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Bangladesh
Bangladesh And The Money Train
2012-03-23
In Bangladesh, Islamic terror organizations such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Harkat- ul Jihad al-Islami (HUJI), though banned for years, have survived several changes of government. Some training camps continue to impart both ideological and arms training. It's all because of money.

Survival is made possible by some twenty local and foreign Islamic charities, including al Qaeda's International Islamic Front (IIF), which have been financing radical Islamic groups JMB and HUJI. Much of the money arrives from Pakistan via hawala (underground banking) channel. Other sources include the Saudi based World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), Rabeta-al-alam-al-Islami, Kuwait based Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, International Federation of Islamic Organizations, Islamic World Committee, Qatar based Charitable Society and UK based Muslim Aid. In a single transaction in 2008, for instance, JMB received $42 million, again through 'hawala'.
Bangla is a dog's breakfast of a place, but from where I've been sitting it's about 900 percent improved over the Khaleda regime. The August 21st grenade attacks seemingly had the coppers "stumped" until the election turned the BNP and their allies out. JMP ran wild, with Bangla Bhai and his bad boyz seemingly impossible to run down. HUJI operated with impunity. Even though part of the motive behind it is the fact that the Battling Begums despise each other, I think the war crimes prosecutions have provided a wedge to take out the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership, the corruption trials and the arrests in the Chittagon Arms Shipment fiasco are providing a level to dump some of the more odious BNP partisans, and the recent revelations of the ISI's ownership of BNP will help postpone their comeback for awhile. Because it's a Moslem country they'll be back in power eventually, but until then and in spite of the Awami's League's own problems with corruption things have definitely been getting better.
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Afghanistan
Son of the spiritual head of the Egyptian Islamic Group killed in Afghanistan
2011-10-15
The Egyptian Islamic Group announced on its website that the son of its spiritual leader, the 'Blind Sheikh,' who is in a U.S. jail for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan.

The group said that Ahmed Omar Abdul Rahman, who is also known as Saif, “was killed in an American air bombing from an unmanned plane on the frontlines in Afghanistan,” according to the translation by the SITE Intelligence Group for the brief statement that was released on the group’s website.

Two of the jailed sheikh’s sons are known to have developed close ties to al-Qaeda.

One son, Asim Abdul Rahman, who is also known as Abu Asim, is reported to have signed onto al Qaeda's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders back in 1998. He is also rumored to have been granted citizenship by the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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India-Pakistan
They Hate Us — and India Is Us
2008-12-09
By PATRICK FRENCH

AS an open, diverse and at times chaotic democracy, India has long been a target for terrorism. From the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi in 1948 to the recent attacks in Mumbai, it has faced attempts to change its national character by force. None has yet succeeded. Despite its manifest social failings, India remains the developing world’s most successful experiment in free, plural, large-scale political collaboration.

The Mumbai attacks were transformative, because in them, unlike previous outrages in India, the rich were caught: not only Western visitors in the nation’s magnificent financial capital but also Indian bankers, business owners and socialites. This had symbolic power, as the terrorists knew it would.

However, I recently saw a televised forum in which members of the public vented their fury against India’s politicians for their failure to act, and it soon became apparent the victims were poor as well as rich. One survivor, Shameem Khan — instantly identifiable by his name and his embroidered cap as a Muslim — told how six members of his extended family had been shot dead. Still in shock, he said: “A calamity has fallen on my house. What shall I do?” His neighbors had helped pay for the funeral. Like most of India’s 150 million Muslims, Mr. Khan is staunchly patriotic. The city’s Muslim Council refused to let the terrorists be buried in its graveyards.

When these well-planned attacks unfolded, it was clear to anyone with experience of India that they were not homegrown, and almost certainly originated from Pakistan. Yet the reaction of the world’s news media was to rely on the outmoded idea of Pakistan-India hyphenation — as if a thriving and prosperous democracy of over a billion people must be compared only to an imploded state that is having to be bailed out by the I.M.F. Was Pakistan to blame, asked many pundits, or was India at fault because of its treatment of minority groups?

The terrorists themselves offered little explanation, and made no clear demands. Yet even as the siege continued, commentators were making chilling deductions on their behalf: their actions were because of American foreign policy, or Afghanistan, or the harassment of Indian Muslims. Personal moral responsibility was removed from the players in the atrocity. When officials said that the killers came from the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, it was taken as proof that India’s misdeeds in the Kashmir Valley were the cause.

These misdeeds are real, as are India’s other social and political failings (I recently met a Kashmiri man whose father and sister had died at the hands of the Indian security forces). But there is no sane reason to think Lashkar-e-Taiba would shut down if the situation in Kashmir improved. Its literature is much concerned with establishing a caliphate in Central Asia, and murdering those who insult the Prophet. Its leader, Hafiz Saeed, who lives on a large estate outside Lahore bought with Saudi Money, goes about his business with minimal interference from the Pakistani government.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is part of the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (the Qaeda franchise). Mr. Saeed’s hatreds are catholic — his bugbears include Hindus, Shiites and women who wear bikinis. He regards democracy as “a Jewish and Christian import from Europe,” and considers suicide attacks to be in accordance with Islam. He has a wider strategy: “At this time our contest is Kashmir. Let’s see when the time comes. Our struggle with the Jews is always there.” As he told his followers in Karachi at a rally in 2000: “There can’t be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them — cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.” In short, he has an explicit political desire to create a state of war between the religious communities in India and beyond, and bring on the endgame.

Like other exponents of Islamist extremism, he has a view of the world that does not tolerate doubt or ambiguity: his opponents are guilty, and must be killed. I have met other radicals like Mr. Saeed, men who live in a dimension of absolute certainty and have contempt for the moral relativism of those who seek to excuse them. To achieve their ends, it is necessary to indoctrinate boys in the hatred of Hindus, Americans and Jews, and dispatch them on suicide missions. It is unlikely that any of the militants who were sent from Karachi to Mumbai — young men from poor rural backgrounds whose families were paid for their sacrifice — had ever met a Jew before they tortured and killed Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who was several months pregnant, at the Mumbai Jewish center.

America’s so-called war on terror has been, in many respects, a catastrophe. In Pakistan, it has been chronically mishandled, leading to the radicalization of areas in the north that were previously peaceful. Yet links between the military, the intelligence services and the jihadis have remained intact: Lashkar-e-Taiba is merely one of a number of extremist organizations that continues to function.

The prime solution to the present crisis is to force the closing of terrorist training outfits in Pakistan, and apply the law to those who organize and finance operations like the Mumbai massacres. Hafiz Saeed and other suspects should be sent to India to stand trial. The remark by Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari (a man whose history of shady business dealing makes him demonstrably unfit for high, or even low, office), that he did not think the terrorists came from Pakistan would be funny if it were not tragic.

The United States gives around $1 billion a year in military aid to Islamabad; that is leverage. It does the people of Pakistan no favors for Washington to allow their leaders to continue with the strategy of perpetual diversion, asking India to be patient while denying the true nature of the immediate terrorist threat. I received this e-mail message recently from a friend in Karachi: “Nowhere can get more depressing than Pakistan these days — barring some African failed states and Afghanistan.”
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India-Pakistan
Let's give Pakistan the attention it deserves
2008-12-03
By Bernard-Henri Levy

The world is decidedly poorly made," Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and president of Pakistan, must be saying to himself. The French expression Le monde est décidément mal fait sums things up quite nicely. For it was at the very moment that Mr. Zardari was attempting to modernize his country -- to break with the equivocations of the Musharraf years and move forward with a peace process with India for which he took the initiative -- that the tragedy of Mumbai occurred. But what's done, unfortunately, is done. And if the authors of the carnage are, as it seems, linked to the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, we can already draw a certain number of appalling and unquestionable conclusions.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the jihadist groups with which I became familiar while working on my book "Who Killed Daniel Pearl." This group is, without a doubt, based in Pakistan. It is likely that the Lashkar-e-Taiba has within India ideological or religious "correspondents" in the vast Muslim community that sees itself (not without reason) as discriminated against by the Hindu majority. Still, there is very little doubt that the initiative, strategy and money for the assault on Mumbai came from terrorist leaders inside Pakistan. Far from concentrating only on the cause of Kashmir's independence, and most of all, far from existing only in the notorious and officially ungovernable "tribal zones" on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Lashkar-e-Taiba is an all-terrain group with great political influence. It includes militants in every city of the country: Peshawar, Muzaffarabad, Lahore and even Karachi (Pakistan's economic capital).

Since its creation 15 years ago, the Lashkar-e-Taiba has been linked to the ISI, the formidable Inter-Services Intelligence agency that operates like a state within a state in Pakistan. Obviously, this link is not widely publicized. However, from the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl to the July 2005 attack on the Ayodhya Hindu temple in Uttar Pradesh, there is abundant evidence that the jihadist wing of the ISI has assisted the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the planning and financing of various operations. Worse yet, the Lashkar-e-Taiba is, as I discovered while researching and reporting my book on Daniel Pearl, a group of which A.Q. Khan, the inventor of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was a longtime friend. Mr. Khan, one may recall, spent a good 15 years trafficking in nuclear secrets with Lybia, North Korea, Iran and, perhaps, al Qaeda, before confessing his guilt in early 2004. Later pardoned by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Mr. Khan remains perfectly free to travel within Pakistan, as he was just admitted this Monday, under the protection of the ISI, to the most elite hospital in Karachi. No, this is not a dream -- it is reality. Pakistan is home to a man both father of his country's nuclear program and known sympathizer of an Islamist group whose latest demonstration has netted at least 188 dead and several hundred wounded.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba is, ultimately, one of the constitutive elements of what is conventionally called al Qaeda. For too long we've told ourselves that al Qaeda no longer exists except as a brand; that it is only a pure signifier, "franchised" by local organizations independent of one another. Yet there indeed exists in our world what Osama bin Laden called the "International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders," which is like a constellation of atoms aggregated around a central nucleus. These atoms find themselves, for the most part, clustered in this new zone of tempests that forms the whole of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Three days after the massacre, in a moment of anger and frustration that rings true, Pakistan's President Zardari said: "Even if these activists are linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who do you think we are fighting?" The problem, unfortunately, is beyond him. Like his predecessor, President Zardari lacks the means to break the back of criminal elements within the ISI and Pakistani military. To an even greater extent, he lacks the backing of those who associate it with the darker side of his own administration. And therein lies the challenge -- perhaps the most frightening of our era. After the bleeding of Mumbai, it is time the entire international community -- not just those in the region -- took notice.
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India-Pakistan
Muslim anger vs Hindu anger
2008-11-17
By B. Raman

1. The manner of the current investigation by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Mumbai Police into an explosion at Malegaon in Maharashtra on September 30,2008, which mainly targeted and killed some local Muslims should be a matter of concern to all right-thinking Indians.

2. Large sections of the Muslims,the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) political class and the so-called secular elements in the Hindu community, which lose no opportunity to demonise the Hindu nationalists and the BJP in order to win the applause of the minorities and project themselves as liberals, have used the investigation to divert attention away from the hundreds of innocent civilians killed by the jihadi terrorists, many of them trained and assisted by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh and inspired by the pan-Islamic ideology of Al Qaeda and its International Islamic Front (IIF).
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India-Pakistan
Jihadist polemic holds clues to mission bombing
2008-07-10
Investigators have begun to sift through the debris left behind by Monday's bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul, searching for clues as to just who might have carried out the murderous attack.

Afghanistan's secret service, the Riyast-i-Amniyat-i-Milli, India's Research and Analysis Wing and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency will also be scanning vast volumes of intercepted communications and pressing informants for clues

One important piece of the puzzle is, however, has long been in the public. For the past the last year, powerful Islamist groups have cast India's presence in Afghanistan as a plot to bring about the disintegration of Pakistan.

During a May 9 sermon at the Jamia Masjid al-Qudsia in Lahore, Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed charged India with following a plan of destroying Pakistan.

'India,' Saeed continued, 'is building dams on rivers flowing into the country. On the other hand, it is establishing training centres in Afghanistan where it is teaching its agents how to carry out terrorist acts in Pakistan. While our rulers insist that we should have good relations with the Afghan government, India is imposing wars upon us. Still, our rulers, pursuing a policy of unilateral friendship under foreign pressure, have promised the world we will not fight with India.'

Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the parent organisation of the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba which, in turn, is a member of the Al-Qaeda-led International Islamic Front.

But Saeed isn't the only one making such claims. In May, a Jamaat-e-Islami spokesperson told Aaj Television that Pakistan authorities had erred in allowing the distribution of Indian films containing material objectionable and offensive to Islam.

He said:
''India is our enemy, and has been at the forefront of efforts to destabilise and damage Pakistan. The Indian Army is massacring Muslims in Kashmir, while India is constructing dams on our rivers in violation of treaties, in order to turn Pakistan into a desert.

''Besides, Indian consulates in Afghanistan are busy in conspiracies to undermine Pakistan's security. Still, we are providing India billions of dollars by importing its movies.''
Several jihadist ideologues have argued that circumstances are now right for Pakistan to adopt a more aggressive posture against India, in both Jammu and Kashmir and Afghanistan.

In February, former Inter Services Intelligence Directorate chief Hameed Gul wrote an article in the Nawa-i-Waqt, which asserted that the key to Kashmir is in Afghanistan. Lieutenant-General Gul argued that until the United States was defeated in Afghanistan, Kashmir would not be freed.

'But,' General Gul prophesied, 'I, being a professional soldier, say with full confidence that the U.S. can never win the war against terror in Afghanistan or Iraq. Following a withdrawal from Afghanistan in late-2009,' he asserted, 'the United States will disintegrate like the former USSR and this disintegration will result in the freedom of Kashmir.'

Some jihadists in Pakistan have called for military action to bring about this outcome, including the Hizb ut-Tehrira, a small group with little military capability, but considerable ideological influence among Islamists.

In a pamphlet circulated in Islamabad on May 17, 2008, soon after the United States fired a missile which killed 14 people inside Pakistan, the Hizb ut-Tehrir called on authorities to respond to this unprovoked American aggression blow for blow. How? 'Recently,' the pamphlet argued, 'Pakistan successfully tested the radar-evading Babar and Raad cruise missiles. Why not use this lethal weapons at this opportune juncture? Our ballistic missiles can wipe out American bases in Afghanistan in the twinkling of an eye.'

Saeed, too, issued a statement in June, after U.S. forces in Afghanistan attacked a Pakistan military post where the Taliban was located. He demanded that Pakistan dissociate itself from the U.S.' so-called war on terror and join the mujahideen to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Jihadists believe they have the backing of elements in Pakistan's armed forces, a perception shared by several analysts.

In February, the deputy head of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad asserted that 'a huge majority of Pakistan's army does not want to fight us.' He said: 'Had [President Pervez] Musharraf continued to support the jihad in Kashmir, the mujahideen would have broken India apart. Musharraf's biggest crime is abandoning jihad in Kashmir. Now, we have a new army chief. I appeal to him to adopt the old policy of jihad.

Monday's bombing, coming as it does in the context of heightened tensions along the Line of Control and in Jammu and Kashmir, has led many experts in New Delhi to fear his wish has been met.
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India-Pakistan
War against Pakistan
2008-03-30
By Cyril Almeida

AS the transfer of power to the incoming coalition government nears completion, there is troubling evidence that the country’s new civilian leaders are not gearing up to face the threat that Islamic militancy poses to the state.

While the incoming coalition does consider militancy a problem it appears to view the threat as a law and order issue rather than a creeping challenge to the state. Away from the politics of Islamabad, however, there is a consensus amongst security analysts that the wave of suicide bombings across the country is part of a growing challenge to the writ of the state originating from the tribal areas.

The difference between the views of the politicians and analysts appears to boil down to the role of the intelligence agencies. The evolution of Afghan jihadists of the 1980s to today’s suicide bombers via the Kashmir insurgency and the Taliban regime is an open secret and few question the role of the intelligence apparatus in nurturing that progression.

Today, the problem is that neither the civilian elite nor the general public is convinced that suicide bombers are no longer under the control of intelligence ‘handlers’ who have guided the activities of militants for over two decades now.

This scepticism of the intelligence agencies is perhaps a paradoxical result of the state’s success in the recent past in reining in militants operating in Kashmir. It is, however, a false comparison. Crossing the Line of Control and operating in Indian-occupied Kashmir required coordination with the Pakistani military apparatus. Operating inside Pakistan does not require the state’s complicity.

The militants are already here and able to blend in easily with the local population, especially the ‘Punjabi Taliban’. Containing ‘rogue’ elements within this militant structure from operating inside Pakistan is more difficult and there is mounting evidence that elements within these groups are no longer under the control of their handlers.

Consider the case of perhaps the most well-known Punjabi Taliban, Qari Saifullah Akhtar. The former Amir of the Harkatul Jihad al-Islami (HJI) is indelibly linked in the public mind to Benazir Bhutto. In the mid-1990s he was a suspect in a plot to topple and kill the prime minister, while more recently he has been posthumously accused by Ms Bhutto of orchestrating the Oct 18 attack on her caravan in Karachi.

Behind this public image, however, Qari and HJI are firmly linked to the intelligence apparatus. Qari’s organisation, which stretches from Kandahar to Azad Kashmir and from Chechnya to Myanmar and is linked to seminaries in Sinkiang (China), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Karachi, has been nurtured by the intelligence apparatus since its formation in 1980. Writing in 2002, Khaled Ahmed, an expert on militant groups, stated: “[HJI] has branch offices in 40 districts and tehsils in Pakistan, including Sargodha, Dera Ghazi Khan, Multan, Khanpur, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Mianwali, Bannu, Kohat, Waziristan, Dera Ismail Khan, Swabi and Peshawar.”

In the wake of the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, HJI was dislodged from its base there and its militants were scattered across the globe. Some settled in Waziristan, while others sought space in the NWFP to continue training for raids in Indian-held Kashmir.

The problem was that even as HJI was put into cold storage by its intelligence handlers, Al Qaeda and the Taliban had an eye on the militants of HJI and similar groups. HJI in particular had old links to Al Qaeda. In 1992, Osama bin Laden is believed to have aided the setting up of the Bangladeshi chapter of HJI under the leadership of Shaukat Osman. In 1998, HJI joined bin Laden’s International Islamic Front upon its formation. Similarly, Qari was close to Mullah Omar of the Taliban and his forces fought alongside and trained the Taliban in camps in Kotli, Kandahar, Kabul and Khost.

In seeking now to take its battle against the state beyond the tribal areas, Al Qaeda has capitalised on its HJI connections and recruited the organisation’s militants, the Punjabi Taliban, to launch suicide attacks in Pakistan’s urban centres.

The intelligence apparatus, at least, is aware of this development and is quietly working to capture these militants. The Asia Times has reported that a Special Investigation Authority (SIA) has been set up jointly by Pakistani and US intelligence to track down Al Qaeda’s latest recruits. The suicide attack on a house in Model Town, Lahore, is believed to be a botched attempt by the militants to strike at one of the SIA’s safe houses.

Publicly, however, there is no discussion of these developments. The problem that the intelligence apparatus faces in exposing Al Qaeda’s new henchmen is straightforward: they are the same elements nurtured to fight in Kashmir and alongside the Taliban. Exposing the new threat is, to put it mildly, awkward.

There is, however, one significant person who is alert to the militant threat: Gen Kayani. According to a report in The New York Times, Gen Kayani’s immediate priority as army chief is to reorient the army towards counter-terrorism. The general is, however, facing stiff resistance from senior officers who believe that the primary role of the Pakistan Army is to counter the Indian threat.

The incoming government must act decisively to support Gen Kayani’s counter-terrorism efforts. Indeed, alert minds in the coalition government will see a unique dovetailing of civilian and army interests. Support the army chief in his bid to take on the militants and two benefits will be apparent. One, politicians will earn the gratitude of the army chief, a significant bonus in this time of transition. Second, if the security situation deteriorates alarmingly Gen Kayani may be reluctant to consider a takeover when the civilian government is solidly behind him.

The PPP must also act cautiously in pursuing the link between Qari Saifullah and the attacks on Ms Bhutto. Given the association between the intelligence apparatus and HJI, a media trial will make many in that apparatus squeamish. While it is imperative that sympathisers of militants in intelligence circles be weeded out, this must not be at the cost of institutional demoralisation. By fighting yesterday’s battles, the incoming government could lose today’s war. It may be galling but it is a legacy of state interference.

The incoming government must instead focus on altering the public perception that there is no real threat to Pakistan from Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Countering this perception is difficult but more openness would be a start. The ban on reporters in the tribal areas and other trouble spots must be lifted. The government fears that images of death and destruction caused by US and Pakistani military action will inflame public sentiment. This is true to an extent; however, blocking access to the area has simply allowed the enemy to shape public opinion.

The government can take a page out of the US playbook and embed journalists with troops operating in the region. The regular attacks troops come under and the views of pacifist indigenous tribes will portray a more complex situation than that of a ‘foreign’ military killing the local population.

Whatever course of action the incoming government takes will be fraught with difficulties. The key though is to act decisively. If the incoming government dithers, the coming crisis will almost make people yearn for the simpler days of a tussle between the presidency and the judiciary.
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Terror Networks
Shattered certitudes and new realities emerge in terror link investigation
2007-07-08
“I take pride,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a June 2005 interview, “in the fact that, although we have 150 million Muslims in our country as citizens, not one has been found to have joined the ranks of Al-Qaeda or participated in the activities of [the] Taliban.”

Just two years after he made that assertion, the certitudes which underpinned it have been blown apart. News that three Karnataka residents possibly spearheaded an Al-Qaeda plot to bomb Glasgow and London suggests that the global jihad might have deeper roots in India than most people ever imagined.

All the Glasgow suspects are the kind of upper-middle class Indian Muslims who policy-makers imagined had been made immune to Islamist seduction for reasons of privilege and prosperity. Effort must now be made to explore the ideological landscape which led them to join al-Qaeda’s war-without-fronts, analysts point out.

Journeys into the jihad
Days before he is believed to have rammed a burning Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow terminal, Kafeel Ahmed phoned home to say he was about to face a difficult examination. His first presentation had been unsuccessful, the postgraduate engineering student said – a possible reference to the fact that the cellphone-triggered fuel-canister bombs he had placed in two Mercedes-Benz cars parked in central London had failed to work. “Pray for me,” he asked his mother Zakia Ahmed.

The belief system that led Kafeel Ahmed to the hospital burns unit where he is now battling for his life is unknown, bar one fact: at some point he began to journey into the strange and subterranean world of the jihadist movement.

By some accounts, Ahmed was drawn around 1999-2000 to the Salafi movement, a sect inspired by the 18th century preacher, Saudi Arab Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Salafis, who take the Prophet Muhammed’s companions and the two generations of Muslims after them to be exemplary models of the practice of Islam, became active in South Asia in the 19th century. Known in South Asia as the Ahl-e-Hadith, or followers of the Prophet’s traditions, the Salafi sect grow spectacularly because of Saudi Arabian support.

While some Salafi groups urge their followers to support or endure the regimes they live under, others call for armed struggle against non-Islamic regimes and Muslim states opposed to the Sharia. Perhaps the most active of these pro-jihad Salafi factions is the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the attack on the Indian Institute of Science right in Bangalore. In the Lashkar’s variant of mainstream Salafi ideology, the Koran is a manifesto for a perpetual jihad against unbelievers, in the pursuit of the construction of an ideal Islamic state.

Some, though, say Ahmed was in fact drawn to the Tablighi Jamaat – a pietist organisation that has often been involved in acrimonious ideological exchanges with the Salafis. Perhaps the fastest-growing Islamist organisation worldwide, the Tablighi Jamaat urges Muslims to discard what it perceives as corrupt influences that have permeated South Asian Islam. Its founder, Mohammad Illyas, privileged the jihad bin-nafs, or the war for the conscience, over the jihad bin-Saif, or holy war by the sword. Most South Asian Muslims reject the neoconservative theology and politics of organisations like the Tablighi Jamaat: their faith includes syncretic Barelvi-school practices like the veneration of saints and the worship of relics.

While the Tablighi Jamaat once used to be criticised for its apolitical stand, the links between some Tablighi Jamaat followers and Islamist terror groups has become increasingly clear. In February 1995, Pakistani investigative journalist Kamran Khan quoted a Harkat ul-Mujahideen spokesperson as admitting that “most of our workers do come from the TJ.” He said: “Ours is a truly international network of genuine jihadi Muslims.”

Like Hindu and Sikh neoconservative movements, the Tablighi Jamaat attracted elite groups in search of legitimacy. Lieutenant-General Javed Nasir, who was Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s first stint in office, was a Tablighi Jamaat activist. So was Mohammad Rafiq Tarar, President of Pakistan during Mr. Sharif’s second tenure. In 1995, the Pakistan Army arrested a group of 36 officers led by Major-General Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi on charges of conspiring to overthrow Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and declare an Islamic state. The conspirators, the Pakistani media reported, were mainly Tablighi Jamaat and Harkat ul-Mujahideen members.

It is not immediately clear if his Salafi or Tablighi Jamaat leanings led Ahmed – as well as his arrested brother, the Liverpool-based doctor Sabeel Ahmed, and cousin, Mohammad Haneef – into the embrace of Al-Qaeda. But this much is clear: others from the Tablighi Jamaat have traversed much the same road as Ahmed.

Preacher’s role
Earlier this month, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) secured the conviction of several members of an Islamist cell led by Maulana Sufiyan Patangia – a Tablighi Jamaat preacher who used to run in the Waliullah seminary in old-city Ahmedabad’s Kalupur area. Patangia is thought to have recruited cadre for the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad after the 2002 communal pogrom in Gujarat. According to the CBI, the preacher played a key role in organising the assassination of one-time Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya.

Salafi clerics, like their Tablighi counterparts, steer clear of endorsing terrorism. But their stances have proved attractive to many angry young people. Investigations into the 2006 serial bombings in Mumbai showed that top Lashkar-e-Taiba organisers Rahil Ahmed Sheikh and Zabiuddin Ansari often met at the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) in Mumbai’s Dongri area. IRF librarian Feroz Deshmukh, their contact there, turned out to be a key member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba cell which executed the bombings.

Zakir Naik, a popular Salafi television evangelist who heads the IRF, had no role in the Mumbai serial bombings. But his teachings, which include calls for Muslims not to participate in Hindu and Christian festivities, have considerable symmetries with those of organisations advocating violence. Interestingly, the IRF is listed as an approved religious information resource on the official website of the Lashkar’s parent organisation, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

While figures like Zakir Naik are emphatic in their rejection of terrorism, others are less so. Tablighi Jamaat preachers in Gujarat, for example, have been deeply inspired by the South African cleric Ahmed Deedad. While Deedad’s target was syncretism, his work contained the seeds of violence praxis. Deedad’s Durban-based Islamic Propagation Centre International received large financial contributions from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden. In 2001, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that Deedad’s son and successor, Yusuf Deedad, had distributed anti-Jewish literature emblazoned with pictures of Adolf Hitler at the World Conference Against Racism.

Ahmed and his relatives, then, might well have picked up the foundations of their ideology through Tablighi Jamaat teachings. It is also possible that experiences of communal hatred reinforced their beliefs. The son of an unemployed factory worker, Jalees Ansari graduated from Mumbai’s Sion Medical College in 1972. Despite his professional success, Ansari felt embittered by what he perceived as pervasive religious intolerance. Students and staff at his college, Ansari told investigators later, often insulted Muslims. Later, Ansari came to believe that his Hindu colleagues did not treat their Muslim patients with care. Although Ansari claimed to have been a “secular-minded person,” successive communal massacres and the demolition of the Babri Masjid led him to snap. He executed 50 bombings nationwide.

From east to west
In the weeks to come, investigators will seek to piece together just what led Kafeel Ahmed to snap. Most likely, he came into contact with the rest of Glasgow group through Bilal Abdullah, an Iraq-trained doctor who sat with him during the Glasgow airport attack. Abdullah is believed to have had active links in the Hizb ut-Tehrir, a U.K.-based Islamist group that has long supported Osama bin-Laden. When Abdullah was a student at Cambridge, Ahmed studied at the nearby Anglia Polytechnic. Abdullah possibly put Ahmed and his relatives in touch with the overall head of the car bombing plot, Saudi national Mohammed Jamil Asha.

Experts note that no similar collaboration between South Asian and Arab Islamists has ever been seen before – but it is, in fact, no surprise. Groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Harkat ul-Mujahideen and Harkat ul-Jihad Islami are affiliates of bin-Laden’s International Islamic Front. In April 2006, bin-Laden expressly linked Al-Qaeda’s campaign against the West to these organisations, by referring to a “a Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against the Muslims.” Since then, Arab-South Asian alliances have been increasingly evident.

For example, a French court recently convicted Pakistani national Ghulam Rana for funnelling funds to terror groups with the assistance of two French citizens of Arab origin.
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India-Pakistan
LeT issues fatwa to kill the pope
2006-10-02
Acting on behalf of the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, which is headed by Osama bin Laden, the Markaz-ud-Dawa (MUD) of Pakistan, which is the political wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), is reported to have issued a Fatwa calling upon the Muslims to kill Pope Benedict XVI for a recent speech of his delivered on September 12,2006, which has been projected as anti-Islam by Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist organisations of the world.

2. The issue of the MUD fatwa came a few days before the latest video message of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No.2, in which he has made a severe attack on the Pope.

3. A report on the the MUD Fatwa to kill the Pope has been carried by the Pakistani journal "Ausaf" in its issue dated September 18,2006. It has reported as follows:

"Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawa has issued a Fatwa asking the Muslim community to kill Pope Benedict for his blasphemous statement about Prophet Mohammad. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa has declared death to Pope Benedict and said that in today's world blasphemy of the Holy Koran and the Prophet has become a fashion. The leaders of the Jamaat were speaking at a Martyrs' Islamic Conference in Karachi. Prominent Jamaat leader Hafiz Saifullah Khalid said that in the present circumstances, jehad has become obligatory for each Muslim. Muslims are being declared terrorists and our battle for survival has already started. The Muslim world has rejected the Pope's apology and decided to continue protests and demonstrations in big cities. The Pope's apology is just a drama and no political leader has any power to pardon him. It is part of a crusade initiated by the US in the name of terrorism. Instead of accepting fake apologies, Muslims should realise Europe's enemity towards Islam and Muslim Ummah should prepare itself to defend its faith. Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Abdur Rahman Makki said the West and Europe have started a campaign against the Holy Koran and the Prophet and have abused jehad. We should take appropriate steps to deal with the champions of crusade. It is time for Muslim leaders to open their eyes and understand that the West had never been a friend of the Muslims and will never be so."

4. In his video message disseminated through the Internet on September 29,2006, Zawahiri called Pope Benedict XVI a "charlatan" and stated that the Pope "accused Islam of being incompatible with rationality while forgetting that his own Christianity is unacceptable to a sensible mind."

5.The LET has secret cells in the UK and France, but there is no confirmed information of any LET activity in Italy so far. It is likely that the task of executing this Fatwa might be entrusted to one of its cells in the UK or France.

6. The US State Department categorises the JUD as well as the LET as terrorist organisations. President General Pervez Musharraf has rejected the US categorisation of the JUD as a terrorist organisation. He treats it as an Islamic charity organisation, which, according to him, has been doing humanitarian relief work in Pakistan and he asserts that it has nothing to do with the LET. The media had recently reported that a move in the UN Security Council to order the freezing of the accounts of the JUD under the Security Council Resolution No.1373 failed because of Chinese opposition. According to the media, China supported Pakistan's contention that the JUD is not a terrorist organisation. The Security Council acts as the Monitoring Committee for monitoring the implementation of the UNSC Resolution No.1373. The JUD issue has come up before it in its capacity as the Monitoring Committee.
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India-Pakistan
Experts baffled by Indo-Pak deal
2006-09-18
New Delhi, Sept. 18: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf’s decision to put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations has outraged and baffled diplomats and security analysts alike.Naive and ill-advised is how they chose to describe the joint statement that has been thrust upon an unsuspecting nation barely a few weeks after the Mumbai serial blasts.

“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have been smitten with the Stockholm Syndrome ever since the Mumbai blasts of July 11, in which 184 suburban train commuters were killed by suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation and a member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front,” according to Mr B. Raman, a retired additional secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat. The expression Stockholm Syndrome, which came into vogue in 1973, refers to a psychological condition in which a victim of terrorism, finding himself powerless in the hands of a terrorist, starts empathising with the terrorist.

“At a time when a growing number of Western analysts and policy-makers have begun doubting the sincerity of Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and suspecting that he has been playing a double role — openly as a front-line ally in the war against terrorism and covertly as a supporter of Pakistan-based jihadi terrorists — our Prime Minister has sought to play down the extent of Gen Musharraf’s perfidy with regard to jihadi terrorism directed against India from Pakistani territory with the help of organisations such as Lashkar which operate under the control of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence,” Mr Raman has said.

Mr G. Parthasarathy, a former high commissioner to Islamabad, wondered how anybody could equate a country like India, which faced the problem of terrorism, with a country like Pakistan, which sponsored terrorism. “[The move] is ill-advised,” he asserted, “Four days ago, in Brussels, Gen Musharraf said that violence by militants will continue till the Kashmir issue is resolved. To pretend that [a change will happen] is naive and misplaced.” India, he reminded, faced a threat from the terrorists trained by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and it was inconceivable how the ISI or Gen.

Musharraf would “cooperate with us.” Asked whether the joint initiative has come about without help from the United States, Mr Parthasarathy said the Americans have been making such suggestions. He nevertheless felt no initiative can deliver positive results until there was “change in the political intention” to stop the use of terrorism. However, there were some like strategic analyst K. Subrahmanyam who supported the decision announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf in Havana.

He was of the opinion that once a joint mechanism was in place, India can give Pakistan whatever evidence India has of terrorists operating from Pakistan. “They (Pakistan) have to now answer specific allegations and charges. It’s a step forward. Pakistan has accepted that terrorism is a problem between the two countries. It has accepted that terrorism exists on its soil,” Mr Subrahmanyam said.
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India-Pakistan
Indian PM's Stockholm Syndrome
2006-09-17
By B.Raman

In simple terms, the expression Stockholm Syndrome, which came into vogue in 1973, refers to a psychological condition in which a victim of terrorism, finding himself powerless in the hands of a terrorist, starts empathising with the terrorist.

2. Our Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh, seems to have been smitten with the Stockholm Syndrome ever since the Mumbai blasts of July 11,2006, in which 184 suburban train commuters were killed by suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation, which is a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) For Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People.

3. At a time when a growing number of Western analysts and even policy-makers has started doubting the sincerity of Pakistan's President, Gen.Pervez Musharraf, and suspecting that he has been a playing a double role----openly as a front-line ally in the war against terrorism and covertly as the supporter of the Pakistan-based jihadi terrorists--- our Prime Minister has sought to play down the extent of Musharraf's perfidy with regard to jihadi terrorism directed against India from Pakistani territory with the help of organisations such as the LET, which operate under the control of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence ( ISI).

4.The growing suspicion of Musharraf's role in the West has been evident in Western and even independent Pakistani analysts' comments on his so-called peace accord with the Taliban in North Waziristan and the subsequent release of nearly 2,500 persons arrested in Pakistan after 9/11 because of their suspected involvement in acts of jihadi terrorism.
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Terror Networks
The Freelance Jihadis
2006-05-16
By B. RAMAN

Counter-terrorism agencies are facing a new strategic threat to which they do not have a response and they are unlikely to have a satisfactory response in the short and medium terms. This threat is likely to continue till the US-led coalition succeeds in pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan and restores normalcy there.

This threat arises from individual Muslims--mostly the youth--angered over the stories of the sufferings of their co-religionists--whether it be in Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan--taking to suicide terrorism in order to give vent to their anger. They were not members of any identified jihadi terrorist organisation. They were not motivated into resorting to suicide terrorism by any organisation or madrasa or religious cleric or state-sponsor of terrorism.

They were self-motivated. The decision to kill and destroy was their own, though they might have sought the assistance of well-known organisations such as Al Qaeda or madrasas or cleric or a State-sponsor after they had taken the decision in order to enable them to have it executed.

The four British youth, three of them British citizens of Pakistani origin, who carried out the London explosions of July 7, 2005, seem, in retrospect, to be such self-motivated youth who, after deciding to commit an act of suicide terrorism, sought help from elements close to the International Islamic Front (IIF) in Pakistan for executing their decision.

Despite many detentions of suspects belonging to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Bangalore Police seem to be still groping in the dark in their efforts to identify the person who opened fire indiscriminately at a conference of scientists in January this year and establish his motivation. One should not be surprised if this also turns out to be a case of an individual, not belonging to any organisation, resorting to terrorism in order to give vent to his anger.

I had drawn attention to this new threat from, what I characterised as, "free-lance jihadis" in a paper titled 'From Internet To Islamnet---Net-Centric Counter-terrorism" presented by me at a conference jointly organised by the State Islamic University (UIN) of Jakarta and the Institute for Defence Analyses (IDA) of Washington DC at Bali, Indonesia, from October 19 to 21, 2005. A copy of this paper is available here.

I had stated in that paper as follows:

""The military operations by the US-led coalition in Afghanistan after 9/11 not only deprived the Al Qaeda and other jihadi organisations associated with it of their training infrastructure, but it also damaged the ability of their leadership to personally interact with their cadres and motivate them. The scattered remnants of the Al Qaeda and other jihadi organisations found themselves forced to split into small groups and take shelter in different places in Pakistan as well as in other countries such as Iran, Bangladesh, Yemen etc. The post-9/11 security measures made travel to other countries difficult, thereby drastically reducing the possibility of personal meetings. This period also saw the emergence of the phenomenon of free-lance jihadis--individual Muslims angered by the actions of the US and other Western countries in Afghanistan and Iraq waging an individual jihad, either alone or in association with like-minded co-religionists, without necessarily belonging to the Al Qaeda and other member-organisations of the IIF. The free-lance jihadis also made their presence felt in the WWW."

The gravity of the threat posed by the free-lance jihadis arises from the fact that very often they come to the attention of the intelligence agencies only after they had committed an act of suicide terrorism, though in the case of the London explosions the persons of Pakistani origin would appear to have come to the adverse notice of the British intelligence even before they committed their act of suicide terrorism, but it did not take seriously the possibility of any threat from them.

Intelligence agencies already face considerable difficulty in penetrating terrorist organisations and collecting preventive intelligence. Many, if not most, of their successes are based on technical intelligence (TECHINT). It would be a very uphill task for them to identify individuals or small groups of individuals, not belonging to any organisation, who decide to resort to an act of suicide terrorism to give vent to their anger and to prevent them before they succeed.

The dilemma posed by these free-lance jihadis has been highlighted in the annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" for 2005 submitted by the US State Department to the US Congress in the last week of April, 2006. It refers to them as the new phenomenon of "Micro-Actors" and says as follows: " Increasingly, small autonomous cells and individuals drew on advanced technologies and the tools of globalisation such as the Internet, satellite communications and international commerce. When combined with the motivation to commit a terrorist act, these technologically empowered small groups represented micro-actors, who were extremely difficult to detect or counter."

It draws attention to the emergence of a "more diffuse world-wide movement of like-minded individuals and small groups, sharing grievances and objectives, but not necessarily organised formally. While Al Qaeda linked trainers or facilitators often acted as catalysts for terrorist activity, this was no longer strictly necessary in functional terms and self-sufficient cells have begun to emerge.

"This new generation of extremists, some of whom are self-selected and self-radicalised, is not easy to categorise. Some cells are composed of individuals from the same ethnic group, often an insular band of brothers that is difficult to identify or penetrate. Others become radicalised virtually, meeting in cyberspace and gaining their training and expertise in part from what they glean from the Internet. Just as some groups in the flattened global terrorist movement are ethnically defined, other cells are mixtures, such as the July 7 London bombers, who included a convert along with second generation British citizens of South Asian descent."

It concludes: "This trend means there could be a larger number of smaller attacks, less meticulously planned and local rather than transnational in scope. An increasing number of these attacks could fail through lack of skill or equipment, in the same way that the July 21 London attack did."

While the emergence of this new threat from micro non-State actors has been identified and described, the State Department's report is silent on how to deal with it. The scope for HUMINT and TECHINT in respect of the micro non-State actors is even more limited than in the case of formally structured non-State actors. The only way of picking up indicators of the emergence of such informal cells, not associated with any terrorist organisation, is through intense police-community relations.

As the threat from Al Qaeda, the IIF and other jihadi terrorist organisations dramatically increased since 1998, the military approach to counter-terrorism has acquired greater importance than the police approach.The same importance has not been paid to strengthening the counter-terrorism capabilities of the Police force as has been paid to those of the armed forces. Police-community relations no longer receive the attention they deserve and which they used to receive in the past.

This state of affairs has to be corrected and the important role of the police in counter-terrorism has to be restored. Fortunately, in India, the Police still enjoys an important role and is viewed as the weapon of first resort in counter-terrorism. But it is not so in many other countries.

The downgrading of the role of the police by successive military regimes in Pakistan is an important cause of Pakistan's degeneration into the world's most worrisome epicentre of terrorism of different hues.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
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