Why The French?

At the time of recording this tentative assessment (2 PM Indian Standard Time  on May 8, 2002), theonly details available about an explosion at Karachi on the morning of May 8, 2002, were as follows: Twelvepersons, nine of them French, and the remaining Pakistanis were killed when an explosion destroyed a bus ofthe Pakistani Navy outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi.  Twenty-five others were injured, many of themFrench.  All of them were working in a production facility of the Pakistan Navy near Karachi where theFrench company producing the Agosta class submarines was assembling a submarine out of parts imported fromFrance and training Pakistani Navy personnel in the assembly and ultimate indigenous production of submarinesout of technology bought by Pakistan from the French company. The bus was to transport the French personnel tothe work site as it was doing every day.  According to the Karachi Police, the explosion would appear tohave been caused by a suicide bomber sitting inside a car.  No organisation  has claimedresponsibility.

The contract with the French for the purchase, assembly and ultimate production of the submarines wasinitiated during the second tenure of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto as the Prime Minister (1993-97).  Since then,it has been enveloped in a controversy regarding the alleged payment of bribes by the French to Asif Zardari,her husband , senior naval officers and the US-based brother of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who allegedly acted asone of the middlemen.

For years, there have been serious allegations in Pakistan that apart from heroin money, one of the majorsources of illegitimate income for Pakistan's senior military officers was bribe from foreign arms traders. The maximum number of such allegations have been against French and Ukrainian arms manufacturers/traders.

When Musharraf started his so-called accountability process against Nawaz Sharif, Benazir and otherPakistani leaders after he captured power on October 12, 1999, he came under strong criticism for directinghis enquiries only against his political opponents and for not taking action against senior military officers,who, it was contended, were as corrupt as the political leaders, if not more.  He, therefore, made apretense of acting against some senior naval officers, but let them free after they agreed to surrender to theGovernment the bribes taken by them.

The allegations against senior military officers did not subside and, before his recent visit to the US inFebruary, 2002, the allegations against his US-based brother re-surfaced.  It was also alleged thatMusharraf and his wife had acquired a house in the US with the money paid by the French to his brother.

It is difficult to accept at this stage that these allegations of bribery of senior military officers bythe French might have played any role in the Karachi explosion.  The Karachi Police claim that it was asuicide bomber who killed the French.  If this is so, it has to be underlined that thePakistan/Afghanistan-based  Jehadi organisations generally undertake suicide missions, as they have done43 times in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and other parts of India, only for religious reasons.  They donot do it for non-religious reasons such as payment of bribery.

The French Government is a member of the US-led international coalition against terrorism, but its role inAfghanistan has been minimal.  Moreover, the criticism in Pakistan's pro-Osama bin Laden religious presshas been mainly against the US, Israel and India.  There is hardly any criticism of the other members fortheir role against bin Laden.  Surprisingly, there has been no criticism of even the British, not to talkof the French, by the Jehadi organisations allied with bin Laden.

So far, these organisations have not  given any inkling of any anger against the French for religiousreasons.  If at all this blast had a religious motive, a possible reason could have been the perceivedFrench co-operation with the USA in the investigation of the Pakistani links of Richard Reid, the so-calledshoe bomber, who started his fateful journey to the USA from Paris. The French counter-terrorism agencies havealso been very active in investigating the links of the Al Qaeda in France, and their bank accounts and inhaving them frozen.

While the Karachi Police have been saying that the explosion was directed at the French.  One shouldnot rule out the possibility that the explosion was directed in general at the Sheraton Hotel where manyforeigners, including Americans, stay and that the Pakistani naval bus carrying the French bore the brunt ofthe blast as it was parked near the explosive- laden car.

If the explosion was directed specifically at the bus, it assumes not only an anti-French, but also ananti-military motive, that is, to disrupt the functioning of the submarine production facility.  Of thevarious terrorist organisations based in Pakistan, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and theHarkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) had in the past targetted foreigners in Pakistan as well as in J & K, butthey generally do not indulge in suicide bombing.

The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) indulge in suicide bombing, but they avoid hittingat the interests of the Pakistan military-intelligence establishment, to which they are beholden.  Thekidnappers of Daniel Pearl, the journalist of the Wall Street Journal of the US, were pro-military anddemanded the release by the US of the impounded F-16 aircraft ordered by Pakistan in the late 1980s as one oftheir conditions for the release of Pearl.

The LET has its headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore, and has not shown in the past a capability forspectacular terrorist operations in Karachi.  The JEM, which has its headquarters in the Binori madrasaof Karachi, the HUM and the HUJI have a demonstrated capability for operations in Karachi.

Another organisation which would come under focus is  Al-Saiqa, which came to notice for the firsttime in January, 2002, and has been taking an anti-military and an anti-foreigner line.  It attacked apatrol of the Frontier Constabulary in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in January, but has beendormant thereafter.  Its pamphlets have been virulently anti-military, but it has demonstrated nocapability for operations in Karachi. 

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