Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: January 7, 2010
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Dawood-is-a-terrorist-has-strategic-alliance-with-ISI-says-US/articleshow/5418149.cms
Nearly 17 years after Dawood Ibrahim's infamous
D-company fled to Karachi after devastating Mumbai with serial bomb attacks
that killed 258 people, the United States has highlighted Pakistan's patronage
of the underworld don and said the "criminal-terrorism fusion model"
he represents is "a credible threat to US interests in South Asia."
A US Congressional report released Tuesday
identified the D-company as a "5,000-member criminal syndicate operating
mostly in Pakistan, India, and the United Arab Emirates," which has a
"strategic alliance" with ISI and has "forged relationships
with Islamists, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaida."
The report, prepared by the Congressional
Research Service (CRS), the research wing of Congress, is aimed at priming
US lawmakers on various issues, and has no immediate policy implications.
The US Department of Treasury has already designated Ibrahim as a Specially
Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in 2006 and President Bush designated him,
as well as his D-Company organization, as a Significant Foreign Narcotics
Trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
Neither action has persuaded US "ally"
Pakistan, which shelters Ibrahim but denies he is in the country, to prosecute
him or extradite him to India or US Aside from periodic hand-wringing, Washington
too has made little effort to force Pakistan to give up Ibrahim or other terrorists
such as Omar Sheikh Saeed, an accused in the Daniel Pearl beheading case who
is also suspected of wiring $ 100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta.
In fact, the same day as the CRS report on
criminal-terrorism nexus was released, Washington was also forced to focus
on the nexus between Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India and its fall-out
in Afghanistan, following reports that the massacre of seven CIA agents at
a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan was masterminded by Ilyas Kashmiri,
a Pakistani commando-turned-jihadi.
Kashmiri's initial terrorist forays into India
were largely ignored by Washington, the same way it overlooked the jihadi
activities of Masood Azhar, Hafeez Saeed and other terrorist leaders under
the pretense that it did not affect US interests.
The latest CRS has a different tone altogether.
It makes no secret of Pakistan's sponsorship of the criminal-terrorist Ibrahim,
saying his "D-Company is believed to have both deepened its strategic
alliance with the ISI and developed links to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which
was designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in 2001."
During this time period, some say D-Company
began to finance LeT'sactivities, use its companies to lure recruits to LeT
training camps, and give LeT operatives use of its smuggling routes and contacts,
the report says. It also notes that some press accounts have reported that
Ibrahim's network might have provided a boat to the 10 terrorists who killed
173 people in Mumbai on 26/11 and records that the "US government contends
that D-Company has found common cause with Al Qaeda and shares its smuggling
routes with that terrorist group."
Tracing Ibrahim's background, the report says
he began as a "criminal specialist" in Bombay, first as a low-level
smuggler in the 1970s and later as the leader of a poly-crime syndicate. He
formed a thriving criminal enterprise throughout the 1980s and became radicalized
in the 1990s, forging relationships with Islamists, including LeT and Al Qaeda.
D-Company's evolution into a true criminal-terrorist group began in response
to the destruction of the Babri Mosque and the subsequent riots that killed
hundreds of Muslims, it recalls.
"Outraged by the attacks on fellow Muslims
and believing the Indian government acted indifferently to their plight, Ibrahim
decided to retaliate. Reportedly with assistance ISI, D-Company launched a
series of bombing attacks on March 12, 1993, killing 257 people. Following
the attacks, Ibrahim moved his organization's headquarters to Karachi, Pakistan,"
the report says, mincing no words about the terrorist don's Pakistani location
and patronage.
While US analysts and researchers periodically
wake up to the continued Pakistani protection of terrorists such as Ibrahim,
Omar Sheikh Saeed, Masood Azhar and others, there is no sign that Washington
is making any effort to persuade Islamabad to act against them. A furious
President Obama railed about intelligence failure and the inability to connect
the dots on the same day the CRS report was released, but US intelligence
history is dotted with monumental flubs - including sleeping over A.Q.Khan's
nuclear proliferation (and not holding him or Pakistan accountable to this
day) and a shocking lapse in tracing the origins of the $ 100,000 wired to
9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta which would go towards significantly unraveling
the 9/11 plot.
