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Open season for
jihadis
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Sophisticated terror attacks
using the minimum possible resources to target
civilians are the issue of the day, whether it be
in Egypt, the United Kingdom or Spain.
Invariably, Pakistan is linked to the
attacks. In the case of the July 7 suicide attacks
in London, three of the bombers were of Pakistani
descent and had visited madrassas (Islamic
schools) in Pakistan. Pakistanis are being sought
in connection with the weekend's attacks in Egypt.
Pakistan, simply, is widely reckoned as
the premier breeding ground for jihadis, fueled by
the Afghan resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s,
the on-going troubles in Kashmir and the current
Taliban-led resistance to foreign forces in
Afghanistan.
The root of the "evil", as
much of the West sees it, is the madrassa
system - the many thousands of schools that teach
the Koran and little else, and which mostly
attract underprivileged, marginalized youth highly
susceptible to the extreme teachings - and
militancy - that some of the madrassas
offer.
Under US and British pressure,
therefore, in the wake of the London bombings,
hundreds of madrassa teachers and students,
along with militants, have been rounded up in the
past two weeks.
Yet maybe this is a
classic case of not been able to see the wood for
the trees.
Pakistan's leading monthly
magazine, Herald, has published a detailed
eyewitness account backed with photographs on how
youths are trained in militant camps in the
central region of North-West Frontier Province
(NWFP), Mansehra. The story was so accurate that
the government could not deny it, although it
issued orders to "fix" the publisher.
"Until 2001, thousands of fighters trained
here for operations in Kashmir and Afghanistan ...
after the 9/11 attacks in America, though, the
militants' activities dwindled, and last year the
camp was abandoned following an unequivocal
warning from the government. But all major
militant organizations began regrouping in April
this year by renovating training facilities that
were deserted last year," the cover story of
Herald maintained.
According to a manager
of the training camp, the report said, all the
major militant organizations, including Hizbul
Mujahideen, al-Badr Mujahideen, Harkat
ul-Mujahideen and others, began regrouping in
April.
The Herald report says that at
least 13 major camps in the Mansehra region were
revived during the first week of May. As the camps
reopen, managers claim trained militants as well
as new aspirants are flocking to enlist for jihad.
As one militant leader put it, the
organizations are now under a "regime of
controlled freedom".
The story is a severe
embarrassment for the government of Pakistan as
many US officials are already skeptical of its
integrity in the "war on terror".
Asia
Times Online security contacts say that the US had
become aware of the main Mansehra camp, but it was
assured by Pakistani officials that the camp had
not been in operation in the past few months.
Meanwhile, in the mountains
...
The mountainous terrain between
Afghanistan and Pakistan is another area where
neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan have been able to
eliminate training camps. The area is a rugged
no-man's-land that spans the border.
This
is the hub of the Taliban resistance, where many
top commanders, including Jalaluddin Haqqani,
visit, and it's a perfect training center of the
Afghan and global resistance. The Afghan
resistance plots its hit-and-run attacks within
Afghanistan from here.
... and in the
tribal areas
Asia Times Online sources in
the North Waziristan tribal area say that there
were as many as 40 attacks in a single day on
various army posts on Monday.
"The purpose
of the attacks was not to kill anybody but just to
remind the Pakistani army what happened to them
last year when they tried to conduct operations in
South Waziristan," commented a tribal source from
Waziristan on the telephone.
Last year,
under immense US pressure, the Pakistani
government launched several military operations in
South Waziristan to track down al-Qaeda suspects
and foreign militants. They encountered fierce
resistance from tribespeople, who cherish their
virtual independence from the central government.
Trouble on the border
Conflict
between the Pakistan army and Islamist militants
along the Afghan border has led security analysts
to talk of a full-fledged insurgency that poses a
grave threat to the country, reports M B Naqvi of
Inter Press Service (IPS).
"Frequent,
bloody gun battles, heavy casualties, ambushes,
attacks on military outposts and killing of
informers and army collaborators are not ordinary
crimes. Make no mistake. It is an insurgency,"
said A R Siddiqui, commentator on military affairs
and a former brigadier in the Pakistan army.
Siddiqui told IPS that he saw the conflict
as an "offshoot or even a continuation" of the
"war against terror" prosecuted by the US against
Taliban-ruled Afghanistan immediately after
September 11, 2001.
US-led coalition
forces across the border in Afghanistan are
coordinating operations with the Pakistani army in
both North and South Waziristan as part of the
efforts to capture al-Qaeda leaders, including
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The
high levels of civilian "collateral damage" in
recent weeks has caused outrage which has resulted
in further alienation of the Pashtun tribes that
dominate Waziristan and which form the backbone of
the Taliban movement.
"This is
inexcusable," said Siddiqui. "Either Pakistan's
intelligence has failed or wrong information was
fed by the coalition's military sources in
Afghanistan. It is going to intensify the
insurgency in all the tribal areas and will mean
many more recruits to the Taliban and other
militant outfits in both countries."
The
Pakistan army first began operations against
al-Qaeda elements holing up in Waziristan in July
2002, but quickly became bogged down in a war with
fiercely independent Pashtun tribes that saw the
expeditions - the first in more than
half-a-century - as an attempt to subjugate them.
Pashtun tribes are spread across the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in
which Waziristan falls, the NWFP and on the other
side of the Durand Line (border) in Afghanistan.
Pakistan President General Pervez
Musharraf has said he is particularly concerned
about Pakistan's image as a hotbed for Islamist
extremism, militancy of various shades and as a
support base for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Last week, he charged two Pakistan-based
militant organizations, the Jaish-i-Mohammed and
the Sipah-i-Sabah, which he had ordered banned,
with being "responsible for indoctrinating some of
the London bombers".
Musharraf also said
he believed that some of the madrassas were
"dabbling in the military training of their
students and preparing jihadis".
Now it is
up to him to stop it, provided he does not get
lost in the trees.
Syed Saleem
Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia Times
Online. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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