India-Pakistan: The risk of
roaming By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Over the last week India-Pakistan
relations have undergone a couple of significant
developments - the historic cricket series is now
underway and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has
resorted to a bit of his old-style Kashmir rhetoric to
appease his domestic audience.
However,
overlooked in the din of the above was an important
event related to India's national security. The Indian
government has, for the first time, decided to allow its
mobile phone customers to use an international roaming
service in Pakistan, initially for a period of four
months, at the end of which it will be reviewed.
The significance of this move lies in the fact
that Indian security agencies have been battling to come
to terms with a new generation of tech-savvy terrorists
armed with instant communication facilities due to the
Internet and cellular phones. As a precaution, cell
phones are jammed during days such as Republic Day and
Independence Day to block terrorists from coordinating
activities. In the past, the Indian government also has
clamped down on telecom and Internet services in
Kashmir, a hotbed of terror activities where only last
month terrorists in Kashmir tried to assassinate the
chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed when he addressed
an election rally.
While it is true that the
roaming facility between India and Pakistan flows well
with the slew of other Confidence Building Measures
emerging between the two countries, there is an added
significance. It also means that there is an added
comfort level between the two countries as far as the
sharing of intelligence is concerned. This is not to say
that terror circles operating in India and Pakistan have
been blacked out, but the activation of roaming is yet
another symbolic gesture toward bringing the two
countries closer based on ground realities, such as a
decrease in infiltration as well as a crackdown on
jihadi elements in Pakistan - even if it comes at the
instance of the US.
In recent history, the use
of technology by criminals has resulted in several
intelligence inputs for security agencies across the
world. The fact that the 21st-century terrorist is
generally educated and tech-savvy, actually helps these
agencies out.
Whether it comes from Aftab
Ansari, accused in the attack on the American Center in
Kolkata in 2002, or Omar Sheikh, accused of killing Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, or even Dawood
Ibrahim or Chhota Shakeel, dreaded dons accused of
spreading terror in India, the kind of information that
has been generated now would not have been possible
without accessing their e-mails.
Those who
interrogated Ansari got hold of several of his e-mail
addresses to connect to the series of e-mail exchanges
between him and Sheikh. India's Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB)
also used e-mail interception technology to track Ansari
by tracing his e-mails, first to servers in Dubai and
then to Islamabad. The local Internet service provider
was roped in to determine the exact location from which
Ansari had sent an e-mail that turned out to be
Islamabad.
In the case of Sheikh, the police in
Karachi, helped by a cyber-tracking team from the United
States Federal Bureau of Investigations, traced the
three men who had sent e-mails about Pearl's abduction
to the media. The arrested men then lead the authorities
to Sheikh, and the authorities picked up Sheikh's
parents-in-law from Lahore, exerting pressure on him to
surrender. Indian intelligence agencies also have
cracked into the e-mail identifications of Dawood
Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel to confirm their presence in
Pakistan.
In addition, other investigations have
revealed that Jaish-e-Mohammad, alias "Burger", who led
the brazen attack on the Indian Parliament on December
13, 2001, used his cell phone moments before the assault
to maintain constant contact with his counterparts in
Karachi, Dubai and India. A laptop also was recovered
that contained detailed plans of the attack.
Various agencies, including the CBI, the IB and
the Delhi Police, have been holding several meetings in
the recent past to surmount the issue of tracing short
message services (SMS), currently one of the preferred
means of communication by terrorists. In addition, the
IB has prepared a list of new keywords to be used to
intercept mail emanating from certain IP addresses in
India.
Until recently, the IB, which earlier
reported that terrorists connected to the
Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, two Islamic
terrorist groups, were tech-savvy, had concentrated more
on e-mail identifications with reference to obvious
giveaways and catchwords such as Kashmir, Lashkar,
Pakistan, Musharraf etc. For example, an e-mail address
such as Lashkar@hotmail.com would fall under the
surveillance of the IB.
Now the IB has gone one
step further and prepared a new list of keywords to look
for in the copy of e-mails. The system works like this:
software filters mail that repeatedly uses words that
the IB has short-listed. The more obvious keywords would
include Jaish, Kashmir and Lashkar. Others are attack,
kill, rocket, etc. Mail with repeated reference to Arab
names and e-mails that carry names of Indian political
leaders will also be under surveillance.
"The
task of monitoring such mails is humongous. Hence, for
now, we will be monitoring mails that have several
references to the keywords that we have identified,"
said a senior IB official.
Speaking on the
latest government move to allow a roaming facility in
Pakistan, Disinvestment, Communication and Information
Technology Minister Arun Shourie said, "This is part of
the process Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
initiated for restoring normalcy between the two nations
... We have allowed the facility for a period of four
months. We will review the situation on June 15."
Shourie had raised the issue with Deputy Prime
Minister L K Advani in view of the Indo-Pak cricket
series. After taking stock of security concerns, the
government has allowed the roaming facility on an
experimental basis. "This is a step towards confidence
building measures, and it comes at a time when people
are not just interested in watching Indo-Pak cricket
matches but also sharing their excitements," Shourie
said.
The facility has not been extended to
Jammu and Kashmir and India's northeastern regions in
view of security concerns. Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti
Group said that their subscribers, when traveling to
Pakistan, would be able to use voice and SMS facilities
with immediate effect as a bilateral agreement with
Mobilink is in place and the services have been tested.
With elections slated for April-May, the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is approaching the
electorate using peace with Pakistan as a significant
achievement. However, a morbid terror attack could
result in a backlash, and the government has opened
itself to severe criticism should anything untoward
happen. A significant terrorist attack could damage the
prospects of the BJP, just as it did in Spain.
This is the risk of roaming.
(Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist)
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Mar 19, 2004
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