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The jackal's eyes
gleam
By B Raman
It was Ilich
Ramirez Sanchez - also known as Carlos the Jackal, aka
Michel, the Lebanese businessman, now in jail in France
- who first borrowed from international communism the
"united front" tactics with which he formed a
constellation of like-minded terrorist groups aimed at
targets associated with capitalism and international
Zionism.
Osama bin Laden, who lived
contemporaneously with Carlos in Khartoum, Sudan, until
August 1994, emulated Carlos' united front tactics in
the formation of his International Islamic Front for
jihad against the US and Israel in 1998.
The
united front initially formed by Carlos comprised the
Red Army faction of Germany headed by Yohannes Weinrach,
aka Peter, now in jail in Germany; the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, then headed by George
Habash; another Palestinian group headed by one Ali,
whose real name could not be established, and splinter
groups of the Kurdish movement. The leaders of these
groups had been given sanctuary by Syrian intelligence
in Damascus, and they were running training camps in
Lebanon and Yemen, where Islamic terrorist elements from
many countries were trained by Carlos and Peter.
This group was in receipt of financial
assistance from the intelligence agencies of Libya,
Iraq, East Germany and Yugoslavia, and travel documents,
including official and diplomatic passports, from the
Yemeni authorities. The training camps in Yemen were
personally supervised by Peter.
In 1992-93,
under US pressure, the Syrian authorities asked Carlos,
Peter and other non-Muslim members of the united front
to leave their territory. However, they allowed the
Palestinian and other Muslim members to continue to
operate from Syrian territory. While Carlos shifted to
Khartoum in Sudan, Peter and others moved to Yemen.
While living in Khartoum, Carlos divorced his German
wife, Magdalena Kopp, embraced Islam and married a local
Muslim woman.
French intelligence came to know
of the presence of Carlos in Khartoum and, after
allegedly paying a huge sum to the Sudanese authorities,
managed to have Carlos heavily drugged while he was
under medical treatment in a hospital and flew him to
Paris in August 1994. Subsequently, Peter was caught by
German intelligence with the cooperation of Yemeni
intelligence.
After the arrest of Carlos and
Peter, their united front withered away and the Yemeni
and other terrorists trained by them gravitated to bin
Laden's al-Qaeda. These elements nurse a strong anger
against the French for the drugging and kidnapping of
Carlos and for his subsequent prosecution and
conviction.
There are some indications, reliable
but not yet independently corroborated, that it is these
elements that were responsible for the incident in Yemen
on October 6 in which a boat laden with explosives is
reported to have rammed a French supertanker, causing a
major fire but no loss of lives. (These elements are
also reportedly behind the explosion outside the
Sheraton Hotel in Karachi on May 8 that killed nine
French experts working on an Agosta submarine project.)
Although Yemeni authorities continue to maintain that
the supertanker explosion was an accident and not a
terrorist attack, other reports indicate that it was
indeed a terrorist strike.
The French vigorously
cooperated with the US in the investigation of the case
of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and into the
functioning of al-Qaeda cells in France, but apart from
this, their role in the war against terrorism in
Afghanistan has been minimal. They have been strongly
supportive of the PLO and critical of Israel and have
opposed a military strike against Iraq. Thus, apart from
anger of the Muslim dregs of Carlos' united front
against the French for the reasons already mentioned
above, there is no other reason why Islamic terrorist
groups operating in this region
(Afghanistan-Pakistan-Yemen) should target the French.
In an interview given to the Arab language daily
Al Hayat of Cairo through his lawyer on September 12
this year, Carlos claimed that the idea of using an
airplane to hit targets in the United States dated from
as early as the spring of 1991. According to Carlos, the
suggestion came from the late Mir Murtaza Bhutto of the
Al Zulfiquar of Pakistan at a meeting of
"anti-imperialist organizations" at an undisclosed
location as a response to US strikes in Iraq. This is
believed to be a reference to Carlos' united front,
which used to meet in Syrian or Lebanese territory.
Murtaza Bhutto, a brother of Benazir Bhutto, former
Pakistani prime minister, then used to live in Damascus.
The followers of Murtaza Bhutto in Pakistan have
strongly denied this report and described it as
disinformation planted by some mischievous elements to
create a misunderstanding between Benazir and the US.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is
also a member of the National Security Advisory Board of
the Government of India, and was head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research and Analysis
Wing, India's external intelligence agency, from 1988 to
August 1994.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
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