The Global Terrorist

Shortly after the commission of the terrorist strikes in the US on September 11,2001, US President GeorgeBush signed Executive Order (EO) No.13224 on September 23,2001, declaring a national emergency to deal withterrorist threats to the USA. He said in his EO:

"I also find that because of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the financial foundation offoreign terrorists, financial sanctions may be appropriate for those foreign persons that support or otherwiseassociate with these foreign terrorists. I also find that a need exists for further consultation andcooperation with, and sharing of information by, United States and foreign financial institutions as anadditional tool to enable the United States to combat the financing of terrorism."

The annual report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 2001 submitted to the US Congress in May,2002, by Gen.(retd) Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, described the significance of this EO as follows:

"EO 13224 enables the US Government to block designees' assets in any financial institution in the USor held by any US person. It also expands US Government authority to permit the designation of individuals andorganisations that provide support or financial or other services to or associate with, designated terrorists.EO 13224 designations allowed the US Government, as well as coalition partners acting in concert, to blocktens of millions of dollars intended to bankroll the murderous activities of Al Qaida and other terroristgroups."

Under this EO, the US Government has so far designated 322 individuals of different nationalities andorganizations as terrorists and terrorist supporters and frozen over $136.8 million in terrorist assets byacting in concert with other member-nations of the UN.

Apart from terrorist organisations such as the Al Qaeda, the Jemaah Islamiya, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen(HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) etc which have been so designated under this EO,anumber of individual terrorists wanted for acts of terrorism in different countries have also been sodesignated. Important amongst them are Osama bin Laden, his No 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri and other leaders of the AlQaeda.

While the US Government has designated the HUM, the LET and the JEM as Foreign Terrorist Organisations,none of their leaders has so far been designated as global terrorists. The only individuals living openly inPakistan who had been brought under the purview of this EO till October 15,2003, were SultanBashir-ud-din.Mahmood, Abdul Majeed and Mahammed Tufail, who were suspected of trying to help bin Laden in theclandestine acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They were so designated on December 20, 2001,and their bank accounts, wherever found, were ordered to be frozen.

Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader- cum- terrorist living in Pakistan since the 1990s, became yet anotherindividual terrorist leader living in Pakistan to be brought under the purview of this EO on October 16,2003,when the US Department of Treasury announced that it was designating him as a Specially Designated GlobalTerrorist under Executive Order 13224 and that it would be requesting the UN to so list him as well. Thedesignation would freeze any assets belonging to Dawood within the U.S. and prohibit transactions with U.S.nationals. The UN listing will require that all UN Membe-States take similar actions.

"This designation signals our commitment to identifying and attacking the financial ties between thecriminal underworld and terrorism," stated Juan Zarate, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financingand Financial Crimes. "We are calling on the international community to stop the flow of dirty money thatkills. For the Ibrahim syndicate, the business of terrorism forms part of their larger criminal enterprise,which must be dismantled."

A press release of the US Department said:

"Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian crime lord, has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smugglingroutes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indiangovernment. He is wanted in India for the 1993 Bombay Exchange bombings and is known to have financed theactivities of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Righteous), a group designated by the United States in October2001 and banned by the Pakistani Government -- who also froze their assets -- in January 2002."

A fact sheet attached to the press release said:

"Ibrahim's syndicate is involved in large-scale shipments of narcotics in the UK and Western Europe.The syndicate's smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa are shared with Usama Bin Ladenand his terrorist network. Successful routes established over recent years by Ibrahim's syndicate have beensubsequently utilised by bin Laden. A financial arrangement was reportedly brokered to facilitate the latter'susage of these routes. In the late 1990s, Ibrahim travelled in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban."

It added:

"Ibrahim's syndicate has consistently aimed to destabilise the Indian Government through incitingriots, acts of terrorism and civil disobedience. He is currently wanted by India for the March 12,1993, BombayExchange bombings, which killed hundreds of Indians and injured over a thousand more."

It also said:

"Information from as recent as Fall 2002, indicates that Ibrahim has financially supported Islamicmilitant groups working against India, such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LET). For example, this informationindicates that Ibrahim has been helping finance increasing attacks in Gujarat by LET. "

The statement and the attached fact sheet do not say how the US Government came to know of Dawood's linkswith the Al Qaeda, bin Laden and the LET. However, it needs to be noted that last week the US Government alsodesignated the Al Akhtar Trust, a supposedly charity organisation based in Pakistan founded by the JEM, forpurposes of freezing its accounts under this EO. It described the Al Akhtar Trust as the successororganisation to the Al Rashid Trust, which had earlier been brought under the purview of this EO.

The Treasury Department statement indicated that it suspected the Al Akhtar Trust of funding jihaditerrorist activities not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. Since February last, I have beendrawing attention to reports that the HUM and the LET have been sending small numbers of their cadres to Iraqto participate in a jihad against the US troops there and that the LET has been collecting funds in Pakistanfor assisting the families of its "martyrs" in Iraq. The statement reveals that the JEM has alsobeen indulging in activities in support of the jihad in Iraq through the Al Akhtar Trust.

The fact sheet attached by the US Treasury Department to the order relating to the Trust says as follows attwo places:

"During a custodial interview in early 2003, a senior Al Qaida detainee related that AL AKHTAR TRUSTand Al-Rashid Trust were the primary relief agencies that Al Qaida used to move supplies into Qandahar,Afghanistan. " Again it says: "During a custodial interview in mid-April 2003, a senior Al Qaidadetainee stated that Al-Rashid Trust and Al AKHTAR TRUST provided donations to Al Qaida."

The USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers in Pakistan had got hold of two senior Al Qaedaoperatives during this period -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,who is suspected to be the mastermind behind the 9/11terrorist strikes in the USA and who was caught in Rawalpindi in March last, and Walid bin Attash, theprincipal Al Qaeda suspect in the case relating to the bombing of the US naval ship USS Cole in Aden inOctober, 2000, who was caught in Karachi in April last.

The interrogation of Walid bin Attash by the FBI had not yet started by mid-April. It would, therefore, bereasonable to infer that the action against the Al Akhtar Trust was probably based on information provided byKhalid Sheikh Mohammad. Since the action against Dawood followed two days after the action against the Trust,there is a strong possibility that the information obtained during the same interrogation about his links withthe Al Qaeda triggered off the action of the Treasury Department.

What next? The designation of Dawood as a global terrorist does not automatically freeze his bank accountsand the accounts of the organisations with which he is associated. It only directs all banks and otherfinancial institutions in the US to identify such accounts and freeze them. How effective is the follow-upaction depends on how effective is the identification of the accounts.

The Treasury Department order does not give all the aliases of Dawood. It names him as Dawood Ibrahim, alsoknown as Dawood Ebrahim, also known as Sheikh Dawood Hassan. Only all accounts held in these names will beaffected by this order. If he has been holding accounts under other names, those would not be affected tillidentified to be his.

The UN Security Council, in its capacity as the monitor of the implementation of its Resolution No.1373calling for action against terrorism by member-nations, would now be moved by the US to issue instructions toall member-nations, including Pakistan, to freeze the accounts of Dawood held under these three names.

Whenever such instructions were issued by the UNSC in the past, the Government of Pakistan circumventedthem by alerting organisations and individual terrorist leaders named by the EO and the UN about the impendingfreezing of their accounts, thereby enabling them to withdraw the bulk of the balance to their credit ortransfer it to other accounts under different names.

This has been repeatedly happening since January last year. As a result, when the accounts were finallyfrozen, they were found to contain paltry amounts.

The last one year has also seen a tremendous increase in the remittance of funds from overseas bankaccounts to accounts in Pakistan. The total remittances during this period were estimated at US $ fourbillion. The Pakistani authorities attributed this increase to the fact that Pakistanis living abroad havestarted using normal banking channels for their remittances due to fears that the use of the informal hawalachannels as in the past might attract the suspicion of the FBI. Even if this explanation is true, it couldaccount for the transfer of only about US $ 1.5 billion from overseas accounts to accounts in Pakistan.

Following suspicion that the steep increase in the remittances flowing into Pakistan might be due to thetransfer of the money held overseas by the so-called Saudi charity organisations associated with terrorism toaccounts in Pakistan and the use of new accounts in Pakistan by organisations based in Saudi Arabia forfunding terrorism, the FBI is reported to be closely monitoring all remittances of over US $ 1,000 to accountsin Pakistan. The Washington correspondent of the News, the Pakistani daily newspaper, has reported(October 1,2003) that the Pakistani authorities have agreed to a request from the US to report to the FBIdetails of all such remittances.

The action taken by the Pakistani authorities against all suspected bank accounts in Pakistan continues tobe an eye-wash. On June 14,2003, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's Finance Minister, placed on the table of theNational Assembly a statement giving details of the accounts frozen by the authorities. In the statementfigured three accounts in Peshawar banks held in the name of bin Laden and one in the name of his No.2 AymanAl-Zawahiri (name of the branch not given). Of the three accounts of bin Laden, two were joint accounts heldby him along with others and one was an account only in his name. The three bin Laden accounts, according tothe statement, had balances of only US $ 306, US $ 342 and US $ 1585 and the account of Al-Zawahiri had abalance of US $ five only.

The statement contained a remark that the account of Al-Zawahiri had remained dormant since 1993. Therewere 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 ortransferred 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.

Over the years, Pakistan, its military dictator Gen.Pervez Musharraf and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)have fine-tuned the art of hoodwinking international community and particularly the US Administration --whether it be in respect of its clandestine WMD assistance to North Korea and Iran, its sponsorship ofcross-border terrorism into India and Afghanistan or evasion of action under the UNSCR No.1373 againstterrorists and other organisations.

Unless India takes advantage of the slight opening provided by the US designation of Dawood as a globalterrorist and acts proactively and aggressively through the UN monitoring mechanism and through bilateralchannels to ensure that Pakistan does not again wriggle out of its obligations under the UNSC Resolution 1373,we will find history repeating itself.

In September 2002, in my article RhetoricOver Reason, I wrote as follows:

"After 9/11, the purely legalistic approach to the question of blocking terrorist funding has givenway to a more pragmatic approach, with actions now being taken by the international community againstsuspected terrorist accounts even on the basis of strong suspicion instead of waiting, as in the past, tilllegally sustainable evidence was forthcoming. This should have been taken advantage of by us by moving for thefreezing of the bank accounts of Dawood Ibrahim and other members of his mafia group wherever they are held --whether in Pakistan, the UAE, South Africa, Nepal, Thailand or elsewhere. Our plea for action could have beenjustified on the basis of the strong evidence at our disposal regarding their involvement in the Mumbai blastsof March,1993."

In a paper presented at a panel discussion on Terrorism in the Indian sub-continent , organized by theUS-India Political Action Committee and the US-India Institute for Strategic Policy at Washington DC on July16, 2003, available here as TheAfghanistan-Pakistan Problem, I had stated as follows:

About 400 survivors of the 500-strong hardcore of Al Qaeda had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistangiving a slip to the US security forces in the beginning of last year. Of these, about 75 are estimated tohave since moved over to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and 30 are estimated to have crossed over into Iran viaPakistan’s Balochistan.

Of the remaining, about 75 took shelter in Karachi and 220 in Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP),Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). Of the75, who took shelter in Karachi, about 50 are still holed up in various hide-outs there with the assistance oftheir Pakistani sympathizers and the mafia gang led by Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted by the Indian authoritiesfor prosecution in connection with the Mumbai (Bombay) blasts of March,1993, a precursor of mass-casualty orcatastrophic terrorism."

India should act on the US order and move against Pakistan before it is too late.

Annexed is an extract from a paper on terrorism and transnational crime presented by me at a meeting of aworking group on this subject held in Shanghai, China, in May last year. The Herald, the monthlyjournal of the prestigious Dawn group, has since come out (August,2003) with more details on thepresence of Dawood in Pakistan and his activities there.

(B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director,Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and, Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter)