China’s mid-air terror trail leads to Pakistan
Praveen Swami, The Hindu
March 22, 2008
http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/22/stories/2008032254581200.htm

Introduction: Terrorists on board Urumqi-Beijing flight used Pakistani passports

* Explosive-actuated incendiary devices increasingly used by terrorists

* Chemicals needed for their manufacture can be easily purchased

Investigations into the attempted mid-air bombing of a Chinese airliner on March 7 has thrown up evidence that a Pakistan-based Islamist terror group may have aided its perpetrators.

Wire service reports citing Chinese civil aviation sources say the two terrorists who attempted to blow up the China Southern flight CZ6901 from Urumqi to Beijing carried Pakistani passports, although their nationality still remains undetermined. A third member of the cell, believed to be a Pakistani national, is reported to have escaped.

Legitimate Pakistani passports have long been used to facilitate transnational terror operations targeting India. Operatives of Pakistan-based Islamist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba often use legal passports to fly into Bangladesh or Nepal, knowing it is easy — and safe — to cross their extensive and under-policed land borders with India.

Several members of the Lashkar cell which executed the 2006 attack on the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for example, were found to have possessed Pakistani passports. Mafioso-turned-terrorist Aftab Ansari operated out of Dubai using a Pakistani travel document, J 872142, which he later told investigators was obtained for him by the Lashkar.

Chinese officials say a woman, whose identity has still not been made public, had smuggled two soft-drink cans filled with gasoline on to the flight. She had intended to ignite the fuel in the Boeing 757 jet’s restroom, but lost her nerve at the last moment and was overpowered by crew. Flight CZ6901 was able to make a safe emergency landing at Lanzhou.

Although some media commentators have argued that the use of gasoline discredits Chinese claims that trained terrorists carried out the attack, aviation experts say the plot in fact demonstrated considerable sophistication. “Airport security staff tend to look for guns and bombs,” one Central Industrial Security Force expert told The Hindu, “not at what’s inside sealed soft-drink cans.”

Noting that the terrorist would have locked the restroom’s doors before lighting the fuel inside the cans, the official said “the crew would have had little chance of putting out the blaze once it began.” Fires spread with great speed inside the pressurised cabins on aircraft, and have claimed hundreds of lives in past accidents.

Interestingly, explosive-actuated incendiary devices have been increasingly used by terrorists, since the chemicals needed for their manufacture — be it gasoline, iron oxide or aluminium powder — can be easily purchased. Explosive-actuated incendiary bombs were used in London and Glasgow last year, as well as in the lethal attack on the New Delhi-Lahore Samjhauta Express.

Chinese authorities believe the bombing was attempted by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), one of two major terror groups operating in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Both groups have been increasingly active in the build-up to the Olympic Games. Two terrorists were killed and 15 arrested during raids on a secret explosives facility in Urumqi in January.

Founded in 1993 by Muhammad Tuhir and Abdu Rehman, both residents of Hotan in Xinjiang, ETIM became a major force towards the end of that decade. Operating under the leadership of Afghanistan-based Hasan Mahsum, ETIM carried out a string of assassinations and bombings which led to its designation as an international terrorist group by the United Nations in 2002.

Xinjiang has also seen a succession of terror strikes executed by the East Turkestan Liberation Organisation (ETLO), which like ETIM operated under the patronage of the Taliban. Founded by Muhametemin Hazret in Turkey, the organisation is believed to have carried out several assassinations, including the June 29, 2002, murder of Chinese diplomat Wang Jianping in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

During the summer of 2000, ETLO terrorists killed several bureaucrats and policemen in Kyrgyzstan’s Kizilsu Autonomous Prefecture and adjoining Kazakhstan. ETLO members also participated in earlier strikes in Kyrgyzstan, including a series of bombings in the Oshskaya region in the summer of 1998.

According to Chinese investigators, much of ETIM and ETLO’s funding comes from Pakistan and West Asia-based Islamists, as well as narcotics and weapons trafficking. Both organisations ran camps around Afghanistan’s Khost area until the destruction of the Taliban regime after Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 strikes on New York and Washington.