Jerusalem Issue Brief
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Vol. 8, No. 21 12 February 2009
The Saudi Connection to the Mumbai Massacres:
Strategic Implications for Israel
Col. (res.) Jonathan Fighel
The Mumbai attacks have been linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and radical Islamic
groups in Kashmir generally. Yet it would be a mistake to see Lashkar only
as a local organization with only a local agenda.
Saudi Arabia has contributed very much to what Lashkar-e-Taiba looks like,
how it thinks, its motivation, ideology, and funding. Saudi Arabia presents
itself as the protector and the spearhead of the defense of Muslims around
the world against what they define as the Western cultural attack.
The Saudis are very committed to recruiting, funding, and funneling ideology
to embattled Muslim minorities, and use Muslim charities as their tool to
implement this policy. The Saudi methodology is to take advantage of a
humanitarian crisis to get a foot in the door. Who could be against
assisting widows and orphans and setting up schools and clinics? Some of the
money is indeed funneled to support terrorism - families of suicide bombers.
The notion of global Islam has also penetrated to Gaza and exists under the
umbrella of Hamas, which is enabling a revival of global jihadi
organizations there such as Jaish al-Islam and others. This phenomenon is
radicalizing the already radicalized society in Gaza.
Hamas could agree to a hudna (calm) for fifty years, but there will be no
recognition of Israel or a cessation of the struggle against it. If Hamas
was ready to act pragmatically, it would no longer be Hamas. And then the
frustrated factions within Hamas would break off and join up with the
radical global jihadi organizations in Gaza.
The similarity of the November 2008 attack in Mumbai to the attack on the
Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv in 1975 was striking. At that time, a Palestinian
organization based outside the borders of Israel, in a safe haven in
Lebanon, had undergone months of specialized training. With a high level of
prior intelligence, several very dedicated assault groups attacked a
high-value target.
The Mumbai attacks were not a conventional suicide attack. Since 1998,
al-Qaeda's hallmark has been suicide attacks, based upon the whole rationale
of jihad, sacrifice and martyrdom. But the attacks in Mumbai did not
resemble 7/7 in London or the attacks in Madrid or any other al-Qaeda-style
attacks.
What Is Lashkar-e-Taiba?
The Mumbai attacks have been linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and radical Islamic
groups in Kashmir generally. Yet it would be a mistake to see Lashkar only
as a local organization with only a local agenda.
The creation and flourishing of Lashkar-e-Taiba would not have been possible
unless they were supported by three major elements. The first is the
ideology of global jihad. The second is funding and support from external
sources. And the third is a territorial base which enables them to conduct
activities and maintain training camps.
What is Lashkar-e-Taiba and why is it relevant to the Middle East? Lashkar
collects funds from Pakistanis and Kashmiris, as well as the Pakistani
community in the Persian Gulf, in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Its
website appears under the name of Jamaat ud Dawa and the group maintains
ties to religious and militant groups around the world. The Jamaat ud Dawa
website links directly to the Hamas website.
The Saudi Connection
Since the beginning of the 1990s, Saudi Arabia has contributed very much to
what Lashkar-e-Taiba looks like, how it thinks, its motivation, ideology,
and funding. Saudi newspapers at the time published calls for jihad to
support all Muslim struggles around the world. Kashmir was seen as a place
where jihad was taking place, so donations were solicited for the Muslims
living there. Allah was said to bless the warriors of this financial jihad.
In August 1999, the Saudi newspaper Al Jazeera reported on a press
conference conducted by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a
Saudi-based charity supervised by the government. The group's
secretary-general, Maneh al-Johani, praised the role played by Saudi Arabia
in providing assistance to Muslims around the world, especially in Kashmir.
Johani equated the Kashmir issue with the situation in Kosovo and Palestine,
and called on Muslims to help the Kashmiri people.
Radical Wahhabi, Salafi, Saudi Islam sees the world in confrontation, with
zones of jihad where Muslim minorities are struggling politically and
religiously against other forces. The struggle can be with Israel, Serbia,
India, or the Philippines. Saudi Arabia presents itself as the protector and
the spearhead of the defense of Muslims around the world against what the
former Supreme Religious Authority of Saudi Arabia, the late Sheikh Abdul
Aziz Ibn Baz (Ben Baz), defined as the Western cultural attack.
This is the ideology behind Saudi politics. The Saudis are very committed to
recruiting, funding, and funneling ideology to those Muslim minorities, and
use Muslim charities as their tool to implement this policy. In September
2000, the Saudi newspaper Al Jazeera reported on an additional press
conference by WAMY Secretary-General Johani, who discussed Saudi Arabia's
role in providing aid to Kashmir and asked the Islamic countries to play an
effective part in saving Kashmir's Muslims. Johani described the Kashmiri
people's jihad and noted that they had suffered thousands of casualties.
"The Kashmiri people want to protect their Islamic entity and we must help
them," he concluded.
Since the end of the war in Afghanistan in 1989, the Saudi contribution to
entrenching the phenomenon of global jihad around the world has mushroomed,
whether
in Chechnya, the Philippines, Kosovo, or the Palestinian territories. Yet
for all this, Saudi Arabia is not held accountable.
The Saudi methodology is to take advantage of a humanitarian crisis to get a
foot in the door. Who could be against assisting widows and orphans and
setting up schools and clinics? It is a methodology that has been duplicated
all around the world. Since direct assistance to armed groups is problematic
for Saudi Arabia, they use "charities," which are actually organizations
that use the social network called the dawa to propagate their ideology
through mosques, health clinics, and madrassas, to influence minds and
recruit supporters to Wahhabi-style ideology and commitment. Some of the
money is indeed funneled to support terrorism - families of suicide bombers.
It is now evident that the so-called Saudi non-governmental charities are
closely monitored by the Saudi government. The Saudis have understood that
they were under pressure from the West and so they were very willing to
sacrifice the Al-Haramain charity. It was banned and dismantled, but other
charities were not, like the Islamic Relief Organization (IRO). The Saudi
charities just change names and, unfortunately, nothing concrete is being
done. There is no all-out campaign to dismantle all those charities.
Training Camps in Pakistan
Lashkar-e-Taiba has created an infrastructure inside Pakistan which is
relevant to struggles beyond the boundaries of Kashmir or India. It has
created an operational capability in its training camps through the use of
highly skilled instructors, veterans of the Afghan war. Some well-known
terrorists have passed through those training camps before launching their
attacks. The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, was trained in a Lashkar training
camp, as was Dhiren Barot, a British subject and a Hindu who converted to
Islam, who was the mastermind of a failed gas cylinder bombing plot in
London and who also prepared detailed blueprints for al-Qaeda of the
buildings in New York's financial district.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is headed by Muhammad Saeed, who plays a key role in the
group's operational activities, terrorist training camps, ideology, and in
its worldwide activities. Saeed was reportedly arrested in Pakistan in
February 2009. Saeed determines where the graduates of the Lashkar camps in
Pakistan are sent to fight and in 2005 he personally organized the
infiltration of Lashkar militants into Iraq. He was in Saudi Arabia at the
time, with the knowledge of the Saudi government (you cannot enter Saudi
Arabia without permission). He also arranged for Lashkar operatives to be
sent to Europe as fundraising coordinators. So Saudi Arabia again was a
launching pad for sending highly-trained mujahidin to the war against the
Americans in Iraq. This shows the global nature of Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is
not just a provincial organization but one that has a global reach.
Haji Mohammad Ashraf has been Lashkar's chief financier since 2003,
expanding the organization and increasing its fundraising activities.
Mahmoud Mohammed Ahmad Ba'aziq, a Saudi national, served as the Lashkar
leader in Saudi Arabia during the 1980s and 1990s, before Ashraf, and
coordinated fundraising activity with non-governmental charities and
businessmen in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime is aware of the money going to
Lashkar in Saudi Arabia for its activities around the world.
Lashkar operations chief Zakir Rehman Lakvi was also reportedly arrested in
a Pakistani raid on a Lashkar training camp. He was one of the masterminds
of the Mumbai attack and was in constant cellular phone contact with the
attackers. Lakvi has been very much involved in military operations in
Chechnya, Bosnia, and Iraq.
Lashkar-e-Taiba would not have evolved to the scale they have reached
without Saudi assistance. One key Saudi who helped build Lashkar into such
an efficient and highly-trained organization is Abdul Aziz Barbaros.
Barbaros, whose real name is Abdul Ahman el-Dosfari, fought with al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan. He was one of the founding members of Lashkar in Kashmir after
the end of the Afghan war. He also traveled to Bosnia to assist the
al-Qaeda-oriented mujahidin brigades there. During the 1980s and 1990s
Barbaros served as a critical link between Lashkar, wealthy and pious Saudi
financiers, and Pakistani and Muslim fanatics around the world.
Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin in Gaza routinely delivered speeches addressed to
Lashkar-e-Taiba militant rallies in Kashmir and Pakistan. This is an example
of the general mindset of radical Islamic solidarity. The Hamas leader in
Gaza showed that he cared about what was happening with other Muslim
minorities around the world, as they should care about what is happening in
Gaza or the West Bank. This is not necessarily directly connected to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Iraq, this is seen as a struggle against
the American "Crusade occupation." This reflects Bin Laden's 1998
declaration of jihad, when he spoke of the Islamic front against the
Crusaders and the Jews. So everything is linked and what happened in Mumbai
has a wider perspective.
Global Islam Penetrates Gaza
The notion of global Islam has also penetrated to Gaza and to some extent in
the West Bank. This phenomenon exists under the umbrella of Hamas, which
enables a revival of global jihadi organizations in Gaza such as Jaish
al-Islam and others. The emergence of these groups is worrying because they
are very much inspired by the global jihadi, Saudi Wahhabi ideology - a
strict interpretation of Islam which is being interpreted into political and
terrorist activity. What is important in this phenomenon is the
radicalization of the already radicalized society in Gaza.
The bottom line is that we are seeing the same pattern of global
jihad-oriented groups starting to be active in Gaza. They have carried out
some attacks, mostly directed against foreign, Western institutions like the
YMCA and the American School. Yet they have played only a marginal role in
attacks against Israeli targets.
Hamas in Gaza
I think the situation of Hamas control in Gaza is irreversible. From my
reading of Hamas publications in Arabic, it is clear that there is no way
back, only ahead, to take control in the West Bank if they become strong
enough. Hamas could agree to a hudna (calm) for fifty years, but there will
be no recognition of Israel or a cessation of the struggle against it.
If Hamas was ready to act pragmatically, it would no longer be Hamas. It
would be something else. And then the frustrated factions within Hamas would
break off and join up with the radical global jihadi organizations in Gaza.
Those organizations hope to provide a refuge for Hamas radicals who believe
that any normalization or pragmatism would be harmful to the Hamas cause.
This is not just my hypothesis. The declarations of Hamas leaders Zahar and
Siam have hinted that if Hamas were to lose its real identity, people would
shift their loyalties and activities to a more genuine Islamic organization,
not a pragmatic, opportunistic, hudna-style one.
Should we talk with Hamas? Is the international community ready to sit down
with al-Qaeda? There is no difference. It is a total misrepresentation to
say Hamas is like the IRA. There is no political wing of Hamas disconnected
from the operational wing. There are no pragmatists to speak to. At the end
of the day, those who
believe that trying to talk to Hamas is the right way to conduct business
here in the Middle East will be in for a big disappointment.
* * *
Col. (res.) Jonathan Fighel is a senior research scholar at the
International Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT). He is also a member of
the International Academic Counter Terrorism Community (ICTAC) and serves as
a consultant and expert witness for the U.S. Department of Justice on Hamas
trials, as well as to private U.S.-based law firms in cases of prosecuting
al-Qaeda terrorism. His expertise also includes the Palestinian Authority,
Islamist terror groups (Hamas, PIJ, al-Qaeda), funding, Palestinian
terrorism and the Palestinian suicide terrorism phenomenon. This Jerusalem
Issue Brief is based on his presentation at the Institute for Contemporary
Affairs in Jerusalem on December 9, 2008.
This Jerusalem Issue Brief is available online at:
http://www.jcpa.org
Dore Gold, Publisher; Yaacov Amidror, ICA Chairman; Dan Diker, ICA Director;
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opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of
Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
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