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Afghanistan: Enduring
terrorism
By B Raman
The
Afghan authorities have reportedly attributed the
suicide car bomb explosion against a bus carrying
members of the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in Kabul on June 7 to Pakistani terrorists. Four
German members of the force were killed and many others
injured when a car filled with explosives dashed against
the ISAF bus.
While German officials have
expressed suspicion that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
might have been involved, officials of the security
agencies of the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul have
ruled out the involvement of either al-Qaeda or the
Taliban and have pointed their finger of suspicion at
terrorists belonging to the Pakistani organizations
which are members of bin Laden's International Islamic
Front (IIF).
Five Pakistani terrorist
organizations are members of the IIF - the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which has a new international wing
called the HUM-Al Alami, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami ,
the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Sunni
extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ). The LEJ's activities
in the past were mainly confined to Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Before September 11, it actively collaborated
with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their fighting against
the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan and in the massacre
of the Shi'ites (Hazaras) in central Afghanistan.
The other four organizations were indulged in
terrorism in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and India, and in
helping terrorist organizations in Chechnya and Dagestan
in Russia and in Southeast Asia. They were also actively
involved in assisting the Taliban and al-Qaeda against
the Northern Alliance.
These Pakistani
organizations suffered heavy casualties in the military
operations of the international coalition led by the US
in Afghan territory after October 7, 2001, and their
survivors, along with those of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and
other constituents of the IIF, took shelter in Pakistan.
Initially, they took sanctuary in the North West
Frontier Province (NWFP), Balochistan and the
Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Subsequently, they spread out to Karachi,
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas (Gilgit
and Baltistan).
The survivors of the Pakistani
organizations played an active role in the kidnapping
and murder of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist, and
in other terrorist incidents in Pakistani directed
against Westerners, Pakistani Shi'ites and Christians.
They also stepped up their acts of terrorism in Jammu
and Kashmir (J&K) in India.
Under US
pressure, Pakistani security agencies stepped up action
against them in Karachi, arresting a number of their
leaders and cadres, who are now undergoing trial for
their involvement in last year's acts of terrorism in
Karachi. Those who escaped arrest in Karachi have gone
back to the NWFP, which is now ruled by the pro-Taliban
and pro-bin Laden coalition of religious fundamentalist
parties called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and have been
helping Taliban and al-Qaeda elements operating against
the troops of the international coalition in Afghan
territory. They have also been joined by the remnants of
the Hizb-e-Islami (HEI) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
In recent months, there have been a number of
hit-and-run raids and indiscriminate rocket attacks on
Afghan, American and other Western troops by these
elements operating from Pakistani territory. The
suggestion of the local commanders of the American
troops that they should be allowed to exercise the right
of hot pursuit against these elements so that they could
destroy their hideouts in adjoining Pakistani territory
has reportedly been rejected by the Pentagon and the US
State Department due to fears that this could
destabilize the regime of President General Pervez
Musharraf.
While the government of Musharraf has
been collaborating with the US intelligence agencies in
neutralizing the remnants of al-Qaeda operating from
Pakistani territory, it has avoided taking action
against the remnants of the Taliban, the HEI, and the
Pakistani components of the IIF now based in the NWFP.
It has been using them to keep up pressure against India
in J&K and to retrieve the ground lost by Pakistan
in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan after September 11.
During his recent visit to Islamabad, Karzai
reportedly handed over to Pakistani authorities a list
of Taliban leaders now operating from Pakistan and
sought Islamabad's assistance in arresting and bringing
them to trial. No action has been taken on this by
Pakistan, just as it has not taken any action against 20
terrorist leaders based in Pakistan who have been
coordinating terrorist activities in Indian territory.
Repeated requests by India in this connection and
red-corner notices issued by Interpol for their arrest
have been ignored by the Musharraf government.
US intelligence agencies, which now have a
strong presence in Pakistani territory, are aware of the
presence of these elements in Pakistani territory and
their activities against Indian targets, military as
well as civilian, in J&K and other parts of India
and against the Afghan and Western troops in Afghanistan
from their sanctuaries in the NWFP. They are, however,
giving priority to the neutralization of al-Qaeda
remnants, including bin Laden and his No 2, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, who still have a capability for operations
against US interests in other countries of the world and
even in the US. As long as Pakistan has been
satisfactorily cooperating with them against al-Qaeda,
the US agents have turned a blind eye to its avoidance
of action against the Taliban, the HEI and the Pakistani
members of the IIF operating from the areas near the
Afghan border lest too much pressure on Musharraf weaken
his position in the Pakistan army.
In using
these elements for achieving its strategic objectives,
Pakistan has been following a two-pronged approach. Its
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) continues to be
directly involved in assisting these elements for their
operations against Indian targets. For their operations
in Afghan territory, the ISI has been avoiding direct
involvement. Instead, assistance and guidance are being
provided by a group of retired officers of Pakistan's
military-intelligence establishment, such as
Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul and Lieutenant-General
Javed Nasir, both of whom headed the ISI in the late
1980s and the early 1990s.
Hamid Gul and Nasir
have been attending rallies organized by these
organizations in different parts of Pakistan to protest
against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and to
collect funds to assist the families of the members of
these organizations, who, according to them, died in
operations against the US troops in Iraq. Remnants of
Iraq's Ba'ath Party and stragglers from the defeated
Iraqi army have started making their way to the NWFP and
the FATA, where joint meetings attended by them and
representatives of the IIF, including al-Qaeda, have
reportedly been held to work out a joint strategy for
bleeding American and other Western troops in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The attack on the Germans in Kabul
by the Pakistani terrorists, the stepped-up activities
by the Taliban, the HEI and al-Qaeda in southern and
eastern Afghanistan and the sporadic attacks on American
troops in Iraq are an outcome of this joint strategy.
After the attack on the German troops in Kabul,
Reuters reported as follows on a joint media briefing
held by Karzai and his Interior Minister, Ali Ahmed
Jalali: "I am not worried about the resurgence of the
Taliban," Karzai told a news briefing. "The Taliban
movement as a movement is finished, is gone. Are we
concerned about terroristic activities of the kind that
occur at the borders or inside Afghanistan, of the kind
that happened the day before yesterday? Yes." Interior
Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali was more specific. "The one
thing we learned so far is that the terrorists and
anti-government elements cannot stay for long inside the
country so they take refuge in these areas along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border," he told the same briefing.
"We hope that Pakistan security forces who are also
committed to fight terrorism will intensify their
activities to go after these terrorist centers including
training areas, staging areas and also areas where some
of their leaders are residing." Karzai said that the
main threat to security was not from Afghans, but
foreigners. "We know he is not from Afghanistan," he
said, referring to the car bomber who blew up the bus
carrying German peacekeepers.
The incident in
Kabul came a few days after a major clash between the
Afghan security forces and some remnants of the Taliban
in southern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. The
Afghan authorities claimed to have killed about 40
Taliban cadres, while losing six of their own security
forces. While admitting that its members were involved
in the clash, the Taliban has at the same time claimed
that only eight of its members were killed and that the
remaining were innocent civilians who, according to
them, were killed by the Afghan security forces. After
the incident, Afghan officials carried 22 of the dead
bodies to the Pakistani border and threw them into
Pakistani territory to make the point that they were
Pakistani and not Afghan nationals.
It does not
stand to reason that Musharraf should refrain from
putting down such activities from Pakistani territory a
fortnight before his forthcoming visit to Camp David for
talks with President George W Bush. Does it indicate
that his control over the military-intelligence
establishment is not as effective as it is believed to
be? It is difficult to answer this question at present.
Whatever the truth, it should be a matter of
great concern to the US and other members of the
international coalition. If he is consciously allowing
such activities from Pakistani territory, it shows him
as engaging in duplicity and as an unreliable ally. If
he is unable to prevent such activities, it should give
cause for concern about his ability to prevent
Pakistan's weapons of mass destruction from finding
their way into the hands of terrorists for ultimate use
against the US.
B Raman is Additional
Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of
India, and presently director, Institute For Topical
Studies, Chennai; former member of the National Security
Advisory Board of the Government of India. E-Mail:
corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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