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2 Military brains plot Pakistan's
downfall By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Al-Qaeda has been in the process
of a decisive ideological and strategic debate
over the past few years. At times it developed
fault lines that brought forward extremists in the
organization, whom the Sunni and Shi'ite orthodoxy
of the Muslim world calls takfiris. [1]
This rise of the takfiris within
al-Qaeda gave an unprecedented boost to its
anti-establishment drive. This concept is based on
the philosophies of 13th-century Muslim scholar
Ibn Taymiyyah, who
threatened to revolt against
the Muslim sultan if he did not give up his
neutrality toward the invading Tartars and
eventually forced him to fight to defend Damascus.
[2] It also draws on General Vo Nguyen Giap's
guerrilla strategy against French and US forces in
Vietnam.
The aim of the takfiris
now is to extend the current insurgency against
the establishment in the North Waziristan and
South Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan into a
large-scale offensive to bring down the central
government or force the government to support
their cause.
The US invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 and Pakistan's post-September
11, 2001, about-turn into the camp of the United
States led to a marriage of convenience among the
flag-bearers of Ibn Taymiyyah's ideology, zealots
of al-Qaeda and experts in Giap's guerrilla
strategy - former officers of the Pakistani armed
forces who were upset with Pakistan's policy
reversal, which included abandoning the Taliban.
These groups joined forces to take control
of the state through a popular revolt or by using
violent means, or force on the state apparatus to
support the battle against the Western coalition
in Afghanistan. The alliance has had some success,
notably in the Waziristans, where in effect a
rigid Islamic state prevails beyond the control of
the central authorities in Islamabad. Indeed, the
highest level of casualties in the history of the
Pakistan Army has forced Pakistani leaders to
speak of stopping operations in the Waziristans,
saying it is a wrong war.
But while there
have been several serious popular outbursts
against President General Pervez Musharraf - and
attacks on his life - his military government
remains in power since staging a coup in 1999.
Meanwhile, after a long lull, al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden resurfaced recently with
three video and audio tape messages. His emergence
on the horizon of the jihadist audience came at a
time when Islamic militants of varied backgrounds
(in the Waziristans) had finally sorted out their
conflicts on issues such as revolt against a
Muslim state and fighting Muslim armies.
Those groups include the Taliban (led by
Mullah Omar), the command of the Pakistani Taliban
(led by a shura - council - of mujahideen
in the two Waziristans), leading Arab scholars in
the Waziristans, such as Sheikh Essa, Abu Waleed
Ansari and Abu Yahya al-Libbi, the command of
Pakistani jihadist organizations in the
Waziristans under Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri and its
allied group of former officers of the Pakistan
Armed Forces who resigned to join the Afghan
resistance.
Bin Laden has always spoken
out against the Western world, but in his most
recent audio message last week, for the first time
he urged Pakistanis "to fight against Musharraf,
his army, his government and his supporters". This
was the first endorsement of his deputy Ayman
al-Zawahiri's anti-establishment theory under
which war should be waged first against the
un-Islamic Muslim states before fighting infidel
armies. In the past, Mullah Omar and bin Laden
have always avoided stirring revolt within
countries such as Pakistan.
Pakistan
immediately dismissed bin Laden's call. Army
spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad was quoted
as saying, "If Osama bin Laden has spoken to the
people and urged them to rise, and the people were
really following him, they would have done so much
earlier. He doesn't have much following here."
However, this was clearly for public
consumption. Asia Times Online has learned that
these new developments were so seriously viewed on
the intelligence radars of Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia that they devised a joint strategy.
Islamabad is so concerned over the latest
developments that it asked Saudi Arabia to
approach al-Qaeda to abandon its
anti-establishment policy.
The Saudis are
concerned that should their erstwhile son bin
Laden succeed in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia would be
one of the next logical targets. So a joint
strategy was devised to confront the threat.
According to a witness who spoke to Asia
Times Online, last month a Saudi consul visited
North Waziristan in the first such interaction
with the al-Qaeda command since the US invasion on
Afghanistan in 2001. The consul was meant to meet
Zawahiri or bin Laden, but he was not allowed to
see them and instead met second-tier al-Qaeda
leaders.
The consul wore traditional
clothes of the region and a Pashtun-style hat, and
carried several gifts, mostly food items,
especially
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