Al-Qaeda seeks a new alliance
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE, Pakistan - Fighting in the Swat Valley and the
neighboring districts of Buner and Dir between Taliban militants and Pakistani
security forces is still raging after a week, forcing about 1.4 million people
from their homes in addition to another 550,000 people displaced by earlier
fighting there and in other regions.
The military claims it has made "considerable headway" in the intense fighting,
killing hundreds of militants in this latest phase of the South Asian war
theater.
The reaction of the militants will be crucial in deciding the direction of this
struggle, which has been instigated under intense pressure from the United
States on Islamabad.
In this regard, Asia Times Online spoke to a top ideologue, on the
condition that neither the name of the man nor the location of the meeting be
hinted at in the writing.
He said that al-Qaeda had already anticipated that Washington would bring
Pakistan and India on board in the fight against militants, and even try to get
cooperation from Iran. The aim would be to geographically isolate the
militants.
But the militants, said the man, planned to occupy a strategic corridor that
stretched from Nangarhar province in Afghanistan through Pakistan's Khyber
Agency and the Pakistani Balochistan area of Tutrbat all the way to Iranian
Balochistan.
The militants plan to establish a new regional alliance. In this regard,
Iranian Jundullah (Army of God) leader Abdul Malik Rigi is due to meet an
al-Qaeda emissary in the near future near a Pakistani Balochistan coastal town
to lay the foundation for joint regional operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Iran and India.
Al-Qaeda has in the past had some reservations about the Iranian Jundullah, an
insurgent Sunni Islamic organization opposed to Tehran, on suspicion it had
links to US and Pakistani intelligence.
In the past three years, a few Pakistani Balochi anti-Shi'ite elements who were
previously part of the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi worked with
Jundullah. They carried out joint operations against Iranians and Shi'ites in
the region.
These Pakistani Balochi elements played a role in bringing al-Qaeda and
Jundullah closer, making it clear that Jundullah is now an independent
organization with its headquarters in the southern Pakistani port city of
Karachi. It has bases, though, in Pakistani Balochistan and the Iranian
province of Sistan-Balochistan.
Jundullah has the narrow aim of destabilizing the Iranian Shi'ite regime.
Al-Qaeda wants to sell its franchise to Jundullah, with two main aims:
To destroy or disrupt operations at Chabahar port, which could be used for
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supplies going to Afghanistan. The
current main route through Pakistan is under heavy attack by the Taliban.
Establish al-Qaeda's presence in Iran to carry out operations to create a
strategic balance against any Iranian role in Afghanistan and Iraq.
At present, Jundullah is a naive and financially poor organization which only
carries out low-profile, stand-alone, sporadic attacks inside Iran. It claims
to have killed about 400 Iranian soldiers over the years, but it does not pose
any real threat to Tehran.
Al-Qaeda aims to change this, as it did with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Pakistan.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a breakaway faction of the Sepah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
(SSP), a political anti-Shi'ite party which aimed to have Shi'ites declared
non-Muslims through legislation. In elections, the SSP could not secure more
than one seat in parliament, while several of its leaders were assassinated by
Shi'ite militant organizations.
That compelled a small number of SSP members to form a militant group - the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Army of Jhangvi), named after their founder, Maulana Haq
Nawaz Jhangvi. Jhangvi was subsequently killed by Shi'ite militants.
Initially, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carried out target killings of Shi'ites in mosques
and their religious leaders. The Shi'ite organization Sepah Mohammad
reciprocated in bloody kind against Sunnis.
The Pakistani security forces tightened the noose around the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,
forcing its members to flee to Afghanistan, where the Taliban were ruling.
These members, with little political ideology and poor, were embraced by
al-Qaeda and given training in its camps.
After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when al-Qaeda retreated to
Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members provided them help, and in the process
their interaction increased.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's members proved good fodder for al-Qaeda's suicide bombings
as many of them were already dead-enders, wanted by the Pakistani security
agencies dead or alive and abandoned by their families.
Other developments will complement the new alliance between Jundullah and
al-Qaeda. For the first time, for instance, there has been a huge influx of
Pakistani Balochis to al-Qaeda's camps in South Waziristan and North Waziristan
in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
This is all a part of establishing a new strategic corridor for militants. The
meeting of Abdul Malik Rigi with an al-Qaeda emissary is expected to take this
a step closer to realization.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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