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Editorial: Kidnappings as terrorist strategy
Bearded gunmen ambushed the car of the Iranian commercial attaché, Mr Hashmatullah Attaarzadeh, in Peshawar on Thursday and took him away after killing his police guard. This was the second attack on foreigners in the city in two days. On Wednesday, similar gunmen killed a US aid worker and his Pakistani driver in the University Town. On September 22, the Afghan ambassador-designate, Mr Farahi, was kidnapped and his driver was killed. Earlier even than this, a Pakistani ambassador returning to his post in Kabul by road was kidnapped and, despite denials, was locked up in the prison of the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.
Iran has condemned the kidnapping, calling it a terrorist act, and has asked the Pakistan authorities to do all they can do to find and free him. When the Chinese engineers were kidnapped from the province, the Chinese also said something akin to that. Iran, however, is an old victim and it doesnt help to know that Tehran also nurses grievances with regard to sectarian killings in Pakistan and the killing of its diplomats and security personnel in Pakistan in the 1990s. Unfortunately, an Iranian-Baloch terrorist outfit called Jundallah is active on the Pakistani side and its Iranian leader Abdul Malik Reiki is known to kidnap Iranians and then escape to safe havens in our Balochistan.
The latest kidnapping in Hayatabad carries all the trademarks of the Taliban and their patron Al Qaeda. Sources say the kidnappings are happening now because of the pressure on the Taliban from the military operations in Bajaur. The connection is no doubt there but kidnapping as strategy has been in place since much before the Bajaur operation began. Kidnappings are done to achieve two ends: to get ones own men released from Pakistans custody, and to replenish depleting terrorist funds through ransom money. All warlords resort to it. Even the Khyber warlord Mangal Bagh relied on it. Baitullah Mehsud has been ambushing security forces in South Waziristan to pick up Pakistani troops as spoils of war with which to earn money and get his men released.
General (Retd) Hamid Nawaz, who specialises in national security, says Peshawar is besieged from all sides by the terrorists but has a very defective system of security. The NWFP government uses police as its security force in the provincial headquarters, which is very inadequate, given the lack of quality training of the police. According to him, in many instances when a police posse is sent to confront the terrorists many policemen duck out of the operation and escape. He would like a joint security set-up mixing army and the police in order to secure essential foreign and domestic personnel. The crux of the matter is that Peshawar is unprotected and has begun to look like Karachi where kidnappings are endemic.
Kidnappings as terrorist strategy first came to surface in Karachi when a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi suicide-bomber gang blew themselves up along with the local abductee when they were surrounded by the police. This has to be distinguished from the mercenary kidnappings, with the observation that terrorism-related organisations do it under orders from some kind of central authority that probably wants to delegate financial powers to its branchline affiliates. Therefore, at the bottom of it all, there is financial crisis inside Pakistans terrorism. There is also the possibility that some commanders do it on the side to enrich themselves.
Because of the expansion of terrorism, funds are needed by all the terrorist branches. The one million pounds demanded for the release of the prominent Karachi filmmaker and distributor, Satish Anand, points to a party which operates outside Pakistan too. The phone calls demanding ransom from Anands family have been traced to Quetta and Bannu. This is a clear signal that apart from kidnapping as a device to get terrorists released from state custody, there are budget constraints in the terrorist coffers. Has the drug money coming from the makers of heroin in Pakistan begun to taper off? Is the spate of kidnappings of lucrative persons anticipatory after America decided to eliminate the monopoly of the Afghan warlords over the production of poppy?
An easy prediction is that this is going to spread to Punjab too. Someone behind the curtain of terrorism needs a lot of money and this can be earned only through a strategy of kidnappings. Pakistan has to plug the security gaps in Peshawar also because of the tenuous political scene there after the JUIFs frontal attack on the ANP, following its secret satisfaction that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are already after ANPs blood; and that the media has generally abandoned the post-2008 elections political order and challenges it for non-delivery on the restoration of judges, removal of the 17th Amendment, and submission to the hegemony of the United States. *
http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk
Bearded gunmen ambushed the car of the Iranian commercial attaché, Mr Hashmatullah Attaarzadeh, in Peshawar on Thursday and took him away after killing his police guard. This was the second attack on foreigners in the city in two days. On Wednesday, similar gunmen killed a US aid worker and his Pakistani driver in the University Town. On September 22, the Afghan ambassador-designate, Mr Farahi, was kidnapped and his driver was killed. Earlier even than this, a Pakistani ambassador returning to his post in Kabul by road was kidnapped and, despite denials, was locked up in the prison of the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.
Iran has condemned the kidnapping, calling it a terrorist act, and has asked the Pakistan authorities to do all they can do to find and free him. When the Chinese engineers were kidnapped from the province, the Chinese also said something akin to that. Iran, however, is an old victim and it doesnt help to know that Tehran also nurses grievances with regard to sectarian killings in Pakistan and the killing of its diplomats and security personnel in Pakistan in the 1990s. Unfortunately, an Iranian-Baloch terrorist outfit called Jundallah is active on the Pakistani side and its Iranian leader Abdul Malik Reiki is known to kidnap Iranians and then escape to safe havens in our Balochistan.
The latest kidnapping in Hayatabad carries all the trademarks of the Taliban and their patron Al Qaeda. Sources say the kidnappings are happening now because of the pressure on the Taliban from the military operations in Bajaur. The connection is no doubt there but kidnapping as strategy has been in place since much before the Bajaur operation began. Kidnappings are done to achieve two ends: to get ones own men released from Pakistans custody, and to replenish depleting terrorist funds through ransom money. All warlords resort to it. Even the Khyber warlord Mangal Bagh relied on it. Baitullah Mehsud has been ambushing security forces in South Waziristan to pick up Pakistani troops as spoils of war with which to earn money and get his men released.
General (Retd) Hamid Nawaz, who specialises in national security, says Peshawar is besieged from all sides by the terrorists but has a very defective system of security. The NWFP government uses police as its security force in the provincial headquarters, which is very inadequate, given the lack of quality training of the police. According to him, in many instances when a police posse is sent to confront the terrorists many policemen duck out of the operation and escape. He would like a joint security set-up mixing army and the police in order to secure essential foreign and domestic personnel. The crux of the matter is that Peshawar is unprotected and has begun to look like Karachi where kidnappings are endemic.
Kidnappings as terrorist strategy first came to surface in Karachi when a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi suicide-bomber gang blew themselves up along with the local abductee when they were surrounded by the police. This has to be distinguished from the mercenary kidnappings, with the observation that terrorism-related organisations do it under orders from some kind of central authority that probably wants to delegate financial powers to its branchline affiliates. Therefore, at the bottom of it all, there is financial crisis inside Pakistans terrorism. There is also the possibility that some commanders do it on the side to enrich themselves.
Because of the expansion of terrorism, funds are needed by all the terrorist branches. The one million pounds demanded for the release of the prominent Karachi filmmaker and distributor, Satish Anand, points to a party which operates outside Pakistan too. The phone calls demanding ransom from Anands family have been traced to Quetta and Bannu. This is a clear signal that apart from kidnapping as a device to get terrorists released from state custody, there are budget constraints in the terrorist coffers. Has the drug money coming from the makers of heroin in Pakistan begun to taper off? Is the spate of kidnappings of lucrative persons anticipatory after America decided to eliminate the monopoly of the Afghan warlords over the production of poppy?
An easy prediction is that this is going to spread to Punjab too. Someone behind the curtain of terrorism needs a lot of money and this can be earned only through a strategy of kidnappings. Pakistan has to plug the security gaps in Peshawar also because of the tenuous political scene there after the JUIFs frontal attack on the ANP, following its secret satisfaction that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are already after ANPs blood; and that the media has generally abandoned the post-2008 elections political order and challenges it for non-delivery on the restoration of judges, removal of the 17th Amendment, and submission to the hegemony of the United States. *
http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk
