Author: Juliette Terzieff, Chronicle
Foreign Service
Publication: SF Gate
Date: January 31, 2003
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/31/MN65384.DTL
New names, old agenda one year after
crackdown
A year after President Pervez Musharraf
drew applause from the West for banning militant Islamic groups and announcing
a crackdown on their activities, the organizations he sought to dismantle
are alive and well, repackaging themselves to promulgate their message
and increase their numbers.
"America is against Islam. They
want to control the resources of the Muslims and enslave us," declares
the lead article in this month's issue of Majalah al Dawa, one of more
than a dozen strident publications entreating radical followers to action.
Published clandestinely by Jamaat
al-Dawa (Army of Preachers) -- previously known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army
of the Righteous) -- the magazine regularly contains a mix of instructions
for pious living, Koranic interpretation and condemnation of U.S., Indian
and Israeli policies.
"Those who are afraid only of God
cannot be scared away by machine guns. Honor is a strong weapon, and Pakistan
must choose it. If we enforce the will of God and adopt jihad (holy war),
no infidel weapons can harm us," the article promises.
A similar tactic has been adopted
by another banned pro-Kashmiri independence group, Jaish-e- Mohammed (Army
of the Prophet), which now publishes a magazine called al-Islah (Reform).
Both Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar
were declared illegal after an attack on India's Parliament killed 14 people
in 2001 and set off a chain reaction that brought the two rival nations
to the brink of war last year.
Underscoring the militants' continued
ability to act despite the arrest of over 2,000 members following the ban,
Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Omar Saeed Sheikh masterminded the kidnap-murder
of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
"Banning them and closing their
official offices was never going to relegate them to history, it merely
pushed them out of the public eye to work in the shadows," said Nejum Mushtaq,
an analyst for the International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Belgium.
MOST OF THOSE ARRESTED FREED
In the end, most of those arrested
were released without charge, including Lashkar's firebrand leader Hafiz
Saeed, who was arrested after the ban, released in March and rearrested
in May after the massacre of 25 Indian soldiers and their families.
"There is no border between Pakistan
and Kashmir, so the question of cross- border terrorism is irrelevant,"
Saeed warned after his second release this past December. "Even if we are
banned again, the government cannot stop this struggle for the liberation
of Indian-held Kashmir."
As tensions with India and incidents
of cross-border shelling on the rise again, Washington is once again exerting
diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to do more.
Last week, U.S. Ambassador Nancy
Powell unleashed a flurry of criticism from religious and political leaders
here after publicly calling on Pakistan to "ensure its pledges are implemented
to prevent infiltration (into Kashmir) and end the use of Pakistan as a
platform for terrorism."
Secretary of State Colin Powell
and other U.S. officials delivered a similar message to Pakistani Foreign
Minister Kurshid Mehmood Kasuri during the latter's visit to Washington
this week.
On Thursday, the State Department
designated the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi a foreign terrorist
organization. It, too, is believed to have played a role in the Pearl slaying
and is suspected of mounting last May's car bomb attack on a Karachi hotel
that killed 16 people, including 12 French citizens.
"We know it is the same people meeting
under different names, and that cannot be allowed because it is not the
names that were made illegal but the groups themselves," said Abid Saeed,
a police inspector in the town of Dera Ismail Khan.
RAID OUTSIDE ISLAMABAD
On Tuesday, police in Dera, about
180 miles southwest of Islamabad, raided a meeting and arrested two dozen
men tied to a third banned group, Harkat-al- Mujahideen, confiscating a
satellite phone, three rifles and militant literature.
Like the others, Harkat has reconstituted
itself -- using the name Jamiat- ul-Ansar -- and police believe the Dera
meeting was a gathering of regional militant leaders intending to plan
attacks inside Indian-ruled Kashmir.
"We know who they are, and the law
will be upheld," said the police inspector Saeed, echoing recent statements
by the Interior Ministry.
Despite the crackdowns, many analysts
and some Pakistani officials fear Musharraf is playing a dangerous game
-- actively hunting down foreign Taliban or al Qaeda members hiding here
while going relatively soft on Pakistan's homegrown militants, tens of
thousands of whom provide a valuable proxy force for the fight over Kashmir.
Both India and Pakistan claim the
Himalayan region in its entirety and have fought two wars for control.
Separatist militant groups have long crossed the Line of Control, which
partitions the province, from the Pakistani side to carry out attacks on
the Indian side in the name of the Muslim population there.
New Delhi accuses Pakistan of arming,
training and funding the groups while Islamabad insists it provides only
moral and diplomatic support to indigenous freedom-fighting groups.
"What needs to happen is a floor-to-ceiling
dismantling of the (militant) organizations," said ICG's Mushtaq. "While
the groups may appear to serve the interests of some power brokers, they
hijack the overall interests of the country."
ANALYSTS WARN OF DANGER
While moving too quickly against
the well-established militant network could potentially topple the government,
insufficient action is more dangerous,
analysts say. They say the United
States is now the common enemy of both the Pakistani radical groups and
the al Qaeda operatives they are believed to be protecting and assisting.
Lashkar leader Saeed has minced
no words at rallies and dinners around the country since his release: "The
U.S. is an international terrorist, and it is wrong to suggest that I should
not talk about jihad. The Muslim world should take notice that the U.S.
threat extends beyond Iraq, to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
"We will continue jihad. It is the
sole weapon of Muslims to defend their rights and honor."