Brig Anil Gupta
A recent report in the media of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim joining hand with Boko Haram has once again highlighted the fact that the dreaded terrorist cum don of the underworld is actively pursuing his anti-India activities from Pakistan. Boko Haram is a militant Islamist organisation based in Northern Nigeria. It is influenced by Wahhabi radical philosophy. This salafi-jihadi group aims to create an Islamic state in Nigeria. It is an affiliate of Al Qaida in Maghreb (AQIM). Dawood Ibrahim is considered to be the mastermind of 1993 Mumbai Stock Exchange bombings in which hundreds of innocent civilians were killed and over 1000 injured. His activities are not limited only to the underworld but has been regularly trying to destabilise India through inciting riots, acts of terrorism and financing anti-national forces.
Underworld crime syndicates and terrorist organisations have been bedfellows since long. In fact, there is a lot common between the two. Both aim at using brutal force to force the opponent to succumb to their demands. Both use extortion, kidnapping and looting as tools of generating funds and bargaining. The kidnapping of about 250 school girls by Boko Haram in April this year, who still continue to be held hostage, took the world by surprise. The girls are reported to be forced to convert to Islam and marry Boko Haram terrorists. It is also reported that they are being used as suicide bombers. The terrorists originally were demanding release of their fellow terrorists held by the Nigerian Government. On the eve of Eid, the group kidnapped the wife and sister-in-law of a Deputy Prime Minister in neighbouring Cameroon. This is in retaliation to Cameroon’s stepped operations against the militant group. I have highlighted these to draw the attention of the readers to the barbarian ideology of Boko Haram, the Al Qaida controlled group that is being inducted into India by D-Company, led by Dawood Ibrahim, purportedly for smuggling drugs. There is something more to it than that meets the eye.
The secret intelligence agencies like CIA of America, MSB of Russia, Mossad of Israel, MSS of China, ISI of Pakistan, MI6 of UK, and MOIS of Iran have not only used the underworld as recruiting ground for terror but also are alleged to have funded the activities of individuals/ terrorist outfits. It’s a well- known fact that Dawood Ibrahim is a stooge of ISI and enjoys its full patronage. ISI is also known to recruit under trial criminals in Pakistani jails for fighting Jihad. Intelligence agencies can go to any extent to achieve the political objectives set by their masters. In the secret world of intelligence services, even the enemies cooperate together, if they have a common enemy. Many believe that Israel is being backed by Egypt for targeting Hamas, a common enemy. It is not commonly known that Islamic State supremo al Baghdadi alias Caliph Ibrahim was in CIA custody before he formed the ISIS. The head of Indian Mujahedeen (IM) is actually Roshan Khan a member of the dreaded underworld gang of Fazl-ur-Rahman before he became Riyaz Bhaktar and another stooge of ISI. Ranjit Singh Neeta, head of banned Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), who now operates from Pakistan,was also a criminal cum smuggler before he joined militancy at the behest of ISI.Pakistan also alleges that underworld don Chhota Rajan and members of his gang were used by RAW for terror attacks in Pakistan.
The story of Daniel Pearl, a Jewish American journalist, who was kidnapped and brutally murdered, is also spine chilling. He wrote numerous stories about Pakistan’s Islamists and their links with Al Qaeda and the ISI. He also uncovered a “charity” linked to both Osama Bin Laden and ISI. He became too uncomfortable for the agencies and was decided to be eliminated. The task was accomplished by another terrorist cum ISI agent Omar Saeed Sheikh, an Islamist militant of British origin who had been trained in terror camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistan Government believed that he was a double-cross and was spying for CIA and Mossad as well. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President at that time also said that Pearl was the victim of “intelligence games.”
Daood Sayed Geelani alias David Headley was a drug trafficker and a spy of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of America. His father was a Pakistani while the mother was an American. He grew up in Pakistan but later moved to the US. From a drug trafficker he became a LET terrorist and close confidant of Hafez Saeed. He had settled in America with his mother but continued to visit Pakistan in connection with drug trafficking and simultaneously worked as an informer of DEA. During his visits to Pakistan he regularly attended LET training camps. He was spotted by the ISI and incorporated in plotting for Mumbai terror attacks. He assisted the ISI by carrying out detailed recce of the intended targets. Later,subsequent to developing differences with LET, Headley switched his loyalty to Al Qaeda and was used by the terrorist outfit for planning attack on a newspaper building in Copenhagen, Denmark. This drug trafficker turned terrorist cum spy is presently undergoing a 35-year jail sentence in US. Many believe that even CIA has a hand in the activities of David Headley.
Al Qaeda is now known to use the underworld tools of ransom and kidnapping for collecting huge funds for funding terror operations. As per New York Times approximately $ 125 million have been paid as ransom by European Governments to free western hostages since 2008. “Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil, which I may describe as a profitable trade and precious treasure,” according to Nasser al Wuhayashi, an Al Qaeda leader. Every kidnapping results in a ransom or an exchange of prisoners or delivery of arms. The recent exchange of five dreaded Taliban terrorists for a captured American soldier in Afghanistan must be fresh in the mind of the readers. In this era of unrestricted warfare which focusses on using means other than direct confrontation to weaken a stronger enemy; fake currency, narcotics and smuggling is gaining importance. These activities till not very late were considered the domain of underworld crime syndicates. They are now being used as instruments of state policy to weaken a technologically superior adversary. Terrorism is also one of the tools of Unrestricted Warfare. Terrorism erodes a nation’s sense of security and economic wellbeing. In fact, it’s a war with no rules. Nations use intelligence agencies to launch and coordinate this type of warfare that has no physical domain, spreads across a number of non-military spheres and has no visible enemy.
Coming back to Dawood Ibrahim, whose D-company has a vast network across the globe and is involved in large-scale shipments of narcotics. The D-Company’s smuggling routes are known to be used by Al Qaeda for its terrorist activities albeit after paying huge sums of money. He is also friendly with the Taliban. He is also known to be a liberal financer of LET, a Sunni anti-India terrorist organisation with proclaimed aim of making India an Islamist country. His narcotics trade already extends to Somalia and Kenya in East Africa. His latest affiliation with Boko Haram that usually operates in Western Africa is not confined only to extend the tentacles of his underworld activities but also to facilitate entry of Al Qaeda operatives into India in garb of drug traffickers. The well- established network of D-Company in India is likely to be used to finance and provide logistics support to foreign jihadists in India. Readers may like to link this with Al Qaeda’s plans for final jihad in India and its claim to have the network not only in Kashmir but in other parts of India as well.
If the terrorists and underworld don join hands to destabilise the secular fabric of Bharat, can ISI be far behind? In order to thwart this danger our intelligence agencies have to gear up and pre-empt any such nefarious design.
(The author is presently a political commentator, security and strategic analyst. The views expressed in this article are entirely the personal views of the author)
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