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Terror and Mafia Kingpin Dawood Ibrahim: Why Nepal should be paying

attention.

January 09, 2010

Dawood Ibrahim (aka Dawood Ebrahim and Sheikh Dawood Hassan) was bornon December 26, 1955. He is the godfather of the organized crimesyndicate D-Company in Mumbai and one of Interpols most wanted men. Hewas No. 4 on the Forbes' World's Top 10 most dreaded criminals list of 2008and is ranked #50 in Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.

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Dawood Ibrahim first attracted international interest after the 1993 Bombaybombings. In 2003, the United States declared him an internationalterrorist with close links to al-Qaidas Osama bin Laden, and pursued thematter before the United Nations, attempting to freeze his internationalassets and crack down on his operations. More recently, Russian and Indian

intelligence agencies have looked closely at Ibrahim's possible involvementin the November 2008 Mumbai hotel attacks. Among other things, there iscircumstantial evidence that Ibrahims network provided a boat to the tenterrorists who killed 173 people in the 2008 Mumbai slaughter.

Ibrahims whereabouts remains unknown, although Indias Research andAnalysis Wing (RAW) believes he is in hiding in Pakistan. Pakistan officialsdeny any knowledge of his presence in their country. But the issue will notgo away. The extradition of Dawood Ibrahim remains one of the majorhurdles in the difficult relations between India and Pakistan.

THE SPECIFICS OF IBRAHIMS D-COMPANY

Four days ago, on January 5, 2010, the United States Congressional

Research Service (CRS), a research wing of Congress, released a report thatidentifies D-Company as a criminal syndicate now numbering 5,000members with strategic alliance with the ISI, LeT and al Qaida, thus makingit a leading example of the criminal-terrorism fusion model that currentlyposes an increasing threat to South Asian interests.

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The report, titled "International Terrorism and Transnational Crime:Security Threats, US Policy, and Considerations for Congress", notes that D-Company is involved in a variety of criminal activities, including extortion,smuggling, narcotics trafficking, contract killing, and deep infiltration intothe Indian filmmaking industry, (extorting producers, assassinatingdirectors, distributing movies, and pirating films).

But, according to the report, D-Company's evolution into a genuine terroristgroup began in response to the destruction of the December 1992 BabriMosque in Ayodhya, India. 2000 people died in the ensuing riots and Hindu-Muslim relations deteriorated dramatically as a result.

Then: "Reportedly with assistance from Pakistan government's intelligencebranch, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), D-Company launched aseries of bombing attacks on March 12, 1993, killing 257 people," the reportsaid. Following the attacks, Ibrahim moved his network's headquarters toKarachi. There, D-Company is believed to have deepened its strategicalliance with the ISI and developed links to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT).

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(For those unfamiliar with it, LeT is an organization included in theTerrorist Exclusion List by the US Government in December 2001. It wassubsequently proscribed by the United Nations in May 2005. Formed in 1990in the Kunar province of Afghanistan, LeT is now headquartered in Muridke,near Lahore in Pakistan, and headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.)

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During the 1990s, according to the Congressional Research Service report,Ibrahims D-Company began to finance LeT's activities, use its companiesto lure recruits to LeT training camps, and give LeT operatives use of itssmuggling routes and contacts. Lending his criminal expertise andnetworks to such terrorist groups, [Ibrahim] is capable of smugglingterrorists across national borders, trafficking in weapons and drugs,controlling extortion and protection rackets, and laundering ill-gottenproceeds, including through the abuse of traditional value transfermethods, like hawala."

Also known as hundi, hawala is an informal value transfer system based onthe performance and honor of a huge network of money brokers, which areprimarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, andSouth Asia.

DAWOOD IBRAHIMS RELATIONSHIP TO NEPAL AND THE

PAKISTANI CONNECTION

Ibrahim has a long-standing connection to Nepal and was once a regularvisitor to Nepal, according to Indian officials. He has since restricted his

movement outside of Pakistan but, according to a South Asia Tribune reportwritten in April 2004, Ibrahim was last seen in Kathmandu in the last weekof August 2003. During that visit, he met his Nepali front man Sartaj Ahmedand several leaders from fundamentalist organizations. Sartaj is reportedlyin constant touch with officials of the Pakistani Embassy.

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Dawood has big financial stakes in Nepal: He has made huge investments ina variety of business ventures, from media, private airlines, hotels, travelagencies to trans-border smuggling including that of gold. In Nepal he hasbuilt high level contacts with businessmen, officials, politicians, smugglersand religious fundamentalists, according to South Asia Tribune. The late

Mirza Dilshad Beg, an ex-member of parliament of Nepal, was once anassociate of Dawood. He was gunned down in Kathmandu in 1998. After hisdeath, his son-in-law Sartaj joined Dawood.

WHY NEPALIS SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE DAWOOD IBRAHIM

CONNECTION

The exploitation of trade routes crossing through Nepals porous southernborder for both smuggling and the either direct or indirect exportation ofterrorism (both domestic and Pakistani) has now become a problem ofincreasing international concern and scrutiny. As long as the main political

parties continue to squabble among themselves, while a would-be newconstitution remains unwritten, and while southern Nepal remains an areawith little or no effective security, the criminal-terrorism fusion, whichhas taken root in Nepal, will be favored with conditions suitable for furtherexpansion and control. If this pattern cannot be reversed by the goodpeople of Nepal, eventually, the international community may decide thatthey must address Nepals degeneration of law and order themselves withor without Nepals consent.

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Dawood Ibrahims name came up once again in connection with Nepal just last week. In the first days of 2010, the dramatic arrest of the son of apowerful Nepalese politician on charges of heading a major fake Indiancurrency and drugs smuggling racket, allegedly sponsored by Pakistaniintelligence agencies, further exposed how illicit funds pour into Nepal

(with the underworlds help) presumably to destabilize Indias relationswith Nepal.

Heres what happened.

A special task force of Nepal police arrested Yunus Ansari, the son of formerminister Salim Miya Ansari, who is alleged to have links with PakistansInter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Dawood Ibrahim, after a tip-off by Indianauthorities that he was running the two criminal networks.

Yunus Ansari, the president of Nepals National Wrestling Federation, is alsothe chairman of a new television channel that is yet to start regulartransmission. While Yunus Ansari was arrested along with three Nepalis, twoPakistanis, one African and one from the Caribbean, police said they had noevidence against his father, former forest and soil conservation ministerAnsari.

Yunus Ansari and his associates were caught with fake Indian currencyworth over Indian Rs.2.5 million last week and nearly four kilograms ofheroin after a long period of surveillance that started with the arrest of two

Nepalis with fake Indian currency in Indias Madhya Pradesh state last year.

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The Nepal chase started on New Years Day when Yunus Ansaris Nepalibodyguard, Kashiram Adhikari, was dispatched to Thamel, once the hub oftourists and now increasingly targeted by criminals and sex workers, tomake contact with Pakistani agents.

Adhikari led police to the Red Planet Guest House in Thamel wherePakistani national Mohammad Sajjad was awaiting him in room 304. Thebodyguard collected a red suitcase from Sajjad and went to room 204 whereanother Pakistani, Mohammad Iqbal, was waiting with two suitcases.

After collecting the lot, Adhikari headed for the Bluebird Mall in Thapathaliwhere Yunus Ansari had allegedly rented a room. Police caught him thereand a search exposed the false bottoms in the suitcases, where the fakenotes were hidden.

According to initial investigation, the racket starts from Karachi, where aPakistani known as Haji Talad Ali heads it. The modus operandi was simple.

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The money would be brought to the same guesthouse from where Adhikariwould take it to his master.

When police raided the hotel and arrested the two Pakistanis, Sajjad wasfound to possess heroin as well. Yunus was arrested soon afterwards from

his residence in Tahachal.

Police also arrested a Guyana citizen, K. Ibrahim, and another from SierraLeone, Austin Ibrahim, who were to have circulated the heroin.

ON NEW YEARS DAY, INDIA BEEFED UP SECURITY ALONG NEPALSBORDER BECAUSE OF PAKISTANI CONCERNS

On January 1, 2010, New Delhi placed its country on alert as the policelaunched a manhunt for three Pakistani militants who escaped from police

custody.

Abdul Razzak, Mohammed Sadiq and Rafaqat Ali escaped from G B Panthospital in central Delhi. The three had served jail terms for triggering twoblasts in the citys 16th century Red Fort in 2000. They were in the custodyof Special Branch of Delhi Police and were to be handed over to theForeigners Regional Registration office (FRRO) for deportation to Pakistanwhen the escape took place.

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While the Meghalaya Police personnel, who were escorting the three, werebeing questioned by security agencies, Uttar Pradesh state police deployed

additional security along the India-Nepal border to guard against possiblethreats or escapes through the 870-mile open border of Nepal.

The point here is that, in many peoples minds, the potential of a Nepali-Pakistani connection is becoming a given. This is not a healthy presumptionfor Nepal to have to contend with.

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The Nepali police did an outstanding job of bringing Yunus Ansari to ground.Crimes were being committed and a crack team stepped in and took properaction.

But the police cannot be expected to do the governments job, which is toprovide stability an atmosphere in which criminal activity can be curtailedbefore it actually takes place. Neither the Maoists nor the UML nor theCongress Party, nor any of the other parties for that matter, have been ableto provide that sort of backdrop for the people of Nepal, who deserve farbetter.

Little wonder that the three major parties leaders Prachanda, Koirala andPrime Minister Nepal -- were christened The 3 Idiots by the Nepali Times

this week, a reference to a new Bollywood film that is currently all the ragein Kathmandu.

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The international community may not get the joke, per se, but theyllcomprehend the cynicism behind the joke. They know that incompetence,at the end of the day, really isnt all that funny.