The al-Zawahiri killing: Why India can’t do what US does with ease and regularity
The al-Zawahiri killing: Why India can’t do what US does with ease and regularity
On 10 June 2011, a Tier One United States’ Naval Special Warfare Development Group, namely DEVGRU or Seal Team Six assassinated Osama bin Laden in the heart of Pakistan. Eleven years later, on 30 July 2022, a lone drone — probably armed with Hellfire R9X “razors” — killed the successor of Osama bin Laden in Kabul, Emir of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
It is still early days to seek out the anatomy of the precision strike that killed Zawahiri. But the most important question that is being asked is how did the United States, which had no personnel in Afghanistan, pull off such a coup. Where did the intelligence emanate from? Deeper thought revealed that although there were no “boots on ground”, the United States had — even as it was withdrawing from Afghanistan — left a drawer of “socks in the closet”. It was these deep assets that engineered the textbook kill. US President Joe Biden, of course, referred to them in his “victory speech” as “key allies”. Indeed, the “socks in the closet” could well have been the Taliban. Seeking to change and learn from the mistakes of 2001, the “Seekers” — as the Taliban is known in Pashto — knows which side of the bread is buttered and had accordingly accomplished the needful.
Zawahiri was a tired old man who had outlived his utility. The Egyptian surgeon who was once the chief strategicians of Osama bin Laden could no longer guide the Al Qaeda (“The Base”) onto newer vistas of pernicious action and he was becoming expendable. The Islamists — especially now that they are endowed with a completely new motivation of unleashing the “Third Wave of Radicalisation” — needed a new Emir. “Colonel” Saif-al-Adel @ Mohammed Salah al-Din Zaidan, a former Egyptian Special Forces officer who had overseen the “Black Hawk Down” episode in Mogadishu in 1993 was the man for the moment.
As the world celebrates the death of a terrorist, certain interesting questions are being asked in India. What would be the implication of Zawahiri’s death on India? After all he had, on 3 September 2014, not only proclaimed and formed the Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent, but had even named “Assam” in his worldwide televised speech and had unfurled the Islamist flag in an expanse that this author calls the “Shadow of Zawahiri”. Well-entrenched in the Indian subcontinent, Al Qaeda and its affiliates are burrowing into the innards of the region, with an epicentre that encompasses Bangladesh, Rakhine State of Myanmar, parts of West Bengal and Assam. Furthermore, organisations such as the Popular Front of India had laid the foundation for the entry of the first among equals of radical Islamists.
The author was asked yesterday — during the course of a television interview — as to what would be the fate of Al Qaeda after Zawahiri. His answer was straightforward. The Islamist radicals who were waging a war against the infidels can countenance only two choices, that of a “ghazi” (victor) or a “shahid” (martyr). There isn’t a third choice for the radicals whose sole objective is Nizam-e-Mustafa. The war that is being waged will be a neverending one, one that will continue until the end of time.
In any event, the surgically clinical manner in which Zawahiri was eliminated in Kabul on 30 July 2022 has prompted even lay observers of the incident in India to question as to “why India cannot replicate such feat against the plethora of terrorist and insurgent leaders billeted in foreign lands and from where they act against India with impunity”. Indeed, the query — however innocuous — has weight when aspects such as the fact that India is one of the most terror-afflicted countries in the world are considered. The helplessness that was exhibited for instance after Col Viplav Tripathi of 46 Assam Rifles and his innocent family which included his five-year-old child were cruelly gunned down by terrorists from across the border in Manipur added to the sense of distress and ignominy.
Indeed, the rage — after the 13 November 2021 Churachandpur incident — within the rank and file of the Indian Army was palpable. But there was no way the anger could be given vent to. An officer of the Assam Rifles who the author spoke to after the attack was fuming. “We know exactly where the terrorists are sitting, just across the border, in what is termed as the ‘Southern Cluster’ of the Coordination-Committee, but we cannot cross over and take the assassins of Viplav down,” was the sad lament. Indeed, during a visit to Manipur to deliver a lecture to the Assam Rifles and the Manipur University in April this year, the author took the opportunity to visit the site of the November ambush. He was also briefed about the terrorist camps in the Sagaing Division of Myanmar and the manner in which the terrorists belonging to the Coordination- Committee had set up a conglomeration of seven Manipur-valley-based outfits which is known as the Joint Fighting Force.
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The Operations Room briefing for the author in Chandel was so systematic that the author wondered “what good is it to have every single camp of the terrorist plotted so immaculately on maps and sand models when there is little that can be done about it”! The Commanding Officer informed the author of the camps in Phaisat, Senam, Sialmong and Khuangkhan as also the fact that the terrorists have come into an agreement with the Myanmar army. The deal was simple: help the Tatmadaw quell the rebellion that had erupted after the 1 February 2021 military takeover and the terrorists could continue to enjoy the hospitality of an outland detachment from where they can undertake raids against the Indian security forces.
Battling the People’s Defence Force (PDF), members of the Coordination-Committee were terrorising the local Myanmarese population and there was a time when a constituent of the PDF, the Chin National Army (CNA) had retaliated. Attacking a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Manipur camp in Senam on 13 January 2022, the CNA had killed two cadres of the PLA. Analysis states that the CNA was attempting to “curry favour” with Indian agencies by carrying out an operation that would be considered as a retaliation for the Churachandpur attack of 13 November 2021 by the Indians. They probably wanted to drive a wedge between the Myanmar army and India as well.
However, the opportunity that the incident provided — by all accounts — has been ignored by New Delhi. The ambivalence that is being exhibited by the security managers in India is so glaring that there was all round bewilderment for the absence of a clear, comprehensive policy on Myanmar. The “Act East Policy” that was expected to “Go East” had come to a grinding halt and the entire ground had been left for the Chinese to exploit at leisure. In the meantime, even as 15 August 2022 nears, there is considerable speculation about the Manipur valley-based terrorists planning attacks on Indian security forces in Manipur and Nagaland.
The story pertaining to ULFA (Independent) is no different. Sitting pretty in Yunnan, chaperoned by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the ULFA leadership has set up important camps across Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district in Myanmar. The camps at Papung, Jokham, Hachi, and two others (lyrically named as “Camp Arakan” and “Camp 779” — the latter foxed a very senior intelligence officer in Delhi until the author pointed out the simplicity with which “Camp 779” was so named, quite simply it bore the “hallowed” date of the formation of the ULFA, 7 April 1979). These camps are now being used as staging grounds for possible attacks, extortion and subterfuge in Assam as also to house the flurry of new recruits that were suddenly making their way from every nook and cranny of Assam to join the ULFA, which had all but disappeared during Covid-19 when a farsighted Indian Army officer and the head of intelligence of Assam had carefully engineered a mass surrender of ULFA cadres.
But, for one reason or the other there was a blow-back and youths from Upper, Central and Lower Assam were making their way into the wastelands of Myanmar to join the ULFA. Gratefully the tide has stemmed, but the manner in which young men and women were making their way to “Camp Arakan” — at one point in time — was disconcerting. Perhaps there were reasons that had tucked themselves away from smart analysis that were responsible for the spurt in recruitment!
But why is the column describing the whereabouts of Indian terrorist camps in Myanmar? Quite simply because of the question that a barber had asked of the author on the morning of 31 July 2022 after hearing the news of the Zawahiri killing. Therefore, even as Islamism of a rabid kind stealthily attempts to grow and thrive in Assam, there are questions being asked by the people of India as to why India cannot do what the United States has been able to do with a prime adversary. Are the terrorist leaders sitting in Myanmar untouchables? Isn’t it possible for India to procure UAVs and missiles such as the predatory “Hellfire R9X” that took Zawahiri down even as he was standing in his balcony in Kabul?
New Delhi would do well to recall the tragic death of five-year-old Abeer, Col Viplav Tripathi’s son, and provide answers to not only the still bereaving family but to the people of India. After all the man in the street — and in the hair-cutting saloon — is pausing for a reply.
The author is a conflict analyst and author of the bestselling. ‘Terror Sans Frontiers: Islamist Militancy in North East India’. Views expressed are personal.
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