SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW-Volume 10, No. 40, April 9, 2012

Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 10, No. 40, April 9, 2012

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 ASSESSMENT PAKISTAN: Gilgit-Baltistan: Orchestrated Strife - Ajit Kumar Singh PAKISTAN: Terror by Abduction - Ambreen Agha PAKISTAN Gilgit-Baltistan: Orchestrated Strife Ajit Kumar Singh Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) has been an area of enduring darkness and oppression since its occupation in 1948, in the wake of India’s bloody Partition, and is, again, reeling under a renewed cycle of acute violence. The current troubles commenced with the killing of 18 Shias in the Kohistan area of neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on February 28, 2012, and took an uglier turn on April 3, 2012. At least 24 people have died and several others have been injured, in incidents across GB, since the morning of April 3 (till the time of writing). Unconfirmed reports put the number of dead at more than 250. Giving his account of the escalation, GB Police officer Basharat Ali noted that the violence within the region commenced on April 3, when five persons were killed in Gilgit city in clashes between the Police and protesting cadres and sympathizers of the recently banned Sunni formation, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), a reincarnation of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). The outfit had called for a strike in Gilgit, to press the Government to release its ‘deputy secretary general’, Maulana Ataullah Sadiq, who was arrested on March 28, 2012, in connection with firing on a Shia procession on March 4, 2012. The March 4 procession had been organized to protest against the February 28, 2012, Kohistan killings. On April 3, angry protesters burnt tyres and forced shopkeepers to shut down their shops. Meanwhile, an unidentified person hurled a grenade at the protesting ASWJ cadres, killing at least seven protestors. Subsequently, mosques in the Kashroot area of Gilgit made announcements to retaliate against the Shias in the Diamer District of GB and the Kohistan District of KP. Unsurprisingly, 12 Shias were killed when unidentified assailants opened fire on buses on Karakoram Highway (KKH) near Gonar Farm in Chilas, headquarter of Diamer District, on April 3. According to eye witnesses, miscreants also set ablaze four buses. In a number of attacks on public transports, some 300 passengers were reported missing, and their whereabouts are yet to be ascertained. Fresh lashkars (armed groups) were reported to have embarked from the Chilas, Diamer and Kohistan areas towards Gilgit and its outskirts, to take the ‘revenge’ for the grenade attack on the ASWJ protestors, but were prevented from entering the town by locals in the outlying villages.

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW

Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 10, No. 39, April 2, 2012

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 ASSESSMENT · INDIA: Maoists: Enduring Strengths - Ajai Sahni · INDIA-SRI LANKA: Disgrace - Ajai Sahni INDIA Maoists: Enduring Strengths Ajai Sahni Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management & SATP In quick succession, three disruptive incidents have shocked India out of the complacency that had set in, as the policy establishment celebrated sharp declines in violence and fatalities engineered by the Communist Party of India – Maoist (CPI-Maoist), over the past year. The worst of these incidents was, of course, the March 27, 2012, improvised explosive device (IED) attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) transport at Pustola in Gadchiroli District, Maharashtra, which killed 12 and injured 28. In their enthusiasm during CRPF Director General Vijay Kumar’s visit to Fulbodi Gatta to inspect a Community Outreach Programme, the troopers had ignored standard operating procedures (SOPs), driving over a road that had not been sanitized in advance. The Maoists were quick to take bloody advantage. A loss of lives among SF personnel, however, is easily ignored and quickly forgotten by the Indian state. The abduction of foreigners and the inevitable international media carnival that follows, tends to be far more embarrassing, for much longer, especially when the ‘hostage drama’ extends over weeks. The ‘arrest’ as the Maoists chose to describe it, of two Italians – a tourist and a tour operator – on March 14, 2012, in the Daringbadi Block of Kandhamal District, Odisha, has, consequently, shattered the illusion of an ‘improved internal security situation’ to a far greater extent. While one of the hostages, Claudio Colangelo, was released on March 25, 2012, the second, tour operator Paulo Basusco, continues to be held hostage by the rebels at the time of writing. The abduction occurred while the Italians were moving in areas of Maoist influence, officials claim, against the advice of the administration. Even as the Italian hostage drama was being played out, a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), tribal leader Jhina Hikaka, from the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD), was abducted on March 24, 2012, near Laxmipur in Koraput District, Odisha, when he chose to ignore security procedures, to travel through Maoist dominated territories from Semilguda to his constituency, Laxmipur. Hikaka’s vehicle was stopped near Toyaput, and he was abducted after he identified himself. The Basusco and Hikaka abductions remain unresolved at the time of writing. Crucially, all three actions were incidents of opportunity, reflecting enduring Maoist capacities, rather than strategic intent or planning, and demonstrating quite clearly that a decline in fatalities is not synonymous with a decline in rebel capacities or with an improvement in the ‘security situation’. Indeed, despite the significant reverses inflicted on the Maoists, especially at the leadership level, as well as some contraction in their areas of operation, the rebels’ disruptive capabilities in their core areas along the purported ‘Red Corridor’, remain substantially intact.

Iranian and Hezbollah Terrorist Attacks against Israeli Targets Abroad

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center

February 19, 2012

 

Iranian and Hezbollah Terrorist Attacks against Israeli Targets Abroad
The Situation on the Ground and Background Information ¹
(February 15, 2012)

 

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Overview

1. For the past half year (May 2011-February 2012) Iran and Hezbollah have organized and carried out a terrorist campaign against Israeli targets abroad. So far six attacks have been attempted in five Asian countries, four in sequence (Turkey, Azerbaijan, twice in Thailand) and two simultaneously (India and Georgia). Several methods were employed, the most conspicuous of which, according to information made public so far, was the attaching of a magnetic explosive device to a vehicle (or vehicles) mainly used, in our assessment, by representatives of the State of Israel.

2. Iran (through the Quds Force and other apparatuses linked to the regime) conducts a global terrorist campaign against countries and individuals it perceives as its enemies: the United States and the West, Israel and the Jewish people, Saudi Arabia and other pro-Western Arab countries, and Iranian and foreign figures who oppose the Iranian regime. Hezbollah and foreign operations apparatus serve as the main Iranian proxy, handled by the Iranians for subversion and terrorism in the Middle East and around the globe. Both the Iranians and Hezbollah repeatedly and strongly deny involvement in terrorism and subversion around the globe.

Israeli Embassy Officials Attacked in India and Georgia

JERUSALEM — Unidentified bombers attacked staff at Israeli embassies far apart in India and Georgia on Monday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, and images from New Delhi showed what appeared to be a minivan consumed by flames.

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Mustafa Quraishi/Associated Press

Indian officials examined a car belonging to the Israeli Embassy after an explosion tore through it in New Delhi on Monday.

“There was one attempted attack, and one successful, as it were,” Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, was quoted by Reuters as saying. “In both cases, the people concerned worked with the Israeli embassies.”

He also confirmed that a bomb had been found in a car belonging to a staffer at the embassy in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, which was defused by local police.

Indian police said at least one person had been injured in New Delhi but there was no immediate word on fatalities.

Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry, confirmed that a bomb was discovered affixed to the car of an employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi.

“The car of a Georgian national working for the Israeli embassy was mined,” he said. “The embassy employee noticed a suspicious object and he called the police, and the police successfully defused it before it went off.”

He said the car was not parked close to the embassy at the time. He said this was the first attempted attack on an employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi. Police have not yet identified any suspects, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the apparently coordinated attacks.

While the world braces for e-threats, India moves slow

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6 Feb, 2012, 10.58AM IST, Rajat Pandit,TNN

MUNICH: After the first four “real” battlefields of land, air, sea and now increasingly space, India needs to get very serious about the virtual front as well. The country should begin planning a full-fledged military cyber command, instead of the current piecemeal and disjointed steps to bolster cyber-security, grappling as it already is with incessant online espionage and other attacks from China, Pakistan and others.

This was the clear takeaway from the deliberations on cyber-security and cyber-warfare in the high-profile Munich Security Conference on Sunday, even though India hardly figured in the discussions.

Experts said the emergence of “cyber-weapons” like the Stuxnet software ‘worm’ that was used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme over a year ago, had changed the entire security ballgame, almost on par with the use of nuclear bombs for the first time in 1945.

Indian Mujahideen penetrates Chennai college

November 28, 2011

• By V.P. Raghu

In an early morning operation in a sleepy rain-hit city suburb, security agencies picked up four college students and a man from Delhi, suspected to be members of a sleeper cell of terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM), from a house at Vijayaraghavan Nagar in Selaiyur on Sunday.

At least three other students and another man, however, escaped the dragnet. “All the students are from Bihar. Based on an input from intelligence agencies, the people staying in the house were picked up early on Sunday morning. Five of them were detained for further questioning while the others, including two software professionals, were let off after initial enquiry,” official sources said here.

“Detection of suspected terror modules gains significance particularly in the background of a pipe bomb being found on BJP leader L.K. Advani’s yatra route a month ago in Madurai. The anniversary of the Babri masjid demolition is also around the corner,” a senior police official said.

Of the four students picked up, one is doing MBA while the other three are students of engineering in private colleges, two of which are attached to Anna University. The 52-year-old man from Delhi who was also detained is said to be the uncle of one of the students.

“Another elderly man had also come to visit the students. He and three other students are now missing. The missing students are studying engineering,” said a police official.

Those in Indian intelligence circles believe that IM had branched off from Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) after the government banned the latter.

Security on coastline must be tightened: Narendra Modi – India

Published: Sunday, Nov 27, 2011, 17:36 IST
By DNA Correspondent| Place: Gandhidham| Agency: DNA

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Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi emphasised on the need to evolve a strategic consensus and agreement among different nations for a common legal and judicial framework to combat the growing menace of terrorism and piracy through sea routes.

Modi was inaugurating the two-day international conference on ‘Global Maritime Security & Anti-Piracy’ at Gandhinagar.

He stressed on the need to ensure that no terrorist attack takes place along the sea coast in a country like India which has a long coastline. Gujarat has a 1600km long coastline.

Modi said that the 26/11 attack on Mumbai cannot be forgotten and to avoid such incidents, coastal security has to be increased.

Justice Dancan Gaswagha, Seychelles Supreme Court, Ambassador for Denmark in India Freddy Swane, Ambassador for Somalia Coast, Ebyan Mahamed Salah and others were also present at the conference.

China, Pakistan boost anti-terrorism

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JHELUM, Pakistan — The Pakistani and Chinese attack choppers swoop low across the valley, strafing a mock terrorist hideout and a bomb-making factory. Then a joint commando team storms the camp — to the gentle applause of top brass from both nations watching from the stands.

The fact that such a drill is needed reflects a new concern troubling their long-standing alliance: Chinese militants along the Afghan border allegedly aiding separatism in China and plotting terrorist attacks there

Countries around the world, especially the U.S., share Chinese concerns about Pakistan’s militant-infested tribal regions, but few get the same kind of public commitment of help as Beijing. It’s a legacy of China’s oft-hailed “all-weather friendship” with Pakistan.

Anti-terror cooperation is the latest example of the special relationship between the neighboring countries.

China’s good will is vital to Pakistan: China is its largest defense supplier, and it has helped construct two nuclear reactors. Chinese investments help keep the Pakistani economy afloat.

India -Beat constable key to busting terror modules: PM

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Calcutta News.Net, Friday 16th September, 2011 (IANS)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday highlighted the key role played by beat constables in busting terror modules and networks and said traditional means of collecting intelligence inputs had gone into disuse.
‘The role of a vigilant and effective beat constable can be proactive in checking the activities of networks that otherwise operate under the radar,’ Manmohan Singh said while addressing directors general and inspectors general of police here.

Terrorism Concerns on U.S.-India Agenda

 

July 20, 2011

Author: Jayshree Bajoria, Senior Staff Writer

Clinton shakes hands with India’s Foreign Minister Krishna before their meeting in New Delhi. (B. Mathur/Courtesy Reuters)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in India for the second round of the U.S.-India Strategic dialogue, discussed a laundry list of issues, from defense, trade, and civil nuclear cooperation, to women’s empowerment, education, and innovation.