Author: Charles Piller, World Report
Publication: Deccan Herald
Date: March 8, 2001
Introduction: Terrorist organisations
are increasingly using the net to further their cause
A car bomb shattered storefronts
in Netanya, a seaside resort town in northern Israel, and wounded 60 diners
and shoppers on the evening of January 1. There was one fatality - the
bomber himself.
The group behind this blast didn't
call a TV station to claim credit. Instead Hamas, the Palestinian organisation
that sponsors acts of terror against Israel, posted a note on its Web site.
It turns out that the Internet inexpensive,
open and accessible at anytime from anywhere - is an ideal tool for terrorists.
Scores of guerrilla armies and political
factions locked in holy wars and liberation struggles flock to the Net
to send messages undiluted by the press and untouched by government censors.
Hezbollah and Hamas in the Middle East, guerrillas with the Maoist group
Shining Path of Peru and revolutionaries across Europe and Asia operate
their own Internet sites. The most popular terrorist sites draw tens of
thousands of visitors each month.
Hamas Web site presents political
cartoons, streaming video clips and photo montages depicting the violent
deaths of Palestinian children. The Armed Islamic Group, a fundamentalist
sect warring with the Algerian government, posted a detailed bomb-making
manual.
The online home of the Tamil Tigers,
a liberation army in Sri Lanka best known for the 1991 assassination of
former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, offers position papers, daily
news and peddles free e-mail services. Other terrorist sites post electronic
bulletin boards, tips on smuggling money to finance their operations and
automated registration for e-mail alerts to foment revolt.
Experts still are unclear whether
the ability to communicate online worldwide is prompting an increase or
a decrease in terrorist acts. But they agree that online activities substantially
improve the ability of such terrorist groups to raise funds, lure new faithful
and reach a mass audience.
"There is a tendency to think that
these people are not computer savvy, that they run around with (AK-47s)
and that's about it," said Ben Venzke, an intelligence researcher at IDefense,
a Fairfax, Virginia, computer security company But the Internet "is the
perfect vehicle for them to generate support." Yet the US government has
lagged in responding to this surge of terror groups online.
"I give us a 'C-minus' in following
these issues," said a US counter-terrorism official who requested anonymity.
"We're still trying to get our arms around exactly what we're dealing with."
Terrorists rarely rely on their Web sites to communicate within their groups.
More commonly, they use encrypted - or digitally scrambled - e-mail, according
to the FBI. But even that method is widely distrusted.
"The FBI has developed a system
to intercept (and read e-mail). The British intelligence (agency) MI-5
and Scotland Yard have developed similar programmes," said Isaac Velazco
Fuertes, Web manager for Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, in
an interview from Germany, where the group's main Web site is based. "We
believe that to communicate among members using (our Web sites or e-mail)
is to be exposed." To solve the problem, some terrorists place seemingly
innocuous messages that contain coded instructions on outsiders' Web site
bulletin boards.
Others hide messages within digital
images. Islamic extremists, including some connected to Osama bin Laden
embed encrypted messages within pornography, then post such images on public
Web sites. The intended recipients download the images, then extract and
decrypt the messages.
"The value of this technique is
much like a classified ad," Venzke said, "the sender doesn't even need
to know who the recipient is." Scores of Israeli and Palestinian Web sites
have been vandalised.
Pakistani and Indian computer hackers
have done the same in response to the bloody conflict between those nations
over Kashmir.
"When tensions arise on the ground,
you see a parallel rise of activity in cyberspace," said Venzke, who recently
completed a report on the Web wars for commercial clients.
And no matter how much a group may
revile the US, most factions translate their sites into English, the Web's
lingua franca.
"You can't work on the Internet
if you don't know English very well," said Hezbollah's Hussein, who was
educated in Europe and is fluent in English.
American firms also play a significant
role in back-office support for some terrorist sites, according to Internet-address
registration records.
A University of California, San
Diego, student group maintains the "Burn!" Web site that hosts offerings
from a wide range of radical-left organisations, including an English-language
version of the Tupac Amarusite.
The Peruvian guerrillas are one
of 29 groups officially designated on the US State Department's foreign
terrorist list. Tupac Amaru seized the Japanese Embassy in Lima in 1996,
taking over 400 hostages. A UCSD representative said the university neither
endorses nor censors the site, which operates on UC computers.
And until recently Interland Inc.,
a medium-size Internet service provider in Atlanta, hosted several Hezbollah
Web sites. The company said it terminated contracts with three Hezbollah
sites in December and January for unspecified violations of its usage agreement.
Hezbollah then switched to a Lebanese provider.
The company also hosts the Web site
for the UN mission addressing the Taliban regime, Islamic fundamentalists
who rule most of Afghanistan. The Taliban was severely sanctioned in January
by the UN for harbouring terrorists, including Bin Laden.
Many terrorist sites seem to preach
to the converted, but others build surprisingly diverse audiences. Hezbollah
claims 40,000 visitors per month to its sites - a paltry showing compared
with the 50-million-plus on Yahoor America Online. But they have proved
influential. In one case, Hezbollah forced the Israeli military to recant
its story about a commando disaster
After 11 Israeli soldiers were killed
by Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1997, Israel negotiated a bodies-for-prisoners
swap. Israel only reported the return of one soldier's body, although the
remains of two others also were returned. The army secretly buried the
remains.
"Only after Israel learned that
the Hezbollah planned to (and ultimately did) post the information on its
Internet site did (the Israeli military) decide to pass the information
on to the two families," the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported. A scandal
ensued.
Last summer, Israelis seeking information
on the fighting in southern Lebanon looked to Hezbollah Web sites for news
or images of casualties that may not have appeared in the Israeli press
due to military censorship, Hoffman said.
Given the violence by many national
governments against political opponents, the definition of "terrorist"
can be murky. In the US, Web sites are protected by the First Amendment.
The FBI does not track visitors to the sites or monitor content unless
it is investigating a specific illegal activity, a spokesman said. But
US law does prohibit fund raising by groups on the State Department list
of foreign terrorists.
One organisation that apparently
fell foul of that rule recently was the Brooklyn, NY-based Hatikva Jewish
Identity Centre. That group operates www.kahane.org, named for the anti-Arab
extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was slain a decade ago.
Two organisations Kahane or his
supporters founded, Kach and Kahane Chai, were placed on the State Department
list after a Kach member massacred 48 worshippers at a West Bank mosque
in 1994. Kahane.org calls for the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and
solicits donations.
On January 4, the FBI raided Hatikva
and carried away computers and documents. Hatikva views the raid as an
effort to establish links between it and Kach and Kahane Chai.
Some terrorist groups rely on supporters
to raise funds offline.
One such fund-raiser is Azzam Publications
in London. Azzam operates a site dedicated to worldwide jihad and its site
steers funds to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to allied guerrillas fighting
the Russians in Chechnya.
Taliban's assets abroad have been
frozen by UN mandate. But the Azzam site states, "An appeal for cash donations
is especially urgent" and advises the personal delivery of US currency
to the Taliban consul-general in Karachi, Pakistan, and suggests a 20,000
dollar minimum donation.
"It is probably advisable to send
one or two trustworthy, young, strong, fit Muslims with the delegation
for protection of the money and the delegation," the instructions caution,
suggesting ways to dodge nosy airport officials.
"Under no circumstances should you
hand over the money to anyone at the consulate other than the consul-general."
Possibly the most accomplished Internet fund-raiser is Lashkar-e-Taiba
("Army of the Pure"), a Taliban ally that maintains a guerrilla army battling
the Indian military for control over the Kashmir region bordering Pakistan.
Lashkar-e-Taiba's sophisticated
Web site offers Arabic, Urdu and English versions, attractive illustrations
and easy pull-down menus that resemble Microsoft Windows.
The site directs donations to a
bank in Pakistan; the bank's phone and the account number are conveniently
provided for wire transfers.
Their effort has been so successful
that Lashkar-e-Taiba may soon become the envy of like-minded groups that
have discovered the Internet.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is reportedly planning
to open its own bank.
