Jihadi's arrest a small step for
Pakistan By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The extradition of jihadi leader Qari
Saifullah Akhtar from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates
to Pakistan clearly indicates that Islamabad has finally
succumbed to US pressure to turn its guns against
al-Qaeda and Taliban connections in Pakistan.
Akhtar, arrested on Friday night in Dubai and taken
to Pakistan on Saturday morning, is the head of the
banned Harkat Jihad-i-Islami al-Alami and a close aide
of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He
has been linked to failed assassination attempts against
President General Pervez Musharraf, the Corps Commander
Karachi, as well as the recent attack on Pakistani
Premier-designate Shaukat Aziz.
According to
security sources, Pakistan learned about Akhtar's
whereabouts from a militant they recently apprehended in
Karachi. Akhtar was said to be with Mullah Omar when US
forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001. He escaped from
Kandahar and went to Saudi Arabia, from where he made
his way to Dubai.
More such arrests are now expected. Indeed, Maulana Fazlur Rehman
Khalil, the head of the banned militant organization
Jamiatul Ansar, has also been arrested. Khalil is
the only Pakistani jihadi known to have been very
close to bin Laden, who funded Khalil to hold seminars in
Pakistan in favor of jihad in the late 1990s. However,
amid reports that some of this money was embezzled,
the relationship cooled. Some sources in Islamabad
maintain that Khalil has been in Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) protective custody for some time
on the instructions of the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
The US government recently raised
the issue with Pakistan about camps in the country where
recruits were trained before being sent to fight in
Afghanistan. According to Asia Times Online security
contacts, the US government dished out details on these
camps - gathered from its own sources - including the
role of people like Khalil, and pressed for their
arrest.
Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in its
"war on terror", has arrested more than a dozen al-Qaeda
suspects in less than a month - including a top figure
sought by the US, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. The arrests
prompted a series of raids in Britain and uncovered past
al-Qaeda surveillance in the US, allegedly gleaned from
one of those arrested, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, who has
subsequently been said to have been a mole within
al-Qaeda.
The US, battling as it is in
Afghanistan against an unbending Taliban-led resistance
movement, has become increasingly concerned over Taliban
and al-Qaeda activities in Pakistan that aid the
resistance. There are regularly reports in the media of
former Taliban ministers roaming in cities like Quetta
and Karachi to raise funds to keep their guerrilla
movement alive in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani
military has launched several large operations into the
tribal areas bordering Afghanistan to root out foreign
fighters, moves that have triggered fierce resistance
among the tribes there.
US authorities believe
that the ISI certainly knows about these activities, but
turns a blind eye or, even worse, indirectly assists, as
some claim was the case with Khalil. Many within
Pakistan's strategic circles, as well as the population,
still want to regain the country's influence in
Afghanistan, which was lost when the Taliban were ousted
in late 2001.
In this regard, the case of brothers
Dr Akmat Waheed and Dr Ajmal Waheed from Karachi
is illuminating. They belonged to the Pakistan Islamic
Medical Association (a sister organization of the
influential Jamaat-i-Islami religious party) and were
apprehended on suspicions of treating Taliban and
al-Qaeda militants at an exclusive facility in Karachi.
The provincial governor of
Sindh, Dr Ishratul Ibad, got hold of their
interrogation files and video footage of the interrogation in
which they allegedly admitted that they had shuttled
between South Waziristan tribal agency and Karachi, raised
funds for militants and treated several high-profile al-Qaeda
figures. The governor handed over the material to the US
consulate in Karachi, and it was passed on to
Washington. Hence the demands that Pakistan take action
against al-Qaeda and Taliban activities. The
Jamaat-i-Islami could become a target too. Several
prominent clerics and jihadi workers associated with
different outfits have already been picked up from their
seminaries and mosques in Karachi.
Harkat
Jihad-i-Islami The Harkat Jihad-i-Islami returned
to the limelight after a long time in mid-May 2002,
when 13 civilian French workers were killed near the
Sheraton Hotel in Karachi in a suicide attack.
Intelligence agencies blamed the attack on the Harkat,
which they said operated in isolation from all other
jihadi outfits and with no patronage from intelligence
agencies.
Yet the Harkat is one of the
few militias with international linkages. It calls
itself "the second line of defense of all Muslim states"
and, apart from Karachi, it has well-organized seminaries
in Arakan in Myanmar and in Bangladesh, as well
as Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Kashmir and Tajikistan.
Before being closed down by Mullah Omar on the intervention
of the ISI, Chinese Uighur militants were trained in Afghanistan
at the Harkat's camps.
The Harkat was accepted among
the Taliban as one of its leaders in the Afghan war
against the Soviets in the 1980s, and Maulvi Nabi
Muhammadi, and his Harkat Inqilab Islami fighters joined
the Taliban forces in large numbers.
Korangi, the eastern part of
Karachi, especially residents of
Ibrahim Hyderi village, welcomed Arakanese Muslims who fled
Myanmar to fight jihad from Pakistan. A
large number of them now live in Korangi, and the
area is sometimes called Mini-Arakan. The Harkat opened 30 seminaries
for these jihadis inside Korangi, while another 18
are spread across the rest of Karachi. Orang
town area, where Khalid bin Walid is the biggest
seminary, is home to the Khalid bin Walid
madrassa
(religious school), where 500 Myanmar
nationals study. They were trained in Afghanistan and later
fought against Afghanistan's Northern Alliance and against the Indian
army in Kashmir.
The Harkat was first banned by
the US State Department in the 1980s, after which the
government forced it to rename itself Harkatul
Mujahideen (now Harkatul Ansar). However, Akhtar did not
merge his party with any organization, and without
support from the ISI or mainstream religious parties,
the banned organization lost support and influence.
After the emergence of the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan in 1996, Akhtar went to that country and
established training camps, from where he sent hundreds
of youths to Kashmir. These jihadis still fight under
the banner of Harkat-i-Jihad-i-Islami, but the outfit
does not have strong roots in Pakistan, even though its
mission is to support the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The Harkat has been blamed for foiled attempts
on the US Consulate in Karachi, the attack on the French
workers, and plots to kill Musharraf in Karachi. It has
also been tied to the attack on Musharraf's life in
Rawalpindi, the attack on the Corps Commander Karachi
and that on Shaukat Aziz. But such accusations have also
been leveled against at least two other organizations,
Junduallah (the Army of Allah) and the
Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.
While the
arrest of Akhtar is significant, his activities related
to more domestic issues in Pakistan, such as the assassination
attempts on Musharraf and other officials, clearly show that Islamabad is being forced
to curb its Taliban and al-Qaeda connections.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau
Chief Pakistan, Asia Times Online. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
