SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 4, August 12, 2002

Fatalities in Maoist Insurgency, Nepal

INDIA	PAKISTAN

The Arc of Terror Crystallises Again
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

"How do you stop something like this?" Attributed to a Western diplomat standing amidst pools of blood and shattered glass after the latest terrorist attack, on August 9, 2002, at a Christian Hospital in Taxila, Pakistan, in which four local nurses lost their lives, this question will reverberate again and again across South Asia - as it has done for over a decade past.

The answer may have been found in a concentrated, coherent, collaborative and efficient counter-terrorism campaign under the banner of the 'global war against terror'. Unfortunately, hopes from this international initiative have progressively been diluted over the past months: by the ambivalence of actual policies and strategies adopted by various 'co-operating' states; by a regrouping and consolidation of the forces of terrorism after a brief interregnum of apparent confusion and flight; and by a progressive loss of focus that has diverted attention from the key conflict to unrelated issues tied to the broader geo-strategic ambitions or political compulsions of the major players.

The Taxila attack was the seventh on Christian or Western targets in Pakistan since 9/11. The sequence commenced with an attack on a Catholic Church at Bahawalpur on October 28, 2001, and included the kidnapping in January 2002 of the American journalist, Daniel Pearl, and his subsequent and brutal murder; a bomb attack on the Sheraton Hotel, Karachi, on May 8, 2002, in which nine French nationals were among the fourteen killed; the June 14 attack on the US Consulate at Karachi, which left 10 Pakistanis dead; the July 13 attack on European tourists at the archaeological site in Mansehra in Northern Pakistan in which 12 persons, including seven Germans, were injured; and the August 5 attack on the Christian Missionary School at Murree, in which six Pakistanis lost their lives. At least 116 persons also lost their lives to sectarian terrorist attacks in Pakistan in just the first six months of year 2002.

Across the Line of Control (LoC) and international border, Islamist extremist terrorists have also engineered a succession of dramatically violent attacks in the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) over the past months. These have included a particular effort to provoke communal tensions with two major attacks on the Hindu minority community in the State - the March 30 strike at the Raghunath temple in Jammu in which seven persons were killed; and the attack on a camp of pilgrims on the annual Amarnath yatra, at Pahalgam in Anantnag district, on August 6. The current year also witnessed the massacre of 11 civilians, including a woman and eight children, at Behra, in Poonch District, on January 20; the February 16 massacre of eight civilians at Nirala, Rajouri; the May 14 massacre of 36 members of the families of Army personnel at Kaluchak - the incident that provoked the second major military mobilisation by India (the first was after the December 13, 2001 attack on India's Parliament); the assassination of the moderate All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leader, Abdul Gani Lone on May 21; and the Kasimpura massacre in the Jammu district, in which 25 persons, including 12 women and a child, were killed on July 13.

These parallel streams of violence, despite surface differences, are two faces of the same coin; their architects are drawn from the same network of terror, and nurtured within the same structure of patronage that provides them with safe havens and secure operational bases. Elaborate and tenuous arguments have been advanced to create distinctions between terrorists located in Pakistan, who act against Western or sectarian targets; and those headquartered in Pakistan, who cross over into J&K to execute their operations. But there is a continuity - of purpose, of ideology and of identity - here. It is supposed 'breakaways' from the 'mainstream' jehadi groups active in J&K who have increasingly concentrated their violence - particularly, though not exclusively under the banner of the newly constituted Lashkar-e-Omar (LeO) - against Western targets in Pakistan. Crucially, these jehadi groups have been allowed to survive in Pakistan, and have been encouraged to continue to operate in J&K, by the Pakistani regime and its covert agencies. It is this pattern of tolerance of 'our terrorists' that has created the space and the opportunity for the regrouping and revival of the forces that had been beaten into a retreat after the initial successes of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

This continuity is not limited to the networks of terror that find their targets in Pakistan and in India, but extends beyond, to comprehend the survivors of the Al Qaeda-Taliban combine who have now, in significant numbers, relocated in Pakistan. Whether or not such a re-location has actually been facilitated by the Musharraf regime, or by supposed 'rogue elements' in the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the fact is, their absorption into the local population has been made infinitely easier by the free operation of their ideological and operational affiliates, the various Pakistani jehadi groups, with their extended historical associations with the Afghan campaigns, and their current activities in J&K and Pakistan. The pattern of this relocation is, moreover, far more dangerous than their open concentration in 'terrorist camps' and other clearly defined nodes of control. They now reside among, and are often indistinguishable from, volatile local populations, particularly among the madrassa based or affiliated fundamentalist terrorist groups who, even currently, operate on their behalf, or make their own operations possible. It is this secret consolidation that has, in fact, allowed the surviving elements of the Al Qaeda to stabilise, after their headlong flight, and to sufficiently revive operational structures to carry out aggressive strikes in Afghanistan as well - as manifested in a succession of attacks, such as the assassination of Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir on July 6; the earlier and abortive assassination attempt against interim Defence Minister, Mohammad Fahim on April 8, in which four persons were killed and 18 others injured; and the August 7 clash between the Afghan police and Al Qaeda elements in which 15 persons were killed. Thus, even in Afghanistan, after what seemed to be a conclusive victory, there appears to be a reversion, if not to an earlier anarchy, certainly to a greater audacity and intensity of terror.

The unrelenting truth, reiterated again and again by each act of terror in Pakistan, India or Afghanistan, is that the concentration of terrorists and their sponsors in the 'strategic slums' of South Asia - wherever these are located - will have to be cleared, systematically, ruthlessly, and without the equivocation between strategically 'convenient or inconvenient' terrorism from the perspective of individual states. Unless policies and operations are based on this uncompromising premise, terrorists will always be able, both to secure safe havens and sponsors, and to sustain their operations. And while these 'forces of evil' may find their targets overwhelmingly among one nationality or another during transient phases of their existence, they eventually threaten all order and civilisation.

NEPAL