Jihadist penetration of Pakistani armed forces may be deeper than feared

[sparten]

Merchant ships, which are underway, not tied up at pier side, and who are typically unarmed, Most of the time they don't take over control of the ship directly, just order the sailors to do their bidding.

Do you seriously think that a ship tied up at port, on auxiliary power, with its engines cold is going to be taken over by 10 men? Even Indians can't be that stupid (). It takes hours just to start it up.

As for "Jihadi penetration", its worrying that a few officers seemed to have fallen under the spell. Its hardly indicative of "takeover". There are thousands of military officers, and these were low ranking bastards anyway, And none too bright.

 

[Windows 10]

Naval dockyard episode was a very very dangerous plan , had they succeeded, there would have be irreparable damage to PN.

OK I have a simple question, what is the procedure to stop if any fighter pilot under jihadi mentality tries to repeat some thing similar to naval dockyard, I mean crossing enemy lines and doing a suicide mission inside enemy territory using his loaded F sola.

I mean Some thing similar to Rashid Minhass and the traitor Mati Ur Rehman.

Not sure if there is really a way, no one will be able to stop if he is on a suicide mission other than our air force who will shot it down. It will have its own repercussions. It could happen even though.

Jihadist penetration of Pakistani armed forces may be deeper than feared
BY AMIR MIR on JUNE 9, 2016 in ASIA TIMES NEWS & FEATURES, SOUTH ASIA

ISLAMABAD–A Pakistani Navy tribunal’s recent awarding of death sentence to five officers for the September 6, 2014 terror attack on the Karachi Naval Dockyard points to the growing penetration of the Pakistani armed forces by radical elements including Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) launched by Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri.



The main target of the Karachi Naval Dockyard raid in 2014 was a US supply ship

While Pakistan’s military had been secular and disciplined, it is now being infiltrated at all levels by jihadists and al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers.

This obnoxious development has brought into open the conflicting ideologies which seem to have caused fissures in the ranks of the Pakistani armed forces by pitting Islamists against reformists.

The death sentence awarded to five officers proves that the fidayeen assault on the naval dockyard could not have been possible without “inside help.”

Those court-martialed and sentenced to death by the Navy tribunal after in-camera trials were Sub-Lieutenant Hammad Ahmed (whose father Saeed Ahmed is a retired Army Major), Irfan Ullah, Hashim Naseer, Mohammad Hammad and Arslan Nazeer.

The naval authorities concluded the court martial proceedings on April 12, 2016 and promulgated the judgment on April 14, 2016. Those arrested were tried on charges of inciting mutiny, hatching a conspiracy and carrying weapons in the naval dockyard.

The naval court reportedly refused to provide copies of trial proceedings to the family members of the convicted officers who want to challenge their death sentences. All the five officers had links with AQIS led by Commander Asim Umar who is an Indian national from the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The AQIS was launched by Al Zawahiri on September 3, 2014 and the dockyard attack was carried out three days later. AQIS spokesman, Usama Mahmood, claimed the attack by the group in his September 11 statement.

US and Indian navies the targets

The incident came as a big blow to the credibility of the Pakistani military which had received billions of dollars of US aid since 2001 when General Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led war against al-Qaeda.

The statement issued by AQIS spokesman identified their target as USS Supply, a US naval ship which is used to refuel warships at sea. It was part of a plan to strike at the American military strength on the seas.

In a nine-page press release, Mahmood said the targets were American and Indian Navies and the operation was carried out on the orders of Al Zawahiri.

The Pakistani military authorities took 20 months to convict those naval officers who had been indoctrinated by al-Qaeda and were part of the dockyard attack which killed four Navy officers, including two dissidents.

However, worries for the Pakistani military establishment are far from over.

The Washington Post reported on June 3, 2016 that AQIS is regrouping in Pakistan and re-adapting through enhanced alliances with established militant groups there.

The report said: “Five years after most senior al-Qaeda leaders are thought to have fled the port city, officials in Karachi worry that the organization is regrouping and finding new support here and in neighboring Afghanistan.

“They are especially concerned about the recruitment of potential foot soldiers for the next major terrorist attack. The resurgence has been managed by a South Asian offshoot called Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, created by the top al-Qaeda leader, Ayman Al Zawahiri, in 2014 in order to slow advances by rival Daesh (IS) militants in the region.”

Going by the Post report, the AQIS initially struggled to gain traction in Pakistan as it has been the principal target of US President Barack Obama’s drone-strike strategy in the country’s northwestern tribal belt.

“But AQIS is now finding its footing in southern Pakistan, powered by fresh recruits and budding alliances with other militant organizations. They are making a comeback of sort in the form of a different, more localized al-Qaeda. The formation of AQIS is again allowing al-Qaeda to tap into Karachi’s wealth and network of madrasas in search of recruits and technical expertise and sparking deadly clashes with the Pakistani security forces,” the report said.

“The core al-Qaeda, the thinkers and planners are not coming to the front right now, rather they are giving directions and the local boys are going in big numbers. While Pakistani officials remain confident that al-Qaeda can’t pull off another 9/11-style attack on the United States, there is concern that the group is planning something big,” it said.

In Karachi, the AQIS has divided itself into three operational segments — recruitment, financial and tactical — made up of four-to-six-person cells. The recruitment cells work in madrasas and schools, casually preaching Islam before targeting certain students for potential recruitment. These cells solicit local businesses for donations, often under the guise of supporting Islamic charities, officials said.

They have no estimate on how much money al-Qaeda raises from relatively wealthy Karachi but said militants are often found carrying hundreds of dollars in cash. Militants are being told they don’t need to do any job and they don’t need to indulge in petty crimes. But they should remain discreet.

The Washington Post story is alarming as al-Qaeda has targeted several military installations in Karachi in recent years.

Assault on PNS Mehran Naval base

The most damaging assault was carried out on May 22, 2011 when Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked terrorists stormed the heavily-guarded PNS Mehran Naval base with sophisticated weapons and fired rocket-propelled grenades which badly damaged some important defense assets, including Pakistan Navy’s highly expensive surveillance aircraft P-3C Orion, worth more than $35 million.

The attack began around 10.30 pm and lasted for over 16 hours. Fifteen security forces personnel were killed in the gun battle while 15 others were critically injured. The attack was carried out with such precision that it must have taken months of planning and drills.

The attackers knew where to get in from and where to find the P-3C Orion. Such sensitive information could have only come from insiders. Unfortunately, there are a number of cases where those with links to the armed forces have been involved in attacks targeting the military.

The Pakistani authorities subsequently arrested an ex-commando of the Navy, Kamran Ahmed, and his younger brother, Zaman Ahmed, from Lahore for aiding the attack.

Kamran, who had joined the Navy in 1993 and was trained as a Special Services Group commando, was detained on charges of providing maps of the Mehran Naval base to the attackers. He was court-martialed and terminated in 2003 for assaulting a senior officer. The military court declared Kamran unfit for the job because of his extremist views.

A former medic of Pakistan Army, ‘Dr’ Usman aka Aqeel, was the ring leader of the 12 fidayeenattackers who stormed the General Headquarters (GHQ) in the garrison town of Rawalpindi in October 2009 and killed over two dozen people.

He was subsequently court-martialed and hanged.

Another dreaded jehadi, Adnan Rasheed, known for various terrorist acts including an attempt on General Pervez Musharraf’s life, was a former air force man before he turned his guns on the state.

Now affiliated with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Adnan was freed along along with 400 other inmates by Taliban militants when they stormed the Central Prison in the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2012.

He later masterminded the Dera Ismail Khan jailbreak in August 2013, in which 175 prisoners were freed.

Attack on Karachi Naval Dockyard

The Karachi Naval Dockyard attack was carried out entirely by serving Navy personnel, along with Owais Jakharani, a former Navy cadet. Jakhrani, son of Assistant Inspector General of Karachi Police Ali Sher Jakhrani, was killed during the operation.

The mystery behind the attack was solved when AQIS spokesman Mahmood issued a statement denying reports that the fidayeen operation was carried out by “some intruders.”

He said some naval officers executed the operation to take control of a Pakistani Naval ship PNS Zulfiqar to launch missile attacks on US warships in the Indian Ocean, carrying eight C-802 surface to surface anti-ship missiles.

He said all the participants in the “fearless operation” were officers of the Pakistan Navy. He described it as an act of rebellion against the Pakistani Navy by its own elements, striking at its policy of humiliation and subjugation to the United States.

He issued another statement on September 29, 2014, making public the name and picture of a Pakistan Navy officer, Second Lieutenant Zeeshan Rafeeq. He said the attack was to take control of two Pakistan Navy warships – PNS Zulfiqar and PNS Aslat – and use them for destroying an American oil tanker and an Indian warship.

The press release carried pictures of bearded Rafeeq and Jakhrani briefing “the leadership of the mujahideen on the Naval Dockyard operation.”

The statement said: “By the grace of Allah Almighty, the Mujahid brothers assumed control of both frigates. A firefight ensued with the officials of the Pakistan Navy. It lasted for several hours on both the warships. Due to this firefight with officials of the Pakistan Navy, the brothers were not able to fully execute the next part of their plan, namely the attack on American and Indian warships. Several soldiers and officers of Pakistan Navy were killed and injured while a number of our brothers attained martyrdom.”

Subsequent investigations by the Pakistani authorities revealed that Rafeeq was a serving Navy officer. He blew himself up after being surrounded by naval commandos. Zeeshan acted in unison with Jakhrani before being killed in a gun battle with the Special Services Group (Navy) commandos.

Four more attackers, who had taken refuge in one of the compartments of the PNS Zulfiqar, were locked inside by the Navy commandos and arrested afterward. At least a dozen rogue Navy personnel were detained by the Pakistan Naval Intelligence based on the phone records of the attackers, including four aboard PNS Zulfiqar, for their alleged involvement in the dockyard attack.

In a follow up report pertaining to the dockyard attack, the Wall Street Journal, quoting a senior American official, claimed on September 17, 2014 that although al-Qaeda recruited within the Pakistani military, such occurrences were rare.

“Still, there have been several attacks on military facilities and personnel in Pakistan carried out with the help of serving and retired military personnel,” the report said.

Alert gunner foils plan

According to the report, during the attempt to seize PNS Zulfiqar, the rogue officers were in uniform and had their service cards displayed. They simply walked on board.The frigate was due to sail the same day to join an international naval flotilla in the Indian Ocean. However, the plan was foiled primarily by the alertness of PNS Zulfiqar’s gunner.

The militants, who were supposed to board PNS Zulfiqar, approached the docked ship in an inflatable boat, wearing Marine uniforms. The gunner felt they were too close and their weapons appeared to be AK-47s which are not standard Marine issue. The gunner turned his sights on them and fired a warning shot.

The militants, fearing the game was up, retaliated with rockets and automatic weapons. At the sound of the firing, Marines and naval commandos rushed to the ship and were engaged by the renegade officers awaiting the militants on the inflatable boat.

While those on board the ship continued to fight it out for a few hours, the ones in the inflatable boat had no chance. The gunner ripped apart the boat with his Gatling anti-aircraft gun, killing all six on board. The four rogue naval men were killed aboard the frigate.

The battle ended when the last surviving rogue naval officer, a young sub-lieutenant, blew himself up after being surrounded, the WSJ report concluded.

The specter of Islamist infiltration has haunted the Pakistani armed forces for decades. The creeping coup of conservatism in the armed forces is a legacy of the country’s third military dictator, General Zia-ul Haq, under whose command the state policies were cantered on Islam; religious sermons by fanatic mullahs in military units were encouraged and even Tableeghi Jamaat (the party of preachers) members were allowed to preach in the garrisons at will.

This drift within the armed forces was first revealed during Benazir Bhutto’s second tenure as Prime Minister in 1995 when a group of senior Army officers led by a serving Major General was busted while planning to topple the federal government in Islamabad and to eliminate the top military leadership to enforce Shariah in the country.

Attempts on Musharraf’s life

The arrests of dozens of commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the Pakistan Army and the Air Force in connection with the December 2003 twin assassination attempts targeting General Musharraf’s presidential cavalcade in Rawalpindi did not come as a surprise to many.

Subsequent investigations revealed that al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants had penetrated the Pakistan Army and Air Force units to preach their brand of jihad and recruit personnel to assassinate none other than their own army chief.

During investigation of the two assassination attempts that took the military investigators to Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, about 150 suspects including four-dozen commissioned and non-commissioned personnel of the Army and the Air Force were questioned.

The investigators concluded that the attempts on Pervez Musharraf’s cavalcade (on December 14, and on December 25, 2003) were an exclusive job of over a dozen brainwashed-technicians of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) who lived in a residential facility nearby. They were directed, motivated and armed by a Pakistani contact person of al-Qaeda.

The investigation showed that the Air Intelligence, which is the intelligence wing of the Air Force, had no wind that its personnel — about two dozen at the Chaklala airbase — had been attending meetings with religious extremists and were making preparations at the Pakistan Air Force base to bomb the presidential motorcade.

The investigation also led to the arrest of civilian religious extremists, including three clerics involved in the indoctrination of the PAF technicians and planning of attacks. A small group of religious extremists who had supplied the C4 explosives to the Air Force technicians and the suicide bombers were also arrested.

The investigation team, headed by Pakistan’s former Army Chief General Ashfaq Kiyani, who was a lieutenant general at that time, was shocked to learn that the Air Force technicians spent two days making several trips beneath the Lai Bridge to strap large quantities of the C4 explosives to the pillars of the bridge, all without being noticed either by the police or the Military Intelligence, which was supposed to keep an eye on this presidential route.

Almost 13 years after these attacks, with General Musharraf gone overseas and al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden killed, there are strong indications that Islamic extremists remain within the lower ranks of the Pakistani armed forces and are involved in several deadly terrorist attacks targeting important military installations.

This raises the billion dollar question: Is the jihadi penetration of the Pakistani armed forces deeper than feared?

Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist known for his research work on Islamic militancy and terrorism in Pakistan. He has authored several books including “Talibanization of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11,” “The Bhutto Murder Trail: From Waziristan to GHQ,” “The True Face of Jehadis” and “The Fluttering Flag of Jehad.”

Interesting read. Thanks for sharing mate.

 

[T-72M1]

A handful of ill equipped Somali pirates have taken over numerous merchant ships..

they have, but radar tracking a target and firing an anti ship cruise missile at it is not the same as the few pounds of pressure required to fire an RPG 7 or a Kalashnikov

Though the jihadi plan was ill conceived to begin with. .what the mention here is that navy officers were part of the jihadi team.

very ill-conceived, there was always going to be resistance from the rest of the hijacked crew, PN might be a small coastal defence force but they're not jihadi pirates.

the most worrying take-away from that plan was the confirmation of just how deep these jihadi roots have crept in to Pakistani society overall, that is scary.

 

[cranwerkhan]

Pak Navy cease to exist.

----------------------------------

@Solomon2

PS - Those who were court martialed were not ordinary sailor but ranking officer and ex SSW.

they were not from ssw. yes officer were there

 

[I M Sikander]

Not sure if there is really a way, no one will be able to stop if he is on a suicide mission other than our air force who will shot it down. It will have its own repercussions. It could happen even though.

I mean is there any SOP, how to control any such incident.

Is it possible to install GPS based jammers in fighter jets similar to cars that immediately ceases all functions of the fighter jet in case of any inadvertent scenario.

 

[Jamwal's]

they were not from ssw. yes officer were there

The article speaks of one Kamran Ahmad ex Navy commando, who aided the attack.

 

[illusion8]

Merchant ships, which are underway, not tied up at pier side, and who are typically unarmed, Most of the time they don't take over control of the ship directly, just order the sailors to do their bidding.

Do you seriously think that a ship tied up at port, on auxiliary power, with its engines cold is going to be taken over by 10 men? Even Indians can't be that stupid (). It takes hours just to start it up.

As for "Jihadi penetration", its worrying that a few officers seemed to have fallen under the spell. Its hardly indicative of "takeover". There are thousands of military officers, and these were low ranking bastards anyway, And none too bright.

If I remember it right, the initial plan though ill concieved was that the terrorists were to get on board and hide themselves with the help of the jihadi officers. .It was by chance that one security guard saw them getting on board and engaged them..which resulted in their exposure.

The second stage was that once the ship leaves port - the terrorists were to emerge out.

As for your snide remark about stupidity...I agree..replying to you was a bit stupid on my part. I'll cease to do that hereon.

they have, but radar tracking a target and firing an anti ship cruise missile at it is not the same as the few pounds of pressure required to fire an RPG 7 or a Kalashnikov


very ill-conceived, there was always going to be resistance from the rest of the hijacked crew, PN might be a small coastal defence force but they're not jihadi pirates.

the most worrying take-away from that plan was the confirmation of just how deep these jihadi roots have crept in to Pakistani society overall, that is scary.

As far as plans go...even the 9/11 attack wasn't imaginable before it happened..jihadi taking over countries and fighting a war with well trained armies wasn't imaginable till it happened. So, I for one wouldn't be surprised what jihadi planning churns out next.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Mir Jaaafer , writer what else to expect

 

[pak-marine]

“The core al-Qaeda, the thinkers and planners are not coming to the front right now, rather they are giving directions and the local boys are going in big numbers. While Pakistani officials remain confident that al-Qaeda can’t pull off another 9/11-styleattack on the United States, there is concern that the group is planning something big,” it said.


where !?? Pakistani seems the most obvious target of all its well within their reach

 

[Irfan Baloch]

What Else Can You Expect From The Snake Named Amir Mir

Hamid Mir's brother?

 

[Ray_of_Hope]

PS - Those who were court martialed were not ordinary sailor but ranking officer and ex SSW.

Thats incorrect...As a matter of fact almost all of those court martialled and hanged were ordinary sailors bars one or two junior cadre officers...i.e sub lieutenant

 

[RIP Pak LAW]

When I saw the name Amir Mir, I stopped reading the article at once. Enough said.

 

[Irfan Baloch]

This is everyone's biggest fear, a jihadi commander in charge of their strategic arsenal. From what I know though, the Pak military, despite their love for anti India jihadis, is mostly a professionally run operation and they are kind of/in a way.. 'secular', if that makes sense.

Even if there is a fundamentalist beardo takeover of their forces, it'll always be a suicide jihad, no way they can win this, conventionally, or otherwise.

time and again Americans have reported back to their senate select committee and government about our checks, protocols and SOPs in place to prevent such possibilities .
but risks are always there and Indian protocols were found to bee weaker than us. do look it up yourself

 

[salarsikander]

Yup. And five officers aren't enough to run a warship. But five are enough to command one. Apparently they were convinced they could get "ordinary sailors" to enthusiastically support their plan to attack an American warship.

Oh come on now when Israel can bomb the shit out of American naval vessel and Americans can hide it, why can't they give us same favours ?? After all we have taken quite heat of american foreign policy we just don't suck of that aid unlike israel

 

[RIP Pak LAW]

As far as Indians are concerned, well their own investigating committee found security of the Pathankot air base extremely shocking.

http://indianexpress.com/article/in...-our-security-establishment-parliament-panel/

Indians should worry about their internal security apparatus first before commenting about other nations.