SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 12, No. 36, March 10, 2014

PAKISTAN

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Punjab: Simmering Cauldron
Ambreen Agha
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On March 3, 2014, at least 11 persons, including Additional District and Sessions Judge Rafaqat Awan and a woman lawyer, were killed, and another 25 were injured, when terrorists carried out a suicide attack at the courthouse complex located in the F-8 area of Islamabad. According to reports, the terrorists entered the complex and opened fire indiscriminately at everyone, hurled hand grenades and later exploded their suicide vests.

The TTP ‘spokesman’ Shahidullah Shahid, distancing his outfit from the attack, clarified, “We have already declared a ceasefire and we strictly adhere to our deal with the Government. Our colleagues in the organisation also cannot violate this agreement”. On declaring an ‘unconditional’ ceasefire, on March 2, 2014, Shahid had stated, “Following a positive response from the Government, an appeal from religious scholars, in honour of the representative committee and in the greater interest of Islam and Pakistan, we have decided not to carry out any activities for one month... We hope that the Government will take our ceasefire announcement seriously and will work to move forward in a positive way while keeping the peace process away from all types of politics.” The Nawaz Sharif Government and TTP resumed negotiations in the second phase of talks on March 5, 2014.

Meanwhile, ‘spokesman’ of the Ahrar-ul-Hind (AH), a TTP splinter group, claiming responsibility for the attack, declared that the judicial system in the country was ‘un-Islamic’ and that they would continue their ‘struggle’ till Sharia’h law was enforced. Further, while dispelling any confusion over its alleged links with the TTP, he said, "We are an independent group and have no links with TTP. We were a part of TTP earlier but now we operate independently.” 

Earlier, on February 7, 2014, five officials were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up during a search operation jointly launched by Police and Intelligence Agencies in the Khanewal District of Punjab Province. 

Prior to this, on January 20, 2014, a TTP suicide bomber killed 13 persons, including eight soldiers and three children, and wounded another 29, when he blew himself up at Royal Artillery Bazaar, close to the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi District. Claiming responsibility for the attack, TTP 'spokesman' Shahidullah Shahid announced, "It [the attack] was carried out by one of our suicide bombers to take revenge for the Red Mosque massacre. We will continue our struggle against the secular system." The Pakistani Army had conducted operations at Red Mosque in 2007.

These incidents are not in isolation. The first two months and seven days of the current year have already recorded 39 fatalities, including 23 civilians, nine Security Force (SF) personnel and seven terrorists, in nine incidents of killing, according to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP).

In 2013, a total of 81 persons, including 64 civilians, seven SF personnel and 10 terrorists were killed in total 20 separate terrorism related incidents of killing, as compared to 104 persons killed in 19 such incidents in 2012, registering a decline of 22.11 percent in fatalities.

The decline registered in overall fatalities is mainly due to the SFs' reluctance to counter the terrorists’ threat. Indeed, as compared to 2012, the year 2013 witnessed a decline of 75.86 and 37.5 per cent in fatalities among SFs and terrorists, respectively. Perhaps emboldened by the evident operational paralysis among the state's security agencies, terrorists killed a slightly higher number of civilians in 2013, as against the previous year.  

Other parameters of violence have varied widely. Out of 20 incidents of killing in 2013, seven were major incidents (involving three or more killings) resulting in 40 deaths, as compared to five major incidents in 2012 that accounted for 76 deaths. While the Province recorded only one suicide attack in 2013, same as in 2012, the resultant fatalities stood at five and 11 respectively.  At least five bomb blasts occurred in 2013, which claimed 14 lives and left 73 injured. In 2012, the number of bomb blasts stood at 10 with 51 fatalities. Incidents of sectarian violence, however, increased considerably from four in 2012 to 13 in 2013. The resultant fatalities, though, remained almost the same: 42 in 2013 as against 43 in 2012.

The possibility of escalation of violence cannot be ruled out as a result of the considerable and increasing presence of at least 57 extremist and terrorist outfits in Punjab alone Out of the 57 extremist organisations found in Punjab, at least 28 homegrown outfits exist in the provincial capital, Lahore, making it the most violent among the 36 Districts of the Province, followed by Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Significantly, Lahore has witnessed a total of 563 fatalities since 2005, according to partial data compiled by SATP, compared to 225 in Rawalpindi and 222 in Islamabad, in the same period. However, in 2013 Rawalpindi recorded the maximum fatalities, 26 in nine incidents of killing, followed by Lahore, with 14 in seven terrorism incidents.

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The Province is also home to various foreign terrorists, including the Afghan Taliban and Uzbek terrorists. Talibanisation is, consequently, no longer a local affair, and manifests a dual strategy of both importing foreign radicals into the Province and exporting radical Islamism. Significantly, on December 15, 2012, suicide bombers of the TTP in collusion with foreign terrorists of Dagestani and Uzbek origin, attacked the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base inside the Bacha Khan International Airport of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On December 18, 2012, the then Federal Minister of Education Sheikh Waqas Akram disclosed in the National Assembly, that banned terrorist outfits in Punjab had contacts with Uzbek terrorists, who charged USD 40,000 for carrying out terrorist attacks within Pakistan.

Punjab has also proved to be a major ideological sanctuary and recruitment base for terrorists, as well as a source for the export of the terrorist theology and activities beyond borders. A September 7, 2013, media report quoting analyst Mansur Mehsud, who runs the FATA Research Institute (FRI), stated that terrorists based in Punjab Province were being trained for an ethnicity-based civil war in neighboring Afghanistan after the withdrawal of foreign forces in 2014. Mehsud explains:

Before, they [terrorists in Punjab] were keeping a low profile. But just in the last two or three years, hundreds have been coming from Punjab. Everyone knows that when NATO and the American troops leave Afghanistan there will be fighting between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns.

Indeed, in a media interview in 2013, a senior Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) member, who goes by the pseudonym Ahmed Zia Siddiqui, declared, "We will go to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban as we have done in the past." When asked whether the Punjab-based terrorists were preparing for war in Afghanistan after the foreign withdrawal, he replied, "Absolutely."

In one of his bizarre claims, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) founder and Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, while addressing a gathering at Markaz-e-Khyber in the Nishatabad area of Faisalabad District on February 23, 2014, alleged that America, India and their allies were trying their best to ‘crush’ Pakistan from the East and West, and that India was supporting terrorism in Pakistan. Significantly, these gatherings and pronouncements fuel the jihad culture of Punjab, radicalizing madrassa educated youth, face of future religious extremism. In the last two years, Saeed has organised and led five grand rallies, three in 2013 and two in 2012, with the sole purpose of disseminating hatred and sowing the seeds of extreme orthodoxy. Appearing openly at a rally in Islamabad on September 6, 2013, he denounced India as a 'terrorist state', while more than 10,000 of his supporters chanted slogans of "holy war" against India and 'War will continue until the liberation of Kashmir’. Further, he told a frenzied crowd, "The United States and India are very angry with us. This means God is happy with us." Unsurprisingly, former ISI chief Hamid Gul added during the rally, "They should know there are a lot of people here who are waiting for the conquest of India. It will be our privilege to take part in this war."

Punjab is experiencing a tsunami of extremist forces. Significantly, apart from the principal TTP organization, separate local wings of the outfit, such as the TTP-Tariq Karwan Group in Mianwali District in the North of Punjab and the Fidayeen-e-Islami wing of TTP in Lahore District in the East, thrive, and have the potential to multiply further, swelling the radical Islamist wave in the Province. The ideological heads of these extremist formations move around openly with impunity and ease across the Province, including Provincial Capital Lahore and Federal Capital Islamabad. Saeed once audaciously declared, “I move about like an ordinary person - that is my style.” Saeed has also expressed appreciation of the ‘security’ offered to him, declaring, on January 1, 2012:

Pakistan is unmatched in terms of the freedom it allows for the pursuit of jihad and for the spread of Islam. No other territory in the world matched Pakistan and it was a great blessing from Allah... Non-Muslims were conspiring against Pakistan both internally and externally.

With no one to hold them to account, these radicalized forces find fertile grounds in Punjab, creating an escalating threat of destabilizing across the entire region. With little realistic expectations from the peace talks, several of the Army's self-created terrorist proxies have turned against their masters. Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that a substantially collusive and compromised civilian Government will do anything more than the military establishment to eliminate Islamist extremist formations that have, for decades, been harnessed against Pakistan's perceived external enemies, even if some of these terrorist groupings have turned renegade against their erstwhile sponsors.

INDIA

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Bihar: Advantage Squandered
Mrinal Kanta Das
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

In the night of February 22, 2014, around 150 heavily armed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres attacked the Amas Police Station in the Gaya District of Bihar, bringing traffic to a grinding halt on both the New Delhi and Kolkata side of the Grand Trunk Road. The exchange of fire between the Maoists and the Police continued for nearly two hours before the Maoists retreated. Though the Maoists failed to inflict any casualty on the Police side, a civilian taxi driver was killed in the crossfire. Reports suggested that the two sides exchanged about 600 rounds of fire.

On December 31, 2014, a group of nearly 50 Maoist cadres had attacked a highway construction site in Gaya District and torched construction machinery.

On July 17, 2013, at least three Special Auxiliary Police (SAP) troopers and two guards of a private road construction company were killed and seven others were injured, when over 125 Maoist cadres attacked the base camp of the company at Goh in Aurangabad District.

On June 13, 2013, a group of around 200 Maoist cadres had attacked the Dhanbad-Patna Intercity Express at the Bhalui halt near Jamui District, killing three persons and injuring six passengers.

Swarming attacks have become a rarity in most other Maoist-afflicted States, but their persistence in Bihar demonstrates both the capacity of the rebels in the State, and their efforts to stage a comeback there. Nine of 13 such incidents recorded in 2013 occurred in Bihar alone, with Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh accounting for two each. This comes at a time when the State had the opportunity to go after a substantially weakened Maoist network. After securing some tentative but significant gains against the Maoists in 2011 and 2012, Bihar appears to have squandered the opportunity, with its anti-Maoist campaign losing focus. There simply cannot be any acceptable explanation for a State losing 27 Security Force personnel [Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) data] to Maoist attacks in 2013 without inflicting a single casualty on the Maoists.

According UMHA data, a total of 69 persons – 42 civilians and 27 SF personnel - were killed in Bihar in Naxalite (Left Wing Extremism) violence in 2013, as against 49 persons – 34 civilians, 10 SF personnel and five extremists – were killed in 2012. Significantly, this yields a 270 per cent Year-on-Year (YoY) escalation in SF fatalities, even as the Maoists managed to reduce their own losses to zero. Civilian killings by Maoists also increased significantly. Partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) confirms these trends. However, SATP records two Maoist fatalities in 2013, of cadres killed by the Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC), a breakaway faction of the CPI-Maoist, which has turned into its bitter rival.

In the first two months of 2014, the Maoists have already killed at least five civilians while two Maoists have been killed. Prima facie, the Maoist problem in Bihar appears to be worsening again. Apart from the adverse fatalities trends, the arrest and surrender data is also discouraging. 311 Maoists were arrested in 2013, as against 426 in 2012, while just three Maoists surrendered in 2013, as against 42 in 2012.

Significantly, number of encounters with Police has halved to six from 12 between 2012 and 2013, while the number of attacks on the Police increased from seven to 10. Further, the number of arms snatched increased from just two in 2012, to 38 in 2013, while the number of arms recovered decreased from 151 to 88.

Further, according to partial SATP data, at least four incidents of abduction, eight incidents of arson, two incidents of extortion and call for bandhs on three occasions, were recorded against the Maoists in 2013.

Maoist violence in Bihar has also witnessed a significant geographical recovery. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) data, Maoist-related incidents (both violent and non-violent) were reported from 23 out of a total of 38 Districts in 2013, as against 19 Districts in 2012, down from 24 Districts in 2011. However, just three Districts - Aurangabad, Gaya and Jamui - accounted for over 60 per cent of the total fatalities in the State in 2013. There were seven major incidents (each resulting in three or more fatalities) in Bihar in 2013, of which six were reported from these three Districts - Aurangabad (3), Gaya (2) and Jamui (1). One major incident was recorded in Munger District.

On the basis of underground and over ground activities of Maoists as well as the frequency and intensity of violence, three Districts - Aurangabad, Gaya, and Jamui - are categorized as highly affected; another four - Rohtas, Vaishali, Muzaffarpur and Munger - are moderately affected; while sixteen Districts - Arwal, Hazaribagh, Banka, Nawada, Kaimur, Lakhisarai, East Champaran, Jehanabad, Nalanda, Sheohar, Patna, Purnia, Saran, Lakhisarai, Gopalganj and Khagaria – are marginally affected.   

On February 17, 2014, SFs seized 3,400 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, used for making Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), along with a large number of detonators, during anti-Maoist operations in Rohtas District. Earlier, on February 10, 2014, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troops recovered acid bulbs, chargers, megaphones and around 1,680 rounds of ammunition of a .22mm rifle from a Maoist hideout in Gaya District.

Reflecting a dim view of the performance of the State Police and SFs in Bihar, an assessment prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) titled "Left-Wing Extremism: Trends in 2013", warned of the resurrection of Maoist activities in the State, owing to poor counter-insurgency efforts by the Bihar Government. The report noted, "Any respite, at this stage, such as provided by the feeble anti-Naxal response in Bihar, could be fatal to the gains made by security forces" and could help Maoists "form new battle-ready companies and units." The assessment emphasised that a 57 per cent increase in terms of killings in the State had been recorded, even though the rise in the number of incidents was only five percent.

The problem with counter-insurgency operation in Bihar is further compounded by a reported trust deficit between the State Police and Central Forces deployed in the State. The Gaya District Police, on November 18, 2013, arrested one CRPF officer, Assistant Commandant Sanjay Kumar Yadav, posted in Barachatti (Gaya), on charges of leaking crucial information on security operations to the Maoists. Police had filed an FIR against him on November 14. Police claimed that many anti-Maoist operations had ended in failure due to leakage of information by the Assistant Commandant. However, CRPF sources, on condition of anonymity, insist that, even if the charges against the officer are true, it would have been better not to have arrested the officer at that point of time. Five days after a case was lodged against Yadav, who hails from Bihar, Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) Abhayanand sent a letter to the Central Government, urging it to relocate the 159th Battalion of CRPF outside the State, and to substitute it by another battalion.  It also urged the Centre not to post any CRPF officer who belonged to Bihar for anti-Maoist operations in the State.

Despite the evidence of data, State officials, quite surprisingly, claimed that Bihar had, in fact, been carrying out specific intelligence-based operations and been quite successful in arresting the 'maximum number' of Maoists in 2013. A top State Police official thus asserted, "Only killing Maoists is not a sign of big operations", adding that the clearing of the entire Chakarbanda area in Gaya District — which had once been a Maoist stronghold where Police did not even think of entering — was an example of how the State has been doing intelligence-based operation quietly.

Complicating the situation further, the Nitish Kumar Government has still not abandoned the illusion of fighting Maoists with 'development'. On December 2, 2013, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar declared that Bihar did not have a “magic wand” to stop the Maoist attacks, and the answer lay in initiating multiple measures, including socio-economic development.

While the Chief Minister looks for a magic wand to stop Maoist attack, the Police population ratio of Bihar stands at meagre 68 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for 2012) per 100,000 population, even lower than it was a decade earlier, at 69 in 2002, and less than half the national average of 138 in 2012. Not surprisingly, the State Government is constantly looking for the deployment of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) battalions to tackle every security crisis in the State. There are at least six battalions of CAPFs deployed in the Bihar. Further, on January 13, 2014, CRPF deployed close to 200 commandos of its elite Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) battalion to bring a greater effectiveness to its offensives in the State. The Bihar Government has also proposed the setting up of 242 armed fighting companies of the State Police, of which 44 companies will be a dedicated force to deal with rioting, while the remaining would be engaged in operations against the Maoists and organized crime.

Bihar’s anti-Maoist operations appear to have lost focus in 2013, and the counter-insurgency advantages secured in the preceding years have been squandered. The State Government’s reluctance to act firmly and consistently against the Maoists has provided the rebels much needed breathing space, which they are expected to exploit to the fullest, to frame their strategy for the revival of the movement which, in their own assessment, is at a "critical stage" across the country.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

BANGLADESH

Left Wing Extremism

INDIA

Assam

Jammu and Kashmir

Manipur

Left-wing Extremism

Jharkhand

Maharashtra

Odisha

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Punjab

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)