[world-vedic] Weapons against terrorism- Article from Washington Times

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>[indianembassy] Weapons against terrorism- Article from Washington

>Times

>Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:09:48 -0800

>

>

>By Timothy Towell appeared in "The Washington Times"

>on January 11, 2000. Timothy Towell was United States

>ambassador to Paraguay from 1990-1994.

>

>While a "cold peace" seems to be settling in over

>centuries-old animosities between Jewish and Islamic

>interests in the Middle East, a new front in the wars

>of religious intolerance seems to be taking its place

>across South Asia. While the suicide bombings and hijackings

>of the 1980s and 1990s have abated, the recent hijacking

>of an Indian Airlines jet across Nepal, India, Pakistan

>and Afghanistan harkens back to a time when such heinous

>acts of extremism were commonplace.

>

>In the wake of this act of cowardice, India's Prime Minister

>Atal Bihari Vajpayee has asked Western governments to join

>him in declaring Pakistan responsible for this latest act

>of terror. India's claim is that by providing safe harbor

>and operational freedom to the manifold terrorist groupings

>within Pakistan to stage their assaults, the military government

>of Gen. Pervez Musharraf is a complicit and willing sponsor

>of terrorism. Though the government of India has yet to

>produce its smoking gun condemning its Pakistani neighbor,

>circumstantial evidence clearly weighs heavily against Pakistan.

>

>Though little is known about the escaped hijackers, their

>demand, that India release three senior members of the

>Pakistan-based group Harakat ul Mujahedeen, implicates

>them in a series of anti-Indian assaults conducted in

>Kashmir and carried out against Western interests. Formerly

>known under its original name, Azhar ul Mujahedeen, after

>its just-released founder and head Masood Azhar, the group

>has been on the State Department's terrorist watch list

>since 1997. Central to this listing is the group's

>responsibility for the 1995 kidnapping of six Western

>tourists, one of whom was beheaded while four others remain

>missing.

>

>Active throughout the subcontinent, Harakat is only one of

>a number of similar terrorist cells operating in clear view

>of their government protectors and with a single-minded

>hatred for non-Islamic "infidels." Much like the notorious

>"blind cleric," Abdul Rahman, who masterminded the World

>Trade Center bombing, Maulana Masood Azhar, a self-described

>holy man, prays on the cultural backwardness and economic

>hardship of local youth to coerce them into lives of

>terrorist thought and activity, all under the guise of

>"finding religion." In his first public announcement since

>hijackers won his escape from an Indian prison, Azhar this

>week railed from a Karachi mosque, "I have come here

>because this is my duty to tell you that Muslims should

>not rest in peace until we have destroyed America and India."

>

>Similar groups, like the Lashkar-e-Tayyba, whose membership

>and leadership include retired members of Pakistan's army

>and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), are so much a

>part of the unofficial body politic in Pakistan now that

>they enjoy open material support from the Musharraf regime.

>At that group's annual meeting last November, Lashkar's

>chief, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed ranted that "Issues cannot

>be solved without introducing the Islamic system. The

>Jehad is being organized under the leadership of

>Lashkar-e-Osama [soldiers of Osama bin Laden]. In this

>fight, the United States is the biggest terrorist.

>Its diplomatic missions here patronize us!" Even more

>unsettling than the fact that this speech was made

>exactly one week prior to the attack on the U.S. mission

>in Islamabad, is that this conference received a permit

>and security protection from the Pakistani government.

>

>Faced with such complicity, what recourse does the United

>States have in combating and preventing future attacks

>against its territory and its citizens? In his Senate

>testimony, Michael Sheehan, the State Department's new

>coordinator for counter-terrorism, identified a shift

>in the center of terrorism "from Libya, Syria, and

>Lebanon to South Asia in particular, Afghanistan and

>Pakistan." As a result, the United States has had to

>press, plead with and cajole Pakistan, its former Cold

>War ally, "to end support for terrorist training in

>Afghanistan, to interdict travel of militants to and

>from camps in Afghanistan, and to prevent its own militant

>groups from acquiring weapons." Under successive

>"democratic" governments, this was done to little

>avail. Now, faced with a military junta whose own

>ties to these Islamic fundamentalist are already

>well-established, the United States must proceed with

>a policy of containing this regime and its terrorist

>allies while engaging the only responsible power left

>in the region: India.

>

>An initial and highly important first step towards

>this end was taken last month when U.S. and Indian

>intelligence officials concluded their discussions

>on the formation of a Joint Working Group on

>Counter-Terrorism. While material and intelligence

>support by the United States will enable our Indian

>allies to better combat those terrorist elements at

>work on its borders and with the capacity to strike

>our own territory, more must be done to demonstrate

>U.S. resolve in this fight. U.S. officials should

>join the Indian prime minister in declaring Pakistan

>a terrorist state and subject it to the same sort

>of pariah status as Afghanistan and Iran. To not do

>so violates the spirit of this country's tough stand

>on terrorism.

>

>

>

>------

>Embassy of India

>Press & Information

>Washington, DC

>http://www.indianembassy.org

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