A
"failure of imagination", the panel investigating the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US stated,
was what kept officials from understanding the al-Qaeda
threat before the catastrophic events in New York and
Washington.
There is, however, a manifest and
abiding danger today that a future investigation into
terrorist plots that are yet to be accomplished would
find another, even greater, "failure of imagination",
culminating in horrors that may easily dwarf the events
of September 11.
The 9-11 Commission has been
sagacious in noting that the critical element that must
be understood if an adequate response to global
terrorism is to be crafted is that "we are in the midst
of an ideological conflict". The contemporary assessment
of where precisely inimical ideologies are located will
be crucial to the outcome of this conflict - and here
again there is an evident error in the dominant US
evaluation.
It is, of course, the case that
Osama bin Laden has been one of the most articulate
representatives of this ideology, and his al-Qaeda one
of its most effective manifestations. But there are many
"future bin Ladens" waiting in the wings, largely
unnoticed, or systematically and intentionally ignored,
by the US establishment, as well as by much of the
world.
Among the most dangerous instances of
this neglect occur in Pakistan. The present US
administration appears to have substantially
"outsourced" the management of its security interests in
this region to what it perceives as a pliant, even
servile, military dictatorship headed by President
General Pervez Musharraf, and there is a belief that
this regime will bring about the "enlightened
moderation" that the United States hopes for in its
favored ally. It is useful, consequently, to identify
where precisely, within this arrangement, the ideologies
of hatred are articulated, what their constituent
elements are, and what relationship the Musharraf regime
has with their most visible advocates.
On May 20
a meeting was organized at Muzaffarabad in
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) by the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), the largest terrorist group
operating in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir
(J&K). The meeting commemorated the "martyrdom" on
May 6 of two of its commanders in J&K and was only
one of many such routinely organized to commemorate the
rather frequent "martyrdom" of prominent terrorist
cadres in J&K.
The current Pakistani
fiction, substantially accepted by the international
community, is that the HM is an "indigenous" Kashmiri
group with an agenda exclusively limited to the
"liberation" of Kashmir. The HM is not a banned
organization in Pakistan, and operates openly with
significant infrastructural, material and military
support from the Inter-Services Intelligence.
The May 20 meeting was addressed by, among
others, Syed Mohammad Yusuf Shah alias Syed Salahuddin,
the supreme commander of the Hizb; Sheikh Aqil
ur-Rahman, the district chief, Muzaffarabad, of the
Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), one of the largest "mainstream"
political parties in Pakistan, and Javed Iqbal, also of
the JI; Ghulam Rasool Shah alias Abdur Rafiya, deputy
chief of Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, a terrorist organization
supposedly banned in Pakistan; and Mohd Farooq Rahmani,
convener of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, PoK, an
organization engaged in a "peaceful struggle" for the
"liberation" of J&K.
Significantly, the
meeting was held openly in a public ground in an
affluent area in Muzaffarabad, and the benign presence
of uniformed police personnel is visible in the video
recording secured by the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
It is not possible here to reproduce the full
text of their speeches translated from Urdu, but their
main thrust can be communicated, without comment, with a
few extracts:
Almighty Allah, by his will and tactics,
is bringing the jihad movement of Kashmir on a track
that will liberate not only the oppressed people of
Jammu & Kashmir but also crores [millions] of
Muslims and other minorities in India oppressed by
Brahmin imperialists ...
Islamic history, the
Holy Koran, the biographies of the holy Prophet
Mohammed and his virtuous followers, and the whole of
history prove that no Muslim issue could ever be
solved on the negotiating table. Can anyone quote an
example and tell me whether any Muslim issue has been
solved in their favor according to their will on the
negotiating table? Disputes have been solved only on
the battlefield. On the table? Yes! We were cheated!
Don't go far, ask the Palestinian people how they were
cheated in the Camp David agreement. The Afghan
mujahideen were cheated in the Geneva Agreement. If
the mujahideen had not tackled the problem through
their iman [faith], then today Russia would
have Afghanistan firmly in its claws ...
Most
humbly and respectfully, I request the leadership of
my base camp and the political leadership of the
God-gifted state [Pakistan], whether they are in power
or in opposition, in politics or in religion that they
take not for friends unbelievers rather than
believers. Jews and Hindus were neither your friends
earlier nor can they be today ...
The
God-gifted Pakistan will emerge as a prosperous
Islamic, nuclear and Islamic country that can listen
to the cry for help of the empty-handed, innocent
child mujahideen, the shamed mothers and sisters in
Palestine. There is no Salahuddin Ayyubi [1] or
Nooruddin Zangi [2] in the entire Arab world who can
listen to their cry for help. There is no Mohammad bin
Qasim [3], Tariq bin Ziyad [4], and no Salahuddin
Ayyubi in the entire Muslim world who can prevent the
bloodshed of helpless Muslims, which flows like rivers
in the hills of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq,
in the sky-high mountains of Kashmir or in the
[Chechen] valley strewn with flowers. There are 56
Muslim countries, 56 organized Muslim forces and all
of them have surrendered to the devil's forces. They
are defeated and helpless ...
Dear youth!
Allah bless you, Allah has chosen you by his own
powerful hand. He has chosen you for protecting the
honor of Islam. Who is there today? Where have Saddam
Hussein's 500,000 forces and 80,000 Republican Guards
gone? Who is present today to challenge the
imperialist powers? Who is defeating the allied forces
in the deserts of Arab Iraq, and who is breaking the
pride of America? Who is causing trouble in the hills
of Afghanistan and for the 750,000 forces of Indian
imperialists in the Kashmir Valley, strewn with
flowers? Who is attacking the generals in Chechnya?
Dear youth! They are none other than the mujahideen,
the successors of the holy Prophet Mohammed. In this
context, Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) said:
"To embark on the cause of Allah, whether in night or
day, is the greatest good on Earth." These are the
mujahideen who teach a lesson to all forces of the
devil, who will make Allah's religion achieve eminence
and will protect the honor of the oppressed
millat [community]. They are the mujahideen
about whom it was said that on judgment day Allah will
weigh all the treasures of the earth and the sky on
one side and a day or a night in the life of the
mujahideen on the other side.
Sheikh
Aqil-ur-Rahman of the JI
The rulers of Islamabad and India as well
as those of America, who are conspiring against jihad,
should understand that Muslims cannot compromise with
jihad. It is an integral part of our iman. We
do not possess the same eminence and stature as the
500,000 brethren who have sacrificed their lives for
this purpose. But we will also follow their paths and
sacrifice our lives.
Javed Iqbal, also
of the JI
My brethren! Today, after [September 11],
people all over the world are saying that the
situation has changed and the mujahideen should learn
their lesson and they should stop their activities. My
brethren! If we believe in Allah, if we believe in the
Holy Koran, if we are the followers of the Prophet
Mohammed (peace be upon him) and believe in him, then
jihad is the destination of our lives. Jihad is our
only path and we have to follow it.
Sheikh Jamil-ur-Rahman, a political
leader in PoK
The Hindus can never be our friends. The
Holy Koran confirms it. In clear words, Allah also
says that the Jews and Christians too cannot be our
friends. Those who are initiating friendship between
India and Pakistan are misguiding the nation. They are
cheating the nation. Friendship with the Hindus is
unnatural, unprincipled and unlawful.
These
voices are neither isolated exceptions, nor the most
extreme in the ideological discourse that dominates the
Islamist core in Pakistan. In an address at Jamia Qadsia
in Lahore on July 9, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of
the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its terrorist arm, the supposedly
"banned" Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), states:
Islam was spread and propagated in the
world through jihad. Jihad strengthens the relation
between Islam and the Muslims and reinforces their
iman. In the past, too, through jihad, infidels
were defeated in the world and infidelity crushed.
Islam achieved eminence and even today, jihad will
lead to similar results by the will of
Allah.
Earlier, on June 7, Saeed had written
in Jasrat: "The US thought that it would keep jihad
limited to Afghanistan and extend its agenda of usurping
the natural resources of the Muslim world to Central
Asia. But jihad's wave spread all over the world. The US
wants to control this wave. Jihad is the biggest threat
to the US interest. There is nothing like al-Qaeda. It
is the figment of the US's imagination. The US has
concocted an outfit like al-Qaeda to massacre the
Muslims all over the world. It has concocted false
stories related to al-Qaeda with the help of the foreign
media ... America is bleeding these days. It has become
a threat to peace. When a wounded animal becomes a
threat to one's life, it is shot dead. It is time to gun
down the US. The US is the enemy of our religious
culture, jihad, curriculum, the two-nation theory, the
people of tribal areas and Kashmir."
What is
articulated by these views finds constant echoes in the
Urdu media. In Jasarat, on June 12, Javed Kasuri, deputy
supreme commander of the HM, stated: "The US, Israel and
India feel threatened by those who sit on a mat and
recite the Koran in madrassas [seminaries].
Jihadis are the only force that can challenge US
imperialism. The entire West is Islam's enemy ... To
save Islam, all the Muslim sects will have to unite and
wage jihad against the West."
Conspiracy
theories and denial abound in this discourse. In the
Nawai Waqt of May 26, Dr Asrar Ahmad, a "well-known
Islamic scholar", writes: "The US has invaded Iraq at
Israel's behest. The US wants to make greater Israel by
subjugating Iraq. [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon
had stated some time ago that Iraq is part of Israel.
The Iraq war is not the game of oil but securing a
stable future for Israel. The [September 11]
investigations have been stopped because it was
masterminded by Israel and the US cannot take any action
against the Jews. Europe will go to war against the US
and Israel because a crusade is on the card that will be
fought between the Jews and the Christians. Europe will
try to conquer the US and Israel to make the world a
Catholic colony."
Ludicrous as these statements
may seem to Western sensibilities, they form a
substantial component of Islamist "scholarship" in
Pakistan. Worse still, as has been repeatedly noted in
the past, the extremist Islamist discourse on jihad, and
shahadat (martyrdom) and the "global conspiracy"
against and threat to Islam is not the province of
mullahs and militants alone, and has penetrated many
aspects of the Pakistani educational system - and not,
as is widely believed, just the extremist
madrassas.
It is useful to note that the
examples drawn up in this assessment are a small
selection of statements and writings in the past less
than three months. A comprehensive archive of extremist
discourse in this vein for the entire period since
September 11 would fill volumes, and would include
innumerable statements by elements proximate to, or
directly connected with, the regime of President General
Pervez Musharraf.
Some of these dangers have
been acknowledged, for the pre-September 11 period under
its review, by the 9-11 Commission. One writer notes
that a cursory keyword search of the panel's report
recovers "more than 200 references to Pakistan, many of
them damning. There are [fewer] than 100 references to
Iran and Iraq combined."
Nevertheless, ignorance
persists at unacceptable levels. The international press
and diplomatic community, largely located in protected
and affluent enclaves, with their attention fixed firmly
on the relatively moderate and Westernized
English-language media, remain substantially
uncomprehending of these dangerous undercurrents. Worse,
denial remains integral to the mindset of many Western -
and particularly US - observers.
A mention of
the "dominant ideology of Pakistan" to a senior US
diplomat posted in that country, for instance, drew a
sharp response rejecting the idea that any such
"dominant ideology" could actually be identified. Such
denial also characterizes the mainstream political
discourse on the issue in India today, and constitutes a
danger even greater than the direct threat of
contemporary terrorism, creating vast spaces for the
continuous consolidation of ideas that will breed much
worse in the years to come.
Notes [1] The 12th-century
Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, who united Arabs
across North Africa and Western Asia against the
crusading Christians. [2] Nooruddin Zangi, Saladin's
army commander. [3] Mohammad Bin Qasim, the Muslim
soldier who conquered present-day Pakistan early in the
8th century (AD 712) and extended Umayyad Muslim rule to
the Indus Valley. [4] Tariq bin Ziyad, a Berber
Muslim who led the conquest of Visigoth Spain in 711.
Ajai Sahni is editor of the South Asia
Intelligence Review and executive director of the
Institute for Conflict Management.
