Posted on 28-5-2002
Sow
The Wind...
By HOWARD W. FRENCH, NY Times
For more than 20 years, the Pakistani government has used Islamic
radicals
as an instrument of both domestic and foreign policy. Now, many
Pakistani
security experts doubt that the government has the will or the
means to
neutralize what has become a huge network of violence.
In recent days the general who is now president, Pervez Musharraf,
has
reportedly resolved to strengthen a 1997 antiterrorism law to
make it
easier to prosecute extremist acts by Islamic militants, and
he is pushing
for changes to allow longer detention of suspects without trial.
Left
untouched by these proposals and largely taboo in public discussion,
though, are the tight and longstanding ties between Kashmiri
separatists,
radical Islamic groups and Pakistan's military and intelligence
structure.
According to Pakistani experts on Islamic militancy and national
security,
there are as many as 500,000 members of jihadi — Muslim holy
war
organizations — in Pakistan, including many thousands committed
to the
cause of forcing India out of the sector of Kashmir that it
controls. One
expert said that as many as 3,000 fighters trained in Pakistan
are
operating in Indian-controlled territory.
In December, Kashmiri militants attacked the Indian Parliament
in New
Delhi, killing 12 and setting the two countries on a course
for a crisis
that has brought a million soldiers to the Kashmir region, Indian
threats
of a "decisive victory" over its neighbor and provocative Pakistani
tests
of ballistic missiles. A new test this weekend of the Ghauri
missile, which
has a range of 900 miles, brought reproaches not only from India,
but from
President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Even
after those
reproaches, Pakistan tested a Ghaznavi missile, whose 175-mile
range could
reach border regions of India.
The jihadis trace their roots to the mujahedeen, the Islamic
fighters who
battled the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan, beginning
in 1979.
Pakistani experts say the Kashmiri separatists, like the American-
and
Pakistani-backed mujahedeen, have been assisted by Pakistan's
military spy
agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. "The terror structure built
up in the
1980's is very much intact, and the jihadi groups are functioning
the same
way they always have, recruiting, training and fund-raising,"
said Arif
Jamal, a Pakistani author who has spent years studying Islamic
militancy
here. "This government does not have the political will to crack
down. The
only thing new is that since December, these groups are not
visible. They
have changed their names, their telephone numbers and addresses,
and they
have moved out of Islamabad."
When the Kashmiri insurgency entered its violent phase 12 years
ago, it was
mostly indigenous. Over the years, Pakistan first gave political
support to
the separatists, then more and more military support, drawing
on the 80,000
fighters whom Pakistan had trained and armed to fight the Soviet
forces in
Afghanistan. As the insurgency evolved, Pakistan's military
and
intelligence services struck upon the idea of employing jihadis
to wrest
control of the Kashmir from India. "We have fought three wars
with India
and have not won even one of them," said an expert on the country's
jihad
movements. "The success of the jihadi strategy in Afghanistan
compelled the
generals to try it on India, too. The Kashmir jihadis are our
cannon fodder
because they are willing to die for their cause in a way that
no paid
soldiers would." The Pakistani government strongly denies promoting
cross-border infiltration, but the enduring official ambivalence
about
support for such groups could be heard in the comments of one
senior
official here who said that although there was heavy pressure
now to arrest
separatist leaders, any action must "ensure that the Kashmiri
population on
our side of border is not disillusioned, because their support
for our
strategic objectives is crucial."
Though India insists that Pakistan can and must curb attacks
within
Kashmir, the political issue of governing the state has become
overshadowed
by the religious agenda of the Islamic jihadis. This religious
aura has
been reinforced by the return of many of Pakistan's most hardened
Islamic
militants from Afghanistan since the unseating of the Taliban
there. Groups
like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba, which received heavy
patronage
from the former president Zia ul-Haq, who used them to keep
civilian
politicians off guard, reportedly still enjoy strong links to
the Pakistani
intelligence services, particularly through retired agents and
army
officers who worked with them both domestically and in Afghanistan.
"If the
army is with Musharraf, he can neutralize these groups, but
it will take a
long time, and a terrible amount of violence in Pakistan first,"
said one
Pakistani with intimate knowledge of the security services.
"I still don't
see the army taking these groups on, though. Jihad has been
part of the
defense structure of this country for 20 years. How do you get
rid of
500,000 people?"
Recent attacks in Pakistan — the killing of the journalist Daniel
Pearl, a
church bombing in Islamabad, a car bomb in Karachi that killed
12 French
military contractors — hint at what lies ahead if President
Musharraf
pursues a war on domestic terrorist groups. "With Pakistan's
support for
the American attacks against the Taliban, President Musharraf
is already
their enemy," said Dr. Rasul Baksh Rais, director of the Area
Studies
Center, an independent political research group. The president
may give
some hint of his plans when he addresses the nation on Monday.
Pakistani
intelligence sources have reportedly linked Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
to both the
Karachi bombing and the Pearl killing, and describe them as
revenge against
the West for the defeat of the Taliban, and a shot across the
bow of the
government not to toe an overly enthusiastic pro-Western line.
Under heavy international pressure to crack down on terrorism
after these
two incidents, the government has responded with uncommon energy,
rounding
up three suspects in the Karachi bombing who led them to Mr.
Pearl's body
last week. Pakistani intelligence sources now say that the killing
of Riaz
Basra, leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the country's most wanted
man, was
in fact a police execution in detention, and not a shootout
with villagers
in southern Pakistan, as publicly reported. According to The
Weekly
Independent, the killing of Mr. Basra, who had recently returned
to
Pakistan from a base in Afghanistan, was a warning by the government
to his
followers. "The government will want to pursue a systematic
but gradual
line against terror," Dr. Rais said. "There is change, but there
is also a
long history of collaboration here, so it will take time. If
the government
pushes too hard, it will create a rebellion."
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