Asia Times: End of the line for poor man's bin Laden?


	December 1, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

End of the line for poor man's bin Laden?
By Muhammad Rafique

ISLAMABAD - Reports trickling in across the border from Afghanistan suggest that Northern Alliance forces have been able to do something that Pakistan security officials have been trying to do for years - eradicate their public enemy number one.

Pakistan's intelligence agencies believe that Riaz Basra, chief of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, reputed to be the most extreme sectarian organization in Pakistan, has either been killed or is trapped with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

If he is not already dead, the fate of the man dubbed the "poor man's Osama bin Laden" because of the US$165,000 reward on his head, is likely dead once the Northern Alliance get their hands on him. In contrast, the United States has offered a $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of bin Laden, wanted on international terrorism charges.

Basra is convicted of assassinating the director-general of the Iranian Cultural Center in Lahore in 1990 and is listed on a US list of terrorists that "live in or have lived in, have trained in, are headquartered in or financed from Afghanistan". He is also described as a "would-be assassin" for his failed attempt on the life of former premier Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

Basra, who has been on the run since escaping from prison in 1994, heads a vicious Muslim Sunni organization that has waged a campaign of terror on Shi'ites. Sunnis make up approximately 77 percent of Pakistan's Muslim population, of which Shi'ites account for 20 percent. He and his close aides have regularly sought shelter in Afghanistan with the Taliban to avoid Pakistani security forces.

Senior security officials in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar say that Basra and at least two dozen close aides of his Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have either been killed in Mazar-e-Sharif or were trapped in Kunduz. Hundreds of foreigners fighting for the Taliban - mostly Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens - were killed this week during a riot at the prison in Kunduz where they had been sent after surrendering to the Northern Alliance.

The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been linked to hundreds of deaths in Pakistan, including government officials, judges and senior police officials who tried to pursue them. Three successive Pakistani governments, including the present one of President General Pervez Musharraf, have unsuccessfully tried to bring Basra to justice. On at least three occasions Punjabi police have reported him killed. But each time he has telephoned news organizations to gloat with lines such as, "Tell those idiots I am still alive and I will get back to work on them and the Shi'ite leaders." And he always kept his promise.

Police officials say that Basra is adept at changing his appearance, and that he had a number of lookalikes within his ranks - hence the number of times that he has mistakenly been reported killed.

Basra's avowed mission is to establish an extremist Sunni state in Pakistan, a mission that was encouraged by former military dictator General Zia ul-Haq. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other sectarian organizations mushroomed on his nod in an attempt to sideline the Pakistan Peoples Party, whose popularity had survived the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom Zia had ousted in a military coup in 1997. Bhutto was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death for alleged conspiracy to murder a political opponent, and hanged in 1979.

Musharraf has banned the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and its parallel Shi'ite militant organization Sipa-e-Muhammad, which is also responsible for the deaths of many Sunnis. Pakistani security officials say that since 1991 at least 1,865 Shi'ites and 810 Sunnis have been killed in sectarian violence.

After September 11, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other extremist organizations ordered their followers to Afghanistan to join in a jihad. Pakistani intelligence officials say that the groups were welcomed and were given ample facilities, including financing and sophisticated weapons. Basra is believed to have fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the invading Soviet forces.

Independent sources and intelligence authorities estimate that about 8,000 Pakistani jihadis, mostly from the the lawless tribal areas of the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) are presently in Afghanistan, either already captured and imprisoned awaiting trial, or besieged in Kandahar, the last major stronghold of the Taliban in the country. Some 2,000 families in Pakistan have reported male members missing in the past month alone.

In the past, successive governments, including that of Nawaz Sharif, sent their intelligence chiefs to Afghanistan to plead with the Taliban authorities to hand over the sectarian terrorists. Both General Ziauddin Butt in the Sharif government and General Mehmoud Ahmed in Musharraf's administration until recently, were roundly rebuffed. However, officials in Islamabad would not say in so many words whether the Pakistani organizations had a working relationship with bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization.

Pakistani officials said that the Taliban had countered their requests by demanding that Islamabad hand over all non-Taliban Afghans in Pakistan, whom they said were hatching conspiracies against the Taliban regime.

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