In January 2018, a special cell of the Delhi Police arrested Bilal Ahmed Kawa at the Delhi airport. Kawa was accused of being part of the December 22, 2000 attack on the Red Fort in Delhi. The pre-dawn attack, a month ahead of the Republic Day celebration, shook the security infrastructure in the country as it proved that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) had acquired the ability to launch attacks right in the heart of India. Kawa played just a small part of that attack. According to Indian law enforcement agencies, the operation was firmed up by the top leadership of the LeT, which included Abdul Rehman Makki, the deputy Amir and head of political affairs of the terrorist outfit and its parent organisation, Jamat ud Dawa (JuD).
Makki, a long-time aide of LeT Amir Hafiz Saeed, has been of great operational significance for the organisation. Apart from being a member of the top family of the JuD/LeT (he is Saeed’s brother-in-law), Makki has served as the member of the Shura and a member of the JuD’s central and proselytising teams. His main skill lies in raising funds for the LeT’s operations.
The LeT first appeared in the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s. In the initial decade, its focus was limited to Jammu and Kashmir. The Red Fort attack, however, changed the threat perception that the LeT posed. Ever since, India has blamed several attacks, both inside Kashmir and in the rest of the country, on Makki.
The list includes the 26/11 Mumbai attacks; the attack on the Rampur CRPF Camp on January 1, 2008; the Karan Nagar attack on February 12-13, 2018; the Khanpora attack on May 30, 2018 in Baramulla; the Srinagar attack on June 14, 2018; and the Gurez attack on August 7, 2018.
India accuses Makki of being involved in raising funds and radicalising and recruiting young men to attack India, particularly Jammu & Kashmir. The long list of the anti-India attacks prompted India and the U.S. to declare him as a terrorist.
While the heat has been increased on Hafiz Saeed, who is a UN-proscribed terrorist, Makki is not on the global list of terrorists. India and the U.S. jointly proposed, on June 1, to list Makki under the UN Security Council’s Al-Qaeda and ISIL Sanctions Committee, also known as the UNSC 1267 Committee.
Sources disclosed that the proposal to list Makki under the UN Security Council sanctions regime was circulated to all members of the Council’s 1267 Committee under a “no-objection procedure” till June 16. At the last moment, China placed a “technical hold” on the proposal that nixed the India-U.S. plan to list Makki as a global terrorist. Designating Makki as a global terrorist would have frozen all his assets that could be targeted more effectively by the law enforcement authorities of the most powerful countries in the UN.
Names galore
According to the U.S. Rewards for Justice programme, Makki is known by multiple names — Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki; Hafaz Abdul Rahman Maki; Abdulrahman Makki; Hafiz Abdul Rehman and carries a price of $2 million. The American programme says Makki has played a role in the past in raising funds for terror strikes by the LeT.
Makki has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. authorities for a long time. On November 4, 2010, the U.S. Department of Treasury listed him as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ under Executive order 13224. The order curtailed Makki’s ability to access American resources.
Though global action against Hafiz Saeed was achieved with comparative ease, the lack of consensus among the permanent members of the UNSC prevented Makki’s inclusion in the 1267 list. India has blamed China and said that its lack of support in listing Makki shows its “double standards on combating terrorism”.
In 2020, an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan indicted Makki for terror financing and sent him to jail. But another court suspended the sentence and asked him to pay ₹50,000 instead. Hafiz Saeed was listed a global terrorist under the 1267 list soon after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. But Makki who is effectively the leader of the LeT — as Saeed serves a 32-year jail term — is yet to feel the weight of the international order.
