On his release, he was received outside Kot Lakhpat prison by leaders of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, banned in 2001 as a terrorist organization but now—after being renamed harmlessly to Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat—resting in a legal grey area because of an appeal lying with the higher judiciary. The Sahaba leader heading the welcome party was Maulana Muhammad Ahmad Ludhianvi—recalling an anti-Shia 1980s polemicist who was assassinated in Karachi—who came in handy when the current Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, called on Ishaq to talk to the terrorists who had attacked Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009. The Army chief’s personal plane had carried Ishaq to Rawalpindi, while another plane belonging to the ISI chief, Gen. Shuja Pasha, carried Ludhianvi.

Sipah-e-Sahaba’s welcome party was hardly a dozen strong, but by the time it reached the border of South Punjab, the numbers began to swell. If in Okara it was a few hundred, and a thousand in Khanewal, it was nearly 5,000 in Bahawalpur—the city of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s sister terrorist organization, Jaish-e-Muhammad. When Ishaq arrived in his village of Tarinda Sawai Khan in Rahim Yar Khan, the crowd out to greet him was actually 15,000-strong, as claimed by a Sahaba publication.

Their newspaper, Daily Ummat Karachi, in its July 16 edition said Ishaq had been freed without any “secret deal” and that he had rededicated himself to war against the proliferation of “insulters” of the Companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) on the Internet as he now fought under the flag of Sipah-e-Sahaba after disbanding Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. How far Jhangvi will be disbanded after appearing on the flag of Al Qaeda’s 313 Brigade (which includes Jandullah and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) is yet to be seen. One reason Ishaq has joined Sahaba is that the banning order against it is on hold and this takes him away from the mischief of the antiterrorism law.

According to the publication, Ishaq was wanted in 43 cases, involving 70 murders, out of which he had been acquitted in 37 and awarded bail in eight. The last case, involving planning—from prison—the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009 has concluded in another bail at the Supreme Court after which he has been released. Earlier resistance to release by the Punjab government had required Lahore to pay for the monthly sustenance of Ishaq’s family. This time Lahore let him go. Daily Ummat says that, because Punjab was not releasing Ishaq, Sipah-e-Sahaba decided to reach an agreement with Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on electoral support in Bhakkar from where the latter was elected unopposed with the help of Ishaq’s brother.

Arriving back in South Punjab, Ishaq has consolidated the power of the hard-line sectarian organizations emanating from the state policy of jihad. He is ranked at par with the chief of Jaish-e-Muhammad, Maulana Masud Azhar, famous for his companionship with Osama bin Laden and his linkage with Omar Sheikh, who contributed to the killing of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002. Sheikh, too, has been charged with planning terrorist acts—including against then President Pervez Musharraf—from his prison cell in Sindh. Azhar and Sheikh were both sprung from an Indian jail in 1999 and released in Kandahar, after the hijacking of an Indian airliner in Nepal, as a result of a deal facilitated by a Pakistan-dominated Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Ishaq headed a union of shopkeepers in Rahim Yar Khan when he fell under the thrall of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founder of the Shia-apostatizing Sipah-e-Sahaba in 1982 after his contacts with Arab princes enjoying extraterritorial hunting rights in Rahim Yar Khan made him strong. Against the background of an Arab-Iranian confrontation in the region, Sahaba flourished financially, too. The other devotees of Maulana Jhangvi were Jaish-e-Muhammad’s Azhar and Riaz Basra, who was killed in a “police encounter” in 2002 because “no judge could sentence him.” Basra and Ishaq founded Laskhar-e-Jhangvi.

After Ishaq was arrested in 1997 in the wake of the killing of five Iranian Air Force trainees in Rawalpindi, Basra threatened the government with dire consequences unless he was released. Meanwhile, another Lashkar-e-Jhangvi commander, Akram Lahori, went on killing Shias in Karachi, which according to Ishaq was much easier because the Jhangvi cadre there was better trained than in the Punjab. (Training was received in Al Qaeda camps in Surobi, Afghanistan.) Facing trial in Multan, Lahori, responsible for the killing of such well-known Karachi figures as businessman Shaukat Mirza and prominent Shia doctors, was indicted in 2010 after living comfortably in jail for seven years. Witnesses against him in Multan continue to die or disappear. Witnesses against Ishaq also have a hard time surviving, as in the case brought against him by a Shia citizen, Fida Husain Ghalvi, charging that Ishaq had killed 10 of his family.

The Punjab government has made a deal with Sipah-e-Sahaba after seeing its growing clout in South Punjab. One well-known episode was recorded by jihadist newspaper Islam: “Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah visited Jhang and paid his respects at the tomb of the founder of the greatest banned sectarian-terrorist Deobandi organization, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. He led a delegation of the [Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)] which also included parliamentary secretary Iftikhar Baloch and party M.P.A. from Jhang, Sheikh Yaqub. He also visited the tombs of other Sipah-e-Sahaba martyr-leaders like Maulana Isarul Qasimi and Allama Azam Tariq.”

Threatened communities have reacted predictably. Shia outfit Imamia Students Organization issued the following statement: “The planned release of terror kingpin Malik Ishaq who is also the co-founder of banned organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, with the blessing of Punjab government’s weak prosecution and the court’s blind decision is likely to fuel the ruthless killings of Shias across the country.” Sri Lanka, which hoped to get justice for the attack on its cricket team, and Iran, whose cultural consul Muhammad Ali Rahimi was allegedly killed by Ishaq in Multan in 1997, will also be offended. His release was badly timed. President Asif Ali Zardari’s paid a goodwill visit to Iran the same week.

When the Iranian consul in Lahore Sadeq Ganji was assassinated in 1990, the strong presence of Sipah-e-Sahaba in politics prevented the due process of law to unfold. At the Lahore High Court, where the killers faced trial, many judges retired or were elevated before the court was able to pass the obvious death sentence. Sahaba wanted to pay diyat or blood money for the killer it wanted spared, and even approached Iran in this respect. The power of apostatizing sectarian elements has redoubled in 2011 and “legal” political parties have to align with them to survive in certain regions. All it takes is a renaming of the banned organization.

Khaled Ahmed is a director at the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) in Lahore.

Source: NewsWeek

Why is military the problem in Pakistan? What is wrong with its continued interference in our politics and civil society? Consider this.

The military’s influence on the social and cultural landscape of Pakistan is of homogenisation. Its imperatives dictated it to mould a society that is homogenised in its ideological leanings. Since Pakistan is everything but a homogenous society (ethnically, linguistically, culturally), Islam became a useful tool of homogenisation in the hands of both the civilian political elite and the military leadership. But it has been a more destructive tool in the hands of the latter than the former. Here is why: civilians never really used Islam to expand the control of the state in Pakistan. For them the use of Islam in Pakistani politics has been largely for purposes of pandering to the masses, securing votes during elections and establishing their credentials before a constituency that is largely conservative and religious. The military, on the other hand, institutionalised religion within the state to expand its writ and control over Pakistan. General Zia’s regime is a prime example of this. A homogenised polity is easier to control by dictatorial forces. Once they have the monopoly over setting both the agenda and the discourse, it becomes (relatively) easier to shape public opinions. The military’s use of Islam has served the same purpose for its leadership. So, under Zia’s regime when the military ‘Islamised’ the state through public education, brought shrines under state control, influenced the bureaucracy, and so on, it essentially ensured that its influence on homogenising the state takes on a permanent role in state structures. It is this permanence that allows the military’s continued influence in the state even when not directly ruling the country.

The military’s world view has been unable to look beyond its own narrow interests. It is not even willing to consider that its own actions can be, and are, harmful to the state that it intends to protect. One way of studying the current civil-military relationships within the existing state structure can be that the imperatives of the military desiring a geographically unified state outguns the imperative of the state for a military. The interest of the military institution to keep the geographical entity called Pakistan intact essentially stems from economic concerns. A large country allows a bigger economy even if its economic performance remains mediocre. If nothing else, it ensures a sustained flow of rents from the economy to the military, and the military needs these rents to maintain two important aspects of its internal structure. First, it needs the rents to maintain an internal system of patronage. Second, it needs them to sustain and expand its vast business empire. As one of the larger (if not the largest) business empires in the country its influence on the economy and Pakistan’s general polity cannot be assumed away. Since the military’s economic empire is not subject to any (real) civil accountability, it gives it significant financial autonomy that may not be available to any other business group in the country (at least in theory). The financial autonomy can be expanded because of the military’s political power. In the name of providing national security the military finds it justifiable to expand its control and ownership of the country’s resources (natural or other). It follows then that independence from any meaningful civil accountability allows the military’s financial autonomy and political clout to feed off each other. Both depend on each other while perpetuating themselves further.

Is it possible to reform this praetorian military? Well, it is tough, to say the least! The problem with the military mindset is that it continues to follow the same colonial binaries that it was instituted with under the British Raj. In some ways it follows the same occupant/conqueror mindset that was followed before 1947 and the British concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is still followed — only now it has been replaced with the ‘civilian and non-civilian’ binary. This attitude is reflective of the gulf that exists between the military and the rest of our society. This gap also makes it immune to any critical thinking or self-reflection. Its efforts to homogenise society have turned Pakistan into a society that looks at diversity with suspicion. Any discourse that attempts to escape the Muslim/non-Muslim binary has to move a mountain to establish itself as valid and credible. Hence, each time the military is in charge of the affairs of the state (or some troubled area) it leaves behind a trail of unresolved conflicts that essentially stem out of the local plurality unwilling to accept the homogenous identity imposed on it from the above. The military’s economic might leads it into a bigger quagmire. Let us just assume (only for the sake of making the argument) that our military might be willing to give up its economic and financial empire. The military leadership (both past and present) has amassed immense wealth through its business empire that even if they give up such interests the lower cadre that relies completely on the patronage (mostly in the form of plots and subsidised living) of the higher cadre will feel betrayed. This change can make the lower cadre susceptible to all kinds of ideas and acts. The business empire that feeds the system of internal patronage has important (side)effects; it acts as a disciplining tool. Hence, the quagmire — damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

The real challenge that can force a change in the civil-military relationship is political power of the civilians. The more power civilians get, the larger is the space where a reorganisation of military structure can be thought of. Without that we shall continue to rot in a state where we condemn politicians each day and accept the military’s hegemony unquestioningly.

The writer is studying towards his doctorate in Economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He can be reached at fahdali@gmail.com

Source: Daily Times

Wreckage of motorbikes at site of a bomb explosion outside Opera House in Mumbai Photo: AP

By Con Coughlin

A fresh wave of terrorist attacks are launched at the heart of the Indian city of Mumbai, and immediately the finger of suspicion points towards Pakistan.

And this is before Indian counter-terrorism officials have even had a chance to examine the crime scene.
Indeed, it may well transpire that the three bombs that killed 17 people and injured 131 others were the work of an indigenous group of Islamists in retaliation for the recent arrests of their fellow members by the Indian authorities.

Even if that proves to be the case, though, it will not prevent blame for the attack from ultimately being laid at Pakistan’s door, with all the implications that will have for the country’s emerging status as a one of the world’s leading pariah states.

The tentacles of Pakistan-based terror groups, many of whom are linked to the country’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), spread far and wide, even to parts of India, where they provide training instruction to local Islamist militants.

The Pakistani authorities may have been completely in the dark about the latest attacks on Mumbai’s business district, but they will have a hard time convincing their Indian neighbours of their innocence, such is the level of mutual suspicion and hostility that exists between the two countries.

If the Pakistanis do end up being implicated in the attacks, though, they will only have themselves to blame. For nearly a decade, America and its Western allies have been urging Islamabad to clean up its act and for the government to dissociate itself from the complex web of terrorist organisations that enjoy the patronage of its security establishment.

Whether they were formed to pressure Delhi into renouncing its sovereignty over Kashmir or to fight foreign invaders in neighbouring Afghanistan, the continued existence of radical groups such as Lashkar-e-Taeba, which has waged a brutal terror campaign in Kashmir, and the equally fanatical Taliban – both the Afghan and Pakistani wings – totally undermines Islamabad’s claim to be a reliable ally of the West.

So much for the billions of dollars Pakistan has received in Western aid during the past decade and its repeated assurances that it is just as committed as its Western counterparts to eradicating the modern menace of Islamist fanaticism.

This has certainly been the Pakistanis’ oft-repeated refrain since the Bush administration’s infamous threat, made in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001, to bomb Pakistan back to the dark ages if it failed to co-operate fully with Washington’s offensive against those responsible for the worst terrorist attack in American history.

In return for a whopping $20 billion in American aid during the past decade, Pakistan has made a passable stab at positioning itself as a key Western ally, offering co-operation on a wide range of counter-terrorism issues.

But Islamabad’s double-dealing was laid bare the moment a team of US Seals stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad in May, killing the al-Qaeda leader and seizing a treasure trove of intelligence material.

Pakistan’s military and political establishments now seem to be locked in a state of total denial about the implications of having the world’s most notorious terrorist discovered hiding in their midst.

The protestations of senior officials that they had no idea of bin Laden’s whereabouts, even though he was living just a few hundred yards from one of the country’s leading military academies, are unconvincing, to say the least.

And they have simply added to the growing mood of anti-Pakistan resentment in the West with their continual whine that they should have been fully informed of the raid’s objectives before it was launched.

Apart from being disingenuous in the extreme, given the ISI’s well-documented links with Islamist terror groups, it is also an insult to the thousands of victims of the various atrocities that have been committed in bin Laden’s name during the past 20 years.

With every day that passes, investigators trawling through the massive archive of intelligence material seized in bin Laden’s compound uncover new evidence of his participation in acts of terrorism against the West.

This week, for example, it was revealed that bin Laden personally directed the July 7 suicide bomb attacks in London, and was the force behind the 2006 plot to blow up a dozen transatlantic airliners in mid-flight after they left Heathrow.

In any normal relationship, these revelations would merit a public apology from the Pakistani government to the families and friends of the victims, for allowing London’s worst terrorist attack to have been hatched on its territory. The same goes for America over the events of 9/11. But this is no normal relationship.

Indeed, the increasingly fractious relations between Pakistan and America resemble an acrimonious divorce in which the warring parties deliberately interpret any action by their former partner in the worst possible light.

Thus, rather than congratulating the Americans on eliminating bin Laden, the Pakistanis have accused them of committing a gross violation of sovereignty, and have responded with a number of punitive measures, such as closing air bases used for drone strikes and expelling teams of military advisers.

For its part, the US has frozen £500 million worth of aid and has made it clear that it will have no hesitation in launching further unilateral action in defence of its own security interests.

There is, after all, the small matter of the continued existence on Pakistani-controlled soil of the rump of al-Qaeda’s command structure – including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born surgeon who last month was appointed as bin Laden’s successor.

Rather than bemoaning American interference, it would very much be in Pakistan’s interests to apprehend Zawahiri and his fellow conspirators, who are no doubt actively working on new plots to attack not only Western targets, but also Pakistani ones.

Despite the current meltdown in relations between Islamabad and Washington, it should not be forgotten that the Pakistanis have, during the past decade, suffered thousands of casualties of their own, as Islamist militant groups have turned their guns on their own people.

The need for Pakistan and the West to patch up their differences, moreover, is all the greater now that Barack Obama and his Nato allies have set a time limit for combat operations in neighbouring Afghanistan.

In view of the difficulties Pakistan has in controlling its own territory, the last thing it needs is for another failed state to take root on the other side of the Afghan border.

And this remains a distinct possibility so long as the Taliban is able to use its havens in Pakistan to mastermind the kind of operation that earlier this week resulted in the murder of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of the Afghan president who was the main political power broker in the southern province of Kandahar.

If such incidents continue, it will not just be the future of Afghanistan that is in doubt, but the very survival of Pakistan.

Source: The Telegraph

Zar Ajam (ABC News)

A 17-year-old died this week in Afghanistan, hanging from the end of a rope. A prison official fastened it around the boy’s neck in Kabul’s largest jail, tightened the knot, and then, in front of a crowd, removed the platform that held up the boy’s feet.

He was hanged by the Afghan government because he was a killer. In February, Zar Ajam put on a suicide vest and a police officer’s uniform. He picked up an AK-47, walked into the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad and started shooting. Forty people were dead by the time he took off his suicide vest and walked out, trying unsuccessfully to blend into the crowd of victims.

Zar Ajam might sound cold-blooded; he might sound evil.

But consider that Ajam, a Pakistani from North Waziristan, left school when he was seven years old. He didn’t know how to read or write. He worked as a day laborer and had little to no economic future. That made him easy prey for his Taliban teachers.

He believed them when they said the people banking in Jalalabad were foreigners because he’d never seen a foreigner before. He believed them when he visited the bank during a dry run and his teachers told him foreigners were so scared of the Taliban, they wore local clothes and spoke Pashto, the local language. He believed them because he knew no better.

Two months ago, in an interview with ABC News from prison, Zar Ajam said he would never do what he did again — because he knew better, now.

But he also said he accepted his punishment. He accepted responsibility. He never got a chance to apologize to the families of those he killed.

“When police arrested they put me in a room. The window was open and I heard the prayer call and I saw a person in a police uniform praying – and it was then I realized the people I killed were Muslim,” Ajam said in the long, somber interview, during which one of his guards hovered a few feet away. “It was like I woke up and I realized that I have killed innocent people.”

It is far too simple to suggest that Ajam became a terrorist because he was poor and uneducated. Millions of boys grow up in the impoverished, rugged tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border and never choose to join the Taliban. Some studies suggest that poorer Pakistanis are actually less likely to support extremism.

But Zar Ajam’s story reveals just how easily boys from that area can become militants. It reveals just how many boys are willing to become suicide bombers, how they are passed from one militant commander to another, and how easily they can be sent to Afghanistan.

Perhaps more than anything, his story is a warning that, despite military advances in Afghanistan and advances in pinpoint targeting in Pakistan, defeating the Taliban may require reducing their pool of recruits by improving the lives of those living on the border.

‘You Should Pass Your Time Doing Jihad’

Zar Ajam grew up in the Shawal district of North Waziristan, Pakistan, just across the border from the Birmal district in Paktika, Afghanistan. It is one of the poorest, most remote corners of the planet, with few jobs, no cell phone coverage, and not a single university for hundreds of miles.

Ajam studied until the third grade, although he seems to have never reached a third-grade level of comprehension. He never learned to write or read.

When he left school, he went to work in a quarry as a day laborer alongside two of his uncles. Everyone else in the family, he said, was working, and he was never encouraged to stay in school.

By the time he was a teenager, an Afghan friend of his cousin named Sharif was a repeat visitor to the family home.

“He was a Talib,” Ajam recalled. “He was encouraging me to go to Jihad, and he was telling me about the Westerners in Afghanistan and how it is our duty to do Jihad.”

Sharif then made his pitch: “Come with us,” he told Ajam. “You don’t have to work. You should pass your time doing Jihad.”

Ajam’s story of how he came under the sway of the Taliban and trained for jihad cannot be independently confirmed. According to his version of events, his decision eventually led him to a local militant training camp, then to Peshawar, then across the border to the bank in Jalalabad. But he did not seem to take it very seriously at the time. He said he wasn’t all that interested in school or work, and he was easily convinced by his older friend. His was not an ideological decision.

Ajam says he was first taken to the bazaar in Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan and a virtual alphabet soup of terrorist groups. Pakistan has refused to launch a military campaign into the area; Pakistan’s critics say that is because some militant leaders in the city have been linked to Pakistan’s intelligence service. But U.S. officials believe that another reason Pakistan is unwilling to attack militants in North Waziristan is that the country could not withstand the blowback if the militants who live there — and restrict their attacks to Afghanistan — suddenly turned on Pakistan.

Ajam and his new handlers were therefore left alone to introduce him into the Taliban. He was first kept in two different holding centers, and then driven out toward the border.

“There were no rooms in that camp — only a few tents,” Ajam recalled. “There were 25 other people, some of them my age, some were older, some younger. They were all suicide attackers.”

For 27 days, Ajam learned first how to fire a pistol, then an AK-47, then a rocket-propelled grenade.

‘If You Kill Westerners, God Will Shower You with Blessings’

And then, Ajam received the pitch that convinced him he had made the right choice:

“The teacher told us, ‘If you kill Westerners, God will shower you with blessings. And if you die, you will go to paradise.’ So I decided this is the way to get God’s blessing.”

It was then that Ajam started hearing the drones.

North Waziristan residents have long complained about the CIA’s unmanned killers hovering in the sky almost every day, sounding like insects. Residents say they often sleep outside, out of fear that a small chip will be thrown inside their homes that will allow the drones to fire with pinpoint accuracy.

Ajam quickly felt the impact of the drones. His teacher — whom he spoke of with respect — was killed while driving between two different Taliban camps.

“These planes were circling day and night, sometimes four times, sometimes one time,” he says. “During the clouds they wouldn’t come. During the clear sky, they were coming.”

‘The University of Jihad’

Zar Ajam completed his training and finally received his marching orders: he would become a suicide bomber and attack foreigners in Afghanistan.

Before he crossed the border, Ajam was given $50 and a cell phone with a number for a teacher in Peshawar. He ended up in one of the most famous religious schools in South Asia — the Darul Uloom Haqqania, or Center of Righteous Knowledge, some of whose graduates read like a who’s who of Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar.

It has been called “the University of Jihad,” and its leader, Maulana Samiul Haq, is a firebrand who has been linked with the Taliban leadership council and led anti-U.S. demonstrations after the war in Afghanistan began.

But Pakistan says it has cracked down on radical madrassas, and while today, many do teach hate, they are far from bomb factories. Ajam’s experience seems to support Pakistan’s claim. He says that was he not radicalized — at least not any more than he already was — in the Haqqania madrassa, and that he could not openly speak of his plans for jihad.

He spent a month there and was specifically told not to share with anyone that he had chosen to become a suicide bomber. He was taught the Koran, he says, and kept his head down.

“We were studying the basic Islamic books, just so no one could see us as suspicious,” he said.

The Jalalabad Attack

After his month at the madrassa, Ajam traveled over the Afghan border to Jalalabad and saw Kabul Bank for the first time. “I was told it was a palace where Westerners were coming and collecting money,” he said.

But he noticed something unusual: the “Westerners” were wearing local clothes called shalwar khameez and speaking Pashto, the same language Ajam spoke.

He asked his teachers, surely these people couldn’t be foreigners?

“They wear these clothes and speak the language,” his handler told him, “because they’re frightened from Taliban.”

Ajam agreed, and went to sleep early the night before the attack.

He was woken up at 3:00 a.m. and given something to eat. Afghan officials say after all the brainwashing, all the preparations, and all the radicalization, Taliban commanders still don’t take anything for granted with their young recruits. The commanders give young suicide bombers a chemical that will make them more compliant the day of the attack, Afghan officials believe.

Ajam says looking back, he thinks he was drugged. “I was accepting whatever he was telling me,” he said.

He was handed a police uniform with shoes too small for his feet, so one of his handlers ripped open the tips. Underneath the uniform was an explosive suicide vest. He was handed an AK-47 and a phone that he was supposed to use to set off a motorcycle bomb outside the bank.

He never pushed the button on his suicide jacket. He never pushed the button to trigger the motorcycle bomb. But he did kill his fellow Pashtuns — more than 40 of them, before walking out of the bank.

Asked whether he understood why Afghanistan wanted to put him to death, Ajam said he did understand it. “They will kill me because I killed Muslims, I killed the people of Afghanistan.”

Did he accept his punishment, then?

He was hanged two months later.

Source: ABC News

BY CHRISTOPHER ANZALONE

One month after acknowledging that al-Qaeda Central’s (AQC) founder and leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by the U.S. military, the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) this week issued a written statement eulogizing him and threatening revenge attacks on the U.S. and Pakistani governments (they also expressed their support this morning for al-Qaeda’s new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri). The TTP, an umbrella movement for dozens of militant outfits operating in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber-Puktunkhwa province has already carried out a number of deadly attacks throughout the country since mid-May, including the brazen May 23 attack on the Pakistani Navy’s Mehran base in Karachi. With estimated numbers of its fighters in the thousands, the TTP and other Pakistani militant groups based in the Punjab are arguably among the best-placed of AQC’s allies to launch “revenge attacks” in bin Laden’s name. The statement’s distribution online via the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), a long-established transnational jihadi media and translation network, is significant, suggesting that the TTP continues to embrace elements of both transnational militancy and domestic insurgency.

The written statement is signed by Omar Khalid Khorasani, the TTP leader in the FATA’s Mohmand agency. Its June 8 release follows a June 6 Reuters report based on video-taped responses by Khorasani to questions posed to him by the news agency, in which the TTP leader says that recent attacks in Pakistan are just the beginning of a wider campaign of planned revenge attacks. In his statement, Khorasani dismisses claims that Bin Laden’s killing will adversely impact the “ideology of jihad,” attacks the Pakistani government and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, and states that the TTP remains allied to AQC and the Afghan Taliban.

“The idea that the Jihadi groups have weakened after the departure of Sheikh Usama [bin Laden] is totally, baseless,” he writes. “The ideology which Sheikh Usama bin Laden preached and the inspiration he gave to fight the global forces of infidelity not only continues to linger in our souls, but has grown much stronger.” Khorasani continues, “The ideology of Jihad was not something introduced by Sheikh Usama, but rather something taught to us [the Muslims] over fourteen hundred years. This ideology was not shaken by the departure of [the] leader of humanity, Muhammad, from this life, and it will never weaken by the martyrdom of any other leader.” Muslims generally and the TTP specifically have, according to Khorasani, embraced the transnational idea of jihad espoused by bin Laden: “Before the Jihad of Sheikh Usama, the Muslims sufficed with localized Jihadi movements, but now, his ideology of fighting a global Jihad against the forces of infidelity has penetrated into our very souls.”

Khorasani also claims that Pakistan’s Pashtun tribes have united behind the TTP in support of AQC and other foreign fighters. His claims, however, are belied by the fact that the TTP, despite its widespread networks in the tribal regions, continues to face substantial opposition from strong elements within the tribes. This has proven to be a concern to senior TTP leaders, who have called on tribal leaders to support them. The most recent such appeal was an Urdu letter dated April 19 that was distributed on jihadi Internet forums and presumably also on the ground. In it, TTP deputy leader Wali ur-Rehman Mehsud warns Mehsud tribal leaders against allying themselves with the “Crusaders and apostates” against the “mujahideen.” Doing so, he writes, will result in their punishment in Hell and disappointment in this life, since, as he claims, it has repeatedly been established that the Pakistani government will not fulfill its promises to the tribes.

However, the statement’s online distribution via the GIMF is as, or even more, noteworthy than the statement itself, because it suggests that the TTP is attempting to further embed itself within the transnational jihadi milieu while continuing to wage what is largely a domestic insurgency and campaign of terrorism within Pakistan.

The eulogy was distributed on transnational jihadi Internet forums by the Al-Qadisiyyah Media Foundation, which was launched in January as a branch of the GIMF. The GIMF is best known for producing translations of media material such as videos, audio messages, and written statements and essays released by AQC, its regional affiliates, and regional allies such as the TTP. In the past, the GIMF has focused primarily on translating Arabic, Urdu, and Pashtu materials into English and other European languages.

The founding of Al-Qadisiyyah marked the beginning of a new GIMF focus. In addition to its previous emphasis on translating transnational jihadi materials into European languages, the GIMF began to produce and distribute, via al-Qadisiyyah, primary source translations and original media materials in languages from South Asia, such as Urdu, Hindi, Bangla, Pashtu, and Persian. In its statement announcing the new media outlet’s launch, the GIMF noted that “the media [has become] one of the most important weapons in modern warfare” and, because of this, the GIMF hopes to broadly spread the message of transnational jihad to what could be termed “untapped markets” for jihadi propaganda. Al-Qadisiyyah materials are distributed on transnational jihadi Internet forums through the Sada al-Jihad (Echo of Jihad) Center of the GIMF, as are media materials produced by Somalia’s Islamist-insurgent movement Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen (Movement of the Warrior-Youth).

The new outlet takes its name from the Battle of Qadisiyyah, a famous battle that took place in November 636 that resulted in a Muslim victory over a much larger army of the Sassanian Empire, opening the door to the Arab-Muslim conquest of what is now Iraq and Iran. In the statement announcing the founding of Al-Qadisiyyah, the GIMF also invoked Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, a 17-year-old Muslim general who led the Umayyad dynasty’s conquest of Sindh and Punjab. The young commander was arrested and killed as a result of Umayyad Caliphate court intrigues over succession and has since become a regional saint to many Muslims. Al-Qasim is invoked in an Urdu jihadi nasheed (rhythmic recitation or song) that was used most prominently in the TTP video showing Hakimullah Mehsud and the Jordanian medical doctor and jihadi essayist-turned suicide bomber Humam al-Balawi, who killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian intelligence officer in a December 2009 attack inside a U.S. military base in Khost, Afghanistan.

Al-Qadisiyyah has also started distributing media materials on transnational jihadi Internet discussion forums, including Arabic and English forums like Ansar al-Mujahideen, the Urdu-English forum Jamia Hafsa, and the Urdu Bab-ul-Islam forum, issued by the TTP’s in-house media organ, Umar Studio. Since the beginning of the year, Al-Qadisiyyah has released several statements in Arabic, English, and Urdu and videos in Urdu and Pashtu from the TTP. Previously, TTP media materials were either released directly through Umar Studio or distributed by various Urdu and Pashtu-language media outlets and distributors such as al-Moqatel.

The move to GIMF distribution of TTP media materials is not surprising, considering the Pakistani movement’s long-established ties with AQC and other foreign militant movements, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). GIMF distribution, however, needs to be contextualized and not misinterpreted. The TTP, like Somalia’s Harakat al-Shabab, retains local networks throughout Pakistan in which its statements and media is distributed, including contacts with the Pakistani press corps. These local networks are the backbone of the TTP’s media campaign, whereas media released via Al-Qadisiyyah is likely aimed to a large degree at an external audience, namely denizens of the Arabic jihadi Internet forums, as well as forum-goers from non-Arabic-speaking countries.

The TTP still has numerous other avenues through which to distribute its media materials. Like Harakat al-Shabab and the IMU, the TTP maintains an independent media outlet and production capability, though AQC’s Al-Sahab Media Foundation has released a number of high-profile videos with senior TTP leaders, confirming the close alliance between the two groups. However, both Harakat al-Shabab’s Al-Kata’ib (The Brigades) Media Foundation and the IMU’s Jundullah (God’s Soldiers) Studio release videos independently, and the former also maintains a network of local media outlets in Somalia including terrestrial radio and TV stations.

The fact that TTP and Harakat al-Shabab media materials and statements are distributed on the transnational jihadi Internet forums via the GIMF and not the Al-Fajr (The Dawn) Media Center is also significant. The latter distributes all statements and media releases from AQC, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). Of the two distribution and media networks, Al-Fajr is also believed to have the closer relationship with AQC and its regional affiliates. Thus, GIMF distribution, while noteworthy, demonstrates in part that the TTP and Harakat al-Shabab are not AQC “affiliates,” though this connection is often suggested or claimed in the media. Rather, the TTP and the Somali insurgents share some elements of AQC’s ideology, particularly with regard to a peculiar interpretation of militaristic jihad, but remain independent or complementary movements.

Differences in media distribution also highlight that there remain significant ideological and tactical differences between the TTP and the Afghan Taliban. Although both the TTP and Afghan Taliban network centered, at least symbolically, on Mullah Muhammad Omar maintain independent media capabilities, the latter has held onto a much more thoroughly independent media apparatus and has not formed a close relationship with or released media through As-Sahab. The Afghan Taliban’s media network includes several regularly-updated web sites and monthly Internet magazines, as well as in-house media production organs, chief among them Al-Emarah (The Emirate) Studio.

These differences provide limited evidence of the very real, and perhaps growing, ideological and operational divisions between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP, though cooperation on some level does continue. The Afghan Taliban remains essentially a parochial Islamist-insurgent movement, whereas the TTP is a hybrid movement combining both local insurgency with elements of transnational militancy. The former is also opposed in theory to attacking the Pakistani state writ-large, whereas the TTP has no such qualms (though recent attacks against Pakistani security forces in the country’s northwest may have involved Afghan Taliban fighters). Recognizing these differences is vital to formulating an intelligent and viable set of policies in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, particularly with regard to the two Taliban movements. Of the two, the TTP has most clearly operationally shown a desire to participate, in a significant form, in AQC’s transnational war and the Pakistani movement’s shift to distributing media material via the GIMF is yet another sign of its self-embedding within the transnational jihadi milieu, while still holding on to its local identity.

Christopher Anzalone is a doctoral student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University where he studies modern Muslim socio-political movements, Shi’ite Islam, and Islamist visual culture. He blogs at Views from the Occident and Al-Wasat.

Source: Foreign Policy

Mourners comfort the son of Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad during his funeral in Karachi this month. Shahzad had said he was being threatened by the country's intelligence services before he was tortured to death. (Rizwan Tabassum, AFP/Getty Images / June 7, 2011)

By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times
June 6, 2011

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan— The men in police commando uniforms sat silent, recalled investigative journalist Umar Cheema, as he nervously repeated that he was a reporter and he wanted to see their supervisor.

Blindfolded after being kidnapped last fall and thrown into a Toyota Land Cruiser, Cheema said, he was taken to a safe house outside Islamabad, stripped naked, forced to lie facedown on the floor, and beaten on his shoulders and hips, first with a leather strap, then with a long wooden rod. At one point, they threatened to sodomize him. “They said, ‘When you cannot avoid rape, just enjoy it,’” Cheema recalled.

Cheema’s captors didn’t carry out the threat. Instead, the men, who Cheema and his colleagues believe belonged to the country’s intelligence community, threw him back into the vehicle and dumped him on a deserted stretch of road 75 miles from the capital.

Later, Pakistani leaders vowed to hunt down those responsible for Cheema’s abduction and torture. They never did. Cheema thinks the government’s fervent promises to determine who kidnapped, tortured and killed journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad last week will prove just as hollow.

“If history is any guide, nothing will occur,” Cheema said. “Today, we are mourning Shahzad. Maybe tomorrow we will mourn someone else.”

In a world where journalists often face peril, Pakistan is one of the most dangerous beats. Terrorism courses through many stories here, which means Pakistani journalists often must walk a razor’s edge as they report on the country’s cauldron of Islamic militant groups, its shadowy government intelligence agencies and, at times, the link between the two.

Shahzad had written about Al Qaeda’s infiltration of the Pakistani navy, asserting that the 17-hour siege carried out by militants on a naval base in Karachi last month was a retaliatory strike for the military’s reluctance to release a group of naval officers suspected of having ties to the terrorist network.

The story, published on the Asia Times Online website, came out at a time when Pakistan’s military and its intelligence agencies were under intense criticism over security after a U.S. commando team was able to reach the military city of Abbottabad undetected to kill Osama bin Laden. The attack on the naval base, in which 10 Pakistani security personnel were killed, only deepened the military’s humiliation.

Shahzad was kidnapped while on his way to a television talk show appearance in Islamabad on May 29. His battered body was found two days later in a canal outside Islamabad. Pakistani media reported that he had several broken ribs and severe injuries to his lungs and liver. His colleagues have accused Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, of being behind the 40-year-old journalist’s abduction and slaying, a charge that the agency has called “baseless.”

Pakistani leaders and the ISI have promised a thorough investigation into Shahzad’s death. Leading journalists, however, say they’re deeply skeptical of those pledges, particularly because previous abductions and slayings of reporters have not resulted in prosecutions.

“We don’t have any hope that we’ll find out who killed Shahzad,” said Amin Yousuf, secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists. “But we will do what we can to get at the truth.”

Pakistani journalism has evolved into an aggressive, free-wheeling business in which more than 100 television channels and a host of newspapers compete for ratings and readers. At times it can be reckless and agenda-driven; members of the media acknowledge that some journalists and outlets have in effect become mouthpieces for the security establishment, and some are even on the payroll of intelligence agencies.

Journalists like Cheema and Shahzad, however, developed reputations as hard-nosed diggers undeterred by threats.

In some cases, the kinds of intimidation that reporters face are a function of geography.

In Karachi, deadly turf battles between the city’s ruling Urdu-speaking Muttahida Qaumi Movement and its Pashtun rival, the Awami National Party, have put Pashtun journalists at risk. In January, Pashtun television reporter Wali Khan Babar was gunned down in Karachi. Local authorities later arrested five men who they said were linked to MQM. In the volatile tribal areas along the Afghan border, journalists must cover militant groups that routinely carry out public executions of anyone they regard as spies for either the Pakistani government or the West.

Cheema believes several stories he had written last summer about the country’s intelligence agencies probably led to his abduction. One story raised questions about whether the agencies’ lack of cooperation with law enforcement authorities helped lead to the acquittal of militants accused in a suicide bomb attack that killed a lieutenant general.

In Shahzad’s case, he had said he received several warnings from intelligence agents about his writings. Last October, he said, ISI officials called him into the agency’s headquarters and asked him to divulge the source of a story he had written claiming that Pakistan had freed a top Afghan Taliban commander. Shahzad refused to name his source. When the meeting ended, one of the ISI officials issued what Shahzad perceived to be a threat on his life.

According to notes from the meeting that Shahzad forwarded to Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan representative for Human Rights Watch, the ISI official told Shahzad that the agency had recently arrested a terrorist who had a hit list. “If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know,” the official reportedly said.

“He told me he feared he would be killed by the ISI, and wanted me to bring this into the public domain in case anything would happen to him or his family,” Hasan said.

Despite his ordeal, Cheema says he has resumed his investigative work into corruption and misconduct within the government and the security establishment.

“We know the red lines,” he said, “but as journalists we always try to cross them. It’s not easy writing about the army or the intelligence agencies, but taking risk is a part of journalism. And we do it.”

Source: Las Angles Times

All aspects of this crime, including the possibility of links to the ISI, need to be independently investigated and prosecuted. The ISI and other military and intelligence-related agencies have long been beyond the reach of the regular criminal justice system. To ensure this investigation can follow the evidence wherever it leads, an extraordinary mechanism with the full support of all state institutions needs to be created.

(Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch)

(New York) – The Pakistani government should establish a credible, independent investigation into the torture and killing of the journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, Human Rights Watch said today. The investigation should have subpoena and prosecutorial powers and look into other allegations of serious human rights abuse by the Pakistani military’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and for Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, disappeared from central Islamabad on the evening of May 29, 2011, on his way to the studios of Pakistan’s Dunya News. Shahzad, an expert on Islamist militancy, had just published a book, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11. He had been invited to discuss the contents of his report about a May 22 attack in which 10 people died on PNS Mehran, a Pakistani naval-base in Karachi, by militants linked to al-Qaeda. Shahzad’s body, bearing visible signs of torture, was discovered two days later, on May 31, near Mandi Bahauddin, 80 miles southeast of the capital.

“All aspects of this crime, including the possibility of links to the ISI, need to be independently investigated and prosecuted,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The ISI and other military and intelligence-related agencies have long been beyond the reach of the regular criminal justice system. To ensure this investigation can follow the evidence wherever it leads, an extraordinary mechanism with the full support of all state institutions needs to be created.”

Shahzad had previously complained of threats by ISI agents for his reporting on links between the ISI and al-Qaeda. In October 2010, Shahzad sent an e-mail to Human Rights Watch outlining a recent meeting he had with the ISI and asking for the e-mail to be released if he or his family were harmed. Shahzad asked Human Rights Watch to make details of the meeting public “in case something happens to me or my family in future.” (The email is attached as an appendix below).

On October 19, 2010, Shahzad sent an email informing Human Rights Watch that he had been threatened by the ISI at an October 17 meeting at the ISI headquarters in Islamabad with the Director-General of the Media Wing of the ISI, Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir, and another ISI official, Commodore Khalid Pervaiz. Shahzad wrote that the meeting ended with the following comment from Rear Admiral Nazir, which Shahzad construed as a death threat:

I must give you a favor. We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know.

Shahzad sent the same email and information about other threats to Hameed Haroon, publisher of the highly regarded English language daily Dawn and president of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society, and to colleagues at Asia Times Online. All those who spoke to Shahzad at the time including professional journalists and Human Rights Watch understood that a threat had been made to his life through the statement quoted above. In order to place the threat on record, Shahzad wrote an account of the meeting and emailed it to the recipients.

Commodore Pervaiz was recently appointed the new commander of the Mehran naval base in Karachi, the subject of Shahzad’s last story for Asia Times Online, in which he alleged that al Qaeda had attacked the base in Karachi on May 22, after talks with the military to release two naval officials accused of militant links broke down.

Later, Shahzad informed Human Rights Watch of two other instances where he felt threats were made to him by or on behalf of the ISI by people who identified themselves as belonging to the agency.

Shahzad’s wife, Anita Saleem, informed Human Rights Watch of her husband’s disappearance on May 30, according to her husband’s instructions. She told Human Rights Watch that she had received an anonymous phone call saying that Shahzad would be released the same evening. Credible sources also told Human Rights Watch that Shahzad was in intelligence agency custody and was expected to be released in the evening of May 30. However, despite repeated inquiries, Human Rights Watch received no official response from the government of Pakistan about Shahzad’s whereabouts or well-being. When Shahzad failed to reappear, Human Rights Watch notified the Pakistani and international media.

On June 1, the ISI issued an unprecedented statement through an anonymous spokesperson to the state-controlled Associated Press of Pakistan. The ISI official denied that any threat had been made to Shahzad, stating that, “The reported e-mail of Mr. Saleem Shahzad to Mr. Ali Hasan Dayan of HRW” was “being made the basis of baseless allegations leveled against ISI.”

The following day, Haroon, the Dawn publisher, rejected the ISI’s position and went on record to “verify that allegations levied by HRW at the Inter services Intelligence (ISI) are essentially in complete consonance with the contents of the slain journalist’s e-mail.” Haroon added that he wished to “state on the record” that the late journalist confided to him “that he had received death threats from various officers of the ISI on at least three occasions in the past five years. Whatever the substance of these allegations, they form an integral part of Mr. Shahzad’s last testimony. Mr Shahzad’s purpose in transmitting this information to three concerned colleagues in the media was not to defame the ISI but to avert a possible fulfillment of what he clearly perceived to be a death threat.”

The ISI has a long history of abducting critics and others, then engaging in threats and beatings, telling relatives or others that they should not worry or complain as their loved one would soon be released, and then releasing the person with the threat of further abuse if he or she made the abductions and mistreatment known. Pakistani and international human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have extensively documented the ISI’s intimidation, torture, disappearances, and killings of those who earn its ire, including journalists.

“Given the threats from the ISI alleged by Shahzad and a long pattern of similar cases involving the ISI, there is good reason to suspect the ISI’s involvement in his abduction and death,” Adams said. “If the ISI is committed to respect for human rights and the rule of law, it should welcome an independent investigation so that abusive elements can be rooted out and held legally accountable. It is time that the military and intelligence agencies understood that this kind of behavior is both abhorrent and unacceptable.”

The statement by the Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, that the government would investigate possible ISI involvement in Shahzad’s abduction and killing was a positive step, Human Rights Watch said. The investigation should be conducted promptly and transparently, and the government should follow all possible leads, Human Rights Watch said. Pakistan’s government has not held any military or intelligence personnel accountable for serious and ongoing human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch called upon the international community to insist on a successful investigation into Shahzad’s killing by taking this case up not only with the civilian government but also with the army and ISI, with which they have close and longstanding contacts.

“While their calls for justice are positive, it is time for Pakistan’s defense and intelligence partners such as the United States and United Kingdom to make clear to the army and ISI chiefs that it will not be business as usual until Shahzad’s killers are identified and brought to justice,” Adams said. “If the government does not set up such an investigation or the military and the ISI fail to cooperate, Pakistan’s partners should call for an independent international investigation to ensure that Shahzad’s death does not become yet another example of impunity in Pakistan.”

APPENDIX: OCTOBER 19, 2010 EMAIL FROM SALEEM SHAHZAD TO ALI DAYAN HASAN

From: Saleem Shahzad [mailto:saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com]
Sent: 19 October 2010 12:54
To: Ali Dayan Hasan
Subject: Fw: For the record

Dear Hasan,

I am forwarding this email to you for your record only if in case something happens to me or my family in future.

Saleem

— On Mon, 10/18/10, Saleem Shahzad <saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Saleem Shahzad <saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com>
Subject: For the record
To: anazir@hotmail.com
Date: Monday, October 18, 2010, 1:11 PM

For future reference:

Meeting details as on October 17, 2010 at the ISI headquarters Islamabad between DG Media Wing ISI, Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir and Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Bureau Chief Pakistan for Asia Times Online (Hong Kong). Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, the Deputy Director General of Media Wing ISI was also present during the conversation.

Agenda of the meeting: discussion on Asia Times Online story published on October 15, 2010, titledPakistan frees Taliban commander (see http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LJ16Df02.html).

The meeting discussed the following issues.

1-Syed Saleem Shahzad told Rear Admiral Adnan that an intelligence channel leaked the story. However, he added that story was published only after a confirmation from the most credible Taliban source. Syed also explained that DG ISPR was sent a text message about the story, but he did not respond.

2- Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir had the view that story caused a lot of embracement for the country but observed that issuing a denial from the government side is no solution. He suggested Syed Saleem Shahzad should write a denial of the story.

3- Syed Shahzad refused to comply with demand and termed it impractical.

4-Rear Admiral Adnan was curious to know the source of the story as it is a shame that information would leak from the office of a high profile intelligence service.

5- Syed Shahzad called it an intelligence leak but did not specify the source.

6-The conversation was held in an extremely polite and friendly atmosphere and there was no mince word in the room at any stage. Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir also offered Syed Saleem Shahzad a favor in following words.

“I must give you a favor. We have recently arrested a terrorist and have recovered a lot of data, dairies and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a hit list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know,”

Source: Human Rights Watch

Originally published in ‘Daily Aajkal’.

Despite Gen Zia’s Islamisation, the promotion of piety in the barracks, and the support for puritanical movements that were allowed to organise sermons, the armed forces have still essentially retained a secular outlook. Institutionally, religion might be used as a motivational tool, but it is not allowed to guide the organisational strategy or goals. Intelligence networks help purge out the radical members of the forces.

But there have been many instances when radical Islamists have penetrated the armed forces and other law-enforcement agencies and threatened the state security mechanism. It is very well known that the lower ranks of the Punjab Police in district of Southern Punjab suffer from an infestation of sympathisers of militant organisation and this hurts the policing ability of the force. That was evident in the 1990s, when the Punjab Police was at the forefront of the war against sectarian terrorism and lower ranking officials had collaborated with the banned outfits on numerous occasions to tip them off or facilitate counter-attacks. An offshoot of the Shia militant organisation Sipah-e-Muhammad was led by a retired major, Ashraf Ali Shah.

In the two assassination attempts on former president Gen Pervez Musharraf, the PAF arrested 57 soldiers (Dawn June 25, 2009), five were awarded death sentences (mostly corporals, junior technicians), one army jawan (from the DSG) was hanged. Others, awarded sentences of varying lengths, included two soldiers of the SSG. Explosives used in the first attempt were in fact stolen from a PAF depot by one of the convicted airmen (Daily Times February 25, 2005). Some of the airmen were sermoned to radicalisation in-house and others “got a one-year leave on the pretext of accompanying the preaching groups, but when they were later arrested, it transpired that they had in fact been training with different militant groups” (The News May 24, 2011). Another three young airmen were sentenced for association with the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad in the arrests that followed (Oct 19, 2005).

The assassination of ex-GOC of SSG Maj Gen Ameer Faisal Alavi was plotted by a retired major, Haroon Ashiq. After joining the Lashkar-e-Tayyba, he moved on to work with Ilyas Kashmiri of the Brigade 313 linked with Al Qaeda. Ashiq’s own brother, Captain (r) Khurram, had retired from the army only to join Taliban and other fighters in Afghanistan. He was killed in 2007 in Helmand province. Various other retired soldiers, many of whom had liasioned with the Taliban during the ‘90s, returned to Afghanistan to fight on voluntary basis too.

Maj (r) Ashiq is not the only officer with links with Al Qaeda. In 2003, Major Adil Qudoos of 45 Signals was arrested and later sentenced for being linked to the militant network. The infamous Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was arrested from the house of his brother in Rawalpindi. Linked to this web of militants were Lt Col Khalid Mahmood Abbasi of Signals, Lt Col Abdul Ghaffar posted at the Army Aviation Command Rawalpindi, Maj Ataullah Khan Mahmood from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) branch, Major Rohail Sarfraz of HQ II Corps and Capt Dr Usman Zafar. The first three were given various sentences while the latter were dismissed from service.

More recently, retired Maj Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed has been found to be conclusively involved in planning of the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks in some way and planning attacks on a Danish newspaper. Connected to the LeT, he was arrested by the authorities, but his current status remains unknown.

Another case of high level militant infiltration involved Col Shahid Bashir, retired Sq Ldr Nadeem Ahmed Shah (a member of the Rawalpindi bar) and a civilian employee of the Air Weapons Complex (AWC). Associated with the proscribed Hizbut Tehrir that is gaining membership amongst private university students across the country in alarming numbers, they are accused of spying on, leaking info about and planning attacks on the Shamsi Air Field. Muhammad Altaf, a civilian employee of the National Development Complex (NDC) that comes under NESCOM and deals with ballistic missile development was similarly arrested for alleged links with a banned outfit. His status remains that of a “missing person” (Dawn News TV “Gumshuda”).

Radicalisation at the highest levels has been witnessed earlier too, in the failed 1995 “Operation Khilafa” coup attempt. Led by DG Infantry at the GHQ, Major General Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, the plan involved taking over the GHQ at the time of the Corps Commander Conference, killing the high ranking officers and then taking over the country to impose a Taliban-esque radical Sunni government. Convicted or dismissed alongwith Maj Gen Abbasi were Brig Mustansar Billah, Col Inayatullah Khan, Col Azad Minhas, Col Abdul Hamid, Col Muhammad Iqbal, Lt Col Shamsul Islam Tahir and Lt Col Liaquat Ali Raja amongst others.

One of the most alarming factors is that the approver for the prosecution, who was the militant given the duty to provide raiders for the attack, was none other than Qari Saifullah Akhtar, an ex Harkatul Jihad Al Islami militant who is now linked to Al Qaeda and was named by Benazir Bhutto as being involved in the attacks on her life.

Radicalization in the lower ranks is equally worrying. Investigation by Dawn in May, 2010 showed that the deadly Jundullah that carried out the assassination attempt on V Corps Commander, later VCOAS Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat, was raised by serving and ex-soldiers of the army and the PAF. Jundullah has become famous as a small but deadly force.

Constable Sheikh Muhammad Adil of the Sindh Police Special Branch was convicted in 2002 of being involved in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. A member of the HuJI whilst serving in the police, Adil assisted in the act of kidnapping. More recently, the section in-charge of the Computer Section at the Special Branch of the Punjab Police was found to have militant links. Accused Junior Clerk Zahid Bajwa had been recruited on a fake domicile and had a case pending against him for possession of explosives. Posted at the HQ of the Special Branch, he had access to intelligence reports and security plans, a cause of extreme worry. A constable was arrested in 2004 for being linked to the network of militants that aided Al Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani in Gujrat.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. While the armed forces have been somewhat successful in purging militant sympathisers from within their ranks, the case of police has been extremely worrying. The case of Mumtaz Qadri alone is sufficient to become a cause for worry. During the trial of the CIA contractor Raymond Davis, one of the policemen from the escort that brought Davis to court was proudly wearing the badge of a militant organisation on his chest. Even after being furiously admonished by the judge, the policeman refused to remove the badge from his uniform and nobody was able to do anything. Such cases are a cause for fear and should not be taken lightly.

The author is a free lance contributor based in Illinois, USA.

( Reproduced from “Friday Times” of Lahore, dated June 3,2011)