QUAKE IMPACT ON JIHADI TERRORISM

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QUAKE IMPACT ON JIHADI TERRORISM

 

by B.Raman

 

No accurate estimate is as yet available on the human losses and

material damage suffered by the Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist

organisations belonging to Osama bin Laden's International Islamic

Front (IIF) as a result of the earthquake, which struck Pakistan-

Occupied Kashmir (POK) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)

of Pakistan on October 8,2005.

 

2. Of the members of the IIF, only the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has

openly admitted extensive damages to its infrastructure in the POK.

It has also admitted the death of at least 70 of its cadres and an

unspecified number of its POK-based office-bearers in the quake. It

has not ruled out the possibility that many more of its cadres might

have died in the POK. It has claimed that Prof-Hafeez Mohammad

Sayeed, the leader of its political wing called the Jamaat-ud-Dawa

(JUD), is alive and denied reports that he was in the POK at the time

of the quake.

 

3. Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi,a spokesman of the JUD, said at Karachi on

October 11: "The group has taken a severe blow. The casualty figure

may cross 100 and even more, as we have no information about those

killed in other areas of Muzaffarabad." He added that the

organisation's members, who survived the earthquake, were attending

funerals after every two to three hours.According to him; the

Jamaat's religious schools and mosques had been razed to the ground.

More than a dozen members died when the roof of the party office

collapsed during a meeting, he said. .

 

4. Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman of the JUD at Lahore , said on October

11 that Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed was not in the region at the time of

the quake and was still alive. "The Jamaat has a strong following in

all the earthquake-hit areas. Sayeed is safe and well. It's time to

do jihad (holy war) of a different nature, by helping people in this

hour of need. The Jamaat teams are working day and night," he added.

Do his remarks mean that the LET too, like the United Jihad Council,

is temporarily suspending its terrorist operations? The answer is not

clear.

 

5. However, the LET has remained silent on the damages and casualties

suffered by it in the NWFP. Even in the POK, it has admitted the

damages only to its legitimate structures such as hospitals, charity

offices and madrasas. It has not referred to its training camps since

it never admits running training camps for jihadi terrorists.

 

6. The Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other members of the IIF, who have

their infrastructure in Pakistani territory, have not come out with

any admissions regarding the losses and damages suffered by them. One

should not over-estimate the damages suffered by the training

infrastructure of the jihadi terrorist organisations. Their training

camps generally consist of tents and other makeshift structures,

which can be shifted from place to place to evade detection and

targeting by the US intelligence agencies. Even if they have been

damaged, the human casualties are likely to be low.

 

7. The problem, which the jihadi terrorists might face in the short

term, would arise from the fact that some areas such as the POK and

the Manshera District of the NWFP, which were favoured by them in the

past for locating their training camps, are now unlikely to be

available at least for some months because of the damages suffered

and the large influx of foreign relief teams, which would weaken the

deniability of any new camps.

 

8. But Balochistan and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas

(FATA), where most of the sanctuaries and training camps of the Al

Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the

Jundullah and other similar organisations are located, have not been

affected by the quake. The jihadi training infrastructure in those

areas are reportedly intact.

 

9. There is no information so far about Osama bin Laden. Jihadi

elements in Pakistan have been making frantic enquiries among

themselves about the safety and welfare of "the Sheikh", which is

possibly a reference to him. This would indicate that he was possibly

in Pakistani territory at the time of the quake.

 

10. The announcement by a Pakistani military spokesman on October 11,

2005, that 24 more US helicopters would be joining the rescue and

relief missions next week has given rise to suspicions that President

Pervez Musharraf has agreed to the US intelligence agencies operating

anti-Al Qaeda reconnaissance missions in the POK and the NWFP in

order to hunt for bin Laden and other remnants of the Al Qaeda under

the cover of quake relief missions. Some of the senior military and

Air Force officers are reported to have reiterated to Musharraf their

misgivings over the wisdom of allowing American personnel to operate

these helicopters. This is one of the issues, which the National

Security Council, chaired by Musharraf, is expected to discuss on

October 12.

 

11. There is an increasing demand that Musharraf should withdraw the

troops deployed on anti-Al Qaeda duties in the FATA and use them for

humanitarian relief work in the POK and the NWFP. There has also been

criticism of the use of helicopters for so-called aerial survey

missions, ostensibly to survey from the air the extent of the quake

damage. There has been a demand that the choppers should be used only

for transporting relief materials and for shifting the injured to

hospitals.

 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat,

Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical

Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow, International Terrorism

Watch Programme, Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Convenor of

its Chennai Chapter. E-mail: itschen36)

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