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India
Islamist Terrorist Threat – No Respite
 
On January 22, 2002, an
obscure group claiming an Islamist agenda made a dawn attack at a police
picket guarding the United States Information Centre at Kolkata in West
Bengal. Five policemen were killed, and another 13 injured, and though
the perpetrators were shortly identified – two conspirators were subsequently
killed at Hazaribagh in the neighbouring State of Bihar, and a gaggle
of associates were arrested – controversy over the motives and intent
of the attack refuses to die. Nevertheless, whether the objective was
a symbolic attack on an American establishment or vengeance against
the Police, its execution, claimed by a marginal ‘terrorist’ group –
the Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF) – has exposed linkages across the
globe. These include direct connections through Bangladesh, Dubai and
Pakistan, as well as operational connectivities that lead right up to
‘9/11’. As one American counter-terrorism official said shortly after
the incident, "The terrorists who are targeting Indians are the
same people who are trying to kill Americans."
The ARCF is the brainchild
of Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, a Dubai based
mafiosi, who operates an extortion and abduction network in India
with the active support of Pakistan and Bangladesh-based terrorists
and the ISI. Ansari was the financier of a large consignment of arms
and ammunition, including 14 kilograms of RDX, which was seized in Gjuarat’s
Patan district in November 2001. The seizure followed the arrest of
Asif Reza Khan and a Pakistani accomplice, Arshad Khan in New Delhi
on October 29, 2001. Asif Reza Khan – after whom the ARCF is named –
was killed at Rajkot in Gujarat on December 7, 2001, in an alleged attempt
to escape from police custody. Revenge for this killing was one of the
possible motives for the Kolkata attack.
Asif Reza Khan’s arrest
had led to disclosures of international linkages with the Jaish-e-Mohammed
(JeM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), based in Pakistan. His primary
link with these outfits was through Ahmed Omar Sheikh, whom he met in
Tihar Jail at Delhi in 1999, while undergoing a sentence under the Terrorist
And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987. Sheikh was one of
the terrorists who was released – along with Maulana Masood Azhar, founder
of the JeM – in the hostage swap after the hijack of Indian Airlines
Flight IC-814 to Kandahar in December 1999. Omar Sheikh subsequently
operated out of Pakistan, and was identified as being responsible for
the transfer of US $ 100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the key conspirator in
the multiple terrorist attacks in USA on September 11, 2001. Asif Reza
was delegated by Omar Sheikh to execute a series of terrorist strikes
in New Delhi, when he was arrested.
Aftab Ansari and Asif Reza
also played a key role in the July 25, 2001, abduction of a Kolkata-based
businessman Partha Pratim Roy Barman, who was released on July 30, 2001,
after reportedly paying a huge ransom in Dubai through the hawala
(illegal international financial transfers) network. According to intelligence
sources, Ansari has established bases at Kolkata, Agra (Uttar Pradesh),
Mumbai and Malegaon (Maharashtra), and Surat (Gujarat).
The Kolkata incident reflects
an important transformation in the pattern of terror in India, and suggests
an increasing role for organised crime networks. Visible state sponsorship
is becoming progressively unsustainable – the American and media microscope
now focuses unwaveringly on the traditional patrons of the politics
of mass murder. Terrorist organisations, as well as sponsoring states
who seek to maintain deniability, will have to depend more and more
on the criminal underground for both finance and logistics support,
and will not only establish mutually useful connections with established
Mafia, but will also progressively take organised criminal activities
under their own wing. This has, of course, been the case in the past
as well – and the complex of drug barons, gun-runners, extortionists,
hawala operators and ‘political’ terrorists is already well established.
It will, in the foreseeable future, become the mainstay of terrorist
activity, creating new challenges for law enforcement and new imperatives
for international co-operation and legislation for effective counter-terrorist
responses.
These trends further complicate
and intensify the very substantial threat of Islamist terrorism confronting
India. The Kolkata incident and the December 13 attack on India’s Parliament
are indications of both a widening of the sphere of terrorism and an
escalation in intensity. Moreover, as Jasjit Singh, the former Director
of India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), notes,
the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan has resulted in "the dispersal
of the soldiers of the religious extreme rather than the winding down
of the ideological and operational command and control core… the most
favourable location for the Al-Qaeda to regroup would be the tribal
areas of Pakistan and PoK. From now on it would be Al-Qaeda that we
(India) will be fighting against, regardless of the name bestowed on
the outfits." These apprehensions are reinforced by reports of
the formation of a new group, the Shoora-e-Furqan (Assembly of Believers)
reportedly comprising thousands of Pakistani fighters who were airlifted
by Pakistan from Kunduz during the siege of that Afghan town by the
Northern Alliance-US combine. This operation was, indeed, one of the
inexplicable ambiguities in the US "war against terrorism",
and is an issue that was recently raised by India’s National Security
Advisor, Brajesh Mishra, at an international conference on security
at Munich. Mishra disclosed that over 5,000 Pakistani regulars and volunteers
supporting the Taliban were airlifted by Pakistan from Kunduz in a day-night
operation in late November, before the city fell to Northern Alliance
Forces. Though both India and the Northern Alliance brought these operations
to the notice of the US and UK Coalition forces – and these movements
cannot have been missed by the US radar and satellite cover – they chose
to look the other way. The rescued Kunduz fighters, along with other
Pakistani stragglers who escaped the Afghan campaign are now being relocated
in PoK and the Northern Areas, and it is expected that their main force
will be directed against India.
Despite the Pakistani dictator,
General Pervez Musharraf’s "historic" speech on January 12,
2002, and his declared resolve that "Pakistan will not allow its
territory to be used for any terrorist activity anywhere in the world",
and that "No organisation will be allowed to indulge in terrorism
in the name of Kashmir", cross border terrorism in the beleaguered
province of Jammu & Kashmir shows no signs of abatement. The cosmetic
arrests of leaders of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad in
Pakistan notwithstanding, both extremist rhetoric emanating from Pakistan
and continuous infiltration across the border remain unaffected, though
there has been some decline in the incidence of terrorist attacks in
the latter half of January. A declining trend in violence, is, however,
usual for this time of the year, with heavy snowfall making operations
difficult and blocking escape routes across high mountain passes.
Musharraf’s subsequent
statements, including his Kashmir Day address at Muzaffarabad in PoK,
where he reiterated Pakistan’s "political, moral and diplomatic"
support to the "freedom struggle" in J&K, suggest that
there is no present evidence that Pakistan proposes to de-escalate the
proxy war against India. In the coming summer – traditionally a period
of escalation in J&K – Pakistan can consequently be expected to
raise the stakes of its covert campaign. Regrettably – beyond massive
and aimless troop movements along the border and its double-edged diplomatic
offensive across the world – India does not appear to have evolved any
consistent and coherent strategy to counter this onslaught.
(Edited version
published in Pinkerton Global Intelligence Services, February 8, 2002.)
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