Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: March 22, 2008
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/22/stories/2008032254581200.htm
Introduction: Terrorists on board Urumqi-Beijing
flight used Pakistani passports
* Explosive-actuated incendiary devices increasingly
used by terrorists
* Chemicals needed for their manufacture can
be easily purchased
Investigations into the attempted mid-air
bombing of a Chinese airliner on March 7 has thrown up evidence that a Pakistan-based
Islamist terror group may have aided its perpetrators.
Wire service reports citing Chinese civil
aviation sources say the two terrorists who attempted to blow up the China
Southern flight CZ6901 from Urumqi to Beijing carried Pakistani passports,
although their nationality still remains undetermined. A third member of the
cell, believed to be a Pakistani national, is reported to have escaped.
Legitimate Pakistani passports have long been
used to facilitate transnational terror operations targeting India. Operatives
of Pakistan-based Islamist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba often use legal
passports to fly into Bangladesh or Nepal, knowing it is easy - and safe -
to cross their extensive and under-policed land borders with India.
Several members of the Lashkar cell which
executed the 2006 attack on the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for
example, were found to have possessed Pakistani passports. Mafioso-turned-terrorist
Aftab Ansari operated out of Dubai using a Pakistani travel document, J 872142,
which he later told investigators was obtained for him by the Lashkar.
Chinese officials say a woman, whose identity
has still not been made public, had smuggled two soft-drink cans filled with
gasoline on to the flight. She had intended to ignite the fuel in the Boeing
757 jet's restroom, but lost her nerve at the last moment and was overpowered
by crew. Flight CZ6901 was able to make a safe emergency landing at Lanzhou.
Although some media commentators have argued
that the use of gasoline discredits Chinese claims that trained terrorists
carried out the attack, aviation experts say the plot in fact demonstrated
considerable sophistication. "Airport security staff tend to look for
guns and bombs," one Central Industrial Security Force expert told The
Hindu, "not at what's inside sealed soft-drink cans."
Noting that the terrorist would have locked
the restroom's doors before lighting the fuel inside the cans, the official
said "the crew would have had little chance of putting out the blaze
once it began." Fires spread with great speed inside the pressurised
cabins on aircraft, and have claimed hundreds of lives in past accidents.
Interestingly, explosive-actuated incendiary
devices have been increasingly used by terrorists, since the chemicals needed
for their manufacture - be it gasoline, iron oxide or aluminium powder - can
be easily purchased. Explosive-actuated incendiary bombs were used in London
and Glasgow last year, as well as in the lethal attack on the New Delhi-Lahore
Samjhauta Express.
Chinese authorities believe the bombing was
attempted by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), one of two major
terror groups operating in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Both groups have
been increasingly active in the build-up to the Olympic Games. Two terrorists
were killed and 15 arrested during raids on a secret explosives facility in
Urumqi in January.
Founded in 1993 by Muhammad Tuhir and Abdu
Rehman, both residents of Hotan in Xinjiang, ETIM became a major force towards
the end of that decade. Operating under the leadership of Afghanistan-based
Hasan Mahsum, ETIM carried out a string of assassinations and bombings which
led to its designation as an international terrorist group by the United Nations
in 2002.
Xinjiang has also seen a succession of terror
strikes executed by the East Turkestan Liberation Organisation (ETLO), which
like ETIM operated under the patronage of the Taliban. Founded by Muhametemin
Hazret in Turkey, the organisation is believed to have carried out several
assassinations, including the June 29, 2002, murder of Chinese diplomat Wang
Jianping in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
During the summer of 2000, ETLO terrorists
killed several bureaucrats and policemen in Kyrgyzstan's Kizilsu Autonomous
Prefecture and adjoining Kazakhstan. ETLO members also participated in earlier
strikes in Kyrgyzstan, including a series of bombings in the Oshskaya region
in the summer of 1998.
According to Chinese investigators, much of
ETIM and ETLO's funding comes from Pakistan and West Asia-based Islamists,
as well as narcotics and weapons trafficking. Both organisations ran camps
around Afghanistan's Khost area until the destruction of the Taliban regime
after Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 strikes on New York and Washington.
