Pakistan after India's 'Osama',
too By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - While all attention is focused on
Osama bin Laden and his cohorts allegedly cornered in
western Pakistan, in India there is an equal amount of
interest in the one man who is wanted just as
desperately - Dawood Ibrahim.
Reports quoting
intelligence sources and independently confirmed by home
ministry officials say that India's most wanted criminal
- thought to be hiding in Pakistan - is facing the heat
at the instance of none less than Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf. The reports say that Dawood's
personal security guards, derived from the cream of
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency,
have been removed. Ibrahim is now said to be on the run,
and some reports say that he has shaved his mustache and
is contemplating plastic surgery to take on a new
identity and passport.
Following last week's
foreign-secretary-level India-Pakistan talks, which
ended with a clear time-frame and a positive roadmap for
future dialogue, this crackdown on Dawood is music to
India's ears. Such is the keenness in India that
Pakistan nab Dawood that officials say that this one
step by the Pakistan establishment could propel Indo-Pak
relations to levels that have never been witnessed since
the time of partition in 1947, during which the two
countries have fought three wars and one near-war at
Kargil in 1999.
The hunt for Dawood is taking
place following Pakistan's realization that flushing out
terrorists and jihadi elements has become a necessity
for its own survival. Pakistan has currently amassed
20,000 troops along the Afghanistan border for what is
being believed to be a decisive battle against bin Laden
and al-Qaeda militants. But what might be more than a
coincidence is that Pakistan's sudden willingness to
flush out Dawood comes amid reports in the Indian media
that a timely tip-off by the Indian intelligence agency
Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) helped foil a third
assassination plot against Musharraf. Two abortive
attempts have been reported in the past few months.
There is, however, no doubt in anyone's mind that Dawood
is indisputably the number one criminal wanted by India,
and what has rankled is that he has for long used
Pakistan as a base.
"If Dawood is nabbed, it
will be the biggest step Pakistan undertakes to curb
cross-border terrorism on the eastern side of the
border," said an official with the Foreign Ministry.
India Defense Minister George Fernandes has already
hinted that India has some information about the
Pakistan army dismantling terror camps and infiltration
along the India-Pakistan border.
Dawood's
alleged dirty deeds It is the nature of the
crimes attributed to Dawood that place him at the top of
India's most wanted wish list. The son of a police
constable, he is the prime suspect in masterminding a
series of bomb blasts that occurred in a single day in
1993 in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the financial heart of
India, killing 260 people and injuring 1,000.
Dawood figures in a list of 20 fugitives that
India wants Pakistan to hand over and is suspected to be
the prime player used by Pakistan's ISI to foment
cross-border terrorism in India. Ever since September
11, India has been trying to impress on the United
States Dawood's links with al-Qaeda and the
Lashkar-e-Toiba - one of two groups India blames for a
bloody 2001 raid on its parliament that triggered a
military standoff with Pakistan and brought the
neighbors close to a fourth war.
It is estimated
that in Mumbai alone, Dawood and his family own assets
worth US$430 million. This includes several buildings at
prime locations such as Colaba, Crawford Market, Bhendi
Bazar, Bandra, Oshiwara and Versova. Many of these are
benami (fictitious names), which makes it
difficult to seize them. The family has several
builders, stockbrokers and jewelers fronting for it.
Apart from this, Dawood has vast business interests in
the hospitality industry in the United Arab Emirates,
Canada, Australia and India. Several shopping malls in
the West and Australia are also reportedly owned by the
family. Dawood has also allegedly began operating an
airline from a Central Asian republic.
India has
made a strong effort to convince the US of the
complicity of Pakistan allowing Dawood, as well as
others such as Masood Azhar, to flourish. Azhar is the
founder of the Islamic extremist group, the banned
Jaish-e-Mohammed that is accused of leading several
terror attacks in India. Azhar was released by India in
exchange for the lives of 150 passengers traveling on
Indian Airlines flight IC 814 from Kathmandu in Nepal
that was hijacked in December 1999 by Pakistani
nationals with links to the ISI.
Pakistan has
always denied that Dawood resides in the country, though
several Indian journalists have reported on his lavish
lifestyle in the port city of Karachi. But, as the
global consensus against terrorism has grown
post-September 11, the US has taken notice of India's
apprehension. Last year, the US labeled Dawood a "global
terrorist". The US Treasury department linked Dawood to
al-Qaeda and backed India's claim that he was hiding in
Pakistan, listing his address as Karachi and holding a
Pakistani passport.
The US notification had in
one stroke nailed as a lie Pakistan's repeated
assurance, until the recent turnabout, that it had not
provided a safe haven for the fugitive terrorist. The
citing of his Pakistani passport also suggested official
complicity. "This designation signals our commitment to
identifying and attacking the financial ties between the
criminal underworld and terrorism," Juan Zarate, deputy
assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing and
Financial Crimes, said in a statement.
Indeed,
the designation was the result of close and painstaking
cooperation between the top leaderships in India and the
US, as well as the intelligence agencies. The fact sheet
on Dawood on the website of the US Department of
Treasury sounds as if it has been drafted after close
consultation with India. Ultimately, it took a personal
meeting between Indian Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani
and US President George W Bush in June last year to
impress on him the links of Dawood with the al-Qaeda.
Belated as this American "discovery" of Dawood
was, it nonetheless exposed Pakistan's duplicity about
Dawood's notorious "D-company" and, by implication, the
role of both in sponsoring trouble in India. The
Musharraf regime is under pressure now and undergoing a
change of face and hopefully heart. Reports suggest that
Dawood might be trying to leave Pakistan - but he may be
running out of options. Dubai, the one safe haven of
several terrorists wanted by India, where Dawood was
holed up for some time, will no longer welcome him. The
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and India have signed an
extradition treaty with several wanted men already being
sent back to India. The UAE government considers terror
outfits holed up in Dubai as inimical to its business
interests that rest largely on tourist shopping.
At a briefing to the press this week, home
ministry officials in Delhi said that the Indian
government does not want to reveal too much information
about the ground level operations that are in place, to
prevent jeopardizing the process, as well as in keeping
with the new diplomatic understanding of keeping
relations subtle and understated.
But, everybody
agrees that nailing Dawood will be one feather in the
cap of the ongoing Indo-Pak peace process that can never
be removed. He is India's Osama.
Siddharth Srivastava is a
New Delhi-based journalist
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Reports quoting
intelligence sources and independently confirmed by home
ministry officials say that India's most wanted criminal
- thought to be hiding in Pakistan - is facing the heat
at the instance of none less than Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf. The reports say that Dawood's
personal security guards, derived from the cream of
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency,
have been removed. Ibrahim is now said to be on the run,
and some reports say that he has shaved his mustache and
is contemplating plastic surgery to take on a new
identity and passport. 
