in the Thane District of Maharashtra, located a hundred kilometres from Mumbai. Two days later, on July 16, another eight young Gujarati 'preachers' were arrested from a mosque in Udaipur, headquarters of Tripura's South District. All of the arrested persons were later confirmed to be members of the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ, the Arabic name denotes a Group that propagates the Faith), and were released on July 19 after investigations, even though three of the persons detained admitted to a SIMI past.

In spite of the clean chit given to the detainees, it is the case that the TJ, formed in the 1920s by Muhammad Ilyas in the Mewat area of India (now in the State of Haryana), with an explicit agenda of proselytisation, is known to have hobnobbed with the militant groups worldwide. Though the organisation publicly rejects terrorism and seeks to distance itself from various Islamist militant groups, TJ members have often been recruited by terrorist groups in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Experts believe that the TJ has worked as a catalyst for Islamist extremism, creating the mindsets that lend themselves to subsequent recruitment by more radical groupings. With an extremely successful outreach programme, the TJ has, over the years, managed to secure a significant presence in countries including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the United States, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Incidentally, the United States had put the TJ under a scanner following the 9/11 attacks with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicating that the al Qaeda had used the TJ in the United States for recruitment of cadres. In Pakistan the TJ is known to maintain links with the LeT and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM). The TJ was also involved in a failed assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and senior army officials in September-October 1995. A large number of Pakistani, Saudi and Jordanian TJ activists were provided arms training in HuM and LeT camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The possibility of the TJ bringing these linkages into Tripura, a State enveloped by Bangladesh from three sides, at some point in the future, cannot be ruled out.

The shadows of subversion appear to be strengthening over other States, such as Meghalaya and Manipur, as well. While Meghalaya, with an extended and porous border with Bangladesh, provides points of ingress and egress, the interior States, such as Manipur, have been gradually turning into areas of Islamist consolidation and potential loci of future flare-ups. The arrested MULTA 'camp commander', Nurul Islam, during his interrogation at Guwahati, disclosed that a group of 15 to 20 MULTA cadres had used Meghalaya's capital Shillong and Lad Rymbai in the Jaintia Hills, as their hideouts during their journeys to and from Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi migration has emerged as a serious issue in Manipur. In late April 2003, Bangladeshi immigrants in the Jiribam Sub-division of Imphal East District teamed up with the Islamist PULF, to avenge the death of an illegal migrant, hounding out 300 Bengali Hindus from their villages. According to sources, of late, subtle ISI activities are being noticed in various places, including capital Imphal and Moreh.

Given its geographical location, the hostile terrain, porous and unmanaged borders with Bangladesh, administrative apathy and political myopia that the Northeast is enmeshed in, the forces of destabilisation will always find opportunities to organise themselves, plan and execute attacks. There is substantial cumulative evidence of incessant efforts of subversion in the region, and an urgent need to establish a strategy and mechanism to continuously assess, monitor and neutralise such threats as they emerge.


NEWS BRIEFS

Weekly Fatalities: Major Conflicts in South Asia
July 17-23, 2006

 
Civilian
Security Force Personnel
Terrorist
Total

BANGLADESH

2
0
4
6

INDIA

     Jammu &
     Kashmir

8
4
22
34

     Left-wing Extremism

33
1
16
50

     Manipur

4
0
0
4

     Tripura

0
0
3
3

Total (INDIA)

45
5
41
91

PAKISTAN

0
3
0
3
SRI LANKA
19
3
6
28
 Provisional data compiled from English language media sources.



BANGLADESH

Left-wing extremists plan united action: Left-wing extremists in the south-western region of Bangladesh have decided to operate under the joint banner of 'Naxalite movement', especially after a caretaker Government assumes charge before the general elections to the jatiya sangsad (national assembly). Top leaders of a number of left-wing extremist outfits recently held two separate meetings at Kodalia village in Jhenidah Sadar and Malithia village in Shailkupa sub-district in the Jhenidah District. The meeting at Malithia was attended by founder of Janajuddha faction of Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) Abdur Rashid alias Dada Tapan, Pulok of PBCP (Red Flag) and Madhu Babu of Chinnomul Communist Party (CCP). Daily Star, July 19, 2006.

JMB commander Ataur Rahman Sunny sentenced to 17 years rigorous imprisonment: The Fourth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court in Dhaka on July 17 sentenced Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) military commander Ataur Rahman Sunny to 17 years of Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) under the Explosive Substances Act for possessing firearms, ammunition and explosives. JMB cadres identified as AHM Shamim, Zakaria alias Jewel, Nur Azam Siddique alias Yeasir, Belal Hossain alias Tamim, and Akramul Islam, were also sentenced to three years' RI for possessing 700 capacitors. Daily Star, July 18, 2006.


INDIA

33 persons killed in Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh: Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres killed 33 villagers and injured 70 after launching a simultaneous attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) post and a State Government-run relief camp at Errabore in Dantewada District on July 17. Forty one persons, including twenty three who were either abducted or went missing after the Maoists raid, subsequently returned to the relief camp. The Hindu, July 17-19, 2006.

State Secretary of CPI-Maoist killed in Andhra Pradesh: 'Andhra State Secretary' of the CPI-Maoist, Burra Chennaiah alias Madhav, was killed in an encounter along with seven Maoists, including five women, near Davaboyinapenta village in the Nallamala Forest of Prakasam District on July 23. Madhav was a key suspect in the Alipiri blast in October 2003, in which an unsuccessful attempt was made on the life of the then Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu. He was also involved in the killing of the then Panchayat Raj Minister, A. Madhava Reddy, and Congress MLA, C. Narsi Reddy. Police sources said that other top leaders such as the Maoists' 'district committee secretaries' Jeevan, Sambasivudu and Sudarasan, besides Sagar of the 'Tiger project dalam (squad)' might have escaped during the encounter. The Hindu, July 24, 2006.

Police arrests five persons and recover explosives in Coimbatore: The Coimbatore city police, in two separate raids on July 22, arrested five persons and recovered materials and components meant for assembling improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from Kurichipirivu, Ganapathy and Ramanathapuram areas. Commissioner Karan Singha stated that the police arrested two brothers, Haroon Basha and Malik Basha from Kurichipirivu and two other persons, Sultan and Athikur Rehman from Ganapathy. The operation ended with the arrest of K. Samsudeen of Ramanathapuram. Police said the arrested persons belonged to a shadowy outfit "Manidha Neethi Paasarai" (forum for human justice). The recovered explosive materials are suspected to be a potassium chlorate mixture (weighing close to 400 gm), glass pieces, iron balls, small iron pipes, two batteries, a country bomb and an electric detonator. A map with eight places marked out was also recovered. Police suspect that the accused had plans to plant explosives in the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital and offices of senior police officers. The Hindu, Tribune India, July 23, 2006.

Four persons arrested in connection with Mumbai blasts: The Mumbai Police Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested two persons in Bihar and one in Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra in connection with the serial blasts in Mumbai on July 11. Khalid Aziz Raunak Aziz Sheikh and Kamal Ahmed Mohammad Vakil Ansari, belonging to Basupatigaon in the Madhubani District near the Indo-Nepal border, were arrested on July 20 from Patna in Bihar. Mobile phones and half a kilogram of black powder were recovered from them. Police further said that the arrested persons had links in Nepal and Bangladesh and were part of a larger network. Based on the information provided by them, police arrested Mumtaz Ahmed Maqbool Ahmed Chaudhary in Navi Mumbai on the same day.

Subsequently, on July 23, Tanvir Ansari, a doctor, practising Unani medicine in central Mumbai, who police said is an operative of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), was arrested. ATS sources said "Ansari had undergone training in Pakistan in handling arms, ammunition and making bombs and explosives. He is suspected to have provided such training to others." The Hindu, Rediff, July 22 & 24, 2006.

Government asks Pakistan to hand over Dawood Ibrahim and Syed Salahuddin: On July 21, India asked Pakistan to hand over Syed Salahuddin of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and the underworld don Dawood Ibrahim as proof of its cooperation in the battle against terror. A statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said though India gave Pakistan details of terror groups and individuals during the Home Secretary-level talks in May, no action was taken so far. However, India would continue to provide Pakistan with all possible evidence of terror activity, the MEA spokesman said. He further said, If Pakistan really wanted to convince the Indian people that it was taking action against terrorists, some steps had to be taken immediately. Also, Islamabad could ban the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), and arrest its leader, the spokesman said. The Hindu, July 22, 2006.

Fencing along India-Bangladesh border hindered by BDR: The ongoing works of barbed wire fencing along the India-Bangladesh border would not be completed in the stipulated time due to constant opposition by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR). According to the Engineer-in-Chief of the Public Works Department, B.N. Majumder, the BDR personnel have not been allowing the fencing to come up beyond 150 yards from the zero line resulting in delays in the erection of the barbed wire fencing along the border. "As per new timing, the work should be completed by June next year," Majumder said. He added, "Designated agencies like BRO, NPCC and NBCC are facing problem in some areas… due to obstruction from the BDR side." Tripura Info, July 22, 2006.



NEPAL

Maoists demand one third seats in interim Parliament: Maoist leader Dr. Baburam Bhattarai told the visiting European delegation that his party was vying for an interim Parliament, which would constitute one third representation from the seven-party alliance, the CPN-M and civil society. "A few members of our delegation met the Maoists' second-in-command and he talked about an interim Parliament in which he demanded one third representation of the SPA, one third of the Maoists and one third of civil society," the European Parliament delegation's leader Neena Gill said. The Himalayan Times, July 22, 2006.


PAKISTAN

Ceasefire between militants and government forces extended by a month in North Waziristan: A grand tribal jirga (council) on July 22 negotiated a one-month extension to the ceasefire in North Waziristan between local militants and Government forces. The jirga, led by Maulana Nek Zaman, National Assembly member from North Waziristan, held talks with local Taliban commanders at an undisclosed location east of Miranshah. Officials said. "The jirga has successfully negotiated a ceasefire extension, which is now effective till August 25." A spokesman for the Governor's FATA Secretariat in Peshawar confirmed the ceasefire extension.

Previously, in South Waziristan, the local Taliban commanders had warned the administration against collecting import tax. A senior official disclosed that the Taliban termed the tax collection "un-Islamic" and warned the tax collectors of "serious consequences" if they did not stop immediately. Authorities collect thousands of rupees in taxes on goods imported into and exported from South Waziristan, at more than 20 check posts every day and the money goes to the political agent's 'Agency Development Fund' for meeting the administration's expenses. Daily Times, July 18-23, 2006.

Six commanders along with 500 armed tribesmen surrender in Balochistan province: Six top commanders, reportedly of Nawab Akbar Bugti's militia, along with 500 armed tribesmen, surrendered separately to the authorities in Sui and Dera Bugti on July 21. The District Coordination Officer (DCO) of Dera Bugti, Abdul Samad, stated on July 21 that intensive search operations were continuing in different parts of the Dera Bugti District. He further disclosed that about 40 'farari (absconders') camps' have been completely smashed and about 1,000 armed tribesmen have surrendered to the administration over the past month. Dawn, July 22, 2006.

 


SRI LANKA

LTTE rejects Swedish demand of accepting continuance of EU members as SLMM officials: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) political wing leader, S.P. Thamilselvan rejected the Swedish special envoy, Anders Oljelund's demand of accepting the continuance of European Union (EU) members as Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) officials, during his meeting with the special envoy at Kilinochchi on July 21. He reiterated that the deadline of September 1, 2006, issued by the outfit with regard to the removal of three officials from the EU countries from the SLMM would remain unchanged. He also called for the Sri Lankan Government to remove all armed forces from civilian areas and begin 'to fully implement the cease-fire agreement (CFA)". Thamilselvan further claimed that the All Party Conference created by the Government was "merely a strategy using delaying tactics to mislead the international community". Daily News, July 22, 2006.

 


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 of the Institute for Conflict Management and the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

South Asia Intelligence Review [SAIR]

Publisher
K. P. S. Gill

Editor
Dr. Ajai Sahni


A Project of the
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