South Asia Terrorism Portal
The Delhi Declaration: Convergence on Terror Ajai Sahni Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management
President Putin’s three-day visit to Delhi last week culminated in the Delhi Declaration on the ‘further consolidation of Strategic Partnership’ between India and the Russian Federation. While the declaration emphasised a commitment to work towards a ‘new cooperative security order’ in general, it focused particularly on shared concerns as "victims of terrorism having its roots in our common neighbourhood". Coming as it does in the wake of President Putin’s unambiguous indictment of Pakistan, and his apprehensions that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in that country could fall into the hands of ‘bandits and terrorists’, the Delhi Declaration is an extraordinary expression of determination to root out terror at a time when the international community’s attention and will appear to be wavering. Indeed, in a pointed reference to Western – and particularly American – vacillation, the Declaration went on to add that "The fight against terrorism must not admit of any double standards and should also target the financial and other sources of support to terrorism." In a Press Conference after the signing of the Declaration, President Putin stated further that "it is not only important that Islamabad would cut the ways of infiltration of militants into Kashmir through the control line to the State… but would also increase its work to liquidate the whole terrorist infrastructure acting in this region."
In stark contrast, underlining the increasing ambivalence of the current stage of the war against terrorism, the United States is reported to have issued a demarche to India, suggesting that New Delhi ‘go slow’ on its political and reconstruction activities in Afghanistan because these were, in turn, having ‘an adverse impact on a weakened President Musharraf in Islamabad’.
Unsurprisingly, Russia and India have found it necessary to emphasize their "particular interest in putting an end to this common threat through preventive and deterrent measures nationally and bilaterally." The Delhi Declaration strongly condemns those who support and sponsor terrorists and proclaims that, "States that aid, abet or shelter terrorists are as guilty of the acts of terrorism as their perpetrators."
Pakistan’s support to terrorism in the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) is, of course, widely known and documented, as is its patronage – indeed, control – of the Taliban forces and regime in Afghanistan before 9/11. What is less well known is the Pakistani role in fomenting Islamist extremism in Chechnya and Dagestan, where the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has actively mobilized fundamentalist forces for over a decade, and has directly trained and supported terrorist cadres, as well as given sanctuary to their leadership. Most of the members of the Chechen Cabinet are known to have been trained in Pakistan, and as far back as in July 1995, senior Russian counter-terrorism officials had indicated that Chechen commander Shamyl Basayev was among the terrorists trained in Pakistani camps. Russian authorities asserted that Basayev had been living in Pakistan since 1991, and only returned to Chechnya periodically to organize terrorist incidents. Salman Raduyev, another Chechen who had led a raid in Kizlyar, Dagestan, in January 1996, taking over 2,000 Russians hostage, also received training from the Harkat-ul-Mujahiddeen (HuM) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The HuM was an ISI creation, and came into being in 1985, originally to participate in the Jehad against Soviet Forces in Afghanistan. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the group substantially turned its attention to J&K, though its influence and its cadres go well beyond. The HuM has been particularly active in training Islamist terrorists from a wide range of countries, including the Philippines, Myanmar, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Chechnya, Dagestan and the Xinjiang province of China.
The Pakistani intervention in Chechnya is part of a larger game plan, drawn out during the tenure of Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir as the Director General of the ISI, to dominate the CARs through an extended process of extremist Islamist mobilization. Nasir was also an ‘advisor’ to the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), which was used extensively in this process, backed by liberal funding from Saudi Arabia. The TJ extensively preached an extremist Wahabi form of Islam in the CARs, as well as in Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia, and in the Xinjiang province of China, mobilizing recruits, who were brought to Pakistan and Afghanistan for ‘religious studies’ and for arms training in camps run by the HuM and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). A large number of mercenaries and volunteers from Pakistan have also participated in terrorist operations and rebel campaigns in Chechnya and Dagestan. An international Islamist ‘charitable’ organization, Al Haramein Islamic Foundation, created to support the anti-Soviet movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s was also known to have subsequently widened its activities to support Islamist terrorist organizations worldwide, and established a network of offices in Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Kosovo, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Somalia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and was active in Chechnya as well. The Foundation is headquartered at Riyadh, and provides support to Wahabi extremist groups in Dagestan and Chechnya. Al Haramein’s operations in Pakistan have been used to arrange the acquisition of heavy weaponry, a range of armaments, and the recruitment of experienced Pakistani mercenaries for the Chechen terrorists. The Chechen rebels had also established strong links with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as with a number of Pakistan based extremist groups, including the HuM, the LeT, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam.
Russia has been targeted by a series of acts of terrorism, including mass hostage taking, bombings and shootings, many of them in Moscow – including the October 23, 2002 outrage in a Theatre where over 800 persons were held hostage by heavily armed Chechen terrorists with bombs strapped to their chests, and in which more than 120 persons eventually lost their lives in the rescue operation. Moscow sees a widening arc of Islamist terror sweeping across Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, and, with over 33,590 lives lost in J&K alone, India cannot but share these concerns. The network of radical Islamism and terror that has been established in Pakistan is a grave danger to stability and security throughout this region, and it is, as the Delhi Declaration notes, "democratic and open societies" that are most "vulnerable to the threats posed by globalization of terror, including new manifestations of linkage between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." The Declaration is a recognition of the fact that it will require an extraordinary international and cooperative effort to fight against this "terrorism, separatism and extremism, and the support these phenomena receive from organized crime and illicit arms and drug trafficking."