The Great Vanishing Trick

(To be read in continuation of my earlier article titled TheTerrorist Meteorites And the Pakistanisation of Al Qaeda.)

Apart from rumours and speculation, no credible evidence is still available on the fate of Osama bin Laden.The most persistent and widespread (in the Pashtun belt on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border)speculation is that he has been physically incapacitated by a shrapnel injury and that his speech has alsobeen affected.

This, if true, could explain his audio and visual black-out despite the repeated assertions of personsclaiming to speak on his behalf that he is alive and active and would shortly appear on TV.

The speculation is that he has been sheltered either in the Binori madrasa of Karachi or in one of themadrasas in the tribal belt and that he is under treatment by a group of retired medical experts of thePakistan Army. It is said that his speech impediment is not serious and that his doctors are hopeful that thiscould be rectified.

Presuming that this speculation is correct, this would show the support, which serving and retired officersof the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment continue to extend to bin Laden, his Al Qaeda and hisInternational Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel. 

Another glaring instance of such support from serving officers has come to notice from South Waziristan inthe Federally-administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, where about 4000 to 6000 Pakistani securityforces, helped by about 50 communication experts of the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and theNational Security Agency (NSA), have been hunting for the dregs of the Al Qaeda and the International IslamicFront for over two months now, without any major success. 

Speculation in Pakistan, which put the total number of Pakistani troops involved at 20,000 plus and theAmericans involved at hundreds, has not been corroborated.

In a botched-up operation at Azam Warsak in South Waziristan on June 26, 2002, a raiding party of thePakistani Army and the South Waziristan Scouts raided in an incredibly casual manner a suspected hide-out ofthe Al Qaeda. The suspected members of the Al Qaeda (about 35 strong including wives and children) managed toescape, leaving behind two dead bodies, after killing two officers and eight other ranks of the PakistaniSecurity Forces. 

The GHQ in Rawalpindi initially put out that the Al Qaeda members involved in the exchange of fire wereChechen followers of bin Laden, but local officials of South Waziristan have since clarified that they wereactually Uzbeks belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which is a member of the InternationalIslamic Front. 

After the US air strikes started in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, a large number of the members of theIMU, accompanied by some members of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HUJI) of Pakistan, had escaped into theCentral Asian Republics (CARs), while some others were escorted to the FATA by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), themilitant wing of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), which is also a member of the International Islamic Front.It was this group, which was involved in the clash with the Pakistani Security Forces on June 26, 2002.

Subsequently, on July 3, 2002, a combined party of the Pakistan army and the local Police had signaled apassenger coach (a large private taxi) coming from Bannu to Peshawar to stop at the Jarma checkpost on theoutskirts of Kohat. One of the passengers threw a hand grenade and there was an exchange of fire between thePolice-Army party and some passengers of the coach, who managed to escape. They have since been identified aspossible remnants of the Uzbek group, which had escaped on June 26, 2002. One police constable and five otherswere killed in the exchange of fire. The driver of the taxi and two of the passengers were arrested.

One of the dead persons and the two arrested persons were subsequently found to be serving junior officersof the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI headquarters got its two arrested officers released by thepolice on the ground that they, as well as their dead colleague, were not aware that the other passengers ofthe coach belonged to either the Al Qaeda or the IMU, even though they were heavily armed.

This incident brings to mind another incident of 1995 when a serving Brigadier of the Pakistan Army wasfound travelling in a jeep in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), carrying arms and ammunition, alongwith Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the Amir of the HUJI, which was then a part of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) under Benazir Bhutto, ordered an enquiry into howthe Brigadier was travelling together with Saifullah.

It was this enquiry which brought to light the plot by a group of Army officers headed by Maj. Gen.Zaheer-ul-Islam Abbasi, the former station chief of the ISI in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi inthe late 1980s, who was a close personal friend of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military dictator, toassassinate Benazir, arrest the COAS and other senior officers and set up an Islamic caliphate in Pakistan.

While Abdul Waheed Kakkar and Benazir took immediate action against the Brigadier and his associates,Musharraf has hushed up the present incident involving the suspected role of three junior officials of the ISIin escorting a group of terrorists belonging to the International Islamic Front.

The month of July saw many raids by the Police and the Pakistani security forces in Karachi and other partsof Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, the NWFP and the FATA for suspected members of the Al Qaeda and othercomponents of the International Islamic Front. During these raids, over a hundred members of the LJ, some of asplinter group of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) called HUM-al-Almi, some Yemeni-Balochis and a large numberof Arabs were rounded up and detained for interrogation.

The police and the military-intelligence establishment claim to have established through the interrogationof the arrested or informally detained members of the LJ and the HUM-Al-Almi that while the explosion outsidethe US Consulate in Karachi on June 14, 2002, was the work of the HUM-al-Almi, the grenade attack on Christianworshippers in a Bhawalpur (Punjab) church in October, 2001, the second grenade attack on foreign Christianworshippers in an Islamabad church in March, 2002, and the subsequent explosion in Karachi killing 11 Frenchsubmarine construction experts were the work of the LJ, which was banned by Musharraf on August 14, 2001.

It is suspicious that while all other terrorist incidents have been left to be investigated by the KarachiPolice, the investigation into the explosion outside the US Consulate in Karachi is being handled by theRangers, under the over-all supervision of the GHQ and the ISI. There are many intriguing questions relatingto this investigation, which still remain unanswered.

The arrested/informally detained leaders of the HUM-Al-Almi, who claim to have planned and carried out theexplosion and accompanied the suicide bomber till the Consulate in the same vehicle before taking leave of himand quitting the car before he set off the explosion, were not able to give the number of the car or the nameof the suicide bomber, who, according to them, killed himself.

Many of the Arabs rounded up as suspected members of the Al Qaeda, do not appear to have had anyassociation with it. They were arrested or informally detained just because they spoke Arabic. Thecommunication experts of the FBI and the NSA also seem to have contributed to the unnecessary arrests andharassment of many Arabs. Whenever they overhear anyone talking in Arabic over telephone, they get them pickedup by the Pakistanis on suspicion of being Al Qaeda members. Karachi and other Pakistani cities have a largenumber of illegal Arab immigrants. While many, if not most, of them are admirers of bin Laden, they do notnecessarily have any association with the terrorist activities of the Al Qaeda.

During the whole of July, 2002, while there were many raids to hunt for suspected terrorists in Sindh,Punjab, Balochistan, the NWFP and the FATA, there was not a single raid reported from Pakistan-OccupiedKashmir (POK) and the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan).

Even in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, the NWFP and the FATA, the raids were largely confined to the hide-outsof the LJ, which is not active in India's Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), and suspected Arab organisations. Theonly organisation, active in J&K, whose hide-out was raided was the HUM-al-Almi. This seems to have beenbecause of its involvement in the explosion outside the US Consulate and the identification of some of itsmembers by the communication experts of the FBI and the NSA.

There were no reports of any important raids into the hide-outs/establishments of the Lashkar-e-Toiba(LET), the HUM, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the HUJI, which have been carrying out acts of terrorism inJ&K. The Pakistani media had reported that towards the end of May, 2002, around the time of the visit ofRichard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, to Islamabad, the ISI had re-arrested Prof. Hafiz MohammadSaeed, the Amir of the LET, who had been released after being held in detention for three months after theattack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. But, in response to a habeas corpus petition filed in aPunjab court by his wife, the Pakistani authorities have denied media reports of his re-arrest.

The rumours circulating in Karachi and elsewhere about a large number of members of the Al Qaeda, includingsome leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama's No.2, having escaped to Bangladesh, with the help of the HUJI,which has an active branch in Bangladesh assisted by the Bangladeshi military-intelligence establishment, havenot been corroborated.

What seems to have happened and is still happening is that many Bangladeshis, Arakanese, Malays fromSingapore and Malaysia, Indonesians and Filipinos, who had fought as members of the HUM and the HUJI againstthe Northern Alliance and subsequently against the US in Afghanistan, have been finding their way, with thehelp of the HUJI and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Bangladesh, which is a member of the ruling coalition inDhaka, into Bangladesh.

It is likely that the escaping dregs from the South-East Asian countries may, from Bangladesh, try to sneakback into their respective countries by clandestine overland routes via Myanmar and Thailand.

They apparently do not want to return to their respective countries by air or sea lest they be detected bythe local immigration authorities. India has to remain alert to the possibility of some of these dregsclandestinely transiting through Indian territory by the overland route on their way to Bangladesh.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director,Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai)