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2 Islamists break Pakistan's military
ranks By Amir Mir
ISLAMABAD - The arrest of Brigadier Ali
Khan, a senior officer of the Pakistan army, for
his alleged ties to Hizbul Tehrir (HuT), a banned
Islamic militant group believed to be working in
tandem with al-Qaeda under the garb of
pan-Islamism, has brought into the open
conflicting Islamists and reformists ideologies
that have split the military's rank and file for a
decade.
Pakistani armed forces spokesman
Major General Athar Abbas confirmed Khan has been
arrested due to his links to the HuT and was being
interrogated by the Special Investigation Branch
of the Military Intelligence. The brigadier, who
had been posted at the General Headquarters (GHQ)
of the army in the garrison town of Rawalpindi,
was taken into custody on May 6, hardly three days
after the May 2 killing of
al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in a US military
raid in Abbottabad.
The military spokesman
was quick to dispel any impression that Khan, who
was in charge of drafting army regulations, was
linked with the investigations into the Abbottabad
episode. "The detention shows that the Pakistan
army is determined to weed out bad actors,'' Major
General Athar Abbas said. ''We follow zero
tolerance policy of such activities in the
military and that's why prompt action was taken on
detection. We don't allow any other cult in the
military other than the military cult. We have
zero-tolerance policy for any extremist ideology
in the army."
The arrest of the brigadier
over a suspected militant connection has surprised
his colleagues since he comes from a family with
three generations in military service, besides
having a brilliant service record. His father was
a junior commissioned officer, while his younger
brother is a colonel in a Pakistani intelligence
agency. His son and son-in-law are both army
captains.
Khan's wife, Anjum, rejected the
allegations. "Every general knows Brigadier Ali
Khan. Even army chief General [Ashfaq Pervez]
Kiani knows him," she told a foreign news agency
on June 22. "We can never think of betraying the
army or our country. He is an intellectual,
honest, patriotic and ideological person. It has
become a fashion in Pakistan that whosoever offers
prayers and practices religion is dubbed as
Taliban and militant."
She said her
husband went missing on May 5, and she has been
searching for information about his whereabouts
since. Authorities had assured her that he would
soon return, she said. "Our three generations have
served the army and none of our family members
have had any links with the militants," she
insisted.
Military circles said clearance
for Khan's arrest came after Kiani was shown
convincing evidence of the brigadier's apparent
militant links. The army chief was disturbed to
learn of infiltration by HuT at such a senior
level. Khan, who had received training in the
United States and was set to retire soon, had
previously been denied promotion because of his
extremist leanings. A defense source claimed that
a lieutenant-colonel who worked under Khan had
also been detained.
Before his GHQ
posting, the brigadier served as a commander in
the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir. The
source added that efforts were being made to
arrest other members of the group who were in
contact with him.
News of brigadier's
arrest was made public almost a week after a June
15 report in The New York Times that Pakistan's
top military spy agency had arrested five Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) informants, including a
major who fed information to the American spy
agency before the Abbottabad raid in which Bin
Laden was killed.
Major General Athar
Abbas confirmed that the army had made several
detentions in connection with the US raid and
other unspecified incidents under ''a purge'', but
denied holding any military officer. "These
arrests are part of ongoing cleansing process and
are not related to any single incident," the
military spokesman said, without clarifying what
he meant by "cleansing process" and whether it was
about a covert CIA network in the country.
It soon transpired that a doctor in the
Pakistan army's medical corps, Major Amir Aziz,
had been picked up by the agencies from his
Abbottabad house, just a couple of hundred meters
from the compound where the Americans killed Bin
Laden. However, it is not yet clear if the arrests
of Khan and Aziz were part of a larger "cleansing
process" in the military or an isolated event.
Pakistan's armed forces have come under scathing
international criticism for a seemingly lax
approach to elements who sympathize with militant
organizations.
Brigadier Khan was not the
first high-ranking officer of the Pakistan army to
be arrested for alleged links with HuT, which
represents a new breed of Islamic fundamentalists
who study at top British and American educational
institutions yet abhor Western values and advocate
the removal of the pro-US Pakistan government and
the formation of a pan-Islamic state.
Military intelligence apprehended Colonel
Shahid Bashir, then commanding officer of the
Shamsi air force base in Balochistan province, on
May 4, 2009, for keeping links with HuT. The
colonel was arrested along with a retired fighter
pilot-turned lawyer, Squadron Leader Nadeem Ahmad
Shah, and Awais Ali Khan, a US-educated mechanical
engineer who held a Green Card giving him the
right to live in the United States.
On May
13, 2009, Federal Minister for Law, Justice and
Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan informed
parliament that the army had detained a serving
colonel along with a Rawalpindi-based lawyer on
espionage charges.
Colonel Bashir was
subsequently accused of leaking secrets pertaining
to the Shamsi air force base, which the CIA was
using to launch drone attacks on al-Qaeda and
Taliban-linked militants in the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. He
was eventually court-martialed on charges of
spying and provoking armed forces personnel to get
involved in terrorist acts.
The court
martial was conducted by a military court, headed
by a brigadier under Section 31(d) of the Army
Act. Under the act, the accused could be sentenced
to death if proven guilty. The accused had pleaded
not guilty and challenged the jurisdiction of the
military court. Their fate is unknown.
The
arrest of Khan over suspected jihadi links only
confirms that the tug-of-war between Islamists and
reformists in the army has reached a boiling point
as the Islamic extremists and their ideological
partners in the garrison act in unison to advance
their anti-US and anti-state agenda.
The
development has set alarm bells ringing among the
military leadership, which already faces sharp
criticism for the May 2 American raid in
Abbottabad and subsequent terrorist attacks
targeting highly sensitive military installations
in various parts of the country - especially the
naval base in the port city of Karachi.
Investigations have revealed that the May 22
assault on the high-guarded Mehran naval base
could not have been possible without inside help.
Investigators believe the naval base
attackers achieved their prime aim, the
destruction of two PC3 Orion aircraft, worth together over
US$70 million, in a clear bid to impair Pakistan's
military prowess and demoralize its rank and file.
The most worrying aspect of the assault was that
the militants appeared to have been privy to
classified information about the Mehran base that
only an insider could have provided.
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