SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 11, No. 38, March 25, 2013

INDIA	SRI LANKA

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Ambivalence, Opportunism, Deceit
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, ICM & SATP
S. Binodkumar Singh
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

On March 21, 2013, at the 22nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) a United States-sponsored resolution on Human Rights (HR) violation in Sri Lanka was adopted with 25 countries, including India, voting in favour of the resolution in the 47-nation body. While 13 countries voted against, eight member-states abstained from voting on the resolution.  The resolution urged the Government of Sri Lanka to implement the Government’s National Action Plan (NAP), including the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) addressing outstanding issues related to reconciliation, and to meet its obligations for accountability. Earlier, on March 22, 2012, UNHRC had adopted a resolution urging Sri Lanka to investigate alleged abuses during the final phase of war with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), with 24 votes in favour, 15 against and eight abstentions.

The international campaign against Sri Lanka, backed by European interlocutors who had strongly sought to protect the LTTE as it approached inevitable defeat, ignores the realities of over 33 years of the most vicious terrorism in Sri Lanka, the extreme atrocities of the LTTE, the intensive use of civilians as human shields by the LTTE during the terminal stages of the conflict, and, indeed, the significant self-imposed restraints accepted by the Sri Lankan Forces to minimize civilian losses. It ignores, moreover, that, in less than four years since the LTTE terror was brought to an end in May 2009, Sri Lanka has restored normalcy, rehabilitated displaced citizens and, indeed, even the overwhelming majority of surrendered and captured LTTE cadres, and initiated developmental projects in former rebel-held areas that would compare favourably with the record of any post-conflict society in recent history. Significantly, with the shutting down of the Menik Farm camp in Vavuniya District on September 25, 2012, a total of 1,186 people from 361 families – the last of a group of the estimated 290,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) resulting from the final phase of the conflict – were restored to their original places of residence in the Mullaithivu District.

Much of the ‘data’ on which the international ‘human rights’ campaign against Sri Lanka is based, moreover, is deeply suspect. After the end of war, different international bodies and individuals gave varying estimates of the number of civilian fatalities. The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), on December 13, 2009, gave an estimate of 20,000 to 40,000; Frances Harrison of the BBC, in July, 2012, put the figure at an incredible 147,000; and the UN Internal Review Panel, on November 10, 2012, published an estimate of 70,000 civilians killed, jacking up the UN’s earlier ‘credible estimates’ of 40,000 with little new evidence. These divergent estimates have been credibly challenged by an authoritative study based on a wide range of parameters, including witness testimonies, satellite and associated imagery, contemporary reports on the conflict in diplomatic dispatches revealed by Wikileaks, media reports and reports of various HR organizations operating in the field during the conflict, and a range of other documentary sources. Nevertheless, the more exaggerated estimates continue to be projected in the international HR discourse as a propaganda stick to beat the Sri Lanka Government with, in a misconceived strategy to exert pressure on Colombo to deliver on a ‘political solution’ of the ‘ethnic problem’ in the country.

International action on this count has been further compounded by protests in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu, where political parties have sought to make domestic electoral capital out of the ‘Tamil issue’ in Sri Lanka. Indeed, India voted in favour of the US sponsored resolutions principally because of domestic political compulsions. When India displayed a degree of ambivalence on the March 22, 2012, resolution, regional political parties in Tamil Nadu agitated vociferously, forcing the Union Government to swing in favour of the US sponsored resolution. Unsurprisingly, this time around, when the political pressure escalated to the point of provoking the Tamil Nadu regional party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), to pull out of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government on March 19, 2013, after the Government failed to acquiesce to its demand of introducing amendments in the resolution accusing Colombo of "genocide" during the war against the LTTE, the Government again voted in favour of a ‘softer’ US-backed resolution. In a failed effort to placate the DMK, on March 8, 2013, as part of a larger debate in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a statement of gratuitous interference, declared, "There are problems in Sri Lanka; we have been worried about the fate of the Tamil population in Sri Lanka. India is worried about the fate of Tamils in Sri Lanka and wants them to live with dignity and self respect. It has been our effort to work with the leadership in Sri Lanka and to ensure that Tamil people there do get a chance to live a life of dignity and self respect as equal citizens of the country." India’s efforts to balance its position between domestic political compulsions and its relations with Sri Lanka have remained deeply unconvincing.

That the international and Indian strategy to exert pressure for reform on Colombo is deeply flawed is, today, recognized even by elements that were central to the LTTE’s campaigns. Thus, Valautham Dayanidhi aka Daya Master, the former spokesperson for the LTTE noted, in an interview published on March 24, 2013, that “Tamil Nadu politicians are now creating problems between the Tamils and the Sinhalese… all Tamil Nadu parties are doing now is fomenting trouble between us and the Sinhalese.” He further appealed to the international community to “restrict itself to developmental work… and leave our political future to us and our elected Governments… For heaven’s sake – there were 30 years of war. It ended barely three years ago. Development is in full swing. More needs to be done but give the Government some time.”

Significantly, the Director of Operations of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), John Ging, validated Colombo’s claims on August 3, 2012, observing, “The scale of what Sri Lanka has accomplished over the past three years, the pace of resettlement and the development of infrastructure, is remarkable and very clearly visible." Similarly, on March 5, 2013, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in reply to a question on Sri Lanka during a Press briefing, conceded, “I recognised the important steps taken by the Government of Sri Lanka since the end of the conflict.”

Further, the UNHRC, on March 15, 2013, adopted the outcome of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a mechanism of the Council under which it reviews human rights on a regular basis, on Sri Lanka. The UPR noted a wide range of positive steps taken by the Sri Lankan Government, but also sought to underline certain perceived deficiencies, specifically, in the implementation of the LLRC recommendations; to ‘combat impunity’ relating to the past conflict; to prevent torture and ill-treatment in prisons and detentions centres; to respect independence of the judiciary; and to protect the rights of women and children and of HR defenders and journalists.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's Special Envoy of the President on Human Rights, the Minister of Plantation Industries Mahinda Samarasinghe, in a statement to the Council on Sri Lanka's Progress in the Promotion of Human Rights argued, “Sri Lanka had accepted 113 out of 204 recommendations received, and had also made 19 voluntary commitments. Sri Lanka is currently evaluating the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) which was conceived of as part of Sri Lanka's participation in the UPR process before the UNHRC in 2008.” 

On March 18, 2013, the US presented a toned down version of its resolution co-sponsored by 32 countries at the 22nd session of the UNHRC in Geneva. The draft welcomed and acknowledged the progress made by the Government of Sri Lanka in rebuilding infrastructure, demining, resettling the majority of internally displaced persons, but noted that considerable work needed to be done in the areas of justice, reconciliation and resumption of livelihoods. While recognizing the NAP to implement the recommendations of the Government's LLRC, the resolution insists that the NAP does not ‘adequately address’ all of the findings and constructive recommendations of the LLRC.

Unsurprisingly, given India’s opportunistic efforts to sit on the fence, repercussions have been felt on bilateral relations between the two countries. On March 18, 2013, with pressure on New Delhi mounting from the Tamil Nadu political parties to act against Sri Lanka, India called off "The Annual Defence Dialogue” with Sri Lanka, scheduled to commence from March 23, 2013. Anti-Sri Lanka protests were orchestrated across Tamil Nadu, with non-political organisations and industries joining a students’ agitation, forcing the Tamil Nadu Government on March 20, 2013, to shut down 525 engineering colleges and 438 arts and science colleges in the State, indefinitely.  Further, on March 22, 2013, Tamil Nadu Members of Parliaments (MPs) turned violent in the Rajya Sabha, as agitating MPs of DMK and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) broke the chairperson's mike during noisy demonstrations over the Sri Lankan Tamils.

It is unlikely that these various protests, statements and resolutions will have any impact in Sri Lanka, beyond polarizing relations between Sinhala and Tamil even further, and hardening attitudes against an ‘unreliable’ India.

Predictably, Sri Lankan External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris addressing the Foreign Ministers of the member countries of UNHRC on March 19, 2013, declared, "Just as the Government of Sri Lanka did not recognize the last UNHRC resolution, it rejects the new resolution." Likewise, rejecting the resolution, the President’s Special Envoy on Human Rights, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, on March 22, 2013 observed that the resolution was clearly unacceptable due to its inherent flaws and pointed out that the preamble to the text was “intrusive, bears misinterpretations and focuses disproportionately on the negative and eliminates or is dismissive of the positive.” Earlier, on March 18, 2013, Prof. Peiris had noted that India had made an ‘immense contribution’ to the development of the war-affected Northern Province and it was in India's interest, as much as Sri Lanka's, to support efforts to achieve stability and not to polarize Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, criticizing the undue pressure exerted after the resolution, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, on March 22, 2013, observed, “The Government was aware that it had to face the consequences, when the humanitarian operation began… It is because of this external irritant that the country is facing pressure from various foreign forces. This foreign intimidation is what the imperialists and the Diasporas want.”

Similarly, reflecting Colombo’s hardening attitude, Minister for Youth Affairs Dallas Alahapperuma while addressing a media briefing held at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute in Colombo on March 22, 2013, stated, “The UNHRC has become an institution that implements a new 'colonial policy' of ruling by creating divisions in the international community. It has used Sri Lanka as the first test subject to experiment with the new policy of division. The UN resolution, calling for Sri Lanka to investigate war crimes allegedly committed by the Security Forces (SFs) during the war against the LTTE, attempts to divide the country.”

Over the past years, India has rapidly lost ground and faith in Sri Lanka as a result of its ambivalence and a policy driven by domestic compulsions, rather than strategy interests and a historical investment in its relations with one of the few friends it has in the neighbourhood. India’s approach to Sri Lanka clearly cannot hinge on domestic politics in Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka views resolutions against it in the UNHRC as not binding and as driven by lobbies with agendas against the country, especially when sponsored by a country accused of rights violations across the globe – the US. Instead of using discriminatory HR interventions as a prod, there is a strong case for India to restore goodwill with Colombo, to encourage a politics that is more democratic and participatory, and to establish a sustainable peace in Sri Lanka. If India continues with its present diplomacy of opportunism and deceit, based principally on domestic political compulsions and its interest in relations with the US, it will wholly undermine a diminishing influence in Sri Lanka to the inevitable detriment of both New Delhi and Colombo.

PAKISTAN

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Terror-Finance Inc
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

While winding up the tenure of Pakistan’s Parliament (on March 15, 2013), within a short span of the three preceding weeks, both the Senate (Upper House) and National Assembly (Lower House) passed the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2013, related particularly to offences relating to the financing of terror. The National Assembly passed the Bill unanimously on February 20, while a majority in the Senate passed on March 5, 2013. The Bill empowers Government authorities to take action against elements involved in financing terrorism in the country, and provides, among other things, for the confiscation of properties owned by those involved in such activities.

This latest Bill is a reproduction of the earlier Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2010, proposing amendments in the existing Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997, which had been introduced in the Senate in July 2010. This, however, remained with the Senate Standing Committee on the Interior, and was reportedly withdrawn in 2012, though reasons for this remain unknown.

The possibility of UN sanctions on Pakistan for failing to comply with standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is likely to have fuelled the development. In October 2011, the FATF pressed upon Islamabad to amend ATA 1997 for freezing assets and other stern action on charges of terrorist financing by February 12, 2012. On missing the deadline, Pakistan was blacklisted by FATF in February 2012. Later, in June 2012 FATF, reiterated that laws on counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering in Pakistan either did not exist or were ineffective in Pakistan. Further, in October 2012, the FATF included Pakistan in its Public Statement, underlining continuing deficiencies in its anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) regime. Pakistan was first publicly identified by the FATF in February 2008 for deficiencies in its AML/CTF regime.

Media reports of October 2012 suggest that a few token steps were taken by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), to check possible financing of terrorist activities, and that 128 bank accounts had been frozen and over PKR 750 millions had been seized. A Financial Monitoring Unit was also established under the Money Laundering Act to monitor suspicious financial transactions.

Earlier, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume-II 2008 SBP and Customs had set up joint counters at international airports to monitor the transportation of foreign currency. In furtherance of the ‘official commitment’ of 2007, authorities made a number of significant cash seizures at the international airports in Karachi (Provincial Capital of Sindh), Lahore (Provincial Capital of Punjab) and Peshawar (Provincial Capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-KP), as well as at various land border crossings.

Pakistan is internally crippled by terrorism and the vast flows of funds to violent extremist groupings in the country, even as the danger percolates from this domestic infrastructure of terrorism to other parts of the region and world. Terrorist groups use a range of instrumentalities to raise finances, including hawala (illegal money transfer), abuse of the charitable sector, narco-finance, abduction etc. Worse, state institutions are deeply complicit in a wide range of terror finance operations, prominently including the printing and distribution of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) , as well as a protracted involvement in drug running to facilitate the operations of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As a result of growing concerns following 9/11, a 2002 report on Financial Terrorism noted that Government officials in Pakistan estimated that USD 7 billion entered the country each year through hawala; the actual volume is likely to be significantly higher. Despite the SBP’s initiative, unlicensed hawaladars (hawala agents) still operate illegally in parts of the country (particularly Peshawar and Karachi), and authorities have taken little action to identify and enforce the regulations prohibiting nonregistered hawaladars. In a recent incident, on November 22, 2012, the US Department of Treasury designated a hawala firm, Rahat Ltd., and its owner Mohammed Qasim and the manager of its Quetta (Provincial Capital of Balochistan) branch, Musa Kalim, as financers and money launderers for the Taliban. The firm has branches in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran which “have been used by the Taliban to facilitate their illicit financial activities,” the Department disclosed.

Terror financing under the garb of charitable trusts have been a principal source of funding for terror outfits. One notorious trust, Al Akhtar, an offshoot of the terrorist Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), for instance, has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) since 2003 and by the UN since 2005.  Al Akhtar Trust has, moreover, been operating under a multiplicity of other identities, including Pakistan Relief Foundation, Pakistani Relief Foundation, Azmat-e-Pakistan Trust and Azmat Pakistan Trust. Saud Memon, a financier of Al Akhtar Trust, was found to be involved in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal's reporter Daniel Pearl. Al Rashid Trust (ART) also deserves mention in this context; it was listed by the U.S. Department of Treasury on September 23, 2001 and by UN on October 6, 2001. ART was known to have been supporting jihadi activities in Chechnya, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir under the leadership of Mufti Mohammad Rashid. It also worked under the identities of Al Amin Welfare Trust, Al Amin Trust, Al Ameen Trust and Al Madina Trust and was linked to Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) , JeM, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), among others. Later, by the end of 2001, it merged with Al Akhtar Trust.

The Saudi angle to such disruptive activities is manifest in the example of Al-Haramain Foundation (Pakistan), a branch of the Saudi Arabia-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation founded by Aqeel Abdulaziz Aqeel al-Aqeel. This ‘charitable organization’, associated with Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), an organization financed by Osama bin Laden, as well as with LeT, was listed on January 26, 2004 by the UN as being associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and for participating in financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities in conjunction with al Qaeda.

Narco-finance has been another vital element of terrorism. It has been reported that 90 per cent of the world's heroin goes through Pakistan, carried in on trucks from Afghanistan that are owned by the Fauji (Army) Foundation, controlled by the Pakistan Army, so they are never checked by customs. The narcotics trade through Pakistan is principally used for funding terrorism, with the ‘Golden Route’, from Afghanistan through Pakistan and then into Iran established as one of the world’s most lucrative illicit drug thoroughfares.

The deliberations of the “Regional Ministerial Conference on Counter Narcotics” held in Islamabad in November 2012 noted, “There is also an emerging need to explore and address the link between illicit drug production, trafficking and terrorist financing.” Moreover, for enhancing regional cooperation for combating narco-terrorism, one of the aims stated was, “Underline the need to strengthen international cooperation in addressing the links that in some cases may exist between illicit drug trafficking, illicit production of narcotic drugs and drug related financing of terrorism”. Further according to the official record of the Ministry of Narcotics Control, an estimated 551,257 kilograms of heroin was seized in Pakistan over a period of nine years (2003-2011), with the obvious apprehensions that the actual quantities traded through the country are many multiples of the volume seized.

Abduction for ransom is another important tactic used by various terrorist groupings for the dual purpose of generating money and spreading terror. This is often outsourced to gangs that supply arms and money to terrorist groups both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Reports indicate that all of Pakistan’s provinces are now under attack from armed abductors , with women and children, becoming the easiest targets, along with foreigners and the Shia minority. Data collated from Criminal Statistics of Sindh Province suggest that, between 2003 and 2012 , a total of 12,311 cases of ‘Kidnapping for Abduction’, and 933 cases of ‘Kidnapping for Ransom’ were recorded in the Province. However, the lack of sincerity of the state is evident in the fact that, apart from Sindh, no chronological data is available regarding abduction in other Provinces on the official sites of the respective Provincial Police.

Clearly, there is an urgent need for a strong law to check terror-finance in Pakistan. ATA 1997 had been engineered against the backdrop of the political situation of the 90s. However, after 9/11, the situation changed dramatically for the worse. Accordingly the need to provide augmented powers to Police and other investigating agencies for monitoring and surveillance of persons, financial transactions, and money flows in connection with terrorism has been felt. The new Bill, thus, paves the way for enforcement agencies to take action against those who finance acts of terrorism and those who benefit from the proceeds of such acts.

The objective of the Bill is to “strengthen the provision concerning the offences of terrorism financing and to provide more effective enforcement measures against such offences.” It also expands the scope of the definition of ‘money’ in the context of terrorist finance, as including “coins or notes in any currency, postal orders, money orders, bank credits, bank accounts, letter of credit, travelers cheques, bank cheques, bankers draft in any form, electronic, digital or otherwise and such other kinds of monetary instruments or documents as the Federal Government may by order specify.” The definition of property includes “corporal or incorporeal, moveable or immoveable, tangible or intangible and includes shares, securities, bonds and deeds or interest in property of any kind or money.”

However, the Pakistani state’s enduring legacy of harbouring and supporting terrorism casts doubt on the efficacy of the Act, once it receives Presidential approval. Pakistan’s covert policy of sponsoring terrorist formations as instruments of state policy can never be reconciled with any legislation that seeks to curb terrorism. The present Bill is, at best, a ‘face-saving’ device to counter mounting pressure from the international community. Pakistan’s geo-strategic ambitions will play a decisive role in undermining the efficacy of the provisions of the new Anti Terrorism (Amendment) Bill with respect to control of the financing of terrorism.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

BANGLADESH

Islamist Extremism

Left Wing Extremism

Total (BANGLADESH)

INDIA

Jammu and Kashmir

Manipur

Nagaland

Left-wing Extremism

Bihar

Jharkhand

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)