A
surprise show of force in
Pakistan By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The political winds have shifted
markedly in Pakistan following last week's
parliamentary elections, and with the drubbing of
his "king's party", pressure is mounting to oust
President Pervez Musharraf for his actions in the
US-led "war on terror".
The underlying
mood of the likely new coalition government is to
roll back his hardline approach to militancy in
favor of dialogue. However, already this is being
challenged by the security apparatus.
On
Tuesday, it was announced that the high-profile
Qari Saifullah Akhtar, named by former premier
Benazir Bhutto in a book published after her death
in December as the mastermind of
an
attempt
on her life in October, had been arrested.
Akhtar was seized with his three sons in
Ferozwala, near Lahore. He had not previously been
named as a suspect in the October attack in
Karachi in which about 200 people died. Blame for
this, and the attack in Rawalpindi that did kill
Bhutto in December, was laid on Baitullah Mehsud,
a Pakistani Taliban commander.
The
decision to arrest Akhtar, therefore, can be
interpreted as a sign of the security apparatus
flexing its muscles in the face of what it
perceives as a potential political softening
against militancy.
Hashmat Habib, Akhtar's
lawyer, told Asia Times Online, "After his release
from a prolonged detention [last year] he had
adopted the path of Sufism and in Ferozwala he was
constructing a shrine for his spiritual guide
[pir] . But Ms Benazir Bhutto had named him
in her book as the mastermind behind the terror
carnage in Karachi on October 18, 2007, in which
Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped but over 200 people
were killed.
"The book was published after
Ms Bhutto's killing so I held a press conference
and warned the publisher and the beneficiary of
the book to remove the allegation, otherwise I
would file a libel case against them. I was in the
process of filing the case when the police
detained Qari Saifullah Akhtar," Habib said,
adding that he would challenge the arrest in the
Supreme Court.
In August 2004, Akhtar was
arrested in Dubai and then extradited from the
United Arab Emirates to Pakistan, allegedly in
connection with assassination attempts on
Musharraf and for involvement in terror training
camps in Afghanistan. He was released from the
custody of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
in the middle of last year without standing trial.
He is also said to have been the
mastermind of "Operation Khilafat" to topple
Bhutto's government in the mid-1990s, for which he
and several army officers were arrested.
Some time later, Akhtar was released and
went to Afghanistan, where he became the only
Pakistani to be appointed as one of Taliban leader
Mullah Omar's advisors (equal to a minister) and
he was also very close to al-Qaeda's leadership.
Akhtar is the founding father of the
Harkat-i-Jihad-i-Islami (Islamic Movement for
Jihad) which was set up in the early 1980s to
fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was
the only organization to separate itself from the
clutches of the security apparatus and merged with
the Taliban. It is still the only outfit to have
shifted its base to the Waziristans and it
represents Pakistani fighters in the Taliban-led
resistance in Afghanistan.
A stir in the militant
camp The news on Tuesday of Akhtar's
arrest immediately created a stir within militant
camps as such a high-profile apprehension had not
been expected as Musharraf's pro-United States
camp is on the run and calls are mounting for the
former general to be placed on trial for his
actions against militants. These include military
operations in the Waziristan tribal areas, in
Balochistan province and against the radical Lal
Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad last year.
On Monday, the nation was surprised when
former premier Nawaz Sharif - whose Pakistan
Muslim League is a leading contender to be a part
of the new government - met with the chief of the
Islamist political party Jamaat-i-Islami, Qazi
Hussain Ahmed. At a joint press conference they
said they had agreed on calling for Musharraf's
removal for "crimes" committed during his seven
years as a military ruler.
The architect
behind these demands is retired Lieutenant General
Hamid Gul, a former boss of Musharraf as well as
an ex-head of the ISI. He is backed by another
retired lieutenant general, Asad Durrani. "He
[Musharraf] was directly leading the operations
[at Lal Masjid ] so therefore he is the only one
who is responsible," said Durrani in a television
interview.
Interestingly, soon after the
Lal Masjid operation, militants in Waziristan
announced they would take revenge against all
those responsible for the Lal Masjid raid, in
which the military was used to flush out militants
from the mosque. Particularly, the militants named
the then-director general of the ISI and now chief
of army staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani; the
director general of Military Intelligence, Major
General Nadeem Ejaz; then-corps commander
Rawalpindi and now chairman of the joint chiefs of
staff committee, General Tariq Majeed; and
then-chief of army staff and now retired general,
Musharraf.
Since the elections, leaders of
civil society - including Sharif - have embraced
these calls for "revenge", although obviously they
want to use the judicial process, not the bullet.
Soon after the suicide attack at a Kabul
hotel in January in which several people were
killed, dozens of Pakistani militants who had been
sent to Afghanistan returned home to avoid an
Afghan security clampdown.
Most of them
were originally from Punjab province and many of
them laid low in the outskirts of Rawalpindi, the
garrison city twinned with the capital Islamabad.
Pakistani security agencies are aware of
their presence but are extremely cautious about
launching any large-scale operations in fear of a
militant backlash and aware of the current calls
for leaders of earlier crackdowns to be punished.
Liberal and secular political parties like the
Pakistan People's Party and the Awami National
Party, which had vowed to join forces in the
government to fight against extremism, are now
quiet on the issue of combating militancy.
Akhtar's arrest will shake things up,
placing the country's security apparatus at odds
with the new government of politicians wanting
dialogue, not confrontation with militancy.
Syed
Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's
Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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