வாரணாசி குண்டுவெடிப்பில் ஹுஜியும் மற்ற ஜிஹாதிகளின் பங்கு!
திடீரென்று முன்பு இஸ்லாமிய தீவிரவாதிகளால் நடத்தப் பட்ட குண்டுவெடிப்புகளில் சில, இந்து அமைப்புகள் செய்தன என்று மாற்றி செய்திகள் வருகின்றன, வழக்குகள் திருத்தப்படுகின்றன என்பதைப் பார்க்கும்போது ஆச்சரியமாக உள்ளது
HUJI (B) & VARANASI BLASTS-
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR : PAPER NO.41
Paper no. 1762 06. 04. 2006
by B.Raman
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers18%5CPaper1762.html
The Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police, which has been investigating the two explosions at a Hindu temple and a local railway station at Varanasi on March 7,2006, announced on April 5,2006, that its investigation has established that the two explosions were carried out by three terrorists of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami of Bangladesh, known as HUJI (B), with local help provided by one Walilullah, the Imam of a mosque at Phulpur in Allahabad, and five other Indian Muslims.
2. While Walilullah and the five other Indian Muslims, who had helped the three terrorists from Bangladesh, have been arrested, the three terrorists, who actually carried out the explosions, have managed to go back to Bangladesh after carrying out the terrorist strikes. Twenty innocent civilians were killed in the two explosions. The UP Police have described Walilullah as the Eastern UP Area Commander of HUJI (B).
3. In a confessional statement, Walilullah has reportedly cited the demolition of the Babri Masjid in UP in December 1992 by a Hindu mob and the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in February,2002, as the reasons for the terrorist strikes against the temple and at the railway station. He has projected the twin blasts as acts of reprisal terrorism. He has given the names of the three persons, who came from Bangladesh to carry out the explosions, as Bashiruddin alias Bashir,Mustafiz and Zakaria, all Bangladeshi nationals. According to his version, they had studied along with him at the Deoband seminary in UP some years ago and he has been in touch with them since then.
4. Walilullah had once been arrested by the Allahabad Police in 2001 on suspicion of his links with the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) of Pakistan. He was released after eight months without being prosecuted. Bashiruddin took him to Bangladesh in June 2004 and introduced him to one Maulana Asadullah of HUJI (B), who enrolled him into the organisation and appointed him as its Area Commander for Eastern UP.
5. The other five Indian Muslims arrested are Syed Shuib and Farhaan (Lucknow), Mohammad Rizwan Siddiqui and Mohammad Saad Ali (Amroha) and Shahid (Allahabad). They were working in a power loom in Bhiwandi near Mumbai. All the arrested Indian Muslims are reported to have confessed that they had visited Pakistan via Bangladesh for training in jihadi terrorism, organised by Maulana Asadullah.
6. HUJI (B) is the Bangladesh branch of the HUJI of Pakistan, which is headed by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who is presently in jail in Pakistan. He was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in 1995, when Mrs. Benazir Bhutto was the Prime Minister, on a charge of involvement with a group of Pakistani army officers headed by Brig.Zahir-ul-Islam-Abbasi in trying to organise a military coup. Brig.Abbasi used to be the New Delhi station chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the Pakistani High Commission and was expelled by the Government of India in 1988.The arrested Army officers and the Qari were accused of planning to have Benazir and Gen.Abdul Wahid Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff, assassinated and capture power. While the arrested officers were tried before a court-martial and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, the ISI did not prosecute the Qari for reasons which were not clear.
7. He was released. After his release, he settled down in Kandahar and emerged as a key adviser of Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban. The HUJI, under his leadership, participated in the fight against the Northern Alliance led by the late Ahmed Shah Masood. Its volunteers also participated in the jihad in the Central Asian Republics and Chechnya. It came to be known as the Punjabi Taliban.
8. The HUJI of Pakistan and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil merged for some time and operated under the name Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). They split and started operating again as two different organisations after the US State Department designated the HUA as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in October,1997. This was done because of suspicion of the involvement of some of its cadres in the kidnapping of some Western tourists in Jammu & Kashmir in 1995 under the name Al Faran.
9. When the US started its military action in Afghanistan on October 7,2001, in the wake of 9/11, Qari Saifullah Akhtar and his followers crossed over into Pakistan and dispersed to different places. The HUJI was suspected to have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, at Karachi along with the HUM (Al-Alami meaning International) in January-February,2002, and in the two attempts to kill President General Pervez Musharraf at Rawalpindi in December,2003, along with the JEM and some lower level officers of the Army and the Air Force.
10. The Qari ran away to Dubai to escape arrest. His presence there was detected by the Dubai authorities in August,2004. They arrested him and handed him over to the Pakistani authorities, but he has not so far been prosecuted in connection with any of these incidents.
11. The Bangladesh branch of the HUJI came into existence in 1992 after the Afghan Mujahideen captured power in Kabul in April,1992, after overthrowing the then Afghan President Najibullah. It was set up by a group of Bangladeshi nationals, who had fought against the forces of the Najibullah Government after having undergone jihadi training in Pakistan.The formation of the HUJI (B) was announced at a press conference in April 1992 by a group of Afghan war veterans. It was projected as a successor to a first Bangladeshi Mujahideen group that had been formed in 1984 by Commander Abdur Rahman, for fighting against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.He later reportedly died in the Afghan War in 1989.
12.Among the founding fathers of the HUJI (B) are Shaikhul Hadith, Allama Azizul Haq, who is also associated with the Islami Oikyo Jote (IOJ), a member of the present ruling coalition headed by Begum Khalida Zia, Muhammad Habibur Rahman of Sylhet, Ataur Rahman Khan of Kishoreganj, Sultan Jaok of Chittagong, Abdul Mannan of Faridpur and Habibullah of Noakhali. All of them are members of different Islamic organisations and madrasas. Ataur Rahman Khan was reportedly elected to the Parliament as a candidate of Begum Khalida Zia’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP) in 1991.
13.All of them visited Afghanistan in 1988 before the withdrawal of the Soviet troops and met, amongst others, Osama bin Laden. An account of their travel to Afghanistan at the invitation of the HUJI of Pakistan was given by Habibur Rahman in an interview to an Islamic journal called “Islami Biplob” (Islamic Revolution), which was published by the journal on August 20,1998. Habibur Rahman is also the convenor of Sahaba Sainik Parishad and the founding principal of the Jameya Madania Islamia, a madrasa at Kazir Bazar, Sylhet.
14. He said in the interview: “An invitation from Harkat-ul Jihad- Al- Islami made it possible for me to make the fortunate trip to Afghanistan… Those of us who visited the Afghan war-fields during that trip were Shaikhul Hadith, Ataur Rahman Khan, Sultan Jaok, Abdul Mannan, Habibullah and myself. In Pakistan, leaders of the local chapter of the HUJI greeted us and took us to the HUJI Karachi office. HUJI Pakistan chief Saifullah Akhtar and a Bangladeshi Mujahideen Abdur Rahman Shahid drove us to an Afghan Mohajir ( refugee) camp on the Pakistan-Afghan border. We stayed at the camp and visited some injured Mujahideens and an Islamic cadet college, where the cadets received us with a guard of honour. Abdur Rahman then drove us to the residence of top Mujahideen leader Rasul Siaaf. The house was defended like a fort with anti-aircraft cannons and armed guards. While still in Pakistan and on our way to Afghanistan, we visited a special Mujahideen training camp and met about a dozen Bangladeshi young Mujahideens led by one Abdul Quddus. We watched youths from different countries taking military training on a mountainous terrain. The arms they were being trained to operate included rocket launchers. That night, I shared a meal of dry cold bread with a handsome young Arab.When I inquired after his identity, I was told he was Osama bin Laden, a son of one of the richest Saudi families.The next day, we entered Afghanistan and arrived at a Mujahideen cantonment on a mountain top. We visited an armoury inside a tunnel. We were informed that some Russian forces were in position nearby and that every one must prepare to fight. All of us were given Kalashnikov (AK-47) rifles. We stayed the night at the camp, while a Mujahideen team advanced towards the enemy position and engaged in a skirmish. The following day we started our return journey.”
15. The HUJI (B) subsequently appointed as its leader Shawkat Osman alias Sheikh Farid. Imtiaz Quddus was appointed its General Secretary. He is probably identical with Abdul Quddus mentioned above. It has its main operational base in the coastal area stretching from the port city of Chittagong south through Cox’s Bazar to the Myanmar border. In addition to acts of terrorism, it has been involved in piracy, smuggling and gun-running . It reportedly maintains six training camps in the hilly areas of Chittagong and six more near Cox’s Bazar. There are varying reports of its total strength, going up to 15,000, but my own estimate on the basis of available intelligence is that it has a hard-core strength of about 700, consisting of native Bangladeshis, Rohingya Muslims from the Arakan area of Myanmar and Pattani Muslims from Southern Thailand. According to some reports, the Rohingya Muslims constitute the largest single group in the organisation.
16.According to Bangladesh Police sources, a key suspect in the plot to assassinate the then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, in July 2000, Mufti Abdul Hannan, was trained in a HUJI camp in Peshawar in Pakistan. A diary recovered by the Police from Hannan’s brother Matiur Rehman, who was also involved in the assassination plot, reportedly indicated he was in touch with the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka.These sources say that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence uses the HUJI (B) for running training camps for the insurgent groups in India’s North-East, for Indian Muslims and for selected members of the Bangladeshi illegal migrants to India. These training camps are reportedly located in the Kurigram and Rangpur areas of Bangladesh, near the border of Coochbihar in West Bengal. The presence of similar training camps for training recruits from India were also reported in the past in Rangmari, Sundermari and Masaldanga.
17.Instructors from the HUJI (B) are also attached to the training camps of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) near the Tirupura border. It was suspected that the attack on the security guards outside the US Consulate at Kolkata in January,2002, was orchestrated by HUJI (B), in collaboration with the JEM and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, under the name the Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF). Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, the prime accused in the attack, was in touch not only with the office-bearers of these organisations in Pakistan, but also with Omar Sheikh, who had masterminded the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl. Omar Sheikh claimed during his interrogation by the Karachi Police in 2002 that it was he who had asked Aftab Ansari to carry out the attack.
18. The HUJI (B) reportedly receives financial assistance from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan through Muslim Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) of Bangladesh such as the Adarsa Kutir, Al Faruk Islamic Foundation and Hataddin as well as from the ISI through its station chief in the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka. Amomg the terrorist incidents in Bangladesh in which it was suspected were: the murder of journalist Shamsur Rahman, on July 16, 2000, in Jessore, a plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina on July 23,2000, plots to assassinate 28 prominent intellectuals of Bangladesh , including National Professor Kabir Choudhury, writer Taslima Nasreen and the Director General of the Islamic Foundation, Maulana Abdul Awal, an explosion at a Bengali New Year’s Day function in Dhaka on April 14,2001, which killed eight people, an explosion in a Roman Catholic church at Baniachang in Gopalganj on June 3,2001, killing 10 worshippers, and an attempt to kill Dr.Humayun Azad, a Bangla Professor and famous writer, on February 27,2004.
19.In February,2005, under pressure from the European Union, Begum Khalida Zia, the Bangladesh Prime Minister, who till then was denying the presence of any jihadi terrorist organisation in Bangladesh territory, admitted for the first time the presence of the Jamiatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh and banned them. But her Government continued to deny the existence of HUJI(B) and the ban order did not cover it.
20.Commenting on this in an editorial on February 27,2005, the usually reliable “Daily Times” of Lahore wrote as follows: “The disease of ‘Islamist terrorism’ was incubated in Karachi and Khost and then passed on to Dhaka. A glance at the looking glass in Dhaka will discover Pakistani-jihadi footsteps all over the place. The Harkatul Mujahideen al-Islami (the one called HUJI in Bangladesh) is the outfit whose leader was a graduate of the Banuri Mosque seminary in Karachi and whose activists tried to kill our Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently. HUJI is the international face of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. As for the “pseudo-Islamic” nature of what is happening in Bangladesh, let us accept that that is the way of ‘Islamic revolution’ these days. This is what the Uzbek Islamist Tahir Yuldashev did in Osh before he came down to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. The Hizb al-Tahrir, which Pakistan banned only after Yuldashev’s discovery, worked in tandem with him in Central Asia and is now clearly working in tandem with HUJI in Bangladesh. As in Pakistan, seminaries also flourish in Bangladesh with foreign funding because of poverty and — and this few observers mention — profits to the organising clergy. Had the clergy been devoted to a higher cause they would have used the money to promote local Islam and not the hardline Wahhabi-Saudi one now associated with the Taliban. An increasing number of Bangladesh’s madrassas are now following the pattern of study of the madrassas in Pakistan and have become Deobandi in their world view. The Hindus have been targeted, aided by the widespread belief that they should be expelled from the country. The jihad in Afghanistan brought in Al Qaeda money, and the training camps in Bangladesh have since begun to turn out warriors for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”
21. The paper added: “The phase Bangladesh is passing through can be taken in two parts. An aspect of it belongs to the early 1990s when the “Islamist” outfits in Pakistan did not offend the conservative Muslim League but were seen as a threat by a liberal PPP (Pakistan People’s Party). These days the ruling BNP in Bangladesh is most reluctant to take action against the Islamists as they continue to attack Awami League cadres and communists; but when phase two opens up, the BNP will be equally threatened. The “purifying” dynamic of the Islamists will demand that the BNP bend to the kind of shariah the warriors favour in light of their training in Afghanistan and their “salafi” contact with Al Qaeda. A day will come soon enough when the state of Bangladesh will come under threat from the Islamic warriors it is now empowering through denial.”
22.As predicted by the paper, that day came on August 17,2005, when the two organisations banned in February,2005, but whose leaders and activists were not arrested, carried out 450 simultaneous explosions all over Bangladesh and thereafter introduced suicide terrorism. Acting in panic, Begum Khalida Zia ordered a round-up of the leaders and activists of these two organisations and their prosecution. She also banned the HUJI (B) in October,2005, but so far none of the leaders of HUJI (B) except Mufti Abdul Hannan, who was involved in the attempt to kill Sheikh Hasina, has been arrested. Its cadres, many of them trained in Pakistan, remain untouched and no action has been taken against its training infrastructure in Bangladesh territory, which continue to train jihadi terrorist recruits from India, Myanmar and southern Thailand.
19.The HUJI of Pakistan is a member of bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People formed in 1998 and through its branch in Bangladesh, it has been trying to arabise and wahabise the Muslims of Bangladesh, who are in their overwhelming majority descendents of converts from Hinduism, and use them for carrying out its pan-Islamic agenda in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and southern Thailand.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: itschen36@gmail.com )
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