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COMMENT ON KASHMIR
Al-Qaeda empire in
Pakistan
By B Raman
Pakistan-based pan-Islamic terrorist
organizations, which are allied with Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda in his International Islamic Front (IIF), have
been consistent in the pursuit of their long-term
strategy directed against India. They look upon Jammu
and Kashmir (J&K) as the gateway to India and
repeatedly underline that the "liberation" of J&K
would be only the first stage of their jihad against
India. According to them, the second stage would be the
"liberation" of Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Junagadh
in Gujarat, which they look upon as rightly belonging to
Pakistan, and the third and final stage would be the
"liberation" of the Muslims in the rest of India as a
prelude to the formation of an Islamic caliphate in
South Asia.
All of these organizations project
their jihad as directed not only against the Indian
state, but also against the Hindu religion and against
what they describe as the corrupting influence of
Hinduism on Islam, not only in India, but also in the
Sindh and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan and in Bali
in Indonesia. It is as part of their jihad against
Hinduism that they have been attacking Hindu places of
worship and Hindu pilgrims, not only in J&K, as one
saw again in Jammu on November 24, in Hyderabad a few
days before that and in Gandhinagar in Gujarat in the
last week of September.
The most virulent and
the most active of these organizations is the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), whose headquarters used to be at
Muridke, near Lahore, in Pakistan. It has been
responsible for most of the suicide attacks in India
since it joined bin Laden's IIF shortly after its
formation in 1998. Before it joined the IIF, it did not
believe in suicide terrorism.
After the attack
on the Indian parliament on December 13, 2001, the
United States, which had designated the LeT and the
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), another pan-Islamic terrorist
organization allied with al-Qaeda in the IIF, as foreign
terrorist organizations under a 1996 law, exercised
pressure on the military regime in Pakistan to act
against the Pakistani pan-Islamic organizations allied
with al-Qaeda in the IIF.
In response to this
pressure, President General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's
military dictator, ostensibly banned on January 15,
2002, the LeT, the JeM and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ),
arrested many of their leaders and administrative cadres
and imposed restrictions on their open fund collection
drive in Pakistani territory. However, he did not ban
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), which was declared by
the US as a foreign terrorist organization as early as
October 1997 and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI),
both of which have a large number of trained cadres
operating not only in J&K, but also in Bangladesh,
in the Arakan area of Myanmar, the southern Philippines,
the Central Asian republics and Chechnya in Russia.
The Pakistani authorities, while briefing the
media at that time, had said that another order banning
the HuM and the HuJI would follow. This has not happened
so far. This reluctance to ban these organizations is
attributable to the large following that they have in
the lower and middle ranks of the Pakistani army.
Among those ordered to be arrested by Musharraf
under US pressure were Professor Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed
of the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad (MDI), the political wing
of the LeT, and Maulana Masooid Azhar, the head of the
JeM. But he did not order the arrest of Maulana Fazlur
Rahman Khalil, the head of the HuM, who was one of the
signatories of bin Laden's first fatwa of 1998
against the US and Israel, and Qari Saifullah Akhtar,
the head of the HuJI.
Many of the arrested
cadres of the LeT and the JeM were subsequently released
on the ground that there was no evidence of their
involvement in terrorism. Maulana Azhar was released
from jail, but placed under house arrest. Sayeed was
released, re-arrested and has recently been released
again, ostensibly on the orders of a court.
The
MDI changed its name to the Markaz ud Dawa (MuD) and
proclaimed itself as delinked from the LeT. The LeT, the
JeM, the HuM and the HuJI transferred their training
infrastructure and cadres to camps in Pakistan-occupied
Kashmir (POK) and the Northern Areas (NA - Gilgit and
Baltistan), which were not covered by the ban order of
January 15. Pakistani government spokesmen had indicated
in January that a separate order banning their
activities, not only in the POK and the NA, but also in
the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering
Afghanistan, would follow. This, too, has not happened
so far.
Taking advantage of the exclusion of
these areas from the purview of the ban order, al-Qaeda,
the Taliban and the Chechen and Uzbek components of the
IIF moved their training infrastructure and surviving
cadres to the FATA and the Pakistani pan-Islamic
organizations, except the LeJ, to the POK and the NA.
The LeJ defied the ban order and moved its cadres to
Karachi, where it paved the way for the creation of
shelters in the Binori madrassa (religious
school) and other places for the survivors of al-Qaeda,
including, possibly, bin Laden. The HuM floated a new
organization called the HUM (Al Almi, meaning Universal)
to evade the provisions of the ban order of January 15,
and set up its headquarters in the Binori
madrassa.
By March, the LeT resumed its
activities in other parts of Pakistan, too, in violation
of the ban order. This became evident after the arrest
of Abu Zubaidah, a top functionary of al-Qaeda, at
Faisalabad in Punjab towards the end of March. He had
been given shelter by the local LeT office-bearers. At
that time, there was considerable speculation in
Pakistan that bin Laden had also been shifted from the
FATA to Faislabad, but he managed to evade capture and
escape to Karachi. Despite this proved nexus between the
LeT and al-Qaeda, the military-intelligence
establishment has not acted against the resumption of
the LeT activities in Punjab in violation of the ban.
Drawing attention to the spread of al-Qaeda
cadres to different parts of Pakistan, with the
complicity of the Pakistani pan-Islamic organizations
without the state acting against it, Khaled Ahmed, the
highly respected Pakistani analyst, wrote in the Daily
Times (July 19, 2002), the prestigious daily of Lahore,
as follows: "While our religious leaders deny that there
is such a thing as al-Qaeda existing on the face of the
earth and say that the Americans had created it to be
able to attack Muslim sovereign states, the empire of
al-Qaeda keeps unfolding in Pakistan. The government
troops are fighting al-Qaeda foreigners and the local
warriors aligned with them in the tribal areas and the
major cities of the country. What is coming to light is
the astounding depth of al-Qaeda's penetration of
Pakistan. One is compelled to realize that the state
itself was cooperating with the elements that planned to
take over Pakistan on behalf of al-Qaeda and Osama bin
Laden."
Alluding to the linkages of the LeT with
al-Qaeda and the emergence of Karachi as the new
clandestine hub of al-Qaeda, he further wrote, "The
state of Pakistan allowed the centralization of jihad in
Karachi at the Banuri [Binori] mosque complex, whose
founder, Maulana Yusuf Banuri, was empowered through
induction into the Council of Islamic Ideology in 1977
by General Zia [ul-Haq]. It was in Banuri mosque that
Osama bin Laden and Mulla Umer [Omar] reportedly met for
the first time during the Afghan war. The above report
from Karachi makes clear the connection of al-Qaeda with
Pakistan's jihad movement. The Ahle Hadith connection
[the reference is to the LeT] with Osama was revealed
when Osama bin Laden himself possibly and his lieutenant
Abu Zubaida took shelter in Faisalabad. That in all the
big cases of terrorism an official of the state agencies
was also caught along with the jihadi terrorists points
to the lingering connection of the state with al-Qaeda."
During the Afghan war of the 1980s, bin Laden
had financed the construction of a mosque and a guest
house for his use in the headquarter complex of the LeT
at Muridke. During his visits to Pakistan, he used to
stay in this guest house. After 1996, this guest house
was used as transit accommodation for al-Qaeda recruits
from Saudi Arabia and Yemen on their way to and from the
al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. It is said in
Pakistan that some of the 19 terrorists involved in the
September 11 terrorist strikes in the US also stayed in
this guest house when they had transited through
Pakistan on their way to Kandahar to meet bin Laden.
The MDI and its successor the MUD did not join
the six-party religious coalition during the recent
elections in Pakistan as Professor Sayeed is strongly
opposed to Western-style democracy, which he views as
anti-Islam. However, the MUD extended its propaganda
support and made financial contributions to the
coalition partners. It was at its insistence that the
coalition included in its manifesto a promise of
increased assistance to the jihadis in Palestine,
J&K, Arakan, thee southern Philippines and Chechnya.
Al-Qaeda and the other
components of the IIF generally step up their acts
of terrorism and pro-jihad propaganda during the holy fasting
period of Ramadan and in the days preceding it. Many
of their terrorist acts, such as the Mumbai blasts of March,
1993, the New York World Trade Center explosion of
February 1993, etc, took place during the fasting period. The
last two Fridays of the fasting period are particularly
important occasions for them to draw the attention of
the world to their continuing jihad. The recently
stepped-up propaganda offensive, either by bin Laden
himself or someone on his behalf, has also coincided
with the fasting period. November 29 is the last Friday
of the fasting period and there would be need for extra
vigilance on and around this day.
After the
October 10 elections in Pakistan, what was described as
a jihad conference was held at the initiative of the
MUD. The exact dates of the conference are not known,
but the Pakistani media carried reports on the
conference in the first week of November. The conference
was held at a place called Yarmook, which has been
projected as the new headquarters of the MUD, the parent
organization of the LeT. I do not as yet know where this
place is located.
Among those who addressed the
conference were Sajid Mir of the Jamiat Ahle Hadis, Amir
Hamza of the MUD, Ghulam Mohammad Safi, the POK-based
representative of the All Party Hurriyat Conference of
J&K, Amir Abdullah of the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen and
Sheikh Jamitur Rehman of the Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen. The
speakers strongly criticized the US and India and called
for the intensification of the jihad against both the
countries. They said that jihad was the only way to
compel India to come to terms. The Pakistani military
regime did not take any action to stop this conference
and to prevent the participation in it of persons
belonging to organizations ostensibly under a ban since
January 15.
The intensification of terrorist
attacks in J&K and elsewhere has come in the wake of
this conference. The overtures made by the new
government of J&K to the indigenous Kashmiri
organizations will not have any impact on these
Pakistani pan-Islamic organizations, whose agenda is
totally different from that of the indigenous
organizations. Their agenda is an Islamic Caliphate in
South Asia, and not better governance, more autonomy and
a new political dispensation in J&K. Most of them
are the Pakistani jihadi warriors of bin Laden's IIF and
not sons of the Kashmiri soil. They have to be
ruthlessly eliminated, if necessary, by taking India's
counter-terrorism operations into Pakistani territory
through appropriate covert actions. Unless and until
this is done, innocent civilians will continue to bleed.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; 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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