By Amir Mir
Despite much-touted public claims by President General Pervez Musharraf to have changed the countrys direction by uprooting its network of extremists, a cursory glance at the activities of the outlawed militant and sectarian groups and their leaders shows that most of them are back in business and operating freely in the country.
For those who need a ready reckoning of Musharrafs performance, a glance at his record on handling the jehadi kingpins will prove instructive. When the President of Pakistan banned six of the countrys top jehadi and sectarian groups in two phases on January 5, 2002 and November 14, 2003 he declared that no militant or sectarian organization would be allowed to indulge in terrorism to further its cause. Yet, none of the key jehadi leaders has been either arrested or prosecuted on terrorism charges.
After the initial crackdown, the four major jehadi organizations the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkatul Mujahideen, and Hizbul Mujahideen resurfaced and regrouped to run their respective networks with different names and identities. The respective leaders of these organizations, Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Maulana Masood Azhar, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, and Pir Syed Salahuddin, remain at large, and the pattern of treatment being meted out to them by the military-led so-called civilian administration suggests they are being kept on a leash, ready to wage a controlled jehad in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
These militants largely depend on Pakistan for training, logistics, arms, ammunition and, most of all, sanctuary, a dependence that has been exploited by Pakistans intelligence establishment. Not only does its intelligence establishment decide which jehadi group will play what role in fuelling the Kashmir insurgency, but it also launches new militant outfits at regular intervals to ensure that none of them ever get so big or powerful that they start posing a threat to their creators.
Musharrafs claims of having taken concrete measures to clip the wings of jehadi groups and reform their religious seminaries across Pakistan were nothing more than rhetoric, proved in the recent past when his own administration admitted that three out of the four London suicide bombers had been visiting madrassahs in the provincial capitals of Sindh and Punjab in November 2004, before returning to England in February 2005, only to carry out deadly bombings there. Since then, Musharrafs policy of enlightened moderation has come under sharp criticism, both from within and outside Pakistan.
After the 9/11 terror attacks, the four key jehadi leaders, who were becoming increasingly vocal in their condemnation of Musharrafs policy of slavery to the Americans, were placed under house arrest in their respective home towns in the Punjab province. A countrywide crackdown was launched against activists of the jehadi organizations, who were furious over General Musharrafs U-turn on support for jehad in Afghanistan. Groaning under US pressure, Islamabad had to temporarily stop cross-border infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir, which eventually reduced violence in the Valley.
As things stand, one can notice that most of the militant leaders and their respective groups, which were made to adopt a lie-low and wait-and-see policy in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, are once again on the loose. Some of these groups have assumed new identities: Jaish-e-Mohammad has been renamed as Khudamul Islam, and Harkatul Mujahideen is called Jamiatul Ansar. Almost all the major jehadi organisations have re-launched campaigns to recruit volunteers, utilising websites etc., to promote the jehadi culture and attract youngsters. The most effective instruments of these groups to freely propagate jehad are their publications (Ghazwa, Majalla, Zarb-e-Taiba, Shamsheer, Zarb-e-Momin, etc) which together boast a circulation of millions and are distributed free of cost.
In his televised address to the nation on July 21, 2005, a few hours after the failed London bombings, Musharraf renewed his January 2002 commitment to root out the evils of extremism and terrorism from the country. There was nothing new in his speech. The administrative measures for combating terrorism and extremism that he announced were no different from his earlier assurances. Indeed, in his televised interaction with journalists on July 25, 2005, Musharraf declared that the fresh crackdown would not be like the last one, where people were picked up and held for 10-15 days and then released; an open admission that the earlier crackdowns he had ordered were just an eyewash. This raised a basic question if the previous declarations were not followed up with effective action, how would the regime do a better job this time round?
While addressing a crowded press conference in Rawalpindi on July 29, 2005, Musharraf confronted such scepticism, conceding that he had not taken a firm action against the militants since 2002 because he did not have a free hand at that time as a result of an unstable economy, confrontation with India over Kashmir, and insufficient international support for his presidency. He claimed he was now in a much stronger position to campaign against religious militants. I am in a totally different environment. Today, I am very strong. We need to act against the bigwigs of all the extremist organizations. We are not going as fast as I would like to go, the General said.
In response to specific questions on the difference between the crackdowns in 2002 and now, Musharraf said the world and media should not judge the performance of his government through the eyes of the past. Replying to a Western journalists query why he had not been serious in his earlier attempts to curb militancy, General Musharraf retorted, You have to be realistic and take cognizance of the ground situation. By taking stringent action against Islamic fundamentalists, I would have risked the prospect of a million Taliban on the streets of Pakistan.
To judge the general through the eyes of the present, it is useful to note that in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks, he had once again directed the law enforcement agencies to deal with extremist organisations and the threat of terrorism with their full might. His first declaration was that none of the sectarian and militant groups banned on account of terrorism and extremism would be allowed to operate under any name and those poisoning young minds would be arrested and tried under Anti-Terrorism Laws. By saying so, Musharraf actually repeated his resolve for the third time since 9/11, but without doing anything practical to implement the same.
As far as his declaration to arrest those poisoning young minds is concerned, not even a single key jehadi leader was arrested after the 7/7 attacks in the so-called anti-jehadi crackdown. This included, among others, two Most Wanted militants of the CBI who had allegedly orchestrated major acts of terrorism in India: Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed of the Jamaatul Daawa, and Pir Syed Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen. Similarly, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to interrogate two more jehadi leaders including the Harkatul Mujahideen (now Jamiatul Ansaar) leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (now Khudamul Islam) chief Maulana Masood Azhar. As things stand, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Syed Salahuddin are on the loose and most of the extremist infrastructure their groups used to maintain before 9/11 to wage jehad in Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir remains intact. The kid glove approach of the Pakistani establishment towards the leaders of the banned jehadi outfits can be gauged from the fact that the Jamaatul Daawa led by Hafiz Saeed was allowed to hold a 25,000 strong public meeting at the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore on March 18, 2006.
The second instance is that of Syed Salahuddin, the leader of Hizbul Mujahideen who was shown on television on March 26, 2006, addressing an international conference organised by the Jamaat-e-Islami in Peshawar and attended by a leading Hamas figure, Sheikh Muhammad Sayam and top leaders of the MMA. The third instance is that of a proscribed Sunni sectarian organization Sipah-e-Sahaba (Army of Companions of Prophet Mohammad PBUH) or its reincarnation Millat-i-Islamia, which has been allowed to resume activities in the country. The SSP is one of the five outfits banned by General Musharraf on January 12, 2002. This pro-Taliban organisation whose leadership eulogizes Osama bin Laden, has been allegedly involved in bloody violence. Thousands of the SSP activists took out a rally in Islamabad on April 7, 2006 and distributed pamphlets preaching jehad and hatred against Shias. One of the organisers even thanked the government for allowing the rally.
Analysts give varying explanations why the Musharraf-led administration keeps hobnobbing with these jehadi and sectarian groups. However, the root cause of the problem seems to be the jehadi orientation of the Pakistani military leadership and its continued alliance with fundamentalists. As the head of the Pakistan Army an institution credited with crafting and carrying Pakistans pro-jehad policy in Afghanistan few know more about what goes on in Pakistan than General Musharraf himself. And the fact remains that despite his repeated rhetoric to promote enlightened moderation in the country, Jehad Fi Sabilillah (Jehad in the name of Allah Almighty) continues to be the motto of the Pakistan Army.
To sum up, despite enthusiastic applause from the West for the anti-militancy efforts of Pakistans visionary military ruler, it is evident that much remains to be done on the ground before these efforts actually bear fruit. With changing scenarios all over the world, there has been a change of minds, yet what is required is a change of hearts.
The writer is the former editor of Weekly Independent, currently affiliated with Reuters and the Gulf News |
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