The Jehadi Kitchen Diary

Chinese Fear Kidnapping In Pakistan

Following the kidnapping of four Russian diplomats in Baghdad by theMujahideen Shura Council (MSC), of which Al Qaeda's Iraq branch is a member, todemand the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and the release of Chechendetenus in Russia, the Chinese authorities in Pakistan are concerned over thedangers of a copy cat kidnapping of Chinese diplomats posted in Pakistan inorder to demand the withdrawal of the Chinese troops posted in the XinjiangRegion and the release of Uighur detenus held in custody by the Chineseauthorities.

The usually reliable Daily Times of Lahore has reported as follows onJune 26, 2006:

"The Chinese diplomatic mission in Pakistan has said that members of theEastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) are planning to kidnap senior Chinesediplomats and consular officers in the country. Chinese diplomats in Pakistanhave expressed their concern through a letter to the Ministry of ForeignAffairs. They said that some members of the ETIM had arrived in Pakistan andwere planning to kidnap senior diplomats of the Chinese Embassy, sources told DailyTimes. They also said that members of terrorist organisations, including AlQaeda, were providing support to ETIM activists for the kidnapping, sourcessaid. 

"Sources said that the Chinese diplomats had sought increased securityand round-the-clock patrolling of the Chinese diplomatic mission in Islamabadand the consulate general in Karachi. The ETIM is a separatist organisation inthe Xinjiang province of China, and seeks independence on grounds of Islamicidentity. Sources said that the Interior Ministry had issued directives to theinspectors general of police of the four provinces and the Islamabad CapitalTerritory to hunt down the ETIM members and report to it as soon as possible.Diplomatic Protection Department Senior Superintendent of Police Tariq MasoodYaseen said that security around the Chinese Embassy building and residences ofChinese diplomats had been tightened.

Police officials had also been directed to visit religious seminaries intheir areas and investigate possible connections of foreign students,particularly the Chinese nationals, with activists of the ETIM, the sourcessaid. Meanwhile, intelligence agencies have submitted reports to the InteriorMinistry saying that a group of terrorists has arrived in Rawalpindi andIslamabad but been unable to select an appropriate target for kidnapping becauseof enhanced security. They said that the terrorists had travelled to Jalalabadin Afghanistan to deliberate their future plans, sources said.

The independent Eastern Turkistan envisaged by the ETIM includes partsof Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Xinjiang. The ETIM was added to the United Nations ‘list of Al Qaeda and the Taliban,and other individuals, groups and entities associated with them’ in September2002. It has also been declared a terrorist outfit by Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan,China and the United States. The US government accuses the ETIM of committingover 200 acts of terrorism between 1990 and 2001, resulting in at least 162deaths and over 440 injuries."

My comment: The four Russian diplomats are since reported to have beenexecuted by the MSC.

Death Threat to NGOs

Representatives of some Islamic fundamentalist parties and non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs) operating in the tribal areas of Pakistan have receivedanonymous letters threatening to kill them if they do not support the Al Qaedaand the Taliban. Some of the covers carrying the warning letters also hadRs.1,500 in currency notes to enable the recipients to buy their coffins if theydecide not to support the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Waziristan: The Jihadi Cauldron

According to the Reuters news agency, pro-Taliban militants have announced amonth-long ceasefire in North Waziristan from June 25,2006,  to give tribalelders a chance to broker a settlement. 

"We decided that there will be a total ceasefire in the area from our sidefor one month, as the government wants to set up a tribal Jirga here,"Abdullah Farhad, a commander of the militants in North Waziristan, told Reuters."We want (the) tribal Jirga to work freely and settle the issue," he said.Farhad said the militants were calling on the government to abolish all newcheckpoints in the region and replace security forces deployed at checkpointswith tribal police.

He also demanded the release of detained tribesmen and the reinstatement ofofficials who had been removed from their jobs in the region. "If our demandsare fulfilled, we can consider extending the ceasefire," he said. Lt. Gen. (retd.)Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai, Governor of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP),who is responsible for the administration of the Federally-Administered TribalAreas (FATA) of which Waziristan is a part, welcomed the ceasefire announcement."Every positive step will be responded to positively. We will put theirdemands before the Jirga to discuss them and suggest actions," he toldReuters.

My Comments: Coinciding with the visit of President George Bush toIslamabad in the beginning of March,2006, the Pakistan army had launchedoperations against the remnants of the Al Qaeda  taking shelter in NorthWaziristan. Since then, there have been frequent clashes between the Army andthe tribals, including at least one incident of suicide terrorism directedagainst the security forces.

The Army claims to have killed at least 75 members of the Al Qaeda operatingin this area--Arabs, Chechens, Uzbecks and Uighurs. However, there has been nosatisfactory corroboration of these claims. The Army has also been claiming thatneither Osama bin Laden nor his No2.Ayman al-Zawahiri nor Mulla Mohammad Omar,the Amir of the Taliban, are in this area. The Army contends that all the threeare taking shelter in Afghanistan, but this has been denied by President HamidKarzai. Two tribal shoora councils, which are referred to as the PakistaniTaliban, have been spearheading the fight to protect the foreign terroristsoperating in Afghanistan from this area. 

One of these shooras is headed by Haji Omar, the successor of Nek Mohammad,who was allegedly killed by a US missile two years ago, and the other byBaitullah Mehsud.  The shoora council  headed by Haji Omar is activeamong the Ahmedzai-Wazir tribes in the Wana area and the other council is activeamong the Mehsud tribes in the Makin area.

The Pakistani army troops posted in this area have at least been making apretense of acting against the Al Qaeda, the Chechens, the Uzbecks and theUighurs, but they are not taking any action against the Taliban. Jallaluddin Haqqani, a senior commander of the Taliban, and his son Serajuddin operate from Waziristan, where they run training camps for the Taliban.

In its issue for April, 2006, the Herald, the monthly journalpublished by the Dawn group of publications, had quoted an unidentifiedformer member of a militant outfit,  as saying as follows: 'Hundreds ofvolunteers have so far been sent to Wana  where Taliban leaders train themand send them across the border." The Herald also reported that the Hizbul Mujahideen, a Kashmiri terrorist organisation, whose leader SyedSalahuddin operates from Pakistan, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistani Punjabijihadi organisation,  have their own training camps in the Dera and Tankareas of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

British Troops, Bring Your Own Coffins

The illegal FM broadcasting stations operated by the pro-Taliban and pro-AlQaeda groups  in the tribal areas near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border havebeen asking the British troops to bring their coffins when they come to Southernand Eastern  Afghanistan shortly to take up the fight against the Talibanand the Al Qaeda on behalf of the NATO. They have been giving similar advice tothe Canadian troops. They claim that their forefathers had given a bloody noseto the British whenever they tried to venture into the tribal areas before 1947and say that they are eagerly waiting for the British troops to arrive so thatthey could emulate their forefathers.

Madrid 2004, London 2005, Copenhagen 2006?

With the first anniversary of the publication of the Danish cartoonscaricaturising the Holy Prophet coming nearer, the jihadis have been advisingtheir co-religionists  not to forget this insult to Islam. In a messageearlier this year, Osama bin Laden  had himself said that an economicboycott of Denmark was not sufficient punishment for the hurt caused to theMuslims.

My comment: A terrorist strike against Danish nationals and interests,including a possible attack on the cartoonists, is a worrisome possibility.

Pathanis and Pattanis

The Islamists think that the Pattanis of Southern Thailand are Pathans fromJalalabad in Afghanistan. So wrote Mr.Khaled Ahmed in the Daily Times ofLahore (June 28, 2005)

My comment: There are nearly a thousand Pattanis in Pakistan. Most ofthem are studying in the madrasas run by the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI)and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). Sources in Pakistan claim  that the commandand control of the jihadi terrorists operating in Southern Thailand is locatedin the Multan area of Punjab and that many of the leaders are actually RohingyaMuslims from the Arakan  area of Myanmar and not Thais.

LeT And The Indonesian Quake

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JUD), the political wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), amember of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), has carried thefollowing item on its website:

"LAHORE (HabibUllah Salafi): Jama’at-ad-Da’wah has dispatched itsfirst shipment of relief goods worth two million rupees for earthquake survivorsin Indonesia. The shipment, which was dispatched from Masjid al-Qaadiseeah inChauburji, Lahore, included medicines, tents, beddings, etc. A team ofphysicians, surgeons, and aid workers will soon follow the supplies.

"We will help the quake victims of Indonesia just like we helped the quakevictims of Azad Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province, and keep up asustained relief effort until the situation comes back to normal. We ask Muslimcountries, Muslim charities and relief organizations, and the Indonesian peopleto help us generously in this endeavor". This desire was expressed by one ofthe principal leaders of Jama’at-ad-Da’wah Pakistan, and Chairman of IdarahKhidmat-e-Khalq, Maulana Ameer Hamza, and also by Head of Idarah Khidmat-e-Khalq,Hafiz Abdur Ra’oof, during a press conference as aid supplies were beingdispatched for the victims of the Indonesian earthquake.

Yahya Mujahid, Head of Jama’at-ad-Da’wah’s Media and InformationDepartment, and many other prominent leaders of Jama’at-ad-Da’wah werepresent at the occasion. Maulana Ameer Hamza said that, keeping in mind therequirements of the quake victims, Idarah Khidmat-e-Khalq, Jama’at-ad-Da’wahhad begun collecting aid supplies from all over the country. He said more aidsupplies like the current one will be shipped soon, and arrangements to sendover the team of physicians and surgeons had also been finalized, and they wouldsoon leave for Indonesia along with the volunteer aid workers."

Musharraf's Back At It?

In order to prevent the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) ofMrs Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) of Mr Nawaz Sharif fromcoming back to power in the general elections due by October next year, Gen.Pervez Musharraf has again started courting the fundamentalist and jihaditerrorist organisations. While the so-called ban on the Sipah-e-Sahaba, asectarian terrorist organisation, and the LeT continues on paper, he has askedhis intelligence agencies and the police not to take any action against them. Itwas a similar policy adopted by him in October, 2002, which led to the Islamicfundamentalist parties, forming a coalition, winning an absolute majority in theprovincial Assembly of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and emerging asthe largest single group in the Balochistan Assembly.  The Governments ofthe NWFP and Balochistan dominated by them have been openly assisting theremnants of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban operating in Afghanistan from thetribal areas.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd.), Cabinet Secretariat, Governmentof India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai