11-04-2003, 12:30 AM
CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON TERRORISM
by B. Raman
A joint hearing "to review US counter-terrorism policy toward Asia and the Pacific" was held at Washington DC from 1-30 to 5 PM on October 29, 2003, under the joint auspices of the sub-committees on Asia and the Pacific and on International Terrorism, Non-Proliferation and Human Rights of the House Committee on International Relations.
2. The hearing was open to the public and the media. I received on October 10, 2003, a formal invitation to testify at the hearing from Mr.Henry J.Hyde, the Chairman of the House Committee. Before the formal invitation, his staff had informally sounded me as to whether I would be available for the hearing and would be willing to testify as a non-governmental expert. They also wanted to know what would be the theme of my testimony.
3. I accepted the invitation and stated that my theme could be "Cross-border Terrorism in India and Afghanistan." In the formal invitation received subsequently, it was stated that during my testimony I should give my "assessment on cross-border terrorist challenges facing India and their implications for the counter-terrorism policies of the United States."
4. The rules for witnesses communicated to me along with the invitation stated that I should submit well in advance a written testimony by E-Mail so that it could be made available for those interested on the web site of the Committee before the hearing and that I should bring along with me 50 copies of it and hand them over to the staff so that they could have them circulated to those concerned. This was done by me.
5. The full text of the advance written testimony along with its Executive Summary as prepared by me is available at the web site of the Committee, which also carries the testimonies of other witnesses, governmental as well as non-governmental. The text, without the Executive Summary, is also available at www.saag.org since October 30, 2003. The Executive Summary is attached to this report.
6. I was also informed before I left for Washington DC that each witness would be allowed to make a personal testimony for 10 minutes at the joint hearing, which could be followed by questions by the members and discussions.
7. The joint hearing, which was chaired by Mr. James Leach, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific, consisted of three parts. In the first part, the Chairman and each of the other seven members, who attended, made opening remarks for five minutes. In the second part, Mr.Cofer Black, Counter-terrorism Co-Ordinator in the State Department, Mrs. Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, and Mr. Matthew P. Daley, Deputy Assistant Secretary in charge of South-East Asia who used to be in charge of South Asia under the Clinton Administration, testified for 10 minutes each.
8. Mr. Black used to head the Counter-Terroriosm Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before he was posted as the Counter-Terrorism Co-Ordinator. Mr.Daley had served as the Deputy Head of Mission in the US Embassy in New Delhi during the 1990s and was closely involved in co-ordinating with the Indian authorities when the Pakistani Wahabi organisation Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), under the name Al Faran, kidnapped some Western tourists in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in 1995.
9. While Mr.Black testified on the Administration's counter-terrorism policies in South as well as South-East Asia, Mrs. Rocca and Mr.Daley confined their testimonies to the region of which thery are in charge. Their testimonies were followed by questions and discussions.
10. In the third part, four non-Governmental experts---three from the US and one from India--had been invited to give their assessments. The three US experts were Dr.Timothy D.Hoyt, Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the US Naval War College, Prof. Zachary Abuza of the Simmons College, and Mr. Robert Oakley, former US Ambassador to Islamabad in the 1980s. While Prof.Abuza testified on terrorism in South-East Asia, the other two testified on that in South Asia.
11.The joint hearing was not confined to only the terrorist situation in South Asia. There was also a discussion on other subjects such as the situation in South-East Asia, the violation of human rights in Myanmar by the military junta, narcotics production in Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan and the US policy towards the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka.
12. The opening remarks of the Chairman and all the other members except Mr.Dan Burton and Mr.Dana Rohrabacher showed understanding and sympathy for the Indian position and indicated continuing concerns over the policies of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
13. However, Mr.Burton totally and Mr.Rohrabacher to some extent made no secret of their sympathies for Pakistan. Mr. Burton started his remarks by expressing his apprehensions over the possibility of the joint hearing turning into a Pakistan bashing exercise. He then criticised the Government of India for avoiding the implementation of the UN Resolution calling for a plebiscite in Jammu & Kashmir and accused the Indian Army of serious human rights violations, including gang rape of Kashmiri women. Mr.Rohrabacher also spoke of alleged human rights violations and of the Kashmiris' right to self-determination.
14. Their attacks on India in their opening remarks created a dilemma for me as to whether I should, in my testimony, ignore them and use the 10 minutes allotted to me only for giving my assessment on the terrorist challenges facing India or whether I should utilise part of the time to rebut their allegations even at the cost of having less time for giving my assessment for which I had been invited.
15. I decided that their allegations should not be allowed to go into the Congressional records without being rebutted. Therefore, with the permission of the Chairman, I utilised five minutes for rebutting them and five minutes for highlighting certain aspects of the terrorist situation. My testimony was followed by questions and discussions. A transcript of my oral testimony as recorded by the Congressional staff is appended to this. I have not corrected the spelling and grammatical mistakes in it.
16. In the US Administration, the intelligence professionals, experts associated with the Defence Department and the Treasury Department, which co-ordinates the drive against terrorist funding, show more understanding of the Indian concerns relating to Pakistan's continued sponsorship of jihadi terrorism and the insincerity of its professed actions against terrorism. But, the State Department officials continue to show a reticence on this subject, equate India with Pakistan and praise Pakistan's contribution as an ally of the US in the war against terrorism.
17. This has come out clearly in the recent report (May) of the US State Department on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2002,which has been drafted by the Counter-Terrorism Division of the State Department headed by Mr.Black and not by the South Asia Division headed by Mrs. Rocca, the recent orders of the Treasury Department freezing the bank accounts of Dawood Ibrahim and the Al Akhtar Trust of Pakistan, which has been accused of funding jihad in Iraq, and the recent Memo of Mr.Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, as reported in the US media, expressing his exasperation over the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
18. After rebutting the anti-India allegations of Mr.Burton and Mr.Rohrabacher, I kept the focus of my remaining testimony on these documents of the US Government in order to make the sub-committees aware of the fact that what has been stated in these documents is at variance with the certificate of good performance given to Musharraf by Mrs. Rocca.
19. Mr.Black also gave a certificate of good performance to Pakistan , but his was not as unqualified as hers. He did bring on record the role of Pakistani terrorists in J&K. The testimony of Dr. Hoyt was not unfavourable to India's position. Even though he is a non-governmental academic, he has been associated with the Pentagon and is hence likely to have been exposed to their internal debates and analyses.
20.Mrs. Rocca had a difficult time answering pointed questions from the members on the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the role of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in it, the failure of the Musharraf Government to effectively enforce the ban on the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the insincerity of his action against the jihadi madrassas and terrorist funding, the alienation of the Sindhis, the increase in narcotics production etc. She was mostly evasive in replying to these questions.
21. One noted with interest during the testimony by the officials of the Bush Administration as well as during my discussions with other interlocutors after the hearing as to how the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) in Rawalpindi in March last is being projected by them as the greatest triumph in their war against terrorism. KSM's name is being dropped by them at every conceivable opportunity.
22. The Bush Administration has been facing one disaster after another in Iraq and the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating since August. The only success stories worth bragging about so far have been the arrest of four senior Al Qaeda operatives (Abu Zubaida, Ramzi Binalshibh, KSM and Waleed Bin Attash) in Pakistan and of Hambali of the Jemaah Islamiya in Thailand. As the Presidential elections approach, they will keep focussing on these perceived success stories in order to divert attention away from the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Musharraf will continue to be a beneficiary of this policy as they look upon him as having facilitated these successes.
23. In the US, there is increasing understanding of the Indian position in sections of the media and in the House of Representatives. Many share our doubts about the sincerity of Musharraf, but the same cannot be said of the State Department and the National Security Council Secretariat and the support for our views is still to be felt strongly in the Senate.
24. On October 30, I participated in a discussion on the situation in J&K in the office of Congressman Jack Pallone. I made the same points as I had at the joint hearing and handed over to his staff a copy of my advance written testimony. (
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )
APPENDIX A: TRANSCRIPT OF MY ORAL TESTIMONY
MR. RAMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I am going to do is, with your kind permission, I am going to offer clarifications on some of the points which were raised earlier with regard to Kashmir, and then make my own presentation. I will try to be as brief as possible.
In references made to the United Nations resolution on Kashmir, which was passed some years ago, in that resolution, it consists of a number of parts.Part I called for the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops from occupied Kashmir before a plebiscite can be held. Pakistan violated that resolution by refusing to withdraw the troops from the part occupied by it.
Number two, Pakistan committed a second violation of the resolution by transferring part of the Kashmiri territory to China without the clearance of the United Nations Security Council. That part which was transferred to China in 1963 has been integrated by China into the Xinjiang province of
China.
Number three, Pakistan committed a third violation of the U.N. resolution by separating what is called the Northern Area, Gilgit and Baltistan, from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and merging it as Pakistan. Today, that area is directly administered from Islamabad by the federal government of Pakistan.
And number four, it committed yet another violation of the U.N. resolution by (permitting ?) the Chinese to construct a highway, what is known as Karakoram Highway, along this Gilgit-Baltistan area.
And number six (sic), the sixth violation it committed was it used this highway for nuclear proliferation. In 2001, the Washington Times, quoting American intelligence sources, reported that some of the consignments of M-9 and M-11 missiles from China were brought by this highway, because the Chinese and the Pakistanis were afraid that the huge ships for bringing these missiles from China, American satellites might detect their movement. So they brought them by road, by this road which was committed (sic). In view of all these reasons, the resolution of the United Nations has ceased to be valid.
Mr. Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary- general, visited New Delhi and Islamabad in the year 2000. When he was in Islamabad, he was asked about U.N. resolutions, and he replied, I quote, and he said that resolution has become irrelevant. "Irrelevant" was the word used by Mr. Kofi Annan.
In references also made to allegations -- these are Pakistani allegations -- of large-scale atrocities in Kashmir. In certain situations, sometimes violations of human rights do occur. And the government of India, whenever such violations occur, they are taking action, they have got a National Human Right Commission.
Mr. Robert Blackwell, who was the ambassador to New Delhi -- he recently visited Kashmir a number of times. I don't think any of the U.S. ambassadors in India had visited Kashmir as frequently as he used to do. He had one diplomatic officer under him in the U.S. embassy whose only charge was to monitor the situation in Kashmir, and that officer used to visit. Last year, before the elections, the U.S. ambassador, as well as the ambassadors to the European Union countries, were given free access.
They could go anywhere to Kashmir. And I don't think any of them had ever referred to anything about violations like gang rapes of women, et cetera. So I prefer to go by the conclusions of the U.S. ambassador in Delhi and by the conclusions of his own officers in Delhi rather than by the allegations made by General Pervez Musharraf.
Then I come to my own presentation. Recently, as I was coming here, I read in the media a memo had been recorded by Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defense secretary, in which he had reportedly expressed exasperation over the fact that the more the number of jihadi terrorists which the U.S. forces put out of action in Afghanistan and Iraq, the more the number of jihadi ter> rorists would come out of the madrasses to replace them. He did not mention the country in which these madrasses are located. From the context of the memo, it was apparent that these madrasses are the madrasses in Pakistan.
Last year, Mrs. Jessica Stern, a counter terrorism expert of the Howard University, brought out a very widely read study on the working of the madrasses in Pakistan, where she describes them as jihad factories. In India the problem, the same problem which Mr. Donald Rumsfeld referred, we feel. The more the terrorists who are coming out of these madrasses that they put out of action, the more the terrorists will come out of those madrasses to replace those whom we put out of action.
The problem which we are facing today in Kashmir is not because of
Kashmiri militancy but because of large-scale infiltration of people into Kashmir from Pakistan. Till 1993, the average number of foreigners killed by the security forces in Kashmir used to come to 32. It went up to 172 per annum between 1993 and 1998. Since 1999, our security forces have been killing 951 foreign mercenaries per annum in Kashmir. The majority of them are Pakistani nationals. The rest of them are of 18 different nationalities.
I'll kindly request the distinguished panel to read the reports, the annexes of the report of the State Department on Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2002, which was submitted to the Congress in May this year. There they refer to the fact that most of these terrorist organizations which are operating today in Kashmir, they are foreigners. I'll just mention one sentence, for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The State Department report says that almost all Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists are foreigners, mostly Pakistanis from madrasses across the country and Afghan veterans of the Afghan wars. In respect to each organization, the State Department report says, in anticipation of asset seizures by the Pakistani government, the organization withdrew funds from bank accounts. This shows the extent to which how sincere or how insincere the government of Pakistan has been in acting against terrorist funding.
I would like to draw the attention of the panel also to four other recent documents of the U.S. government. On the 14th of October the U.S. Department of Treasury issued an order freezing the bank accounts of a supposedly charity organization of Pakistan called the Al Akhtar Trust, producing a second observation in that order issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury. But one observation, it says the charity trust was founded by the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the same organization which has supporters who have played a leading role in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl and which has been very active in Jammu/Kashmir. This organization is supposed to have been banned -- (inaudible) -- an order issued on January 15 last year. If it was a banned organization, how did the Pakistan government allow it to start a charity fund, the charity organization and collect funds?
The second significant observation in that order of the U.S. Department of Treasury is that the Al Akhtar Trust funded jihad not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it's also suspected with funding jihad in Iraq. That means an organization founded in Pakistan has been collecting funds and funding attacks on the American troops in Iraq. How did this happen? What action did Musharraf take against this organization? What is action taken by the U.S. Treasury Department on its soil, or in the instance of the Pakistan government, what cooperation it got from the Pakistan government, it calls for a detailed inquiry.
The other order was with the U.S. Department of Treasury. On October 16 there is a man called Dawood Ibrahim. He was a man, he's head of a mafia group, transnational triangle which is closely involved with the terrorist groups. He was suspected -- he was involved in the explosions in Bombay in 1993 along with five others who have been given shelter in Pakistan. The government of India has been repeatedly asking for their arrest and handing over to India so that they could be tried for involvement in terrorism. But the government of Pakistan has all the time been maintaining that they are not in Pakistani territory. This order, which has designated Dawood Ibrahim as a global terrorist, it says, number one, he had links with the al Qaeda and with the Taliban and had been helping them by placing his ships at their disposal, number one. Number two, it also says that he had been living in Karachi and has given his passport number.
In spite of that, the Pakistan government, to the U.S. also, it has denied that he was in Karachi, and it has denied that this passport belonged to him. It says that this passport did not belong to him.
For these reasons, we find it very difficult when Pakistan -- Musharraf says that he has been taking action against terrorists, we in India find it very difficult to accept it, find it difficult to believe it.
One last point I would like to make, with your kind permission. We are all gratified in India recently by the fact that justice has at long last been done with the families of victims of the Lockerbie tragedy. Your plane was blown up, was blown up by a Libyan intelligence officer. He planted the explosives. And this case went on. The United States imposed punitive sanctions against Colonel Qadhafi. They held him responsible for allowing his intelligence agencies to blow up the aircraft. Ultimately, justice was done.
There have been seven instances of attacks, instances of acts of terrorist, directed against Indian civil aviation: five instances of hijacking by Sikh terrorists of Punjab; one instance of hijacking by a Wahhabi terrorist organization of Pakistan, the Harakat ul-Mujahedeen, 1999; one instance in which an Air India plane, Kanishka, was blown up off the Irish coast, resulting in the deaths of over 200 civilians; and one instance in which an unsuccessful attempt was to blow up another Air India aircraft in Tokyo.
And all these instances took place when the military was in power. There has not been a single attack on civil aviation from Pakistan by terrorist groups from Pakistan whenever a democratically elected government was in power.
All these people who were involved in these offenses -- the hijackers, the people who are involved in explosions, et cetera -- they have been given sanctuary in Pakistan. Is it not the responsibility of the international community to see that these people, who are responsible for acts of terrorism directed against civil aviation, that they are brought to trial; that the government of Pakistan cooperates with the government of India by arresting them and handing them over to India, so that they could be tried?
Doesn't the international community -- does it have an obligation to do justice to the families of all those people whose -- families of all the victims of the aircraft which was blown up in midair, (just as it required ?) justice to the victims of the Lockerbie aircraft? These are some of the questions which I'd like to put before this panel.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
REP. LEACH: Thank you, Mr. Raman.
REP. DANA ROHRABACHER (R-CA): Thank you very much. I'm sorry Mr. Daley had to leave. And just to note that I do accept that heroin production has declined -- I don't know how dramatically -- in Burma. But at the same time we've had a huge increase in methamphetamine production in the areas controlled by the government. Let me just note that. And that's no -- there's no doubt about that. In fact, different briefings I've had is that actually the methamphetamines can be traced to Burmese military camps, and they're being sold all over Southeast Asia.
So we'll have a -- I'm sure I'll have -- continue to have my discussion with the State Department and their desire to bestow upon the government of Burma a mantle of respectability, as compared to what I would bestow upon them.
Mr. Raman, just a note. I mean, you can come up with every excuse in the world, India is not permitting the people of Kashmir to have a vote, to determine their destiny by a vote. This will all be over if the people of Kashmir will be given the right to determine their destiny with a vote.
All the other things you say may be true. Forty years ago, somebody stepped on somebody's toe. Twenty years ago, somebody didn't go by the rules. You know, 10 years ago, somebody gave somebody a passport who shouldn't have had a passport. The bottom line is right now we need to solve the problem, and Americans believe -- and I believe Indians believe it's true as well -- that people have a right to control their own destiny via the ballot box. And I would suggest that people of good faith in India and in Pakistan get together to try to find a solution to which the people of Kashmir will vote for and approve.
My personal suggestion is, as a compromise, knowing that there are large chunks of people in Kashmir that would be part -- that want to remain part of India, if you accept the idea that people have a right to determine their destiny, Kashmir need not remain a whole unit, and those parts of Kashmir that want to remain part and vote to remain part of India in the ballot box, they should remain part of India.
But every -- I have seen -- I have heard no one ever deny the fact that a large proportion of the people of Kashmir are not satisfied and would vote either to be independent or be part of Pakistan.
Let's try to solve it. Let's quit lying. Let's quit changing the subject, which is every time you -- I happen to be -- have more sympathy with India because it's trying to be a democratic society than I do with Pakistan because they're a military dictatorship, you know. But -- it's as simple as that. And, Charlie, when they have a free election, I'll be happy to reassess that. But the people of India have tried to have democracy, and I respect that. And I think they tried a lot harder and their leaders have tried a lot harder at democracy than the people who led Pakistan have. But to solve this problem, it goes right down to let's give the people of Kashmir a right to determine that. It's going to go on and on and on till that.
I want to give kudos to India on one thing. I noticed in the paper that some of the leadership in India have been talking about we're willing to discuss autonomy for Kashmir.
And that's a step in the right direction. And until we solve that problem, all the rest of these problems are going to fester. Pakistan will continue to be destabilized because what we're doing is we're empowering THE most radical elements in Pakistan by keeping the Kashmir an issue. So I would hope that we can do that. I would -- even if it's a -- I would admonish my own government for not taking as tough a stand on trying to find a solution for Kashmir.
And again, I -- the testimony of this panel has been terrific. And I've learned a lot from each and every one of you, and I appreciate that. And so I would -- let me just ask one question. Is there a reason that -- for optimism that we can -- in South Asia? We've got terrorism running amuck now because we haven't paid attention to some of these fundamental problems. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel, and are people beginning to see that -- a solution, a way out of this, or is this a -- are we going to go through a lot more turmoil before there's even hope? And just very quick, maybe a 30-second answer down the panel.
MR. RAMAN: Well, the honorable member said that India is trying to be a democracy; India IS a democracy.
REP. ROHRABACHER: Right. Right.
MR. RAMAN: It's not trying to be a democracy, India is the most well-functioning democracy in the Third World. It's as healthy a democracy as the United States.
REP. ROHRABACHER: Right.
MR. RAMAN: It's as healthy a democracy as the United Kingdom. There's no question of India trying to be a democracy.
So far as the question of Kashmir is concerned, we have got a political process going in Kashmir. There are many parties, there are mainstream political parties which have been -- with the government of India -- which have been strongly opposed to the activities of the terrorists in the territory. And even at the height of terrorism, we had held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Last year we held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. In 1996 we had -- held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Last year we told everybody, every embassy in Delhi, if you want to go and observe the elections there, you are welcome to go and observe the elections. And the elections, we have an Independent Election Commission in India. This commission recently was given the Magsaysay Award for the way it conducted the elections in Kashmir last year. And all the Western ambassadors who went there, including the U.S. ambassador, the ambassadors of the European countries, they were all satisfied that the elections were free and fair.
In spite of threats held out by Pakistan that they would kill people who participate in the election process, people went out --
REP. ROHRABACHER: So then why not give them a chance to vote on what country they want to be part of?
MR. RAMAN: Oh, there's no question. See, will the United States, if tomorrow, if one of the states here, it says it wants to have a referendum in order to decide -- for example, if Hawaii tomorrow says it wants to have a referendum in order to decide whether Hawaii should continue to be a part of the United States or not, would the United States tolerate?
Is there a provision in the U.S. Constitution --
REP. ROHRABACHER: Actually, I happen to believe that if a large part of the United States wanted to vote to become a part of another country, then we should permit them to vote and become part of another country. And if we don't have faith that those people will stay Americans, and if we don't permit them to have a vote, then that says something about us. But I think that we have faith in every American to vote to stay part of America.
MR. RAMAN: There are many federations in the world -- India is one example; Australia is another -- which do not give a right of secession to their -- (inaudible). Otherwise, there would be --
REP. ROHRABACHER: It's not a right of secession to a state. We're talking about people's right to make their own determination. Now --
MR. RAMAN: A group of terrorists -- do a group of terrorists get hold of arms and ammunition; they get hold of mines; they get hold of explosives and they say, "We don't want --
REP. ROHRABACHER: Okay. Well, let me just say, that attitude from --
people who believe in democracy, people who believe in the human rights of a person to determine their own destiny will always be insulted by that, and you're going to continue to have bloodshed by people who want to maintain the same rights that other people have. And let India just provide them a vote -- Where do you want to be? -- which was mandated by the United Nations and which was agreed to. Let them have that vote finally and get this conflict behind us. It'll continue until that happens. And we're going to have instability; we're going to have bloodshed; we're going to have radicalization of people who should not be radicalized. And we're going to have India spending money on weapons, and Pakistan spending money on weapons that they don't need to waste for poor countries like this.
So, I mean, I'm sorry. I know you're an honorable person, and I do respect India. I, as I say, actually have more of an attraction to the Indian people than the Pakistani people, because I think they are much more dedicated to democratic principles than the Pakistanis that I've seen. But, I know what the solution is going to be, and it's got to include a free vote. And every time you talk about it, the Indians come up with this and that and this and that, and that's why we're not going to permit it?
REP. LEACH: The time of Jefferson Davis is expired. (Laughter.)
REP. ROHRABACHER: (Laughs.)
REP. LEACH: Mr. Faleomavaega.
DEL. ENI FALEOMAVAEGA (D-SAMOA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The solution is, there is no solution. No, I'm just kidding, Mr. Chairman.
I do want to thank Ambassador Oakley for his observations in the hearings. And although with some sense of humor, we do know the sense of the seriousness of the problems that these two nations face. And if I could just go back to Mr. Raman's statement he made earlier about the -- this resolution that was passed by the United Nations. Was it required that the Pakistani military forces have to be cleared from the Kashmir territory? Is that my understanding, Mr. Raman.
MR. OAKLEY: I think so, yes.
REP. FALEOMAVAEGA: Yeah. And that did not occur -- has not occurred since that time, am I correct on this?
MR. OAKLEY: In my judgment, it was a shared responsibility or a shared fault. It was not by one side or the other. Furthermore, I think today that one needs to move ahead and find a different way to deal with it, perhaps the way Congressman Rohrabacher was talking about.
In any event, there are a lot of efforts being made, both informally and formally, to assist India and Pakistan to grope towards some sort of agreement on Kashmir.
I'm not optimistic it's going to come any time soon, but compared to a year and a half ago -- when India had a million troops mobilized and the tensions were extremely high, everyone was worried about nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, and then all the diplomatic relations were broken, no travel -- things are somewhat better than they used to be. And let's hope they continue to go that way.
DEL. FALEOMAVAEGA: And if I understand it correctly, that part of the U.N. resolution required that Pakistani military forces withdraw themselves from the Kashmirian territory, but at the same time, because of its refusal, India ends up with 700,000 military forces on its border because of the fear of attacks.
I'm curious: How many Muslims live in India? Mr. Raman?
MR. RAMAN: We have 140 million Muslims in India. We have got the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. And the Muslims enjoy equal rights in India. Presently our president is a Muslim. He is the third Muslim to become the president of India.
DEL FALEOMAVAEGA: Did you say 140 million Muslims in India?
MR. RAMAN: One forty million Muslims in India. More than Pakistan. Second-largest Muslim community in the world after Indonesia.
DEL. FALEOMAVAEGA: Am I correct to observe that the only division between the Pakistanis and the Indians is their differences in religion, but ethnically and culturally, you're the same people?
MR. RAMAN: (Culturally ?), yes.
DEL. FALEOMAVAEGA: Okay. I got that right.
APPENDIX B: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF MY ADVANCE WRITTEN TESTIMONY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
India has been the victim of the use of cross-border terrorism by the State of Pakistan and its intelligence agencies since 1956 to achieve their strategic objectives, which are three in number. First, to create a religious divide between the Hindus, who are in a majority, and the Muslims, who are in a substantial minority. Second, to keep the Indian State destabilised and preoccupied with internal security tasks in order to hamper the economic development of the country. And third,to annex the State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), which is an integral part of India.
2.During the proxy war, through the use of State-sponsored terrorism, being waged by Pakistan against India for the annexation of J&K since 1989,12,755 innocent civilians and 4,842 members of the Indian Security Forces have been killed in J&K alone. These figures do not include those outside J&K killed by terrorists sponsored by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. This proxy war has passed through the following phases in J&K:
1989-93: The terrorists involved were mostly Kashmiris from India and Pakistan. Very few foreign mercenaries were involved. They initially operated mostly with hand-held weapons, but subsequently started using explosive devices, mines and hand-grenades to indiscriminately kill civilians.The average number of local terrorists killed by the Security Forces came to 848 per annum. As against this, the average number of foreigners, mostly Pakistanis, killed came to 32 per annum only. The average recoveries of military material other than weapons such as AK-47 rifles, light-machine guns, rocket launchers etc, by the Security Forces came to 100 KGs of explosives, 426 mines and 2760 hand-grenades per annum.
1994 to 1998:Finding that the indigenous terrorists were not making any headway in their operations against the Indian Security Forces, the Pakistan Army and the ISI started infiltrating foreign merceneries, who had fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, most of them Pakistani nationals, in increasing numbers. There was an increase in the use of explosives, landmines and hand-grenades. The average number of local terrorists killed came to 1069 per annum and the average number of foreign jihadi terrorists killed came to 172 per annum. The average recoveries per annum came to 405 KGs of explosives,628 mines and 4085 hand-grenades.
1999 to 2003:This period saw two important developments. The Pakistan Army headed by Gen.Pervez Musharraf staged a coup and seized power in October,1999. Four Pakistani jihadi organisations operating in J&K joined Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, which had been formed in 1998. These were the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). Under the influence of bin Laden, they introduced suicide terrorism for the first time in J&K. Before 1999, there was no suicide terrorism in the State. Since 1999, there have been 46 acts of suicide terrorism or fedayeen attacks, of which 44 were carried out by the LET and the JEM. The remaining two were by unidentified (possibly local) terrorists. The infiltration of foreign mercenaries, mostly Pakistani nationals, increased and they started operating under the guise of Kashmiris and took over the leadership of the militant movement.The average number of local terrorists killed came down to 726 per annum and the average number of foreign mercenaries killed went up steeply to 951 per annum. The average recoveries per annum were 866 KGs of explosives and 5336 hand-grenades.Figures in respect of mines are not available.
3.The killing of a large number of foreign mercenaries has not yet affected the capability of the Pakistani terrorist organisations to maintain a high level of violence since those killed are immediately replaced through fresh infiltration of trained mercenaries.The Pakistan Army and the ISI have managed to maintain a total of about 1,600 foreign mercenaries always active in J&K---more in the Jammu Division where the Hindus are in a majority and less in the Kashmir Division, where the Muslims are in a majority.
4.In addition to the foreign mercenaries, about 1,700 Kashmiris recruited from J&K as well as the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) have also been got trained by the ISI in camps located in the POK and elsewhere and infiltrated into J&K. Those killed are constantly replaced.They largely belong to the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), the militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which calls for the merger of J&K with Pakistan. The JEI of J&K is an appendage of the JEI of Pakistan, which is a strongly anti-US , anti-India and anti-Israel organisation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, of Al Qaeda, believed to be the master-mind of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US which brought down the World Trade Centre in New York killing over 3,000 innocent civilians and damaged the Pentagon building in Washington DC killing many more, was caught in the house of a women's wing leader of the JEI in Rawalpindi in Pakistan in March last. Some other Al Qaeda members were also found to have been sheltered by the JEI of Pakistan.
5. An idea of the extent of the Pakistani assistance to the terrorists in J&K could be had from the fact that the total recoveries since 1989 of hand-held weapons, rocket-launchers etc supplied by the ISI to the terrorists would be sufficient to equip one Division of a conventional army. One does not know how many weapons are still left with the terrorists. None of the countries which have been designated by the US as a State-sponsor of International Terrorism is known to have issued hundreds of mines of different kinds to terrorists as Pakistan has been doing.
6.During 2002, following a visit by Mr.Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, to Islamabad for talks with President General Pervez Musharraf, the latter gave an assurance that no more infiltration of trained terrorists into J&K would be allowed. Despite this, infiltrations continue to take place as would be evident from the following figures of detected infiltrations of armed terrorists into J&K from
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK):
2000 ----- 2284
2001----- 2417
2002------ 1400
2003------ 1410 upto September 30.
The number of armed terrorists infiltrated came down in 2002, but has gone up this year. 1410 new terrorists were infiltrated till September 30, 2003, as against 1028 during the corresponding period of 2002.
7.While co-operating with the USA in its operations against the terrorists of Al Qaeda and other organisations such as the HUM, the JEM, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) etc, who pose a threat to American lives and interests in Pakistani territory, the Pakistani Government has refused to act against terrorist organisations and their members indulging in acts of terrorism in Indian territory. It has avoided implementing the provisions of the UN Security Council Resolution No. 1373 as would be evident from the following:
MUTUAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE IN BRINGING TERRORISTS TO TRIAL: It continues to refuse to arrest and hand over to India for trial 20 terrorists involved in major acts of terrorism in Indian territory. Of these, one (a Sikh terrorist, who is an Indian national) is wanted for trial in the 1981 hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Lahore; five Pakistani terrorists, all members of the HUM, which is a founding member of bin Laden's IIF, are wanted for trial in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian aircraft to Kandahar;five terrorists (all Indian nationals) of the Dawood Ibrahim gang, which has links with Al Qaeda and the LET according to the notification dated October 16, 2003, of the US Treasury. Department, are wanted for trial in the Mumbai (Bombay) explosions of March 1993, in which 250 innocent civilians were killed;four Sikh terrorist leaders, all Indian nationals, are wanted for trial in connection with acts of terrorism in Punjab before 1995; one Pakistani national is wanted for trial in the case relating to the attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001; two terrorists are wanted for trial in connection with a conspiracy to assassinate the Deputy Prime Minister of India; and two other terrorists, both Indian nationals, are wanted for trial in connection with some other terrorist incidents. Pakistan continues to ignore the red-corner notices issued by the INTERPOL for their arrest and handing over to India for trial. In the case of the Indian nationals, it has been taking up the stand that they are not in Pakistani territory despite the fact that the Pakistani media has been reporting about their presence and activities in Pakistan. In the case of the Pakistani nationals, it has been contending that there is no evidence of their involvement in terrorism.
SANCTUARIES TO TERRORIST LEADERS: Five Sikh terrorist leaders, the Amir of the Hizbul Mujahideen,which is a Kashmiri organisation, and Dawood Ibrahim, the leader of a trans-national crime group supporting Al Qaeda and the LET, continue to enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan. All of them were Indian nationals when they sought sanctuary in Pakistan, but Dawood Ibrahim, who was designated by the US on October 16, 2003, as a global terrorist, has been given a Pakistani passport under a different name.
CONTINUED USE OF PAKISTANI ORGANISATIONS FOR SPONSORING ACTS OF TERRORISM IN INDIAN TERRITORY:The ISI continues to use the HUM, the LET, the JEM, the HUJI and Al Badr, all Pakistani organisations, for sponsoring acts of terrorism in Indian territory. Of these, the HUM is a founding member of bin Laden's IIF. The HUJI, the LET and the JEM joined it subsequently. The US State Department designated the HUM as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 1997 underr its then name of Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). It designated the LET and the JEM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations after 9/11. The HUM has not so far been banned in Pakistan despite its involvement in acts of terrorism not only against Indian nationals, but also against American and other Western nationals. There has been no ban on the HUJI either. Musharraf banned the LET and the JEM on January15, 2002, but the ban order applied to only their activities in Pakistani Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). It did not apply to their activities in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Their leaders and some of their cadres were arrested and kept in jail or under house arrest for some weeks. They were subsequently released on the ground that there was no evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory. Both these organisations continue to be active under different names. Their leaders travel all over Pakistan to collect funds and recruit volunteers for jihadi training. The Pakistani media has reported that even after the so-called ban, the LET has acquired immovable property of considerable value in Pakistani Punjab and Sindh. On October14, 2003, the US Treasury Department moved for the freezing of the accounts of a Pakistani charity organisatioin called Al Akhtar Trust on the ground that it was funding jihadi terrorist activities not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Iraq. This Trust was founded by the JEM after Musharraf had ostensibly banned it. In September, 2003, the Pakistani authorities claimed to have rounded up Gungun, the brother of Hambali, who is reported to be the operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) of South-East Asia and some other Indonesian and Malaysian students studying in two madrasas of Karachi. The JI is stated to have masterminded the Bali bombing of October last year. According to the Pakistani media, one of these madrasas is run by the LET and Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, the chief of the LET, was taking a class in the madrasa when the police went there for the arrests. Even though he is the head of a banned organisation, he was not arrested.
CONTINUED TERRORIST INFRASTRUCTURE IN PAKISTANI TERRITORY:No action has been taken by Pakistan against the training camps in Pakistani territory run by the Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorist organisations. These training camps are located not only in the POK and the Northern Areas, but also at Muridke, near Lahore, in Pakistani Punjab and at different places and madrasas in Sindh and the NWFP.
CONTINUED SUPPLY OF ARMS AND AMMUNITION, EXPLOSIVES, DETONATORS, TIMERS, LANDMINES AND HAND-GRENADES: There has been no decrease in their supply.
AVOIDANCE OF ACTION AGAINST TERRORIST FUNDING:The action taken by the Pakistani authorities against all suspected bank accounts in Pakistan under the UN Resolution continues to be an eye-wash. The "News" of Islamabad reported as follows on January 1, 2002: " Experts said the policy to freeze the accounts in "pieces" gave ample time to most of these account-holders to withdraw their money." On June 14, 2003, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's Finance Minister, placed on the table of the National Assembly a statement giving details of the accounts frozen by the authorities. In the statement figured three accounts in Peshawar banks held in the name of bin Laden and one in the name of his No.2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri (name of the branch not given). Of the three accounts of bin Laden, two were joint accounts held by him along with others and one was an account only in his name. The three bin Laden accounts, according to the statement, had balances of only US $ 306, US $ 342 and US $ 1585 and the account of Al-Zawahiri had a balance of US $ five only. The statement contained a remark that the account of Al-Zawahiri had remained dormant since 1993. There were no
such remarks in respect of the accounts of bin Laden. Hence, they are presumed to have been active. The statement remained silent as to what were the various deposits made in the accounts and withdrawn or transferred from them before they were frozen, who were the beneficiaries etc. According to the same statement, the HUM had three accounts with balances of US $ 62, US $ 48 and US $ 35. The JEM had one account with US $ 14.The seizure of only such paltry amounts speaks eloquently of the insincerity of the Pakistani authorities in circumventing the directives of the UNSC to act effectively against terrorist funding. When the State of Pakistan itself, through its Inter-Services Intelligence, has been distributing an estimated US $ 40 million per annum to different terrorist groups, where is the question of its acting against terrorist funding? More than a half of this goes to the four Pakistani terrorist organisations, which are members of bin Laden's IIF.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE US COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICY
8.The USA's reluctance to act against Pakistan and make it pay a prohibitive price for helping the jihadi terrorists is coming in the way of an effective counter-terrorism strategy. Encouraged by this reluctance, the Pervez Musharraf regime continues to keep the jihadi terrorists alive and active in the hope of using them to retrieve the lost Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and achieve its strategic objective of forcing a change in the status quo in India's Jammu & Kashmir.
9. One is already seeing the result of this not only in the continuing acts of terrorism in Indian territory by terrorists sponsored, trained ,armed and infiltrated by Pakistan, but also in the similar cross-border infiltration of re-grouped,re-trained and re-armed cadres of the Taliban from the sanctuaries in Pakistan into Afghanistan. According to Ahmed Rashid,the internationally renowned Pakistani expert on the Taliban, about 2,500 well-trained and well-equipped Taliban cadres are presently in the Pakistani territory waiting to be infiltrated into Afghanistan. About 1,400 plus trained and armed terrorists are infiltrated into India every year by the ISI.
10. The continued availability of the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory poses a serious threat not only to peace and stability in India and Afghanistan, but also to the US and other allied troops and the personnel of international organisations in Iraq, which are trying to restore normalcy in Iraq and lay the foundation for its emergence as a modern, liberal democracy. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi organisations subscribing to his ideology look upon India, the US and Israel as the main obstacles in their efforts to spread jihadi terrorism across the world and achieve their pan-Islamic
objectives.
11. Any counter-terrorism policy followed by the US, in its capacity as the head of the international coalition in the war against terrorism, cannot be effective unless it acts firmly not only against terrorist organisations and their leaders, but also against States using terrorism as a weapon to achieve their strategic objectives.
12.Even if the US has difficulties in taking punitive action against Pakistan, it should at least ensure that Pakistan sincerely implements the provisions of the UNSCR 1373 against all terrorist organisations whether their terrorist activities are directed against the USA, India, or any other country.Any further US economic and military assistance should be linked to this condition . As a first step, the US should insist on Pakistan arresting and handing over to India the 20 terrorists wanted for trial in India, effectively enforcing a ban on the HUM, the LET, the HUJI and the JEM and removing all training and other terrorist infrastructure in its territory, whether of Pakistani or Kashmiri organisations. Pakistan's claims of freezing terrorist accounts need to be closely scrutinised. If they are found to be false, Pakistan should be held accountable before the UN Security Council.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )
by B. Raman
A joint hearing "to review US counter-terrorism policy toward Asia and the Pacific" was held at Washington DC from 1-30 to 5 PM on October 29, 2003, under the joint auspices of the sub-committees on Asia and the Pacific and on International Terrorism, Non-Proliferation and Human Rights of the House Committee on International Relations.
2. The hearing was open to the public and the media. I received on October 10, 2003, a formal invitation to testify at the hearing from Mr.Henry J.Hyde, the Chairman of the House Committee. Before the formal invitation, his staff had informally sounded me as to whether I would be available for the hearing and would be willing to testify as a non-governmental expert. They also wanted to know what would be the theme of my testimony.
3. I accepted the invitation and stated that my theme could be "Cross-border Terrorism in India and Afghanistan." In the formal invitation received subsequently, it was stated that during my testimony I should give my "assessment on cross-border terrorist challenges facing India and their implications for the counter-terrorism policies of the United States."
4. The rules for witnesses communicated to me along with the invitation stated that I should submit well in advance a written testimony by E-Mail so that it could be made available for those interested on the web site of the Committee before the hearing and that I should bring along with me 50 copies of it and hand them over to the staff so that they could have them circulated to those concerned. This was done by me.
5. The full text of the advance written testimony along with its Executive Summary as prepared by me is available at the web site of the Committee, which also carries the testimonies of other witnesses, governmental as well as non-governmental. The text, without the Executive Summary, is also available at www.saag.org since October 30, 2003. The Executive Summary is attached to this report.
6. I was also informed before I left for Washington DC that each witness would be allowed to make a personal testimony for 10 minutes at the joint hearing, which could be followed by questions by the members and discussions.
7. The joint hearing, which was chaired by Mr. James Leach, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific, consisted of three parts. In the first part, the Chairman and each of the other seven members, who attended, made opening remarks for five minutes. In the second part, Mr.Cofer Black, Counter-terrorism Co-Ordinator in the State Department, Mrs. Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, and Mr. Matthew P. Daley, Deputy Assistant Secretary in charge of South-East Asia who used to be in charge of South Asia under the Clinton Administration, testified for 10 minutes each.
8. Mr. Black used to head the Counter-Terroriosm Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before he was posted as the Counter-Terrorism Co-Ordinator. Mr.Daley had served as the Deputy Head of Mission in the US Embassy in New Delhi during the 1990s and was closely involved in co-ordinating with the Indian authorities when the Pakistani Wahabi organisation Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), under the name Al Faran, kidnapped some Western tourists in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in 1995.
9. While Mr.Black testified on the Administration's counter-terrorism policies in South as well as South-East Asia, Mrs. Rocca and Mr.Daley confined their testimonies to the region of which thery are in charge. Their testimonies were followed by questions and discussions.
10. In the third part, four non-Governmental experts---three from the US and one from India--had been invited to give their assessments. The three US experts were Dr.Timothy D.Hoyt, Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the US Naval War College, Prof. Zachary Abuza of the Simmons College, and Mr. Robert Oakley, former US Ambassador to Islamabad in the 1980s. While Prof.Abuza testified on terrorism in South-East Asia, the other two testified on that in South Asia.
11.The joint hearing was not confined to only the terrorist situation in South Asia. There was also a discussion on other subjects such as the situation in South-East Asia, the violation of human rights in Myanmar by the military junta, narcotics production in Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan and the US policy towards the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka.
12. The opening remarks of the Chairman and all the other members except Mr.Dan Burton and Mr.Dana Rohrabacher showed understanding and sympathy for the Indian position and indicated continuing concerns over the policies of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
13. However, Mr.Burton totally and Mr.Rohrabacher to some extent made no secret of their sympathies for Pakistan. Mr. Burton started his remarks by expressing his apprehensions over the possibility of the joint hearing turning into a Pakistan bashing exercise. He then criticised the Government of India for avoiding the implementation of the UN Resolution calling for a plebiscite in Jammu & Kashmir and accused the Indian Army of serious human rights violations, including gang rape of Kashmiri women. Mr.Rohrabacher also spoke of alleged human rights violations and of the Kashmiris' right to self-determination.
14. Their attacks on India in their opening remarks created a dilemma for me as to whether I should, in my testimony, ignore them and use the 10 minutes allotted to me only for giving my assessment on the terrorist challenges facing India or whether I should utilise part of the time to rebut their allegations even at the cost of having less time for giving my assessment for which I had been invited.
15. I decided that their allegations should not be allowed to go into the Congressional records without being rebutted. Therefore, with the permission of the Chairman, I utilised five minutes for rebutting them and five minutes for highlighting certain aspects of the terrorist situation. My testimony was followed by questions and discussions. A transcript of my oral testimony as recorded by the Congressional staff is appended to this. I have not corrected the spelling and grammatical mistakes in it.
16. In the US Administration, the intelligence professionals, experts associated with the Defence Department and the Treasury Department, which co-ordinates the drive against terrorist funding, show more understanding of the Indian concerns relating to Pakistan's continued sponsorship of jihadi terrorism and the insincerity of its professed actions against terrorism. But, the State Department officials continue to show a reticence on this subject, equate India with Pakistan and praise Pakistan's contribution as an ally of the US in the war against terrorism.
17. This has come out clearly in the recent report (May) of the US State Department on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2002,which has been drafted by the Counter-Terrorism Division of the State Department headed by Mr.Black and not by the South Asia Division headed by Mrs. Rocca, the recent orders of the Treasury Department freezing the bank accounts of Dawood Ibrahim and the Al Akhtar Trust of Pakistan, which has been accused of funding jihad in Iraq, and the recent Memo of Mr.Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, as reported in the US media, expressing his exasperation over the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
18. After rebutting the anti-India allegations of Mr.Burton and Mr.Rohrabacher, I kept the focus of my remaining testimony on these documents of the US Government in order to make the sub-committees aware of the fact that what has been stated in these documents is at variance with the certificate of good performance given to Musharraf by Mrs. Rocca.
19. Mr.Black also gave a certificate of good performance to Pakistan , but his was not as unqualified as hers. He did bring on record the role of Pakistani terrorists in J&K. The testimony of Dr. Hoyt was not unfavourable to India's position. Even though he is a non-governmental academic, he has been associated with the Pentagon and is hence likely to have been exposed to their internal debates and analyses.
20.Mrs. Rocca had a difficult time answering pointed questions from the members on the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the role of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in it, the failure of the Musharraf Government to effectively enforce the ban on the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the insincerity of his action against the jihadi madrassas and terrorist funding, the alienation of the Sindhis, the increase in narcotics production etc. She was mostly evasive in replying to these questions.
21. One noted with interest during the testimony by the officials of the Bush Administration as well as during my discussions with other interlocutors after the hearing as to how the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) in Rawalpindi in March last is being projected by them as the greatest triumph in their war against terrorism. KSM's name is being dropped by them at every conceivable opportunity.
22. The Bush Administration has been facing one disaster after another in Iraq and the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating since August. The only success stories worth bragging about so far have been the arrest of four senior Al Qaeda operatives (Abu Zubaida, Ramzi Binalshibh, KSM and Waleed Bin Attash) in Pakistan and of Hambali of the Jemaah Islamiya in Thailand. As the Presidential elections approach, they will keep focussing on these perceived success stories in order to divert attention away from the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Musharraf will continue to be a beneficiary of this policy as they look upon him as having facilitated these successes.
23. In the US, there is increasing understanding of the Indian position in sections of the media and in the House of Representatives. Many share our doubts about the sincerity of Musharraf, but the same cannot be said of the State Department and the National Security Council Secretariat and the support for our views is still to be felt strongly in the Senate.
24. On October 30, I participated in a discussion on the situation in J&K in the office of Congressman Jack Pallone. I made the same points as I had at the joint hearing and handed over to his staff a copy of my advance written testimony. (
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )
APPENDIX A: TRANSCRIPT OF MY ORAL TESTIMONY
MR. RAMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I am going to do is, with your kind permission, I am going to offer clarifications on some of the points which were raised earlier with regard to Kashmir, and then make my own presentation. I will try to be as brief as possible.
In references made to the United Nations resolution on Kashmir, which was passed some years ago, in that resolution, it consists of a number of parts.Part I called for the withdrawal of the Pakistani troops from occupied Kashmir before a plebiscite can be held. Pakistan violated that resolution by refusing to withdraw the troops from the part occupied by it.
Number two, Pakistan committed a second violation of the resolution by transferring part of the Kashmiri territory to China without the clearance of the United Nations Security Council. That part which was transferred to China in 1963 has been integrated by China into the Xinjiang province of
China.
Number three, Pakistan committed a third violation of the U.N. resolution by separating what is called the Northern Area, Gilgit and Baltistan, from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and merging it as Pakistan. Today, that area is directly administered from Islamabad by the federal government of Pakistan.
And number four, it committed yet another violation of the U.N. resolution by (permitting ?) the Chinese to construct a highway, what is known as Karakoram Highway, along this Gilgit-Baltistan area.
And number six (sic), the sixth violation it committed was it used this highway for nuclear proliferation. In 2001, the Washington Times, quoting American intelligence sources, reported that some of the consignments of M-9 and M-11 missiles from China were brought by this highway, because the Chinese and the Pakistanis were afraid that the huge ships for bringing these missiles from China, American satellites might detect their movement. So they brought them by road, by this road which was committed (sic). In view of all these reasons, the resolution of the United Nations has ceased to be valid.
Mr. Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary- general, visited New Delhi and Islamabad in the year 2000. When he was in Islamabad, he was asked about U.N. resolutions, and he replied, I quote, and he said that resolution has become irrelevant. "Irrelevant" was the word used by Mr. Kofi Annan.
In references also made to allegations -- these are Pakistani allegations -- of large-scale atrocities in Kashmir. In certain situations, sometimes violations of human rights do occur. And the government of India, whenever such violations occur, they are taking action, they have got a National Human Right Commission.
Mr. Robert Blackwell, who was the ambassador to New Delhi -- he recently visited Kashmir a number of times. I don't think any of the U.S. ambassadors in India had visited Kashmir as frequently as he used to do. He had one diplomatic officer under him in the U.S. embassy whose only charge was to monitor the situation in Kashmir, and that officer used to visit. Last year, before the elections, the U.S. ambassador, as well as the ambassadors to the European Union countries, were given free access.
They could go anywhere to Kashmir. And I don't think any of them had ever referred to anything about violations like gang rapes of women, et cetera. So I prefer to go by the conclusions of the U.S. ambassador in Delhi and by the conclusions of his own officers in Delhi rather than by the allegations made by General Pervez Musharraf.
Then I come to my own presentation. Recently, as I was coming here, I read in the media a memo had been recorded by Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defense secretary, in which he had reportedly expressed exasperation over the fact that the more the number of jihadi terrorists which the U.S. forces put out of action in Afghanistan and Iraq, the more the number of jihadi ter> rorists would come out of the madrasses to replace them. He did not mention the country in which these madrasses are located. From the context of the memo, it was apparent that these madrasses are the madrasses in Pakistan.
Last year, Mrs. Jessica Stern, a counter terrorism expert of the Howard University, brought out a very widely read study on the working of the madrasses in Pakistan, where she describes them as jihad factories. In India the problem, the same problem which Mr. Donald Rumsfeld referred, we feel. The more the terrorists who are coming out of these madrasses that they put out of action, the more the terrorists will come out of those madrasses to replace those whom we put out of action.
The problem which we are facing today in Kashmir is not because of
Kashmiri militancy but because of large-scale infiltration of people into Kashmir from Pakistan. Till 1993, the average number of foreigners killed by the security forces in Kashmir used to come to 32. It went up to 172 per annum between 1993 and 1998. Since 1999, our security forces have been killing 951 foreign mercenaries per annum in Kashmir. The majority of them are Pakistani nationals. The rest of them are of 18 different nationalities.
I'll kindly request the distinguished panel to read the reports, the annexes of the report of the State Department on Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2002, which was submitted to the Congress in May this year. There they refer to the fact that most of these terrorist organizations which are operating today in Kashmir, they are foreigners. I'll just mention one sentence, for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The State Department report says that almost all Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists are foreigners, mostly Pakistanis from madrasses across the country and Afghan veterans of the Afghan wars. In respect to each organization, the State Department report says, in anticipation of asset seizures by the Pakistani government, the organization withdrew funds from bank accounts. This shows the extent to which how sincere or how insincere the government of Pakistan has been in acting against terrorist funding.
I would like to draw the attention of the panel also to four other recent documents of the U.S. government. On the 14th of October the U.S. Department of Treasury issued an order freezing the bank accounts of a supposedly charity organization of Pakistan called the Al Akhtar Trust, producing a second observation in that order issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury. But one observation, it says the charity trust was founded by the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the same organization which has supporters who have played a leading role in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl and which has been very active in Jammu/Kashmir. This organization is supposed to have been banned -- (inaudible) -- an order issued on January 15 last year. If it was a banned organization, how did the Pakistan government allow it to start a charity fund, the charity organization and collect funds?
The second significant observation in that order of the U.S. Department of Treasury is that the Al Akhtar Trust funded jihad not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it's also suspected with funding jihad in Iraq. That means an organization founded in Pakistan has been collecting funds and funding attacks on the American troops in Iraq. How did this happen? What action did Musharraf take against this organization? What is action taken by the U.S. Treasury Department on its soil, or in the instance of the Pakistan government, what cooperation it got from the Pakistan government, it calls for a detailed inquiry.
The other order was with the U.S. Department of Treasury. On October 16 there is a man called Dawood Ibrahim. He was a man, he's head of a mafia group, transnational triangle which is closely involved with the terrorist groups. He was suspected -- he was involved in the explosions in Bombay in 1993 along with five others who have been given shelter in Pakistan. The government of India has been repeatedly asking for their arrest and handing over to India so that they could be tried for involvement in terrorism. But the government of Pakistan has all the time been maintaining that they are not in Pakistani territory. This order, which has designated Dawood Ibrahim as a global terrorist, it says, number one, he had links with the al Qaeda and with the Taliban and had been helping them by placing his ships at their disposal, number one. Number two, it also says that he had been living in Karachi and has given his passport number.
In spite of that, the Pakistan government, to the U.S. also, it has denied that he was in Karachi, and it has denied that this passport belonged to him. It says that this passport did not belong to him.
For these reasons, we find it very difficult when Pakistan -- Musharraf says that he has been taking action against terrorists, we in India find it very difficult to accept it, find it difficult to believe it.
One last point I would like to make, with your kind permission. We are all gratified in India recently by the fact that justice has at long last been done with the families of victims of the Lockerbie tragedy. Your plane was blown up, was blown up by a Libyan intelligence officer. He planted the explosives. And this case went on. The United States imposed punitive sanctions against Colonel Qadhafi. They held him responsible for allowing his intelligence agencies to blow up the aircraft. Ultimately, justice was done.
There have been seven instances of attacks, instances of acts of terrorist, directed against Indian civil aviation: five instances of hijacking by Sikh terrorists of Punjab; one instance of hijacking by a Wahhabi terrorist organization of Pakistan, the Harakat ul-Mujahedeen, 1999; one instance in which an Air India plane, Kanishka, was blown up off the Irish coast, resulting in the deaths of over 200 civilians; and one instance in which an unsuccessful attempt was to blow up another Air India aircraft in Tokyo.
And all these instances took place when the military was in power. There has not been a single attack on civil aviation from Pakistan by terrorist groups from Pakistan whenever a democratically elected government was in power.
All these people who were involved in these offenses -- the hijackers, the people who are involved in explosions, et cetera -- they have been given sanctuary in Pakistan. Is it not the responsibility of the international community to see that these people, who are responsible for acts of terrorism directed against civil aviation, that they are brought to trial; that the government of Pakistan cooperates with the government of India by arresting them and handing them over to India, so that they could be tried?
Doesn't the international community -- does it have an obligation to do justice to the families of all those people whose -- families of all the victims of the aircraft which was blown up in midair, (just as it required ?) justice to the victims of the Lockerbie aircraft? These are some of the questions which I'd like to put before this panel.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
REP. LEACH: Thank you, Mr. Raman.
REP. DANA ROHRABACHER (R-CA): Thank you very much. I'm sorry Mr. Daley had to leave. And just to note that I do accept that heroin production has declined -- I don't know how dramatically -- in Burma. But at the same time we've had a huge increase in methamphetamine production in the areas controlled by the government. Let me just note that. And that's no -- there's no doubt about that. In fact, different briefings I've had is that actually the methamphetamines can be traced to Burmese military camps, and they're being sold all over Southeast Asia.
So we'll have a -- I'm sure I'll have -- continue to have my discussion with the State Department and their desire to bestow upon the government of Burma a mantle of respectability, as compared to what I would bestow upon them.
Mr. Raman, just a note. I mean, you can come up with every excuse in the world, India is not permitting the people of Kashmir to have a vote, to determine their destiny by a vote. This will all be over if the people of Kashmir will be given the right to determine their destiny with a vote.
All the other things you say may be true. Forty years ago, somebody stepped on somebody's toe. Twenty years ago, somebody didn't go by the rules. You know, 10 years ago, somebody gave somebody a passport who shouldn't have had a passport. The bottom line is right now we need to solve the problem, and Americans believe -- and I believe Indians believe it's true as well -- that people have a right to control their own destiny via the ballot box. And I would suggest that people of good faith in India and in Pakistan get together to try to find a solution to which the people of Kashmir will vote for and approve.
My personal suggestion is, as a compromise, knowing that there are large chunks of people in Kashmir that would be part -- that want to remain part of India, if you accept the idea that people have a right to determine their destiny, Kashmir need not remain a whole unit, and those parts of Kashmir that want to remain part and vote to remain part of India in the ballot box, they should remain part of India.
But every -- I have seen -- I have heard no one ever deny the fact that a large proportion of the people of Kashmir are not satisfied and would vote either to be independent or be part of Pakistan.
Let's try to solve it. Let's quit lying. Let's quit changing the subject, which is every time you -- I happen to be -- have more sympathy with India because it's trying to be a democratic society than I do with Pakistan because they're a military dictatorship, you know. But -- it's as simple as that. And, Charlie, when they have a free election, I'll be happy to reassess that. But the people of India have tried to have democracy, and I respect that. And I think they tried a lot harder and their leaders have tried a lot harder at democracy than the people who led Pakistan have. But to solve this problem, it goes right down to let's give the people of Kashmir a right to determine that. It's going to go on and on and on till that.
I want to give kudos to India on one thing. I noticed in the paper that some of the leadership in India have been talking about we're willing to discuss autonomy for Kashmir.
And that's a step in the right direction. And until we solve that problem, all the rest of these problems are going to fester. Pakistan will continue to be destabilized because what we're doing is we're empowering THE most radical elements in Pakistan by keeping the Kashmir an issue. So I would hope that we can do that. I would -- even if it's a -- I would admonish my own government for not taking as tough a stand on trying to find a solution for Kashmir.
And again, I -- the testimony of this panel has been terrific. And I've learned a lot from each and every one of you, and I appreciate that. And so I would -- let me just ask one question. Is there a reason that -- for optimism that we can -- in South Asia? We've got terrorism running amuck now because we haven't paid attention to some of these fundamental problems. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel, and are people beginning to see that -- a solution, a way out of this, or is this a -- are we going to go through a lot more turmoil before there's even hope? And just very quick, maybe a 30-second answer down the panel.
MR. RAMAN: Well, the honorable member said that India is trying to be a democracy; India IS a democracy.
REP. ROHRABACHER: Right. Right.
MR. RAMAN: It's not trying to be a democracy, India is the most well-functioning democracy in the Third World. It's as healthy a democracy as the United States.
REP. ROHRABACHER: Right.
MR. RAMAN: It's as healthy a democracy as the United Kingdom. There's no question of India trying to be a democracy.
So far as the question of Kashmir is concerned, we have got a political process going in Kashmir. There are many parties, there are mainstream political parties which have been -- with the government of India -- which have been strongly opposed to the activities of the terrorists in the territory. And even at the height of terrorism, we had held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Last year we held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. In 1996 we had -- held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Last year we told everybody, every embassy in Delhi, if you want to go and observe the elections there, you are welcome to go and observe the elections. And the elections, we have an Independent Election Commission in India. This commission recently was given the Magsaysay Award for the way it conducted the elections in Kashmir last year. And all the Western ambassadors who went there, including the U.S. ambassador, the ambassadors of the European countries, they were all satisfied that the elections were free and fair.
In spite of threats held out by Pakistan that they would kill people who participate in the election process, people went out --
REP. ROHRABACHER: So then why not give them a chance to vote on what country they want to be part of?
MR. RAMAN: Oh, there's no question. See, will the United States, if tomorrow, if one of the states here, it says it wants to have a referendum in order to decide -- for example, if Hawaii tomorrow says it wants to have a referendum in order to decide whether Hawaii should continue to be a part of the United States or not, would the United States tolerate?
Is there a provision in the U.S. Constitution --
REP. ROHRABACHER: Actually, I happen to believe that if a large part of the United States wanted to vote to become a part of another country, then we should permit them to vote and become part of another country. And if we don't have faith that those people will stay Americans, and if we don't permit them to have a vote, then that says something about us. But I think that we have faith in every American to vote to stay part of America.
MR. RAMAN: There are many federations in the world -- India is one example; Australia is another -- which do not give a right of secession to their -- (inaudible). Otherwise, there would be --
REP. ROHRABACHER: It's not a right of secession to a state. We're talking about people's right to make their own determination. Now --
MR. RAMAN: A group of terrorists -- do a group of terrorists get hold of arms and ammunition; they get hold of mines; they get hold of explosives and they say, "We don't want --
REP. ROHRABACHER: Okay. Well, let me just say, that attitude from --
people who believe in democracy, people who believe in the human rights of a person to determine their own destiny will always be insulted by that, and you're going to continue to have bloodshed by people who want to maintain the same rights that other people have. And let India just provide them a vote -- Where do you want to be? -- which was mandated by the United Nations and which was agreed to. Let them have that vote finally and get this conflict behind us. It'll continue until that happens. And we're going to have instability; we're going to have bloodshed; we're going to have radicalization of people who should not be radicalized. And we're going to have India spending money on weapons, and Pakistan spending money on weapons that they don't need to waste for poor countries like this.
So, I mean, I'm sorry. I know you're an honorable person, and I do respect India. I, as I say, actually have more of an attraction to the Indian people than the Pakistani people, because I think they are much more dedicated to democratic principles than the Pakistanis that I've seen. But, I know what the solution is going to be, and it's got to include a free vote. And every time you talk about it, the Indians come up with this and that and this and that, and that's why we're not going to permit it?
REP. LEACH: The time of Jefferson Davis is expired. (Laughter.)
REP. ROHRABACHER: (Laughs.)
REP. LEACH: Mr. Faleomavaega.
DEL. ENI FALEOMAVAEGA (D-SAMOA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The solution is, there is no solution. No, I'm just kidding, Mr. Chairman.
I do want to thank Ambassador Oakley for his observations in the hearings. And although with some sense of humor, we do know the sense of the seriousness of the problems that these two nations face. And if I could just go back to Mr. Raman's statement he made earlier about the -- this resolution that was passed by the United Nations. Was it required that the Pakistani military forces have to be cleared from the Kashmir territory? Is that my understanding, Mr. Raman.
MR. OAKLEY: I think so, yes.
REP. FALEOMAVAEGA: Yeah. And that did not occur -- has not occurred since that time, am I correct on this?
MR. OAKLEY: In my judgment, it was a shared responsibility or a shared fault. It was not by one side or the other. Furthermore, I think today that one needs to move ahead and find a different way to deal with it, perhaps the way Congressman Rohrabacher was talking about.
In any event, there are a lot of efforts being made, both informally and formally, to assist India and Pakistan to grope towards some sort of agreement on Kashmir.
I'm not optimistic it's going to come any time soon, but compared to a year and a half ago -- when India had a million troops mobilized and the tensions were extremely high, everyone was worried about nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, and then all the diplomatic relations were broken, no travel -- things are somewhat better than they used to be. And let's hope they continue to go that way.
DEL. FALEOMAVAEGA: And if I understand it correctly, that part of the U.N. resolution required that Pakistani military forces withdraw themselves from the Kashmirian territory, but at the same time, because of its refusal, India ends up with 700,000 military forces on its border because of the fear of attacks.
I'm curious: How many Muslims live in India? Mr. Raman?
MR. RAMAN: We have 140 million Muslims in India. We have got the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. And the Muslims enjoy equal rights in India. Presently our president is a Muslim. He is the third Muslim to become the president of India.
DEL FALEOMAVAEGA: Did you say 140 million Muslims in India?
MR. RAMAN: One forty million Muslims in India. More than Pakistan. Second-largest Muslim community in the world after Indonesia.
DEL. FALEOMAVAEGA: Am I correct to observe that the only division between the Pakistanis and the Indians is their differences in religion, but ethnically and culturally, you're the same people?
MR. RAMAN: (Culturally ?), yes.
DEL. FALEOMAVAEGA: Okay. I got that right.
APPENDIX B: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF MY ADVANCE WRITTEN TESTIMONY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
India has been the victim of the use of cross-border terrorism by the State of Pakistan and its intelligence agencies since 1956 to achieve their strategic objectives, which are three in number. First, to create a religious divide between the Hindus, who are in a majority, and the Muslims, who are in a substantial minority. Second, to keep the Indian State destabilised and preoccupied with internal security tasks in order to hamper the economic development of the country. And third,to annex the State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), which is an integral part of India.
2.During the proxy war, through the use of State-sponsored terrorism, being waged by Pakistan against India for the annexation of J&K since 1989,12,755 innocent civilians and 4,842 members of the Indian Security Forces have been killed in J&K alone. These figures do not include those outside J&K killed by terrorists sponsored by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. This proxy war has passed through the following phases in J&K:
1989-93: The terrorists involved were mostly Kashmiris from India and Pakistan. Very few foreign mercenaries were involved. They initially operated mostly with hand-held weapons, but subsequently started using explosive devices, mines and hand-grenades to indiscriminately kill civilians.The average number of local terrorists killed by the Security Forces came to 848 per annum. As against this, the average number of foreigners, mostly Pakistanis, killed came to 32 per annum only. The average recoveries of military material other than weapons such as AK-47 rifles, light-machine guns, rocket launchers etc, by the Security Forces came to 100 KGs of explosives, 426 mines and 2760 hand-grenades per annum.
1994 to 1998:Finding that the indigenous terrorists were not making any headway in their operations against the Indian Security Forces, the Pakistan Army and the ISI started infiltrating foreign merceneries, who had fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, most of them Pakistani nationals, in increasing numbers. There was an increase in the use of explosives, landmines and hand-grenades. The average number of local terrorists killed came to 1069 per annum and the average number of foreign jihadi terrorists killed came to 172 per annum. The average recoveries per annum came to 405 KGs of explosives,628 mines and 4085 hand-grenades.
1999 to 2003:This period saw two important developments. The Pakistan Army headed by Gen.Pervez Musharraf staged a coup and seized power in October,1999. Four Pakistani jihadi organisations operating in J&K joined Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, which had been formed in 1998. These were the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). Under the influence of bin Laden, they introduced suicide terrorism for the first time in J&K. Before 1999, there was no suicide terrorism in the State. Since 1999, there have been 46 acts of suicide terrorism or fedayeen attacks, of which 44 were carried out by the LET and the JEM. The remaining two were by unidentified (possibly local) terrorists. The infiltration of foreign mercenaries, mostly Pakistani nationals, increased and they started operating under the guise of Kashmiris and took over the leadership of the militant movement.The average number of local terrorists killed came down to 726 per annum and the average number of foreign mercenaries killed went up steeply to 951 per annum. The average recoveries per annum were 866 KGs of explosives and 5336 hand-grenades.Figures in respect of mines are not available.
3.The killing of a large number of foreign mercenaries has not yet affected the capability of the Pakistani terrorist organisations to maintain a high level of violence since those killed are immediately replaced through fresh infiltration of trained mercenaries.The Pakistan Army and the ISI have managed to maintain a total of about 1,600 foreign mercenaries always active in J&K---more in the Jammu Division where the Hindus are in a majority and less in the Kashmir Division, where the Muslims are in a majority.
4.In addition to the foreign mercenaries, about 1,700 Kashmiris recruited from J&K as well as the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) have also been got trained by the ISI in camps located in the POK and elsewhere and infiltrated into J&K. Those killed are constantly replaced.They largely belong to the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), the militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which calls for the merger of J&K with Pakistan. The JEI of J&K is an appendage of the JEI of Pakistan, which is a strongly anti-US , anti-India and anti-Israel organisation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, of Al Qaeda, believed to be the master-mind of the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US which brought down the World Trade Centre in New York killing over 3,000 innocent civilians and damaged the Pentagon building in Washington DC killing many more, was caught in the house of a women's wing leader of the JEI in Rawalpindi in Pakistan in March last. Some other Al Qaeda members were also found to have been sheltered by the JEI of Pakistan.
5. An idea of the extent of the Pakistani assistance to the terrorists in J&K could be had from the fact that the total recoveries since 1989 of hand-held weapons, rocket-launchers etc supplied by the ISI to the terrorists would be sufficient to equip one Division of a conventional army. One does not know how many weapons are still left with the terrorists. None of the countries which have been designated by the US as a State-sponsor of International Terrorism is known to have issued hundreds of mines of different kinds to terrorists as Pakistan has been doing.
6.During 2002, following a visit by Mr.Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, to Islamabad for talks with President General Pervez Musharraf, the latter gave an assurance that no more infiltration of trained terrorists into J&K would be allowed. Despite this, infiltrations continue to take place as would be evident from the following figures of detected infiltrations of armed terrorists into J&K from
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK):
2000 ----- 2284
2001----- 2417
2002------ 1400
2003------ 1410 upto September 30.
The number of armed terrorists infiltrated came down in 2002, but has gone up this year. 1410 new terrorists were infiltrated till September 30, 2003, as against 1028 during the corresponding period of 2002.
7.While co-operating with the USA in its operations against the terrorists of Al Qaeda and other organisations such as the HUM, the JEM, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) etc, who pose a threat to American lives and interests in Pakistani territory, the Pakistani Government has refused to act against terrorist organisations and their members indulging in acts of terrorism in Indian territory. It has avoided implementing the provisions of the UN Security Council Resolution No. 1373 as would be evident from the following:
MUTUAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE IN BRINGING TERRORISTS TO TRIAL: It continues to refuse to arrest and hand over to India for trial 20 terrorists involved in major acts of terrorism in Indian territory. Of these, one (a Sikh terrorist, who is an Indian national) is wanted for trial in the 1981 hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Lahore; five Pakistani terrorists, all members of the HUM, which is a founding member of bin Laden's IIF, are wanted for trial in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian aircraft to Kandahar;five terrorists (all Indian nationals) of the Dawood Ibrahim gang, which has links with Al Qaeda and the LET according to the notification dated October 16, 2003, of the US Treasury. Department, are wanted for trial in the Mumbai (Bombay) explosions of March 1993, in which 250 innocent civilians were killed;four Sikh terrorist leaders, all Indian nationals, are wanted for trial in connection with acts of terrorism in Punjab before 1995; one Pakistani national is wanted for trial in the case relating to the attack on the Indian Parliament in December, 2001; two terrorists are wanted for trial in connection with a conspiracy to assassinate the Deputy Prime Minister of India; and two other terrorists, both Indian nationals, are wanted for trial in connection with some other terrorist incidents. Pakistan continues to ignore the red-corner notices issued by the INTERPOL for their arrest and handing over to India for trial. In the case of the Indian nationals, it has been taking up the stand that they are not in Pakistani territory despite the fact that the Pakistani media has been reporting about their presence and activities in Pakistan. In the case of the Pakistani nationals, it has been contending that there is no evidence of their involvement in terrorism.
SANCTUARIES TO TERRORIST LEADERS: Five Sikh terrorist leaders, the Amir of the Hizbul Mujahideen,which is a Kashmiri organisation, and Dawood Ibrahim, the leader of a trans-national crime group supporting Al Qaeda and the LET, continue to enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan. All of them were Indian nationals when they sought sanctuary in Pakistan, but Dawood Ibrahim, who was designated by the US on October 16, 2003, as a global terrorist, has been given a Pakistani passport under a different name.
CONTINUED USE OF PAKISTANI ORGANISATIONS FOR SPONSORING ACTS OF TERRORISM IN INDIAN TERRITORY:The ISI continues to use the HUM, the LET, the JEM, the HUJI and Al Badr, all Pakistani organisations, for sponsoring acts of terrorism in Indian territory. Of these, the HUM is a founding member of bin Laden's IIF. The HUJI, the LET and the JEM joined it subsequently. The US State Department designated the HUM as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 1997 underr its then name of Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). It designated the LET and the JEM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations after 9/11. The HUM has not so far been banned in Pakistan despite its involvement in acts of terrorism not only against Indian nationals, but also against American and other Western nationals. There has been no ban on the HUJI either. Musharraf banned the LET and the JEM on January15, 2002, but the ban order applied to only their activities in Pakistani Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). It did not apply to their activities in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Their leaders and some of their cadres were arrested and kept in jail or under house arrest for some weeks. They were subsequently released on the ground that there was no evidence of their involvement in acts of terrorism in Pakistani territory. Both these organisations continue to be active under different names. Their leaders travel all over Pakistan to collect funds and recruit volunteers for jihadi training. The Pakistani media has reported that even after the so-called ban, the LET has acquired immovable property of considerable value in Pakistani Punjab and Sindh. On October14, 2003, the US Treasury Department moved for the freezing of the accounts of a Pakistani charity organisatioin called Al Akhtar Trust on the ground that it was funding jihadi terrorist activities not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Iraq. This Trust was founded by the JEM after Musharraf had ostensibly banned it. In September, 2003, the Pakistani authorities claimed to have rounded up Gungun, the brother of Hambali, who is reported to be the operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) of South-East Asia and some other Indonesian and Malaysian students studying in two madrasas of Karachi. The JI is stated to have masterminded the Bali bombing of October last year. According to the Pakistani media, one of these madrasas is run by the LET and Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed, the chief of the LET, was taking a class in the madrasa when the police went there for the arrests. Even though he is the head of a banned organisation, he was not arrested.
CONTINUED TERRORIST INFRASTRUCTURE IN PAKISTANI TERRITORY:No action has been taken by Pakistan against the training camps in Pakistani territory run by the Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorist organisations. These training camps are located not only in the POK and the Northern Areas, but also at Muridke, near Lahore, in Pakistani Punjab and at different places and madrasas in Sindh and the NWFP.
CONTINUED SUPPLY OF ARMS AND AMMUNITION, EXPLOSIVES, DETONATORS, TIMERS, LANDMINES AND HAND-GRENADES: There has been no decrease in their supply.
AVOIDANCE OF ACTION AGAINST TERRORIST FUNDING:The action taken by the Pakistani authorities against all suspected bank accounts in Pakistan under the UN Resolution continues to be an eye-wash. The "News" of Islamabad reported as follows on January 1, 2002: " Experts said the policy to freeze the accounts in "pieces" gave ample time to most of these account-holders to withdraw their money." On June 14, 2003, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's Finance Minister, placed on the table of the National Assembly a statement giving details of the accounts frozen by the authorities. In the statement figured three accounts in Peshawar banks held in the name of bin Laden and one in the name of his No.2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri (name of the branch not given). Of the three accounts of bin Laden, two were joint accounts held by him along with others and one was an account only in his name. The three bin Laden accounts, according to the statement, had balances of only US $ 306, US $ 342 and US $ 1585 and the account of Al-Zawahiri had a balance of US $ five only. The statement contained a remark that the account of Al-Zawahiri had remained dormant since 1993. There were no
such remarks in respect of the accounts of bin Laden. Hence, they are presumed to have been active. The statement remained silent as to what were the various deposits made in the accounts and withdrawn or transferred from them before they were frozen, who were the beneficiaries etc. According to the same statement, the HUM had three accounts with balances of US $ 62, US $ 48 and US $ 35. The JEM had one account with US $ 14.The seizure of only such paltry amounts speaks eloquently of the insincerity of the Pakistani authorities in circumventing the directives of the UNSC to act effectively against terrorist funding. When the State of Pakistan itself, through its Inter-Services Intelligence, has been distributing an estimated US $ 40 million per annum to different terrorist groups, where is the question of its acting against terrorist funding? More than a half of this goes to the four Pakistani terrorist organisations, which are members of bin Laden's IIF.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE US COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICY
8.The USA's reluctance to act against Pakistan and make it pay a prohibitive price for helping the jihadi terrorists is coming in the way of an effective counter-terrorism strategy. Encouraged by this reluctance, the Pervez Musharraf regime continues to keep the jihadi terrorists alive and active in the hope of using them to retrieve the lost Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and achieve its strategic objective of forcing a change in the status quo in India's Jammu & Kashmir.
9. One is already seeing the result of this not only in the continuing acts of terrorism in Indian territory by terrorists sponsored, trained ,armed and infiltrated by Pakistan, but also in the similar cross-border infiltration of re-grouped,re-trained and re-armed cadres of the Taliban from the sanctuaries in Pakistan into Afghanistan. According to Ahmed Rashid,the internationally renowned Pakistani expert on the Taliban, about 2,500 well-trained and well-equipped Taliban cadres are presently in the Pakistani territory waiting to be infiltrated into Afghanistan. About 1,400 plus trained and armed terrorists are infiltrated into India every year by the ISI.
10. The continued availability of the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory poses a serious threat not only to peace and stability in India and Afghanistan, but also to the US and other allied troops and the personnel of international organisations in Iraq, which are trying to restore normalcy in Iraq and lay the foundation for its emergence as a modern, liberal democracy. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadi organisations subscribing to his ideology look upon India, the US and Israel as the main obstacles in their efforts to spread jihadi terrorism across the world and achieve their pan-Islamic
objectives.
11. Any counter-terrorism policy followed by the US, in its capacity as the head of the international coalition in the war against terrorism, cannot be effective unless it acts firmly not only against terrorist organisations and their leaders, but also against States using terrorism as a weapon to achieve their strategic objectives.
12.Even if the US has difficulties in taking punitive action against Pakistan, it should at least ensure that Pakistan sincerely implements the provisions of the UNSCR 1373 against all terrorist organisations whether their terrorist activities are directed against the USA, India, or any other country.Any further US economic and military assistance should be linked to this condition . As a first step, the US should insist on Pakistan arresting and handing over to India the 20 terrorists wanted for trial in India, effectively enforcing a ban on the HUM, the LET, the HUJI and the JEM and removing all training and other terrorist infrastructure in its territory, whether of Pakistani or Kashmiri organisations. Pakistan's claims of freezing terrorist accounts need to be closely scrutinised. If they are found to be false, Pakistan should be held accountable before the UN Security Council.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )