(IN): Poaching for Bin Laden in Kaziranga

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Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2073168,00.html

 

Poaching for Bin Laden

 

 

In the jungles of India, local animal trappers have a new breed of

client: Islamic militants using the trade in rare wildlife to raise

funds for their cause. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report from Assam

 

Saturday May 5, 2007

The Guardian

 

It is so early in the morning that the cooks in the roadside dhabas

along India's National Highway 37 are asleep in their kitchens, their

tandoors unlit. Across the valley of Assam, in this far north-easterly

corner of India, there is not a flicker of light except the feeble

yellow beams from the Gypsies, the open-backed vehicles carrying small

groups of tourists to the edge of one of the world's most bountiful

jungles.

 

Kaziranga - 429 sq km of forest, sandbanks and grassland - was

recognised by Unesco in 1985 as a world heritage site. Tourists come

in their thousands to glimpse some of the 480 species of bird, 34

kinds of mammal and 42 varieties of fish, many rare, endangered or

near extinct, that inhabit this remote jungle.

 

In recent times, however, the wildlife has attracted a new kind of

visitor. According to India's security services, police, intelligence

analysts, local traders and forestry officials, Islamic militants

affiliated to al-Qaida are sponsoring poaching in the reserve for

profit. These groups have established bases in the formerly moderate

enclave of Bangladesh and have agents operating all along the

country's porous 2,500-mile border with India. They have gone into

business with local animal trappers and organised crime syndicates

around Kaziranga - as well as in parks and reserves in Nepal, Burma

and Thailand - in a quest for horns, ivory, pelts and other animal

products with which to raise " under the wire " funds that they can move

around the world invisibly.

 

A small rhino horn, the size of a bag of sugar, with good provenance

(the beast's tail and ears, presented to a prospective buyer) and in

the right marketplace (in Asia, Europe or North America), can fetch

£20,000. Big cat pelts can go for up to £10,000. Monkey brains, bear

bile, musk, big cat carcasses, elephant feet, tails, horns and teeth

have considerable value. A shipment worth £2.8m was recently

intercepted by UK customs. Profits from the trade run from $15bn to an

incredible $25bn a year, according to estimates from the WWF (formerly

the World Wide Fund for Nature). The punishment for trading in these

items is generally a fine as low as £300 in India and £900 in Nepal.

 

A senior Indian security source, based in the north-east, who has

tracked the incursion into the trade by Bangladeshi militants, warns

that the poaching has global consequences. " There is an environmental

disaster in the offing here, but as pressing are the security

ramifications, " he says. " Only a minuscule percentage of the vast

profits need to trickle back into a nascent Islamic insurgency in a

country like Bangladesh to bring it to the boil. And then it can reach

out around the world. "

 

In 2000, US president Bill Clinton commissioned " a global threat

assessment " which concluded that the illegal trade in animal parts and

endangered species was second only to drugs in the profits it could

turn. That same year, the UN general assembly expressed its strong

conviction that the " transnational crime " of trafficking in endangered

species had growing links with terrorism. The WWF took up the baton

and commissioned a report from Wolverhampton University that found

organised crime was taking advantage of existing routes used for

smuggling small arms, drugs and humans. The UK scene was a microcosm,

with 50% of those prosecuted for wildlife crimes having previous

convictions for serious offences including drugs and guns.

 

That's if there is such a prosecution: ill-defined laws often prevent

police making arrests. British torpor was highlighted in London in

2004, when customs intercepted a multimillion-pound ivory haul but

were powerless to arrest anyone. Meanwhile, radical Islamists from

Bangladesh have done what conservationists had long predicted and

moved in on the endangered species racket.

 

One has only to tour Kaziranga, or any of the outlying parks in Assam

or Nepal, to understand why. Dawn breaks as our convoy of Gypsies

reaches the park. The rangers whisper urgently, " Gorh " , the local word

for rhinoceros. Metres away, eight rhino are lumbering through the

rich alluvial mud, showing off their prized uni-horn. There are more

than 2,000 of these short-sighted beasts here, making up

three-quarters of the global stock of one of the rarest pachyderms in

the world. Beside them are scores of swamp deer coloured like the

scrub. A group of wild buffalo, whose colossal horns have the span of

a longboat oar, plod by, as does a troop of elephants, their tusks

glinting in the purple dawn. Somewhere in the long grass, which rises

in clumps like a castle keep, are more Royal Bengal tigers per square

kilometre than in any other stretch of jungle in the world - broken

down into their constituent parts, each is worth as much as a bespoke

Italian racing car.

 

The gangs hired to trap and kill in Kaziranga are said by forestry

staff to camp on the vast sand bars created by the flow of the

Brahmaputra river. The river here is at least a kilometre wide and we

haggle with a man paddling a wooden canoe to take us across. But as

soon as it dawns on him where we intend to go, he backs out of the

deal. " I will not go there, " he says. " The people who live there will

skin me alive. " He offers to rent us his boat instead, and with our

driver, a migrant from the impoverished state of Bihar, we launch

ourselves into the water. The nearest sand bar is clearly visible, but

so vicious are the currents that it takes two hours to reach it.

 

As we near, people who look more like Saharan Touaregs than Assamese

run towards the shore, waving hunting rifles. Trapped in a swirling

eddy, we can't decide what to do. From the sand bar, they pelt the

canoe with stones. The Bihari driver, who understands what they're

saying, starts screaming. The canoe pitches and rolls as we try to

calm him. He takes a deep breath and addresses the angry crowd: " These

are only here for talking. Please... These bring gifts. Not the

police. " We hold up baskets of fruit, bags of nuts and sweets. The

sand bar dwellers lower their weapons and motion us ashore.

 

We climb the bank and at the crest of the dune see there are hundreds

of them, living in an improvised encampment. We want to know about

life on the sand bar, we say, passing round the food. They shrug,

munching. One man offers: " We are people who have few rights. " Another

agrees: " We are poor and we do what we can. " Does that include

poaching? Has anyone trapped animals from Kaziranga? Now everyone is

eating and nearly all the hands shoot into the air.

 

One man says, " We are for hire. We can trap and shoot, but when the

summer rain comes, the river breaks its banks and the animals float to

us. " Another adds, " We patrol the park's border, too; when the animals

wander out, we are there. " He pulls from his pocket an unidentifiable

animal claw.

 

These sand bar dwellers at the start of the tangled enterprise know

far more about the intricacies of the business than the authorities

told us they would. They draw trafficking routes in the sand,

explaining how the trade is coordinated by agents across Assam. A

villager places stones on the sand-map to mark the towns. " Golaghat,

Tezpur, Kamrup, Nagaon, these are the main places for agents. " They

answer to a boss based in Dimapur, one of the richest cities in the

neighbouring state of Nagaland, with a highway that runs into Burma

and rail links to New Delhi and Calcutta . " But everything tends to

collect and move through Siliguri, " a villager says, identifying a

chaotic city in West Bengal which is also a springboard into the

Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan.

 

What do they poach? " Whatever we can and whatever we are asked for. "

The money is in rhino horn and elephant tusks, the latter taking

advantage of a black hole in the forestry department's record-keeping.

While the rhino population remains closely monitored, no accurate

records are kept for elephants. The forestry department estimates that

170 were poached over a six-year period, but the sand bar people claim

a figure almost double that.

 

From whom do they take orders? The villagers look stony-faced. They

talk among themselves. " The Tibetans and Chinese are big men in this, "

says one, " but we are all from Bangladesh. Bangladeshis dominate the

network now. " Are they talking only about those living in India, or

about orders coming from over the border, too? They shrug and mumble,

clearly distressed. We should talk to an agent they name in a nearby

city. They cannot tell us any more.

 

In nearby Tezpur, the wildlife trade agent turns out to be a rich

local jeweller, but he is tight-lipped and refers us to his boss in

another town. This boss, who runs a local hotel, says he can't talk

without clearance from the bhai, the big boss in Siliguri. After 10

hours on the broken highway, we find his modest house in a chaotic

suburb. Over plates of daal-fry, bread and curd, he tells us he is a

haulier, shipping freight over the border with Bangladesh, but also " a

man of many hats. One hat, you could say, is in animals. I move a lot

of everything: elephant ivory, cat skins, musk deer, bear gall

bladders, rhino horn, live leopard cubs that are sent to Nepal, Burma

and then into Thailand. The prices we pay are so low, the profit

margins are healthy. " He opens both arms expansively, as if

demonstrating the size of a fish. " We can get a snow leopard pelt for

$1,000 and sell it for 10 times that. Ivory can be bought for as

little as $200 a kilo and sold for 100 times this. "

 

He munches on a red onion as a glass of milk poured straight from a

churn froths in front of him on the table. How did he get involved?

The wildlife trade in the town took off in 1983, he says, when old

trafficking networks in Calcutta were effectively shut down by the police.

 

The Siliguri police confirm that soon after this, a stash of horns was

discovered, tipping them off to the town's new business. But it was

not until 1995 that the local authorities grasped the scale of the

racket when, in the first operation of its kind in India, an entire

syndicate trading in rhino horn was rolled up and found to have

members in China, Taiwan and Tibet. " But these police successes were

few and far between, " claims the haulier, showing us his gleaming new

trucks and his home - the first in town to have a flat-screen TV, now

with one in every room.

 

He is happy to talk, and calls colleagues to confirm his stories.

Eventually we ask who's behind the Bangladeshi business. " Where, not

who, " he says and points to Bangladesh. " Religious men hold the purse

strings now. The business has changed. Their agents came to see us.

They want a low-risk business. "

 

A trader from Siliguri with betel-red teeth tells the same story.

" This was a Chinese business but now it's Bangladesh's business. It's

become God's work, " he says, raising an eyebrow. " And, as you know,

the Prophet, peace be upon his head, is irresistible. "

 

It all began two years ago. Says the haulier, " A friend in common at a

local mosque [in West Bengal] passed me a message saying

representatives working for two militia groups in Bangladesh wanted a

meet in a madrassah [seminary] in Siliguri. "

 

A trader with an import-export company near to the India-Bangladesh

border explains: " They came to us because we are the same as them, " he

says. " The hauliers and money men behind the wildlife trade are of

Bangladeshi origin. The poachers, too. All of us can move freely over

the border. We look right. Talk the same. They wanted in. Small,

valuable commodities - horn, teeth, pelts - fetch incredible prices

and are easy to conceal among legitimate export goods. Also, something

truly valuable can be used to borrow against, to secure a line of credit. "

 

The traditional methods by which anyone wishing to raise and transport

money invisibly were through nominal charities, the gold market and

the global unofficial banking system known as hawala. But these were

heavily disrupted after September 11 2001, the traders say. New

channels were needed.

 

Three of those who claimed to have been at the meeting two years ago

say they knew exactly whom the agents worked for in Bangladesh: Al

Mujahideen, an obscure jihadist umbrella organisation governing a

panoply of militant groups that have sprung up in Bangladesh in recent

years. Two in particular, both banned by the Bangladeshi government,

were in need of money and eager to get into the racket, said Siliguri

traders. One was Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), allegedly linked to

al-Qaida; the second was Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), whose

leader, Shaikh Abdur Rahman, had joined Bin Laden's World Islamic

Front for the Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders in 1998. He was

captured in Bangladesh and in March was hanged for the killing of two

Bangladeshi judges and for nationwide bombings in 2005.

 

A 147 million-strong, predominantly Muslim state, Bangladesh was once

renowned for its religious and ethnic tolerance. Then, six years ago,

Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Islamic party, was elected as a coalition

partner in the ruling government.

 

Extremists, especially the HuJI and JMB, have already been accused of

a string of terrorist attacks. In June 2001, former prime minister

Sheikh Hasina was injured when an explosion killed 20 and injured 300

at a rally in Dhaka. On May 21 2004, Anwar Choudhury, the British

ambassador to Bangladesh, was targeted in a bomb blast that claimed

the lives of three others, including his bodyguard. In January 2005,

the former finance minister and four other opposition activists were

killed and 70 people injured when a grenade was thrown during a

meeting in the north. Some graduates from terrorist training camps run

by the HuJI were recently arrested, suspected of plotting a

coordinated wave of 459 explosions that detonated across Bangladesh on

August 17 2005.

 

There is already an international dimension, too. After the fall of

Kabul in 2001, in a now notorious incident, the MV Mecca, a boat

loaded with 150 Taliban and al-Qaida cadres, was said by Bangladeshi

intelligence sources to have anchored off the country's Chittagong

port, where small boats ferried them ashore. The Indonesian

authorities raised concerns about the direction Bangladesh was taking

after interrogating " Hambali " , the leader of Indonesia's militant

Jemaah Islamiya group, who was arrested in Thailand in connection with

the Bali bombings in August 2002. Hambali, currently in US custody at

Guantánamo Bay, allegedly admitted having made plans to shift part of

his organisation to Bangladesh as life got more difficult at home.

 

Earlier this year India said it had intelligence connecting

Bangladeshi militant groups with some of those behind the Mumbai train

blasts of July 11 2006, in which more than 100 people died and 700

were injured. India also claims that on January 4 this year, two

Bangladeshi nationals, who admitted belonging to HuJI, were arrested

in New Delhi carrying 1.42kg of explosives, four electronic detonators

and two hand grenades thought intended for the Republic Day celebrations.

 

The Indian security services officer we interviewed says, " There has

been a significant migration from Bangladesh, with tens of millions

fleeing to expatriate communities abroad. Poverty has helped

radicalise them and we have put to your government our concern that

the increasingly ambitious militant groups in Bangladesh are aiming to

incite the exiles and so broaden the jihad - as Pakistani groups did

in Britain. "

 

This warning was echoed by Bruce Riedel, a former director on

Clinton's National Security Council, at a conference in the US in

February. " After September 11, " he said, " al-Qaida determined it would

be increasingly difficult to bring Arab or South Asian operatives into

the [West] on Arab or South Asian passports. They needed to look for a

new mechanism in order to move operatives around. They found it, for

example, in the large Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in the

United Kingdom. Those communities turned out to have a significant,

albeit small, minority of radicals who could be encouraged to perform

al-Qaida's dirty work for it. Since those people had as a birthright a

British passport, they had relatively easy access into the UK and out,

and into the US and back into Pakistan. "

 

In Kaziranga, an anti-poaching patrol prepares to leave: 16 men, nine

carbines, rope, machetes, plastic sheeting - and eight elephants. Only

elephants are capable of navigating the sodden terrain. As we move

forward, the canopy overhead thickens. There is a micro-climate

beneath the tree tops; a humid mizzle generated by the perspiring

vegetation folds around us.

 

Clouds of pinprick flies swarm, irritating everything they touch.

Creepers with blood-red scales snag skin and clothing; high above our

heads, amid a bouquet of jungle orchids, red spiders have trapped a

nectar-hunting bird. No one lingers too long. Small mistakes here have

grave results. Fall over and the soupy air prevents a scab forming;

toxic spores blossom in an open wound. None of us dares drop litter or

personal possessions, not just because the jungle is pristine but

because we do not want to leave a trail for predators.

 

By five it is dark. We have seen nothing suspicious, but the thick

vegetation obscures everything. There is a strange drumming in the mud

up ahead. It sounds like digging. The branches crackle. No tour

parties are allowed this far in. Anyone we encounter will have to

shoot their way out because they know the park rangers will fire on

them first. The elephants rip into the undergrowth, the rangers raise

their rifles.

 

We reach the banks of a vast lagoon and catch sight of something

skimming away from us. It might be a canoe, or an animal. The rangers

mutter. They fear it is poachers. One lets loose a shot out of

frustration. Timid wildfowl tear out of the undergrowth, shrieking,

setting off the bar-headed geese, which clatter and flap over the

water. A lame Chinook clips the trees, shaking up a colony of

ring-tailed macaques; they go off like car alarms. Osprey, kites and

fish eagles. Wigeons, pigeons, shovellers and barbets. Shrikes,

thrushes and bronzed drongos. Names of birds, inelegant and bizarre,

are whispered by the mahouts, who identify everything they see as if

constantly making an inventory of the jungle that is now at screaming

pitch. A radio crackles. It is the rangers' HQ calling.

 

Miles away, with the electricity supply cut again, the duty officer

huddles by a loudspeaker powered by a car battery. Next door, Central

Range chief Dharanidhar Boro sits at his table, a bowl of rice in

front of him. He is one of the most vigorous of the park's rangers

charged with disrupting the poaching. But he is exhausted.

 

Boro is an awkward man. He does not drink or get stoned when all

around him do. He believes in straight talking. " We cannot stop but it

is difficult sometimes to go on. We are up against it. This is hard,

hard work. We have to be merciless. This is a war for survival. "

 

He pulls from a cabinet a photo album. On the first page is a picture

of a corpse splattered by shotgun fire. " I killed this man as he

prepared to stake out a rhino. " He turns the pages and points to

another corpse, its entrails dangling like ship's bunting. " I killed

this one, too, as he sawed at a rhino's horn. " There are scores more

photographs picturing the dead laid out like mackerel.

 

We ask him about the new jihadi component in the trade. " We hear

things but we have no hard facts. The rhino horns are used to buy guns

and bombs, we are told. The guys we catch, what can they tell us? The

colour of the shirt worn by the guy who paid them off. "

 

In December, Boro's men tracked a gang of poachers to their tents.

They had fled but left behind a new, modern tranquilliser gun and

darts. " They used to shoot at rhinos, but the crack of the bullet is a

problem as it carries far and we will hear. Some place poison. Others

pull down power lines and try to electrocute the animals. However,

recently they have come here with silencers. We are finding

increasingly sophisticated weapons. "

 

The poaching figures for Kaziranga were stark until very recently. As

many as 48 rhinos a year were being killed for their horn, a figure

comparable to about 2% of the total population in Assam. The state is

classified as a " disturbed area " , with a stubborn and often bloody

secessionist movement desperate to break free from New Delhi.

Militants have been fighting for 27 years and 10,000 lives have been

lost. Recently, as peace talks began, there was a lull, then an

insurgency blew up in Nepal. Boro says, " Through better organisation

among the rangers and better stability in Assam, the gangs laid off us

and started attacking Nepal, which also has rhino. " Then he adds

dourly, " We cannot count on peace. "

 

Shortly before we arrived in Assam in February, seven Hindi-speaking

labourers were shot dead at one of the state's brick kilns. A railway

bridge was blown up, just missing a crowded train. Masked gunmen

attacked six labourers' colonies in the northern districts of

Dibrugarh and Tinsukia, killing 48 Indian settlers. Another eight

people, including police officers, died when their vehicle hit a

roadside mine in the central Karbi Anglong district. It was the

state's worst violence in a decade, all the killings perpetrated by

the United Liberation Front of Assam. An indefinite curfew was imposed

while the Indian security forces combed the jungle for rebel camps and

forest rangers hid themselves among the trees, waiting, resignedly,

for the opportunists to arrive. Whether it's an independence struggle

in Assam or an al-Qaida terror campaign, the outlook is perilous for

the wildlife of Kaziranga.