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Pakistan:
The Raging Jihad
B
Raman
In the second fortnight of May,
2004, it became evident that under US pressure Gen.Pervez Musharraf
was planning to resume military operations in the South Waziristan
area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering
Afghanistan in order to hunt for Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda
and Taliban dregs. The Hizbut Tahrir (HT), the strongly anti-Musharraf
terrorist organisation with some following in the Armed Forces,
re-circulated amongst the military personnel copies of anti-Musharraf
statements issued by it in March and April during an earlier similar
operation, which had ended in a fiasco for the Army. Both these
statements were attributed to Naveed Butt, described as its
spokesman.
2. The first of these statements titled " Musharraf is transforming
Pak Army into Colonial American Army" said: " The war, which
Musharraf joined under the pretext of “Pakistan First”, is now being
fought inside Pakistan. The people were informed that providing
assistance to kill our Afghan brothers will save Pakistan but that
lie has been exposed now. Today Pakistani army is killing Pakistani
Muslims on Pakistani territory. Musharraf has reduced Pak Army into
a Colonial American Army. Their motto has been practically changed
from “Jihad Fi Sabil lillah” (Jihad in the way of Allah) to “Qital
fi sabil Amrica” (Fighting for the sake of America). The butcher of
Afghani Muslims is now busy in massacring the Muslims of
Pakistan.These days the government repeatedly announces that
killings in the tribal area are only carried out by Pakistani troops
and there are no American troops involved in the operation. Most
certainly, why would America risk her own troops while through the
courtesy of Musharraf, she has Muslim blood at her disposal for
free? To stop a civil war, the Ummah should eject Musharraf and
establish Khilafah. We strongly advise the Army not to raise arms
against their Muslim brothers since
according to the Hadith of the Messenger , abusing a fellow Muslim
is “Fisq” (transgression) while hitting him is “Kufr” (disbelief)."
3. The second, titled "By threatening people of Pakistan, America
works to provide Musharraf the justification to carry out operations
in the tribal region", said:" American Ambassador in Afghanistan,
Zalmay Khalilzad’s claim of carrying operations against Taliban in
the Pakistani territory is nothing but a hollow threat.
Approximately 19,000 exhausted coalition troops stationed in
Afghanistan do not have the courage to penetrate a column of 70,000
Pakistani troops standing at the border and carry out operations in
the tribal belt whilst they cannot even enter the territories of
small Afghan warlords. Nor they are willing to sacrifice “precious
lives” required for such a guerilla action. The real motive of this
pseudo-threat is to give Musharraf an excuse which he would use
against the people and his fellow Generals to justify that Pakistan
army has to continue to fight his own Muslim brothers otherwise the
US troops would cross the border in order to carry out military
operations. In the past, Musharraf and America have repeatedly
issued statements to facilitate each other politically. To provide
America with a reason to pressurize Pakistan, it was Musharraf
himself who declared that Osama and Al-Qaida elements could be
hiding in the Pak-Afghan border area. It was none other than
Musharraf himself who claimed that the scientists might have
proliferated for their own benefit long before the completion of the
investigation. The people have well understood Musharraf-American
nexus and they cannot be terrorized by such pseudo-threats. People
should reject this deceptive plan of Bush and “Mush” and work to
stop this military operation. Furthermore, the people should
establish Khilafah and liberate the whole Ummah from the current
humiliation and slavery."
4. On the orders of Musharraf, the Pakistani security forces, in
violation of an amnesty agreement signed with the tribal leaders of
South Waziristan after an earlier round of fighting in March,2004,
imposed an economic blocade on the South Waziristan area, ordered
the closure of shops belonging to non-co-operative tribal leaders
and were deploying themselves at different places before resuming
the military operations in the area on the night of June 9,2004.
5. They were completely taken by surprise when many groups of
well-armed tribals pre-empted the planned offensive of the Pakistani
security forces and launched simultaneous attacks on a number of
Pakistani military and para-military posts in the area on the night
of June 8,2004. In the ensuing fighting, which has continued for
over 48 hours, 41 persons have already been killed ----- 17 of them
officers and men of the security forces and the remaining the local
tribals who have taken to arms against the security forces. A number
of innocent civilians have also been killed.
6. As it usually does after every operation in this area since
October last, the Musharraf regime has claimed to have killed or
captured a number of foreign terrorists who had taken shelter with
the local tribals, but has not been able to produce convincing
evidence in support of its claims. According to reliable reports
from local police sources, the fighting till now has been largely
between the Security Forces on the one side and the local tribals
backed by the Uzbeck, Chechen and Uighur members of the
International Islamic Front (IIF).
7. After the tribals launched their pre-emptive strike,Nek Muhammad,
the most important and dreaded (by the Pakistani military) tribal
leader of the area, who had helped the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the
past, gave an interview to a Pusto language service of BBC Radio in
which he warned of attacks throughout Pakistan in retaliation for
the Wana (capital of South Waziristan) operation. He warned that the
resistance against the Wana operation would spread throughout
Pakistan and Karachi would see the result before the evening (of
Thursday) and added ominously: "And wait and see what happens in the
other big cities in a few days.”
8.A few hours thereafter, seven Army personnel, three policemen and
a sanitary worker were gunned down and 12 others sustained injuries
when 10 unidentified armed men, in a stolen car, ambushed the convoy
of the Corps Commander of Karachi, Lt-Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat, near
the Clifton Bridge of Karachi on the morning of June 10. While the
Corps Commander escaped, his driver and six other Army personnel of
his security detachment were killed.
9. Within 15 minutes of the incident, as Police and Army officers
were inspecting the scene, a suspicious-looking bag was detected by
a policeman, who picked it up and threw it away into a nearby empty
plot of land.It exploded without causing any damage. The police
recovered another bag containing 20 kilos of explosives connected
with a mobile telephone which was defused by the police bomb
disposal squad. It was reportedly similar to the improvised
explosive devices used in the Madrid bombings of March.
10.The unsuccessful attempt to kill the Corps Commander is the sixth
major act of terrorism in Karachi since the beginning of May.
Sixty-one persons have died in these attacks. The particulars of
these incidents are given below:
May 7: A suicide bomber ( a police constable) killed 23 Shia
worshippers in an imambargah.The anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)
is suspected.
May 25: A parcel bomb exploded at the gate of Karachi port, killing
two people. No responsibility established so far.
May 26: Two car bombs exploded within 20 minutes of each other
outside a private English school called the Pakistan American
Cultural Center and near the US Consul-General’s residence, killing
one policeman and injuring 10 others.
May 30: Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai of the Binori madrasa, the mentor
and godfather of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the LEJ, the Jaish-e-Mohammad
(JEM) and other jihadi organisations, was gunned down along with a
son and a nephew. Anti-Saudi ruling family elements in Al Qaeda are
suspected because of his opposition to their terrorism campaign
against the Saudi ruling family.
May 31: A suicide bomber killed 21 Shia worshippers. The LEJ is
suspected.
11. No organisation has so far claimed responsibility for the
unsuccessful attack on the Corps Commander. After the two abortive
attempts to assassinate him at Rawalpindi in December last year,
Musharraf had made a series of changes in the senior posts of the
Army.Lieutenant-General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, who was then working as
the Quarter-Master General in the GHQ at Rawalpindi, was transferred
and posted as the Corps Commander of the V Corps in Karachi. He was
commissioned in 1967 in the Armoured Corps. The speculation in
Pakistani Army circles was that if Musharraf really decided to give
up his post as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) at the end of this
year as he has promised to do so, Lt.Gen.Hayat would be one of the
three Lts.General favoured by him to succeed him, the other two
being Lt-Gen Javed Hassan of the 30 Corps in Gujranwala and Lt
General Tariq Waseem Ghazi, Commandant of the National Defence
College.Since then, there have been indications that Musharraf is
reluctant to hand over as the COAS lest his authority over the Armed
Forces be weakened.
12. The manner in which the ambush was planned and carried out and
the terrorists managed to escape after the attack indicates inside
knowledge which they had of the plans of the Corps Commander and his
likely route. It is almost certain that there was an involvement of
elements from the Armed Forces in the ambush. Well-informed Police
sources in Karachi also believe that there was a strong insider
involvement. Altaf Hussain, the leader of the Muttahida Qaumi
Movement (MQM), who lives in exile in the UK and whose party is a
leading member of the ruling coalition in Sindh and controls the
Police Department, has also been quoted as saying in a statement
disseminated from London: " “The attack is the work of the same
group of religious extremists and terrorists who were involved in
the attack on President Musharraf.The people arming the ‘religious
extremists’ and getting them safely into Karachi should be
identified.The attacks on the President and the Corps Commander
clearly indicate that there are organised groups within the military
and intelligence agencies who are supporting religious terrorists."
He is believed to have issued this statement after consulting his
party's representatives in the Sindh Cabinet.
13. There was an abortive attempt to kill Musharraf in Karachi in
2002 in which the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Al Alami meaning
International) was involved. There was also suspicion of the
involvement of some para-military personnel posted in Karachi. The
present indications are that the attack on the Corps Commander was,
most probably, carried out by the Pakistani components of the
pro-bin Laden International Islamic Front (IIF) with the
collaboration of the pro-HT elements inside the Pakistani Armed
Forces.
14. The Pakistani organisations, which are members of the IIF, are
the HUM, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the JEM, the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-Al-Islami (HUJI) and the LEJ. Of these
organisations, the HUJI has a strong following in the Armed Forces
and was involved in an aborted attempt of 1995 to assassinate
Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed
Kakkar, the then COAS. It was also suspected along with the JEM in
the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf in December.
15. The HT projects itself as a politico-religious organisation and
denies any links with terrorism. It is not a member of the IIF.But,
its denials are not taken seriously. It is a highly motivated jihadi
terrorist organisation which advocates the restoration of an Islamic
Caliphate.
16. The sequence of events since June 8,2004, clearly indicates a
linkage between the terrorist incidents in South Waziristan and the
attack on the Corps Commander. It is an act of terrorism mounted
against the Army and one of its senior officers considered close to
Musharraf, in retaliation for the military operations against the
dregs of the IIF in South Waziristan.
17. This incident, coming in the wake of the attacks on Musharraf,
indicate the growing influence of the IIF in the Armed Forces and
the continuing high morale and motivation of the jihadi terrorists
of Pakistan.
The writer is
Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai,
and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research
Foundation (ORF), Chennai chapter. By
arrangement with South Asia Analysis Group, New Delhi. |
