Author: Agencies/New Delhi
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 30, 2002
Former Pakistani activists in the
Taliban have set up a new terrorist outfit to carry on jehad in Jammu and
Kashmir, according to informed Afghan sources here.
The outfit, Shoora-e-Furqan (Assembly
of Believers), comprises thousands of Pakistani Taliban fighters airlifted
by Islamabad in the wake of the siege of the northern Afghan town of Kunduz
by the US-led forces, the sources said. The sources, who claim to be privy
to inside information in Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IANS that the new
outfit, which would be based in PoK, might step up violence in Jammu and
Kashmir in the coming weeks and months to prove that jehad in Kashmir was
not dead.
They also said the Taliban militia,
which had only made a "temporary retreat" from Afghanistan, would soon
launch an offensive in a bid to return to power in that country. The militia
was still led by its supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who is supported
by Osama bin Laden. The sources added that Bin Laden was very much alive.
"Both are very much alive somewhere
in Afghanistan or Pakistan," said the sources and noted that no senior
Taliban leader had been killed or taken into custody by the US forces.
The sources, referring to reports
now surfacing in the Western media that between 3,500 and 5,000 Taliban
and Al-Qaeda activists had been airlifted from Kunduz by Pakistan, said
their number was much higher.
Well-known American journalist Seymour
M. Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, had quoted National Security Adviser
Brajesh Mishra as having told him that New Delhi had sent "diplomatic notes"
to Britain and the US, protesting Pakistan's airlifting its nationals and
Taliban fighters after they were surrounded by Northern Alliance fighters.
Hersh said Mishra told him that
the Indian Government estimated that some 5,000 Pakistanis and other Taliban
fighters were rescued by Pakistan. But a source in Kabul, close to assassinated
Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masood, said there were between
25,000 and 30,000 Pakistani and other Taliban fighters in Kunduz at that
time. While about 6,000 of them surrendered, Pakistani military aircraft
evacuated the others.
"It was a day and night operation
which continued for several days. It could not have taken place without
the knowledge of the US forces," the source said.
Western sources said the rescued
Taliban could pose a serious threat to Jammu and Kashmir and the newly
installed interim Government in Kabul. "It is not only top Taliban leaders
who have disappeared. Hundreds of missiles, tanks and artillery guns which
the Taliban had in its armoury have also disappeared without a trace,"
one Western diplomatic source said.
"It is unlikely that they have been
shifted to Pakistan. Most probably they have been cleverly camouflaged
in the snow-covered mountain ranges," the source said, adding the Taliban
would come out of their hideouts and use those weapons once winter is gone.
The London-based Asia Pacific Foundation
(APF) had said terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India
could increase substantially as a result of the evacuation of Taliban,
Pakistani and Al-Qaeda fighters by Pakistan.
"The portents of this secret evacuation
are not good for other nations in the region because these several thousand
hardcore Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters will join hands with the terror
groups based in Pakistan and intensify jehadi activity in the Chinese Xianjiang,
Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Kashmir," it said.
"They can also, of course, commence
cross-border terror activity against the new Government in Kabul and incite
the local Afghan Pushtuns with whom they have close links and we could
find ourselves back to square one again in the war against terrorism,"
APF president M J Gohel said in a report.