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Istanbul: The enemy
within
By B Raman
Twin
blasts, well synchronized. Both by suicide bombers.
Jewish and British targets. Similar to the 1998 twin
blasts in Kenya and Tanzaniya carried out by al-Qaeda's
suicide terrorists against American targets.
These were the reasons cited not only by many
British and American analysts, but also by the British
Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, for concluding or
suspecting that al-Qaeda carried out Thursday's bombings
in Turkey at the local office of the HSBC bank, which
has its head office in London, and the British consulate
in Istanbul, in which 26 British and Turkish civilians,
including the British consul-general, were killed.
These reasons are very weak and show how little
Western analysts, governmental as well as
non-governmental, understand jihadi terrorism, which has
been playing havoc in different parts of the world since
the New York World Trade Center explosion of February,
1993.
India has been the largest victim of this
jihadi terrorism, with nearly 20,000 innocent civilans,
Muslims as well as non-Muslims, having lost their lives,
but they were killed not by al-Qaeda, but by the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM),
the Jaish-e- Mohammad (JEM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al
Islami (HUJI), all Pakistani organizations aligned with
al-Qaeda in Osama bin Laden's International Islamic
Front (IIF). They are allies of al-Qaeda, but not
al-Qaeda.
The blasts in Mumbai on August 25,
2003, in which 52 civilians were killed, were also
well-synchronized twin blasts, but those were not
suicide terrorism. The blasts were carried out by the
LET through local Muslims, who had their own cause for
anger because of the perceived failure of the government
of Gujarat to protect their co-religionists during the
violent riots of last year.
It is important to
keep this distinction between al-Qaeda and the IIF in
mind; otherwise, one tends to go wrong in one's analysis
and keeps looking for enemies from outside the country
when they are often right in one's midst. This is what
happened in Bali and Casablanca; it was initially
thought that al-Qaeda had carried out the blasts, but it
turned out that they were carried out by local elements
sympathetic to al-Qaeda for local reasons.
This
is what happened in Istanbul too, after the synagogue
blasts of last Saturday. Initially, al-Qaeda elements
from outside were blamed, but the investigation has
revealed that the masterminds and the suicide bombers
were locals and not externally based. That is, local
jihadis looking up to bin Laden for inspiration and
possibly trained by the IIF, but not forming part of
al-Qaeda, carried out the terrorist strikes on their own
without any directions or coordination from al-Qaeda.
Only when there is the involvement of Arab
suicide bombers is there legitimate ground for suspicion
of direct al-Qaeda involvement. In the synagogue blasts,
it has now emerged that the two suicide bombers were
Turks.
It is apparent that the blasts against
the two synagogues and those of Thursday against British
establishments were interconnected. To get a hang of the
latest bombings, it is necessary to take note of the
progress made in the investigation of the synagogue
blasts. As per the version of the Turkish authorities,
the following facts have emerged from the investigation
made so far. Both the suicide bombers were Turks, but
one of them is believed to have carried a Pakistani
passport, the reasons for which are not clear. They have
been identified as Mesut Cabuk, 29, who had spent some
time in Iran, Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan in
recent years, and Gokhan Elaltuntas, 22, who has two
cousins presently in prison on charges of terrorist
attacks carried out in the early 1990s. Both are from
the town of Bingol, about 600 miles (960 kilometers)
southeast of Istanbul. They had two accomplices, Azad
Ekinci, 25, and Feridun Ugurlu, also from Bingol, who
are believed to have purchased the pickup trucks used in
the attacks. Both of them had spent some time in
Pakistan.They seem to have fled Turkey after helping the
suicide bombers. Their present whereabouts are not
clear. Some reports say they have gone to Dubai, which
has been denied by the Dubai authorities; other reports
say they are in Pakistan.
It has been reported
that Azad Ekinci had been questioned by the police in
the past over involvement in the activities of the Great
Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front (IBDA-C), thereby giving
rise to the suspicion that the group might have carried
out the synagogue bombings, either on its own or with
the assistance of al-Qaeda or any of the components of
the IIF, such as the LET and the HUM.
According
to investigators, Cabuk drove the explosives-laden
pickup truck that blew up in front of the Neve Shalom
synagogue, the largest in Istanbul. Elaltuntas drove the
truck that exploded in front of the Beth Israel
synagogue in the Sisli district. The leader of the
IBDA-C Salih Izzet Idris, also known as Salih Mirza
Beyoghlu, in jail since 1998, used to attend the annual
conventions of the LET at Muridke, near Lahore, before
his arrest. The HUM had trained some members of the
IBDA-C at one of its training camps in Afghanistan
before that camp was destroyed by a US cruise missile
strike in August, 1998. In the mid-1990s, the HUM and
the IBDA-C had sent a small joint contingent to wage a
jihad against the Serbs in Bosnia.
The IBDA-C
was established in 1975 by a breakaway faction of the
youth group of the then Islamic Salvation Party headed
by former Turkish prime minister Necmettin Erbakan. It
is a strong critic of secularism and Mustafa Kemal
Pasha, and advocates the restoration of the Ottoman
Empire just as the LET advocates the restoration of the
Moghul rule in India.
The IBDA-C's anger over
the perceived British role in the break-up of the
Ottoman Empire could explain its motive for attacking
British personnel and interests, if it is established
that it also had a role in Thursday's blasts. Were the
blasts timed, at the instance of al-Qaeda, to coincide
with President George W Bush's high-profile UK visit to
embarrass him and Prime Minister Tony Blair? Difficult
to answer. In the past, the IBDA-C had attacked members
of the Greek Orthodox community, secular journalists
etc, but had not shown till now an inclination to take
to suicide terrorism. However, in February 2000, it
claimed responsibility for a quadruple bomb attack in
Istanbul, not involving suicide bombers.
Sections of the Turkish media have contradicted
reports of the involvement of the IBDA-C. They have
quoted police sources as saying that the suspects were
really members of a little-known group called Beyyiat
el-Imam, meaning "allegiance to the Imam", which, it is
claimed, was formed in the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan
and is reportedly led by a Saudi cleric identified as
Abu Musab. He is believed to have taken shelter in Iran
after the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan.
According to the media, Ekinci had flirted with
a hotch-potch of Islamic groups, including Hezbollah, a
violent Turkish Sunni group unrelated to the Shi'ite
Lebanese group of the same name. He had travelled to
Iran, received jihadi and explosive training in Pakistan
between 1997-99, and fought in Chechnya.
The
fact that neither the Turks nor the British nor the
Americans had the least inkling of the goings-on in the
world of jihadi terrorism in Turkey and of the
preparations for the terrorist strikes in Istanbul speak
disturbingly of the inability of their intelligence
agencies to penetrate the IIF either electronically or
through human sources. While some electronic penetration
has definitely been achieved in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia, resulting in some
successes, there are other areas such as Iraq and Turkey
where they seem to be groping in the dark, as the Mumbai
police are doing in India.
B Raman is
Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat,
Government of India, and presently director, Institute
For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the
National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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