SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 14, No. 23, December 7, 2015

PAKISTAN

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Punjab: Creeping Shadow of Daesh
Ambreen Agha
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On November 30, 2015, after a heavy exchange of fire, the Security Forces (SFs) killed at least four al Qaeda terrorists at Wador, within the limits of Gadani Police Station in Dera Ghazi Khan District. However, an al Qaeda 'commander' Shoaib Cheema and his accomplice Hanif Muhammad managed to escape from the encounter site. According to Police sources, the terrorists had entered Punjab via Balochistan and had planned to launch major terrorist activities in the Punjab Province.

On November 25, 2015, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) founder Haroon Bhatti and three of his accomplices were killed in a midnight raid jointly conducted by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and Police in the Badami Bagh area of the provincial capital, Lahore. Bhatti’s slain accomplices were identified as, Omair Nadeem, Omair Hassan and Noman Yasin. Three Policemen were also injured in the gunfight. On October 22, 2015, the Police had brought Bhatti and four of his associates back to Pakistan, from Dubai, with the help of Interpol. According to official sources, Bhatti was accompanying the Police and CTD personnel to an abandoned factory where LeJ terrorists were hiding. On reaching the location, the terrorists hiding inside the factory allegedly opened fire, killing Bhatti and the three others. Later, an unnamed senior Police official admitted that the killings were staged by the authorities. In an interview to The Guardian a Lahore-based Police official, on condition of anonymity, admitted,

This had to be done to maintain peace in the Province. No one would have given evidence against them because witnesses would be brutally targeted. You can’t allow terrorists to carry on their attacks just because you don’t have any proof against them.

Bhatti, one of the founding members of LeJ, was accused of involvement in over two dozen terrorist attacks. Significantly, Bhatti was a close aide of former LeJ chief Malik Ishaq, who was killed in a similar exchange of fire with the Police on July 29, 2015, along with his two sons Usman and Haq Nawaz, and another 11 accomplices. The Police had then claimed that Ishaq had attempted to escape from their custody.

On November 26, 2015, SFs arrested nine LeJ terrorists from the Farooq-e-Azam Madrassa (seminary) in the Cantonment area of Lahore. According to an unnamed senior CTD official a huge quantity of hate material was recovered from the seminary which was involved in various terrorist incidents and was the last stronghold of the LeJ in Lahore. The CTD official stated that the seminary was sealed under the National Action Plan (NAP). Federal Minister of the Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had told the National Assembly on November 11, 2015, that a total of 102 seminaries had been sealed in the country for fanning extremism since the implementation of NAP on December 24, 2014. Of these, he disclosed, 87 madrassas were closed in Sindh; 13 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and two in Punjab where a number of students were found in contact with banned groups. The total number of seminaries sealed in Punjab now stands at three.

According to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 165 persons have been killed in terrorism related incidents in the current year in Punjab (all data till December 6, 2015). Of these 90 were civilians, 66 terrorists and nine SF personnel. In the corresponding period in 2014, a total of 171 persons had been killed, including 129 civilians, 22 terrorists and 20 SF personnel. With fatalities among civilians and SFs dropping considerably, the Province has experienced some respite from terror, even as a significant number of terrorists has been eliminated.

Data provided by the Provincial Home Department on November 24, 2015, stated that at least 48 terrorists, 17 of them ‘high profile’, had been killed by the CTD under NAP. An official also claimed that CTD had arrested 5,812 terrorists and their collaborators from different cities of Punjab in intelligence-based operations, averting major acts of terrorism. Of them, 1,265 were arrested in Bahawalpur District, 1,040 in Gujranwala District, 1,008 in Rawalpindi District, 810 in Sargodha District and 233 in Lahore District.

Law enforcement agencies have succeeded to some degree in minimizing the threats from domestically oriented terror outfits such as LeJ and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but the emergence of Islamic State (IS, also known as Daesh) has introduced new complexities in the profile of terrorism in Punjab. Daesh is looking to expand its jihad by seeking allegiance from domestically oriented outfits like TTP, Jundullah, and others, who are currently under pressure from the Pakistani security establishment, and has launched a sustained and intensive campaign through the Internet. The campaign is securing particular resonance among increasingly disoriented domestic formations, which have suffered mounting losses over the past year. Specifically, since the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the North Waziristan Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on June 15, 2014, Pakistani SFs have killed at least 4,481 terrorists, almost all of them belonging to domestically oriented terror formations.

Notably, on July 6, 2014, a lesser known Punjab-based terror outfit, Tehreek-e-Khilafat-o-Jihad (Movement for Caliphate and Jihad), an offshoot of the TTP, had declared:

From today, Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shall consider Tehreek-e-Khilafat and Jihad mujahideen fighters of Pakistan as one of the arrows among his arrows which he has kept for his bow. We are praying from the almighty Allah to give us chance in our lives to see the expansion of Islamic State boundaries toward the Subcontinent and Khurasan region in order to hoist the flag of Islamic State here.

Three months after threatening “worst attacks” in Islamabad and Lahore, the then TTP 'spokesman' Shahidullah Shahid, in a 16-minute online video released on October 4, 2014, had pledged allegiance to IS, along with dozens of other terrorists. On June 15, 2014, following the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, Shahidullah Shahid had threatened the political elites of Punjab with “retaliatory activities by Mujahideen”. Hardening in his resolve against the Punjab establishment and subsequently “extending full support” to the IS, Shahid, in his October 4, 2014 message to Daesh had proclaimed,

Oh our brothers we are proud of you in your victories. We are with you in your happiness and your sorrow. In these troubled days, we call for your patience and stability, especially now that all your enemies are united against you. Please put all your rivalries behind you. All Muslims in the world have great expectations from you…we are with you; we will provide you with fighters and with every possible support.

Shahid was sacked from TTP after pledging allegiance to IS and was killed, along with five other terrorists, in a United States (US) drone strike in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan on July 7, 2015. At the time of his death he had assumed the title of ‘commander’ of Daesh in Afghanistan. The drone strike was confirmed by Afghanistan‘s National Directorate of Security.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Home Department, citing Intelligence reports, on November 27, 2015, alerted Police and other agencies in the Province that Daesh had planned attacks on civil and military targets. The Punjab Government’s alert mentioned that Daesh-affiliated terrorists were out to strike Army vehicles moving on the Jalalpur Jattan Road and Police patrols on the Grand Trunk Road in Gujrat District. The intelligence report also claimed that a group of five terrorists had reached Lahore, and had planned to storm private establishments. According to an unnamed intelligence official, their likely targets included minorities and foreigners. Earlier, on October 15, 2015, the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) General Raheel Sharif, during his visit to the Royal United Services Institute in London, had declared, "Daesh is a bigger threat than al Qaeda."

Further, on August 18, 2015, posters signed by Daesh were seen on the walls of schools in the Phugla, Fazla Kachh and Barthi areas of Dera Ghazi Khan District. The posters carried messages against co-education. Earlier, on July 4, 2015, Law Enforcement Agencies had arrested three suspected terrorists affiliated with Daesh, from Lahore and had recovered laptops confirming their links with Daesh leaders, maps of sensitive buildings in Punjab and hate literature. According to Police sources, two of the suspects, identified as Asmatullah and Abdur Rehman, hailed from Afghanistan while the third, Muhammad Ibrahim, was from Pakistan’s Punjab Province.

Again, on January 21, 2015, intelligence sources had confirmed the arrest of a local Daesh 'commander', identified as Yousuf al-Salafi, and two accomplices, Qari Tayyab and Dr. Fahad, involved in recruiting and sending fighters to Syria from Lahore. According an unnamed intelligence source, “al-Salafi is a Pakistani Syrian who reached Pakistan through Turkey five months ago. He crossed into Turkey from Syria and was caught there. Somehow he managed to escape and reached Pakistan to establish IS.” Al-Salafi had further revealed that one of his accomplices, Tayyab, was a prayer leader in Lahore and was involved in recruiting Pakistanis and sending them to fight alongside Daesh in Syria on a charge of about USD 600 per recruit.

However, despite the acknowledgment of the Daesh presence by the CoAS, backed by various intelligence reports, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, demonstrating the political elite's persistent state of denial, brushed off the threat alert as being "a routine matter", arguing: “There is no existence of Daesh in Pakistan, especially in Punjab… There are some troublemakers belonging to banned outfits and the Government is making efforts to eliminate these criminals”. A year earlier, the Federal Minister of Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, in a similar note, had ruled out the existence of Daesh in the country on November 10, 2014, asserting, “No organisation of this name exists in Pakistan.”

The war against terrorism, domestic and international, is contingent upon political consensus, political will, and consistency of action. Unless there is a military and political consensus on the continuum of Islamist terrorist formations operating in Pakistan, including both domestically and outward oriented groupings, and the existence of, and creeping threat posed by, Daesh, gains against a limited group of terrorist outfits will easily be frittered away. Crucially, if elements within the leadership continue to ignore the warning signs, Daesh is more likely to gain a foothold and wreak havoc in the Punjab Province, and in Pakistan at large.

INDIA

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Manipur: Endless Turf Wars
Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

Sehkholen, a leader of a breakaway faction of the Kuki National Front-Presidential (KNF-P) and one of his associates are reported to have been killed in an inter-factional gunfight at a secluded location between Leikot and Phaijang villages under Saparmeina Police Station in the Senapati District of Manipur on November 21, 2015.

On November 19, 2015, two militants were killed in a reported clash between the United Tribal Liberation Army led by Kam Robert Singson (UTLA-Robert) and the UTLA faction led by S.K. Thadou in the interior areas of Laikot, a Kuki village, under the Nungba Police Station limits in Manipur’s Tamenglong District. On November 20, the Thadou faction of UTLA clarified that the reported gun fight was between UTLA (Robert) and Kuki National Organisation (KNO) cadres and UTLA (Thadou) was not involved. Thadou asserted that his outfit had not engaged in any violence since it entered into a tripartite agreement with the Government in 2013. UTLA, a Kuki militant, was formed in 2002 and underwent a split in 2011. While the Thadou faction entered into a tripartite agreement in 2013, the Robert faction ‘surrendered’ on March 27, 2012.

With multiple factions operating, factional clashes among the militant formations in Manipur have always been a significant aspect of violence in the State. In fact, Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam, speaking at the 124th Raising Day of the Manipur Police in Imphal on October 19, 2015, observed that there were more than 40 insurgent groups operating in the State. Praising the Police, he added that Manipur Police had earned a "great reputation" in dealing with the difficult situation, including both the containment of the insurgency as well as complex day-to-day law and order problems. Referring to the militant groups and factions, Gaikhangam noted that, apart from the violence of underground outfits and their numerous frontal organizations, small groups of armed mercenaries were also resorting to abduction for ransom, extortion and other unlawful activities.

According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Manipur has recorded at least 20 incidents of factional clashes in 2015 (as of December 6), resulting in 30 fatalities; as against 14 incidents involving 15 fatalities in 2014; 16 incidents with 16 fatalities in 2013; 13 incidents with 27 fatalities in 2012; and six incidents with 12 fatalities in 2011.

The State witnessed three major incidents (each involving three or more killings) of factional clash in 2015, as against one such incident in 2014; one in 2013; three in 2012; and two in 2011. Some of the significant incidents include:

August 10, 2015: Three decomposed bodies of suspected militants of the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) were found in a jungle between Purul and Sirong village in Senapati District. The bodies were identified to be those of Francis, Veihriizii and John. Police suspected that they may have been shot dead three to four days earlier, by a rival faction.

May 22, 2015: Five suspected militants of NSCN-K were killed in a factional clash with suspected cadres of the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM), at Lungsaimai village in Tamenglong District. The clash occurred when NSCN-K militants launched an attack on NSCN-IM cadres.

February 10, 2015: Three persons, identified as Jongkholun, Manglensei and Sotinpai, were killed in Churachandpur District by suspected militants. The bodies were recovered near Vaison Cemetery in the District. Sontinpai was a militant of the Kuki Independent Organisation /Kuki Independent Army (KIO/ KIA) and five ‘demand letters’ (extortion notices) to be delivered by him were recovered from his body.

July 25, 2014: Bodies of three suspected Kuki National Liberation Army (KNLA) militants were recovered from two locations in Churachandpur District. The body of Seikholun Haokip was recovered from a location near Silemat village, those of Paothansang Vaiphei and Paolal-muon were recovered from a location between Saikul and Thingchom village, along the Khuga Canal in the same District. According to Police, the militants were killed by a rival faction.

November 12, 2013: Three militants were reportedly killed and one injured in a five hour gun-battle between NSCN-IM and Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) cadres near Bhalok village in Tamenglong District. Police sources disclosed that the three deceased belonged to ZUF and added that one NSCN-IM cadre was injured. NSCN-IM also confirmed that the three deceased hailed from ZUF. According to NSCN-IM leaders, ZUF cadres launched attacks on NSCN-IM cadres from two sides at a hillock near Bhalok village.

A cursory review of available data [2011-2015] indicates that Naga outfits, viz. ZUF, NSCN-K and NSCN-IM, have contributed overwhelmingly to the factional clashes in the State. Some of the other factions involved include the United National Liberation Front (UNLF); Nehlun faction of the Kuki National Front (KNF-N); KNF-P; Kuki National Front-Zougam (KNF-Z); Hmar People's Convention – Democracy (HPC-D); Kuki Revolutionary Army-Unification (KRA-U); United Kuki Liberation Front (UKLF); UTLA-S.K Thadou, UTLA-Robert and KNO.

Interestingly, while there has been just one clash between a Naga and a Kuki outfit, several incidents are either among Naga outfits or among Kuki outfits, suggesting that these are principally turf-wars. Clashes among Naga outfits have been the most violent: out of a total of 69 incidents, Nagas have been involved in 37, resulting in 47 fatalities. Kuki outfits have been identified in 23 incidents resulting in 22 fatalities. Nine incidents of factional clashes have seen the involvement of either other groups or unspecified groups. In terms of number of incidents, the involvement of Kuki outfits has increased since 2013 [one in 2011; zero in 2012; 8 in 2013; 4 in 2014; 10 in 2015].

Manipur also recorded an increase in the number of extortion and abduction incidents registered during the current year. 45 extortion cases were reported during 2015 (data till December 6, 2015), as compared to 29 for the corresponding period in 2014 [actual incidence is likely to be much higher as a significant number of cases go unreported]. An October 29, 2015, media report indicated that NSCN-IM was allegedly charging INR 2,000 every month from each Government employee working in the Chandel District Headquarters.

There were at least 28 incidents of abduction registered in 2015 (data till December 6, 2015), with 50 persons abducted; in 2014, 31 incidents resulting in 47 abductions are on record.

According to SATP data, Manipur has recorded a total of 92 fatalities, including 16 civilians, 24 Security Force (SF) personnel and 52 militants in 2015 (data till December 6) which is the highest among States in the Northeast this year.

An October 6, 2015, report claimed that a series of developments in the Northeast, especially in Manipur, since the August Peace Accord between the Centre and the Naga rebel group NSCN-IM, had raised serious concerns that the security situation in the region could dramatically worsen in the coming months. According to sources in the security agencies, the NSCN-IM has probably set up a training camp in Manipur, has already recruited a few hundred new cadres, and is contributing to possible new flare-ups in inter-tribe tensions in this fragile State. Media reports further suggest that, since the August 3, 2015, Naga Peace Accord, reports of extortion, arms and drugs smuggling have registered a rising trend in Manipur. An unnamed official was quoted as stating, “Most of it is being done by I-M (NSCN-IM) cadres.” Other sources have confirmed that the outfit may already have set up new camps in the Manipur Hills to accommodate fresh cadres recruited since the Peace Accord. One official claimed that about 400 Nagas may have been recruited by the NSCN-IM in this period. There were also reports of the group recruiting new cadres from parts of eastern Nagaland. NSCN-IM is believed to have had about 2,500 cadres before the Peace Accord, and is believed to be targeting recruitment of another 1000 cadres, mostly from Manipur.

Manipur has a long history of multiple insurgencies and competing factions, as well as one of the worst insurgency-afflicted States in the Northeast. The rising trend in the proliferation of groups and factions, and the turf-wars between them, creates the spectre of increasing violence and a security situation that grows even more complex by the day.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

BANGLADESH

Islamist Terrorism

Left Wing Extremism

Total (BANGLADESH)

INDIA

Jammu and Kashmir

Meghalaya

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

KP

Punjab

Sindh

PAKISTAN (Total)