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Attack on USS Cole: Who engineered it?

B. Raman

INVESTIGATIONS BY the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the October 12 terrorist attack at Aden on the US naval destroyer USS Cole are still in the preliminary stages and there seems to be as yet no breakthrough in establishing the identity o f the culprits.

However, a study of past developments in Yemen could provide some indicators. In December 1998, from his hide-out in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden had called for attacks on American and British interests all over the world in retaliatio n for their air strikes on Iraq. Osama, whose family is of Yemenese origin and had migrated originally from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, has many supporters amongst the youth of Yemen. He is a cult figure for them just as he is for many madra sa-educated Pakistanis.

On December 28, 1998, a till then little known Islamic organisation, the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, kidnapped 16 Western tourists, including two Americans. It called for the establishment of an Islamic state in Yemen and ``an end to the aggression against Iraq and the withdrawal of the US and British forces from the Gulf region.'' When the Yemeni security forces raided the kidnappers' hideout, 215km south of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa the next day, three British and one Australian were shot dead by the k idnappers. Two other hostages, including an American citizen, were wounded. Three kidnappers were killed in the shootout and three others, including the ringleader, Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar, captured. Two other kidnappers were captured in January 1999.

Subsequent reports indicated that the southern province of Abyan had emerged as a base for the activities of Yemeni mercenaries of Jaish-e-Mohammed (Mohammed's Army), who had been trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, armed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS -- popularly known as the MI-6) of the UK and used under the leadership of Osama in the US's proxy war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and th at these mercenaries had formed the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army.

It was also reported that a Yemeni associate of Osama, Tariq al-Fadhli, had established several terrorist training bases in southern Yemen and that these mercenaries, who had turned against the US and the UK after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, had bombed, in 1992, two hotels in Yemen where American troops proceeding to Somalia were staying.

The reports also indicated that Maulana Masood Azhar -- released by the Government of India on December 31, 1999, in response to the demand of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) terrorists who had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar - - had assisted Tariq al-Fadhli in running the training camps in Yemen.

Before his arrest in India in 1994, Masood Azhar had belonged to the HUM. After his release in 1999, he formed an organisation, also called Jaish-e-Mohammed. It has since then been having violent clashes with the HUM in Pakistani territory. The reasons f or the clashes are not known since both belonged to Osama's International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel.

Before 1998, the Yemeni members of the Jaish-e-Mohammed also used to operate under the name Islamic Jihad. The Aden-Abyan Islamic Army was suspected to be an offshoot of the Yemeni Islamic Jihad. Following the US bombing of suspected Osama camps in Sudan and Afghanistan in August 1998, the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army had threatened attacks on American interests in Yemen.

According to the Egyptian authorities, the Yemen-based Islamic Jihad cells were responsible for the 1993 assassination attempt against the Egyptian Prime Minister and the 1995 assassination attempt against the Egyptian President, Mr. Hosni Mubarak. Accor ding to Yemeni officials, one of the kidnappers killed during the shoot-out was an Egyptian wanted in Cairo on charges of terrorism.

It was also alleged that some of the Yemeni mercenaries, recruited by Masood Azhar at the instance of Osama, had participated in the attacks on the US troops in Somalia in 1993. Despite strong indications that since 1992 Yemen had become an important san ctuary, outside Pakistan and Afghanistan, for terrorist elements allied to Osama, the Yemeni Government did not take strong action against them because these mercenaries had helped the government troops of the President, Mr Ali Abdullah Saleh, to win Yem en's civil war in 1994.

The Islamic Jihad group of Yemen, ostensibly unconnected to the Al-Jihad of Egypt or Palestine, came into being during the pre-unification era when Aden was the capital of the pro-Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yemen to oppose the secular policies of the Communist regime in the South. Under the leadership of Tariq Al-Fadhli, the group, many of whose members went to Afghanistan for military training and ideological indoctrination, joined the North Yemeni troops during the war of 1994, which almost co mpletely wiped out the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP).

After the war, the Yemeni Government, having prevailed throughout Yemen and neutralised its Marxist opponents with the help of the Islamic Jihad, rewarded Al-Fadhli and several of his followers by admitting them into the ruling Yemen Congress Party, but rejected their demand that the members of the Islamic Jihad be recruited to the Army and given appropriate ranks. Zein al-Abideen al-Mehdar (known also as Abu-Hassan) and others turned down offers of civilian posts. This led to a parting of the ways betw een the Government and the Islamic Jihad.

When the Government refused, fearing their negative influence on the rest of the army, the group opened a secret military training camp in the province of Abyan, from where most of its members came, and changed its name into Aden-Abyan Islamic Army. Duri ng his trial, Abu Hassan reportedly admitted that he was the `managing mind' for the kidnapping and that he had ordered his men to kill the tourists if the security forces approached their hideout. He told the court: ``I did everything in the name of God so I am sorry for nothing...'' Asked about the kidnappers who had escaped, Abu Hassan said, ``I hope those who are at large will continue the Jihad... I hope God strikes you all.''

Earlier, on December 24, 1998, the Yemeni authorities had arrested five British nationals (all Muslims) and a French-Algerian and recovered weapons and explosives from them. They were reported to have been recruited, trained and armed by Abu Hassan in a plot to attack the British Consulate, an Anglican church and two hotels used by Western tourists, in retaliation for the US-UK air strikes on Iraq.

In January 1999, four more alleged members of the bombing gang, three Britons (all Muslims) and a French-Algerian, were captured at what was described by the Yemeni authorities as a terrorist training camp in Shabwa, 400 km northeast of Aden. According t o the Yemeni authorities, the bombing suspects were recruited in Britain in July 1998 by a London-based Mullah, Abu Hamza al-Masri (real name Mustafa Kamil), an Afghanistan war veteran, who was the leader of an Islamic organisation in London called the S upporters of Sharia (SOS). He was originally an Egyptian national, but obtained British nationality by marrying a Briton, whom he later divorced. It also emerged that the kidnapping was also aimed at securing the release of this group. The British author ities briefly detained Abu Hamza in 1999, but later released him on bail.

According to Yemeni officials, two of the British bombing suspects were related to Abu Hamza: Mustapha Kamal (17), his son, and Mohsin Ghalain (18), his stepson. At the kidnapping trial, Abu Hassan described how he used to send statements to Abu Hamza in London to be passed on to the media and, according to press reports, Abu Hamza too admitted being in contact with the kidnappers and warned of reprisal attacks if Abu Hassan was executed after the trial.

In May 1999, the Yemeni court sentenced three of the kidnappers, including Abu Hassan, to death. A fourth defendant was sentenced to 20 years in jail and a fifth acquitted, as were nine others tried in absentia. Abu Hassan was executed by a firing squad on October 17, 1999, after the rejection of his appeal. The three other defendants each received 20-year prison sentences. In a separate case, a Yemeni court convicted in August 1999, 10 terrorists -- eight Britons and two Algerians, all Muslims -- of c onspiring to commit terrorist acts, including attacks targeting US citizens.

Before the rejection of the appeal, the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army had warned the diplomats of the US and the UK to leave Yemen immediately, threatening a strike that ``will be painful for the enemies of Islam.''

Despite these threats, the US authorities have been developing close relations with the Yemeni Government. Last year, the Yemeni authorities arrested Mr Abdul-Latif Omar, Editor of the weekly Al Haq and Assistant Secretary-General of the Opposition Sons of Yemen League, after he published an article alleging that the US had been secretly provided military base facilities on the Socotra Island. The Government strongly denied this, but, released Mr Omar after some time.

The Times of London reported on June 1, 1999, that the Pentagon planned to use Aden to bunker 600,000 barrels of marine diesel and aviation fuel to service its naval operations in the Gulf against the Iraqi President, Mr Saddam Hussein, and that the firs t US warship under this secret deal docked in Aden in May 1999.

The terrorist violence against American and British interests in Yemen and other places is orchestrated by Osama from his base in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which is today virtually a Pakistani colony. It suits Pakistan that the rest of the worl d has started looking upon Afghanistan and not Pakistan as the hub of jehadi terrorism and the Taliban as the villain. The real villain is Pakistan.

The geographical hub of the activities of Osama and his supporters against other countries may be in Afghanistan, but the brain-centre is in Islamabad. Unless the US acts against this brain-centre by declaring Pakistan a state-sponsor of international te rrorism and imposing total economic sanctions against it and by destroying the opium fields and heroin refineries of Afghanistan, which sustain jehadi terrorism, it would continue to lose the precious lives of its military personnel and other innocent ci tizens at the hands of Afghan-based and ISI-nursed Jehadi terrorists.

(The author is former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.)