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Suspicion and skepticism
By Kanchan Lakshman
"I am not
representing those who talk of fighting. I am
representing those who want to resolve issues through
dialogue."
With this statement, Maulana
Fazlur Rahman, leader of opposition in the Pakistan
National Assembly and chief of his own faction of the
Islamist fundamentalist party, Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam
(JUI), became the latest entrant into the India-Pakistan
"peace constituency" during his visit to India that
ended on Monday. While it is in the interests of the
sub-continent that the space for peace be enlarged, a
question that needs equal attention is whether or not
this space is a bandwagon that can be opened up to
include those who have openly sponsored and supported
virulent acts of international terrorism over the past
decades, and whose recent and current activities - as
opposed to immediate pronouncements - give no reason to
believe that they have altered their fundamental
ideology or agenda?
In India at the invitation
of the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind (the party of Islamic
scholars of India) in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh, Rahman was
accompanied by JUI vice president Hafiz Hussain Ahmed
and fellow parliamentarians Gul Naseeb and Qazi
Hameedullah. The Maulana (teacher) was also briefly a
candidate for the premiership of Pakistan after the
October 2002 election, but lost the battle to Mir
Zafarullah Khan Jamali.
Fazlur Rahman is widely
considered to be one of the primary backers of the
Taliban, is known to have played a vital role in its
creation, and remained intimately linked with both
Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden throughout the period of
the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After Benazir Bhutto
won the 1993 national elections, Rahman was appointed
chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee
for Foreign Affairs, a position he reportedly used to
lobby for the Taliban. The Pakistani Frontier
Constabulary Corps reportedly trained the first batches
of Taliban militia from seminaries run by the Maulana
and the Sibi Scouts in training camps near the Baloch
border with Afghanistan.
Rahman is also
allegedly the mentor of the proscribed terrorist
organization, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM, earlier
called Harkat-ul-Ansar), and is reportedly closely
linked with the activities of the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), and the
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM). When the US and allied forces
commenced bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds in
Afghanistan, he led large anti-US, anti-Musharraf and
pro-Taliban rallies in Pakistan's major cities. While
denouncing President George W Bush and President General
Pervez Musharraf, he also threatened to launch a jihad
against the US if the bombings continued. In October
2001, Musharraf placed Fazlur Rahman under house arrest.
He was charged with sedition for inciting people against
the armed forces and for attempting to overthrow the
government. He was, however, set free in March 2002 and
all cases against him were withdrawn.
The
Maulana's affection for the Taliban has never been in
doubt. He said in Dera Ismail Khan on October 23, 2001,
that, "Those talking of a broad-based government in
Afghanistan have failed in the past ... the Taliban
brought peace, law and order in Afghanistan and banned
poppy cultivation. They established good governance in
more than 95 percent of the country ... many Pakistanis
are already taking part in jihad and several others are
ready to go to Afghanistan."
According to the
acclaimed Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, "The
Taliban's closest links were with Pakistan, where many
of them had grown up and studied in madrassas
[religious schools] run by the mercurial Maulana Fazlur
Rahman and his Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam, a fundamentalist
party which had considerable support amongst the
Pashtuns in Balochistan and the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP)." Rahman now denies these charges and
claims he has "nothing to do with the Taliban",
maintaining, however, that "the Taliban were those who
brought peace to Afghanistan".
Rahman, who is
also secretary-general of the six-party Islamist
fundamentalist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
(MMA)), indicated that the objective of his visit to
India was to create a "congenial atmosphere" between
India and Pakistan and to force the "rulers" of both
countries to resolve their disputes peacefully. The
hollowness of his stance was clear in his complete
disregard of his past position, as he now claims: "Only
talks can find solutions to disputes. We have always
supported this route." While opposing any third-party
mediation between India and Pakistan, he added, for good
measure, during a press conference in Delhi, that the
Kashmir issue should be resolved through dialogue as
envisaged under the Shimla Agreement of 1972. He also
emphasized that "there was no room for terrorism in
Islam".
The compulsions of this dramatic
turnaround are still unclear, but there should be no
doubt that the raison d'etre of the various jihadi
mobilizers in Pakistan - including Rahman - remains
unchanged. Asked about a solution to the Kashmir issue,
he said, "Let me clarify that, on this point, I am with
the Pakistan government. What you call cross-border
terrorism is a freedom movement in our eyes. The people
of Kashmir and the mujahideen who are fighting want
their right to live."
There is speculation that
the government has initiated a "track two" diplomatic
process that seeks to use the "good offices" of people
like Rahman to take the peace process forward. Some
analysts interpret sanction for his visit as New Delhi's
way of exerting pressure on Musharraf by seeking a
rapport with domestic political forces in Pakistan,
howsoever inimical these may be to India.
The
idea of initiating such unprincipled liaisons and "peace
processes" is fraught with grave danger. The idea that
diplomacy is an absolute virtue, and that a "peace
process", irrespective of the character of its
participants, or the morality of its content, is an end
in itself, merely emboldens the unscrupulous adversary.
Rahman's extremist organizational infrastructure
in Pakistan remains intact; the various terrorist groups
associated with him remain committed to their agenda;
the political formations he is associated with remain
steadfast in a fundamentalist, pan-Islamist and deeply
violent worldview. Contacts with individuals like
Rahman, and the groups they represent, confer legitimacy
and create increasing public ambivalence towards their
identity and activities. In permitting Rahman to visit
India at this crucial juncture can only weaken India's
case for firm and consistent international action
against terrorists and their state and non-state
sponsors.
Kanchan Lakshman,
research associate, Institute for Conflict
Management, a non-profit society set up in 1997 in New
Delhi committed to the evaluation and resolution of
problems of internal security in South Asia; assistant
editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict &
Resolution.
Published with permission from
the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South
Asia Terrorism Portal
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