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Captured CST Terrorist

The misplaced hype about Faridkot


Dawn Report


MULTAN/KHANEWAL, Nov 30: As Mumbai struggles to return to normalcy in the wake of terrorist attacks, a Pakistani village named Faridkot is being mentioned in the Indian media as the place of origin of the lone gunman arrested by Indian commandos. He has been identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab.

The media, however, conveniently avoids mentioning that there is also a town with the same name in the Indian state of Punjab.

In Pakistan, there are several villages named Faridkot, but three of them — one each in Khanewal, Pakpattan and Okara — attracted the attention of intelligence agencies and media to ‘prove’ that the terrorist was a Pakistani.

Faridkot in Khanewal, also known as Chak No 90/10-R, is a hamlet on the Jahanian Road, 53km from Multan and has a population of 5,000. This village has one primary school and two mosques — one managed by Barelvis and the other by Shias — and is known for sectarian harmony.

Interestingly, the Indian media is not even sure whether the alleged attacker is named Ajmal Amir Kamal, Muhammad Ajmal, Muhammad Amin Kasab, Azam Amir Kasav or Azam Amir Kasab.

People of this village said there were four people named Ajmal in the village — the one whose name also included Kamal had died 15 years ago. The numberdar of the village, Haqnawaz Baloch, told Dawn that Kamal was son of Muhammad Shafi. Another man named Ajmal had shifted to Ahmedpur East several years ago. The third Ajmal worked in a tea processing factory and the fourth one was a labourer, he said.

He said there was no person by the name of Amin or Azam and did not know what ‘Kasab’ or ‘Kasav’ meant. He said people of the village were peaceful and no one from Faridkot had visited India.

Khanewal police raided Faridkot twice over the past two days to gather details about the alleged terrorist. “We thoroughly checked the village record when Indian media started saying someone from this village was involved in the (Mumbai) attack. The hype is misplaced,” said District Police Officer Kamran Khan. He said police had done the checking on their own, without any instruction from the government.

According to BBCUrdu.com, another village named Faridkot is near Pakpattan. It has a population of 2,000 and most of them are farmers.

Residents say they do not know anyone by the name of Ajmal or Akmal and no one from the village has links with jihadi or other banned outfits.

Another Faridkot is a remote village in Deepalpur tehsil in Okara district.

The Economic Times, an Indian paper, claimed that Azam Amir Kasav, 21, belonged to this village and “speaks fluent English”.

“We can tell you who this man is and how he has become the vital link for investigating agencies to crack the terror plot,” the paper says.

The misplaced hype about Faridkot -DAWN - Top Stories; December 01, 2008

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Given all these conflicting stories out there in the media, nothing seems credible any more, and I still find it hard to believe that the investigation would be compromised so badly by leaking information about potential suspects to the media.
 
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^^ May be not all the information is leaked. There could be some deft media management involved too.

Too early to assume things. I would assume the investigators have some aces up their sleeve.
 
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The media, however, conveniently avoids mentioning that there is also a town with the same name in the Indian state of Punjab.

What the hell is this!

There could be 100 Faridkots. It doesn't matter. The terrorist is supposed to have come from Faridkot in Pakistan as per his own admission. If there are many Pakistani Faridkots, we need to wait for the details to come out.

On the one hand, there is the complaint of too much media exposure and on the other hand people assume that they know everything there is to know from the media sources!
 
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^^ May be not all the information is leaked. There could be some deft media management involved too.

Too early to assume things. I would assume the investigators have some aces up their sleeve.

Releasing the details of the operation and potential suspects is not 'deft media management', its giving the suspects a head start.
 
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What the hell is this!

There could be 100 Faridkots. It doesn't matter. The terrorist is supposed to have come from Faridkot in Pakistan as per his own admission. If there are many Pakistani Faridkots, we need to wait for the details to come out.

On the one hand, there is the complaint of too much media exposure and on the other hand people assume that they know everything there is to know from the media sources!

The point is that the reporter went to the alleged town and his conclusions are in the article, hence the questions about the Indian media's claims.
 
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Releasing the details of the operation and potential suspects is not 'deft media management', its giving the suspects a head start.

I don't see any operation details being leaked.

In this day and age, the media needs to be released some information as the people expect to be kept updated.

There is no reason to believe there is anything out of the ordinary and operational secrets are being revealed.
 
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I don't see any operation details being leaked.

In this day and age, the media needs to be released some information as the people expect to be kept updated.

There is no reason to believe there is anything out of the ordinary and operational secrets are being revealed.

No operational details being released? So all the reports about where the training camp was, the means of getting to India, who trained them, who they called, who called them - all of that is BS then?
 
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No operational details being released? So all the reports about where the training camp was, the means of getting to India, who trained them, who they called, who called them - all of that is BS then?

How does any of this impact the ongoing investigations?

One thing we have to understand is that there are now going to be international agencies involved too. So the evidence is being shared with them as we speak. That should take care of the credibility to the extent it can be.

It it is BS, it will be proved so. If not, we will all see it.

I advocate some patience and not to assume that there is nothing that the investigators know that we don't. I sense the assumption that they are incompetent fools. They may well not be.
 
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The misplaced hype about Faridkot


Dawn Report


MULTAN/KHANEWAL, Nov 30: As Mumbai struggles to return to normalcy in the wake of terrorist attacks, a Pakistani village named Faridkot is being mentioned in the Indian media as the place of origin of the lone gunman arrested by Indian commandos. He has been identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab.

The media, however, conveniently avoids mentioning that there is also a town with the same name in the Indian state of Punjab.

In Pakistan, there are several villages named Faridkot, but three of them — one each in Khanewal, Pakpattan and Okara — attracted the attention of intelligence agencies and media to ‘prove’ that the terrorist was a Pakistani.

Faridkot in Khanewal, also known as Chak No 90/10-R, is a hamlet on the Jahanian Road, 53km from Multan and has a population of 5,000. This village has one primary school and two mosques — one managed by Barelvis and the other by Shias — and is known for sectarian harmony.

Interestingly, the Indian media is not even sure whether the alleged attacker is named Ajmal Amir Kamal, Muhammad Ajmal, Muhammad Amin Kasab, Azam Amir Kasav or Azam Amir Kasab.

People of this village said there were four people named Ajmal in the village — the one whose name also included Kamal had died 15 years ago. The numberdar of the village, Haqnawaz Baloch, told Dawn that Kamal was son of Muhammad Shafi. Another man named Ajmal had shifted to Ahmedpur East several years ago. The third Ajmal worked in a tea processing factory and the fourth one was a labourer, he said.

He said there was no person by the name of Amin or Azam and did not know what ‘Kasab’ or ‘Kasav’ meant. He said people of the village were peaceful and no one from Faridkot had visited India.

Khanewal police raided Faridkot twice over the past two days to gather details about the alleged terrorist. “We thoroughly checked the village record when Indian media started saying someone from this village was involved in the (Mumbai) attack. The hype is misplaced,” said District Police Officer Kamran Khan. He said police had done the checking on their own, without any instruction from the government.

According to BBCUrdu.com, another village named Faridkot is near Pakpattan. It has a population of 2,000 and most of them are farmers.

Residents say they do not know anyone by the name of Ajmal or Akmal and no one from the village has links with jihadi or other banned outfits.

Another Faridkot is a remote village in Deepalpur tehsil in Okara district.

The Economic Times, an Indian paper, claimed that Azam Amir Kasav, 21, belonged to this village and “speaks fluent English”.

“We can tell you who this man is and how he has become the vital link for investigating agencies to crack the terror plot,” the paper says.

The misplaced hype about Faridkot -DAWN - Top Stories; December 01, 2008

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Given all these conflicting stories out there in the media, nothing seems credible any more, and I still find it hard to believe that the investigation would be compromised so badly by leaking information about potential suspects to the media.

Here is the other side of the coin - also, note the obdurate denial of the state of youth in Punjab Pakistan in the media of that country:


Behind the attacks lies a story of youth twisted by hate

The intense poverty and extreme religious culture of the southern Punjab have made the region a hotbed for Islamist terror groups. It is, claim the Indian media, the seedbed of last week's slaughter in Mumbai. Jason Burke travelled to the twin towns of Bahawalpur and Multan, home of alleged killer Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, to discover what impels young men to unleash carnage.

The pitted roads around Multan, the city of saints, stretch flat across the fields. They lead past rundown factories, workshops, shabby roadside teashops and mile after mile of flat fields broken only by the mud and brick houses of the villages of Pakistan's rural poor. One road leads south-east to the nearby city of Bahawalpur, the biggest recruiting base of the militant groups currently being blamed by India for the Mumbai attack; another leads north-west to Faridkot, the home village of Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national named yesterday in the Indian media as the only gunman involved in last week's atrocity now alive and in custody.

Already a picture claimed by the Indian media to be Kasab, showing a young man dressed in combat trousers, carrying a backpack and an AK47, on his way to to Mumbai's main station to carry out his deadly work, has become an iconic image of the assault on the city.

Two other militants have been named. Like Kasab, according to the Indian media reports, they are said to be from the Multan region, southern Punjab.
They, too, are said to be members of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and to have followed a five-month training period to prepare them for the attack. The charge of the group's involvement, denied by its spokesmen, has explosive political consequences for the volatile region and must be treated with caution. In the long-running contest between India and its neighbour, propaganda and misinformation is far from rare. But if the details now emerging are confirmed, the link to Pakistan may spark war.

For though it is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian government has limited control over local militant groups, it is clear that Pakistan's military and security establishment does.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was originally founded with the support of the Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, to fight as 'deniable' proxies in the contested territory of Kashmir, part of a decades-old strategy by the militarily weaker Pakistan to 'bleed' its bigger rival. The ISI also has connections with Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that New Delhi security officials has accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

For the moment little is known about the three men named yesterday or their accomplices. But their place of origin comes as no surprise to experts. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed draw the majority of their recruits from the southern Punjab. Last week The Observer travelled to the twin towns of Multan and Bahawalpur, the centres of the region, to investigate the reality of the groups' power on the ground, their relations with the Pakistani intelligence services and the factors which drive young men, possibly including the Mumbai gunmen, to join them.

Trace a line from where US special forces battle Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights.

For most militants in the region the story - and that of Azam Amir Kasab is unlikely to be very different - starts at school. The southern Punjab has one of the highest concentrations of religious schools or madrassas in south Asia. Most teach the ultra-conservative Deobandi strand of Islam that is also followed by the Afghan Taliban and, crucially in this desperately poor land, offers free classes, board and lodging to students.

In Bahawalpur the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, believed responsible for a string of brutal attacks across south Asia, including the murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl, has been linked to two such madrassas. One is the headquarters of the group - a semi-fortified and forbidding complex in the centre of the town. The other is the Dar-ul-Uloom Medina, where the brother-in-law of Rashid Rauf, the Bahawalpur-based suspected British militant thought to have been killed in an American missile attack eight days ago, is a teacher. Surrounded by some of the 700 students, he told The Observer that 'jihad' was the duty of all his young charges.

The pupils at the more radical Bahawalpur and Multan schools grow up soaked in extremist ideology.
The most senior cleric in Bahawalpur, Maulana Riaz Chugti, said his students could only go 'for training or to fight' after their studies or when the schools were shut for the holy month of Ramadan.

'To fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir and to struggle against the forces who are against Islam is our religious duty,'
Chugti, who oversees the education of 40,000 students, told The Observer.

In Bahawalpur both the effects and the limits of the recent reversal of policy by the ISI, the powerful Pakistani military intelligence service, are evident. A crackdown on the militant groups was launched after they were blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which almost brought India and Pakistan to open war. The groups, previously seen as a strategic asset, were suddenly seen as, at least for the moment, a liability. When their operatives were linked to plots to assassinate the then President, and evidence of collusion with al-Qaeda itself became clear, the pressure mounted on the ISI to rein in their former protégés.

'The militants have had to lower their profile,' said one local security official. 'They are no longer recruiting or preaching or raising funds openly. Things are much more difficult for them. If they recruit at all they do it individual by individual, not en masse like before. There is no production line.'

But the groups - along with break-away outfits with their roots in sectarian Shia-Sunni violence in the region - still have a significant presence in the region, particularly in remote villages such as that of Azam Amir Kasab. 'They may be semi-retired, but in my village there are 300 men who have fought in Afghanistan and have training and can be activated with one phone call,' one local former militant said. That fighters for one operation should come from the same place was not surprising. 'When I went to Afghanistan I went with five guys who I knew from school,' he said.

The young men of the southern Punjab have been found across a broad swath of south Asia and even further afield. In Kabul in August, The Observer interviewed Abit, a 23-year-old from Bahawalpur who had surrendered to Afghan police seconds before he was supposed to blow himself up in a huge truck bomb.
Other militants from the town have been found as far away as Bangladesh. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have even been located in Iraq.

The groups are also of great interest to British intelligence services, who fear their key role as intermediaries between young volunteers from the UK's Muslim community - such as Rauf - and al-Qaeda leaders based in the volatile tribal zones along Pakistan's western frontier. The groups, the sources say, have a UK support network to supply funding.

The groups' relationship with the intelligence services is complex. Front organisations for the groups have even put up candidates in recent elections and travel without fear throughout Pakistan. Earlier this year The Observer interviewed a representative of one group alleged to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the foyer of a luxury Lahore hotel.

Local politicians said groups in the region were still powerful enough to intimidate the local government and security forces and even to collect tax or mediate in legal disputes in some areas. Roshan Gilani, a Shia community leader in Bahawalpur, said music shops had received Taliban-style threats, telling them to close or risk violence. Prominent Shias have been told they are on a hit list.

Until the Mumbai attacks, the recent series of bombings in India had been attributed by most analysts to a home-grown militant outfit: the Indian Mujahideen. With many highly educated and middle-class recruits among its ranks, and led by a 36-year-old computer engineer, the group's members have a very different profile from the Pakistani groups' recruits. But though their paths may be very different, the militants' eventual destination - fanaticism, violence and hate - are the same.

Intelligence agencies have done much research since 9/11 into how individuals become terrorist killers. Dehumanising the enemy is seen as key. Civilians are no longer seen as innocent but as complicit in a war waged by their governments against Islam. Group dynamics also play a huge role, particularly when teams of militants are isolated from normal society for long periods of time. Training camps - such as those in which Azam Amir Kasab is said to have spent months - are the perfect way of reinforcing solidarity and the new 'world view' which will allow them to execute murderous operations, such as killing diners in a hotel restaurant in cold blood.

Indian authorities believe local members of the Indian Mujahideen may have acted as scouts to prepare the ground and gather intelligence before the attack. Security services now recognise that militant groups looking to prepare attacks seek out resources and often enter into temporary coalitions with other outfits when necessary. Though criminal links to Islamic militants are rare, they are not unknown, and there are some suggestions that local underworld networks may have been exploited to get the attackers to the targets by sea.

Mumbai: Behind the attacks lies a story of youth twisted by hate | World news | The Observer

Mumbai: Behind the attacks lies a story of youth twisted by hate | World news | The Observer
 
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What the hell is this!

There could be 100 Faridkots. It doesn't matter. The terrorist is supposed to have come from Faridkot in Pakistan as per his own admission. If there are many Pakistani Faridkots, we need to wait for the details to come out.

On the one hand, there is the complaint of too much media exposure and on the other hand people assume that they know everything there is to know from the media sources!

Listen to this guy, saying it doesn't matter how many Faridchodes are in India, as long as there is one in Pakistan. And again, all this information coming from a recently caught terrorist who supposedly cares so little about life that he was smiling while killing people, now all of a sudden his motivation is to indulge everything to Indian authorities. Something is wrong with this picture. You guys will treat his admissions as holy scripture? Then I am sure of it, that guy is a mole working for RAW while the other idiots were probably hired help.
 
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How does any of this impact the ongoing investigations?

One thing we have to understand is that there are now going to be international agencies involved too. So the evidence is being shared with them as we speak. That should take care of the credibility to the extent it can be.

It it is BS, it will be proved so. If not, we will all see it.

I advocate some patience and not to assume that there is nothing that the investigators know that we don't. I sense the assumption that they are incompetent fools. They may well not be.

If the Indian media is to be believed then we have the locations of the alleged camps, and the identities of the individuals (chacha) who trained them and/or were in contact with them, and planned the operation, being revealed.

There are only two logical assumptions that one can draw from this:

If this information is true, or even close to true, the individuals referred to are probably underground at this point. This would imply that the investigation has been ham-handed and compromised.

If on the other hand this information is not true, then the Indian media (or GoI through careful leaks) is just feeding everyone a pack of lies, and deliberately inflaming sentiment against Pakistan.
 
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Here is the other side of the coin - also, note the obdurate denial of the state of youth in Punjab Pakistan in the media of that country:

Actually the two pieces are very dissimilar in the subject they approach.

No attempt has been made to offer commentary on the 'state of youth' in Punjab in the Pakistani piece. It is a a very factual account of a visit to the alleged village of the captured terrorist to determine whether or not the allegations are true, and the conclusions have not been rebutted by Burke. In fact, he doesn't even delve into that question.

Burke's commentary, in contrast to the Dawn piece, seeks to explore the larger question of how some Islamist groups are structured in Southern Punjab, and how the conflicts of Afghanistan and Kashmir have shaped society (veterans of the Afghan Jihad). By no means is his piece in anyway a damning indictment of 'the state of youth in Punjab', that is your own flawed creation, as is your comparison of the two pieces.

The state of some youth in Southern Punjab would be a more accurate description of Burke's analysis.
 
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If the Indian media is to be believed then we have the locations of the alleged camps, and the identities of the individuals (chacha) who trained them and/or were in contact with them, and planned the operation, being revealed.

There are only two logical assumptions that one can draw from this:

If this information is true, or even close to true, the individuals referred to are probably underground at this point. This would imply that the investigation has been ham-handed and compromised.

The individuals were anyway out of our reach. The only way to build pressure on Pakistan to do something about them would be through public diplomacy and building media pressure.

Individuals are one part of it, the camps are another.The reports claim that there are camps now in both Pakistani Kashmir and in Pakistan proper where these guys trained.

If you follow the media coverage after 9/11, it was pretty much similar. There were a lot of details shared with the media, not all of them.

If on the other hand this information is not true, then the Indian media (or GoI through careful leaks) is just feeding everyone a pack of lies, and deliberately inflaming sentiment against Pakistan.

In that case, they will be proven liars in front of the world.
 
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The individuals were anyway out of our reach. The only way to build pressure on Pakistan to do something about them would be through public diplomacy and building media pressure.

Individuals are one part of it, the camps are another.The reports claim that there are camps now in both Pakistani Kashmir and in Pakistan proper where these guys trained.

If you follow the media coverage after 9/11, it was pretty much similar. There were a lot of details shared with the media, not all of them.
Of course the individuals are out of India's reach, Pakistan is not going to let India into her territory, but that's not the point - I am referring to these individuals now going underground and also being out of Pakistan's reach in the Tribal areas etc. Which almost eliminates any chance of Pakistan being able to deliver these people given that it is struggling to control parts of FATA.

The best we would be able to hope for in that situation is some US drone strike eventually killing them ala Rashid Rauf, but who knows when actionable intel on them would be obtained.

Comparing this with 911 isn't a good example. In the end the US had to invade a country to try and get the people it wanted, and still hasn't captured them because they went underground.

The professional thing to do would have been to keep the identities under wraps until evidence was shared and Pakistani law enforcement could act to detain the suspects. So, if this evidence is true, India has been busy 'point scoring' and inflaming sentiment (perhaps to ward of communal tension at home) while reducing the chances of actually grabbing these guys.

Who knows, if the allegations are true, perhaps these individuals will be cocky enough to stay put, and Pakistani LEA's can still pick them up, but my guess is that at this point they are en route to the Waziristan's.
 
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