INDIA
PAKISTAN
NEPAL
BHUTAN
BANGLADESH
SRI LANKA
Terrorism Update
Latest
S.A.Overview
Publication
Show/Hide Search
HomePrint
 
    Click to Enlarge
   

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 22, December 16, 2002

Data and assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the
South Asia Terrorism Portal



STATISTICAL REVIEW

Bomb Blasts in Bangladesh, 2000-2002

 
Date
Place
Killed
Injured
2002 December 7 Mymensingh
18
300
  October 13 Khulna
0
1
  October 11 Rangmati town
3
2
  September 28 Sathkhira town
3
125
  May 1 Gurdaspur upzila (sub-district), Natore
1
25
  April 25 Dhaka
0
2
  April 10 Kushtia
0
0
  February 27 Dhandoba , Barisal district
1
1
  February 4 Chittagong Press Club
1
3
  January 5 Barisal
0
2
     
 
 
2001 October 14 Sirajganj
0
2
  September 25 Sylhet town
2
0
  September 25 Shullah, Sunamganj district
4
0
  September 24 Mollarhat, Bagerhat district
8
100
  September 3 Makahati Bazar, Munshiganj
0
13
  August 25 Feni town
0
7
  June 15 Narayanganj town
21
100
  June 3 Baniachar, Gopalganj district
10
25
  May 31 Duttapara in Tongi
0
5
  April 23 Dhaka
0
2
  April 17 Rajshahi district
1
0
  April 14 Dhaka
8
0
  January 20 Dhaka
6
50
     
 
 
2000 December 25 Dhaka
0
0
  December 24 Dhaka
2
18
  November 21 Khulna
0
4

            *     Compiled from English language media sources.

                         

ASSESSMENT

DUBAI
PAKISTAN

Fellow Travellers of Terrorism
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

In what was seen as a dramatic breakthrough by India, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities announced on December 8, 2002, the arrest of Anees Kaksar Ibrahim in Dubai (He was arrested on December 3, three days after his reported arrival from Pakistan). Anees is one of the fugitives on the list of 20 most wanted terrorists that had been handed over to Pakistan in the wake of the December 13, 2001 attack on India's Parliament. The news improved on December 12 when UAE authorities asked New Delhi to initiate extradition proceedings for Ibrahim against an Interpol Red Corner notice dating back to 1993. Delhi's confidence that it would, finally, get its hands on one of the planners of, perhaps, the worst single act of terrorism in the country - the Mumbai Blasts, a series of explosions at important commercial centres in the financial capital of the country, in which 257 persons were killed, and another 713 injured in 1993 - was strengthened by the fact that the UAE appeared to have changed its attitude towards the extradition or deportation of organised criminals and terrorists operating from its soil. Two prominent fugitives - Aftab Ansari, an accused in the explosions outside the US Information Centre at Calcutta, and Muthappa Rai, an organised crime gang leader - had been deported, on February 9, 2002 and May 29, 2002, respectively, to face Indian justice.

On December 13, however, things began to unravel, with news reports that Anees had been 'released on bail' and 'deported' to Pakistan. Official confirmation is still to be received by authorities in Delhi, but evidence suggests that Anees has, once again, been allowed to slip away from Dubai into his safe haven in Karachi. This is at least the third time this has happened: in January 1996, he was arrested in Bahrain, but was later shifted to Dubai, allegedly on the intervention of some of Dubai's ruling notables, and was then allowed to slip away to Pakistan. He was again arrested in 1998 on charges of having murdered a former associate and then rival, Irfan Goga, in Dubai, but was freed after two days for 'lack of evidence'. These are, however, not the only occasions that Anees has had passage through Dubai, where he maintains a sprawling establishment, owns a number of other properties, operates a thriving combination of legitimate and illegitimate businesses, and where he visits regularly.

Anees' crimes in India do not date back to the terrorist incidents of 1993 alone. He continues as the operational head of the notorious D-Company, created and controlled by his brother Dawood Ibrahim - who tops the Indian 'list of 20' - which still runs the largest organised criminal network in India, and whose operations prominently include contract killing, extortion, the circulation of counterfeit currency, and the provision of a range of freelance services to terrorist groups at the instance of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Dawood and the D-Company enjoy substantial patronage from, and association with, members of the ruling family in this tiny Shiekhdom. Their entry into Dubai was, moreover, sponsored by members of the royal family of Sharjah. It is precisely these associations that have provided immunity and a secure base to the vast range of criminal operations - including gun running across Asia and Africa, international money laundering, drug running from Afghanistan-Pakistan (before it passed out of the hands of Pakistan's ISI and into the more direct Northern routes through Central Asia and Eastern Europe), and a range of associations with terrorist organisations - including, according to reliable open media sources, with the Al Qaeda. Indeed, speculative media reports - as yet unconfirmed by more authoritative sources - suggested that Anees Ibrahim's arrest in the present instance was actually prompted by US suspicions of possible involvement in the attacks on the Paradise Mombasa Hotel, in which 16 persons (mainly Israelis) were killed, and the abortive missile attack on an Israeli commercial plane, both in Kenya, on November 28, 2002.

The D-Company is not the only organised criminal and terrorist group that thrives in Dubai. In some ways, of course, this little "shoppers' paradise" projects an image as an unlikely associate of Islamist extremists and professional assassins. Extending a bare 72 kilometres along the coast of the Arabian Gulf, Dubai is a thriving port City State and the largest free trade zone in all of Arabia. But underlying the glitter and the conspicuous opulence of Dubai is a permissive regime that has made it the money laundering capital of the world, and one of the favoured locations of the commercial and financial operations of transnational terrorist and organised criminal groups. It is precisely this pattern of quasi-official patronage and licentiousness that has facilitated the rise of a veritable gallery of petty criminals from India to the ranks of multinational criminal corporations. On a random sample, Indian Mafiosi, who substantially owe their success to operations based in Dubai at one time of their career or another, include Abu Salem currently in custody in Portugal on charges of travel documents fraud, but wanted by both the USA and India for involvement with terrorist activity; Aftab Bhatki, who controls the entire fake currency operations in India on behalf of Dawood Ibrahim, and who has an Interpol Red Corner notice against him on India's request; Raju Anadkar, perhaps the largest money launderer in the region; Babloo Shrivastava, who controlled his kidnapping and extortion empire in India from Dubai, till he made the mistake of travelling to Singapore and was nabbed and extradited to India, where he currently bides his time in jail; Chotta Shakeel, another D-Company associate, who controls operations in Mumbai from Dubai; Chotta Rajan, a former Dawood man, now a bitter enemy, who the 'Company' tried to assassinate in Bangkok in November 2000; and, of course, Dawood Ibrahim himself, though he now finds residence in Karachi, under the ISI's protection, safer than Dubai. A substantial volume of illegal trade to and from Russia also passes through Dubai, and the Russian mafia has now established a significant presence there. The US is also said to be 'advising' Dubai on how to prevent the 'abuse' of its facilities as a free trade zone by criminal and terrorist groups, and US investigators are currently looking into large volumes of clandestine (hawala) financial transactions by various terrorist fronts connected with the Al Qaeda, especially the movement of escalating volumes of gold in innumerable unaccountable transactions since the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Indeed, Dubai is a veritable Utopia as a secure base for criminal and for terrorist financial operations that target other countries.

Sources indicate that UAE authorities have pleaded helplessness in the Anees Ibrahim case on the grounds that the country has a 'loose federal structure' and cannot exercise direct control over decisions taken in Dubai. The present structures of international law, moreover, make the Interpol - and its 'Red Corner notices' - completely toothless tigers when it comes to uncooperative regimes, as is evident not only in the Dubai case, but in innumerable cases in Pakistan as well.

The present Anees Ibrahim case has, however, one positive aspect: it has demonstrated clearly that Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, has lied blatantly, repeatedly, and on public record. He - and numberless senior officials of his government - have denied again and again that the Ibrahim brothers were in Pakistan. UAE authorities, however, disclosed that Anees Ibrahim's 'port of origin' on his present journey was Pakistan, that he was in possession of, not one, but two Pakistani passports, and that he was 'deported' to Pakistan after his release in Dubai.

December 13, the day Anees Ibrahim was released by Dubai, gifted another victory to the forces of Islamist terrorism in the region, this time in Pakistan. Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a group on the US list of international terrorist organisations, and which is also banned in both Pakistan and India, was released from jail by a 'Court order'. The Jaish remains among the most active terrorist organisations on Indian soil, and has been closely associated with the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and is believed to be an active facilitator in the rehabilitation and resurgence of Al Qaeda survivors currently in Pakistan.

Clearly, the current international legal regime is not equipped to deal with the scourge of international terrorism. All the benefits of the entire range of modern facilities - travel, banking, documentation, finance and communications - are made available to the forces of disorder by collusive regimes that wink at, or actively support their activities. As one American investigator looking into terror-linked hawala transactions in Dubai is reported to have expressed it, "there is a wilful blindness there". The growth and persistence of terrorism is a deeply collusive activity, and many regimes - not just the active sponsors of terrorism and transnational crime - are deeply implicated. Among these, Pakistan and Dubai - certainly for different reasons - merit (dis)honourable mention.

The international community will have to devise new legislative and enforcement measures if the movement of terrorist cadres, weaponry and finances is to be choked off. Otherwise, the civilised world will find itself at a growing disadvantage against what Bernard Lewis has aptly, though in another context, described as "a string of shabby tyrannies, ranging from traditional autocracies to dictatorships that are modern only in their apparatus of repression and indoctrination."



ASSESSMENT

BANGLADESH

Biswa Ijtema and Bombs
Guest Writer: Bertil Lintner
Senior Writer, Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER)

More than three million Muslim devotees from 52 countries gathered along the bank of the Turag river, 30 kilometres north of Dhaka, at Tongi, Gazipur, for the three-day annual Biswa Ijtema (World Congregation) between December 14 and 16, 2002. The significance of the event was underlined by the profile of political leaders who attended: present at the concluding prayers were Bangladesh President, Prof Iajuddin Ahmed; the Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia; Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Sheikh Hasina and other political, civil and military leaders. The Ijtema is organised annually by the Tablighi Jamaat.

The Biswa Ijtema, the second largest congregation of Muslims in the world after the Hajj, ended peacefully despite rumours that some international terrorist groups may have planned to disrupt the event. But, the fact that millions of Muslim devotees from across the world gathered in Bangladesh emphasises the role the country has come to play in the context of international Islamic brotherhood. Although the government in Dhaka has reacted fiercely to any suggestion that the country is becoming a haven for Islamic extremists, reports from Asian and Western intelligence services suggest otherwise.

Shortly after the fall of Kandahar in late 2001, several hundred Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters escaped by ship from Karachi to Chittagong. They were then trucked down to hidden camps in the Ukhia area, south of Cox's Bazaar. Local people report seeing heavily armed men, with a few Bangladeshis among them, in those camps. They were told that they would be killed if anyone told 'outsiders' about this regrouping of ex-Afghanistan fighters in this remote corner of southeastern Bangladesh.

According to other reports from Asian security services, militants from the Jemaah Islamiah - which is connected to the Al Qaeda and wants to set up a gigantic Islamic state encompassing Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and southern Philippines - are also hiding out in these camps, which were set up in the early 1990s to train rebels from the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar's Rakhine State. In more recent years, these camps are in effect, run by Bangladesh's most extreme Islamic outfit, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HuJI), which was set up in 1992, reportedly with financial support from Osama bin Laden.

The Jemaah Islamiah is suspected of being behind a number of planned - but foiled - attacks against Western targets in Singapore, as well as the devastating bomb blast on the Indonesian island of Bali on October 12, 2002, in which nearly 200 people were killed, most of them Western tourists.

The Jemaah Islamiah militants in hiding in southeastern Bangladesh are believed to be mostly Malaysian and Singaporean citizens. It is, however, uncertain to what extent the Bangladeshi security services have been involved in their relocation. But, well-placed local sources say that it would have been impossible without at least some tacit agreement with the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh's chief intelligence agency, which is closely connected with Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Security concerns heightened over the holding of the Biswa Ijtema in Tongi only a week after at least 18 persons were killed and 300 injured in bomb blasts in four cinema halls in the central Bangladeshi town of Mymensingh on December 7. Without being specific, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia described these as a "planned terrorist attack", while Opposition leader Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League, claimed that an "identified fanatic terrorist group within [the ruling] alliance is behind these heinous bomb blasts." The international news agency, Reuters first reported that Home Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury had said that bin Laden's Al Qaeda network was behind the blast, but later had to retract the report after denials from the Minister.

Subsequently, the police raided the local office of Reuters in Dhaka. Dozens of opposition activists were also arrested, but no link to them could be established. The raid on Reuters and the arrest of opposition politicians came only days after a British TV team and their local helpers had been arrested for trying to document the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh and its possible consequences on the country's non-Muslim minorities.

Many foreign observers may contend that the Bangladeshi authorities are simply overreacting to international press coverage, but it could also be that the DGFI has too much to hide, and therefore wants to silence any reports suggesting that their country has become a hot-bed of Islamic fundamentalism.

The four-party alliance that won the Bangladeshi elections in October 2001 includes the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, which has two Ministers in the present government. Its youth organisation, the Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), was behind Bangladesh's most devastating bomb blast before the cinemas in Mymensingh were hit - an explosion on June 15, 2001, at the Awami League office in Narayanganj, in which 21 persons were killed and over a 100 others injured. The same government-connected outfit is also suspected of being behind several other bomb blasts as well as attacks on secular Bangladeshi politicians, journalists and writers.

The ICS is closely connected with the most militant of the Rohingya organisations along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), which also has links to the Al Qaeda. Video footage released by the American cable television network CNN in August this year and obtained from Al Qaeda, shows Rohingyas as well as Bangladeshis training in camps near the country's southeastern border, but well inside Bangladesh.

Al Qaeda's involvement in Bangladesh was confirmed in September this year, when the police in Dhaka arrested seven 'aid workers' working for the Saudi-based Al Haramain Islamic Institute. The men, who came from Libya, Algeria, Sudan and Yemen belonged to an organisation that had first come to Bangladesh to help Rohingya refugees, but later became involved in running Islamic centres all over the country. The so-called Institute has been named by several sources as a front for the Al Qaeda. Perhaps not surprisingly, nothing came out of the arrests and the whole affair was quickly hushed up by the Bangladeshi authorities, suggesting that the 'arrests' were a mistake by some local police officer.

The United States has so far accepted the Bangladeshi government's assurances that the country is not playing host to international terrorist movements, and that it is a reliable partner in the global war on terror. But this ostrich-like mentality may change as more evidence to the contrary comes to light. The arrests of foreign journalists and the raid on Reuters in Dhaka are worrying signs of increasing intolerance in Bangladesh. And the hosting of the Biswa Ijtema is bound to attract the attention of 'friendly' Islamic organisations, which see the country as a perfect place to hide out when international attention is focused on events in more high-profile countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia.


ASSESSMENT


INDIA

The Church: Tackling Politics in the Northeast
Wasbir Hussain
Associate Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi; Consulting Editor, The Sentinel, Guwahati.

Christmas is approaching, but that's not the only reason why the powerful Church in India's Northeast is busy. Church leaders are involved in the extremely delicate task of brokering peace in insurgency-hit States like Nagaland, Manipur and even Meghalaya, and are also taking on the challenge of 'cleaning up' the electoral system and keeping 'bad elements' out of politics in the turbulent region. With elections to the State Legislatures in Nagaland and Meghalaya due early next year, Church organisations in these two states have come out with a set of 'commandments' that includes asking insurgents to keep away from the polls and calling upon the voters to elect such politicians who are 'guided by values.'

An estimated 12 per cent of the 39 million people in the seven Northeastern Indian States are Christians, but they dominate some of the States more completely. Christians account for nearly 90 per cent of Nagaland's population; about 65 per cent in Meghalaya; and over 85 per cent in Mizoram. It is not surprising, consequently, to find the Church actively involved in the social and political life of these areas. On and off, there are calls from various quarters demanding that the Church should not interfere in politics. But, as one Church leader in Nagaland remarked, the Church is also often held responsible for being unable to correct or prevent the wrongs in society. Trapped in a mesh of contradictory expectations, the Church in the Northeast appears to have decided on playing a proactive role in the urgent crises of the region.

The role of the Church as a peace broker in Nagaland has been well documented in the past and Church leaders continue to take the message of peace from the Naga people to the leaders of the warring Naga insurgent factions, urging the latter to end their bloody internecine feuds and solve contentious issues amicably. The Church has also been a bridge between the Naga rebel groups and the Indian government, helping both sides approach an acceptable solution to the 55-year-old Naga insurrection. If the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN-IM) is engaged in peace negotiations with New Delhi today, this is largely due to the untiring efforts of the Church in the State, as also of other non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The Church has also been inadvertently drawn into the politics of the State and of insurgency, in a situation where rebel groups like the NSCN claim to be fighting for a 'Nagaland for Christ.' Under the circumstances, the Church could in no way have remained a passive observer.

The Government of India removed a 12-year-long ban on the NSCN-IM on November 26, 2002, conferring legitimacy on the organization. Speculation is, as a result, rife that the rebel group would interfere directly or indirectly in the approaching State Assembly elections in Nagaland. The State's Congress party Chief Minister S.C. Jamir, the NSCN-IM's bete noire, has already urged Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to extract an assurance from the rebel group that it would not threaten or intimidate voters or candidates during the polls. Jamir is whipping up fears, claiming that the NSCN-IM is likely to back non-Congress candidates or field 'proxy candidates' during the elections in the State.

Jamir's fears may not be without reason. Ironically, separatist rebel groups in the Northeast fighting for sovereign homelands are avowed opponents of the Indian Constitution and insist that they do not believe in the 'Indian electoral system.' More often than not, however, they are found to play an active role during almost every election, either calling on the voters to boycott the elections, or backing candidates of their choice, and in the process threatening their rivals. This has been the case in States like Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, and now, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. The separatists give a great deal of importance to the elections under the 'Indian system' that they love to hate.

The 'code of conduct' for elections, issued by the Church in Nagaland and Meghalaya, needs to be assessed against this backdrop. On November 28, the Nagaland Christian Forum (NCF) convened an all-party meeting in the State capital, Kohima, where it finalized its 'poll guidelines' for the people, the most important of which was a call to the 'Naga national workers', the term ordinarily used by the Nagas to refer to the insurgents, to stay away from the poll process in Nagaland. NCF president Zhabu Therhuja has been quoted as saying, "The Naga national workers (insurgents) are striving for a nobler and higher status for the Nagas. It would be an unpardonable compromise on their part to be involved in the elections." The Forum's 'guidelines' are meant to create an atmosphere for a free and fair election. The NCF made it clear that it was not trying to impose its diktat on the people, but sought to urge them to "allow each voter to vote freely without inhibition, intimidation and obligation."

In Meghalaya, it is the Roman Catholic Church that has taken up the task of enforcing discipline during the forthcoming elections to the State Assembly. On December 8, the Archbishop of Shillong, Dominic Jala, unveiled the Church's 'ten-commandments' for the elections, which exhort voters to vote for candidates who are, among other attributes, guided by societal values; protect rights as enshrined in the Constitution; are pro-poor and impartial; stand for peace and harmony; fight corruption at all levels; and are 'God-fearing'.

The codes of conduct issued by the Church have generally been welcomed in the region, though there are some who wonder why the Church has decided to enter the sensitive arena of electoral politics. The answer, however, is not difficult to find. The rapid deterioration in human values in the Northeast, the instability and ineffectiveness of the region's legislative politics (legislators defect parties at the drop of a hat in States like Manipur and Meghalaya, bringing down governments), rampant corruption and the culture of the gun are some of the issues that trouble all of civil society, and that naturally agitates the Church. Clearly, religious leaders in the region have realized that the Church cannot contribute sufficiently to the restoration of a fast-degenerating society through simple sermonizing about spiritual duties or life after death. There was, consequently, a certain inevitability about the Church's new role as a watchdog of political values in a society where the secular leadership appears to be failing with distressing regularity.

 

NEWS BRIEFS

Weekly Fatalities: Major conflicts in South Asia
December 9-15, 2002

 
Civilian
Security Force Personnel
Terrorist
Total

BANGLADESH

2
0
0
2

INDIA

9
8
42
59

Assam

2
3
4
9

Delhi

0
0
2
2

Jammu & Kashmir

3
4
29
36

Left-wing Extremism

3
0
3
6

Manipur

0
1
1
2

Meghalaya

0
0
2
2

Tripura

1
0
1
2

NEPAL

7
1
33
41

*   Provisional data compiled from English language media sources.



BANGLADESH

Muslim scholastics claim responsibility for Mymensingh-serial blasts: Unidentified Muslim scholastics, who called themselves as "Students of Madrasa", claimed responsibility for the December 7-Mymensingh serial blasts that killed 18 persons and injured 300 more, media reports said on December 12, 2002. The group claimed responsibility in an e-mail sent to the vernacular 'Prothom Alo' newspaper, and also said they received Bangladesh Taka one lakh (hundred thousand) each for carrying out the blasts at four cinemas, from an unnamed Islamic student's organisation. While investigations by police into the blasts are on, a one-member judicial committee headed by a retired Judge has also launched its inquiry on December 11. Some 50 persons, including leaders and workers of the Opposition Awami League, have so far been arrested in this connection. Indian Express, December 12, 2002.



INDIA


Two suspected Pakistani terrorists killed in Delhi: Delhi Police on December 14, 2002, killed two suspected Pakistani terrorists, while they were moving near some offices of the Indian Air Forces (IAF) and paramilitary forces, including that of the Border Security Force (BSF), in the suburbs in south Delhi. Police recovered two AK-47 rifles, some hand grenades, magazines and other documents from the car in which they were travelling. Reports indicated that documents recovered indicted the terrorists belonged to a hitherto unknown organisation called Tehreek-e-Ghaznavi, and according to Delhi Police Joint Commissioner Niraj Kumar, it could be a cover for the Lashkar-e-Toiba. Hindustan Times, December 15, 2002.

Mafia don Anees Ibrahim deported to Pakistan after Dubai Court grants bail: Mafia don Anees Ibrahim, a key accused in the 1993-Mumabi serial blasts and brother of the Pakistan-based Mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, was deported to Pakistan after being released on bail by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities on December 14, 2002. Anees had been arrested on December 3 in connection with a murder committed in Dubai. On December 12, the UAE, through the Interpol, had asked India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to apply for the extradition of Anees. Times of India, December 15, 2002.



PAKISTAN

Lahore High Court releases Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar: A three-member Review Board of the Lahore High Court on December 14, 2002, ordered the release of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar. The Review Board observed that the Punjab government had not provided sufficient material to continue his detention and further stated that the state had failed to establish that during his one-year long detention, Azhar had ever indulged, directly or indirectly, in any activity which could lead to a law and order situation. The government is required by law to secure permission of a three-member review board for extension in any detention beyond 90 days. Azhar was arrested in December 2001 and had been under detention since then. The review board had extended his detention for three months on September 16, 2002, and this extension was to expire on December 15. Dawn, December 15, 2002.

Suicide squads being trained in Pakistan to hit Afghan targets: Suicide squads are reportedly being trained in Pakistan by Al Qaeda operatives to hit targets in Afghanistan and the bombers' families are being promised $50,000, the Associated Press quoted Afghan and Pakistani sources as saying on December 13, 2002. The report said Pakistani terrorists and Taliban sympathisers in the Pakistan military are providing bomb training to suicide squads. The nephew of Maulvi Abdul Kabir, a front ranking Taliban operative, was quoted as saying that the training camps are located in Bajour and Mansehra, North West Frontier Province (NWFP). However, the Pakistani government has denied the presence of any training camps in the country. "Nobody will ever be able to either hide here or establish training camps in Pakistan," said Interior Ministry spokesperson Iftikar Ahmed. Daily Times, December 14, 2002.


SRI LANKA

War will resume if federal solution is rejected, says government chief negotiator: Cabinet spokesperson and government chief negotiator in the peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), G L Peiris, warned at a press conference on December 9, 2002, in Colombo that war could resume if a political solution based on federal framework was not accepted. Some powerful sections in the country are opposing the LTTE--government agreement to work for a federal solution, added Peiris. Daily News, December 10, 2002.


The South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) is a weekly service that brings you regular data, assessments and news briefs on terrorism, insurgencies and sub-conventional warfare, on counter-terrorism responses and policies, as well as on related economic, political, and social issues, in the South Asian region.

SAIR is a project of the Institute for Conflict Management and the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

 

South Asia Intelligence Review [SAIR]

Publisher
K. P. S. Gill

Editor
Dr. Ajai Sahni



To receive FREE advance copies of SAIR by email Subscribe.

Recommend South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) to a friend.

 

 

 

 

 
Copyright © 2001 SATP. All rights reserved.