Video Testimonial: Sri Lankan refugee camp: pressure and a privilege

Sri Lankan refugee camp: pressure and a privilege

by Michael Edwards, Nov 18, 2009. ABC News Online.

As with life, sometimes in journalism you have to be careful what you wish for.

I had been wishing, and pushing, for a trip to Sri Lanka's notorious Manik Farm internal refugee camp for months.

And at about 7pm sitting in my hotel room in Colombo the Australian High Commission rang - I was booked on a military plane leaving early the next morning.

The news was a big relief, but also a big burden for what I perceive to be my journalistically narrow shoulders.

It was a pressing story. A clue as to why so many Tamils might be risking life and limb to come to Australia illegally. And a story I'd have to cover for television and radio, completely on my own.

I have been sent to South Asia to be a video-journalist. The J side of it isn't the problem; the V side, yes.

I was on a big story and I wasn't sure I had the skills to see it through.

The eventual product you see on your nightly news may only run a few minutes. But the production involved will take hours - filming, interviewing, scripting, editing. Usually, this is done with a reporter working in combination with a highly skilled cameraman.

But I wasn't going to have this luxury. I was going to be in northern Sri Lanka for a matter of hours and I had to get the story.

How I longed to have the ABC's South Asia cameraman Wayne McAllister with me at that time.

Journalists tend to think about the words. A skilled camera operator thinks with his eyes - how what is in front of them can be translated onto a television screen.

I lack this ability. It was a massive frustration during my trip to Manik Farm.

Because the scale and the squalor of the camp is just something my small camera couldn't fully capture.

130,000 Tamils still live at Manik Farm. They do so in makeshift tents without access to proper power, running water and with access to only basic medical care.

The few sequences I was able to capture in our short military escorted tour can't fully tell the tale.

Nor will this blog.

But each of the residents had their own tale of survival from Sri Lanka's war.

Some had lost children, many had husbands who had been taken away by the Sri Lankan military and most faced an uncertain future once they were returned to their home villages.

Their smiles took nothing away from the potency of their stories.

Many had been at Manik Farm for as long as six months. Six months pretty much exposed to the elements. Six months with no income. Six months of little or no education for their children.

Six months under the watchful eye of Sri Lankan soldiers.

And this is on top of a three decades long civil war.

Fairfax Newspaper's South Asia Correspondent Matt Wade was on the trip with me. He had visited northern Sri Lanka earlier in the year.

On his return, what struck him was that the countryside still remained so battle scarred.

It's almost with guilt that I look and realise it is impossible to capture the full extent of this.

As a VJ, when you are capturing images your mind is focused on, well, focus and exposure of the shots.

The story can get swallowed in the process of capturing it.

It's not intentional. It's just the way it is. It's a conundrum every journalist faces. We're privileged to face it.
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Opinion: Remembering for the future

Remembering for the future

Tamil Guardian
11 November 2009

November is the month of the annual Tamil Eelam Remembrance Day. During this month Eelam Tamils across the world hold events to remember and honour those who have sacrificed their lives for the Tamil struggle. The annual Remembrance Day events have become an important expression of the continued existence and strength of the Tamil Eelam national identity.

Remembrance Day events are an important part of the national identities of many countries. The Tamil Eelam national Remembrance Day falls in the same month as Britain’s annual Remembrance Day. In Britain, as in many other Allied and Commonwealth countries November 11, the anniversary of the formal Armistice that ended WW1, is marked as an annual Remembrance Day.

The most visible and memorable symbol of remembrance of these events is the red poppy which evokes the fields of poppies in which soldiers of WW1 lay buried. Although Remembrance Day traditions emerged in the wake of the enormous losses of WW1, November 11 is used to remember and commemorate the sacrifices made by British and Commonwealth armed services personnel in all subsequent conflicts.

Similarly for us November 27, the anniversary of the death of one Tamil militant is used to commemorate all those who given their lives in the struggle to secure freedom and justice for the Tamil people. The Tamil nation’s Remembrance Day events are moments for sober and dignified reflection and commemoration.

Remembering our dead on November 27 maintains continuity with the past and ensures that present and future generations live in remembrance of the sacrifices that were made on their behalf.

Ernst Renan, the nineteenth century French historian, understood well the importance of remembering common suffering. Sorrows he thought were far more important than triumphalism in solidifying national unity and purpose: “In fact, national sorrows are more significant than triumphs because they impose obligations and demand a common effort.”

The Remembrance Day events are therefore not just about commemorating the past. In remembering the sacrifices of the past we also reaffirm our commitment to the Tamil struggle. The sacrifices of the past impose obligations on us and command us to struggle to secure Tamil national rights.

This year in particular Eelam Tamils have a lot to remember, honour and commemorate. Over the past months the intensity of Sri Lanka’s oppression has plumbed new depths. The Sri Lankan has unleashed unprecedented violence in a ‘final solution’ attempt to annihilate the Tamil national identity. Tens of thousands lie buried in the fields and beaches of Vanni – their tally may never be known.

Still Sri Lanka’s oppression continues. It continues to incarcerate thousands and assassinates or imprisons Tamil intellectuals and political leaders. The state is also trying to erase the Tamil national identity from the island by changing facts on the ground. First with overwhelming fire power it dismantled the fledgling de facto state and now with political and logistical savvy it is attempting to change the demography of the Tamil speaking northeastern areas of the island.

But the crude brutality of Sri Lanka’s violence is offset only by the utter futility of these efforts.

Over a hundred years ago Renan understood that the nation was not a physical object made of buildings and identifiable borders. For Renan the nation was a shared principle: “To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have accomplished great things together, to wish to do so again, that is the essential condition for being a nation.”

This shared principle Renan noted was far more important than any physical criterion: “to have suffered, worked, hoped together; that is far more important than common taxes and frontiers conforming to ideas of strategy.”

In the course of the Tamil struggle the Tamil nation has come together through work, hope and suffering. We have forged a shared past and are united by a determination for a better future for our people. This is what the brutal but inept Sri Lankan state will never be able to destroy, no matter how much it violently changes facts on the ground.

The annual Remembrance Day events that will be held across the Diaspora centres of the world are not just about the past, they are about the future. We owe it to all those who have sacrificed so much for the liberation of the Tamil nation not to forget them and to continue to strive for Tamil freedom. By keeping faith with the past we will overcome Sri Lanka’s oppression and ensure the Tamil people have their day in the sun.

The red poppy, worn as a mark of remembrance in Britain and many other allied countries is a symbol of the continuities of past, present and future. The use of the poppy as a symbol was inspired by a poem titled ‘Flanders Fields’, written by a Canadian physician and soldier Lt Col John MCcrae. The poem was written in May 1915 after MCcrae witnessed the death of his twenty two year old friend Lt Alexis Helmer.

The poem is a message from the dead to the living that evokes the poppies that grow on Flanders Fields ‘Between the crosses, row on row’. The dead demand not just remembrance but a continuation of the struggle for which they sacrificed. The last verse could well be speaking to the Tamil people as it sets out the obligations owed by those who live to those who have died for the struggle:



Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.


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News: Amensty International Tells Canada and Australia to Respect Laws Regarding Recent Tamil Refugees

Amnesty International, through a statement made by its Secretary General for Canada in conjunction with the Canadian Council for Refugees to Canada, and statement made by the overall Secretary General for Amnesty Intl. worldwide to Australia, has condemned the politicking and fear-mongering by the respective governments regarding the cases of the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.

Background

Canada has been flouting its own laws as well as its obligations to uphold international norms and treaties that they subscribe in the caes of the recent Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. Australia was trying to do so with the Tamil refugees trying to reach Australia, but Indonesia was unwilling to be an accomplice to Australia, curiously. The situations are very similar. The name of the ship that arrived in Canada was the Ocean Lady, carrying 76 passengers. The name of the ship that was intercepted by Indonesia en route to Australia was the Ocean Viking, carrying 78 passengers. The Canadian Coast Guard was not aware of the Ocean Lady until tipped off by the Sri Lankan government. Many immigrants from that part of the world brave the treacherous voyage across the Pacific Ocean, although this rarely makes the news because many who come as stowaways in freight containers are dead on arrival. The Australian government was notified by the Indonesian government before responding to the situation. The Ocean Viking may have been heading for Christmas Island, like a previous ship had recently, and Christmas Island is where refugees land to apply for asylum in Australia. The detention facility for such asylum seekers on that island, as well as the life-threatening journey to Canada across the Pacific Ocean, are evidently much better options for the refugees than the internment camps in which they would otherwise be languishing in Sri Lanka.

When immigrants apply for refugee status, it is incumbent on the adopted countries to not share this information with the government from which the refugees fled. Since the refugees are being persecuted, any of their families, neighbours, colleagues, etc. who remain behind should not be unfairly punished. See below for details regarding laws to this effect. Canada, however, has bragged that it has shared information that it gained after "interviewing" its Tamil refugees with the Sri Lankan government. The judge in the court hearing for the refugee applicants also ordered a media ban on the personal details of the applicants from the outset, meaning that some of the articles reporting details about the refugees would have contravened this media ban. Even if Canadian officials delayed the beginning court hearing for "security reasons" (read: "terrorism") so that they could "interview" (read: interrogate) the refugees, so as to delay the inevitable media ban so that Canadian tabloid newspapers could immediately publish details of the refugees without legal or factual accountability, that doesn't excuse the obligations to uphold international obligations in these matters. Australian newspapers have been in sync with the Canadian newspapers, to the extent of writing vignettes on Ocean Viking individuals and followup articles to further insinuate, which in some cases involved sharing information.

Now, the only thing that these governments gain is political points among their domestic constituencies. It makes them look good to "be tough on" (read: make an example of) these sinister, dark-skinned, scary, evil refugees, who also might steal jobs and drain government money in a tough economy when "honest, hard-working" Canadians and/or Australians struggle to make ends meet. And all this irresponsible media plays in really well into government policy to pander to the majority, especially in Canada. But at the end of the day, they have to respect the basic human decency shrined in international laws. You can't go around quoting fake experts, as both countries have done, just to further your agenda, when you know your obligations run counter to this, and hope to get away if the democracy is functioning properly. Especially when your case to deport the refugees (read: send back to Sri Lanka, where they will most likely be tortured and killed) is based on a person who has been thoroughly scrutinized and discredited a full 6 years ago.

Statements

Letter concerning confidentiality of claimant information

The following letter was sent by CCR and Amnesty International Canada

22 October 2009

The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P.
Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 1L1

The Honourable Peter Van Loan, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Public Safety Canada
Public Safety Canada
269 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0P8

Dear Ministers,

We are writing to express our grave concern at media reports that Canadian government authorities have been collaborating with Sri Lankan authorities in establishing the identity of the 76 individuals who recently arrived by boat on the West Coast. Given that these persons appear to be claiming Canada’s protection as refugees, such collaboration with the government of the country from which they fled is completely inappropriate.

As you know, personal information about refugee claimants must be kept confidential. This principle is recognized internationally, including in numerous Conclusions of the UNHCR Executive Committee, as well as in Canada’s own legislation, which provides for refugee hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board to be held in private. This is for the protection both of the persons who are making a claim and of others such as family members or colleagues who might be put at risk if claimant information is disclosed.

It is particularly dangerous for information to be shared with government authorities from the country that the claimants fled. In many cases the government is the persecutor.

It is well documented that many serious human rights abuses have been committed by the Sri Lankan government. Numerous Sri Lankans have been recognized as refugees after making a claim in Canada (nearly 1,000 in 2008 alone). Sharing information with the Sri Lankan government about claimants may put them or their family members at risk. Information obtained from the Sri Lankan government about claimants in Canada may be unreliable, given that government’s implication in human rights abuses.

We were extremely disturbed to read in the National Post today the name of one of the passengers on board alleged to be “wanted in Sri Lanka for terrorism”. The newspaper attributed its information to “two sources familiar with the investigation”. We request that you make internal investigations to ascertain whether this dangerous leak came from a government source, and ensure no further personal information on any of the passengers is released to the media.

We ask you to take vigorous measures to ensure that all relevant government agencies have in place policies prohibiting inappropriate communications with foreign governments about refugee claimants, and that these policies are respected.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth McWeeny Alex Neve
President, Canadian Council for Refugees Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada

Amnesty International Chief Blasts Australia's 'Panic' Over Asylum Seekers

The head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, says the Australian government should close its immigration detention center on Christmas Island.

Phil Mercer | Sydney 20 November 2009

Photo: AP

Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International (File Photo)

The head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, says the Australian government should close its immigration detention center on Christmas Island. On a visit to Australia, Khan accuses the conservative opposition of exploiting voters' fears about asylum seekers for political gain.

Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan says that holding asylum seekers at the Christmas Island processing center will not deter the flow of boat people heading to Australia.

On a visit to Canberra this week, Khan urged the government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to close the camp in the Indian Ocean, about 2,600 kilometers northwest of Perth.

The facility opened last year and houses asylum seekers recently picked up by the Australian navy.

A surge of unauthorized arrivals by boat has put the issue of immigration back in the public spotlight in Australia. Khan says the debate here has often been xenophobic.

The Amnesty International chief blames conservative politicians for whipping up public hysteria.

"I think it is unscrupulous politicians and populist media," Khan said. "There has been a lot of fuss being made about the boat arrivals when actually the numbers arriving by air are much higher. There seems to be a sense of panic when what is really needed here is to handle a humanitarian problem with regard to international standards."

She says the number of boat arrivals in Australia is small compared those arriving in Europe.

Khan, however, calls the Rudd government's immigration policies an improvement on those of the previous conservative administration. She points out Mr. Rudd's decision to grant permanent residency rather than temporary protection visas to those deemed to be genuine refugees and the closure of the outback Woomera detention center and offshore processing facilities in the South Pacific.

Amnesty International says a multilateral approach is needed to deal with the asylum problem.

The Australian government says the surge of migrants arriving by boat is the result of conflicts in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan as well as the global economic crisis.

Australia accepts more than 10,000 refugees a year who are processed through non-governmental agencies in other countries.

Tamils risk all to flee Sri Lanka
Al Jazeera
November 22, 2009

The United Nations has welcomed the decision by Sri Lanka's government to announce the release of the remaining 130,000 Tamils kept in detention camps for the last six months. About 250,000 people fled the final bloody phase of the civil war between the government and separatist Tamil Tigers. They were ultimately housed in government-run camps in the district of Vavuniya. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils' have been displaced in the fighting and are now living in hastily put together refugee camps that have been largely shut off from the outside world. More and more Tamils have been risking their lives - spending weeks on the oceans - in the hopes of reaching Australia. Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, in Valaichchenai, Sri Lanka, reports that a new group of asylum-seekers are said to be preparing to board boats on the island's southeastern coast and sail directly to Australia's Christmas Island. Irene Khan, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, says the international community should be more involved in finding a safe home for Sri Lanka's Tamils. "These people are in search of protection, the international community is doing very little," she told Al Jazeera during an interview on Sunday. "There isn't any resettlement of refugees taking place, refugee protection is very weak and, therefore, people are taking the situation into their own hands to desperately find a place where they can have safety. "It is not people smuggling. I would call it a flow of asylum-seekers." According to Khan, asylum seeking is a growing trend. "The numbers of people seeking asylum are going up precisely at a time when borders are closing, which creates a very serious humanitarian situation," she said. "For example, these people on rickety boats are putting their lives at risk to find safety. If they are not rescued at sea many of the boats will flood, if they are rescued at sea, they are then stranded as a lot of bargaining goes on as to where people can be disembarked." Negative propaganda Khan said the Australian authorities should speed up the processing of refugees for resettlement in the country and increase the number. "There is a lot of fear and negative propaganda about refugees and asylum-seekers - that these are people looking for a better life, when really, in effect, they are fleeing to save their lives," she said. "There has to be a change in public opinion. Political leaders, and governments in particular, need to take charge to change the way in which refugees and asylum seekers are viewed - these are desperate people in need of protection and it should be provided to them." At least 9,612 Sri Lankans applied for asylum in developed countries last year Interviewed on the same topic, Chris Lom, a regional spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration, told Al Jazeera: "Sri Lanka has been going through a very bad period over the last 30 years of conflict that has impacted the economy quite seriously. "Consequently, not only have there been a diaspora of Sri Lankans travelling to other countries around the world, but there's also been a fundamental lack of jobs and lack of economic growth that, we hope, will come to an end with the end of the civil war earlier this year." In contrast to Khan, who says this is not a case of people being smuggled but a case of flow of refugees, Lom believes "this is a mixed flow of genuine refugees and economic migrants who are coming for a variety of reasons, but primarily economic reasons such as finding better jobs; supporting their families; getting better education for their children - which are all things they they expect to find in Australia. "But what they don't necessarily take into account when coming to that decision is that the streets of industrialised countries are not necessarily paved with gold and that they are probably taking serious risks by putting their lives in the hands of people smugglers". Rising numbers At least 9,612 Sri Lankans applied for asylum in developed countries last year. However, they are part of a far wider problem. The UN says more than 839,000 people worldwide went through legal channels to gain refugee status in 2008. Australia is a prime destination for thousands of asylum seekers from across the world By contrast, an estimated four million migrants resorted to smugglers and traffickers, according to AI. In Asia-Pacific, Australia is a prime destination for asylum-seekers - at least 13,000 refugees from across the world re-settled in the country last year. That is an increase from just over 10,000 in 2007 - owing to conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka. More than 4500 asylum-seekers arrived by air and were granted temporary status, which allowed them to live in the community while their applications were processed - compared to 161 people who reached Australia by boat. Immigration figures suggest "boat people" are the ones with more genuine claims to refugee status. But in the period their claims are under consideration, they are kept in detention.

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And in other news, the Australia Refugee Council is unhappy with New Zealand's unwillingness to accept any refugees:

Australia refugee council disappointed in NZ stance on asylum seekers in Australia

Radio New Zealand International
Posted at 05:55 on 20 November, 2009 UTC

The President of Australia’s Refugee Council, John Gibson, says New Zealand is obliged to shoulder some of the resettlement needs arising from the growing number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia.

Canberra is under pressure to resettle up to 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who its customs officers picked up in Indonesian waters last month, triggering a four-week standoff with Jakarta over which country would process the group.

New Zealand has ruled out taking any of the Sri Lankans.

Confirming that Australia had raised the question of taking some, Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman said his government was wary of rewarding actions that seek to jump the queue for entry to New Zealand.

John Gibson says it’s a disappointing stance.

“It should really be a matter of trans-Tasman support. One of the boats was headed for New Zealand earlier this year and ran aground in the Torres Strait. Despite the distance between us, we see hopefully some positive developments and that includes other countries of resettlement as well.”


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Interview: Situation in Sri Lanka Absolutely Grim

Interview with Arundhati Roy

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa, Sri Lanka Guardian, November 3, 2009

(New Delhi) “Her voice is calm but the words in her vocabulary are the strongest in the world.” This is my assessment on Arundhati Roy, a well known author and social activist in India whom I met recently. In an exclusive interview with the Sri Lankan Guardian, Ms. Roy has shared her views on the present situation in Sri Lanka. “The situation sounds in Sri Lanka absolutely grim, she exclaimed. There are no need write about Arundhati Roy, although, her name rings across the world. Her books and her essays; even her other social activities are very controversial. “Indian civil society is a vast and varied creature. Most people in India have absolutely no idea what happened in Sri Lanka, because the Indian media was careful not to report it,” she said when I asked about present gloomy interests of an Indian civil society towards situation in Sri Lanka.

Speaking about war in Sri Lanka which has ended last May, Ms. Roy suggested, “I believe that the Government of Sri Lanka should be investigated for committing war crimes.” “I am in no way pro LTTE nor have I ever been. I cannot admire those whose vision can only accommodate justice for their own and not for everybody,” she has pointed out on her view regarding the Tamil Tiger rebels a.k.a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Even talking about the policy of the Government of Sri Lanka, Ms. Roy asserted, “I do believe that the LTTE and its fetish for violence was cultured in the crucible of monstrous, racist, and injustice acts that the Sri Lankan government and to a great extent Sinhalese society visited on the Tamil people for decades.” Has the Rajapakse Government's openly nationalized almost fascist rhetoric? What has Arundhati Roy said? Read full text of the interview is below:

First of all, welcome to Sri Lanka Guardian and thank you for accepting our interview request. We'd like you to share your thoughts with our readers on the present political and military climate in Sri Lanka as well as your thoughts on the ongoing war against Naxalite in India, that is considered as deadly threat to the internal security of India, according to the Leaders of the Government of India.

Q. So how do you summarize the present political developments in Sri Lanka six months after the elimination of the Tamil Tiger rebels?

A: The situation sounds absolutely grim. I have not visited the camps myself, but from the reports that are emerging it is obvious that there is an unconscionable humanitarian crisis unfolding which the world seems to be turning it's eyes away from. For hundreds of thousands of people to be herded into camps and held there by a government that is so blatantly gloating over its military victory over them is a terrifying situation. Mind-numbing. The use of the term 'concentration camp' does seem appropriate given the few testimonies that have made their way out of the steel wall of silence the government has erected around them. If these testimonies are untrue, and if the Government of Sri Lanka has nothing to hide it should allow the media free access to the camps so they can see what is going on.

Q. How is the Naxalite terror impacting on India?

A: Many of us here feel that the Indian Government has paid close attention to the Sri lankan government's methods and will try to reproduce them to some extent in the region where the Maoist (Also called Naxalite) guerillas are, which also happen to be the mineral rich forest regions which the government wishes to clear for mining. I have just written a very long piece about it that you may like to read (click here to article) it’s too a complex situation to discuss in a couple of sentences. However, unlike the Rajapakse Government's openly Nationalist almost fascist rhetoric, which is even more extreme than the rhetoric of the Hindu nationalists—the BJP and its goon squads (the VHP and the Bajrang Dal)— the current Indian government has a different rhetoric, a different self-image. ..it is in a way, far more sophisticated and would not penly use such language. People in India are very disturbed by what is happening, and we hope our protests will be heard. But there are huge corporate interests at stake, running into trillions of dollars. So they won’t back off all that easily. In this part of the world, so many countries are falling into civil war...Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and now India. It is very worrying.

Q. The Government of Sri Lanka is saying it will resettle all Internally Displaced People (IDPs) before end of January 2010. It is interesting to read that the Government is ready to offer Colombo schools to ex-Child Soldiers of Tamil Tigers. Always we can hear victory euphoria from the Government side and its tune all the time is very optimal. Meanwhile, many Rights groups and some countries like the United States criticized the action of the Government of Sri Lanka, and are saying the Government is violating basic human rights, as well as there are some critical issues over war crimes by the Government in the final battle against the Tamil Tigers. But it seems the Indian civil society is having very little sympathy to the suffering of Sri Lankan Tamils. Let me know your views on War on Terror in Sri Lanka and the minority’s future in the Island Nation?

A: Indian civil society is a vast and varied creature. Most people in India have absolutely no idea what happened in Sri Lanka, because the Indian media was careful not to report it. The section of the Indian establishment - those with a 'voice' are increasingly developing a ghoulish fascination for State power and its ability to crush people. There is a great admiration for Israel and its methods among this crowd. It is shameful. So this section has no problem with what ha been done to an ethic minority. They have tolerated a huge amount of state brutality in their own country, in Kashmir, in Nagaland, in Manipur for years. My views on the Sri Lankan War? I believe that the Government of Sri Lanka should be investigated for committing war crimes.

Q. It is claimed by some quarters that India was behind the conflict from the beginning and gave weapons and other logistical support and also training facilities in her soil for the Tamil militancy few decades ago. But later India went against the Tamil militancy and went close to the Government of the Island nation. Let me know your views on the India’s approach towards its southern neighbour in the future?

A: That the Indian government armed and trained the LTTE is well known. But then it switched sides. India has done everything it can, including blocking the demand for an investigation into the possibility that the Sri Lankan government might be guilty of having committed war crimes in this war against the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. India, China and Pakistan came together to block it. International politics is a cold, unforgiving game.

Q. The Prevention of Terrorism Act–or as you have called it, the ‘Production of Terrorism Act’–is still in force in Sri Lanka, whilst hundreds of youth, most of them ethnic Tamils are being arrested under the PTA and held prisons or in undisclosed clandestine camps. It seems Patriotism, National Security, Humanitarian Mission etc of the government are overshadowing the Law and Order in the country. It is easy for people to be branded as patriots or traitors by under these missions thus undermining the law and order needed at this difficult juncture. If this continued what will be the long term consequences for Sri Lanka?

A. That is exactly what anti-terror laws are meant for. They are never meant for real terrorists. They are meant to terrorize ordinary people, to criminalize democratic space.In Gujarat in 2002 after Hindu mobs massacred Muslims on the streets, only Muslims were booked as 'terrorists'. Today India is passing laws that allows the government to call anyone it wants to a Maoist, a Naxalite. In India the bogey of 'Islamist terrorism' had an inherent flaw - the minimum qualification for a person to be booked was that he or she had to be Muslim. Now with the 'Maoist Terror' bogey that flaw has been rectified. The media’s wild stories about Maoist terror has allowed the Indian Government to vastly expanded the catchment area of suspects. It can apply to any one of us. In Sri lanka the long term consequences cannot be good. I don’t believe that people who have been brutalized and robbed of their dignity will just keep taking it. The Tamils will rise again, not now, but some years from now.

Q. Whenever you came out with your views on the ground realities, you came under severe criticism of the Sri Lanka government as a supporter of the LTTE. Is this because your comments are considered pro-LTTE sentiments?

A. That is a pretty standard, self-serving way that most right wing governments have of dealing with criticicm. It’s the old Bush doctrine ‘If you are not with us you are with the terrorists.” I refuse to submit to it. I am in no way pro LTTE nor have I ever been. I cannot admire those whose vision can only accommodate justice for their own and not for everybody. However I do believe that the LTTE and its fetish for violence was cultured in the crucible of monstrous, racist, injustice that the Sri Lankan government and to a great extent Sinhala society visited on the Tamil people for decades. I also believe that the LTTE must take at least some responsibility for the cataclysm that has befallen the people it claimed it spoke for, and fought for. The tragedy of Sri Lanka’s Tamil people is one that all armed struggles, including the Maoists of India ought to learn from.

Q. My last question in this worthy meeting is about former US President Goerge W. Bush’s comment in the Hindustan Leadership summit that “the US recognised India's nuclear weapon's programme and it is considered India's passport to the world,". While in her resent visit in Pakistan, US state Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton said, Pakistan has failed in its mission against Islamic militancy while the Pentagon is giving millions of dollars to Islamabad. However, Pakistan has blamed India for fueling the war in Pakistan. What are your views on the cold war between Delhi and Islamabad, and the current US’s Foreign policy towards South Asia.

A. My views on this are well known. What I fear, just from reading some stray signs, is that given the worsening of the sitation in Pakistan, the Indian Government may be being 'persuaded' to send Indian troops to help the US out in Afghanistan. I really hope I am wrong. I also fear that the ratcheting up of the rhetoric between India and China may result in the US offering India 'protection' (which actually means India offering the US use of its airbases on the border…) And that like other countries that have been thus 'protected' by the US in the past- Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan - India too will devolve into chaos. I fear that greatly. We have enough trouble brewing internally without this added catalyst. I hope this Indian government can reign in its almost child-like desire to please the US. India’s nuclear weapons did not make India a superpower. They made India buy into a game that it cannot hope to win. Once it was a proudly Non-aligned country. Now it is completely aligned, and feels no embarrassment in calling itself the ‘natural ally’ of countries like the US and Israel. Sad.

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Opinion: Maveerar Naal 2009

(most updated version available on tamilnation.org page)

Maveerar Naal 2009
மாவீரர் சுமந்த கனவுகளில் ஒரு தேசம் தெரிகின்றது...

by Nadesan Satyendra, TamilNation.org, November 11, 2009

Today, the 11th of November is Remembrance Day for the countries of the British Commonwealth such as Great Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa as well as for some European countries such as France and Belgium. The Cenotaph (meaning Empty Tomb) in London carries the simple inscription "The Glorious Dead" and it is here that a Remembrance service is held each year at 11 am on the Sunday nearest 11 November.

For Tamils living in many lands and across distant seas, the 27th of November is the day on which they remember, honour and mourn those who have given their lives in the continuing Tamil struggle for freedom. It is the day marked by the death of Shankar in 1982 - the first death of a cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

27 November 2009 marks the first Maaveerar Naal without the physical presence of Velupillai Pirabakaran - a leader who will live in the hearts and minds of generations of Tamils yet unborn as the undying and heroic symbol of Tamil resistance to alien rule.

27 November 2009 also serves to mark the broadening and deepening of the struggle of the Tamil people for freedom - a broadening and deepening reflected in the self immolation in February and March 2009 of Muthukumar, Ravichandran, Thamil Venthan, and Sivaprakasam not from Tamil Eelam but from Tamil Nadu.

It is a a broadening and deepening to which Seeman in Tamil Nadu recently gave poignant expression -

"உலகம் எங்கும் வாழ்ந்தாலும், நாம் தமிழர்... நீயும் தமிழன், நானும் தமிழன்... தமிழனுக்கென்று ஒரு நாடு வேண்டும்.. " - சீமான் வழங்கியநேர்காணல் - 5 November 2009

The Chola Tiger symbol which Velupillai Pirabakaran selected and the name Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which he gave to the movement that he founded, are rooted in the ancient heritage of the Tamil people - roots which reach out, touch and move the hearts of millions of Tamils living today in many lands and across distant seas - a nation without a state.

>And during the past several years, Tamils who trace their origins to their homeland in Tamil Eelam and Tamil Nadu ...



... and living today in many lands, including Australia , Andhra Pradesh , Bahrain , Botswana, Canada, Delhi , Denmark , Eelam , Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Guadelope & Martinique, Hong Kong , Indonesia, Italy, Karnataka, Kerala, Kuwait, Maharashtra, Malaysia, Manipur, Mauritius, Myanmar , Netherlands , New Caledonia & Tahiti , New Zealand , Norway , Quatar, Reunion , Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland,Tamil Nadu, Trinidad, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA have come together on Maaveerar Naal to remember and honour their brothers and sisters who gave their lives for freedom.

"A nation is a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born" Edmund Burke

The heroic armed struggle for freedom in Tamil Eelam, symbolised by the Chola Tiger emblem and led by Velupillai Pirabakaran; and the answering responses in Pongu Tamil Vizhas and Maveerar Naals around the world; the Tamil cultural renaissance of the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century, on the foundations built by Swaminatha Iyer from Tamil Nadu and Thamotherampillai from Tamil Eelam; the rise of the Dravida Tamil national movement of the first half of the 20th century led by Periyar and C.N.Annadurai; and the internationalisation of Tamil studies by the monumental efforts of Father Thaninayagam from Tamil Eelam; are but tributaries flowing into one river - the river of the growing togetherness of more than 80 million Tamil people - and this river is not about to flow backwards.

View of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu from Talaimannar in Tamil Eelam

It is not surprising therefore that those who would conquer and rule the Tamil people continue their efforts to keep the Tamil nation divided because they know that a people are more easily subdued and assimilated if that people are divided into small digestible morsels.

The Sinhala Sri Lanka government seeks to divide the people of Tamil Eelam into Colombo Tamils, Plantation Tamils, Batticaloa Tamils, Trincomalee Tamils, Vanni Tamils, Jaffna Tamils and so on. The New Delhi Indian government seeks to separate Eelam Tamils from Karnataka Tamils, from Bombay Tamils, from Tamil Nadu Tamils, from Kerala Tamils, from Andhra Tamils, from Manipur Tamils and so on. Western governments intent on securing their strategic interests in the Indian Ocean are concerned to encourage Eelam Tamils to see themselves as separate from their brothers and sisters in the Indian sub continent, because they know only too well the force that an undivided Tamil nation will wield in the Indian Ocean region.

And so, New Delhi as well as Western governments will encourage Tamils as a people to remain as supplicants and pleaders for justice and freedom. Having joined hands with Sinhala Sri Lanka in its genocidal onslaught on the people of Tamil Eelam, they will hold themselves out as brokers for peace and justice. That is understandable. Tamil supplicants and pleaders are useful weapons in the armoury of New Delhi and the West - weapons that may be used by each to advance each of their own strategic interests in the island of Sri Lanka, when the occasion so demands.

It is also understandable that New Delhi as well as Western governments will be concerned to 'support' the Tamil struggle so that they may direct the struggle to 'grow in a particular direction' and in that way manage it. To this end, these governments will at all times be vigilant to prevent the Tamil national movement from building its strength from its own people. Empires do not build partners. Kosova with NATO in command and East Timor with Australian armed forces are a few recent examples. Empires build colonies. That was true of the British empire. It is also true of the empires of today, including the Indian empire.

New Delhi as well as Western governments know only too well that a genuine leadership of the Tamil people will not come from English speaking Tamils speaking to other English speaking Tamils in English. They know it will not come from 'part timers' whose full time occupations are heavily dependent on retaining the goodwill of the 'establishment' in the states in which they reside. They know that such a 'leadership' being rootless will all the more readily become a willing tool (whether knowingly or unknowingly) of international actors and agencies who are concerned to advance their own interests in the Indian Ocean region. And for that very reason they will encourage the emergence of such a rootless 'leadership'. After all internal subversion of national liberation movements is not something new.

. "...The Shah of Iran once said that in his role as the gendarme of the region he had two main weapons for dealing with the revolutionary threat which existed in the region. First, was direct intervention. This was applied in the case of Oman in 1973, and also in the case of Baluchistan when the Shah provided armaments and military finance for the Pakistani state's repression in the area. The second weapon was internal subversion of the national liberation movements among the various nationalities. This method was applied in Kurdistan. The goal, ofcourse, was to allow the national movement to grow in a particular direction in order to defeat it. The case of Kurdistan was classic. The Shah said openly that the Kurdistan operation was relatively cheap for him. With 30 million dollars the job was done. He simply supported Kurdistan to destroy it. " (Murad Khan of the Baluchistan People's Liberation Front, speaking to Raymond Noat - Interview quoted in Tariq Ali's 'Can Pakistan Survive')

"The (US) President, Dr. Kissinger and the Foreign head of state (the Shah) hoped our clients (the Kurds) would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents (the Kurds) simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's neighbouring country (Iraq). This policy was not imparted to our clients (the Kurds) who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise." Select Committee on Intelligence of the U.S. House of Representatives (under the chairmanship of Otis Pike) on 1 November 1975)

Those who dance with a 8000 pound gorilla may find the experience exciting but the end is usually preordained. The fate of the (permanent?) Tibetan Government in Exile is a case in point. Fifty years after the formation of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and funding by the CIA, Tibet is no closer to securing its freedom from Chinese rule - though ofcourse the Tibetan Government in Exile has been a useful 'human rights' weapon for the US to beat China with from time to time. Meanwhile, Tibet itself has been settled (colonised) with Chinese and its demography radically changed. The Dalai Lama today speaks of 'autonomy' and no longer of independence. But that too of no avail. And the Tibetan Government in Exile with a Tibetan Parliament in Exile (elected by a 'grass roots' Tibetan diaspora) is left with websites which promote the justice of the Tibetan cause. And there is no shortage of Tibetan websites: Government of Tibet in Exile, Central Tibetan Administration, Tibetan Parliament in Exile, London Office of the Government of Tibet in Exile, Office of Tibet in New York, Office of Tibet in Pretoria, South Africa and so on. The short point is that Tibet will not get freedom until the Chinese empire (like the Soviet empire and the British empire before it) disintegrates. And increasing numbers of Tamils are being driven to conclude that the Tamil nation will not become free until the Indian empire goes the way of all empires. That is, unless New Delhi begins to recognise that the Indian 'Union' will survive only if it reinvents itself as a free and equal association of independent states - and that the European Union is a pointer to the direction that the Indian 'Union' will need to take if it is not to implode.

Again the recent drama enacted in the United States concerning Sinhala Sri Lanka General and US Green card holder Sarath Fonseka, will hopefully open the eyes of those Tamils who were persuaded to send messages of thanks to the US Homeland Security for having requested a meeting with the General to discuss 'war crime issues'.

"The US decision to target Gotabhaya Rajapakse, rather than Fonseka, points to its underlying motivations. These have nothing to do with concern about war crimes and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, but rather are aimed at pressuring the Rajapakse government over its growing economic and political ties with US rivals, particularly China. By undermining the Rajapakse brothers, Washington possibly hopes to install a government more amenable to its interests. The UNP in particular is noted for its close alignment with the US in the past." The General, the President & the Indian Ocean, 9 November 2009

It is right that Tamils are concerned about the horrendous war crimes committed by Sinhala Sri Lanka but adhering to the old adage ' march separately and strike together', will enable us to preserve our own integrity at every stage of the marches ahead - preserve our integrity from later attacks by those who may for now befriend us to further their own agendas. Yes, the Tamil people too have an agenda. But that agenda is not a hidden agenda. It is not a secret agenda. It may be openly stated - it is freedom from alien rule. Subhas Chandra Bose was right to point out in 1933 in Friars Hall, London, some 14 years before India's independence -

".. Every great movement starts from small beginnings.. Our first task will be to gather together a group of men and women who are prepared to undergo the maximum sacrifice and suffering which will be necessary if we are to attain success in our mission. They must be whole-time workers - 'freedom-intoxicated' missionaries - who will not be discouraged by failure or deterred by difficulty of any kind and who will vow to work and strive in the service of the great cause till the last day of their lives. ...these 'morally prepared' men and women .. will have to make... a scientific and critical study of the rise and fall of empires in other ages and climes. Armed with this knowledge, they should proceed to make a scientific examination of the strong and weak points of the British Government in India in relation to the Indian people and a similar scientific examination of the strong and weak points of the Indian people in relation to the British Government. ..

Subhas Chandra Bose was right to emphasise the need for a 'critical study of the rise and fall of empires in other ages and climes.' Indian independence would not have happened when it did if not for the Second World War and the collapse of the British Empire.

"...Nothing intensifies the national feelings and aspirations of a colonial people like a great war. Those who have had anything to do with the two wars, know what effect the 1914-18 a world war had on the feelings and aspirations of the Indian people. National waves which rise slowly or are accelerated during wartime. and rise very high after the war. During the war, they are controlled to some extent; but after the war, they break all shackles and rise very high. Today, in India, no, in the whole Asian continent, they are dashing against the stones and, rocks, breaking them to pieces. I have no doubt about it." British Prime Minister Clement Atlee during the debate on Indian Independence in the UK Parliament, 1946 quoted in 'The Freedom Struggle and the Dravidian Movement' by P.Ramamurti 1987

"... We have recruited our workers for the war; they have been demobilised after the war. They are required to repair the factories damaged by Hitler's bombers. Moreover, they want to join their kith and kin after five and a half years of separation. Their kith and kin also want to join them. In these conditions if we have to rule India for a long time, we have to keep a permanent British army for a long time in a vast country of four hundred millions. We have no such army...." Sir Stafford Cripps, UK President of Board of Trade, Head of Cabinet Mission to India, during the debate on Indian Independence in the UK Parliament, 1946 quoted in 'The Freedom Struggle and the Dravidian Movement' by P.Ramamurti, 1987

But the Second World War did not happen because of the efforts of Subhas Chandra Bose. It happened because of conflict amongst the imperial powers themselves. That was the 'outside' of the struggle for freedom. Subhas Chandra Bose was also right to emphasis the need for the same critical study of our own weaknesses. That was the 'inside' of the struggle for freedom. The outside and the inside always go together. And the relationship between the two is intrinsic, not extrinsic and it is dynamic, not static.

Unsurprisingly therefore, we need to attend to the inside as well. The divisions amongst the Tamil people are not simply the result of machinations by outside powers. Within ourselves, the remnants of a feudal society exist and caste continues to divide.

"The Tamil nation is a political community, a grand solidarity. To maintain its solidarity, the Tamil nation has to remove all sorts of divisions that causes dissension and discord among its members. The caste system is such a pernicious division that has plagued our society for thousands of years." S.M.Lingam on Tamil Nationalism & the Caste System - Swami Vivekananda and Saint Kabir

But it is not only caste that divides. Race too divides. If Hitler's Aryan theory was racist so too is the Dravidian race theory. The term Dravidian signifies a language group not a race. We as a people will need to recognise that the Tamils are not a race. A race is determined by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. The Tamils are a nation. A nation is a community of people who though rooted in kinship has grown through a process of differentiation and opposition to other communities of peoples. It is not nature or nurture - but, it is both. What is a nation? A nation is a political togetherness rooted in a shared heritage, language and culture and expressed in a determined will to live in equality and in freedom.

To confuse a nation with a race and to attempt to mobilise a people on the basis of race is to prevent the growth of the Tamil nation - and leads the Tamil people to a 'racist Dravidian' dead end. The Tamil national identity is not a racist identity.

Neither is the Tamil national identity, a religious identity. It is a secular identity. The Tamil nation includes not only Hindus (both Saivaites and Vaishnavites) but also Tamils belonging to many different faiths. Christian Tamils are also Tamils. Brahmin Tamils are also Tamils. Dalit Tamils some of whom may be Buddhists are also part of the Tamil nation. The Tamil nation also includes within its fold those who regard themselves as atheists and agnostics. A nation is a deep and horizontal togetherness which cuts across vertical divisions in a community.

"A nation is... imagined as a community, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings." *Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities - Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1991

The Tamil nation is a horizontal togetherness and it is a growing togetherness -

... of more than 80 million Tamil people, living in many lands and across distant seas - a growing togetherness rooted in a shared heritage, a rich language and literature, and a vibrant culture - a growing togetherness consolidated by the heroic struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam for freedom from alien Sinhala rule and given fresh impetus by the digital revolution - a growing togetherness given purpose and direction by a determined will to live in equality, in freedom and in peace with their fellow beings and meaningfully contribute to an emerging one world, unfolding from matter to life to mind ... "

It is a nation which has made remarkable contributions to world civilisation.

"There is no doubt that the culture of the Tamils belongs to the great and immortal treasures of the world's civilisation...The following works of art and literature are among the most remarkable contributions of the Tamil creative genius to the world's cultural treasure and should be familiar to the whole world and admired and beloved by all in the same way as the poems of Homer, the dramas of Shakespeare, the pictures of Rembrandt, the cathedrals of France and the sculptures of Greece:

1. The ancient Tamil lyrical poetry compiled in ‘The Eight Anthologies’; this poetry is so unique and vigorous, full of such vivid realism and written so masterfully that it can be compared probably only with some of the pieces of ancient Greek lyrical poetry;



2. The Thirukural, one of the great books of the world, one of those singular emanations of the human heart and spirit which preach positive love and forgiveness and peace;




3. The epical poem Cilappathikaram, which by its "baroque splendour', and by the charm and magic of its lyrical parts belongs to the epic masterpieces of the world;



4. The school of Bhakti both Vaishnava and Saiva, which is one of those most sincere and passionate efforts of man to grasp the Absolute; and its supreme literary expression in the works of Manikkavasagar, Tirugnana Sambandar, Nammalwar and Andal.




5. The philosophical system of Saiva Sidhdhantha, a system, which may be ranked among the most perfect and cleverest systems of human thought;



6. The South Indian bronzes of the Chola period, those splendid and amazing sculptures belonging to the best creations of humanity,



7. The Dravidian temple architecture, of which the chief representatives are perhaps the temples of Tanjore, Chidambaram and Madurai. " (Dr. Kamil.V. Zvelebil in Tamil Culture - Vol. V, No. 4. October, 1956)

And it is this Tamil nation of more than 80 million Tamil people which will bow its head on this Maveerar Naal in the year 2009 - bow its head in memory of those Tamils who gave their lives so that their brothers and sisters, wherever they may live - yes, wherever they may live - may live with dignity and in freedom. In Tamil we say thanmaanam.

And here let it be said that the Tamil nation does not seek seek to glorify its national heroes. To glorify is to boast and magnify. And the Tamil nation seeks neither to boast nor to magnify. But we do seek to remember, honour and mourn our national heroes - remember with gratitude, honour with humility and mourn from deep within our hearts. And, at the same time, we seek to re dedicate ourselves to the cause of justice and freedom for which our brothers and sisters gave their lives. Those who have died shall not have died in vain.

"Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort. A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. " Ernest Renan in What is a Nation, 1885

Read more!

Review: Rohan Gunaratna is not an Expert

by Gogol G.

The abysmal Canadian media proves once again that the word "abysmal" is no exaggeration. With the glee of the Harper government to once again make examples out of Tamils to the rest of Canada that it is "acting tough" [against minorities], the media following government cues shows it is too incompetent to use a basic tool such as an internet search to filter out patently erroneous sources. This includes the so-called "terrorism expert" Rohan Gunaratna. Some Australian papers quoted him (EDIT 11/17/09: and continue to quote him) recently, too, but they are quick on the whole to correct themselves after remembering that they were the ones to originally to do their research and blast Gunaratna's credentials out of the water in 2003 (at least Australia was the first to do so on the international scene, since Tamils have long been well aware of what's true and whether the verbal spewage from Rohan Gunaratna can pass as truth).

Globe and Mail: Lawyers for B.C. migrants challenge expert's allegations

CBC News: Tamil Tigers look to regroup in Canada: expert

In my opinion, I think it would behoove most who care about being right and taking precautions on the basis of national security to be wary of "terrorism experts". What kind of evidence can a terrorism expert really give? If it is related to ongoing, classified, important operations, then why would they divulge it publicly immediately? It can only be divuleged publicly when it is no longer current enough to be relevant. Similarly, if such an expert truly has such important knowledge, then how can they be so public about their identity and the value of their analysis? So the question becomes, who initially provides the experts with their source information, and how useful is that information really? Certainly they have access to knowledge that is classified in it at least some sense. Since the public does not have such knowledge, these experts can also get away with inserting made-up information, as the following articles about Gunaratna prove. The experts need sources within a country's intelligence agency for their information, no doubt, since intelligence needs to be ahead of the game in fact-finding, not popular journalists pseudo-professors who spend time talking to the media and not doing research. Without standards for usefuless or accuracy, terrorism experts would make very good conduits for propagating the psyops, biases, and propaganda of a particular nation domestically and abroad. Some terrorism experts may be smart, insightful, and valuable for a nation's strategic security planning. (But the pretence of the "terrorism" label is discouraging, since large countries still are hesitant to label it as asymmetric warfare, let alone come up with a coherent framework to judge the (il)legitimacy of it.) But the louder they are, the more suspicious they should seem. As Gunaratna proves with the case of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, terrorism experts earn their bread pandering to the security fears of others, and the experts can accomplish their own agendas while doing so.

P.S.
It's sad to see Amos Roberts, the SBS reporter who did the interview with Gothabaya Rajapakse during the escalation of the SL govt.'s war campaign in 2009 during the most brutal months, to do work such as this interview, which passes off Rohan Gunaratna as a professor of some credibility. However, this predates the more recent voices in Australian media

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Sources:

Cronau, Peter. "The legitimising of terror fears: Research or Psy Ops?". Pacific Journalism Review. School of Communication Studies, AUT: Vol. 9, 2003. pp. 201-207.
http://www.pjreview.info/issues/docs/09_1/09_03cronau.pdf

Hughes, Gary. "Analyse This". The Age. 20 Jul 2003.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/20/1058545648013.html

"Expert Commentary". The Media Report with Mick O'Regan. ABC Radio National. 11 Sept 2003.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/stories/s942032.htm

Small, David. "Terrorism Expertise of Rohan Gunaratna Questioned." Scoop Independent News. 24 Aug 2004.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0408/S00236.htm

Sri Kantha, Sachi. "On Rohan Gunaratna: the ‘Temple Drum’ of Terrorism Industry". Website of Ilankai Tamil Sangam. 12 Sept 2003.
http://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/Sachi_9_12_03.htm

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PETER CRONAU

A Sydney journalist, he has worked with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative television programme, Four Corners, since 1998.

The legitimising of terror fears: Research or Psy Ops?

Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, by Rohan Gunaratna. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2002. 304 pp. ISBN 0 908011 95 4

IT HAS become the orthodoxy for journalists when talking about the rise of terrorism in Indonesia to refer to the presence of Jemaah Islamiyah. In the eyes of many observers terrorism barely existed in Indonesia prior to the Bali blasts.
The dozens of lethal blasts in Indonesia prior to the huge explosions in Bali on 12 October 2002 rated little in-depth reporting in the West’s mainstream media. There were bombings in Sulawesi, in Maluku, in Sumatra, and in Jakarta too — hitting the Jakarta Stock Exchange and targets like the office of the nation’s Attorney General. Dozens of churches were bombed over Christmas in 2000. The dead were victims of a ruthless campaign of terrorist bombings, hitting both political and symbolic targets. But the dead were non-whites, and so rated low on Western news agendas and on the radar of many observers.

Then Bali.

The deaths of 200 mainly Western tourists was different — now terrorism had hit Indonesia!

But the greatest source of terror in Indonesia over its short history as an independent nation has been its own military and security forces. The new phalanx of ‘terrorologists’ rarely spoke of this however. The thousands of victims of military terror in Indonesia were described officially as Security Disturbing Gangs. And, as Indonesia was a friend of the West, the West’s mainstream observers and media largely accepted and repeated this ‘official’ version of events.

In Indonesia though, this real story has been known for a long time — both by individual Indonesians whose lives had been devastated by terror acts of their own military, and by pro-democracy organisations, NGOs, and community groups. Groups like YPKP (Indonesian Institute for the Study of the 1965-66 Massacre) have been dedicated to unearthing the truth of the terrible origins of the Suharto years. Hounded by secretive forces, they operate largely underground again.

The deaths of thousands of civilians in Indonesia occurred from the birth of the Suharto dictatorship right up to his fall. Remember the hundreds killed in the anti-Chinese riots in 1997 and 1998; and since the fall of the dictator Suharto, the further thousands who have died in places like Kalimantan, East Timor, West Papua, Maluku, Aceh — many the victims of state terrorism. These deaths barely rate in the minds of ‘the international community’.

And they barely figure in the writings of the acclaimed terrorologist, Dr Rohan Gunaratna. Gunaratna has written the widely accepted Inside Al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, published first in 2002 following the attacks on New York and Washington, and since reprinted with a Preface written post the Bali bombing. We’ll return to Indonesia later.

Formative years

A Sri Lankan, Gunaratna cut his teeth working for the Sri Lankan government from 1984 to 1994 researching and writing about the bloody Tamil separatist conflict. Much of what he now writes he sees through the prism of that conflict.

About the Tamils, Gunaratna has written, ‘What is required is not grand plans but immediate measures to alleviate the suffering of the people of the north-east,’ as a way of undermining support for separatism. At the same time he has encouraged (1998) better counter-insurgency training for the Sri Lankan military and ‘a more coherent national psy ops programme’ aimed at civilians to build political support for the anti-rebel campaign.

He has also made some pointers directed at the media in Sri Lanka: ‘They have to move beyond reporting to analysis and advocacy. Although, media is not expected to take a rigid position and only report events as they occur, the media in a developing country has a more responsible role to play. The Sri Lankan media barons must reflect on this need’. He argues that the Sri Lankan media should educate the public about the dangers of terrorism and the role of negotiations. ‘The media, at the turn of the twentieth century, has a role to guide leaders and lobby the public’.

Gunaratna thanks the subsequent two years that he spent in the US, where he worked with South Asia specialist Stephen Cohen, and Stansfield Turner, a former CIA chief, for focusing his attention on international aspects of terrorism.

He was also assisted in his international terrorism writings by a massive data-base of information on terrorism to which he had access during his time in Scotland at the University of St Andrews’ Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

Gunaratna’s CV contains an impressive list of governments, corporations and institutions with which he has worked and studied. Recently a controversy has arisen following the publishing of a critique of Gunaratna in The Age (20 July 2003; News, p. 13) which suggested some massaging of the CV. Gunaratna has never held the position of ‘principal investigator’ with the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch as he claims — though he was a consultant there. And he has never addressed the Australian Parliament, nor the US Congress, nor the United Nations, as his CV claims — though he has addressed committees of those bodies.

Inside the book

Gunaratna’s book is on the surface a very impressive collection of much of the data about Al Qaeda. It contains a description of the origins and goals of Al Qaeda, a profile of its main members, a country-by-country description of the ‘global network’ said to have been developed by Al Qaeda, and a review of the prospects of the international responses to it.

Praise for the book has been effusive from some sources: ‘The most comprehensive study ever done on Al Qaeda.’ — CBSNews; ‘An alarming, but important book on Al Qaeda.’ — CNN; ‘Excellent.’ — Washington Post. The Times (of London) stated: ‘No one reading Gunaratna’s book could be in any doubt that Al Qaeda is an awesome force.’

Except perhaps the publisher, that is. So wary is Gunaratna’s own publisher about the often flimsily corroborated statements in the book, that he warns ominously that references to organisations as having had contact with Al Qaeda ‘should be treated as nothing more than a suggestion’ that they ‘were the unwitting tools’ of terrorists.

The media, hungry for help in analysing Al Qaeda, has leapt upon Gunaratna’s origins with zeal, magically providing him with some kind of ‘objectivity’, without critically examining or verifying the sources for his information. Gunaratna has developed his book with the considerable help of a number of intelligence agencies who have given him access to alleged terrorists in custody, transcripts of intercepts, interrogation notes, as well as briefings by their intelligence agents. Gunaratna does not ponder on the intent of those whose views he repeats.

London’s Sunday Times says Gunaratna is ‘one of the few qualified to talk with authority about Al-Qaeda’. The strength of his book, says the Sunday Times, is that he ‘has interviewed more than 200 terrorists, including Al-Qaeda members, in dozens of countries, and read countless transcripts of intercepted communications, including calls made by Bin Laden himself’.

Of greatest strategic concern to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region is the development of Al Qaeda in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation on earth. Unfortunately Gunaratna devotes just five pages specifically to this country in his 300 page book — surprising even taking into account it was written prior to the Bali bombing.

In the section on Indonesia, Gunaratna sets about building his case against Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) as the Al Qaeda protege in Indonesia. He does this through citing a number of links between Al Qaeda associates and Jemaah Islamiyah and hence to violence in Indonesia. Gunaratna refers to the ‘Indonesian Mujahidin Council’, a group set up by accused JI leader Abu Bakar Bashiyar, as being involved in conflict in Maluku and Sulawesi (p 198). Gunaratna quotes from an Indonesian intelligence document to link the group’s members to the violence that has claimed thousands of lives over the past five years.

Those links may exist but to use filtered information prepared by a questionable source without presenting any further corroboration or qualifying information on the actions of the source of the document is regrettable. His trust in Indonesian intelligence officers and an intelligence report prepared by the very security forces who have been themselves implicated in incitement and even direct involvement in the violent conflicts in the eastern islands is nothing short of as-
tounding.

Later, Gunaratna makes a bold assertion when he states:

Of the many operations conducted by Al Qaeda in Indonesia, the millenium bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 are very instructive of their tactics (p.199).

Unfortunately he cites no source for this allegation, and makes no qualification about others who may have been involved in the coordinated blasts across 30 cities in Indonesia which killed 19 people and injured dozens.

Far more considered on this point is the work of Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group (ICJ), who has written more detailed and balanced accounts of the rise of Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia. Jones has written a report entitled Indonesia’s Terrorist Network (2002), in which she questions whether members of the Armed Forces may have had prior knowledge of the church bombings of 2000, at least in the city of Medan. Jones is not directly accusing the military of the bombings but argues that ‘a curious link’ between Acehnese figures close to Jemaah Islamiyah and Indonesian military intelligence should be investigated.

Indeed there are many ‘curious links’ between the Indonesian military and intelligence services, and radical Muslim groups such as Laskar Jihad which have been involved in politically-motivated terrorism, that should be investigated another time.

The footnotes to Gunaratna’s section on Indonesia are revealing — 10 of the 25 footnotes state the source as Indonesian intelligence officers or the intelligence report (another eight cite press articles) (p 261). His writing here on Indonesia reveals a remarkably narrow selection of sources, a profound lack of knowledge, and a flawed understanding, of the history of the Indonesian armed forces and of their intelligence operations.

The bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta is seen too readily as new evidence of Jemaah Islamiyah/Al Qaeda activity in Indonesia. After the August bombing of the hotel, Gunaratna went to press. ‘This week’s mass casualty bombing in Jakarta demonstrates that Jemaah Islamiah continues to pose a significant threat to South-East Asia and to Australia’ (Too close to al-Qa’ida, The Australian, 8 August, 2003).

Gunaratna relies on the media’s forgetfulness. It is worth remembering though, that the previous largest bombing in Jakarta was in September 2000 when a huge car-bomb blast in the underground car park of the Jakarta Stock Exchange killed 17 people and injured 20. It would have been even more devastating if the bomb had managed to bring down the multistorey building. This terror bombing was solved — two of the bombers were captured and tried, another escaped. After their trial they were found guilty and jailed for life. They were both members of Kopassus, the Indonesian army’s special forces.

There are dangers in becoming too close to your sources. Gunaratna is rarely critical of intelligence services, unless it is of the West’s. ‘Largely due to the tireless efforts of the intelligence community, especially of the Singaporean service, the region is aware of the existence of a resilient terrorist network’ (2002). Now head of terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, Gunaratna has worked with the Singapore Government he praises in developing their strong anti-terrorism stance. He co-authored the Singapore Government’s White Paper on terrorism, published in January 2003.

In a new preface to the post-Bali edition of Inside Al Qaeda, Gunaratna slams the Australian Government’s anti-terrorism efforts, in part blaming Australia for the rise of militant Islam:

The Australian Government should have invested sufficient resources in its immediate neighbourhood to help dampen Islamism (p xxii).

And he makes extravagant claims about Australia without offering any evidence. ‘.. JI’s operational leader, Hambali, visited Australia a dozen times’ (p xxiii). This statement, denied immediately by Australian intelligence authorities, may indicate that, if Gunaratna’s source was a South- East Asian intelligence agency, its information may be dangerously flawed, and could have had lethal consequences on the innocent if acted upon.

Nonetheless Gunaratna says that Australian universities and the media have been infiltrated by Al Qaeda and he argues for a massive domestic security crackdown in Australia: ‘ASIO and ASIS need to double their strength. They also need to acquire greater powers to operate effectively and efficiently’ (p xxiv).

And he seeks military and intelligence support to countries in the region to crackdown on their citizens too: ‘Australia could assist countries in South-East Asia, especially Indonesia, to improve their capability to fight terrorism’ (p xxiv). This is of particular concern when Gunaratna has demonstrated he is so blind to State-sponsored terrorism in Indonesia.

Of greatest concern is Gunaratna’s apparent support for the very techniques used by terrorists themselves being adopted by the West. He says the CIA’s assassination by guided missile inside Yemen of suspected members of Al Qaeda exemplifies the approach needed. This assassination technique has been used spectacularly and often indiscriminately with civilian casualties resulting, in Israel, where Gunaratna holds the position of Honorary Fellow at Israel’s International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

Finally Gunaratna’s reveals his belief in discarding international law in the pursuit of terrorists: ‘As Al Qaeda is a learning organisation, the law-enforcement, security and intelligence agencies fighting it must be goal-oriented and not rule-oriented’ (p. xxv).

Gunaratna’s aggressive extra-legal approach stands in harsh contrast to what his former colleague from the Center for International and Security Studies in the US argues. ‘Economic sanctions should be used against state sponsors of terrorism, even if they take a long time to be effective,’ wrote former head of the CIA Stansfield Turner just one week after the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Legal recourse is the option most compatible with American values. Legal recourse against terrorists falls into two categories: apprehending terrorists, and isolating states that support terrorism. Apprehending the terrorists themselves serves as a warning to would-be terrorists that they are likely to be caught. Bringing culprits to justice is an important step in curtailing terrorist acts (2001).

In the confusion and fear that followed September 11 and the Bali bombing, people looked to make some sense from what may have appeared a senseless act. In his best-selling book, Inside Al-Qaeda, Rohan Gunaratna offers his simple solution — be alert and alarmed, a pretext welcomed by those who wish to exploit our fears.

References

Gunaratna, Rohan (1998). International and Regional Implications of the Sri Lankan Tamil Insurgency. Israel: International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism, Israel.

Gunaratna, Rohan (2002). The Second Front: The al-Qaeda threat in Southeast Asia, The Review, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, November.

Jones, Sidney (2002). Indonesia’s Terrorist Network: How Jemaah Islamiyah Works. Brussels: international Crisis Group.

Turner, Stansfield (2001). Terrorism and Democracy: Ten Steps to Fight Terrorism Without Endangering Democracy. University of Maryland: Center for International and Security Studies, September 30.



Note: The views expressed in this review are the writer’s and do not represent the views of the ABC or the Four Corners programme.

pcronau@hotmail.com

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Analyse this

July 20 2003

Whenever a comment has been needed about al-Qaeda or terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna has been there to supply it. Who is he? Gary Hughes reports.

Whenever a comment has been needed about al-Qaeda or terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna has been there to supply it. Who is he? Gary Hughes reports. Rohan Gunaratna describes as a spiritually defining moment the day in March 2001 when he learned that the Taliban regime in Kabul had ordered the demolition of the ancient, giant statues of Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

But it was the destruction six months later of an icon of the modern world - New York’s World Trade Towers - that changed his life in a more practical way, launching a stellar new career as a global authority on international terrorism.

Gunaratna was the right person in the right place at the right time.

The world’s media outlets were looking for experts to interpret how and why the world had changed and the Sri Lanka-born academic was great "talent", providing dire warnings about the threat of Osama bin Laden’s shadowy al-Qaeda network.

No one seemed to worry that, until the September 11 attacks, Gunaratna’s acknowledged expertise had been largely confined to the activities of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil Tigers.

In May 2002, as Australian SAS troops were hunting bin Laden’s followers south-east of Kabul, Gunaratna’s book Inside Al Qaeda : Global Network of Terror became an instant bestseller and his reputation grew accordingly, being described as one of the world’s foremost experts on Islamic terrorism.

Gunaratna, 42, had ridden a wave of success driven by the basic laws of supply and demand - there were not enough experts to meet the demand from the media and publishers for intelligence analysts able to provide a catchy quote or headline. And Gunaratna appeared happy to break the mould of the public’s traditional idea of an academic analyst, making at times startling claims based on what he said were his own intelligence "sources" and criticising governments - including Canberra - for not doing enough and being too concerned about civil liberties.

Gunaratna was also seized upon by the Australian media, including newspapers published by Fairfax, and promoted virtually unquestioningly as the leading authority on Islamic terrorism, particularly after the Bali bombing in October last year.

But Gunaratna and others who belong to this new breed of media-friendly commentators, who blur the distinction between academic analysis and politics and base research on information from anonymous intelligence sources, are causing concern in some circles.

Also under scrutiny are the financial links between analysts who highlight the dangers posed by terrorists and private corporations that stand to make money from an increased atmosphere of fear.

Members of Australia’s intelligence community, and in particular ASIO, are known to be dismissive of many of Gunaratna’s more sensational statements, such as claims that alleged military chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah network and senior al-Qaeda member Hambali had regularly visited Australia.

In Britain, The Observer newspaper’s home affairs editor and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups, Martin Bright, describes Gunaratna as "the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden". He says Gunaratna is often used by the British authorities as an expert witness in the prosecution of Islamist terror suspects because they can rely on him to be apocalyptic.

In Australia, journalist and commentator on intelligence issues Brian Toohey is one of the few to have openly questioned Gunaratna’s credentials, describing him as a "self-proclaimed expert" and dismissing some of his claims as "plain silly". He uses as an example a warning by Gunaratna published in November 2001 in the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council Review that terrorist groups might try to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.

David Wright-Neville is senior research fellow at the Centre for Global Terrorism at Monash University and until 2002 was a senior terrorism analyst in the Office of National Assessment. Although he won’t comment directly on Gunaratna, or any other individual analyst, he says that, like in any other profession, the abilities of so- called terrorism experts ranges from the very good down to questionable.

The lack of scrutiny of their abilities, says to Wright-Neville, is partly due to the shortage of analysts and experts available to meet the massive demand for public knowledge.

He says problems arise when analysts don’t make it clear when they leave the secure ground of known facts and enter into their own extrapolation when commenting to the media. The results can been headlines based on conjecture rather than reality.

Another factor, says Wright-Neville, is the use of unidentified intelligence or security sources by some analysts. Not all intelligence organisations are equally reliable and, particularly in some south-east Asian countries, can be highly politicised and running agendas for their governments. Individuals in intelligence agencies can selectively leak information to analysts - or to the media - to influence public debate.

"The context in which information is obtained is vital," he says.

It is also important not to put too much weight on intelligence sources. "Intelligence is an imprecise science," says Wright-Neville.

Gunaratna’s credentials in biographical information published in books, magazines, newspapers and on the internet, are at first glance impressive. His book Inside Al Qaeda states: "Rohan Gunaratna, the author of six books on armed conflict, was called to address the United Nations, the US Congress and the Australian Parliament in the wake of September 11, 2001. He is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St Andrews University, Scotland. Previously, Gunaratna was principal investigator of the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch and he has served as a consultant on terrorism to several governments and corporations."

After The Sunday Age made detailed checks on Gunaratna’s biographical details, he confirmed last week that there was no such position as principal investigator at the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch and he worked there in 2001-02 as a research consultant. He also confirmed that, rather than directly addressing the UN, Congress and the Australian Parliament, he had actually spoken at a seminar organised by the parliamentary library, given evidence to a congressional hearing on terrorism and delivered a research paper to a conference on terrorism organised by the UN’s Department for Disarmament Affairs.

Gunaratna’s first six books on armed conflict were all relatively obscure works on the Tamil Tigers. One of the books, South Asia at Gunpoint, brought him to notice in Australia in October 2000 with claims that a Tamil Tiger support network had shipped a small helicopter and micro-light aircraft to Sri Lanka and that a Tamil Tiger arms smuggling ship had visited Australia in 1993. Although the local Tamil community was outraged, at least one of the allegations was shown to have a basis in fact. An SBS Dateline report telecast that same month tracked down the Newcastle shop owner who had been questioned by ASIO after being approached by an alleged Tamil Tiger sympathiser in 1994 wanting to buy hang gliders and have them shipped to Malaysia.

The information appears to have come through Gunaratna’s very close links with Sri Lanka’s intelligence service. Gunaratna worked for the Sri Lanka Government between 1984 and 1994.

The trail of financial support and weapons supplies to the Tamil Tigers took Gunaratna into the wider world of international terrorism, including Afghanistan, where the Tamil Tigers obtained small arms. His research into the Tamil Tigers and their methods also made him an authority on suicide bombers - knowledge that would stand him in good stead following the September 11 suicide attacks in New York and Washington.

In July 2001, he co-authored (with three others) an article called Blowback in Jane’s Intelligence Review, which looked at Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in light of evidence from the then recently completed trials of those behind the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The article was one of the first detailed examinations of bin Laden and the origins of al-Qaeda. It quickly became a point of reference after September 11.

One former Australian intelligence officer says a problem with Gunaratna’s approach is that he tends to look at international terrorism from the perspective of how it relates to the Tamil Tigers, who declared a truce in December 2001 and opened peace negotiations.

Gunaratna did much of his work on the Tamil Tigers’ international links while studying in the United States in 1995-96. It was then that he began establishing important friends in the small world of intelligence analysis.

He did a master of arts at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University in 1996 and research at the University of Illinois and University of Maryland. While at Maryland, he worked with Admiral Stansfield Turner, one-time head of US intelligence. While at Notre Dame, he linked up with the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland’s St Andrews University and its massive database on terrorist incidents going back to 1968. He also got to know the centre’s then head, Dr Bruce Hoffman, with whom he has co-authored a yet to be published book on terrorism.

Gunaratna moved to Scotland to complete his doctorate at St Andrews and work as a research fellow at the terrorism and political violence centre. He also got open access to the centre’s large terrorism database, one of just a small handful of such databases scattered around the world.

The database is a combination of material gathered by St Andrews and the Rand Corporation, the non-profit US thinktank established by the US Air Force. Now known as the RAND-St Andrews database on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict, it is largely maintained and updated by more than 30 students who comb the internet and newspapers and magazines from around the world for information on terrorist operations.

The database is not the only link between Rand and St Andrews and Rand and Gunaratna. Bruce Hoffman, the founder of the St Andrews centre for terrorism study, is now a vice-president of Rand and chief of its Washington office. And Rand, St Andrews, Gunaratna and Jane’s worked together last year as private advisers to Risk Management Solutions, helping the private American corporation develop a "US terrorism risk model" to sell to insurance companies worried about terrorist strikes.

Rand, in turn, is linked to the $US3.5 billion Carlyle Group, which holds stakes in some of the world’s biggest arms and defence corporations, through the former US defence secretary and deputy CIA director Frank Carlucci, who is chairman of the group and a Rand board member.

The Carlyle Group employs former President George Bush as a senior adviser, uses former US Secretary of State James Baker as its senior counsellor and has former British Prime Minister John Major as chairman of its European arm. Earlier this year, it bought a third of QinetiQ, the company floated by Britain’s Ministry of Defence to commercially exploit non-secret security and defence technology. QinteQ has been negotiating with the British Government to buy the soon-to-be-privatised Security, Languages, Intelligence and Photography College, where British spies are trained.

In his biographical details on the site of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, where he is an assistant professor, Gunaratna states one of his past positions was "principal investigator, QinetiQ Project on Terrorist Information Operations".

Gunaratna moved to Singapore this year to help establish a regional centre for terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, where he is titled assistant professor. Not surprisingly, the centrepiece of the new research centre is a database on terrorist activities in the Asia-Pacific region.

Gunaratna says his expertise on al-Qaeda comes from interviews with the group’s "penultimate leadership" and rank and file members, hundreds of documents seized after the invasion of Afghanistan and the debriefings of al-Qaeda suspects in more than a dozen countries.

It was that kind of information that led him in March to state definitively that Australian David Hicks, who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after his capture in Afghanistan, was "not a member of al-Qaeda", "did not plan to attack civilian targets", "never intended to attack a civilian target" and was a "romantic" not taken seriously by other Taliban fighters.

Eyebrows were raised among fellow intelligence analysts when Gunaratna reversed his position on Hicks two weeks ago, after the US announced the Australian was one of six detainees it had enough evidence against to put before a military tribunal. This time Gunaratna, said Hicks had undergone "more advance and more specialised training" with al-Qaeda, which "had some special plans for him".

Gunaratna attributed his change of heart to information gained from "more recent investigations" and given to him by sources he refused to identify.

Another person with raised eyebrows was Hicks’ Adelaide lawyer, Frank Camatta, who maintains that Gunaratna could not possibly have had access to transcripts of his client’s interrogations in Guantanamo Bay. "We’d sure like to know who his sources are," says Camatta.


Sidebar:

REALITY CHECK

The claim: In his book Inside al-Qaeda and in several interviews, Rohan Gunaratna gives graphic details of how terrorists planned to hijack a British Airways jet at London’s Heathrow Airport on September 11, 2001, and fly it into the British Houses of Parliament. The plot was foiled when aircraft in Britain were grounded immediately after the attack on New York’s twin towers. The source for the information was Indian intelligence interrogations of Mohammed Afroz, a 25-year-old Muslim and suspected member of al-Qaeda, arrested in Mumbai on October 3, 2001. Afroz told interrogators he had been to flying schools in Victoria and Britain and also planned to fly a plane into Melbourne’s Rialto Towers.

The reality: Afroz was released by an Indian court on indefinite bail in April, 2001 after Indian police failed to bring charges. As part of the investigation, Indian intelligence agents flew to Australia in February 2001 to check out his claims. It was reported after his release that New Delhi police believed Mumbai police made up the sensational claims allegedly made by Afroz. ASIO said in its 2002 annual report that none of the allegations made by Afroz that related to Australia could be corroborated and they were assessed "to be lacking in credibility".

The claim: Hambali, the operation commander of the terrorist group behind the Bali bombings, Jemaah Islamiah, and other leaders had visited Australia a dozen times, according to the Australia edition of Rohan Gunaratna’s Inside al-Qaeda.

The reality: Attorney-General Daryl Williams said checks within Australia and overseas had failed to find any record of Hambali having travelled to Australia "under his own name or any known aliases".

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The Media Report, ABC Radio National

Expert Commentary

11 September 2003

Listen Real Media | Windows Media

Armed conflict and military intelligence are staples of the evening news, so "experts" haunt our media. But does the media rely too much on "experts", and has their presence changed the way ideas are discussed.

Program Transcript

Mick O’Regan: Hello, and welcome to the program.

As we open the newspapers this morning and listen to the radio and TV, it’s all too obvious that the scourge of terrorist violence continues to wreck lives around the world. Writing in The Australian newspaper, the Prime Minister, John Howard, acknowledges the millions of words that have been written about September 11th, and comments that the volumes of analysis cannot disguise the fact that the attacks were ideological statements by fanatics.

To understand these attacks and the people behind them, the media has increasingly relied on expert commentators to unravel the complex, historical, religious and political elements that underpin them.

So today, conscious that September 11th is much more than just a date on the calendar, it’s an international shorthand for remembrance, for war, and for a world view, we’re going to consider how experts are used in the media, by talking to some.

John Walker: Its difficult to see that the world is either a safer place or that there are less causes of terrorism either in our region or in the Middle East over the last two years. What concerns me is that these things are not central issues for debate.

Andrew Norton: Well I actually think people are vastly better informed about these issues than they were two years ago. Two years ago most people hadn’t heard of the Taliban, were only dimly aware of Islamic fundamentalism, so I actually think that even if the detail is lacking like it is for every issue in the public mind. At a broadbrush level, people actually are much more aware of the issues than they were two years ago.

Scott Burchill: I think the lesson is very clear, that if you want to really understand these issues, you need to wait for considered opinion by people who perhaps haven’t made career moves to present themselves as experts on terrorism, but who can draw on their long-held experience and knowledge of history and international politics to place what is a very complex series of events in some sort of historical context. So that’s unfortunately a waiting game, you will need to wait for considered analysis which will come some time after these events.

Mick O’Regan: Our experts: Scott Burchill, lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University; Andrew Norton, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, and John Walker, from the Australian Defence Forces Academy.

At the moment I think the community is increasingly reliant on expert information to better understand policy responses to key problems in the areas of security, military conflict and terrorism.

Now it helps that some commentators are very clear about their views, and the sort of policy outcomes they seek. Earlier this week one very prominent American commentator, William Kristol, spoke to Peter Thompson on the Radio National Breakfast program. Kristol has had a long career as an advisor to Republican politicians in the States, and is now the editor of the conservative political magazine ‘The Weekly Standard’.

Regarding the debate now raging in America about the adequacy of US strategy in the Middle East, William Kristol focused on how the debate was framed.

William Kristol: You know, it depends how you look at it obviously. I think that’s the key really, in a way. The Administration, since the war has not framed the issue quite as dramatically as it really deserves to be framed, I really think we’re at a turning point, a hinge-point, for the 21st century. Either the Middle East will improve and the world will get safer, or it won’t improve, and then we really face an awfully scary prospect over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

Peter Thompson: You and your co-author use the term that the US may need to ‘wage perpetual war for perpetual peace’; what do you mean by that?

William Kristol: That might have been a slight rhetorical overstatement. Well I do mean that I don’t think war is going to disappear from the future of the human race, I think we always will need to be prepared for war, I think the US does have a particular role as the world’s strongest nation, and certainly the strongest nation on behalf of freedom and democracy to be willing to, if necessary alone, but hopefully with friends and allies, to beat back threats, whether terrorist threats or dictators who are invading their neighbours, so I don’t think we should kid ourselves, as some Europeans tend to, that war is going to disappear or that the whole world is going to start looking like Switzerland or even like the European Union.

So whether for East Asia or in the Middle East, I think strength is necessary, I do think the terrorist attacks on us in particular were invited by weakness over the last 10 or 20 years in response to Middle East terrorism on our part, and that’s been a problem of both Republican and Democratic Administrations from Reagan on really. So I think we face the need to fight, and I think we will fight, and I think we’ll win. I just wish we had a greater sense of urgency and had committed more resources to Iraq in particular.

Mick O’Regan: William Kristol, editor of the conservative American journal, ‘The Weekly Standard’, speaking to Peter Thompson earlier this week.

Kristol’s acknowledgement that the framing of debates is crucial to communicating your political message highlights one way expert commentary is used in the media, providing a context in which actions can be understood. It’s also critical to realise the interaction of the political cycle with the release of information. Throughout the war on terror, information about the nature of risks and the best way to counter threats has been of the utmost political significance, as Scott Burchill explains.

Scott Burchill: I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Both mid-term Congressional elections, but I think more significantly now, the Presidential election in November next year, effectively rules out of consideration the United States opening a new front in what is called the war on terror. It’s often said now in many of the discussions about US politics, that the war campaign has been handed over to Karl Rove, who is President Bush’s electoral and opinion poll advisor, and the first edict that he issued was that there are to be no more fights, no more wars, until the election is over. So I think it’s impossible to remove this as an issue.

But I’d like to come back to one issue also about the lead-up to the war in Iraq, and show you how these things can be easily confused. There was a considerable discussion about the legality of the war, and many listeners will remember that the Australian government issued a very brief legal advice to suggest that intervention in Iraq was legal without a further Security Council resolution. Well the fact is that the overwhelming body of legal advice suggested that without another Security Council resolution the war in Iraq was in fact illegal.

However, it’s fairly easy to find dissenting voices, so the public is left trying to evaluate exactly where the truth is, when the government tells them one thing, but without actually finding some advice on the internet or reading very widely in the legal area, they wouldn’t be aware in fact the government’s advice on this was minority advice, which was well out of step with broader legal opinion. So how do they evaluate?

Mick O’Regan: Well how should they evaluate? Should that have been a task for the media to undertake, to actually show up those inconsistencies, or should there have been different advice offered?

Scott Burchill: Well I think what the media can do is locate the nature of that advice in the general view of this particular issue. So instead of simply arguing or reproducing the government’s position and saying, ‘Well, there is another position but the government is on firm ground’, the public probably needed to be told that the overwhelming majority of international lawyers who specialise in the use of force in international affairs, felt there was absolutely no legal basis for a war against Iraq, and that the government’s position was well out of step with the broad opinion. But they weren’t told that, and therefore they weren’t really in a position to contest the issue on that basis. The issue effectively was neutralised by the government doing that particular strategy.

Mick O’Regan: Scott Burchill, from Deakin University.

So, is the media, with its reliance on format and brevity, up to the task of untangling the intersecting lines of spin, expert commentary, and political tactics?

Scott Burchill: Well we’ve seen a small number of experts who have been regularly employed to offer short sound bites in response usually to events on the ground whether they be a terrorist attack or as we saw during the war in Iraq, progress during the campaign, and clearly I think perhaps the disappointing aspect for me is that the priority seems to be to get a voice that is coherent, who can express their views concisely in small sound bites, but not really challenge the content of what they say.

And I think this is only partly the fault of the media, because perhaps journalists aren’t in the position to follow up and question some of the assumptions and claims that are being made. And so we get a sort of an ubiquitous presence of some leading commentators on terrorism, who claim to be experts, but we’re not really getting a very diverse range of opinions.

Andrew Norton: In defence of the media there are only a limited pool of people who actually are qualified to comment on these, and they’re usually on a very short time line, and therefore they go for whatever expert happens to be available. But the difficulty is the lack of mechanisms after that to balance what has been said in the immediate aftermath of an event like Bali.

Mick O’Regan: So when you talk about mechanisms, what do you mean? Some sort of follow-up to evaluate the predictions that people have made?

Andrew Norton: Well you can have things like that, but even say programs like in the United States where you get several people on a panel arguing together at the same time, which gives viewers or listeners a chance to actually evaluate claim and counter-claim as they’re being made, rather than days or weeks after the event, trying to remember what was originally said, and then weigh it against the next expert you happen to be listening to.

Mick O’Regan: Andrew Norton from the Centre for Independent Studies and before him, Scott Burchill.

The sharp end of the debate over expert commentary in Australia at the moment concerns the appropriate response to the threat of international terrorism, primarily from South East Asia and in particular from Indonesia.

In the aftermath of the Bali bombings we wanted every shred of information we could get about terrorist threats in Indonesia. Enormous energy was expended, analysing what happened in Bali, while comparatively little was devoted to the spate of deadly bombings at the end of 2000.

It’s as if terrorism had arrived in the archipelago in October last year.

However for many people the real terrorism in Indonesia for the past 25 years has been State terrorism, conducted by its own military and security forces. This sometimes seems to escape the newly-minuted experts on global terror, such as the Sri Lankan academic, Rohan Gunaratna, the author of ‘Inside Al-Qaeda: global network of terror’.

Gunaratna’s career has developed rapidly from dealing with the specifics of the civil war in his homeland to being an international authority on global terrorism. He’s widely quoted in the media where his unequivocal predictions ensure celebrity. In May this year he was interviewed on the ABC Lateline program by Tony Jones.

Rohan Gunaratna: The Australian government has taken this threat very seriously because Australia is aware of a number of operations Al-Qaeda attempted against Australian targets, starting with the December 2001 plan to destroy the Australian mission in Singapore. Subsequently of course we witnessed Bali, but even before that, there has been a number of attempts to destroy Australian targets. So I believe that the Australian government has taken appropriate steps to better respond to this kind of threat.

Although interestingly, the Australian government decided not to close its embassy in Saudi Arabia when both Britain and the United States did that; was that a wise move? I mean was it thought that that threat had already passed?

Rohan Gunaratna: I think that threat to an Australian target in that region would be much less than a threat to an Australian target say in South East Asia, because other than al-Qaeda, there are a number of associate groups of Al-Qaeda, such as Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Sayaf Group, Moral Islamic Liberation Front, Lashkar Jundullah, these groups that are targeting Australian interests in South East Asia.

Mick O’Regan: During the interview, Rohan Gunaratna went on to outline the links that he argues exist between Al-Qaeda and various South East Asian groups, especially Jemaah Islamiyah.

Rohan Gunaratna: Jemaah Islamiah although is a regional South East Asian group, it is also acting as the South East Asian arm of Al-Qaeda, because the operational head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Hambali, is also a member of the military committee of Al-Qaeda. Because of that, Jemaah Islamiah is in many ways acting as an extension of Al-Qaeda in South East Asia.

Mick O’Regan: Rohan Gunaratna, with Tony Jones on Lateline back in May.

The media’s need for detailed commentary on terrorist groups has resulted in Gunaratna being seen as an objective commentator on terrorism, but his analysis of the situation in Indonesia gives cause for concern.

The linkages he poses are based on information from leaked intelligence documents, and as a forthcoming article in The Pacific Journalism Review notes:

‘His trust in Indonesian intelligence officers and in intelligence reports prepared by the very security forces who have themselves been implicated in incitement and even direct involvement in violent conflict, is nothing short of astounding.’

Those linkages are also a problem for other researchers who focus on the historical contexts in which different groups have emerged in Indonesia, and their disparate political goals.

John Walker lectures at the Defence Forces Academy.

John Walker: I think over the last two years movements and groups who have a fairly longstanding history in Indonesia, and intellectual debates in Indonesia, which have been around since the 1920s, are suddenly being couched in new global terms. So things like the Acehnese Independent Movement, people are now trying to link it to Al-Qaeda. Well there may or may not be links, the point about the Free Aceh Movement is, as with many things in Indonesia, the proper context is not global terrorism, the proper context is the post-Soeharto era, it’s 25 years of State terrorism, not this new thing that is of concern particularly to US policymakers.

And my concern I suppose is that because Scott mentioned, something happens on the ground, defence and strategic analysts and a very small number of them, have to comment. They accept the policy parameters, and whilst it’s one thing for governments to deal in policy terms, I think it’s quite different for analysts to, because if you just accept the parameters, then that sets up the debate. And that may or may not provide the insights.

Mick O’Regan: The sort of insights that Rohan Gunaratna has provided seem to depend on information which is difficult to verify and emerges from a very narrow band of sources.

Critics of his work, such as John Walker, highlights a tendency to use generalised notions of global terrorist networks rather than studying the distinctive historical and political attributes of specific groups.

This is especially important when speculating upon the links between Al-Qaeda and other groups.

John Walker: If you look at the three, say best-known Indonesian ones at the moment: Gerakan Aceh Merdeka the Acehnese independence movement, Jemaah Islamiaah and Laskar Jihad. Jemaah Islamiaah is purported to want a pan-national Islamic caliphate in sort of maritime South-East Asia. So bigger than the Indonesian State. Laskar Jihad appear to be ultranationalists determined to attack anybody who threatens the boundaries of the Indonesian Republic as it exists. And the Acehnese want a separate Acehnese Islamic Sultanate in North Sumatra.

Now these three movements, all of which are broadly I suppose, Islamic militant, actually have three, not just different goals, but mutually exclusive goals. So it’s far from clear that that labelling them as Islamic militants, furthers any sort of understanding. And it gets worse than that because there is evidence that Laskar Jihad, or members of former Laskar Jihad, because it claims to have disbanded, have actually gone to Aceh in the last six months to engage with the Acehnese and to fight the Acehnese. So these are mutually exclusive objectives and there’s scope for conflict. And yet in media debates they’re all Islamic militants. It just seems to be not to be at all helpful.

Mick O’Regan: John Walker.

Scott Burchill also has reservations about Gunaratna’s work, suggesting the Sri Lankan’s confidence in his own conclusions and his availability to the media are critical factors in his profile.

Scott Burchill: And that’s why in the war against terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna was so ubiquitous, is because he didn’t have any shades of grey, he was absolutely certain in what he said. He could say things like Hambali, the Jemaah Islamiaah senior operative, had visited Australia 12 times, when in fact the Attorney-General could find no evidence of him ever having visited Australia at all, either under that name or a range of aliases. Now if he says that with great certainty, then journalists, even if they’re not that impressionable, come away with the view that this is a man who knows what he’s talking about because he shows no ambiguity, there’s no doubts in what he says, and it gets duly reported that way.

Mick O’Regan: The information that underpins much of Rohan Gunaratna’s work is also the subject of concern within the academic community.

The analysis of his work in The Pacific Journalism Review includes the following remarks about the footnotes in the section of his book dealing with Indonesia:

‘Ten of the 25 footnotes state the source as Indonesian intelligence officers or the intelligence report. Another eight cite press articles. His writing here on Indonesia reveals a remarkably narrow selection of sources, a profound lack of knowledge, and a flawed understanding of the history of the Indonesian armed forces and of their intelligence operates.’

For John Walker, this represents a major problem with Gunaratna’s work.

John Walker: If you want to talk in any sort of detail, say for example about Al-Qaeda, or Jemaah Islamiyah, without access to classified information, the providence of which you don’t know, you’re left being very sceptical. When dramatic events happen like the Bali bombing or the hotel bombings in Jakarta, the media actually don’t want people being sceptical. There is a requirement to have some explanatory power, and I think that’s where Rohan Gunaratna has found his metier. And he relies very heavily on apparently leaked security documents from the United States government, which people just are unable to verify.

The texts are not available, so we can’t see whether he’s interpreted them correctly, and intelligence documents or intelligence material is actually very hard to analyse, it’s a very subtle process. So even if the documents that he claims to have access to, whether the records of interview that he has access to, are real and have not been spun by the people providing them, we still don’t know whether his analysis is necessarily accurate. And there is I think a tendency to avoid people who will say things like ‘Why a war on terror?’ I mean the branding’s very important, so a nice catchy phrase like ‘a war on terror’, you don’t have time in a 2-minute grab for radio to deconstruct that. And I think that’s also a real problem.

Scott Burchill: If you think of the amount of attention which has been given to the Bali attacks on October 12th 2002, we still don’t know with any degree of confidence whether Australians were specifically targeted, whether it was a mistake and that Americans were targeted, or whether it was a generic anti-Western attack. Now the actual answer to that question is very significant for the kinds of strategies that you may develop to counter these kinds of threats. Claims by Mr Gunaratna that this was definitely specifically targeted at Australians, without any supporting evidence of any kind, doesn’t leave the public with any way of adjudicating or verifying, as John said.

Mick O’Regan: The issue of classified, official documents finding their way into the hands of people not meant to read them has been big news this week in Australia.

The media coverage has centred on the cross-examination of Andrew Wilkie, who resigned from the Office of National Assessments, the ONA, because of disagreements over the government’s characterisation of the threat posed by Iraq.

The Labor Party now wants to know how details of Wilkie’s report found their way into the public domain.

John Faulkner: Can the Minister confirm that all ONA documents are routinely classified, numbered, bar-coded, and individually grammatically configured to identify the source of leaked documents? Can the Minister also confirm that all of these safety measures would have been used on the ONA report on Iraq written by Andrew Wilkie, and dated December 2002? Does the Minister therefore believe that these measures will assist the Australian Federal Police to quickly and accurately identify both the source of the leak of that document and also any person who receives and uses the content of that classified report?

Mick O’Regan: Senator John Faulkner, demanding answers on why some classified documents end up in the wrong hands.

It’s not a new problem, but in the context of political arguments over the war on terror, leaking sensitive information to the media has become an important element in how the public debate is conducted.

As Scott Burchill explains, filtering information through acknowledged ‘experts’ is a tried and tested way of promoting government policy.

Scott Burchill: I think some of the experts have been in receipt of deliberate leaks of government information and intelligence, if you like they’ve been used as conduits for government propaganda, and if you look at the sources of some of the recently published books on Al-Qaeda and anti-Western Islamic terrorism generally, you’ll often see that the sources of some of the claims are confidential intelligence briefings. Now what that means is that the expert has been in receipt of a document and has faithfully reproduced it as argument. Well that’s one way in which governments get their own particular spin on events out into the public domain without having to actually say it directly to the public, they do it through what is essentially a compliant and supportive academic.

Mick O’Regan: Of course compliant academics are a lot easier to deal with than angry bureaucrats. The scandal in Britain over the suicide death of weapons scientist David Kelly highlighted the fact that often the people with the most knowledge on a subject are the ones limited in what they can say, they’re the ones forbidden to speak.

But given the government’s need for confidential information, is it foolish to think that public servants should ever be able to speak on the record?

Scott Burchill: Not really, because in fact in the case of Dr Kelly he was backgrounding journalists in the full knowledge of his departmental minders and masters. And you can hardly blame him, given that the Ministers in the Blair government were leaking information, backgrounding journalists, comprising intelligence dossiers that were heavily weighted to present a particular argument. So they can’t really blame the bureaucrats if they were simply emulating the behaviour of their political masters. But on the other hand, of course, their first and primary responsibility is to provide independent advice to government, and if they do get into the public realm and they do start speaking about their issues, then of course it makes it more difficult for them to offer government advice which is unaffected by public debate and their role within that debate.

Mick O’Regan: Where the public debate has been robustly taken up is by think-tanks, where research is more likely to be focused on specific policy outcomes, especially compared to university research.

John Walker: Very few academics come to an issue wanting to achieve a policy outcome. I can’t imagine that anyone coming out of a think-tank to speak on an issue isn’t cogniscant of the broader policy implications and trying to effect a policy. And I think that has disadvantages I think in terms of the provision of information for the public, but it’s good for journalists because governments put out policy, there is a policy framework there, and think-tanks immediately engage in those terms. So it’s digestible, it’s not confusing to the public, and of course they are very practised in being concise and sticking to message.

Andrew Norton: Look I actually think there’s a broader range of inputs into the debate. I don’t think there’s less than in the past. The sheer fact that satellite means we can bring in American experts I think is on the whole a good thing, that we get this kind of immediate diversity of views that we can’t provide in Australia because we’ve got a relatively small local set of experts, plus we’ve got the think-tanks which now employ people so they can actually participate in public debates in a way they perhaps couldn’t if they held jobs within a bureaucracy or jobs in academia where they were too busy teaching or doing other research. So while I think there may be some problems in the access that some people have to the media, overall I think there’s a wider variety of voices being heard.

Scott Burchill: Well the ABC for example, makes extensive use of US-based think-tanks for commentary on foreign policy developments, and has done particularly during the war against terrorism and the war against Iraq. But in my cynical moments, I suspect that what really motivates the journalists who choose these people, is not so much the content of what they say but their ability to present an issue in a concise and lucid way. And I think think-tanks are much better attuned in many ways of doing this, they’re much more media savvy than the universities are.

The universities don’t have in most cases, a systematic way of providing that short-notice expert opinion, whereas the think-tanks I think are ever ready to provide speakers on a range of issues who can reduce the complexity of issues to a few short lines. Now there are problems in doing that because you do miss the complexity, the context, the background and the historical lead-up to events. But in my experience of being in the media, it’s not so much what you say, it’s how you say it.

Mick O’Regan: And ain’t it just the truth?

Our experts talking about experts today were Scott Burchill, from Deakin University in Victoria; and also my thanks to Andrew Norton, from the Centre for Independent Studies and to John Walker from the Australian Defence Forces Academy.

We endeavoured to speak to Rohan Gunaratna about his work and the criticisms of it, and we will keep trying because obviously we’re very keen to hear from him.

And that’s The Media Report for this week. As always, thanks to producer Andrew Davies and to our technical producer, Jim Ussher.
Guests on this program:

Scott Burchill
Lecturer in International Relations,
Deakin University

Andrew Norton
Research Fellow,
Centre For Independent Studies

Dr John Walker
Lecturer,
Australian Defence Forces Academy,
University of New South Wales


Pacific Journalism Review
http://www.aut.ac.nz/depts/commstud/journ/pjrindex_9_03.shtml


Presenter: Mick O'Regan
Producer: Andrew Davies


----

Terrorism Expertise of Rohan Gunaratna Questioned
Tuesday, 24 August 2004, 10:32 am
Opinion: David Small

Terrorism Expertise of Rohan Gunaratna Questioned

Rohan Gunaratna will take part in a week-long seminar on terrorism and counter-terrorism organised by the Religious Studies Department at Wellington's Victoria University.

Gunaratna is a self-styled expert on Islamic groups and terrorism. He is still being described as “the former principle (sic) investigator for the United Nations Terrorism Prevention branch” [Sunday Star-Times. 15 August 2004] although Australian journalists have established that no such post has ever existed.

Martin Bright, the home affairs editor of the Observer and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups has described Gunaratna as “the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden”.

Gunaratna’s current project to establish a data base of Asian terrorist groups has been said to blur the line between freedom of academic research and intelligence-gathering for governments.

Gunaratna tends to rely on what he claims are inside contacts within intelligence networks. By their very nature, however, no claims based of these sorts of sources can be independently tested.

To the extent that they can be investigated, there are many instances where they have been found to be questionable. For example:
Gunaratna’s claim that Hambali, said to be the commander of Jemaah Islamiah the group behind the Bali bombings, had visited Australia a dozen times was refuted by Australian Attorney-General DarylWilliams who said there was no evidence of him ever visiting Australia.

Gunaratna’s claims of an Australian connection with an alleged plot to fly planes into the British Houses of Parliament were described be ASIO as “lacking in credibility”.

In March 2003, Gunaranta claimed (without producing evidence) that Australian Gunantanamo Bay prisoner, David Hicks, was “not a member of al-Quaeda” and “never intended to attack a civilian target”. In July, after the US announced Hicks would be tried as a terrorist, again without evidence, Gunaratna alleged that Hicks had undergone “more advanced and more specialised training” with al-Quaeda. “A person does not receive that level of training unless both he and his trainers had some special plans for him”.

The British publisher of Gunaratna’s book, Inside al-Quaeda, took the extraordinary step of issuing a disclaimer as a “Publisher’s note” advising the reader to treat the book’s contents as mere “suggestions”.

In January 2003, Gunaratna told the New Zealand Herald (again without evidence) that “there are a few sympathisers and supporters of various terrorist groups in New Zealand” and claimed to have seen their fundraising leaflets. Now he alleges that there are about a dozen groups linked to terrorist support networks operated in New Zealand, fundraising, recruiting and distributing propaganda. Although this would be against New Zealand law, the latest (April 04) government report about the unit responsible for dealing with such matters, New Zealand’s Financial Intelligence Unit, reveals that they have not identified or had suspicions about any terrorist-related assets in New Zealand, and have not frozen any assets with suspected connections to the financing of terrorism.
Commentary from Dr David Small:

Before he was exposed, Gunaratna’s impact in Australia was to heighten people’s sense of fear and suspicion, particularly in relation to Islamic groups and migrant communities. He was also assisting the justifications for laws that undermined hard-won human rights and civil liberties. Now he is bringing this message to New Zealand with claims that “the terrorist threat to New Zealand is not very different to the threat to Australia”.

New Zealanders have demonstrated through our most recent terrorist experience, the Rainbow Warrior bombing, that we don’t need to be on a heightened state of alert to notice terrorists in our midst, and we don’t need special legislation to catch them.

Gunaratna is cloaking his own personal views in a veneer of objective academic expertise in order to push New Zealand further into the War on Terrorism.

New Zealanders should treat his views with scepticism, continue to be welcoming and trusting of migrant communities, and rely on our common sense about the right balance between actual risk and the value we have long placed place on human rights and civil liberties.

At the very least, Gunaratna should be asked to hand over to the Police all the evidence that he claims to have about terrorist support networks operating in New Zealand.

For further comment, phone David Small on 021-1323739. Dr Small is a human rights advocate, an academic at the University of Canterbury, and an Advisory Board member of the Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa

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On Rohan Gunaratna: the ‘Temple Drum’ of Terrorism Industry

by Sachi Sri Kantha


Introductory Note by Sri Kantha

The phrase ‘Temple drum’ (the English translation of a spicy colloquial phrase Kovil Melam in Eelam Tamil lingo) loses much in translation, unless one bothers to fathom the derisive bite it carries in the Tamil language. Kovil Melam refers to an inferior quality item of local origin - regularly seen ad nauseam, in contrast to a superior quality performer, invited specially as a guest for the occasion. The phrase originated in the realm of men musicians and women dancers of a voluptious variety, who provided daily service to the local temples. On festive occasions, the audience thronged the festival grounds in anticipation to listen to specially invited ranking artistes from Southern India, and they would be irritated and least interested in listening and observing their own ‘Temple Drums’.

In the international world of Intelligence analysts, Sri Lanka-born slick performer Rohan Gunaratna had transformed into the ‘Temple Drum’ of Terrorism Industry. Until recently, he had been a staple contributor to the parochial press in Colombo (the Island newspaper) and Chennai (the Frontline magazine) spewing his intelligence on LTTE activities like a camel which spits when it is irritated. Thus it is heartening to see that in a few cities, investigative journalists have begun to size up the quality of ‘intelligence’ delivered by Gunaratna. The camouflage and cloak of this slick artist had been scruitinised, and Gary Hughes had produced an expose for the Melbourne Age newspaper on July 20th.

One should give the devil his due. The expose by Gary Hughes reveals that Gunaratna has some peculiar talent for (a) social climbing, (b) academic imposturing, (c) name dropping and (d) vita forgery, by puffing his vita with non-existing positions. To appreciate the expose of Gary Hughes, it would be helpful if one first reads how the Temple Drum of Terrorism Industry paraded himself as the Emperor of the Terrorism Analyst. A good example of such a performance was Gunaratna’s interview, which appeared in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine of November 2002. Thus, in this assembled anthology on Rohan Gunaratna, I provide the following publicly available material in series, and follow it with an end note on Sri Lanka’s other con persons who made some wave in the past.

Item 1: A Playboy magazine interview by Rohan Gunaratna [A Conversation with Rohan Gunaratna by Leopold Froehlich; Playboy magazine, November 2002, pp.72-74 & 147-150]

Item 2: The expose of Rohan Gunaratna’s credentials by the Melbourne Age newspaper (July 20, 2003)

Item 3: Rohan Gunaratna’s response to Melbourne Age’s expose in Channel News Asia com of July 21, 2003.

Item 4: Excerpts from the commentary by Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball on Terror Watch, in Newsweek Web exclusive feature, datelined July 9, 2003.

Due to the prominent role played by Rohan Gunaratna as a ‘know-all pundit’ on Pirabhakaran and LTTE, I believe that these items are of interest to the readers of sangam website. About his jaundiced views, I have openly criticized him in my Pirabhakaran Phenomenon series (parts 1-53). I had felt for long that Gunaratna do possess credentials as a certified Intelligence operative (for the Sri Lankan government), but is an academic impostor. Now, I’m somewhat relieved to see that my criticism on Gunaratna is substantiated by other Australian and American observers.

Item 1: Rohan Gunaratna’s Interview in the Playboy magazine

[Note by Sri Kantha: For reasons of convenience, I have tagged the questions with a serial number, to a total of 54 questions.]


Al Queda at Home, Our Home



“Rohan Gunaratna’s interest in Al Qaeda began with a series of visits to Pakistan in 1993. Since then he’s become the world’s foremost expert on Islamist terrorism. The Sri Lankan native has interviewed more than 200 Al Qaeda members and has written six books on armed conflict. From 2000 to 2001 he served as principal investigator for the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch. A consultant on terrorism to governments and corporations, Gunaratna travels extensively, this summer shuttling between the U.S., Singapore and Scotland, where he is a senior research fellow at the University of St.Andrews’ Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. His extraordinary new book, Inside Al Qaeda (Columbia University), demonstrates his profound understanding of terrorist mechanics. A surprise best-seller, it’s already regarded as the definitive work on Al Qaeda. Behind his gentle demeanor and even-handed scholarship, Gunaratna is unsparing in assessing the threat of Al Qaeda. This past summer he visited PLAYBOY’s Chicago offices and painted a disturbing picture of our domestic security in a conversation with Leopold Froehlich.



Playboy – Question 1: The September 11 hijackers lived undetected here for a year and a half. Are there more members in the U.S. now?

Gunaratna: Yes, there is an Al Qaeda presence. Al Qaeda has two types of cells in America. Support cells disseminate propaganda, recruit, raise funds and procure technologies. They’ll buy Osama bin Laden a satellite phone. They’ll find safe houses, rent vehicles and mount initial reconnaissance on future targets. The operational cells are the Mohamed Atta type of cells. When a target has already been identified, they will come. They do final reconnaissance or surveillance and execute the operation – assassination, bombing, suicide attack, whatever. Both types of cells are active. But now that there’s a state of alert in the U.S., most of the cells here are support cells. Operational cells are established before an attack, because operations are the most vulnerable to detection.



Playboy – Question 2: You’ve said you believe Bin Laden is alive in Pakistan. Do you expect him to go public again?

Gunaratna: Yes. It was in his interest to maintain ambiguity immediately after U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan. But now that he’s stabilized himself he’ll make it known that he’s alive and Al Qaeda is alive.



Playboy – Question 3: What are the next Al Qaeda hot spots targeted here?

Gunaratna: Actually, the Midwest and New York-New Jersey are two active areas. But it’s likely that because Al Qaeda knows these locales are being watched they’ll establish a presence in other states also.



Playboy – Question 4: You say in your book that there’s a degree of sympathy with Al Qaeda’s objectives among American Muslims. How much sympathy, and with what specific pursuits?

Gunaratna: American Muslims don’t want to support terrorism, but there is a segment of the Muslim community that has been radicalized and politicized to a point that, although they live here, they would have no problem with witnessing another September 11. They’re angry with the U.S. and some of them are convinced the U.S. must be attacked. This fifth column of Al Qaeda in America is small, but they make it possible for Al Qaeda to operate here. The hijackers knew so much about how to behave in this country. How did they know that?



Playboy – Question 5: We’re told that Atta was well assimilated into American culture. How well does Al Qaeda actually understan this culture?

Gunaratna: They have a significant understanding of Western societies because they have penetrated them for at least 10 years. They have people in the West as their fifth column. Because of that, they know how to blend in.



Playboy – Question 6: Who is the typical Al Qaeda supporter in New Jersey, Michigan or Texas? Is he a doctor? A shopkeeper? Taxi driver?

Gunaratna: We can’t exactly say they are from a particular class. Al Qaeda is integrated vertically and horizontally in the Muslim communities. They have supporters, collaborators, sympathizers and members from all those levels. We know the core leadership usually comes from upper- and middle-class families. Bin Laden is from the richest nonroyal Saudi family. Ayman al Zawahiri, a pediatrician, is from an educated Egyptian family. But most of the membership comes from the lower ranks. The middle Al Qaedas, who are the experts, come from middle class families. They’ve attended universities.



Playboy – Question 7: What’s the appeal of Americans to Al Qaeda?

Gunaratna: U.S. passport holders arouse less suspicion when they cross borders. Retired and active military personnel work for or suppport Al Qaeda. For instance, Ali Mohamed trained Bin Laden’s bodyguards. He was part of an Al Qaeda team that included other retired U.S. military personnel who went to Bosnia to train and arm Muslims.



Playboy – Question 8: How does Al Qaeda work in the States?

Gunaratna: They rely on affiliates for support. Al Qaeda did not establish these organizations, many of which enjoy charitable status; they infiltrated them. Since September 11 the FBI has stepped up surveillance, freezing the funds of some U.S.-based Islamic organizations. The Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, both based in Chicago, are currently being investigated by U.S. authorities for their alleged links with terrorists.



Playboy – Question 9: How did the BIF set up shop here?

Gunaratna: Adel Batterjee formed the Benevolence International Foundation in Florida in 1992. Shortly afterward he moved it to Chicago. Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S.citizen, became the BIF’s American head, a post he continues to hold. Arnaout traveled widely, visiting the Balkans, the Caucasus and Asia, channeling U.S.-generated humanitarian support. Until it was raided by the feds last December, BIF Chicago supported an office in Peshawar, Pakistan. BIF Peshawar funded an orphanage near Kabul in Afghanistan. The patron of the orphanage is a former employee of the Taliban Foreign Ministry, with whom Bin Laden and his family stayed six months after they returned to Afghanistan.



Playboy – Question 10: Do former BIF members still operate in Chicago?

Gunaratna: When the FBI raided the BIF’s Chicago office, the search warrant named a well-known employee of MAK, the Afghan Service Bureau. From 1995 to 1998, another BIF Chicago employee gave radical speeches throughout the U.S. in support of jihads in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Before he left for Pakistan, where he now lives, this man founded another charity, Nasr Trust, also in Chicago. Although BIF’s funds were frozen, its office in Chicago continues to function. BIF raised $3.6 million in 2001.



Playboy – Question 11: That’s pretty amazing.

Gunaratna: The Global Relief Foundation is another Islamist organization that had its funds frozen. The GRF had an employee, also a U.S.citizen of Syrian descent, who was responsible for processing documents for Arab volunteers fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.



Playboy – Question 12: You’ve said Abdullah Azzam had 30 offices here to support the mujahidin in their war against the Soviets. Do these offices still exist?

Gunaratna: They do not exist as Al Qaeda offices or as Afghan relief offices. But there are certain mosques and Islamic institutions in this country that still pledge allegiance to Osama’s ideology. They advance those themes and objectives in a clandestine or deceptive way. They are clandestine even as far as the larger Muslim population is concerned.



Playboy – Question 13: As you’ve said, the executive director of the BIF in Chicago is a Syrian American. What about the Syrian community in Chicago?

Gnaratna: Many Muslims in Chicago support various Islamic charitable organizations without knowing they may be linked to Al Qaeda. I doubt that most people who support the BIF know its political mission. They just don’t know.



Playboy – Question 14: You’ve reported that 20 percent of Muslim charities have been corrupted. How has this been accomplished?

Gunaratna: When Al Qaeda identifies a nongovernmental organization, an Islamic registered charity, for instance, they send one or two of their people to join. Gradually, those people become prominent members of the organization. Eventually they control the funds. They largely work through deception in the U.S., but in the Philippines, for example, they use intimidation. If one man says, ‘We have to be more accountable’, they intimidate him. They will coerce him until he’s scared for his life, for his children. Most of the Al Qaeda-infiltrated charities – most of the front and sympathetic organizations of terrorist groups in the U.S.- are still operating. They work as human rights organizations, humanitarian or cultural organizations, social or educational groups.



Playboy – Question 15: Who contributes to these charities? In 2001, Illinois state tax filings for the BIF cite an $80,000 donation from someone who is listed as unknown and $225,000 from a person identified only as Muhammad. Shouldn’t that arouse suspicion?

Gunaratna: Well, that doesn’t conform to proper administrative and financial regulations, at least in spirit. The U.S. government has belatedly taken action against BIF. But there are several organizations like it. We know of several other terrorist groups operating here.



Playboy – Question 16: You’ve said donors in Saudi Arabia and Kuwat also don’t know where their charitable money is used.

Gunaratna: That’s because they don’t have a proper system. American and other Western institutions have procedures for accountability. Charities account for every cent. They maintain books here, but not in those countries.



Playboy – Question 17: Why have Americans become so vulnerable to attack?

Gunaratna: Americans were lulled into a false sense of security. Their isolationist mentality focused on guarding borders. Not on strategic threats. Sheikh Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America said in January 1999 that ‘extremist Islamists took over 80 percent of the mosques in the U.S.’ He said that the ideology of extremism has been spread to 80 percent of the Muslim population, mostly the youth. Because of the radicalization of some American Muslims by Islamist preachers, and because of the penetration of Muslim diasporas by foreign terrorists, the FBI infiltrated several American Muslim communities. But the prevailing view in law enforcement was that if American Muslims who support or participate in terrorism elsewhere didn’t harm American interests, nobody would act against them. Al Qaeda knew U.S. intelligence was monitoring Muslim communties here, so they moved the September 11 operational team away from Islamic strongholds in New Jersey and Illinois. They built a new network that had no connection with any of the U.S. networks that Bin Laden believed had been compromised by the FBI.



Playboy – Question 18: Should the U.S. government have had an inkling about what was going on?

Gunaratna: Certainly. Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, for example – Bin Laden’s brother-in-law – visited the States. When U.S. immigration detained him in San Franciso in December 1994, they found documents in his luggage that detailed the ‘outline of the institution of jihad’. These papers had titles like ‘The Wisdom of Assassination and Kidnapping’, ‘The Wisdom of Assassinating Priests and Christians’, ‘The Wisdom of Bombing Christian Churches and Places of Worship’. Khalifa was held without bail before he was subsequently extradited to Jordan for allegedly financing the 1994 bombing of a cinema there. He was later tried and acquitted on that charge. As Al Qaeda’s reported chief for Southeast Asia in the Nineties, Khalifa reportedly helped finance a plan to destroy 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific, to crash an explosives-laden aircraft into the Pentagon and to assassinate President Clinton and the Pope in Manila. But until Khalifa was acquitted in Jordan, U.S. intelligence had no knowledge of his role in the plan. After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, intelligence authorities arrested Khalifa in Saudi Arabia and later released him.



Playboy – Question 19: How has Al Qaeda altered their approach since the mid-Nineties?

Gunaratna: The quality of the September 11 operations was markedly different from earlier U.S.attacks. Without exception, the hijackers were handpicked for their willingness to kill and die for Allah. When you compare September 11 with the unsuccessful attempt to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999, Al Qaeda has improved in almost every aspect. Realizing the threat of terrorist infiltration from Canada, with its relaxed immigration policy, the Americans tightened security along the border and instigated measures to protect key public buildings from car bombs. So Al Qaeda got their operatives into the U.S. by commercial airline, carrying correct identity papers and with sound alibis for their presene. Al Qaeda had originally planned the attack for September 9, but because of unknown operational constraints, the attack was postponed.



Playboy – Question 20: Were any future Al Qaeda members trained at the John F.Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina?

Gunaratna: Ali Mohamed was. He was a captain in the Egyptian military who came to the U.S. for advanced training. He received training at the John F.Kennedy Center. He came back again and joined the U.S.Army and attained the rank of sergeant in the Special Forces. He was a member of Al Qaeda. As I pointed out, he trained Bin Laden’s bodyguards. He trained the teams that operated in Somalia, Bosnia and Afghanistan.



Playboy – Question 21: Did the hijackers follow their instructions?

Gunaratna: To the letter. Being advised to keep physically fit and mentally alert, they joined gyms. Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehli went to a health club in Decatur, Georgia. Ziad Jarrah did likewise in Florida, where he took martial arts lessons, including kickboxing and knife fighting. Al Qaeda anticipated that passengers might attack.. So the hijackers were ordered to build body strength. Until a month before the operation, the hijackers had planned to threaten or, if necessary, use knives to gain control of the aircraft. An Al Qaeda group had used a knife to seize an Indian Airlines plane in 1999. Al Qaeda realized that the scheme could be compromised if team members were caught trying to smuggle knives aboard. So they carried box cutters that were less than four inches long, which were permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration. Other than pepper sprays, the box cutters were the only weapons carried by the hijackers.



Playboy – Question 22: How else did they prepare?

Gunaratna: All the cells independently acquired flight deck simulation videos. Atta bought videos and other items from Sporty’s, a pilot store in suburban Cincinnati. Nawaf al-Hazmi also obtained flight deck videos from the same store. Rehearsing was another central precept of Al Qaeda doctrine. Atta and al-Shehhi took a flight-check ride around Decatur in February 2001, and Jarrah did likewise at a flight school in Fort Lauderdale. They repeatedly took the same flight to familiarize themselves with airport security and cockpit access.



Playboy – Question 23: Did all the hijackers come from abroad specifically for the attack?

Gunaratna: No. Al Qaeda recruited and trained Hani Hanjour, a Saudi national who had come to the U.S. in 1996 to study English. In 2001, Hanjour attended pilot-training courses in Arizona and Maryland.



Playboy – Question 24: How did Zacarias Moussaoui’s arrest affect the operation?

Gunaratna: It forced them to move up the schedule. Although Al Qaeda strives to train agents who disclose nothing to captors, they were aware of the danger to the operation. Moussaoui was one of the few suspected terrorists who knew about both the Hamburg and the Kuala Lumpur cells. But the FBI failed to examine his computer before September 11. With the imminent threat of being compromised, Al Qaeda’s cells stepped up final preparations within a week of Moussaoui’s arrest. On August 22, Fayez Ahmed used his Visa card in Florida to get the cash that had been deposited in his Standard Chartered Bank account in the United Arab Emirates the day before. That same day, Jarrah purchased global positioning equipment and schematics for cockpit instruments. From August 25 to August 29, the hijackers got their airline tickets with credit cards or online – except Khalid Almihdhar and Majed Moqed of American Airlines flight 77. Their Visa card didn’t match their mailing address, so they had to drive to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and pay cash for two one-way tickets.



Playboy – Question 25: Good to see the security worked. Did these men know they were going to die?

Gunaratna: Well, Atta sent a Fed Ex package from Florida to Dubai in early September. It’s likely that it contained his farewell message to the head of his Al Qaeda family.



Playboy – Question 26: It sounds like they covered all the bases.

Gunaratna: Al Qaeda also prepared a backup team to attack the World Trade Center, and had two other teams of trained pilots and hijackers poised to strike targets in India, Britain and Australia as well.



Playboy – Question 27: In helping the anti-Soviet jihad, did the CIA help Islamic radicals here? As you point out, Abdullah Azzam came to lecture in America. Did U.S. intelligence sponsor radical lectures in American mosques?

Gunaratna: The Afghan Service Bureau didn’t receive any money from the CIA. Its office got money from the Gulf countries and from Muslim immigrants.



Playboy – Question 28: What about through Pakistani intelligence, the ISI?

Gunaratna: The ISI did give assistance. The CIA gave weapons to the ISI, and the CIA gave millions of dollars to Pakistani intelligence. The ISI did the training. I know this because I’ve spoken to the ISI. I spent a lot of time with them. People say the CIA supported Al Qaeda. But the CIA never did. The CIA gave assistance to ISI. And the ISI gave money to all these groups.



Playboy – Question 29: Has Osama bin Laden’s family really disowned him?

Gunaratna: Absolutely – except for one member, his brother-in-law Khalifa. No one else in the family supports him.



Playboy – Question 30: You said it’s unlikely Al Qaeda could mount a biological or nuclear attack but that it could mount a chemical or a radiological attack. Is that still true?

Gunaratna: Yes. Al Qaeda has tried to acquire chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. But as a terrorist group, it’s difficult to get nuclear and biological material. So it’s likely they will acquire and use chemical or radiological weapons.



Playboy – Question 31: How much did the Afghan war hurt Al Qaeda? How much did the bombings and the U.S. military intervention affect it?

Gunaratna: They completely destroyed Al Qaeda’s infrastructure. Training infrastructure is critical for the continuation of any terrorist conflict, because you have to constantly train members, both ideologically and physically. We know the bombs destroyed the infrastructure. When the quality of the Al Qaeda fighter becomes poor, he is vulnerable to detection. His operational security will be poor, so the efficiency of operations goes down. Also, the bombings have already demoralized Al Qaeda supporters, sympathizers and many of its members.



Playboy – Question 32: Are there currently any native-born Al Qaeda members?

Gunaratna: Yes. We know there are from several interrogation reports and arrests. Even before September 11 we knew from the East Africa bombings that there are Americans in Al Qaeda. We know some of them even trained Bosnian Muslims.



Playboy – Question 33: If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be possible for Americans to infiltrate? If it’s conceivable that John Walker Lindh can become a Taliban member, can’t the FBI recruit infiltrators?
Gunaratna: Yes. But the FBI and the CIA lack creativity. They don’t want to take a risk. When you are working with clandestine agents, sometimes you have to terminate them. They don’t want to dirty their hands. I was a foreign-policy fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. My faculty adviser was Stanfield Turner. I love the man. I respect him because he’s an honest man. But the only disagreement I ever had with him was why he got rid of various clandestine programs when he was director of operations in the CIA. He later realized what he did was a mistake. America lost its eyes and ears.



Playboy – Question 34: Has the FBI or any other intelligence agency infiltrated Al Qaeda?

Gunaratna: They’re trying their best now, and they will.



Playboy – Question 35: You’ve said that you think the French have infiltrated Al Qaeda.

Gunaratna: They have. They have infiltrated Al Qaeda for a long time. The French are good. Of all the Western intelligence agencies, they’re the best on Al Qaeda. Among Arab countries, Jordan and Egypt have the best intelligence.



Playboy – Question 36: In Inside Al Qaeda you write about the lifespans of terrorist groups. How long will Al Qaeda survive?

Gunaratna: It depends on how the U.S. and the international community respond. If you rigorously pursue a group, you can destroy it. I’d say in five years we will be able to destroy Al Qaeda. Five years is average. CIA infiltrated Hezbollah in five years, although that was peripheral infiltration. But now, with so much energy going into counterterrorism, I believe that in the next one or two years there will be good infiltration of these groups. That will enable us to destroy them.



Playboy – Question 37: How long should it take the FBI and CIA to catch up in terms of human intelligence? How long will it take the FBI to get Arabic-speaking agents?

Gunaratna: Since September 11 they have started to recruit immigrants as well as Americans skilled in languages. They hadn’t done that before in sufficient volume.



Playboy – Question 38: How reliable is Abu Zubaydah, who’s now in custody?

Gunaratna: He’ll never tell the truth. I know him. I listened to his communications before he was captured. He will never compromise his organization. Even if he’s cut into small pieces, he won’t. But, also, it’s in the interest of federal agents to say Abu Zubaydah is cooperating. If you say one of the key guys in Al Qaeda is cooperating, it demoralizes others. It drives fear into others: Oh, our leader is exposing us.



Playboy – Question 39: Why has there been so little effective counterpropaganda?

Gunaratna: Americans are clean people. They think black propaganda is something bad. It’s big mistake. The American people themselves killed the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence. They should never have done that. That office would have been central to fighting Al Qaeda. Americans must understand that when you deal with a secret organization, a terrorist group that has no principles, you have to undertake black operations – especially when you face a high threat.



Playboy – Question 40: How long would it take for an OSI-type office to be effective? Could it be done quickly?

Gunaratna: The people who know the threat want to do it. But there is some resistance. In five years you will produce world-class intelligence operatives, because young people have seen the suffering of Americans.



Playboy – Question 41: Considering the presence of Saudis in Al Qaeda, especially in the September 11 operation, is there any connection between terrorist supporters and U.S. financial interests? Quite a few major American corporations have longstanding relationships with Saudi Arabians.

Gunaratna: Well, the Saudi system tacitly aids terrorism in a big way. Naturally, the organizations that work with the Saudi system indirectly, without their knowledge, contribute to this. Think about it: American troops kill three to five Al Qaeda members a week in Afghanistan, but the Saudi system produces may be two dozen Al Qaeda members every week.



Playboy – Question 42: The Sudanese government supposedly offered to turn Osama bin Laden over to the U.S.

Gunaratna: Yes.



Playboy – Question 43: And the feds said no?

Gunaratna: They said no because they didn’t have sufficient evidence to prosecute him. It’s very unfortunate. And, of course, a year before, the Sudanese offered Carlos the Jackal to the French government. And Carlos the Jackal is now in France in custody. Bin Laden was afraid to stay in Sudan after that. He was worried the same thing would happen to him.



Playboy – Question 44: You say that American troops should leave the Arabian peninsula. But aren’t the troops there to protet the Saudi royal family as much as they are to defend American interests? Would the regime be at risk from theocratic forces if the soldiers left?

Gunaratna: The regime will definitely be threatened, but not now. Maybe in five years, if the Saudis don’t do a proper job cleaning up. More than catching the terrorists in Saudi Arabia, you must restructure a system that produces terrorists, that produces youths vulnerable to propaganda and indoctrination. Saudis are becoming sympathizers, supporters, collaborators and members of terrorist groups.



Playboy – Question 45: Has Al Qaeda been successful in bridging the Shia-Sunni divide?

Gunaratna: Yes. To target a common enemy. Al Qaeda has gone beyond the ideological divide, which is unprecedented. In fact, the world’s two most dangerous groups are Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, a Shia group and a Sunni group that now work together.



Playboy – Question 46: Is there any potential for disunity – ideological, factional or political – among al Qaeda?

Gunaratna: As long as Osama bin Laden is alive, there will be unity. When he’s removed, there will be so much infighting. Bin Laden is a good diplomat. He can bring people together and give them a dream to follow, a vision and a mission.



Playboy – Question 47: There are a lot of disenfranchised youths in the Islamic world. How much does demographics – a surfeit of people under the age of 20 – help Al Qaeda?

Gunaratna: The young are most vulnerable to radicalization. Even if they’re educated, they can’t find employment. Or they will be underemployed. These are the people who join Al Qaeda. They want to attack, attack, attack. We see that mentality; Kill the Americans; Death to America. Those kinds of slogans come mostly from young people. In the case of Al Qaeda, the demography will not change in the Middle East.



Playboy – Question 48: Do you see a possibility for a reform movement in the Muslim world?

Gunaratna: The fight against Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations and Islamic radicalism should, essentially, be waged by moderate Muslims, because moderate Muslims are the most threatened. They are in danger of having their values taken away. But they don’t have the willpower or the ability to do it. That’s why the West must work with moderate regimes and people.



Playboy – Question 49: Is there a reform movement that would be able to counter the radical Islamist tendency, a counter-reformation away from the Wahhabi, away from fundamentalism?

Gunaratna: The Saudi royal family is under pressure to change that system now, because they know their system spawns and sustains terrorism. But will they be able to do it? That’s the biggest question. Can the West persuade them? We have not seen signs of their doing it.



Playboy – Question 50: Can the madrassas be changed?

Gunaratna: Egypt is reforming its madrassas in a big way. And Algeria has reformed. Algeria says every madrassa and mosque must be registered. Pakistan has also started to do this.



Playboy – Question 51: Tell us about the encryption systems. Al Qaeda’s e-mails were secure. How did they know the National Security Agency couldn’t break their encryption software?

Gunaratna: I don’t know how Al Qaeda knew. But less than five percent of their communications are decipherable, because they’re using the commercially available Pretty Good Privacy. Al Qaeda had a special school in Afghanistan to train people to use computers, to use encryption. Terrorists have produced many computer viruses, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they continually target European and North American countries. They are waging a war against the information infrastructure. Al Qaeda does this with simple means, buying programs off the shelf.



Playboy – Question 52: What’s your personal impression of Al Qaeda members who you’ve interviewed? Are they wild-eyed fanatics? Are they zealots?

Gunaratna: Actually, there is an A team and a B team. Members of the A team are the highly trained, highly motivated cool guys. They are icemen. The B-team guys are hotheads. Al Qaeda doesn’t care for them. They are expendable assets. The Al Qaeda manual for explosives says you must never give explosives training to a hothead, because he will blow himself up and blow up other Al Qaeda members and supporters. Always pick the right man for the right job. One category is expendable, the other is not.



Playboy – Question 53: But you wouldn’t want to mess with either of them.

Gunaratna: The ones you have to watch out for are the Takfirs, who came out of Egypt in the late Sixties. Takfir believers can deviate from Muslim practices to blend in with infidels. They will drink scotch with you, go to topless bars.



Playboy – Question 54: How safe are we now?

Gunaratna: The U.S. remains a vulnerable society. The threat of terrorism is still high. The only sure way to protect America – short of destroying Al Qaeda’s entire infrastructure abroad, an objective likely to remain unattainable – is for the FBI and other agencies to step up recruitment of agents from migrant Muslim communities. That’s how they can penetrate Al Qaeda’s core leadership.”



Thus ended Gunaratna’s secondary-rank interview in the Playboy magazine. Some of his stated positions were idiosyncratic and tasteless [for e.g; in response to Question 46, where Gunaratna gives a positive spin for Osama bin Laden, leaving one to guess for a moment whether Gunaratna was in fact a closet admirer of Al Qaeda. In addition, Gunaratna’s answer to Question 38 is also perplexing. The question was: ‘How reliable is Abu Zubaydah, who’s now in custody?’ According to Gunaratna: “He’ll never tell the truth. I know him. I listened to his communications before he was captured. He will never compromise his organization.”. Finding out, how did Gunaratna came to “know” him may be of some interest. Gunaratna has also stated that he “listened to” the communications of Abu Zubaydah. In what language, I wonder? If one presumes that Abu Zubaydah would have spoken in Arabic and not in English, I have no evidence that Gunaratna has mastered Arabic.



Gunaratna’s answer to Question 33 is a revelation of his personality. Is it a Freudian slip that he had blurted: “the FBI and the CIA lack creativity. They don’t want to take a risk. When you are working with clandestine agents, sometimes you have to terminate them….” He is a crumb who owes his current status to the ‘crumbs’ he gulped from the FBI and CIA transcripts. Then, he had the temerity to foul-mouth his benefactors. More importantly note the use of his euphemistic verb ‘terminate’ for killing. Who gave him the license to advocate killing? Is his sick mind any different from that of real terrorists?



Willie Nelson’s opposing view on terrorism

The individual who was featured in that particular Playboy issue’s signature item ‘The Interview’ is an authentic American original and has higher name recognition than Gunaratna to the Playboy readers, and the American audience at large. The responses of Willie Nelson, the famed singer-songwriter, to three questions addressed by Gunaratna appear more humanitarian than the moronic answers pouted by the Temple Drum of Terrorism Industry. In his interview with David Sheff [Playboy magazine, November 2002, pp.63-70 & 161], Willie Nelson provided a refreshingly opposing view on terrorism. The distinction between Gunaratna’s highfalutin gibberish, and Willie Nelson’s common-sense charm is apparent to all.



“Playboy: How did September 11 change your life?

Nelson: Like everyone. I watched it and at first thought it was a movie they were promoting. I hear that kids saw that over and over again and didn’t understand that it was a single attack – they thought that it kept happening every time they showed it on TV. I didn’t like the way the news media exploited it. No wonder we’re toughened to things like that. We see it and don’t know it’s real because we are bombarded with images. Every time you see it, it starts looking more and more unreal. How long are we going to exploit it? When are we going to let it become what it was? Are we going to learn lessons from it or keep making the same mistakes?



Playboy: What lessons?

Nelson: Are we going to look at poverty, disproportionate wealth and the horrors in the world or ignore them? The poorest places are the ones where terrorism breeds. If someone wants to kill me bad enough to kill himself at the same time, there has to be a reason. People jump all over you if you ask the question, but if someone in America murdered 10 people or 3000, the first thing we would ask is Why? Nothing can justify the attack, but there might have been something we could do to prevent an attack in the future. I’m not talking about giving in or negotiating with terrorists. I’m talking about looking at the complaints of people in the world who hate us. Is it because our troops are over there? Are we afraid to say that? Anything else? Our policies regarding Israel? I’m not saying we should stop doing anything they don’t like just because they don’t like it, but we should understand why and try to acknowledge that people in other parts of the world have rights, too. That they matter. What arrogance to say it doesn’t matter what they think. It’s not un-American to ask these questions. It’s un-American not to ask them. America really stands for human rights and freedom. Let’s apply it everywhere.



Playboy: What led to your performance at the benefit for September 11 victims at which you sang America the Beautiful?

Nelson: Just got a call and they asked. Of course I would do it. Everybody at the show felt helpless and wanted to do something. If any of us could have gotten ahold of Osama bin Laden, we would have cut him into a million pieces, but we couldn’t get ahold of him. We are still frustrated. We may have gotten a whole lot of people, but not the ones who actually did it. Where is Osama? How do you stop terrorism when your enemy is scattered in 80 countries? At least they stopped pretending that we have won any wars. For a while they were saying it: We won the war, blew Afghanistan sky-high. Big deal. Blew up a lot of dirt. I can’t see that we have won any wars. The information you get from the people in charge is frustrating; they lead you to believe that they don’t know any more than you know. All the alerts – trying to scare the hell out of us – don’t seem much good. I’m not sure what good there is to try to scare the death out of every man, woman and child in this country saying the bogeyman is coming. If they know for sure, that’s one thing. But the more times you hear them say ‘Be alert’, the less alert you get. You can only stay so alert. When you say something and it doesn’t happen, you’ve lost the crowd.”


Now, to the Melbourne Age newspaper’s expose on Rohan Gunaratna’s credential as globe-trotting intelligence analyst. The complete text is reproduced below.



Item 2: Expose on Rohan Gunaratna by Gary Hughes



Analyse this

by Gary Hughes [Melbourne Age/ July 20 2003]

Whenever a comment has been needed about al-Qaeda or terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna has been there to supply it. Who is he? Rohan Gunaratna describes as a spiritually defining moment the day in March 2001 when he learned that the Taliban regime in Kabul had ordered the demolition of the ancient, giant statues of Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

But it was the destruction six months later of an icon of the modern world - New York’s World Trade Towers - that changed his life in a more practical way, launching a stellar new career as a global authority on international terrorism. Gunaratna was the right person in the right place at the right time. The world’s media outlets were looking for experts to interpret how and why the world had changed and the Sri Lanka-born academic was great "talent", providing dire warnings about the threat of Osama bin Laden’s shadowy al-Qaeda network. No one seemed to worry that, until the September 11 attacks, Gunaratna’s acknowledged expertise had been largely confined to the activities of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil Tigers.

In May 2002, as Australian SAS troops were hunting bin Laden’s followers south-east of Kabul, Gunaratna’s book Inside Al Qaeda : Global Network of Terror became an instant bestseller and his reputation grew accordingly, being described as one of the world’s foremost experts on Islamic terrorism.

Gunaratna, 42, had ridden a wave of success driven by the basic laws of supply and demand - there were not enough experts to meet the demand from the media and publishers for intelligence analysts able to provide a catchy quote or headline. And Gunaratna appeared happy to break the mould of the public’s traditional idea of an academic analyst, making at times startling claims based on what he said were his own intelligence "sources" and criticising governments - including Canberra - for not doing enough and being too concerned about civil liberties.

Gunaratna was also seized upon by the Australian media, including newspapers published by Fairfax, and promoted virtually unquestioningly as the leading authority on Islamic terrorism, particularly after the Bali bombing in October last year. But Gunaratna and others who belong to this new breed of media-friendly commentators, who blur the distinction between academic analysis and politics and base research on information from anonymous intelligence sources, are causing concern in some circles.

Members of Australia's intelligence community, and in particular ASIO, are known to be dismissive of many of Gunaratna's more sensational statements. Also under scrutiny are the financial links between analysts who highlight the dangers posed by terrorists and private corporations that stand to make money from an increased atmosphere of fear.

Members of Australia’s intelligence community, and in particular ASIO, are known to be dismissive of many of Gunaratna’s more sensational statements, such as claims that alleged military chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah network and senior al-Qaeda member Hambali had regularly visited Australia. In Britain, The Observer newspaper’s home affairs editor and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups, Martin Bright, describes Gunaratna as "the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden". He says Gunaratna is often used by the British authorities as an expert witness in the prosecution of Islamist terror suspects because they can rely on him to be apocalyptic.

In Australia, journalist and commentator on intelligence issues Brian Toohey is one of the few to have openly questioned Gunaratna’s credentials, describing him as a "self-proclaimed expert" and dismissing some of his claims as "plain silly". He uses as an example a warning by Gunaratna published in November 2001 in the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council Review that terrorist groups might try to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.

David Wright-Neville is senior research fellow at the Centre for Global Terrorism at Monash University and until 2002 was a senior terrorism analyst in the Office of National Assessment. Although he won’t comment directly on Gunaratna, or any other individual analyst, he says that, like in any other profession, the abilities of so- called terrorism experts ranges from the very good down to questionable.

The lack of scrutiny of their abilities, says to Wright-Neville, is partly due to the shortage of analysts and experts available to meet the massive demand for public knowledge. He says problems arise when analysts don’t make it clear when they leave the secure ground of known facts and enter into their own extrapolation when commenting to the media. The results can been headlines based on conjecture rather than reality.

Another factor, says Wright-Neville, is the use of unidentified intelligence or security sources by some analysts. Not all intelligence organisations are equally reliable and, particularly in some south-east Asian countries, can be highly politicised and running agendas for their governments. Individuals in intelligence agencies can selectively leak information to analysts - or to the media - to influence public debate. "The context in which information is obtained is vital," he says. It is also important not to put too much weight on intelligence sources. "Intelligence is an imprecise science," says Wright-Neville.

Gunaratna’s credentials in biographical information published in books, magazines, newspapers and on the internet, are at first glance impressive. His book Inside Al Qaeda states: "Rohan Gunaratna, the author of six books on armed conflict, was called to address the United Nations, the US Congress and the Australian Parliament in the wake of September 11, 2001. He is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St Andrews University, Scotland. Previously, Gunaratna was principal investigator of the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch and he has served as a consultant on terrorism to several governments and corporations."

After The Sunday Age made detailed checks on Gunaratna’s biographical details, he confirmed last week that there was no such position as principal investigator at the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch and he worked there in 2001-02 as a research consultant. He also confirmed that, rather than directly addressing the UN, Congress and the Australian Parliament, he had actually spoken at a seminar organised by the parliamentary library, given evidence to a congressional hearing on terrorism and delivered a research paper to a conference on terrorism organised by the UN’s Department for Disarmament Affairs.

Gunaratna’s first six books on armed conflict were all relatively obscure works on the Tamil Tigers. One of the books, South Asia at Gunpoint, brought him to notice in Australia in October 2000 with claims that a Tamil Tiger support network had shipped a small helicopter and micro-light aircraft to Sri Lanka and that a Tamil Tiger arms smuggling ship had visited Australia in 1993. Although the local Tamil community was outraged, at least one of the allegations was shown to have a basis in fact. An SBS Dateline report telecast that same month tracked down the Newcastle shop owner who had been questioned by ASIO after being approached by an alleged Tamil Tiger sympathiser in 1994 wanting to buy hang gliders and have them shipped to Malaysia. The information appears to have come through Gunaratna’s very close links with Sri Lanka’s intelligence service. Gunaratna worked for the Sri Lanka Government between 1984 and 1994.

The trail of financial support and weapons supplies to the Tamil Tigers took Gunaratna into the wider world of international terrorism, including Afghanistan, where the Tamil Tigers obtained small arms. His research into the Tamil Tigers and their methods also made him an authority on suicide bombers - knowledge that would stand him in good stead following the September 11 suicide attacks in New York and Washington.

In July 2001, he co-authored (with three others) an article called Blowback in Jane’s Intelligence Review, which looked at Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in light of evidence from the then recently completed trials of those behind the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The article was one of the first detailed examinations of bin Laden and the origins of al-Qaeda. It quickly became a point of reference after September 11.

One former Australian intelligence officer says a problem with Gunaratna’s approach is that he tends to look at international terrorism from the perspective of how it relates to the Tamil Tigers, who declared a truce in December 2001 and opened peace negotiations. Gunaratna did much of his work on the Tamil Tigers’ international links while studying in the United States in 1995-96. It was then that he began establishing important friends in the small world of intelligence analysis.

He did a master of arts at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University in 1996 and research at the University of Illinois and University of Maryland. While at Maryland, he worked with Admiral Stansfield Turner, one-time head of US intelligence. While at Notre Dame, he linked up with the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland’s St Andrews University and its massive database on terrorist incidents going back to 1968. He also got to know the centre’s then head, Dr Bruce Hoffman, with whom he has co-authored a yet to be published book on terrorism.

Gunaratna moved to Scotland to complete his doctorate at St Andrews and work as a research fellow at the terrorism and political violence centre. He also got open access to the centre’s large terrorism database, one of just a small handful of such databases scattered around the world. The database is a combination of material gathered by St Andrews and the Rand Corporation, the non-profit US thinktank established by the US Air Force. Now known as the RAND-St Andrews database on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict, it is largely maintained and updated by more than 30 students who comb the internet and newspapers and magazines from around the world for information on terrorist operations.

The database is not the only link between Rand and St Andrews and Rand and Gunaratna. Bruce Hoffman, the founder of the St Andrews centre for terrorism study, is now a vice-president of Rand and chief of its Washington office. And Rand, St Andrews, Gunaratna and Jane’s worked together last year as private advisers to Risk Management Solutions, helping the private American corporation develop a "US terrorism risk model" to sell to insurance companies worried about terrorist strikes. Rand, in turn, is linked to the $US3.5 billion Carlyle Group, which holds stakes in some of the world’s biggest arms and defence corporations, through the former US defence secretary and deputy CIA director Frank Carlucci, who is chairman of the group and a Rand board member.

The Carlyle Group employs former President George Bush as a senior adviser, uses former US Secretary of State James Baker as its senior counsellor and has former British Prime Minister John Major as chairman of its European arm. Earlier this year, it bought a third of QinetiQ, the company floated by Britain’s Ministry of Defence to commercially exploit non-secret security and defence technology. QinteQ has been negotiating with the British Government to buy the soon-to-be-privatised Security, Languages, Intelligence and Photography College, where British spies are trained.

In his biographical details on the site of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, where he is an assistant professor, Gunaratna states one of his past positions was "principal investigator, QinetiQ Project on Terrorist Information Operations". Gunaratna moved to Singapore this year to help establish a regional centre for terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, where he is titled assistant professor. Not surprisingly, the centrepiece of the new research centre is a database on terrorist activities in the Asia-Pacific region.

Gunaratna says his expertise on al-Qaeda comes from interviews with the group’s "penultimate leadership" and rank and file members, hundreds of documents seized after the invasion of Afghanistan and the debriefings of al-Qaeda suspects in more than a dozen countries. It was that kind of information that led him in March to state definitively that Australian David Hicks, who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after his capture in Afghanistan, was "not a member of al-Qaeda", "did not plan to attack civilian targets", "never intended to attack a civilian target" and was a "romantic" not taken seriously by other Taliban fighters.

Eyebrows were raised among fellow intelligence analysts when Gunaratna reversed his position on Hicks two weeks ago, after the US announced the Australian was one of six detainees it had enough evidence against to put before a military tribunal. This time Gunaratna, said Hicks had undergone "more advance and more specialised training" with al-Qaeda, which "had some special plans for him". Gunaratna attributed his change of heart to information gained from "more recent investigations" and given to him by sources he refused to identify. Another person with raised eyebrows was Hicks’ Adelaide lawyer, Frank Camatta, who maintains that Gunaratna could not possibly have had access to transcripts of his client’s interrogations in Guantanamo Bay. "We’d sure like to know who his sources are," says Camatta.

REALITY CHECK

The claim: In his book Inside al-Qaeda and in several interviews, Rohan Gunaratna gives graphic details of how terrorists planned to hijack a British Airways jet at London’s Heathrow Airport on September 11, 2001, and fly it into the British Houses of Parliament. The plot was foiled when aircraft in Britain were grounded immediately after the attack on New York’s twin towers. The source for the information was Indian intelligence interrogations of Mohammed Afroz, a 25-year-old Muslim and suspected member of al-Qaeda, arrested in Mumbai on October 3, 2001. Afroz told interrogators he had been to flying schools in Victoria and Britain and also planned to fly a plane into Melbourne’s Rialto Towers.

The reality: Afroz was released by an Indian court on indefinite bail in April, 2001 after Indian police failed to bring charges. As part of the investigation, Indian intelligence agents flew to Australia in February 2001 to check out his claims. It was reported after his release that New Delhi police believed Mumbai police made up the sensational claims allegedly made by Afroz. ASIO said in its 2002 annual report that none of the allegations made by Afroz that related to Australia could be corroborated and they were assessed "to be lacking in credibility".

The claim: Hambali, the operation commander of the terrorist group behind the Bali bombings, Jemaah Islamiah, and other leaders had visited Australia a dozen times, according to the Australia edition of Rohan Gunaratna’s Inside al-Qaeda.

The reality: Attorney-General Daryl Williams said checks within Australia and overseas had failed to find any record of Hambali having travelled to Australia "under his own name or any known aliases".



Item 3: Rohan Gunaratna’s Response to the expose of Gary Hughes [in Channel News Asia com., July 21, 2003; accessed Aug.8, 2003]

“Post 9/11, it is difficult to imagine a man who has been quoted more often on the subject of terrorism than author and academic Rohan Gunaratna. But yesterday, in a scathing attack, a Melbourne-based newspaper crucified the sources, credibility and motives of the Singapore-based analyst.

Associate Professor Gunaratna was brought to Singapore early this year to establish a programme on political violence and terrorism at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies and to help the Singapore Government in its efforts to battle terrorism. But that very expertise was somewhat mocked in the report in The Age, which quoted a British terrorism writer as saying that the Sri Lanka-born academic was ‘the least reliable of the experts on (Osama) bin Laden’. The report also detailed how Dr.Gunaratna, who authored the best seller Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network for Terror, had been less than accurate on some of his biographical details.

But even more damning was the report’s suggestion that the 42-year-old academic was among a breed of ‘media-friendly commentators who blur the distinction between academic analysis and politics’ and who ‘base research from anonymous intelligence sources’. Contacted last night and e-mailed a copy of the report by Today, Dr.Gunaratna reacted calmly to the broadside that has been launched against him by the Australian newspaper. ‘My policy is not to be driven by praise, nor to be dissuaded by criticism’, said the academic, who admitted that the close ties that he shared with some governments could leave him open to attacks. ‘Although I have wanted to be totally independent, sometimes the type of interaction with governments I’ve had may create the perception otherwise, especially given that governments are trying to stamp out terrorism’, said Dr.Gunaratna, who worked for the Sri Lankan government between 1984 and 1994.

So, has he been used by governments to push their agenda, as suggested in the article? ‘Yes, that is entirely possible,’ came the surprisingly candid reply. ‘I am only human after all.’ However, he was unapologetic about his conviction that academics cannot sit in ‘ivory towers’ and proscribe theory alone. ‘Academicians have have to be more practically oriented’, he said. ‘It would even be good if governments do academic work and academics do government work.’ He was also quick to point out that the questioning of his biographical credentials – The Age said that there was no such position as ‘principal investigator’ in the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch as stated in Dr.Gunaratna’s biography – was a ‘distorted’ one. He said that he was the principal investigator of Project One at the UN Terrorism Branch and that The Age article was just ‘playing with semantics’.

On his use of anonymous sources, Dr.Gunaratna argued that such behaviour was necessary in his field of work. ‘There are some sources that are still active and are very sensitive’. But what about the fact that he had backtracked on David Hicks, an Australian terror detainee in Cuba? After having said in March that Hicks was ‘not a member of Al Qaeda’, Dr.Gunaratna was criticised for changing that view only after the US said that it had found enough information to prosecute the Australian. ‘Yes, my initial assessment of David Hicks was based on information available at the time of custody. But we are dealing with continuously new data and people should not be angry if we change our assessments’, he said.

And Dr.Gunaratna does not plan to respond to the report in any other form, as he holds the view that it has not damaged his reputation in the international arena. ‘I’ve worked for 20 years in this field and one article is not going to have any impact on my standing.’ he said. ‘Terrorists are the worst human rights violators and I will pay the price for any criticism of my work.’”



Item 4: Rohan Gunaratna’s claim contradicted by CIA’s spokesman Bill Harlow [in Newsweek web exclusive, by Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball, datelined July 9, 2003; accessed Aug.8, 2003]

The Kuala Lumpur Summit Redux

“Was master terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed at an Al Qaeda ‘planning’ summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000 that was being secretly monitored by the Malaysian secret services – all under the watchful eyes of CIA?

That surprising claim was made today by Rohan Gunaratna, a widely resepcted academic expert on Al Qaeda who claims to have had access to top-secret U.S.intelligence ‘debriefs’ of captured Al Qaeda terrorists. Gunaratna was an initial witness at a public hearing conducted by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Gunaratna, who said he was specifically reviewed transcripts of the interrogations of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed since his capture in Pakistan last March, testified that Mohammed actually ‘chaired’ the meeting of 12 Al Qaeda principals in which the September 11 plot and other future Al Qaeda attacks were discussed. But agency spokesman Bill Harlow flatly refuted the academic’s testimony today, saying the agency can now say for certain that the alleged 9-11 mastermind wasn’t present. ‘He’s totally incorrect,’ said Harlow about Gunaratna. ‘He got it wrong.’

The issue is far from academic. The CIA has previously acknowledged that it had asked the Malaysian ‘Special Branch’ to monitor the Kuala Lumpur summit and that the agency even received secret photographs of the Al Qaeda terrorists meeting there. (Immediately after the meeting, two of those present, 9-11 hijackers Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al Hazmi, flew from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok and then onto Los Angeles. That information was soon known to the CIA but never passed along to other U.S.-law enforcement and border agencies that could have placed the two men on a terrorist ‘watch list’ and tracked their activities inside the United States.)

If true, Gunaratna’s claims about Mohammed’s presence would make the intelligence failure of the CIA even greater. It would mean the agency literally watched as the 9-11 scheme was hatched – and had photographs of the attack’s mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, doing the plotting.But Harlow said Gunaratna may have simply been confused because of those who was present, a high ranking Al Qaeda operative named Tawfiq bin Attash, had the nickname of ‘Khalled’. And the hijacker, Al-Mihdhar, had the first name Khalid. ‘Let’s hope the rest of the commission’s witnesses do better.’ said Harlow.”


End Note by Sri Kantha


According to this Newsweek web exclusive commentary by Isikoff and Hosenball, Dr.Gunaratna “claims to have had access to top-secret U.S.intelligence debriefs of captured Al Qaeda terrorists.” Then, how come the CIA spokesman contradicts the testimony of the Temple Drum of terrorism industry? Is it unreasonable to assume that either Gunaratna or the CIA spokesman is finagling with truth?

Or could it be that the U.S. intelligence operatives initially fed Dr.Gunaratna with not so-accurate ‘debriefs’ so that he ‘being a media-friendly analyst’ could disperse some misinformation for mutual benefit of both parties? In my thinking, Gunaratna’s cryptic response [‘Yes, that is entirely possible,’ came the surprisingly candid reply. ‘I am only human after all.’] to the question of correspondent of Channel News Asia Com. whether “has he been used by governments to push their agenda, as suggested in the article?”, hides much truth than what has been revealed.

Let me put things in perspective. Whatever Sri Lanka lacks, occasionally it produces charlatans and forgers who make some wave at the international scene. Rohan Gunaratna is not the first one in this game. In 1951, J.R.Jayewardene (then, a young Cabinet minister) made a wave as the ‘benefactor of Japan’ at the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and plodded this nugget laboriously to his Sinhalese audience and local journalists for decades. In reality, his role was a minor one – that of a bucket-carrier to the then U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) - and spewing mud at Andrei Gromyko (1909-1989), the then chief Soviet delegate at the United Nations, in the U.S.-Soviet Cold War games. There were two reasons why Jayewardene was not exposed as a con man. One is that Dulles, the mastermind behind Jayewardene’s podium act had died in the 1950s, before Jayewardene gained power in Sri Lanka. Secondly, the majority of the Japanese (even the politicians, diplomats and journalists) hardly read the English press in which Jayewardene had bragged about his big role as the benefactor of Japan.

In the 1960s, there was one Dr.Emil Savundra, the infamous insurance swindler. He was caught and legally punished in Britain. In 1982, there was a con man Sepala Ekanayake, who hijacked an Alitalia plane in Bangkok, by fooling the airport security personnel and airline passengers with the message that he had bomb strapped to his body. Ekanayake was even successful in receiving 300,000 US dollars for his con act, and when he landed in Colombo received a ‘hero welcome’ from the gullibles for his stupendous feat.

In late 1990s, none other than the current Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga was ‘caught’ for her vita forgery of embellishing her ‘Paris period’ by the vigilant editor of the Sunday Leader. If Chandrika Kumaratunga, like one of her predecessors J.R.Jayewardene, did the vita forgery for impressing her dim-witted local fans, it was left to Rohan Gunaratna to trick the international press and emerge as an academic impostor at the global podia. Isn’t it somewhat ironic that because he was busy browsing with all the ‘intelligence materials’ and posturing as a world-class intelligence analyst, Gunaratna had hardly bothered to take to his heart - an unblemished gem of an intelligent advice offered by Abe Lincoln, which is available in any standard quotation book: ‘You can fool all the people for some time; some people for all the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’

August 12, 2003.
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