ROLLING JEHAD BACK
by B.Raman
"Mohammed's plea of guilty has focussed attention
on the efforts of Pakistan and Afghanistan-based jehadi extremists to
recruit members from the Muslim communities in North America and the
Caribbean Islands to use them initially for operations against US
interests in West Asia and then subsequently for promoting jehad in the US
territory itself.
"The annual convention of the ISNA held at
Columbus, Ohio, from September 11,1995, was addressed, amongst others, by
Mr.Hamza Yusuf, an American citizen of Greek origin, who, after embracing
Islam, had lived for six years in Mauritania to study Islam and then work
as a TJ preacher, Mr. Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, the
famous pop singer, who embraced Islam after coming into contact with the
TJ in Pakistan, Dr.Saghir of Algeria, and Dr.Israr Ahmed, the Amir of the
Tanzeem Islami of Pakistan and a worker of the TJ.
"Addressing the convention, Dr. Israr Ahmed said:
"The process of the revival of Islam in different parts of the world
is real. A final show-down between the Muslim world and the
non-Muslim world, which has been captured by the Jews, would soon take
place. The Gulf war was just a rehearsal for the coming
conflict." He appealed to the Muslims of the world, including
those in the USA, to prepare themselves for the coming conflict.
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The above-reproduced paras have been extracted from an
article by this author written on October 20,2000, which was carried by
the South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG), New Delhi, the next day under the
title "Islamic Jehad and the US" (www.saag.org/papers2/paper154.html
) and by the "Business Line", a daily newspaper of Chennai, on
November 7,2000, under the title "Taking Jehad To the US".
The Pakistan and Afghanistan-based jehadists have since
taken their jehad to the US. This is not the culmination of their efforts,
but only the beginning of a new phase of it.
Reports from Washington create misgivings in the minds
of professionals with some knowledge of counter-terrorism that the main
focus of the American deliberations at various levels has been on the
various options for retaliation.
Certain points, which need to figure in any such
deliberations, do not figure in the reports from the US:
* International jehadi groups in general and the
International Islamic Front For Jehad against the US and Israel, headed
by Osama bin Laden, in particular, are known for their forward-thinking
and meticulous planning. When the Front and its constituents decided to
carry out an operation of this nature, they would, most probably, have
been mentally prepared for a US retaliation and planned for
counter-retaliatory operations. It is important for a group of
experts to put themselves into the irrational mindset of the terrorists
and think of various options that might occur to them. One should
prepare in advance necessary protective measures to pre-empt
counter-retaliation by the terrorists.
* The operational component of counter-terrorism has
two aspects---passive and active defence. Passive defence is
protecting yourself, your infrastructure etc from any strikes or
counter-retaliatory strikes of the terrorists through appropriate
physical security measures. Active defence is retaliation in an
appropriate manner. Only after detailed enquiries one would know
how the terrorists managed to strike undetected on September 11, but,
even now, one could be fairly certain that they succeeded because of
inadequate intelligence production, weak intelligence analysis and
inadequate physical security. The deficiencies have to be
identified and rectified before going into the active defence mode.
The Day of Infamy in New York and Washington DC on
September 11 is a wake-up call for all nations grappling with the menace
of externally-directed terrorism. More so for India.
Security agencies all over the world had been concerned
since the middle 1990s over the possibility of the following three
potentially catastrophic future scenarios, which they call new or
catastrophic terrorism:
* First, the use of or threat to use weapons of mass
disruption (e.g. a computer virus) to damage or destroy the national
security, economic, communications, energy and other vital supplies
infrastructures.
* Second, the use of or threat to use weapons of mass
destruction such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
* Third, seizing control of sensitive installations
such as nuclear reactors and using them as bargaining chips to force the
State to concede their demands.
These concerns were the outcome of the Sarin gas attack
by the Om Shinrikiyo sect in Tokyo in 1995 and subsequent interviews given
by Osama bin Laden in which he had expressed an interest in the
procurement of weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons.
However, none of the scenarios discussed in the past had
visualised the type of horrendous attacks mounted by the terrorists on
September 11. But irrational and fanatical minds think alike.
A Sikh terrorist arrested in the early 1990s had stated that Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had suggested to the terrorists the
possibility of crashing a plane into the Mumbai High platform.
Mumbai---March,1993, was the seed from which New York and Washington
DC--2001 was born.
In the third and final part of its report on National
Security during the 21st Century released in February,2001, a
bipartisan Commission led by former US Senators Warren B. Rudman and Gary
Hart had called for the creation of a Cabinet-level agency to assume
responsibility for defending the US against the increasing likelihood of
terrorist attacks in the country. The report warned that terrorists
probably will attack the US with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons
at some point within the next 25 years.
The Commission proposed a complete redesign of the
National Guard to provide a new "Homeland Security Agency" with
U.S.-based troops to combat those who threatened the US within its
territory. It outlined a far-reaching reorganization of the
Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council and other
agencies, saying that they had become bloated and unfocused. Its
report even urged Congress to streamline its own committee structure to
keep interference in national security matters to the minimum necessary.
The Commission recommended merging the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the Customs Service, the Border Patrol and the Coast
Guard into the new "Homeland Security Agency." It said that the
National Guard should be "reorganized, properly trained and
adequately equipped" to cope with natural disasters and attacks on
U.S. targets by weapons of mass destruction. The Commission said
that the National Guard should be relieved of the responsibility of
participating in overseas deployments and concentrate on security at home.
The report said: "The combination of unconventional
weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will
end the relative invulnerability of the US homeland to catastrophic
attack. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil
is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death
and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine US global
leadership. In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent
or integrated governmental structures."
US Congressmen have attributed the failure of the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to give advance warnings of the
September 11 attacks to its over-focus on technical intelligence (TECHINT)
to the detriment of human intelligence (HUMINT). The catastrophic
terrorist groups of today, exemplified by the Al Qaeda of bin Laden, do
not always use modern technologies. For the World Trade Centre
bombing in February, 1993, and for the bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam
in August,1998, his supporters did not use modern explosives. They
used, instead, a large quantity of nitrate fertilisers , which anybody can
buy in the market without creating suspicion.
They stick to old communication technologies to avoid
detection. Ever since the US bombing of his training camps in
Afghanistan in October 1998, bin Laden has been largely using couriers and
avoiding the use of his mobile (satellite) phone lest the Cruise missiles
zero in on the phone.
Unless the HUMINT capability is stepped up, advance
warnings of such catastrophic terrorist acts is going to be increasingly
difficult. Like the CIA, the Indian Intelligence Community has also
been strong in TECHINT, but weak in HUMINT. Unless this is set
right, our preventive capability would be weak.
Catastrophic terrorism demands a multi-agency approach,
with all counter-terrorism divisions of various agencies working under a
common roof, under common leadership, with a common national
purpose. This came into force in other countries many years
ago. India has only just now woken up to the need for it.
Deaths are no longer counted in dozens, but in
thousands. Old crisis management drills evolved to meet conventional
threats such as hijacking, hostage-taking etc will no longer meet the
horrendous threats of today.
India's crisis management was found wanting even during
the classic IAC hijacking of December,1999. Does our security
bureaucracy have the capability to prevent catastrophic terrorism and deal
competently with the catastrophe, if its preventive mechanism fails? This
is a question, which needs urgent attention.
Terrorist networks of today are becoming increasingly
autonomous in their functioning with their dependence on their
State-sponsors reduced by the easy availability of narcotics dollars and
weapons and explosives, which they can buy from the flourishing smugglers'
market with the narcotics money.
The non-State actor terrorists of today tend to group
together in united fronts in order to assist each other in their
operations. bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jehad
against the US and Israel brings together nearly a dozen Islamic terrorist
organisations of different countries. It is a hydra-headed monster.
Under such circumstances, a counter proxy war strategy
by India has to be directed not only against a State-sponsor such as
Pakistan, but also against the various non-State actors operating from
Pakistani territory, who may not be totally under its control.
Terrorism is the core component of Pakistan's proxy war
against India. It is politically overt, but operationally
covert. Even though international law and practice give us the right
of active defence against Pakistan, we have not exercised it even
once. We do not have even after so many years a credible counter
proxy war strategy to demonstrate to Pakistan that its proxy war will not
be cost-free.
Nations, which become incapable of feeling a sense of
indignation and anger when attacked and let their will and readiness to
retaliate, when warranted by circumstances, be weakened by misplaced
forbearance add one more head to such monsters.
To be able to wage a counter proxy war, our intelligence
community needs a strong covert action capability. It has a
capability , but it has not been nurtured by the political leadership,
which hesitates to use it in our national interests, whatever be the
international pressure on us not to do so.
The networking of the terrorists has not been matched by
a networking of the victim-States. There has been a mushrooming of
intelligence-sharing mechanisms, but without visible improvement in the
ground situation.
An equally important factor has been the lack of a lucid
analysis of the dimensions of the new menace and the absence of a
political will to strike. One hopes that the present will to take up
the challenge posed by the terrorists would not be weakened after some
time due to political considerations, as often happens. Terrorism is
an absolute evil and has to be treated as such.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: [email protected]
)
