US-LED WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

Transcription

1 Published on South Asia Analysis Group ( Home > US-LED WAR AGAINST TERRORISM US-LED WAR AGAINST TERRORISM Submitted by asiaadmin2 on Tue, 09/25/ :28 Paper No by B.Raman A satisfactory assessment of the results achieved till now in the US-led war against terrorism is rendered difficult by confusing data emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even more than three months after the war was launched on October 7, 2001, one does not have a clear idea as to what was the strength of the Osama bin Laden-led International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel before October 7, 2001; how many of them have been killed or captured during the war; how many managed to survive and where are they presently. During his daily media briefing at Islamabad on December 26, 2001, Kenton Keith, of the US Embassy there, distributed a chart showing the present (according to the US) hierarchy (brains trust) of the Al Qaeda organisation with bin Laden at the top. It had 42 names, out of whom six were shown as 'killed in action' (KIA) and two under arrest. Those shown as killed were Osama's deputy Muhammad Atef, his aides Muhammad Salah, Assadullah and Tariq Anwar Fathy, the organisation's operational coordinator Abu Saleh al-yemeni and a trainer, Abu Ubaida. The two shown as arrested are Abdul Aziz and Abu Faisal, who were detained on December 12 and 14 respectively. The remaining 34 members of the brains trust, including bin Laden and his second-in-command Aiman al-zawahiri, were described as still on the run.

2 Keith said: "Some of these Al Qaeda members have been accounted for, but others are either in hiding, on the run, or holed up in one of the remaining pockets of resistance. Some of those accounted for might actually have been killed in Tora Bora region or elsewhere. The interrogation of captives and the investigation of former hiding places will bring some clarification over the coming days." From this, it is apparent that the dead bodies of those believed to have been killed have not been recovered and identified. The reports of their deaths are based on human (HUMINT) or technical intelligence (TECHINT). He also distributed a list of 27 Taliban leaders, of whom one Jalaluddin Haqqani was shown as killed in action, while, Muhammad Fazal and Mulla Noorullah Nori were shown as prisoners of war (POW). No credible details have been forthcoming from the allies regarding the damages caused by the war on the cadres of the Al Qaeda and the other components of the International Islamic Front. A mistake, which the US officials and analysts have been making from the very beginning of this war, is to treat the Al Qaeda and the Front as one and the same. The Al Qaeda, which is Saudi-centric, is only one of the 12 components of the Front. Before the war began, the Front was assessed as having 12 components---the Al Qaeda, three each from Egypt and Pakistan, the Taliban, two from Uzbekistan and one each from Southern Philippines and Xinjiang in China. The three components from Pakistan were the Harkatul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba. Details received after the outbreak of the war indicated that the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) was also a component. Of these, the maximum casualties due to the US bombing and the fighting against the Northern Alliance and other anti-taliban groups were sustained by the four Pakistani components. Another Pakistani organisation, which is not a member of the Front, but which also fought in Afghanistan and sustained large casualties, was Mufti Sufi Mohammad's Tehrik-e-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), an organisation whose following is confined to the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. While the Pakistani authorities have been silent on the casualties, independent reports from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas put the number of casualties sustained by these four Pakistani organisations at 8,000 plus. While the HUM brought some of its initial fatal casualties to Pakistan for burial, the rest of them were buried in Afghanistan itself at the places of their death.

3 While some idea of the extent of Pakistani involvement and the casualties suffered by the Pakistanis is thus available, the picture regarding the Arabs, Chechens and other foreigners is confusing. In order to divert the focus from the large Pakistani involvement, the Pakistani authorities and analysts co-operating with Islamabad have been over-estimating the extent of the foreign (non-pakistani) involvement, projecting most of the casualties as those of the Arabs, Chechens and others. They were talking of Chechens in their thousands being involved, which is absurd. Leaving this confusion aside, the most important question today is how many of the Pakistanis and non-pakistani foreigners managed to survive and where are they now. It is from these survivors that the future threats to the security of India, the US, Russia and other countries will arise. Another equally important question is the fate of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, bin Laden and his brains trust. While it is conceivable that at least some, if not many, of these survivors might have dispersed in the Afghan mountains and countryside and might be lying low for the time being, there are credible reports from Pakistan that a large number of the survivors managed to enter Pakistan with the complicity of serving and retired personnel of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment and have taken shelter in the FATA, in the Provincially-Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the mosques/madrasas, which had been providing the recruits for these organisations---particularly in the Binori complex in Karachi, in the Darul Uloom Akora Khattak in the NWFP and the Jamiya Ashrafiya in Lahore. The ISI always maintains a strict surveillance over these three principal mosques/madrasa complexes of Pakistan and they could not thus have taken shelter there without its knowledge, if not complicity. Practically the entire Taliban leadership is reported to have taken shelter in the mosques/madrasas in the NWFP and Balochistan. The surviving members of the brains trust of the International Islamic Front have moved over to the FATA, which is the safest place for them in the world. The talk in the FATA is that bin Laden is also amongst them, but this is yet to be confirmed. The FATA, like the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan), is still administered by Islamabad under the Frontier Crime Regulations promulgated by the British before 1947, which treated the tribals of the frontier areas as born or potential criminals and imposed restrictions on their movements, change of place of residence etc and banned political activities there. The second Benazir Bhutto administration ( ) allowed some political activities in the Northern Areas and the interim administration, which came into office in November, 1996, after her dismissal by the then President Farooq Leghari at the instance of the ISI, tried to bring the FATA into the national mainstream by introducing a modified form of elections there, while continuing the ban on the national political parties setting up branches there.

4 Despite this, the tribal leaders and Mullas hold sway in the FATA totally controlling every aspect of social life and the economy, which is largely dependent on heroin smuggling. The FATA had become shariatised and Talibanised in Pakistan long before the Taliban came into being in Afghanistan in Though theoretically, the continuance of the Frontier Crime Regulations should allow Islamabad a better control over the region, in practice, over the years the tribal leaders and clerics have managed to dilute the central control. The military-intelligence establishment has been careful not to rub the tribals on the wrong side. This is not only because of their propensity for violence, with the people of the area having more arms and ammunition than the people of any other frontier area of Pakistan, but also because of concerns over the impact of any strong action on the lower and middle ranks of the Armed Forces. The FATA has a large concentration of ex-servicemen and many of the tribal families have their relatives serving in the military. It is, therefore, doubtful, whether the junta would sincerely co-operate with the US and its allies in smoking out the Al Qaeda people who have taken shelter in the FATA. It would make a pretense of vigorous action by moving large forces here and there, but would see to it that the end result is zero. The return of the surviving members of the HUM, the LET and the JEM, with redoubled anger against India and the US for the losses sustained by them in Afghanistan and for the humiliation heaped on them by the Afghan people in Kabul and other cities, should be a matter of common concern to India and the US. If there is a September 11 or December 13 encore, it would originate from the jehadi pockets in Pakistan, with the post-october 7 Afghan returnees playing an active role. In response to the post-december 13 US pressure, Musharraf has reportedly arrested or detained in their houses some of the leaders of the LET and the JEM such as Prof. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed of the LET and Maulana Masood Azhar of the JEM, frozen their assets and accounts and sealed off the branch offices in small towns, but he has not acted against Mufti Shamzai of the Binori complex, who is the god father of all the terrorist groups of Pakistan and the Taliban and a close associate of bin Laden. His past fatwas against Americans were more blood-curdling than those of bin Laden. While making a pretense of better control over the madrasas, Musharraf has avoided action against the Binori, the Akora Khattak and the Ashrafi, which are the snake pits of international terrorism in Pakistan. Instead of wasting its resources and energies in a wild goose chase in places such as Somalia and Iraq, the US should now turn its attention to the snake pits of terrorism in Pakistan before the snakes start moving out again to play havoc in the US, India and other countries.

5 It is admitted that the US can't replicate in Pakistan what it did in Afghanistan, but it should stop its policy of showering lollipops on Musharraf and put in place an apparatus for a close monitoring of the goings-on in Pakistan and use the stick more frequently and effectively against Musharraf. The increasing role assigned by Musharraf to Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and the head of the clandestine Army of Islam, in the counter-terrorism operations and in the search for bin Laden and others shows that he is not sincere in wanting to help the US in smoking out the surviving terrorists from wherever they have taken shelter in Pakistan. Reportedly under US pressure, Aziz was removed by Musharraf from his earlier post as a Corps Commander in Lahore on October 7, 2001, and placed in the largely ceremonial post of Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Even from that post he was quite active in maintaining contacts with and advising the Pakistanis fighting against the US in Afghanistan, arranging medical assistance for bin Laden and interacting with the brains trust of Lt.Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul, Lt.Gen. (retd). Javed Nasir and others, who were advising the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. He has now staged a highly visible come-back and presided over a meeting of the Corps Commanders before Musharraf's return to Islamabad from China. It is significant that the Corps Commanders met without Musharraf. Even though Musharraf has given the impression that this meeting presided over by Aziz was held on his instructions in view of the fast-developing situation on the Indian border, one cannot rule out the possibility that this indicates the strengthening of the position of Aziz, who is widely perceived in Pakistan as one of the Mullahs' Generals. (The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. corde@vsnl.com [1] ) Category: Papers [2] Topics: Terrorism [3] Copyright All Rights are Reserved. Source URL: Links

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