Author:
Publication: The Telegraph, UK
Date: May 9, 2002
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/09/wpak109.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/05/09/ixnewstop.html
Ahmed Rashid explains why it is
so easy for al-Qa'eda and its supporters to operate in Pakistan
LOCALS call Karachi the city of
death. Yesterday's car bomb that killed 15 people, including 12 French
nationals, is only the latest in years of ethnic, sectarian and gang-related
killings.
It also underlines how Pakistan,
and in particular Karachi, has become the front line of the war against
al-Qa'eda and its supporters.
Passengers at the international
airport come under the eye of the latest American technology: a camera
mounted on a snake-like spring capturing their faces at passport control.
The image is then sent to a nearby
building occupied by dozens of American FBI agents and from which Pakistani
police are barred.
The FBI's aim is to prevent members
of al-Qa'eda leaving the country.
But it can do little to curb home-grown
terrorism and the dozens of militant Pakistani Islamic groups with close
links to al-Qa'eda and the Taliban.
That should be the task of the military
regime led by President Pervaiz Musharraf. So far it has clearly failed.
While police and senior ministers
tried to pin the blame for the car bomb on India, the government has done
little in the past six months to curb Pakistani militant groups, especially
in Karachi.
Two thousand militants arrested
in the early days of the US-led war in Afghanistan have been freed without
a single terrorism charge being brought against them.
The leaders of the militant groups
are either free to make thundering speeches condemning Gen Musharraf for
siding with the "satanic" United States, or are under lax house arrest
that allows them to receive visitors and make telephone calls.
Omar Sheikh, the alleged killer
of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in
Karachi, is now on trial in the city of Hyderabad.
He has often threatened judges by
making a slitting motion under his chin. The judge hearing the case has
been changed three times.
Sheikh has also issued a public
warning that his supporters will carry out revenge attacks that will shake
the foundations of the regime. He belongs to several terrorist groups,
all with close links to al- Qa'eda - yet their leaders and supporters roam
freely in Karachi.
In March a grenade attack on a church
in Islamabad killed five people, including the wife and daughter of an
American diplomat. Their killers have yet to be found.
Yesterday the independent Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan was brave enough to call the government's
bluff on pinning the blame on its neighbour and rival.
It said: "Unless genuine commitment
is shown to tackling militancy, rather than making merely cosmetic gestures
under international pressure and rounding up low-level activists, violence
will continue to grow."
The 12 million citizens of Karachi
have been going through their own hell, with little of the international
publicity attached to yesterday's bomb. Sectarian killings by Sunni and
Shia extremist groups have claimed about 70 lives this year alone.
Seventy of the city's doctors -
all of them Shia - have been assassinated in daylight in the city over
the past four years. Nine of them were killed this year and hundreds of
doctors are preparing to abandon Karachi for other countries.
"Musharraf calls a cabinet meeting
because the poor French have been killed," said a prominent surgeon who
was operating on wounded Frenchmen last night.
"But he has never called a cabinet
meeting when our doctors are gunned down. Now the medical system in the
city is collapsing because the doctors are terrified."
Money laundering, drug trafficking,
car theft, armed robbery and protection rackets have all spawned their
own mafias in which elements of the police are often involved.
"This is a military regime, but
the crime wave in the city continues unabated," said a retired bureaucrat
in Karachi. "Nobody is caught and nobody is punished because every mafia
has its own protectors in the establishment."
Adding to Karachi's plague of problems,
the militant ethnic group Muttaheda Qaumi Mahaz, which was responsible
for thousands of killings in Karachi in the 1990s, has declared its opposition
to the regime after two of its senior officials were shot dead in Karachi
two weeks ago.
The MQM, which draws its support
from Urdu- speaking migrants from India, of which Gen Musharraf is one,
supported the regime until recently.
Now it has done a U-turn and has
pledged to force the regime to accept its terms for greater autonomy for
Karachi. That promises more violence and death in the days ahead.
Because of a boycott demand by the
MQM, there was a turnout of less than four per cent in Karachi on April
30 for Gen Musharraf's referendum asking the people to give him a further
five-year mandate as president. The government claimed a 70 per cent turnout.
Karachi's other mainstream parties
are also vehemently opposed to the military regime.
Relative stability and some political
support in the city have always been essential to any regime's survival.
It is the country's largest port and industrial and commercial centre and
is the barometer of the flagging economy.
As news of the bombing broke, the
Karachi stock exchange fell by three per cent and businessmen predicted
that foreign investment would dry up.
Karachi, with its complexity of
problems, will continue to remain the test of whether Gen Musharraf can
bring stability to Pakistan while trying to counter terrorism.
