Dongri to Dubai (55 page)

Reliance Industries Ltd chief Mukesh Ambani is ranked No. 35, while Lakshmi Mittal is at No. 47. To those who know of Dawood Ibrahim’s might, power, and reach, it is no surprise that he has managed to upstage so many heads of state and business tycoons in the power list. Dawood Ibrahim is more cunning and smarter than most heads of state put together and has the business acumen of several Dhirubhai Ambanis rolled into one. For example, if you examined even one aspect of his business and survival skills, you would be convinced that he thinks as fast as lightning. Mumbai’s Anti-Terrorism Squad chief, Rakesh Maria, explained the fine nuances and intricacies of Dawood’s empire in an exclusive interview with me,

‘When you are declared a global terrorist, survival is difficult. Seven years ago, Pakistan used the opportunity to tighten the screws on him after the global terrorist tag by America. Dawood, of course, knew that was his death knell and soon he would become expendable. But this is where his astuteness came into play. He knew long before anybody else in Pakistan that the country was going to be outrun by fundamentalists and that the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Talibanic elements were busy making inroads into Pakistan’s polity and framework. When terrorists like Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released in exchange for the IC 814 hijacked passengers, were treated with kid-gloves instead of being handed over back to India, he realised that he too had to become integral and indispensable to Pakistan’s scheme of things and that alone would ensure his survival.

‘And the best way to achieve this status was to fund the biggest power brokers in Pakistan which included ISI, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, or its parent organisation Markazud Dawa,’ said Maria.

Dawood thus began offering huge donations to these rogue outfits and fuelling their gargantuan growth. The money donated actually emboldened these organisations’ jehadi activities and changed the dynamics of Pakistan’s politics and the power equations between the ISI and the jehadi organisations.

The Markazud Dawa, which was trying to ostensibly be a legitimate organisation, began using Dawood’s services for international money laundering. For Dawood, cleansing the Markaz funds from his bases in Europe and Southeast Asia was a cakewalk.

Maria adds, ‘Dawood managed to do all these through video piracy, which he managed to remotely choreograph using the hidden cubby holes in the labyrinthine alleys and basements of the Lahore’s Madina Market. These piracy centres sold Bollywood movies to Pakistan’s Bollywood-crazy audiences, who loved to devour Indian cinema in any format.

‘It was a quid pro quo situation. While Dawood managed to strengthen his clout in Pakistan and built a virtually impregnable wall around himself, Lashkar and other such groups became affluent because of his generous donations,’ Maria said.

Until the Rand Corporation declared in March 2009 that film piracy was funding Islamic terrorism across the world, and that the Dawood Ibrahim syndicate was the biggest player in South Asia, the Indian enforcement agencies always believed that drug trafficking and weapon smuggling were bolstering the size of the terrorists’ coffers.

‘The piracy industry in India is 1,500 crore rupees and much of it goes into funding terror,’ said Moser Baer India Chief Executive Harish Dayani during the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conference in Panaji in 2010. A cabinet minister from Maharashtra, meanwhile, pegged the figure at 4,000 crore rupees.

Dawood through his well-oiled network in Dubai and Pakistan has managed to generate a massive turnover only through film piracy. According to a dossier accessed from the CBI Special Task Force, ‘The D-Company was readily able to transition to film piracy through its well-established hold and influence in the Bollywood movie industry. Beginning with humble King’s Video, the D-company’s film piracy business became a business empire in itself, a very profitable one. The syndicate’s Al-Mansoor and SADAF brands acquired extraordinary market power in the distribution of pirated films throughout the South Asia region and also spread to European and American markets. Still, SADAF’s biggest exports were to India, which, due to lax anti-piracy enforcement on the part of Indian authorities, remained an open channel.’

Bollywood and Hollywood products duplicated at SADAF’s plant were readily smuggled into India via Nepal. The D Company gained control of the SADAF Trading Company based in Karachi, which allowed the gang to better organise distribution in Pakistan and, more important, acquire the infrastructure to manufacture pirated movies. Indian authorities had been aware of D-Company’s film piracy operations in Pakistan since the nineties but were practically powerless to intervene. Only after 2005, when US Customs seized a large shipment of SADAF brand counterfeit discs in Virginia, did Pakistani authorities, under a threat of trade sanctions, begin raiding D-Company’s duplicating facilities in Dubai and Karachi.

Piracy funds generated through such massive operations were diverted for funding of jehadi activities. Millions of dollars that went into the coffers of these radical organisations made Dawood their financial artery. There was no way that they could allow any government or a politician to extradite their golden goose and cripple them financially.

Ironically, Dawood himself is a Konkani Muslim who believes in Sunni Islam and does not adhere to the Wahabi idealogy. Tiger Memon who triggered the serial blasts in Mumbai in 1993, on the other hand, keeps shuttling to various Pakistani cities, like Muzaffarabad and Jalalabad, talking about jehad and exhorting the youth of PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) to fight for the Kashmir cause. Dawood does no such thing. Dawood is not even a practising Muslim.

It was easier for him to buy his freedom by donating funds to these organisations and remain invincible and unassailable.

‘So Dawood is not doling out funds to these fundamentalist organisations out of his religious zeal or jehadi fervour but he is doing it for his own vested interests of survival and endless clout,’ Maria explains.

In India, he used the Mumbai police and influential politicians, while he is using the jehadi elements of Pakistan for his survival.

It appears for Dawood that the show should never stop, even if the players change.

Epilogue

T
he sprawling compound was completely quiet, the silence broken only by footfalls of the patrolling guards. Boots crunched on gravel as they strolled along the high-walled perimeter and inside it, their hands resting casually on the assault rifles slung over their shoulders. It seemed just like any other night.

This was the hiding place of Osama bin Laden in Waziristan Haveli, literally meaning a ‘mansion in Waziristan’, located at the end of a dirt road in Abbottabad, Pakistan, just off a major highway. Not even a mile away lay the Pakistan Military Academy in Bilal Town, the suburbs of which hosted retired military officers. The mansion was like a mini fortress with 12 x 18 foot high walls, no telephone to prevent any signal being traced, and with guards patrolling 24x7.

Bin Laden was not hiding in some obscure cave in Afghanistan then, he was right here in Pakistan under the nose of the Pakistani military despite Pakistan’s vehement denials. His location was revealed after the CIA tracked down one of the Al Qaeda chief’s trusted couriers. After a long debate, US President Barack Obama gave his approval to invade the mansion and kill Osama if need be even though Bin Laden was never actually seen in the compound. And so, at 1 am on the night of 2 May 2011, a team of US Navy SEAL commandoes landed from two helicopters to execute the operation with the code name Operation Neptune Spear.

The objective of the mission was simple and unambiguous. Storm the mansion, remove all perceived threats, eliminate public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden, then scour the compound to retrieve any and all important documents.

The commandoes had all the practice they could possibly get. In preparation for the mission, the CIA had built a replica of the mansion, where the commandoes had spent days practising and maneouvering through the maze of rooms of the three-storey building. They were on edge, and were ready to carry out what would definitely be the most important mission of their lives. The dangers were many, as not only was the operation to be carried out so close to a military base and the target was the most wanted man in the world, but the Pakistan government had been kept completely in the dark about the entire mission. So, if anything went wrong, the commandoes knew they would probably not make it out alive.

The stage was set. A couple of US Navy SEALs planted the explosives on a wall, and waited for the right moment. It was not long in coming.

Precisely at 1 am, the US commandoes breached the boundary wall. The deafening explosion took out a few guards nearby, who fell down stunned, and it dawned on the others that the unthinkable had happened: the safe house had outlasted its safety. The guards immediately began firing at the commandoes, who had, however, come armed with heavy firepower. All guards on the outside were quickly overpowered, and the fight moved into the building with the Navy SEALs team hardly stopping for breath.

The next gun battle ensued inside the building on the first floor, where two adult males lived. They were ready for the onslaught, but gave way under the relentless determination of the team. One of them even tried to use a woman as a human shield, resulting in her death as well.

The commandoes fought their way to the second and third floors where Bin Laden’s family used to live. One by one, the family members were all overpowered, and Bin Laden was shot dead. One of his adult sons perished in the battle, so did two couriers and the unfortunate woman.

The intensive training in the replica mansion had prepared the commandoes well. The entire firefight was over in just a few minutes. The men then spent the next few minutes scouring the headquarters, gathering any computers and documents they could find.

The only glitch in the well-oiled plan was that one of the helicopters reportedly failed due to a mechanical failure. So, the commandoes loaded Bin Laden’s body into the other one, along with all the retrieved items, and left behind a smoking compound, flames licking at the building, a safe house that ultimately could not keep the terrorist safe.

Earlier, the CIA had devised another plan, one where the compound would be bombed with a dozen 2000-lb pound bombs dropped from two B2 stealth bombers. However, the drawback was that in such an event, it would have been impossible to actually determine if Bin Laden was indeed among the dead, and eventually, it was dropped for the far more risky, but ultimately successful Operation Neptune Spear.

Later, it was confirmed that the body recovered by the US Navy SEALs commandoes was indeed that of Bin Laden. A DNA test was carried out, and his DNA matched that of his sister, who had died of cancer earlier in Boston, and whose brain was taken into custody and preserved for that very reason, that some day, it would aid in identifying the dreaded terrorist.

After the Raymond Allen Davis incident in early 2011, the ties between the United States and Pakistan had already become strained. The killing of Bin Laden by the CIA, sanctioned by the US, on Pakistan soil and without any knowledge of Pakistani authorities, served to further alienate the two from each other. The world was now pointing fingers at Pakistan and the ISI because contrary to Pakistan’s claim that Osama bin Laden was not on its soil but was in fact hiding in Afghanistan. Operation Neptune Spear proved otherwise. This in turn implied one of two things, either that the Pakistani authorities there had no idea about the fact, something that could be extremely embarrassing for the government or that the ISI knew Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and had chosen to turn a blind eye, or worse, kept him as a guest. For a country that received billions of dollars in aid from the US, this was a precarious situation to be in.

Either way, the then ISI’s Director General Ahmad Shuja Pasha found himself in a difficult situation on 2 May. Not only had he to contend with the bold and audacious operation of the CIA, he now had a liability on his hands—Dawood Ibrahim, whom the ISI itself had welcomed into the country. The brazen killing of Bin Laden the CIA carried out right under Pasha’s nose was proof that Dawood too could be targeted and just as easily bumped off as Bin Laden.

Dawood himself had yet another worry on his mind. He had been welcomed into Pakistan by the ISI, and was well settled in his home in Karachi. But the local mafia had always been hostile toward him. If the CIA could take out Bin Laden so easily, how would long would it be before the local gangs were emboldened enough to attack him? But Dawood need not have worried. After Dubai, Karachi had become his second home; the ISI and the Pakistan administration had taken pains to ensure that he felt completely at home. They would never let him be captured, let alone killed. He was far too valuable an asset to them to neglect.

The ISI set about strategising how to get the don safely out of their country without falling into the US’s hands. Had it been anyone else, the ISI would simply have sent them away and hid them somewhere in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) or in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). But these places had caves as hideouts, and here, they had a thoroughly urban man on their hands who used the latest technology and was used to a life of luxury and opulence, someone whom they simply could not send to hide in caves in a remote corner of the country. Something else would have to be done.

And something else was indeed done to ensure the don’s safety. It would have to be either Jeddah or Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, the ISI decided. If executed well, the plan was foolproof. Dawood would be out of the country and out of the US’s clutches, and as India did not have an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, out of India’s grasp too.