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The execution of terror
By
Syed Saleem Shahzad
 KARACHI - While much of
the world's attention is focused on a possible
United States-led war on Iraq, and everything that such
a conflict will entail, some Western
intelligence agencies, including thos of the US, are preparing for
a new wave of violence that could see the US
and its allies encountering their enemy not only in Iraq,
but all over the world.
These attacks
could be triggered by the scheduled execution by lethal
injection in the state of Virginia on Thursday of Aimal
Kansi, a Pakistani national convicted for the 1993
murders of two Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
employees near Washington.
Initially, there is
likely to be a strong reaction in Pakistan, but, as the
US State Department has already warned, the execution
could result in retaliation against Americans and their
interests around the world. On Tuesday, Al Jazeera, the
Arab satellite television channel, broadcast an
audiotape that it said was recorded by Osama bin Laden,
in which he praised several recent terror attacks around
the world, and threatened further bloodshed to come.
A prime target of militant organizations in
Pakistan is former president Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari,
as he is the man said in 1997 to have had Kansi arrested
in the Pakistan region of Dera Ghazi Khan, and then
handed over to the Americans, even though there was no
treaty between the two countries for such action.
On Tuesday, activists from the Jamaat-e-Islami
in Multan town in Punjab province marched and threatened
violence if Kansi were executed. In a new report, Amnesty
International confirms that US intelligence agents and
Pakistan's government colluded to abduct Kansi, who
belongs to the powerful Pashtun Kansi tribe in the
southwestern province of Balochistan. The province,
bordering Afghanistan, is a stronghold of hardline
Islamic groups which made major gains in Pakistan's
national elections last month. Tribal head Arbab Zahir
Kansi has sent a written appeal to the US Justice
Department, asking it to pardon Kansi or commute the
death sentence.
The situation in Pakistan
is complicated by the poll success of the six
Islamic groups in the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), which is
in the process of trying to form a key part of a
new coalition government. MMA campaigned on a platform of
ousting the US from Pakistan, and elements of the MMA
were at the forefront of Tuesday's marches and protests.
The post-World War II period of the past
century can be viewed as one in which there was a
silent contract of cooperation between the god-fearing
world (be it Europe, the Americas, Pakistan, Iran or Saudi
Arabia) and the godless world where communism had taken
hold. The god-fearing world, whether Christian or
Muslim, cooperated against the spread of the godless
world. Being the dominant force in the "capitalist"
god-fearing world, the US, the UK and their intelligence
agencies supported Islamic zealots to counter the threat
of communism in the Muslim world. This "holy" nexus was
severed with the the end of the Cold War, and a new
world order began to emerge.
Aimal Kansi was
caught in this transformation period. He fought in
Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s. He is from
a highly influential family with clout in both Balochistan
and in Afghanistan’s Kandahar region. He was given
special training in espionage and guerrilla warfare by
CIA officials to counter the Afghan communist regime’s
designs in southern Afghanistan. Kansi is said to
have been effective, but in the process he was influenced
by Afghan-Arabs who had also been trained and equipped
by the CIA, but who after the Gulf War in 1991
turned against their former mentors.
When the
communist government fell in Kabul in the early 1990s,
Kansi decided to go to the US, tapping a contact, Victor
Marchetti, a former CIA official, who got him a job in a
courier company. This was at the time that Osama bin
Laden was making his calls for the US to evacuate the
Persian Gulf or face the consequences.
Obviously
convinced by the appeal, in 1993 Kansi gunned down
Lansing Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28, as they sat
in their cars outside the CIA headquarters in Langley,
Virginia. Three other people were wounded. He confessed
to the shootings, saying that they were vengeance for
American interference in Muslim countries.
Now
Kansi has been elevated to the position of a hero among
jihadis, and his death at the hands of the US judicial
system will be used to further motivate militants around
the world.
The State
Department warns that attacks could target the United States
or its foreign interests. "The US government
continues to receive credible indications that
extremist groups and individuals are planning
additional terrorist actions against US interests," the department
said in a statement. "Such actions may include,
but are not limited to, suicide operations."
The statement added that targets "may include facilities
where Americans or possibly other foreigners are
generally known to congregate or visit, such as
residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of worship,
schools, hotels, outdoor recreation events or resorts
and beaches". Some embassies and consulates may close
temporarily, the department added.
The US media has
only reported a recent meeting between the Lebanese
Hezbullah and al-Qaeda leaders in Beirut, but in fact
many large-scale contacts between al-Qaeda and militant
groups all over the world have already been made, and
strategies worked out. These range from the kidnapping
and killing of US citizens, to blowing up strategic or
diplomatic areas. Indeed, the process has already begun.
According to the findings of Western
intelligence agencies, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed supplied
US$10,000 to Naeem Bokhari, a leader of the banned
Pakistani sectarian outfit Laskhar-i-Jhangvi, to kidnap
a Westerner. The response was the abduction and
subsequent murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
The attack earlier this year on the Protestant
International Church, located in a heavily guarded
diplomatic enclave about a half-mile from the US embassy
in Islamabad, was aimed at a senior US official, Milton
Green, and his wife Barbara, who was killed. These two
instances provide examples of the al-Qaeda-local
militant nexus, with the latter doing the dirty work.
World terrorism experts believe that al-Qaeda
operatives have secreted hundreds of tonnes of
explosives around the globe. Local militant groups will
be given access to this, along with a plan, wherever and
whenever al-Qaeda decides to open a new war front
against the US.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd.
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