Terror and Mafia Kingpin Dawood Ibrahim: Why Nepal should be paying
attention.
January 09, 2010
Dawood Ibrahim (aka Dawood Ebrahim and Sheikh Dawood Hassan) was born
on December 26, 1955. He is the godfather of the organized crime
syndicate D-Company in Mumbai and one of Interpol’s most wanted men. He
was No. 4 on the Forbes' World's Top 10 most dreaded criminals list of 2008
and is ranked #50 in Forbes list of “The World's Most Powerful People.”
Dawood Ibrahim first attracted international interest after the 1993 Bombay
bombings. In 2003, the United States declared him an “international
terrorist” with close links to al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden, and pursued the
matter before the United Nations, attempting to freeze his international
assets and crack down on his operations. More recently, Russian and Indian
intelligence agencies have looked closely at Ibrahim's possible involvement
in the November 2008 Mumbai hotel attacks. Among other things, there is
circumstantial evidence that Ibrahim’s network provided a boat to the ten
terrorists who killed 173 people in the 2008 Mumbai slaughter.
Ibrahim’s whereabouts remains unknown, although India’s Research and
Analysis Wing (RAW) believes he is in hiding in Pakistan. Pakistan officials
deny any knowledge of his presence in their country. But the issue will not
go away. The extradition of Dawood Ibrahim remains one of the major
hurdles in the difficult relations between India and Pakistan.
THE SPECIFICS OF IBRAHIM’S D-COMPANY
Four days ago, on January 5, 2010, the United States’ Congressional
Research Service (CRS), a research wing of Congress, released a report that
identifies D-Company as a criminal syndicate now numbering 5,000
members with strategic alliance with the ISI, LeT and al Qaida, thus making
it a leading example of the “criminal-terrorism” fusion model that currently
poses an increasing threat to South Asian interests.
The report, titled "International Terrorism and Transnational Crime:
Security Threats, US Policy, and Considerations for Congress", notes that D-
Company is involved in a variety of criminal activities, including extortion,
smuggling, narcotics trafficking, contract killing, and deep infiltration into
the Indian filmmaking industry, (extorting producers, assassinating
directors, distributing movies, and pirating films).
But, according to the report, D-Company's evolution into a genuine terrorist
group began in response to the destruction of the December 1992 Babri
Mosque in Ayodhya, India. 2000 people died in the ensuing riots and Hindu-
Muslim relations deteriorated dramatically as a result.
Then: "Reportedly with assistance from Pakistan government's intelligence
branch, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), D-Company launched a
series of bombing attacks on March 12, 1993, killing 257 people," the report
said. Following the attacks, Ibrahim moved his network's headquarters to
Karachi. There, D-Company is believed to have deepened its strategic
alliance with the ISI and developed links to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT).
(For those unfamiliar with it, LeT is an organization included in the
Terrorist Exclusion List by the US Government in December 2001. It was
subsequently proscribed by the United Nations in May 2005. Formed in 1990
in the Kunar province of Afghanistan, LeT is now headquartered in Muridke,
near Lahore in Pakistan, and headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.)
During the 1990s, according to the Congressional Research Service report,
Ibrahim’s D-Company “began to finance LeT's activities, use its companies
to lure recruits to LeT training camps, and give LeT operatives use of its
smuggling routes and contacts. …Lending his criminal expertise and
networks to such terrorist groups, [Ibrahim] is capable of smuggling
terrorists across national borders, trafficking in weapons and drugs,
controlling extortion and protection rackets, and laundering ill-gotten
proceeds, including through the abuse of traditional value transfer
methods, like hawala."
Also known as hundi, hawala is an informal value transfer system based on
the performance and honor of a huge network of money brokers, which are
primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and
South Asia.
DAWOOD IBRAHIM’S RELATIONSHIP TO NEPAL AND THE
PAKISTANI CONNECTION
Ibrahim has a long-standing connection to Nepal and was once a regular
visitor to Nepal, according to Indian officials. He has since restricted his
movement outside of Pakistan but, according to a South Asia Tribune report
written in April 2004, Ibrahim was last seen in Kathmandu in the last week
of August 2003. During that visit, he met his Nepali front man Sartaj Ahmed
and several leaders from fundamentalist organizations. Sartaj is reportedly
“in constant touch with officials of the Pakistani Embassy.”
Dawood has big financial stakes in Nepal: “He has made huge investments in
a variety of business ventures, from media, private airlines, hotels, travel
agencies to trans-border smuggling including that of gold. In Nepal he has
built high level contacts with businessmen, officials, politicians, smugglers
and religious fundamentalists,” according to South Asia Tribune. “The late
Mirza Dilshad Beg, an ex-member of parliament of Nepal, was once an
associate of Dawood. He was gunned down in Kathmandu in 1998. After his
death, his son-in-law Sartaj joined Dawood.”
WHY NEPALIS SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE DAWOOD IBRAHIM
CONNECTION
The exploitation of trade routes crossing through Nepal’s porous southern
border – for both smuggling and the either direct or indirect exportation of
terrorism (both domestic and Pakistani) – has now become a problem of
increasing international concern and scrutiny. As long as the main political
parties continue to squabble among themselves, while a would-be new
constitution remains unwritten, and while southern Nepal remains an area
with little or no effective security, the “criminal-terrorism fusion”, which
has taken root in Nepal, will be favored with conditions suitable for further
expansion and control. If this pattern cannot be reversed by the good
people of Nepal, eventually, the international community may decide that
they must address Nepal’s degeneration of law and order themselves – with
or without Nepal’s consent.
Dawood Ibrahim’s name came up once again – in connection with Nepal –
just last week. In the first days of 2010, the dramatic arrest of the son of a
powerful Nepalese politician on charges of heading a major fake Indian
currency and drugs smuggling racket, allegedly sponsored by Pakistani
intelligence agencies, further exposed how illicit funds pour into Nepal
(with the underworld’s help) – presumably to destabilize India’s relations
with Nepal.
Here’s what happened.
A special task force of Nepal police arrested Yunus Ansari, the son of former
minister Salim Miya Ansari, who is alleged to have links with Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Dawood Ibrahim, after a tip-off by Indian
authorities that he was running the two criminal networks.
Yunus Ansari, the president of Nepal’s National Wrestling Federation, is also
the chairman of a new television channel that is yet to start regular
transmission. While Yunus Ansari was arrested along with three Nepalis, two
Pakistanis, one African and one from the Caribbean, police said they had no
evidence against his father, former forest and soil conservation minister
Ansari.
Yunus Ansari and his associates were caught with fake Indian currency
worth over Indian Rs.2.5 million last week and nearly four kilograms of
heroin after a long period of surveillance that started with the arrest of two
Nepalis with fake Indian currency in India’s Madhya Pradesh state last year.
The Nepal chase started on New Year’s Day when Yunus Ansari’s Nepali
bodyguard, Kashiram Adhikari, was dispatched to Thamel, once the hub of
tourists and now increasingly targeted by criminals and sex workers, to
make contact with Pakistani agents.
Adhikari led police to the Red Planet Guest House in Thamel where
Pakistani national Mohammad Sajjad was awaiting him in room 304. The
bodyguard collected a red suitcase from Sajjad and went to room 204 where
another Pakistani, Mohammad Iqbal, was waiting with two suitcases.
After collecting the lot, Adhikari headed for the Bluebird Mall in Thapathali
where Yunus Ansari had allegedly rented a room. Police caught him there
and a search exposed the false bottoms in the suitcases, where the fake
notes were hidden.
According to initial investigation, the racket starts from Karachi, where a
Pakistani known as Haji Talad Ali heads it. The modus operandi was simple.
The money would be brought to the same guesthouse from where Adhikari
would take it to his master.
When police raided the hotel and arrested the two Pakistanis, Sajjad was
found to possess heroin as well. Yunus was arrested soon afterwards from
his residence in Tahachal.
Police also arrested a Guyana citizen, K. Ibrahim, and another from Sierra
Leone, Austin Ibrahim, who were to have circulated the heroin.
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY, INDIA BEEFED UP SECURITY ALONG NEPAL’S
BORDER BECAUSE OF PAKISTANI CONCERNS
On January 1, 2010, New Delhi placed its country on alert as the police
launched a manhunt for three Pakistani militants who escaped from police
custody.
Abdul Razzak, Mohammed Sadiq and Rafaqat Ali escaped from G B Pant
hospital in central Delhi. The three had served jail terms for triggering two
blasts in the city’s 16th century Red Fort in 2000. They were in the custody
of Special Branch of Delhi Police and were to be handed over to the
Foreigners Regional Registration office (FRRO) for deportation to Pakistan
when the escape took place.
While the Meghalaya Police personnel, who were escorting the three, were
being questioned by security agencies, Uttar Pradesh state police deployed
additional security along the India-Nepal border to guard against possible
threats or escapes through the 870-mile open border of Nepal.
The point here is that, in many people’s minds, the potential of a Nepali-
Pakistani connection is becoming a given. This is not a healthy presumption
for Nepal to have to contend with.
The Nepali police did an outstanding job of bringing Yunus Ansari to ground.
Crimes were being committed and a crack team stepped in and took proper
action.
But the police cannot be expected to do the government’s job, which is to
provide stability – an atmosphere in which criminal activity can be curtailed
before it actually takes place. Neither the Maoists nor the UML nor the
Congress Party, nor any of the other parties for that matter, have been able
to provide that sort of backdrop for the people of Nepal, who deserve far
better.
Little wonder that the three major parties’ leaders – Prachanda, Koirala and
Prime Minister Nepal -- were christened “The 3 Idiots” by the Nepali Times
this week, a reference to a new Bollywood film that is currently all the rage
in Kathmandu.
The international community may not get the joke, per se, but they’ll
comprehend the cynicism behind the joke. They know that incompetence,
at the end of the day, really isn’t all that funny.
