Now Pakistan rounds on the
Taliban By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - First al-Qaeda, then jihadis. Now the
Taliban. Under sustained entreaties from the United
States, mindful of presidential elections in Afghanistan
in October, Pakistan has now turned its attention to
foreign Taliban operatives in the country.
Asia
Times Online has learned of the recent arrests of former
Afghan deputy foreign minister Mullah Jalil and two of
his close Afghan associates, whose identities have not
yet been disclosed, in the southern port city of
Karachi.
Mullah Jalil is a lieutenant of Taliban
leader Mullah Omar and had been sent to Pakistan to
raise funds for the Afghan Taliban movement in its
resistance to US-led forces in Afghanistan. The arrests
were a part of a covert country-wide sweep in which
dozens of pro-Taliban religious figures were rounded up
from mosques and madrassas (seminaries) and
detained without publicity.
Over the past few
months, Pakistan has arrested more than 350 al-Qaeda
members, including a number of senior operatives, as
part of a US-inspired campaign to rid the country of
such figures in the "war on terror". And earlier this
month, two top Pakistani jihadis, Maulana Fazalur Rehman
Khalil and Qari Saifullah Akhtar, were arrested in an
unprecedented clampdown in the country.
Mullah
Jalil had been shuttling between Afghanistan and Karachi
for some time, but he has never before run foul of the
authorities. The situation has changed, though.
Before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in
late 2001, Pakistan actively supported the Taliban
regime in Kabul, primarily because many of its members
were products of Pakistan's madrassas and had
close links with Islamabad's intelligence services. Many
fleeing Taliban took refuge in the more remote border
areas of Pakistan when the regime disintegrated in the
face of the US-led invasion.
But even though
President General Pervez Musharraf formally renounced
support of the Taliban when he threw in his lot with the
US's "war on terror", action against the Taliban and
their supporters has been half-hearted at best, partly
because many within the Pakistan security apparatus
remain close to the Taliban.
Pakistan even came
up with the idea of drawing "moderate" Taliban into the
mainstream political process in Afghanistan in an effort
to defuse the escalating Taliban-led unrest in the
country - and do not appear to have ditched the Taliban
altogether. These efforts continue, with some success in
wooing minor clerics.
However, the resistance
appears as strong as ever. This is witnessed by the car
bomb attack at the weekend on Dyncorp, an American firm
based in Kabul that provides security for Afghan
president Hamid Karzai and works for the US government
in Iraq, which killed at least seven people.
Now, Pakistan is being "encouraged" by the US to
go after the Taliban. Mullah Jalil's arrest is likely to
be a setback, albeit temporary, for the Taliban as he
was an important link between the leadership, which is
widely spread over parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan,
and he was an important conduit for financial aid. His
arrest could lead to others being apprehended in
Pakistan.
This includes those Taliban sheltered
in an area called Yaghistan, near Pakistan's
southwestern province of Balochistan, which overlaps the
border and which is normally beyond the writ of the law
in both Kabul and Islamabad. This area is said to be the
operational headquarters of the Taliban movement in
southern Afghanistan, where they have taken control of
many districts and villages around the cities of Zabul
and Kandahar. Mullah Omar and some other leaders are
believed to be based here.
Pakistan can now be
expected to launch an operation against Taliban and
pro-Taliban figures on the Pakistan side of the border
in Balochistan. However, the Pakistan initiative comes
at a time when the Taliban are increasingly abandoning
their sanctuaries in Pakistan, as they are consolidating
their positions in Afghanistan.
Other
developments
Recently, the director general of the Inter-Services
Intelligence, Lieutenant-General Ehsan ul-Haq, summoned
a meeting of religious leaders in Islamabad and made
clear that all Islamic seminaries in the capital would
be closed down.
Army officers were convened in Karachi for a
briefing on Qazi Hussain Ahmed (chief of the
Jamaat-i-Islami) and Maulana Fazalur Rehman (leader of
the opposition in the Lower House of parliament and
chief of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam) as two "extremist"
figures who are "working against the broader interests
of the state". Both men have large followings and hold
sizeable influence in the country, especially at the
grassroots level.
The opposition Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an
alliance of six religious-political parties which is
generally "friendly" to the ruling administration, is
rattled by the anti-Taliban drive. A recent meeting in
Karachi attended by representatives of most Islamic
seminaries, including Deobandis, Brelvis, Salafis and
Shi'ites, adopted a hard tone, as did Rehman and Ahmed,
who openly threatened the government with a mass
mobilization of people. Speaking to Asia Times Online,
Ahmed expressed his concern over the real intentions of
the army, saying that he detected a big change in its
behavior (and a real one) and that he and his party were
in the firing line. At the same time, the MMA announced
that it would stage a mass rally on September 11 against
the government.
Syed Saleem Shahzad,
Pakistan Bureau Chief, Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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