SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 10, No. 9, September 5, 2011

AFGHANISTAN

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Messengers of Death
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

Through July and August 2011, war-ravaged Afghanistan witnessed a succession of gruesome suicide bombings, and the trend demonstrates every sign of continuing. In the latest of such attacks, on September 4, 2011, at least two security guards of a private security company were killed and 21 civilians were wounded, after a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside the company’s compound in southern Kandahar Province. On August 28, 2011, three civilians (a woman and her two children) were injured when Taliban suicide bombers struck at a US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) reconstruction team in Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province. The intended targets remained unharmed. On August 27, in three separate suicide attacks, two in Kandahar City and one in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, seven people were killed and another 43 were injured. On August 19, 12 people were killed in a suicide attack on the British Council building in Kabul. On August 13, six suicide bombers targeting the Parwan Province Governor Abdul Basir Salangi, in an attack at Charikan, the provincial capital, killed 22 and injured 34, including 16 Government employees. The Governor, however, escaped unhurt. On August 2, four people were killed and 10 were injured in a suicide attack in the Northern Province of Kunduz.

On July 27, 2011 the Mayor of Kandahar City, Ghulam Haider Hamidi was killed by a suicide bomber, along with one civilian, while another civilian and a security guard were injured in the attack. On July 17, Jan Mohammad Khan, top aide of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai was killed in Kabul. Member of Parliament (MP) Mohammad Hashim Watanwal and a member of the Afghan Police anti-terrorism unit also died in the attack. On July 13, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside Sara Mosque in Kandahar City, killing Mawlawi Hektmatullah Hekmat, the head of religious council of Kandahar and four others.

Significantly, despite 30 years of warfare, Afghanistan had never experienced a suicide attack until September 9, 2001, when the Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated at Khwaja Bahauddin in Takhar Province, by two Arab al Qaeda suicide bombers. With this event, Afghanistan was thrust into a new chapter of armed conflict, though suicide bombing came into prominence only after mid-2005. Since 2005, Afghanistan has experienced a steady escalation in suicide bombing fatalities, as recruits from poor, under-educated or uneducated backgrounds, often recruited from madrassas (religious seminaries), are recruited and trained by a multiplicity of terrorist organisations, many at bases in Pakistan. The principal architect of the initial upsurge was senior Taliban ‘commander’ Mullah Dadullah alias Dadullah Akhund, who targeted Afghan and Western troops in Southern Afghanistan. Though Dadullah was killed in a raid by International Security Assistance Force troops in Kandahar City on May 12, 2007, the trend of suicide bombings continues to terrorise Afghanistan.

According to partial data collected by the Institute for Conflict Management from open sources, there have been 735 suicide attacks since September 9, 2001, killing at least 3,753 people.

Out of the total of 735 suicide strikes, 34 have been ‘major’, resulting in three or more fatalities, over a period of 11 years. The most significant of these incidents include:

June 25, 2011: 35 people were killed and 13 injured due to a suicide blast in a hospital in the Azra District of Logar Province.

March 14, 2011: A suicide bomber attacked an Army base in Kunduz Province, killing at least 37 people and injuring 40.

February 21, 2011: 33 people were killed and 41 were injured in a suicide attack at the Central Census Department of Imam Sahib District of Kunduz Province.

June 9, 2010: 40 people were killed and 72 were injured in a suicide attack by an 18 year old boy in Arghandab District of Kandahar Province.

August 25, 2009: 46 people were killed and 60 injured in a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) suicide blast in the commercial and residential area of Kandahar City.

February 11, 2009: A number of Taliban fighters, including suicide bombers, storm two Government buildings, including the Justice Ministry, across the Presidential Palace at Kabul City, killing more than 20 and injuring nearly 50 people.

February 2, 2009: A suicide bomber killed 21 Afghan Police personnel and injured seven inside a training center for Police reservists in the town of Tarin Kot in Uruzgan Province.

July 7, 2008: 58 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

February 17, 2008: 67 people were killed in the Arghandab District of Kandahar, in a suicide attack. The dead included Abdul Hakim Jan, a prominent leader of the Alokozai tribe and the commander of the Arghandab District’s contingent of the [now discontinued] Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP).

November 6, 2007: A bomber blew himself up when a Parliamentary delegation visited a sugar factory in Northern Baghlan Province, killing 74 people. Six Parliamentarians, including Mustafa Kazimi, who headed the Parliament's Economics Committee and was a former Government Commerce Minister, were killed.

September 29, 2006: A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a bus packed with Afghan Army officers, killing 30 people, including six civilians.

Suicide missions in Afghanistan have targeted the ISAF and Afghan Military, the Afghan Police, as well as softer targets such as Government leaders, politicians, Government workers and community leaders. Civilian casualties have also risen dramatically. According to United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) data, in the year 2011, 49 per cent of a total of 1,462 civilian fatalities were a result of suicide attacks. Out of the country’s 34 Provinces, the worst affected were Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Khost in the South, and Kabul, Paktika, Nangarhar and Kunar in the East. The Central Province of Uruzgan, the Northern Provinces of Takhar and Kunduz, and the western Provinces of Farah and Herat, bordering Iran, have also been affected by suicide attacks.

The numerous armed opposition groups operating in Afghanistan, collectively referred to as Anti-Government Elements (AGEs) have been involved in these suicide attacks. AGEs include the Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar; Hezb-i-Islami or the Haqqani Network, headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; and al Qaeda affiliates such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). The cadres executing the suicide strikes have included Afghan and Pakistani nationals, Afghan refugees settled in Pakistan, as well as Uzbeks, Tajiks and some elements from a number of Arab countries. The principal modus operandi has been the use of Body-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (BBIED), Remote Controlled Improvised Explosive Devices (RCIED) and VBIEDs.

Pakistan’s menacing proximity and strategic overreach into Afghanistan underpins the trend of suicide attacks (as, indeed, the wider insurgency and terrorism) in Afghanistan. UNAMA’s Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict Mid-Year Report, 2011, mentions that, on May 7, 2011, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) in Afghanistan arrested five boys between the ages of 13 and 14, who confessed that they had undergone training in Peshawar, the Provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, to carry out suicide attacks. An earlier UNAMA Report, Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan (2001-2007), observed that, without dedicated efforts to eradicate the recruitment drive in Pakistan’s Pashtun belt, it would be difficult to reduce the supply of suicide attackers, or to deter the groups who deploy them. Pakistan’s tribal areas, especially the North and South Waziristan Agencies, remain the crucial arena where recruitment and training for suicide attackers, as well as the furnishing of explosives and equipment, are concentrated. Significantly, on August 30, 2011, Afghan President Hamid Karzai released eight children groomed by Taliban insurgents to become suicide bombers, the youngest of them just seven years old.

On August 25, 2011, US Army Major General Daniel Allyn, Commanding General of the Regional Command, East (Afghanistan), thus expressed serious concern over the continued smuggling of ammonium nitrate, a key ingredient in bomb making, from Pakistan, into its strife-torn neighbour. Allyn stated, "In fact, Afghan Uniform Police (the principal civil law enforcement agency in the country) this past week conducted two independent operations responding to intelligence from their own sources, and captured two different shipments totaling over 5,750 kilograms of ammonium nitrate”. Along with ethnic bonding between Pashtuns on both sides of the AfPak border, innumerable Pakistani madrassas, thriving on Islamist propaganda and ‘hate literature’, and covert support from Pakistani state agencies, act as catalysts to violence and suicide bombings in Afghanistan.

Surprisingly, the Taliban’s 2010 ‘Code of Conduct’, in paragraph 57 on suicide attacks, imposes a requirement to avoid civilian casualties. Earlier, in July 2009, Mullah Omar had issued a previous ‘code of conduct’, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for Mujahideen”, for Afghan Taliban in the form of a book with 13 chapters and 67 articles for distribution to Taliban forces. The earlier code also called on Taliban fighters to win over the civilian population and avoid civilian casualties, and included exhortations to limit the use of suicide attacks to important targets and set down guidelines for abductions.

Moreover, the Afghanistan National Ulema Shurah issued a fatwa in March 2011, condemning the killing of civilians in both air strikes by the ISAF and in suicide attacks by AGEs. Nevertheless, deaths from suicide attacks continue to rise. In 2011 (till September 2), suicide attacks have already resulted in at least 1019 civilian casualties, including 329 fatalities. In addition, IEDs caused another 1,272 civilian casualties, including 450 deaths. In addition, 421 ISAF, 101 Afghan National Army (ANA) and 189 Afghan National and Local Police personnel have already been killed in 2011 – a large proportion of them in suicide attacks. 

Evidently, the implementation of the various codes, edicts and fatwas is far from stringent.

The impact of suicide bombings on the civilian population extends far beyond the sepcific victims of these attacks, creating a lasting climate of fear throughout affected and unaffected communities alike. Suicide attacks have emerged as one of the most devastating terrorist tactics in Afghanistan, distorting public perceptions about the Government’s and the international community’s capacities to protect Afghans. These incidents have also attracted widespread international media attention, even when the attacker manages to kill only himself. As the supply lines of Ishtihadis (persons with a strong desire to attain bahisht, paradise, through martyrdom) are sustained by the perverse cocktail of religious fanaticism, extremist politics and regional strategic intent, Afghanistan can only look to bloodier times in the foreseeable future.

NEPAL

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Mixed Relief
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management and SATP

The good news is that Nepal has a new Prime Minister; the bad, that the intrinsic and entrenched  political instability that has marred the country since the Constituent Assembly (CA) Elections of April 2008 and the end of the Monarchy in May that year, shows no signs of receding.

On August 28, 2011, the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal elected Unified Communist Party of Nepal–Maoist (UCPN-M) Vice Chairman Baburam Bhattarai, as its fourth Prime Minister (PM) since the CA Elections. The previous incumbent, Jhala Nath Khanal of the Communist Party of Nepal – United Marxist Leninist (CPI-UML), had resigned on August 14, 2011, to pave the way for a National Consensus Government (NCG). He had, in turn, taken over as Prime Minister just in February 2011, after a seven month deadlock over the election of the Prime Minister.

Bhattarai’s elevation to the PM’s post, however, represented a failure to establish a NCG, and came after another contentious election process, and an uncertain last minute deal between the UCPN-M and the United Democratic Madheshi Front (UDMF), a grouping of five Madhesh-based parties.

In the latest electoral process, Bhattarai received 340 votes while Ram Chandra Poudel, the Nepali Congress (NC) Parliamentary Party leader, who stood against Bhattarai, received 235. 575 lawmakers, out of a total of 594, participated in the voting. The UCPN-M has 229 members and the NC, 115, in the CA. The UDMF, with 65 lawmakers, and few fringe parties, supported Bhattarai, Poudel was backed by the CPN-UML, which has 108 members, and some small political formations.

In the morning of August 28, just before the commencement of voting, UCPN-M Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda had signed a four-point agreement with leaders of the UDMF. The UDMF pushed a hard bargain, which reportedly included up to eleven cabinet and eleven state ministries in the new Government, including the crucial Home and Defence portfolios, as well as an assurance of the inclusion of the Madhesis in the Nepal Army and in public office.

The election followed the May 29, 2011, 5-point agreement between the three largest political parties in the CA – UCPN-M, NC and CPN-UML, to pass the Ninth Amendment to the Interim Constitution, to extend the CA by another three months.  On August 29, 2011, the CA’s term was once again extended for another three month, by the Tenth Amendment to the Interim Constitution.

The failure to constitute a NCG, and the potential for continuing instability was clearly recognized by Bhattarai, even before he was voted to power, as he noted, “It is very unfortunate that we were not able to form a consensus government... The country is also caught in a cycle of frustration and uncertainty.”

That the country will not quickly find its way out of this cycle was confirmed by the NC and UML, with both parties openly declaring that they had no reasons to trust the Maoists. NC leader Ram Chandra Poudel thus declared, “The Maoists have constantly breached past agreements and continue to retain their military apparatus.” Similarly, the UML noted that they had not yet received any “credible and acceptable peace process proposals” from the Maoists. For any significant progress on the fractious issues of the absorption of Maoist armed cadres into the Nepal Army (NA) and agreement on a number of divisive clauses in the Draft Constitution, some agreement between the present ruling Coalition and these two major political formations would be necessary – and seems entirely unlikely in the proximate future.

The stability of the present arrangement is also enormously jeopardized from within. Bhattarai’s installation as Prime Minister represents, at best, a transient victory in an inner-party factional feud. Despite the fact that Bhattarai’s candidature was proposed by Party Chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda, the rivalry between the two leaders is legendary. Worse, Bhattarai’s commitments on the transfer of control of the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) weaponry to a Special Committee, and to complete the process of integration with the Nepali Army, have rankled with hardliners, who insist, on the one hand, that the decision to hand over keys of the Arms Containers was ‘suicidal’, and that Bhattarai was exceeding the mandate of the Party’s Central Committee. The hardliners insist that decisions on the weapons’ handover issue should have been left to the Party’s CC meeting , scheduled for September 18, 2011, though Party Chairman Dahal has strongly criticised the rhetoric emanating from this faction. Significantly, the keys of the weapon containers were handed over to the Special Committee, on September 1, 2011. In protest, the hardline Mohan Baidya faction refused to send its candidates to the Cabinet, despite a directive from the Party leadership to ensure that they were part of the Cabinet expansion of September 4, 2011.

Bhattarai has also come under direct personal attack by proxies, denounced as “a Nepalese face with an Indian mind”, even as connections with India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) are hinted at.

Acknowledging the factionalism in his party, Prime Minister Bhattarai, nevertheless, insists that this was both natural and entirely manageable. “In a communist party,” Bhattarai argues, “two-line struggles are natural and we have successfully managed it so far and we will manage it in the future.” He insists, further, that, in the Special Committee, “both PLA and Nepal Army are there. It is not a question of surrendering to the state, but handing over to the Special Committee, which is a joint committee.” Nevertheless, the dangers of factionalism and a possible split in the party are recognized: “Even if some leaders and cadre may oppose or some splinter groups may move out, even then it won’t make much impact on the political line followed by the party.” An astonishing deadline of 45 days has been imposed by Bhattarai to complete the weapons transfer and Army integration processes – and this commitment is likely to become the anvil on which his political future will be tested.

Bhattarai also insists that his ‘majority government’ is only a prelude to the promised ‘consensus government’ to which all parties had committed themselves: “unfortunately since that (a consensus government) could not happen, the second choice was to start with a majoritarian and work for a consensus government. Even though I was elected by a majority, my efforts are directed towards forging consensus.”

The UCPN-M – UDMF agreement of August 28, 2011, has been preceded by at least a dozen earlier agreements between major political formations in Nepal, since the 12-Point Agreement between the Seven Political Parties and the Maoists in November 2005, which initiated the peace process and laid the groundwork for an end to a decade of armed violence. These agreements have sought to impose and maintain political equilibrium, to advance the peace process, to establish an effective structure of Governance, and to take the Constitution drafting process to a conclusion. These various agreements have, however, been riven with contradictions and a failure by various parties to adhere to their terms. Factionalism in the Madhesi parties is already threatening the survival of the latest agreement, and this is expected to intensify once the process of allocation of ministries is completed, with leaders who are left out potentially resorting to brinkmanship to press their own case, failing which, they at least some would attempt to chart out their own course.

Nevertheless, some sort of a democratic framework has survived in Nepal, and all major political formations have restricted their confrontations and contradictions below the threshold of armed violence. It is abundantly clear that national consensus on a wide range of issues, including the formation of a NCG, Army integration, the structure of the Federation, the form of Government, and a number of other divisive issues, will remain tantalizingly elusive. Bhattarai has already admitted that the three month extension of the CAs tenure will be inadequate to complete the drafting process, and a nine-month timeframe is likely more realistic. The gains of the past years, however, are not insignificant. The absence of sustained armed violence – despite the persistence of intimidation and sporadic incidents of bloodshed – has itself transformed both politics and the character of political parties in Nepal, including, most significantly, the Maoists. Despite intra- and inter-party friction, there is no reason to believe that this process will not deepen, or that there will be an abrupt regression to the more atavistic politics of the past.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

INDIA

Assam

Jammu & Kashmir

Left-wing Extremism

Bihar

Jharkhand

Odisha

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)