[Pak Daily Times] A tiff has erupted between the Pakistain army and its best men of several decades' standing. The emir of the Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society , founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer . The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
(JI), Mr Syed Munawar Hasan, ruffled quite a few feathers with his callous remarks about martyrdom last week. Mr Hasan not only called the slain Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) ringleader Hakeemullah Mehsud a shaheed -- a martyr in the divine sense of the word -- but also impugned the martyrdom status of the armed forces men who laid down their lives fighting the TTP and its ilk. The military shot back, quite understandably, with a statement castigating the JI chief and demanded an apology. The ISPR blurb, however, did qualify its criticism of Mr Munawar Hasan with an unqualified exhortation for the JI's founding emir, the late Maulana Syed Abul Aala Maududi. Interestingly, the military ruler, General Ayub Khan, had imprisoned Maulana Maududi twice in the 1960s. But the military had consorted with the Islamists before and continued to do so after Ayub Khan.
The military establishment, under General Yahya Khan, a man not exactly known for religious observance, groomed the Islamist political parties like the JI and Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) as a policy. Mr Shuja Nawaz notes in his book Crossed Swords: Pakistain, its Army and the Wars Within that these two parties "received assistance from (General) Sher Ali Khan Pataudi, who found an ally in Major General Ghulam Umar, the newly promoted executive head of the National Security Council." The idea was to actively upend the popular political forces like the Pakistain People's Party (PPP) and the National Awami Party (NAP) with pliable political elements. In his work Pakistain: Between Mosque and Military, the former ambassador Professor Husain Haqqani describes this strategy as the "Sher Ali Formula", which "required behind-the-scenes manipulation of the political process, to increase the number of political contenders, as well as identification of 'patriotic factions' against 'unpatriotic' ones." The alliance matured when the JI mercenaries fought alongside the army in the botched but brutal attempt to crush the 1971 Bengali nationalist struggle.
It was ultimately the third military dictator General Zia ul Haq
 ...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
, who after dislodging the PPP government, directly shared political power with the JI and the JUI. The overtly religious General Zia inducted three ministers from the JI and two from the JUI, along with five Mohammedan Leaguers in his cabinet on July 5, 1978. The Zia-JUI fling was short-lived but he shared a deep ideological affinity with the JI and a personal connection with the then emir of JI, Mian Tufail Muhammad who, like General Zia, hailed from East Punjab. The Zia-JI union flourished till the general's death did them part. Along with his intelligence chief, the so-called Khamosh Mujahid (silent holy warrior) General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, General Zia unleashed the JI hordes on Afghanistan. The JI and its Afghan counterparts, a la Hizb-e-Islami of  Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
... who used to be known in intelligence circles as The Most Evil Man in the World but who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil...
, remained the major beneficiaries of Saudi money and the US weapons channeled courtesy the Pak security establishment till the gravy train stopped circa 1989-90. On the domestic front, abstract themes like the 'glory of Islam' and as yet undefined 'ideology of Pakistain' became endemic as General Zia went on his 'Islamisation' spree to establish with the help of his clergy cohorts what he called the 'Nizam-e-Mustafa' or the governance of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PTUI!). The Zakat and Ushr Ordinance to collect Widows & Orphans Ammunition Fund on behalf of the state and the Nizam-e-Salaat mandating prayers in schools and government offices were the direct consequence of the Zia-JI liaison. The armed forces wore an ideological rather than a professional look and developed significant pockets of support for Islamist causes, which exists to date.
While the military under General Zia sought to use the JI and its ilk to legitimise their rule on religio-political grounds, the JI wanted to push their fanatical agenda through the junta. But just like the security establishment presumed that it could somehow turn off the field jihadists' switch once the job is done, it also misread the intentions and zeal of its JI-type allies. The jihadists and their political fronts like the JI are in it for the long haul. They do not operate on a 9-5 clock and take the weekends off. The security establishment's à la carte approach to jihadism is what the TTP and the JI both are livid about. The former ISPR chief pinning the JI for harbouring al Qaeda operatives is interesting, but it would take more than a few retaliatory words to roll back the jihadist project his parent outfit had sired together with the political clergy. The military and the mullahs have coauthored the hyper-nationalist narrative prevalent in Pakistain. Even under the 'enlightened moderate' General  Pervez Perv Musharraf
... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ...
, the electoral mandate was manipulated to hand power to the mullahs in two provinces. The mullahs have kept their end of the bargain. They do not like the change of rules in midgame. That the security establishment continues to consort with the chosen jihadists is also not lost on the JI and the TTP.
The latest example of the Pak security establishment turning a blind eye to, if not facilitating, the Afghan jihadists is the murder of the Haqqani terrorist network (HQN) top financier Nasiruddin Haqqani just outside Islamabad. Nasiruddin was son of Jalaluddin Haqqani from an Arab wife, and full brother of the HQN's de facto chief, Sirajuddin. It has been an open secret for several years that Nasiruddin and his uncles Ibrahim and Khalil have operated in Islamabad's vicinity. Nasiruddin leveraged his Arab connections to raise funds for attacks inside Afghanistan while his uncles have been known to induce, personally and through enforcers working out of Rawalpindi, ostensible peace deals such as the 2011 Kurram accord. Sirajuddin Haqqani had played a decisive role in the selection of the TTP chiefs in the past, and possibly in Mullah Fazlullah
 ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM , Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
's recent ascent as the terror group's ringleader as well. It is unlikely that the Pak establishment has not been aware of the al Qaeda-affiliated HQN's activities near the federal capital.
Syed Munawar Hasan and indeed JUI's  Maulana Fazlur Rehman
Deobandi holy man, known as Mullah Diesel during the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ...
's crass remarks have made even the worst critics of the army queasy. It is for the security establishment to reflect over and revisit its association with unsavoury characters from both sides of the Durand Line. But it would be naïve to assume that decades of damage can be undone with one statement. Peace in Afghanistan and Pakistain requires a policy overhaul on the part of the security establishment, not just a knee-jerk reaction only when its toes are stepped on. |
...knaves, footpads, and 
Asif Ali 
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts...
[Washington Post] The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, 
Ulema scared of Taliban
Wazoo
...Smallest of the agencies in FATA. The Agency administration is located in Khar. Bajaur is inhabited almost exclusively by Tarkani Pashtuns, which are divided into multiple bickering subtribes. Its 52 km border border with Afghanistan's Kunar Province makes it of strategic importance to Pakistain's strategic depth...