Face-off
Dawood recreates himself

Dawood Ibrahim, the most wanted man (read terrorist) in India—and in much of the West, including the US—might be undergoing plastic surgery, courtesy the Pakistani ISI

By Ravindra Dubey

Subcontinental terrorism might be in for a much-wanted change. Following the ongoing conviction process for the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993, the pressure on terrorists has been ratcheted up. India's most wanted enemy, numero uno underworld don Dawood Sheikh Ibrahim Kaskar, better known as Dawood Ibrahim, has turned into a harassed, perturbed man. There is huge pressure on him from the unforgiving international opposition to terrorism.

In fact, the man once known to have had the Dubai authorities in the palm of his hand had begun running from pillar to post when, in 2003, the US declared him a “global terrorist” in connection with the supply of arms to organisations like the Laskhar-e-Taiba and al-Qaida. The US had also issued an appeal, pretty much followed the world over except in Pakistan, that his assets and bank accounts be frozen. Not much later, the UN, too, backed the US demand.

To make matters worse for him, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte recently demanded that terrorist command and control centres “be attacked”, and that, specifically, they be “smoked out” of Waziristan in Pakistan. (The US is convinced that al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is in hiding in Waziristan.) Negroponte's statement has increased pressure on Pakistani President General Parvez Musharraf to curb Dawood’s activities, since Dawood’s connection with the al-Qaida is an established fact. Musharraf has lately been behaving uncharacteristically defensively in the face of these demands, saying that the world should visit Pakistan to witness at first hand the good job that the country is ostensibly doing fighting terrorists, but the world seems unwilling to relent.

While realpolitik played itself out, Dawood openly mocked the Bush Administration in July 2006 when marrying off his daughter to the son of former Pakistani cricketer, Javed Miandad. With Bush known for remembering personal slights, this was a rotten move.

The question now is: With international reproach increasing, what recourses remain now open to Dawood and Pakistan government?

If Dawood chooses to alter his appearance with the help of plastic surgery, and if Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence provides him with a new identity, then some of his problems will be solved. The Research and Analysis Wing and the Intelligence Bureau believe that this is the path that Dawood is most likely to take. But even given this reinvention of identity, Dawood cannot live on in Islamabad.

There are reports that say that he has already, in fact, altered his appearance and image, even if nominally, through plastic surgery. Intelligence says that he has been frequently visiting a small town outside Johannesburg as a smalltime Pakistani trader. He has also been seen in Russia, probably to find partners for his trade among the Krasnaya Bratva, the Russian mafia, who share Dawood’s predilection for drugs, gun smuggling and extortion. Whenever he is said to have flown to Moscow, his destinations have actually been Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and some outlaw areas of western Russia. He is said to be part of a global Red Mafia effort to create a Vorovski Mir (Thieves’ World).

Indian intelligence sources say that Dawood moves around with an army of plainclothes bodyguards.