Author: John Lancaster and Kamran
Khan
Publication: Washington Post
Date: February 8, 2003
Support of Kashmir Militants at
Odds With War on Terrorism
A year after President Pervez Musharraf
announced a ban on Muslim extremist groups, a move hailed in Washington
as a turning point for Pakistan, several of the organizations have reconstituted
under different names and are once again raising money and proselytizing
for jihad against India and the West, according to Pakistani officials
and members of the groups.
Over the past few months, leaders
of four groups banned by Musharraf have been released from house arrest
or jail. One of them, Hafiz Sayeed of Lashkar-i-Taiba, has been traveling
around the country to meet with supporters and whip up enthusiasm for renewed
attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir, according to a top aide. Another,
Azam Tariq of Sipah-i-Sahaba, serves in parliament.
Pakistani authorities have released
almost all of the hundreds of militants detained after Musharraf pledged
on Jan. 12, 2002, to dismantle extremist groups that he said were "bringing
a bad name to our faith," according to Pakistani officials and Western
diplomats. His landmark speech came as Pakistani and Indian military forces
were massing along their common border, one month after an attack on India's
Parliament complex by guerrillas that India alleged were supported by Pakistan.
Since Musharraf's address, however,
no effort has been made to disarm the groups, Pakistani officials acknowledge,
and donation boxes for the supposedly outlawed organizations have reappeared
in stores, mosques and other public places.
At the same time, Pakistani officials
deny that Musharraf has reneged on his commitment to curb extremist groups,
noting that scores of al Qaeda operatives have been rounded up in Pakistan
in recent months, frequently in cooperation with the FBI. They say the
government had no choice but to release Pakistani militant leaders and
their followers because courts in many cases found insufficient evidence
to continue holding them.
Perhaps nowhere is Musharraf's unfinished
business more visible than on the outskirts of this farming community near
Lahore, where a group called Jamaat ul-Dawa -- the religious and political
affiliate to Lashkar-i-Taiba and now its apparent successor -- occupies
a sprawling, 190-acre compound protected by barbed wire and bearded men
with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Though spokesmen for the organization
say it has nothing to do with violence, the group continues to churn out
books and periodicals preaching the virtues of jihad, or holy war, in Kashmir,
Chechnya, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Sayeed, who founded Lashkar-i-Taiba
in the early 1990s and now runs Jamaat ul-Dawa, said in a telephone interview
last week that his organization remains dedicated to the armed struggle
against Indian forces in Kashmir. Since Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority
India were carved out of British-ruled India in 1947, each has claimed
Kashmir as its own. The two countries' military forces occupy separate
portions of Kashmir, and Muslims in the Indian portion have been waging
an insurrection with Pakistani support since 1989.
Sayeed said he does not recognize
Musharraf's pledge last spring to "permanently" end militant crossings
of the Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir. "Despite
my detention here, jihad didn't stop even for one day in Kashmir throughout
last year," Sayeed said, asserting that about 1,000 of his supporters have
"embraced martyrdom" in Kashmir in the past two years. "India should believe
me that it is beyond General Musharraf to blow a whistle and stop the jihad
in Kashmir."
Another hard-line group banned by
Musharraf, Jaish-i-Muhammad, is reorganizing under the name of al-Furqan,
according to officials with the group.
The reemergence of "jihadi groups,"
several of which have been linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda, has caused
deep concern among Western diplomats. They say it holds the potential for
renewed confrontation between Pakistan and India, both of which possess
nuclear arms and nearly went to war last spring, and calls into question
the depth of Musharraf's commitment to the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
In that regard, the groups' reappearance
is further evidence of the shift that has occurred in the country since
hard-line religious parties opposed to Pakistan's cooperation with the
United States staged an unexpectedly strong showing in national and provincial
elections last fall.
"At one point I think [the government
was] very seriously committed to reining them in," said a Western diplomat
who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now I think that commitment has probably
flagged."
Last month, American frustration
with Musharraf flared into the open when the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan,
Nancy Powell, during a speech to businessmen in Karachi, called on the
government to fulfill its pledges to "end the use of Pakistan as a platform
for terrorism." Although U.S. officials subsequently played down its significance,
the remark caused an uproar in Pakistan, whose government is unaccustomed
to such blunt talk from Washington's envoy.
"There was a total feeling of unacceptance
of what she had said," Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf's spokesman,
said in an interview. "The president has said that Pakistan will not be
used [by militant groups], and the Pakistani army is not allowing any movement
across the Line of Control."
By most accounts, the militants
are not operating as freely as they did in the past, when they openly campaigned
for funds and recruits and celebrated the "martyrdom" of slain fighters
at mass rallies. And Musharraf seems to have taken a hard line toward groups
involved in sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, regarding
them as a serious threat to internal stability, diplomats and analysts
say.
From all indications, however, the
government still maintains a lenient attitude toward groups focused on
the Kashmir conflict, such as Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad. Trained
and supplied by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, these
organizations have long been regarded as an instrument of state policy.
The government has used them to "bleed" India, with its vastly larger military,
as a means of applying pressure for a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir
issue.
"I don't think they're terrorists,"
said a senior military intelligence officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Anyone who has a beard -- just put an al Qaeda stamp on him. You have
got to be slightly more realistic. We are talking about our own people."
But Pakistan's long-standing support
for those it considers "freedom fighters" in Kasmhir has proved increasingly
difficult to reconcile with the U.S.-led global war on terrorism. Indian
officials regularly argue to their U.S. counterparts that Pakistan is on
the wrong side of that war. While Lashkar-i-Taiba, for example, concentrates
its military operations on Indian security forces, it has also been blamed
for attacks that killed civilians, including the December 2001 assault
on the grounds of the Indian Parliament.
Equally alarming to the West and
to moderate Pakistanis, some Lashkar-i-Taiba fighters trained in Afghanistan
during the Taliban era, and their leader, Sayeed, have professed admiration
for Osama bin Laden. For those reasons, President Bush cheered Musharraf's
ban on such groups, welcoming his "firm decision to stand against terrorism
and extremism and his commitment to the principle that no person or organization
will be allowed to indulge in terror as a means to further its cause."
But progress has been spotty at
best. Though guerrilla incursions into India were curtailed early last
year, pressure on the groups eased in the spring. In May, militants attacked
an Indian army camp in Kashmir, killing 34 people, most of them women and
children.
The incident brought the two countries
to the brink of war, a crisis that was defused only when Musharraf, under
intense U.S. pressure, pledged to "permanently" end infiltrations across
the Line of Control. American and Indian officials say incursions dropped
sharply in June and early July, but U.S. officials now concur with the
Indian assessment that they have resumed.
The government has also allowed
considerable latitude for militant leaders who were supposed to have been
reined in. Even during their detention, for example, Sayeed and two other
militant leaders -- Masood Azhar of Jaish-i-Muhammad and Fazlul Rahman
Khalil of Harkat ul-Mujaheddin -- stayed in ISI safe houses where they
were permitted visitors and the use of cell phones, according to statements
filed by their relatives in court proceedings related to their cases.
The militant leaders were held under
a loosely defined "maintenance of public order" law. Human rights groups
urged that they be prosecuted under laws barring private groups from conducting
military training and operating private armies. But none was ever charged,
and courts ordered their release. They moved home a few weeks before they
were officially set free.
While Musharraf has by most accounts
taken a hard line toward militant groups associated with sectarian killings
in Pakistan, there are exceptions: The leader of one such group, Azam Tariq
of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba movement, was allowed to run for parliament
from his jail cell. He has since been released and was recently a guest
at the wedding of the daughter of one of Musharraf's top aides, according
to Pakistani press reports.
Pakistani officials insist that
the groups face more restrictions than they did in the past, especially
in the area of recruitment. Before Musharraf's speech, for example, Pakistan's
Interior Ministry had estimated that at least 5,000 Pakistanis trained
in guerrilla warfare were registered with five key militant groups in Pakistan.
But over the past year, said a senior Interior Ministry official in Islamabad,
there has been little or no recruitment.
But that too may be changing. In
the two months since he was released, Sayeed, the Lashkar-i-Taiba founder,
has addressed about 100 gatherings around the country to "educate people
about the virtues of jihad," according to an aide who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
At the entrance to the group's headquarters
in Lahore the other day, a clear plastic donation box was plainly visible.
Filled with crumpled rupee notes, it invited contributions for jihad in
Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir.
An official at the headquarters,
who declined to give his full name, said he saw nothing unusual in the
appeal. "We will help anybody in the world who is helping jihad," he said.
