Pakistan And Terrorism: The Evidence

The international community is yet to understand clearly that Pakistan'sState-sponsorship of terrorism against India in Indian territory is not relatedonly to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K).  This started in the North-Easterntribal areas of India in the 1950s, spread to the Punjab in the 1970s, toJ&K in 1989 onwards and to other parts of India, including New Delhi, sincethe late 1990s.

From 1956 to 1971, it provided safe haven to the Naga and Mizo hostiles inthe Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of the then East Pakistan and gave them armsand training assistance.  During the war in East Pakistan in December,1971,an Indian commando group raided the headquarters of the Mizo National Front (MNF)in the CHT. Laldenga, the leader of the MNF, and other MNF cadres managed toescape into the Arakan Division of Myanmar, leaving behind all their records,which were captured by the Indian commando group.  The records gavecomplete details of the MNF's contacts with the ISI and the training and armsassistance received.

From Myanmar, the ISI took Laldenga to Islamabad, where he lived till 1975.In 1975, Laldenga got disenchanted with the ISI.  He realised that the ISIwas using the MNF to achieve Pakistan's strategic objective against India andthat it had no interest in the future of the Mizos.

He escaped into Afghanistan, travelled from Kabul to Geneva, contacted theIndian diplomatic mission in Switzerland and sought negotiations with the Govt.of India, which ultimately led to a peaceful political settlement in Mizoram. During his talks with the Government of India, he gave complete details of theISI's role in instigating acts of terrorism and insurgency in the North-East. The Govt. of Pakistan totally rejected Indian evidence of the ISI's sponsorshipof terrorism in the North-East.

In the late 1970s, the ISI contacted some members of the Sikh diaspora in theUK and Canada and instigated them to take up a fight against the Govt. of Indiafor what was called an independent Khalistan in Indian Punjab.  A number ofterrorist organisations came into being such as the Dal Khalsa, the BabbarKhalsa, the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), the Khalistan CommandoForce (KCF) etc.  The ISI gave them funds, arms and training in camps setup in Pakistani territory.

The explosive post-1967 increase in hijackings by terrorists all over theworld led to the adoption of international conventions against hijacking andother criminal acts against civil aviation such as those of the Hague (1970) andMontreal (1971) .  These conventions made it obligatory for nations toarrest and prosecute hijackers or extradite them to the countries whose aircraftwere hijacked.  Pakistan has never co-operated with India under theseConventions.

Since these Conventions were adopted, there have been seven hijackings ofaircraft of the Indian Airlines Corporation (IAC) by ISI-trained terroristorganisations.  Five of these were by Sikh terrorists, all India-based, oneby Kashmiri extremists, again India-based, and the seventh in December 1999 bythe Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), a Pakistani-based organisation of Pakistanioffice-bearers and cadres, which was designated by the US as a Foreign TerroristOrganisation in October,1997, under its then name of Harkat-ul-Ansar and whichbecame in 1998 a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front ForJehad Against the US and Israel and signed bin Laden's first fatwa against theUS as stated in the US State Department's Report on the Patterns of GlobalTerrorism during 2000 released on April 30,2001, by Gen. (retd) Colin Powell, USSecretary of State.

All these hijackings took place when the Pakistani military was in power. There was no hijacking of Indian planes by ISI-supported terrorist organisationswhenever Pakistan was under a democratically-elected political leadership. Five of these hijackings took place under Zia-ul-Haq and one each under YahyaKhan and Pervez Musharraf.

After a series of five hijackings in quick succession by Sikh terroristsbetween 1981 and 1984, India managed to get clinching evidence of ISIinvolvement in 1984 in the form of a West German Government report that thepistol given to the hijackers of August 24,1984, at Lahore by the ISI was partof a consignment supplied to the Pakistan Government by the West Germanmanufacturers.  This resulted in a severe warning to Pakistan by the Reaganadministration and a total discontinuance by the ISI of the use of hijacking asa weapon against India for 15 years till the latest hijacking on December24,1999, after Musharraf seized power on October 12,1999.

The first hijacking in 1981 by a group of terrorists of the Dal Khalsa headedby Gajendra Singh was terminated at Lahore by  the Pakistani authoritiesand Gajendra Singh and the other highjackers were ostensibly taken into custody. The Zia administration rejected India's repeated demands for handing them overto India for investigation and trial, even though all of them were Indiannationals.  It told India and the Reagan Administration, which had taken upthe matter with Islamabad, that the highjackers would be tried under Pakistanilaws in a Pakistani court.

The highjackers were not kept in a prison.  Instead, they were allowedto live in the Nankana Sahib gurudwara in Lahore and direct the terroristactivities in Indian Punjab from there.  From the gurudwara, theyorchestrated four more hijackings by different Sikh groups.  After repeatedIndian protests, the Pakistani authorities held a sham trial in which thehijackers were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.  Instead ofsending them to jail after their conviction, different Pakistani administrationsallowed them to continue to live in the gurudwara and organise terroristactivities in Indian Punjab.

In June, 1985, terrorists of the Babbar Khalsa, Vancouver, headed byTalwinder Singh Parmar, a Canadian national, had the Kanishka aircraft of AirIndia flying from Toronto to India blown up off the Irish coast, killing all thepassengers.  As the Canadian investigation into the terrorist incidentzeroed in on the involvement of Talwinder Singh Parmar, he escaped to Pakistanand took up residence in the Nankana Sahib gurudwara and from there, guidedterrorist activities in the Indian Punjab.

Again in June,1985, Bhajan Lal, former Chief Minister of Haryana, and RajivGandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, visited the US.  Before theirvisit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found evidence of a plot by agroup of terrorists of the ISYF, Canada, led by Lal Singh alias Manjit Singh, aCanadian national, to assassinate them. As the FBI's investigation zeroed in onLal Singh, he too escaped to Lahore and took up residence there under a Muslimname in a house belonging to the Jammat-e-Islami (JEI) and started directing theterrorist activities in India from there.

To repeated requests from the Canadian and US authorities for tracing andarresting Talwinder Singh Parmar and Lal Singh, the Pakistani Government repliedthat they were not in Pakistan and might be operating in Indian Punjab. Ultimately in 1992, the Canadian and US authorities obtained conclusive evidencethat both of them had been living in Lahore.  When they again took up thematter with Islamabad, the ISI asked them to leave the country.  They bothentered India, where Lal Singh was arrested by the Indian Police and TalwinderSingh Parmar was killed in an encounter with the Punjab Police along with aPakistani national, who was suspected to be an official of the ISI. ThePakistani authorities refused to accept his dead body under the pretext that hewas not a Pakistani national, but his relatives demonstrated in their home townin Pakistani Punjab demanding that his dead body should be brought back toPakistan for burial.

Before 1992, the Government of India had repeatedly taken up with the USA thequestion of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab, but Washington DCrejected all Indian evidence against Pakistan under the pretext that theevidence was based on interrogation during which the Punjab Police must haveused torture.

During his interrogation, Lal Singh gave complete details of Pakistanisponsorship of terrorism in Punjab.  The Government of India invited thecounter-terrorism experts of the US and other Western countries to come to Indiaand interrogate him.  They were assured that no Indian official would bepresent during the interrogation so that they could satisfy themselves that noforce or torture was used.  Some Western countries accepted the offer andsent their experts to interrogate him.  They went back satisfied thatIndia's complaint of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab stood fullycorroborated.

The US was the only Western country which declined the Indian offer.  Itwas afraid that if he told the US interrogators about the Pakistani role, theywould no longer be able to reject his statement as obtained under torture. Nor was the US interested in taking him to the US for investigation andprosecution since it was afraid that if he testified before a US court about thePakistani sponsorship of terrorism in Punjab, Washington DC would no longer beable to evade declaring Pakistan a State-sponsor of terrorism.  They closedthe investigation against him on the ground that this was unnecessary since hewas already being prosecuted in India.

Before 1993, Dawood Ibrahim, the notorious narcotics smuggler and mafialeader, his brother and the principal members of his gang were living in Dubai,but used to frequently visit Karachi in connection with their narcoticssmuggling business.

Details of their close nexus with the ISI  came during theinvestigations into the Mumbai blasts of March 1993.  The perpetrators weretaken to Dubai with Indian passports.  At Dubai, Dawood got them Pakistanivisas on plain pieces of paper from the local Pakistani consulate.  Theywere then taken to Karachi by Pakistan International Airways (PIA) flights,received at the tarmac by Dawood Ibrahim's representative in Karachi, and takenout of the airport without immigration formalities.

They were then taken to a training camp in the North-West Frontier Province,suspected to have been run by the Harkat-ul-Ansar (now called theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen) and, after training, sent back to Mumbai by the sameroute.  Their plain paper visas were removed from them by Dawood's men anddestroyed.  Their Indian passports did not show any entry of their visit toPakistan.

Dawood separately sent the explosives, detonators and timing devices given bythe ISI by boat to clandestine landing points on the Maharashtra coast. One of these detonators and timing devices was recovered from an explosivedevice, which had failed to explode at Mumbai, and given to US law-enforcementofficials for examination by their forensic science laboratory.  Theyconfirmed that the timing device was of US origin and part of a consignmentgiven to the Pakistani Government during the Afghan war of the 1980s for use inAfghanistan.  Austrian experts certified that hand-grenades of Austriandesign found on the spot had been manufactured in a Pakistan ordnance factorywith technology and machine tools sold by an Austrian company to Pakistan'sDefence Ministry.

While some perpetrators of the blasts were arrested by the Mumbai Police,others including the members of the Memon family of Mumbai, who were close toDawood Ibrahim and had played a leading role in organising the explosions,managed to escape to Karachi via Dubai or Kathmandu.  When the US, atIndia's instance, started making enquiries about their presence in Karachi, theISI took them to Bangkok, kept them in a hotel there till the US enquiries hadceased and then brought them back to Karachi. Some members of the Memon Familysubsequently got fed up with the ISI and returned to India in 1994, where theywere arrested and interrogated.  They gave full details of the ISI's rolein the Mumbai blasts.

When the Government of India took up with Interpol and the authorities of theUnited Arab Emirates the question of the arrest and deportation of Dawood forhis involvement in the explosions, the Dubai authorities pressurised him in 1994to leave Dubai.  He and Chhota Shakeel, his lieutenant, shifted to Karachi,from where they supervised their underworld operations in India, Nepal andelsewhere.

Many Caribbean and South Pacific countries offer fugitives from justice whatis called 'economic citizenship' to enable them to evade arrest and deportationto countries where they are wanted for crimes.  This citizenship is sold inreturn for a minimum deposit in foreign currency kept by them in local banks.

Pakistan does not have any laws providing for such 'economic citizenship',but its Government, on the ISI's advice, informally awarded economic citizenshipto Dawood Ibrahim, who was issued a Pakistani passport under a different name. Similarly, Chhota Shakeel was given  a Pakistani passport under a differentname.

It is believed that in the 1990s, Dawood Ibrahim had financially helpedPakistan in the clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technology andcomponents and that this factor too probably influenced Islamabad's decision togrant him economic citizenship.

In 1995, US President Bill Clinton, by presidential decision directive number42, designated the activities of organised crime groups a major threat tonational security and made it a priority for American intelligence agencies. A similar decision was taken by John Major's government in the United Kingdom onthe recommendation of Stella Rimington, then Director-General of MI5, and byother European Union governments.

Since then, Dawood Ibrahim's gang was amongst the organised crime groupsbeing closely monitored by various Western intelligence agencies, therebykeeping him largely confined to Karachi, where he is a privileged guest of theISI.

Indian investigators had a cast-iron case against Dawood Ibrahim, ChhotaShakeel and the two Memon brothers still living in Karachi.  This was basedon the interrogation of those captured, xerox copies of the manifests of theflights by which they went to Karachi from Dubai for training and returned toDubai after the training, evidence regarding their stay in Bangkok and technicalintelligence.

Since the Pakistani authorities could not question the credibility of thisevidence, they have been taking up the stand since 1994 that none of them is inPakistan.  When the Government of India took up the matter with Musharrafduring his visit to New Delhi in July,2001, he took up the same stand.

Musharraf was once again proved a "straight-faced you know what" byan investigative cover story carried by the "Newsline", a reputedmonthly journal of Pakistan, in its September, 2001, issue under the title"Portrait of a Don".  The report, inter alia, said: "DawoodIbrahim and his team, Mumbai's notorious underworld clan including his righthandman Chota Shakeel and Jamal Memon, are on India’s most wanted list for aseries of bomb blasts in Mumbai and other criminal activites.  After the1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, the gang have made Karachi their new home and base ofoperations.  Living under fake names and IDs, and provided protection bygovernment agencies, they have built up their underworld empire in Karachiemploying local talent........ Dawood Ibrahim has been operating out of Karachiwith the apparent blessings of the Government."

Dawood Ibrahim and his gang have had very little to do with the terrorism inPunjab and J & K.  Pakistan's jehadi organisations have no apparentinterest in them.  And yet, the military junta has not been arresting andhanding them over to India due to fears that their interrogation might bring outconclusive evidence about the ISI's involvement in the Mumbai blasts and aboutits use of this mafia group for the clandestine procurement of nuclear andmissile technology and components from the West and North Korea .

The Musharraf junta has consistently avoided carrying out its obligationsunder the Hague and Montreal Conventions in relation to the hijacking ofDecember,1999.

The use by the ISI of the HuM, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and theLashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), all Pakistan-based organisations, with Pakistanioffice-bearers and cadres and with links with the Al Qaeda for sponsoringterrorism in J & K and now in New Delhi is well-known.  Details of thiscould be found in my previous articles.

The most damning indictment of the terrorist activities of theseorganisations from Pakistani territory against India and their links with the AlQaeda is to be found in the State Department's report on the Global Patterns of Terrorism during 2000.  This report is based not on Indian evidence, but onindependent evidence gathered by the USA.

The credible nature of the evidence against them could be understood from thefact that they have been banned by the UK under the Terrorism Act of 2000 anddesignated as Foreign Terrorist Organisations by the US under a 1996 law.

The Musharraf junta has at every stage refused to act or avoided actingagainst terrorists operating from its territory against India, whether they beconnected with the North-East or Punjab or J & K or narcotics smuggling. The pretexts used are that either the evidence is not credible or that theterrorists wanted by India are not in its territory even though its own mediahas been reporting on their presence and activities from its territory.