Archive for Talibanization

In Pakistan, Can Nuclear Warheads be Kept Safe?

November 28, 2009 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Army's Involvement, Pak-US Relations, Talibanization ·Tagged , ,

by Seymour M. Hersh November 16, 2009

America’s dealings with Pakistan may be increasing the risk of radicalization.

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a 22 hour standoff that left 23 dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms.

There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated 80 to a 100 warheads, scattered in facilities around the country.

The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”

The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.

At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a 400 million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust.

Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan.

 I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved.

In response to a series of questions, Admiral Mullen acknowledged that he and Kayani were, in his spokesman’s words, “very close.” The spokesman said that Mullen is deeply involved in day-to-day Pakistani developments and “is almost an action officer for all things Pakistan.” But he denied that he and Kayani, or their staffs, had reached an understanding about the availability of American forces in case of mutiny or a terrorist threat to a nuclear facility.

“To my knowledge, we have no military units, special forces or otherwise, involved in such an assignment,” Mullen said through his spokesman. The spokesman added that Mullen had not seen any evidence of growing fundamentalism inside the Pakistani military. In a news conference on May 4th, however, Mullen responded to a query about growing radicalism in Pakistan by saying that “what has clearly happened over the [past] 12 months is the continual decline, gradual decline, in security.”

The Admiral also spoke openly about the increased coöperation on nuclear security between the United States and Pakistan: “I know what we’ve done over the last three years, specifically to both invest, assist, and I’ve watched them improve their security fairly dramatically.” Seventeen days later, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

“We have invested a significant amount of resources through the Department of Energy in the last several years” to help Pakistan improve the controls on its arsenal. “They still have to improve them,” he said.

Pakistan has more than 20,000 people working in the nuclear-weapons industry, and here is this American view that Pakistan is bound to fail.

High-level coöperation between Islamabad and Washington on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal began at least eight years ago. President Musharraf, recently acknowledged that his government had held extensive discussions with the Bush Administration after the September 11th attacks, and had given State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of the Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures.

Musharraf also confirmed that Pakistan had constructed a huge tunnel system for the transport and storage of nuclear weaponry. “The tunnels are so deep that a nuclear attack will not touch them,” Musharraf told me, with obvious pride. The tunnels would make it impossible for the American intelligence community—“Big Uncle,” as a Pakistani nuclear-weapons expert called it—to monitor the movements of nuclear components by satellite.

Safeguards have been built into the system.

Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft).

The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with India, for example—without pausing to put it together. Final authority to order a nuclear strike requires consensus within Pakistan’s ten-member National Command Authority, with the chairman—by statute, PM Gillani—casting the deciding vote.

But the safeguards meant to keep a confrontation with India from escalating too quickly could make the arsenal more vulnerable to terrorists. Nuclear-security experts have war-gamed the process and concluded that the triggers and other elements are most exposed when they are being moved and reassembled—at those moments there would be fewer barriers between an outside group and the bomb. A consultant to the intelligence community said that in one war-gamed scenario disaffected members of the Pakistani military could instigate a terrorist attack inside India, and that the ensuing crisis would give them “a chance to pick up bombs and triggers—in the name of protecting the assets from extremists.”

The triggers are a key element in American contingency plans. An American former senior intelligence official said that a team that has trained for years to remove or dismantle parts of the Pakistani arsenal has now been augmented by a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the élite counterterrorism group. He added that the unit, which had earlier focussed on the warheads’ cores, has begun to concentrate on evacuating the triggers, which have no radioactive material and are thus much easier to handle.

“The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We saw their target list and their mobilization plans. We got their security plans, so we could augment them in case of a breach of security,” he said. “We’re there to help the Pakistanis, but we’re also there to extend our own axis of security to their nuclear stockpile.” The detailed American planning even includes an estimate of how many nuclear triggers could be placed inside a C-17 cargo plane, the former official said, and where the triggers could be sequestered. Admiral Mullen, asked about increased American insight into the arsenal, said, through his spokesman, “I am not aware of our receipt of any such information.”

A spokesman for the Pakistani military said that “Pakistan neither needs any American unit for enhancing the security for its arsenal nor would accept it.” The spokesman added that the Pakistani military “has been providing protection to U.S. troops in a situation of crisis”—a reference to Pakistan’s role in the war on terror—“and hence is quite capable to deal with any untoward situation.”

Early this summer, a consultant to the Department of Defense said a highly classified military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert after receiving an urgent report from American intelligence officials indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray. The team, which operates clandestinely and includes terrorism and nonproliferation experts from the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the D.O.E., is under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, within four hours of an alert. When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted, the consultant said. By the time the team got the message, it was already in Dubai.

In an actual crisis, would the Pakistanis give an American team direct access to their arsenal? An adviser to the Pentagon on counterinsurgency said that some analysts suspected that the Pakistani military had taken steps to move elements of the nuclear arsenal “out of the count”—to shift them to a storage facility known only to a very few—as a hedge against mutiny or an American or Indian effort to seize them. “If you thought your American ally was telling your enemy where the weapons were, you’d do the same thing,” the adviser said.

“Let me say this about our nuclear deterrent,” President Zardari told me, when asked about any recent understandings between Pakistan and the United States. “We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody’s integrity. We’re all big boys.”

In May, Zardari, at the urging of the United States, approved a major offensive against the Taliban, sending 30,000 troops into the Swat Valley, which lies a hundred miles northwest of Islamabad. “The enemy that we were fighting in Swat was made up of 20 percent thieves and thugs and 80 percent with the same mind-set as the Taliban,” Zardari said. He depicted the operation as a complete success, but added that his government was not “ready” to kill all the Taliban. His long-term solution, Zardari said, was to provide new business opportunities in Swat and turn the Taliban into entrepreneurs. “Money is the best incentive,” he said. “They can be rented.”

Zardari’s view of the Swat offensive was striking, given that many Pakistanis had been angered by the excessive use of force and the ensuing refugee crisis. The lives of about two million people were torn apart, and, during a summer in which temperatures soared to a hundred and twenty degrees, hundreds of thousands of civilians were crowded into government-run tent cities.

The Obama Administration has had difficulty coming to terms with how unhappy many Pakistanis are with the United States. Secretary of State Clinton, during her three-day “good-will visit” to Pakistan in October 2009 seemed taken aback by the angry and, at times, provocative criticism of American policies that dominated many of her public appearances, and responded defensively. 

Last year, the Washington Times ran an article about the Pressler Amendment, a 1985 law cutting off most military aid to Pakistan as long as it continued its nuclear program. The measure didn’t stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, or from buying certain weapons, but it did reduce the number of Pakistani officers who were permitted to train with American units. The article quoted Major General John Custer as saying, “The older military leaders love us. They understand American culture and they know we are not the enemy.”

Some military men who know Pakistan well believe that, whatever the officer corps’s personal views, the Pakistan Army remains reliable. “They cannot be described as pro-American, but this doesn’t mean they don’t know which side their bread is buttered on,”

Brian Cloughley, who served six years as Australia’s defense attaché to Pakistan and is now a contributor to Jane’s Sentinel, told me. “The chance of mutiny is slim. Were this to happen, there would be the most severe reaction” by special security units in the Pakistani military, Cloughley said. “But worry feeds irrationality, and the international consequences could be dire.”

The recollections of Bush Administration officials who dealt with Pakistan in the first round of nuclear consultations after September 11th do not inspire confidence. The Americans’ main contact was Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, the head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, the agency that is responsible for nuclear strategy and operations and for the physical security of the weapons complex. At first, a former high-level Bush Administration official told me, Kidwai was reassuring; his professionalism increased their faith in the soundness of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and its fail-safe procedures. 

The Army was controlled by Punjabis who, the Americans thought, “did not put up with Pashtuns,” as the former Bush Administration official put it. (The Taliban are mostly Pashtun.) But by the time the official left, at the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term, he had a much darker assessment: “They don’t trust us and they will not tell you the truth.”

No American, for example, was permitted access to A. Q. Khan, the metallurgist and so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, who traded crucial nuclear-weapons components on the international black market. Musharraf placed him under house arrest in early 2004, claiming to have been shocked to learn of Khan’s dealings.

At the time, it was widely understood that those activities had been sanctioned by ISI. Khan was freed in February 2009, although there are restrictions on his travel.

A former State Department official who worked on nuclear issues with Pakistan after September 11th said that he’d come to understand that the Pakistanis “believe that any information we get from them would be shared with others—perhaps even the Indians. To know the command-and-control processes of their nuclear weapons is one thing. To know where the weapons actually are is another thing.”

The former State Department official cited the large Pakistan Air Force base outside Sargodha, where many of Pakistan’s nuclear-capable F-16s are thought to be stationed. “Is there a nuke ready to go at Sargodha?” the former official asked. “If there is, and Sargodha is the size of Andrews Air Force Base, would we know where to go? Are the warheads stored in Bunker X?” Ignorance could be dangerous. “If our people don’t know where to go and we suddenly show up at a base, there will be a lot of people shooting at them,” he said. “And even if the Pakistanis may have told us that the triggers will be at Bunker X, is it true?”

There is a lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders in Pakistan. Insiders have facilitated terrorist attacks.

Suicide bombings have occurred at air force bases that reportedly serve as nuclear weapons storage sites. It is difficult to ignore such trends. Purely in actuarial terms, there is a strong possibility that bad apples in the nuclear establishment are willing to cooperate with outsiders for personal gain or out of sympathy for their cause. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. .Anything that helps upgrade Pakistan’s nuclear security is an investment in America’s security.

The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. “If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he’s lying,” he said. “The Pakistanis wouldn’t share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a Dixie cup and then threw them away.”

If the Obama Administration persists in convincing Pakistan to fight Taliban, there will be an uprising, and this corrupt government will collapse. Every Pakistani will then be his own nuclear bomb—a suicide bomber. The longer the war goes on, the longer it will spill over in the tribal territories, and it will lead to a revolutionary stage. People there will flee to the big cities like Lahore and Islamabad.

A former ISI agent, Tarar, believes that the Obama Administration had to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, even if that meant direct talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Tarar knew Mullah Omar well. “Omar trained as a young man in my camp in 1985,” he told me. “He was physically fit and mission-oriented—a very honest man who was a practicing Muslim. Nothing beyond that. He was a Talib—a student, and not a mullah. But people respected him. Today, among all the Afghan leaders, Omar has the biggest audience, and this is the right time for you to talk to him.”

A $7.5-billion American aid package, approved by Congress in September, was, to the surprise of many in Washington, controversial in Pakistan, because it contained provisions seen as strengthening Zardari at the expense of the military.

Shaheen Sehbai, News editor, says that Zardari’s “problem is that he’s besieged domestically on all sides, and he thinks only the Americans can save him,” and, as a result, “he’ll open his pants for them.” Sehbai noted that Kayani’s term as Army chief ends in the fall of 2010.

If Zardari tried to replace him before then, Kayani’s colleagues would not accept his choice, and there could be “a generals’ coup. America should worry more about the structure and organization of the Army—and keep it intact.

If Pakistani officers had given any assurances about the nuclear arsenal, they are cheating the Americans and they would be right to do so. We should not be aiding and abetting the Americans.

Persuading the Pakistan Army to concentrate on fighting the Taliban, and not India, is crucial to the Obama Administration’s plans for the region.

There has been enmity between India and Pakistan since 1947, when Britain’s withdrawal led to the partition of the subcontinent. The state of Kashmir, which was three-quarters Muslim but acceded to Hindu-majority India, has been in dispute ever since, and India and Pakistan have twice gone to war over the territory. Through the years, the Pakistan Army and the ISI have relied on Pakistan-based jihadist groups, most notably Lashkare Taiba and Jaishe Mohammed, to carry out a guerrilla war against the Indians in Kashmir. Many in the Pakistani military consider the groups to be an important strategic reserve.

ISI is deeply troubled by the prospect of Pakistan ceding any control over its nuclear deterrent. “Suppose the jihadis strike at India again—another attack on the parliament. India will tell the United States to stay out of it, and ‘We’ll sort it out on our own,’ ” an ISI guy said. “Then there would be a ground attack into Pakistan. As we begin to react, the Americans will be interested in protecting our nuclear assets, and urge us not to go nuclear—‘Let the Indians attack and do not respond!’ They would urge us instead to find those responsible for the attack on India. Our nuclear arsenal was supposed to be our savior, but we would end up protecting it. It doesn’t protect us,” he said.

Pakistan’s fears about the United States coöperating with India are not irrational. In 2008, Congress approved a controversial agreement that enabled India to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the United States without joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty, making India the only non-signatory to the N.P.T. permitted to do so.

Concern about the Pakistani arsenal has since led to greater coöperation between the United States and India in missile defense; the training of the Indian Air Force to use bunker-busting bombs; and “the collection of intelligence on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal,” according to the consultant to the intelligence community.

“Our worries are about the nuclear weapons in Pakistan,” one of the RAW officials said. “Not because we are worried about the mullahs taking over the country; we’re worried about those senior officers in the Pakistan Army who are Caliphates”—believers in a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state. “We know some of them and we have names,” he said. “We’ve been watching colonels who are now brigadiers. These are the guys who could blackmail the whole world”—that is, by seizing a nuclear weapon.

The Indian intelligence official went on, “Do we know if the Americans have that intelligence? This is not in the scheme of the way you Americans look at things—‘Kayani is a great guy! Let’s have a drink and smoke a cigar with him and his buddies.’ Some of the men we are watching have notions of leading an Islamic army.”

In an interview, an Indian official who has dealt diplomatically with Pakistan for years said, “Pakistan is in trouble, and it’s worrisome to us because an unstable Pakistan is the worst thing we can have.” But he wasn’t sure what America could do. “They like us better in Pakistan than you Americans,” he said. “I can tell you that in a public-opinion poll we, India, will beat you.”

India and Pakistan, he added, have had back-channel talks for years in an effort to resolve the dispute over Kashmir, but “Pakistan wants talks for the sake of talks, and it does not carry out the agreements already reached.” (In late October, Manmohan Singh, the Indian PM, publicly renewed an offer of talks, but tied it to a request that Pakistan crack down on terrorism; Pakistan’s official response was to welcome the overture.)

The Indian official, like his counterparts in Pakistan, believed that Americans did not appreciate what his government had done for them. “Why did the Pakistanis remove two divisions from the border with us?” He was referring to the shifting of Pakistani forces, at the request of the United States, to better engage the Taliban. “It means they have confidence that we will not take advantage of the situation. We deserve a pat on the back for this.”

Musharraf says he had been troubled by the American-controlled Predator drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan, which began in 2005. “I said to the Americans, ‘Give us the Predators.’ It was refused. I told the Americans, ‘Then just say publicly that you’re giving them to us. You keep on firing them but put Pakistan Air Force markings on them.’ That, too, was denied.”

Musharraf, who was forced out of office in August, 2008, under threat of impeachment, did not spare his successor. “Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud,” Musharraf told me. “He’ll do anything to save himself. He’s not a patriot and he’s got no love for Pakistan. He’s a third-rater.”

Musharraf said that he and General Kayani, who had been his nominee for Chief of Army Staff, were still in telephone contact. Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999, and remained in uniform until near the end of his Presidency. He said that he didn’t think the Army was capable of mutiny—not the Army he knew. “There are people with fundamentalist ideas in the Army, but I don’t think there is any possibility of these people getting organized and doing an uprising. These ‘fundos’ were disliked and not popular.”

He added, “Muslims think highly of Obama, and he should use his acceptability—even with the Taliban—and try to deal with them politically.”

Musharraf spoke of two prior attempts to create a fundamentalist uprising in the Army. In both cases, he said, the officers involved were arrested and prosecuted. “I created the strategic force that controls all the strategic assets—eighteen to 20,000 strong. They are monitored for character and for potential fundamentalism,” he said. He acknowledged, however, that things had changed since he’d left office. “People have become alarmed because of the Taliban and what they have done,” he said. “Everyone is now alarmed.”

The rise in militancy is a sensitive subject, and many inside Pakistan insist that American fears, and the implied threat to the nuclear arsenal, are overwrought. The Army continues to support an unpopular President. The survival of the coalition government shows that the present Army leadership has an interest in making it work.

Nuclear weapons are only as safe as the people who handle them. For more than two decades, the Pakistan Army has been recruiting on the basis of faithfulness to Islam. As a consequence, there is now a different character present among Army officers and ordinary soldiers.

The current offensive in South Waziristan marked a significant success for the Obama Administration, which had urged Zardari to take greater control of the tribal areas. There was a risk, too—that the fighting would further radicalize Pakistan.

Since the Waziristan operation was announced, more than 300 people have been killed in a dozen terrorist attacks. “If we push too hard there, we could trigger a social revolution,” the Special Forces adviser said. “We are playing into Al Qaeda’s deep game here. If we blow it, Al Qaeda could come in and scoop up a nuke or two.” He added, “The Pakistani military knows that if there’s any kind of instability there will be a traffic jam to seize their nukes.” More escalation in Pakistan, he said, “will take us to the brink.”

There are undeniable signs that militancy and the influence of fundamentalist Islam has grown.

A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. “They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,” he said. In one case, according to the official, Hizb ut-Tahrir had recruited members of a junior officer group, from the most élite Pakistani military academy, who had been sent to England for additional training.

“Where do these guys get socialized and exposed to Islamic evangelism and the fundamentalism narrative?” the Obama Administration official asked. “In services every Friday for Army officers, and at corps and unit meetings where they are addressed by senior commanders and clerics.” ♦

Source : http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh

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What Will Happen to the Shias if Taliban Come to Power?

November 28, 2009 at 7:26 am · Filed under Talibanization, Tribal Areas ·Tagged , ,

By Farhat Taj

Orakzai is the only agency in FATA that has no border with Afghanistan. It touches Khyber agency in the north, Darra Adam Khel in the east, Hangu and Kohat in the south and Kurrum in the west. 

Orakzai is occupied by the Taliban from Waziristan, Darra Adam Khel and Khyber agencies. Some local tribesmen have also joined the Taliban from the other agencies. Many of the locals who joined the Taliban used to be petty thieves and drug pushers. 

The Taliban have imposed an alien ideology and way of life on the people.

The activities of the Taliban in Orakzai have two interesting aspects. One, tribal affiliations under the code of Pakhtunwali have by and large countered sectarian differences that the fiercely anti-Shia Taliban want to exploit. 

In an area called Dobari for example, there are about 100 Shia families surrounded by the Sunni majority. Under Pakhtunwali, the majority community had taken upon itself to protect the 100 families, whom the Taliban wanted to banish from the area. 

The Sunni tribesmen, however, rejected the Taliban’s banishment and decided instead to remove the Taliban from the area by raising a tribal lashkar. The Ali Khel is the largest tribe in Orakzai and the leaders of the tribe then held a grand jirga to work out the details of a strategy to take on the Taliban. 

The grand jirga was scheduled for Oct 10, 2008 and as it was being held it was attacked by a suicide bomber. 140 tribesmen were killed.

In effect, the tribe’s main leadership was decimated and this paved the way for the Taliban to take control of the agency. However, despite this the Taliban were not able to succeed in dividing the Ali Khels along Shia-Sunni lines. 

Instead, in the intense rivalry between the Ali Khels and the Taliban, a Taliban commander who belonged to the Ali Khel tribe defected and joined his tribe. This angered the TTP which put head money on the man.

The people of Orakzai say that the government and the military should have done more to help the tribe, especially when it had decided to take on the Taliban by raising its own lashkar. 

They say that had that help been forthcoming the situation perhaps would be different to what it is today – where the government’s writ is confined only to the agency’s headquarters and the Taliban control most of the rest of Orakzai. 

Every day, people are kidnapped, killed, beheaded or publicly insulted by the Taliban, who like in other parts of FATA, have also set up their own so-called ’sharia’ courts. In recent weeks, a mentally ill man was even beheaded by the Taliban – he was a Shia and had mistakenly entered an area which the Taliban had banned for all Shia tribesmen.

So what is the way forward? Well, for starters, the Taliban are not a unified group. It is an umbrella of sectarian terrorists, global jihadis and even criminals, and their differences can be exploited by the intelligence agencies. And there are many proofs of such differences. 

In the Ferozkhel area recently, two groups of the Taliban fought each other and there were several casualties. The dispute was over whether or not to return a Shia boy who had been kidnapped by them to his family in exchange for one of their (the Taliban’s) colleagues.

The people feel that they have been left to fend for themselves. And they have taken matters into their own hands. Some weeks ago, three such volunteers intercepted a suicide bomber but could not stop him from triggering his explosives and as a result all three died. 

Also, of late, a Taliban court in the agency summoned 60 businessmen from the majority community – their alleged crime being that they were involved in business with tribesmen from the minority sect.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy.

Email: bergen34@ yahoo.com

 

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Pakistan’s Allegiance to America has come home to Bite the Generals in the Asses

November 7, 2009 at 2:47 pm · Filed under Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

Waging War Upon Ourselves

By:  Peter Chamberlin

911It is easy to see why Pakistan has been chosen as the battleground of the century, but it is a real shame to us all that we have allowed our governments so much unsupervised freedom of action that they could get away with the things you are about to read about in the following article.  It is a difficult story to tell, since an accurate narrative requires the merging of multiple streams of information into one.  The story of the war in Wana is a tale of strange religions, secret alliances and governments that wage war upon themselves.

It would be nice to believe our governments, that they were actually doing their utmost to defend our lives and our freedom in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that they were really marshalling all of our forces and our most advanced military technology to defeat an army of rabid terrorists who were out to destroy us…but that in no way resembles the situation that we have created there on the ground.  The “war on terror” is a great psycho-drama, staged to convince us that the world is out to get us and we must accept living in a state of permanent war.

The first thing that must be understood is that Pakistan’s allegiance to America in the past has come home to bite the generals in the asses.  Running America’s militant/terrorist training camps, creating “Islamist” foot soldiers for the CIA to send all over the world, is suddenly a big deal.  The world has finally recognized that the training program is a vast criminal enterprise, which Musharraf and his generals are all set to take the fall for, except there at home in Pakistan, right in the middle of world war III.

The Pakistani people are the most abused of all the victims of CIA/ISI terror.  The Army is busy there staging a fake terror war, pretending to be fighting the TTP, in a modern remake of a farcical drama that last played in the Roman Coliseum.  Thousands of Pakistani civilians and hundreds of soldiers and policemen have been sacrificed to convince the world that terrorists are waging war indiscriminately across FATA and the NWFP, even though their every action seems calculated to justify an American invasion.

The good people of Pakistan are greatly troubled, trying to understand the situation that they have been trapped in.  Even as the government relocates millions of its citizens to fight entrenched terrorists who live among them, the news of the day (attack on GHQ) once again links “ex-officers” of the Army and ISI with terror attacks.  Other news reports that hit men in sectarian attacks carried ISI identification.  What could possibly motivate some military and government officials to participate in a plan to bring war to Pakistan?

If the evidence really proves military involvement in actual terrorism in the past and in the present, then it becomes a question of motive—Why would dedicated military men, who have taken oaths to serve and protect the Nation, kill innocent Pakistanis, or worse, their fellow officers?   It seems that there could be only three possible answers to this question—money, insanity, or patriotism.

Patriotism stands-out as the most likely answer, since military minds see duty differently than civilian folks.   It is conceivable that perhaps some Army or ISI guys could have been convinced that certain people were a threat to national security and had to be eliminated.  This could explain how the following names of so many officers could be linked to confirmed terrorists:

Mr Aqeel , Aliases Dr Usman, who was named in Daniel Pearl’s murder and the GHQ  attack   Amjad Farooqi namesake of the (TTP) umbrella group which attacked GHQ                           

Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam Abbasi, who led an attempted coup against Benazir Bhutto, or former SSG commando Ilyas Kashmiri who alleged killed SSG Gen. Faisal Alvi.                            

Khalid Khwaja, retired air force officer who led Daniel Pearl to Omar Sheikh                      

dozens of active-duty military officers.… arrested for helping Amjad Farooqi try to kill Musharraf.

People in Pakistan have been exposed to this sort of news for many years, among them, there has been  little doubt that the Army has always served American interests and the Army has always trained and used militants as part of this service.  The terrorism in Pakistan, mostly the sectarian terrorism, has been committed by government-trained militants/terrorists, so much so that the people blame the Army for every bomb in a mosque.

The “militants” who have been trained by the professionals who had joined radical outfits are really no different than those who have trained them—both are radical extremists who are ready to kill or die for their country or for their religion.  As long as the terror that they have unleashed upon their neighbors and countrymen was in the name of America, Pakistan, or Islam, then the terror was for a “just” cause.  This kind of thinking causes military men like ISI Directorate chief Lieutenant-General Pasha to call men like Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah “true patriots,” for offering to fight India, just like Reagan called the contras “freedom fighters.”

There is a theory making the rounds and gaining ground in Pakistan that tries to explain how the military/militant nexus that was openly nurtured to fight in Kashmir was applied covertly to the situation in FATA and NWFP.  That theory attempts to explain how the Army could allow American and British intelligence agencies to secretly use India’s RAW and the Mossad to manipulate certain adherents of a local religious cult, the Ahmadiyya (a schism from Sunni Islam), to create a new series of schisms within Pakistani society.  

The theory seems to gain some validity due to certain facts that apply to many members of the cult—many are embedded within the Pakistani officer corps, a lot of them hold high positions in the government bureaucracy and their movement was founded in what is today the epicenter of sectarian terror, around the town of Jhang.

The basic reality of everyday life for Ahmadis within Pakistan makes them ideal candidates for recruits in a secret army, especially if the mostly poor Ahmadis are paid exceptionally well—because of religious persecution, they have always had to hide their religious identities; they advocate reunification with India; they prefer British rule over the status quo in Pakistan.  If the world was being reordered by the Americans and British in a manner that would reunite India or bring all the Muslim people in Pakistan under the control of one organization that was America-friendly, perhaps also leading to Indian reunification, then surely the Ahmadi and some of their leaders could be counted upon to cooperate in bringing the plan about.

The Pakistani Taliban are the key to the entire psyop.  Understanding who they actually are and what master they really serve is vital to understanding what is going down in the homeland of the “Islamic bomb.”

The Tehreek Taliban emerged from S. Punjab, spreading from there to S. Waziristan.  Contrary to popular deceptions, they are an “anti-Taliban” force.  Like everything else in Pakistan, they were meant to play a “double-game,” pretending to be part of the real Pashtun Afghan Taliban, while waging war in secret upon them.  Musharraf and his generals created this “Taliban” force that was not really Taliban, by utilizing “Islamists,” who were not really Muslims.  They were created to serve as a safe “loyal opposition,” who pretended to wage a fake war of terror for American audiences, without risking a fight with real rogue terror groups.  The plan was to use military men to lead the criminal gangs of real revolutionaries and ordinary rabble,

The Tehreek Taliban are not really “Taliban,” they are more accurately described as a      counter-Taliban force, an “anti-Taliban.”  Like all the real Taliban, they follow a counterfeit Saudi Wahabi version of Islam.  

Unlike the real Afghan Taliban, their warped Wahabi Islam has been blended with another, even more radical “Islam” from India, Deobandi Islam.  The result is the most sectarian bloodthirsty form of Sunni Islam yet devised, to them, anyone who doesn’t follow this perverse Wahabi-Deobandi fusion, just like them, is “Kfir,” the unbelievers.  We are discussing the religious faith of people like Baitullah and Hakeemullah Mehsud, the same people who are now waging war in Pakistan.

The “Islamists” of FATA and NWFP wage sectarian war against all unbelievers in their areas of control, under the direction of ISI controllers.  They also provide targets for American drones, using spies under ISI control to plant tracker chips on expendable “militants.”  Whenever militant leaders, or criminal gangs working under their direction, get out of control, military action takes them out.

In addition to this ISI-controlled war in FATA and NWFP, there is another rogue element that is staging terrorist attacks outside of Army control, an American/British/Israeli/Indian force within the anti-Taliban themselves.  The killers in this super-secret group are even worse bloodthirsty and hate-driven zealots than the Mehsuds.  Pakistani writers refer to them as the “Punjabi Taliban,” because that is where they first sprang-up.

Rise of Punjabi Taliban

“Today the bulk of attacks in heartland Pakistan are carried out by Pakistanis from Punjab or Sindh, or by Pashtun fighters assisted by heartland Pakistanis,” says Rohan Gunaratne, author of Inside Al Qaeda.

“Punjab-based groups… were initially the creatures of the Inter-Services Intelligence, and had a Kashmir focus,” says Teresita Schaffer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The change began when President Pervez Musharraf outlawed two Punjabi militant groups (2002) —Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) — because of outrage over their attacks on Shias.

Many Jhangvi fighters then moved to the NWFP.

“Jhangvi is now the eyes, ears and operational arm of Al Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan [based in Waziristan],” says Gunaratne. “It is hard to distinguish between the three.”

The task of the Punjabi Taliban is to radicalize the TTP even more.

All the leaders in the Tehreek Taliban movement have been educated in Deobandi madrassas, where they studied under Muftis who had been steeped in the sectarian hatred of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founder of the mother of all terror outfits in Pakistan, Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP).  All Tehreek Taliban leaders came from SSP’s militant wing, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), or one of its sub-groups.

To counter the activities of the Shia organisation, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with the blessings of the USA, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, encouraged a group of Deobandi Muslim migrants (Mohajirs) from the districts of what constitute the Indian Punjab and Haryana of today to counter the activities of the TNFJ [Shia].  Thus came into being the Ajuman-e-Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (since re-named as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan–SSP) on September 6,1984, under the leadership of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a semi-educated Khateeb who had his religious education in Darul Uloom, Kabirwala, and the Khairul madrasa of Multan in Pakistani Punjab.

There is a river of terror running through the heart of Pakistan, flowing down every highway, road and goat path.  Wherever progress has gone, the terror has followed, carried by rabble-rousing mullahs/muftis, from the central reservoir of hatred in the town of Jhang, in southern Punjab.  It is more sickening than it is ironic that the architects of the reservoir sit in Washington and criticize the Pakistani engineers for following their blueprint too precisely.

All the sectarian terror in Pakistan flows from this reservoir of hatred dug deep in the town of Jhang, in the southern Punjab Region.  Of all the regions of Pakistan, the ISI knew that only Jhang could produce a common mindset that would both feed the sectarian hatred and convince otherwise sane individuals to join the effort to defend Pakistan by waging war within it.

Since its inception the SSP has relied on a core constituency of Sunni peasantry who felt exploited by Shi’a landlords and aristocrats.  The Ahmadi are a merchant class who have lived under the thumb of Shia since first coming to Pakistan.

In Jhang a center of sectarian hatred and terror already existed, embraced by an ignored hidden cult, or schism within Sunni Islam, known as Ahmadiyya, or “Qadiani.”  The record clearly documents a movement of anti-Shia hatred from Punjab, to Peshawar, to S. Waziristan, to Khyber, and beyond.  There is no way to document how many of the terrorists that infiltrated NWFP and FATA were Qadians, but we know for certain that they were all Sipah/Lashkar Jhangvi.

Basically, Ahmadiyya may be the most glorified personality cult of all time, based on the ego of one man who thought that he could convert the religions of the world by the power of his reasoning skills.  The end product was a type of pseudo-Islamic intellectualism which could be described as a “Hindu-ized” version of Islam, misrepresenting itself as all things to all believers, clearly an abomination to all true Muslims.

The Ahmadiyya believe that their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (1835-1908) was the Mahdi of Islam, the last incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu and the embodiment of the Christian Messiah.  The followers of Ahmad settled on 1034 acres of land near Jhang in Punjab.

It is no coincidence that Jhang is the epicenter of sectarian terrorism in Pakistan, since it is also home to both the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) and its most evil stepchild, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

Jhang had all the ingredients and Gen. Musharraf had all the proper credentials to go forward with the CIA plan to create an anti-Taliban force there, from an assortment of disillusioned Ahmadis and others from the mohajir community, who were fed-up with life’s burdens.  Gen. Musharraf, a mohajir general, was supposedly a Berelvi-Sunni, but many Pakistanis claim that he is a secret Ahmadi.   

The evidence reveals that in 2003, the dictator sought the help of MQM leader, Altaf Hussein, who is known as a willing servant of American and British interests, to use MQM fanatics to manipulate the local mohajir community as part of the plan.

2003 was a pivotal year in the plan, as US forces withdrew most of their assets from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in March.  Bush clearly just dumped the entire operation into Musharraf’s lap.  Musharraf was expected to “give pursuit” to the “al Qaida” militants who had taken refuge in Waziristan.  This was never the real mission, the alleged “mission” was only another part of the psyop; Musharraf’s job was to stall.   He was to wage a pretend war to buy time for American forces to eliminate Saddam Hussein.  For this, he needed a new “Taliban” force, one to fight inside Pakistan.

The moment that Bush passed Afghanistan to Musharraf, he began to call together the old Taliban alliance, under Mullah Omar.  After being clearly routed in Afghanistan by American bombers and Northern alliance troops (who were mostly Shia), Omar needed a new army of zealous militants, fueled with a new desire to wage jihad against American and Afghan forces.

He needed a Pashtun publicity campaign that would follow the American model of motivational speakers, on “lecture circuits,” conducted by brave inspiring role models, such as Mullah Dadullah, to persuade young Pashtun men to go to war.  For this task, nothing seemed to work better than using veteran Afghan Taliban, who were missing limbs, or eyes, such as the one-legged Mullah. 

He was brought into S. Waziristan, along with one-legged Abdullah Mehsud, who was probably released from Guantanamo just for this reason.  After sufficient CIA brainwashing, he was released into Afghanistan, where he inspired an army of Uzbek fighters of IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) to follow him into S. Waziristan. 

 These Uzbeks were reported in the media as “al Qaida,” as they terrorized the land and ran training camps around Wana, undoubtedly under direct ISI control.

In 2003, at the instance of the ISI, Mulla Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, reconstituted the Taliban army to launch a new jihad in Afghanistan—this time against the Western forces. He asked Mulla Dadullah, who continued to enjoy the confidence of the ISI, to act as the chief military commander of the new Taliban army, which consisted of experienced jihadi fighters of the pre-October 7, 2001, vintage as well as new recruits from the madrasas and Afghan refugee camps of Pakistan.

The new Taliban army was trained by the ISI and started operating in the Pashtun majority areas of Southern and Eastern Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Balochistan and in the Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

In its issue of October, 2003, the “Newsline”, the reliable and well-informed monthly of Karachi, gave the following account of the re-constitution of the Neo Taliban army and the role of Dadullah in it:

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of youths from religious schools across Pakistan  have joined the ranks of Taliban cadres that have regrouped in Afghanistan in the last few months. According to one estimate, at least 5,000 youths including former Taliban soldiers who went underground after the fall of their regime in December 2001, and students from religious seminaries from Balochistan, have joined their compatriots in Afghanistan. Many of these young men are known in the ranks as ’sarbaz’ (those who have given their lives to the cause and readily sacrifice them in suicide missions). Regrouped, reorganised and rearmed, these warriors are now all set to launch a new guerrilla war for as long as it takes to expel what they call the ‘infidel forces’ from Afghanistan.

From this moment on, Pakistani proxies were at war with American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.  The creation of the anti-Taliban, the TTP, with the help of the British (See:  Unraveling the Anti-Pakistan Psyop), effectively acknowledged this fact and began to pit an American backed Pakistani proxy force, against Pakistan. 

 If we were in a real war and not just a massive dramatic production, then this would have been a serious matter.  As it was, it was just more geo-strategic chess, or “the great game,” as they like to call it on the sub-continent.

The forces organized under Dadullah had to fight a war within Pakistan that was totally convincing, one that was so intense that it would convince the world community that outside intervention (meaning: American intervention) was absolutely required to save Pakistan from itself.  The real mission required many more terrorists, who were sufficiently vicious to kill religious opponents without hesitation.  This required at least two more side psyops, both staged in areas that had already been marked by past sectarian conflicts—Karachi and Khyber.

In Karachi, Musharraf agitated the MQM supporters of Altaf Hussein.  A fake “ultimatum,” allegedly from an unknown militant group, was issued around Peshawar, threatening to wipe-out all Ahmadis who refused to either convert or leave Pakistan. 

The fear campaign had begun.  MQM agitators began recruiting for a “Sunni Tehreek,” to take the war to Pashtun militants.  An open deal with Musharraf was struck, which effectively closed-down a previous ISI-created anti-MQM faction, the MQM-Haqaqi, begun to undermine Altaf Hussain’s group, the MQM-H, the most violent of all the mohajir factions.   It was driven underground and group leader Amir Khan was arrested (June 29), effectively making thousands of potential recruits available from his organization for ISI missions.

On May 22, Ahmadi leaders met in Ranpur to make plans for dealing with the threat from the mullahs.  A wave of killing was unleashed upon the Ahmadi community, beginning in Karachi.  On July 14, Shia leader Allama Hassan Turabi was assassinated by a suicide bomber in front of his home in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal section of Karachi.

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How to Control Talibanization in Pakistan

November 7, 2009 at 2:36 pm · Filed under Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged ,

Pakistan: The Militant Jihadi Challenge

Asia Report N°164

13 March 2009

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The recent upsurge of jihadi violence in Punjab, the NWFP, the FATA and Quetta demonstrates the threat extremist Sunni-Deobandi groups pose to the Pakistani citizen and state. These radical Sunni groups are simultaneously fighting internal sectarian jihads, regional jihads in Afghanistan and India and a global jihad against the West. While significant domestic and international attention and resources are understandably devoted to containing Islamist militancy in the tribal belt, that the Pakistani Taliban is an outgrowth of radical Sunni networks in the country’s political heartland is too often neglected.

A far more concerted effort against Punjab-based Sunni extremist groups is essential to curb the spread of extremism that threatens regional peace and stability. As the international community works with Pakistan to rein in extremist groups, it should also support the democratic transition, in particular by reallocating aid to strengthening civilian law enforcement.

The Pakistani Taliban, which increasingly controls large swathes of FATA and parts of NWFP, comprises a number of militant groups loosely united under the Deobandi Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that have attacked not just state and Western targets, but Shias as well. Their expanding influence is due to support from long-established Sunni extremist networks, based primarily in Punjab, which have served as the army’s jihadi proxies in Afghanistan and India since the 1980s.

Punjab-based radical Deobandi groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) provide weapons, recruits, finances and other resources to Pakistani Taliban groups, and have been responsible for planning many of the attacks attributed to FATA-based militants. The SSP and LJ are also al-Qaeda’s principal allies in the region. Other extremist groups ostensibly focused on the jihad in Kashmir, such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, are also signatories to al-Qaeda’s global jihad against the West, and have been active in local, regional and international jihads. Their continued patronage by the military, and their ability to hijack major policy areas, including Pakistan’s relations with India, Afghanistan and the international community, impede the civilian government’s ongoing efforts to consolidate control over governance and pursue peace with its neighbours.

The actions of the PPP-led federal government, and the Punjab government, led until recently by Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, against Punjab-based jihadi groups for their role in November’s attack in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, are a step in the right direction. They must now be followed up by consolidating the evidence and presenting it in court. The two main parties, however, risk reversing the progress they have made by resorting to the confrontational politics of the past.

On 25 February 2009, the Supreme Court decided to uphold a ban, based on politically motivated cases dating back to Musharraf’s military rule, on Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, Punjab’s chief minister, from electoral politics. President Zardari’s subsequent imposition of governor’s rule in Punjab aggravated a political stalemate between the two main parties.

The aftermath of the Mumbai attack presents an opening to reshape Pakistan’s response to terrorism, which should rely not on the application of indiscriminate force, including military action and arbitrary detentions, but on police investigations, arrests, fair trials and convictions. This must be civilian-led to be effective.

Despite earlier successes against extremist groups, civilian law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the Federal Investigation Agency, the provincial Criminal Investigation Departments, and the Intelligence Bureau, lack the resources and the authority to meet their potential.

The military and its powerful ISI still dominate – and hamper – counter-terrorism efforts.

The PPP government cannot afford to enforce the law only in response to a terrorist attack or external pressure. Proactive enforcement will be vital to containing religious militancy, which has reached critical levels; this includes checks on the proliferation of weapons and the growth of of private militias, which contravene the constitution; prosecution of hate speech, the spread of extremist literature and exhortations to jihad; greater accountability of and actions against jihadi madrasas and mosques; and ultimately converting information into evidence that holds up in court.

It is not too late to reverse the tide of extremism, provided the government immediately adopts and implements a zero tolerance policy towards all forms of religious militancy.

Unfortunately, on 16 February 2009, NWFP’s Awami National Party (ANP)-led government made a peace deal, devised by the military, with the Swat-based Sunni extremist Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), a militant group allied to the Taliban. The government agreed to impose Sharia (Islamic law) in NWFP’s Malakand region, with religious courts deciding all cases after 16 February 2009; dismantle all security checkpoints and require any military movements to be pre-approved by the TNSM; and release captured militants, including those responsible for such acts of violence as public executions and rape. In return, the militants pledged to end their armed campaign. This accord, an even greater capitulation to the militants than earlier deals by the military regime in FATA, entrenched Taliban rule and al-Qaeda influence in the area; made peace more elusive; and essentially reversed the gains made by the transition to democracy and the defeat of the military-supported religious right-wing parties in NWFP in the February 2008 elections.

The international response to the Swat deal was mixed, with several key leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, viewing it as an acceptable compromise. Acknowledging the failure of unconditionally supporting the Pakistani military, the international community, particularly the U.S., must reverse course and help strengthen civilian control over all areas of governance, including counter-terrorism, and the capacity of the federal government to override the military’s appeasement policies in FATA and NWFP, replacing them with policies that pursue long-term political, economic and social development.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Pakistan:

1. Acknowledge that a credible crackdown on jihadi militants will ultimately require convictions in fair trials and take steps to:

a) vest significantly greater authority in civilian law enforcement agencies, including access to mobile phone records and other data, without having to obtain approval from the military and the ISI;

b) establish through an act of parliament a clear hierarchy of civilian intelligence agencies, including the FIA, the provincial Criminal Investigation Departments and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), with the IB as the primary authority in anti-terrorism investigations;

c) strengthen links between law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to build strong cases in court against religious extremists;

d) enhance the capacity of federal and provincial civilian law enforcement agencies, with a particular focus on forensics capabilities and crime scene investigations; establish national and provincial crime labs with modern equipment and internationally trained scientists, under control of the federal interior ministry and provincial home departments;

e) amend the Criminal Procedure Act to establish a witness protection program, and ensure the highest level of security for anyone agreeing to provide valuable testimony against extremists; and

f) enhance the role and guarantee the autonomy of Community Police Liaison Committees to enlist the public in the fight against militancy.

2. Take robust action against jihadi militant groups and their madrasa networks, including:

a) disbanding private militias, pursuant to Article 256 of the constitution;

b) disrupting communications and supply lines, and closing base camps of jihadi groups in the tribal belt and the political heartland of Punjab; and

c) enhancing oversight over the madrasa sector, including finances and enrolment, and conducting regular inquiries into the sector by provincial authorities, as recently conducted by the Punjab government, with a view to:

i. identifying seminaries with clear links to jihadi groups, closing them and taking action against their clerics and, where appropriate, students;

ii. keeping any seminaries suspected of links with jihadi groups under close surveillance;

iii. taking legal action where seminaries encroach on state or private land; and

iv. ensuring that accommodation and facilities meet proper safety and building standards.

3. Prosecute anyone encouraging or glorifying violence and jihad, including through hate speech against religious and sectarian minorities, and the spread of jihadi literature. 4. Acknowledge that political reform is integral to stabilising FATA and NWFP by:

a) invoking Article 8 of the constitution that voids any customs inconsistent with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, refusing to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation Order 2009 for the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law) in the Malakand region, and refrain from entering into similar peace deals with religious militants elsewhere;

b) carrying through on its commitment to repeal the Frontier Crimes Regulations (1901), extending the writ of the state, the rule of law, including the courts and police, and ensuring FATA’s representation in the state legislature; c) integrating FATA into the federal framework by incorporating it into the NWFP, with the seven agencies falling under the executive control of the province and jurisdiction of the regular provincial and national court system and with representation in the provincial assembly;

d) extending the Political Parties Act to FATA, thus removing restrictions on political parties, and introducing party-based elections for the provincial and national legislatures; e) refraining from arming and supporting any insurgent group or tribal militia, and preventing the army from doing the same; and

f) relying on civilian law enforcement and intelligence as the primary tool to deal with extremism in FATA, limiting the army’s role to its proper task of defending the country’s borders.

5. Repeal all religious laws that discriminate on the basis of religion, sect and gender. 6. Resolve the political crisis between the PPP and the PML-N by ending governor’s rule and respecting the PML-N’s elected mandate in Punjab, and agreeing on a political and legal solution to allow for Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif to participate in electoral politics, either through an act of parliament, or an executive order.

7. Carry through on its commitment to repeal the 17th Amendment to the constitution, and any constitutional provisions, executive orders and laws that contravene the principles of parliamentary democracy.

To the International Community, in particular the U.S. and the European Union:

8. Provide financial and logistic support to civilian law enforcement agencies to expand their capacity, including in forensics and crime scene investigations, through provision of modern equipment and training of Pakistani scientists.

9. Condition military assistance on demonstrable steps by the Pakistani armed forces to support civilian efforts in preventing the borderlands from being used by al-Qaeda, Afghan insurgents and Pakistani extremists to launch attacks within Pakistan and from Pakistani territory to its region and beyond; if the Pakistani military does not respond positively, as a last resort, consider targeted and incremental sanctions, including travel and visa bans and the freezing of financial assets of key military leaders and military-controlled intelligence agencies.

10. Expand assistance to the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the conflict in FATA and Swat.

Islamabad/Brussels, 13 March 2009 Source : http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6010&l=1

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Ahmed Rashid is Advising Zardari

October 22, 2009 at 11:23 am · Filed under Talibanization ·Tagged ,

Ahmed RashidFRESH out of Cambridge University in the late 1960s, and steeped in the era’s favorites — Marx, Mao and Che — Ahmed Rashid took off for the hills of Baluchistan, a dry, tough patch of western Pakistan. He stayed for 10 years.

He was a guerrilla fighter and political organizer, and with a couple of like-minded Pakistani pals, led peasants seeking autonomy against the Pakistani Army. He emerged, after bouts of hepatitis, malaria and lost teeth, not exactly disillusioned but defeated, he recalled recently from the comfort of his study overlooking a garden of palms.

Yet the experience became the launching pad for his real career as a prolific chronicler of Afghanistan, Central Asia and his homeland of Pakistan, places that Western writers have often found difficult to gain access to, let alone comprehend in their full depth and complexity.

An expert on the Taliban — until 9/11 he knew them better than almost any outsider — Mr. Rashid has over the decades turned out to be something of a prophet in the region, though mostly of the Cassandra type, issuing repeated warnings that are ignored by policy makers.

As fluent a talker as he is a writer, Mr. Rashid, 59, has just published his fourth book, “Descent into Chaos, The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia,” a caustic review of the mistakes by the Bush administration in tackling Islamic militancy.

His central argument is not original: that the money and blood spent on Iraq should have been invested in Afghanistan, rebuilding the country from 2001 to prevent the resurgence of the Taliban. But it is hard to argue with, now that the Taliban are indeed back, and NATO and the United States are enmeshed in a tough fight with them.

The Bush administration, he said, was too gentle with Pakistan’s president, Musharraf, after he pledged to support the antiterrorism campaign after 9/11. “The Americans never said strongly enough that Pakistan had to stop supporting the Taliban — that was because Musharraf was giving them the Al Qaeda types,” capturing a few top Qaeda operatives and handing them over to the United States. Mr. Bush should have insisted that Musharraf quash the Taliban too, he said.

One of his insistent themes is the seamlessness of the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban. They reinforce each other, he said, and so cannot be treated in isolation.

The Pakistani Army and Pakistan’s powerful ISI agency protected the Afghan Taliban in Quetta as “a strategic asset” for use in the future as a buffer against India, he said. But that makes it virtually impossible for them to deal with the Pakistan Taliban and its most prominent leader, Baitullah Mehsud.

“Until Pakistan is willing to give up the leadership of the Afghan Taliban based in Quetta, Pakistan is not going to be able to deal with Mehsud and Al Qaeda,” he said. Mr. Mehsud stands accused by the Pakistani government and Washington in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Mr. Rashid was in Kabul for the coup that put the Communists in power. He was in Kandahar a year later when the Soviets rolled in.

“I saw the invasion, when all the Soviet tanks came from the town of Herat into the bazaar in Kandahar,” he said. “The soldiers got off their tanks and asked for tea. There was no tension.” The tanks continued on to Kabul.

With his perfect English and British education (a photo on the wall of his study shows him as a teenager on the rugby team of Malvern College), Mr. Rashid became what he calls the “intellectual repository” for Western journalists who parachuted into the Afghan capital for the Soviet Union’s last big invasion.

It is a role he has played on a larger canvas ever since: as journalist, author and, sometimes, behind-the-scenes adviser to diplomats who have grappled with Afghanistan’s troubles, not least the Taliban.

His book, “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,” an account of the rise of the mullahs in Afghanistan, was published months before 9/11 by Yale University Press. It immediately became an essential item in the backpacks of reporters covering the war in Afghanistan in late 2001. It has sold 1.5 million copies in English, an astonishing number for an academic press.

He said he was the first foreign journalist to visit the Taliban in 1994 as they emerged out of the civil strife that consumed Afghanistan after the Soviets left. He was struck immediately by how different they were from the warlords and guerrillas he had been dealing with.

“I persuaded an ABC television journalist to come with me to Kandahar, and I was shocked they wouldn’t allow us to take pictures,” he said of the Taliban. “I’d been living with the mujahedeen, who loved publicity. When these guys in Kandahar wouldn’t be photographed, I suddenly realized this was a completely new thing.”

Intrigued, he joined their battle groups, soaking in all he could, and he was in Kabul with the Taliban when they overran it in 1996. In his reporting, which appeared in The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Independent, a British newspaper, he warned against Pakistan’s decision in the mid-1990s to support the Taliban. “I wrote that it meant a continuation of the Afghan civil war.”

With the publication of his book, he wore out his welcome with the Taliban. These days, rather than trekking through the Hindu Kush mountains, he is more likely to be found around the dining table of his Lahore home, which is known for its fine cuisine.

Now something of an elder statesman, Mr. Rashid is sought after for advice by diplomats in Islamabad and Kabul, and by policy makers in NATO capitals and Washington. “As recently as last summer, I said to the U.S. ambassador, you have to arrest Mullah Omar and the shura,” he said, referring to the leader of the Taliban, who has taken refuge near Quetta.

When Benazir Bhutto was PM, she asked whether he would be interested in becoming Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan but he demurred, preferring the rough and tumble of frontier reporting.

His writings have never sat well with the ISI, a subject he said he does not want to go into beyond saying he is “unpopular.” Like many Pakistanis, he has watched the unraveling of Musharraf, but declined to predict his moment of exit.

He is on good terms with Zardari, who is now regarded as the most powerful man in the country. But after a two-hour lunch with Zardari recently, Mr. Rashid said that he worries the new government “has no clue” about the “multilayered terrorist cake” that flourishes in the tribal areas.

As Mr. Rashid travels the world, he said he remains a patriot of Pakistan. Of the new government’s attitude to the Islamic militants, he said: “They are not briefed, and I am deeply concerned.”

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Has Pakistan Army Severed its Links Entirely with the Terrorist Groups?

October 14, 2009 at 6:24 am · Filed under Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , , ,

The heart of Pakistan’s military establishment came under attack on Oct 10, 2009 as Taliban gunmen disguised as soldiers attempted to break into the army’s heavily-fortified headquarters in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.

The initial fierce firefight left six military personnel and four attackers dead, but a tense standoff continued for 18 hours as five other militants took more than 20 soldiers and civilians hostage within the compound.

By early morning the next day, Pakistani commandos raided the building and freed 22 of the hostages, though six of them died in the operation; four of their captors were also killed

It was the third major attack in Pakistan during the week, adding fresh urgency to the Pakistan Army’s plans to mount a much-anticipated ground offensive in the Taliban’s mountainous base in South Waziristan, along the Afghan border.

Earlier, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing of the World Food Program’s office in Islamabad, killing five people.

pakistan_bomb_1012The militant group is also believed to be behind a devastating suicide bombing in a Peshawar marketplace on Oct 9 that killed 49 people; Taliban however has not claimed responsibility for this blast, and many link it with the Indians in view of the recent attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

With Oct 9’s attack, the government has been left with “no other option” but to hit back.

 This “fedayeen” tactic — killing until killed — was also deployed with chilling effect on March 30, when Taliban attackers wearing police uniforms stormed a police academy just outside the eastern city of Lahore, leading to an eight-hour firefight before paramilitary troops and police commandos eventually overwhelmed the attackers. That attack came just weeks after gunmen attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in the heart of Lahore. In both instances, while the operation was surely orchestrated from South Waziristan, the attackers were traced to southern Punjab, where the presence of Taliban-linked militants is burgeoning. 

So far, the government has showed no signs that it is willing to take action against the militants in southern Punjab. Access to ready and heavily indoctrinated recruits from that part of the country is crucial to the militant’s demonstrated ability to continue to strike in Pakistan’s heartlands, despite losing their much-feared leader Baitullah Mehsud to a US airstrike on Aug. 5.

His successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, has now reemerged after weeks of silence to vow a series of revenge attacks. Hakimullah Mehsud is considered a much weaker leader, and the already fractious alliance of militant groups under the Pakistani Taliban umbrella is expected to fracture further under his inexperienced command.

Still, the Mehsud network and its deadly allies remain a major threat to Pakistan’s stability. In perhaps its toughest challenge yet, the Pakistan Army is gearing up, after much reluctance, for a ground offensive in South Waziristan to target what remains of Baitullah Mehsud’s group, over five thousand well-armed central Asian fighters known for their brutality, and Arab fighters belonging to al-Qaeda.

From their eastern patch of South Waziristan, the militants have authored close to 250 suicide attacks across Pakistan in the last two and a half years, and trained other militants who have spread the Pakistani Taliban’s brutality across the northwest.

Pakistanis will have to be braced for the fallout. At the moment, after a largely successful sweep of the Taliban who dominated the Swat Valley in the northwest, army morale is cresting.

Revulsion against the militants’ brutality has also sent anti-militant sentiment to an all-time high. But it remains to be seen whether that resolve will hold up in the face of expected troop losses and further bombing attacks across the northwest and in major cities.

There is also the fear that by moving against the militants in one area, they may simply relocate to others. Nor does the army have the luxury of fighting on a single front: battles continue in pockets in Swat and across the tribal areas.

Just weeks after trumpeting the results of a military offensive in the Swat Valley, the Pakistan army suddenly finds itself under attack on multiple fronts.

Subsequent to the attack on the GHQ, in the fourth major attack in eight days, a suicide bomber killed 41 people in a marketplace in District Shangla near Swat on Oct 11.

As the army revealed in a briefing on Oct. 12, the Taliban threat has now spread well beyond its northwestern borderlands and grown tentacles that reach deep into the country’s heartlands. Five of the 10 attackers who laid siege to Pakistan’s equivalent of the Pentagon in Rawalpindi came from Punjab. It is also home to the bulk of the army.

The Punjabi militants involved in the audacious assault were linked to groups that once enjoyed the military’s patronage, and until five years ago, the ringleader had been among its very own ranks.

Aqeel, also known as Dr. Usman, was already wanted for earlier terrorist attacks. He acquired his medical nom de guerre due to his 16 years as a nurse in the army’s medical corps. In 2004, he abandoned the army to join Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a vicious sectarian terror group from Punjab. “He knew how the army functions”. “That’s why he organized this attack better than others could have done.” The embarrassing breach of the heavily fortified headquarters was made possible through artful disguise, military officials said. The vehicle bore army license plates and the emblem of the General Headquarters (GHQ) on its windshield. The attackers dressed themselves in army fatigues.

All of the attackers had at some point been trained in South Waziristan, a tribal area along the Afghan border that has long been a training ground for insurgents. A telephone intercept, “which was recorded between Taliban commander Wali-ur-Rehman talking with some other terrorist, revealed that this attack was planned in South Waziristan” . “Wali-ur-Rehman was asking for him to pray for the fedayeen attack on the GHQ.”

The terrorists were “well-equipped with automatic weapons, IEDs, mines, grenades and suicide jackets”.

The terrorists demands included an end to “American bases” inside Pakistan and that former military ruler and President, General Pervez Musharraf, be placed on trial.

It was during Musharraf’s rule, analysts say, that militants from southern Punjab who were once favored as proxies by the army turned on their masters. Some of the weekend attackers belonged to “splinter groups” from Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) — another banned terrorist organization that emerged in 2000 as an anti-Indian insurgent group staging attacks across Kashmir’s line of control. When that front simmered down, and U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan, they discovered a new cause. “There was pressure on the group from inside. They thought that this was the time to fight alongside the Taliban, not confront them.”

Since then, eight breakaway factions of JeM have been involved in fighting the Pakistan army. South Waziristan has served as one base and training ground. The Punjabi groups have also appeared in the Bajaur tribal area where, after claiming victory months ago, the Pakistan air force dispatched fighter jets on Oct 11 to strike against a creeping return of the Taliban. Two of the splinter groups were also recently involved in fighting in the Swat Valley; after being scattered in that offensive, they are now regrouping in southern Punjab.

ISPR’s Major General Abbas was at pains to insist that JeM itself — which was implicated in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament and the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl — was not directly involved. But other observers are not convinced, and say that its fugitive leader, Masood Azhar, is believed to be somewhere in Waziristan.

Nor is it clear if the Pakistan army has severed its links entirely with the outlawed terrorist group, as its presence in and around the southern Punjabi city of Bahawalpur grows undisturbed. A heavy concentration of madrasahs in the area has become a breeding ground for recruits who are then taken to South Waziristan and trained as suicide bombers.

During the tense, overnight standoff at the military’s headquarters over the weekend, Aqeel tried to appeal to his former army comrades. “They were trying to profess their own cause,” said Major General Abbas. “They were trying to justify their own actions.” In reply, hostage army officers tried to convince him that he was “on the wrong side.”

The hope is that Aqeel, who was earlier suspected of being behind the March attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in the heart of Lahore, may prove crucial in unearthing the elaborate network of terror cells that are suspected to be seeded throughout Punjab.

Before the attack on the Sri Lankan team, Aqeel’s group had already won a fearsome reputation as al-Qaeda’s foot soldiers in Pakistan and pioneered the terrorist attacks that have now become depressingly common. An offshoot of the Pakistani anti-Shi’ite Sipah-e-Sahaba militant group, LeJ gained notoriety in 1998 after attempting to assassinate then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. After al-Qaeda leadership arrived along the Afghan border, LeJ underwent a transformation, says militancy expert Rana. “They developed a nexus with foreign militants there. In many major attacks, LeJ was involved, including the killing of 11 French engineers in Karachi and the bombing of a church in Islamabad in 2002. Sectarianism remains their priority, but they also have a global jihadist agenda.” Last year, the group and its al-Qaeda handlers blew up the Islamabad Marriott, killing over 53 people.

Pakistan’s latest wave of terror has gruesomely underscored the need for the government to take on the Pakistani Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies in the wilds of South Waziristan. But that alone will not put a halt to the renewed campaign of violence. As long as militant groups in southern Punjab also remain undisturbed, the risk to its heartlands is likely to grow.

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Is the ISI Targeting the Salarzai Tribe?

October 8, 2009 at 2:46 pm · Filed under ISI, Talibanization ·Tagged , ,

by Farhat Taj

I was in Pakistan in August and had the opportunity to meet the leaders of the anti-Taliban lashkar (volunteer army) of Bajaur’s Salarzai tribe. I am honoured that upon my request they travelled from Bajaur to meet me in Nowshehra and shared with me information about their anti-Taliban struggle. I am not mentioning their names for reasons of their security.

The area of the Salarzai tribe is on the border with Afghanistan. The tribe have collectively decided that there won’t be any Taliban on their soil. The Taliban have been driven out of the Salarzai area. The Salarzai lashkar, mostly made up of labourers and peasants, has successfully kept the Salazai area free of the Taliban. Tens of Salarzail lashkar leaders have been target-killed. The Salarzai leaders informed me they hold the ISI responsible for the targeted killings.

“The Taliban are just a façade. The real force is the ISI punishing us for our anti-Taliban struggle,” said one of the leaders. The leaders said that Mamond Taliban headquarters used to be in Damadola, which is a few kilometres from the FC fort in Bajaur.

The Mamond Taliban used to bomb Salarzai villages. The Salarzai tribal elders requested the Political Agent, the authorities of the FC and the Pakistani army to stop the Mamond Taliban. None of these offered any help.

Finally the Salarzai lashkar took positions on the mountains and for two hours heavily bombarded the surrounding villages of the Mamond Taliban. At that point the political agent and a colonel of the army asked the Salarzai lashkar to stop the bombing. They gave the same old logic: who will fight the NATO forces from across the Afghan border if you eliminate the Taliban?

Following such encounters with the state authorities, the Salarzais decided to fire at any forces entering their area: be it the Taliban, Al Qaida, the army or the US or NATO. The Salarzais have taken up positions all over the area and are always on guard.

The leaders informed me that there is a set pattern of target-killing of anti-Taliban Salarzai leader. Before each targeted killing all telephone links with the far-flung Salarzai area are cut off. The targeted killing takes place in 24 to 48 hours later. The telephone links are restored a couple of days after the assassinated leader has been buried.

Our area is too far from the rest of Pakistan and our agony means nothing to fellow-Pakistanis. The Pakistani media never ever tries to probe into the targeted killings,” said one of the Salarzai leaders. All telephone lines to the Salarzia area were dead the day I was meeting with the leaders.  The same day they informed me on telephone that Malik Munasib Khan, the spokesman of the Salarzai lashkar, had been killed. They held the ISI responsible for his killing.

The Salarzai leaders also informed me that last year the army deliberately fired at those villages in Bajaur that were known to be staunchly anti-Taliban. They said one of their colleagues called Maj Gen Alam Khattak to ask him to stop the bombing of his village. “Major General Sahib! I will start a vendetta with you if you did not halt the bombing of my village immediately. I will make sure to kill you and your family at the first available opportunity,” they quoted one of their colleagues as saying.

The major general asked him to meet Col Sajjad who was bombing the anti-Taliban villages from his base in Timergara. That colleague saw a big Bajaur map affixed on the wall in the office of Col Sajjad. The map had several encircled villages. Col Sajjad informed him that the map had been handed over to him by his commanders with the order to bomb all the encircled villages. “Our colleague’s blood boiled with anger: none of the villages had Taliban in them,” said the Salarzai leaders. The villages included Butmali, Danqul, Attkay, Matasha, Baro, Raghjan and Nazkai. On the other hand, those Salarzai villages that had Taliban were not marked on the map or bombed by the army. Such villages are Pashat, Banda, Malasyed, Darra and Gundai.

The reason I write this piece is not to defame the institution of the Pakistani army, which I hold in high esteem. I just wish to request the President of Pakistan, the Chief of Army Staff and the DG of the ISI to pay attention to the complaints of the Salarzais and resolve their problems to the satisfaction of the tribe. The Salarzai leaders categorically told me they are loyal Pakistanis, but they are not ready to let the peace of their area be destroyed for the power games of the intelligence agencies.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy.

Email: bergen34@yahoo.com

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Taliban Butcher Thrown on the Road-side

September 23, 2009 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Swat, Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , ,

Mysterious death of high-profile terrorist in army custody
requires immediate investigation

The body of a high-profile Taliban commander, Sher Muhammad Qassab, was found on the roadside at his hometown, Charbagh, Swat valley on September 20, 2009, four days after his widely publicized arrest on September 16. The government had previously announced a head money of Rupees 10 million for his capture.

Qassab was the key commander of Taliban forces at the important
Charbagh area, the stronghold of Taliban militants in NWFP, and had allegedly confessed to being responsible for the beheading of 22 persons including Pakistani soldiers, according to the army. He was a butcher by profession and was the father of four sons, who were reportedly members of a banned Islamic fundamentalist organization, Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), led by Maulana Fazlullah.

According to a brief statement released by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) and the Swat Media Cenre (formed by the army at the local level) on September 20, Qassab died of multiple injuries on September 20 morning after the doctors failed to resuscitate him. Further details as to why Qassab had suffered fatal injuries while in army custody, or why his body was disposed of on the roadside instead of being handed to his family, remain unknown.

The suspicious manner of his death, combined with the reluctance of the army to bring the details to light, creates speculation that Qassab was murdered to cover up connections between the Taliban militants on one hand and the army and the ISI agencies on the other.

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Qari Saifullah Akhtar

September 16, 2009 at 12:52 pm · Filed under Benazir Bhutto, Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , , , ,

qari_saifullah_akhtar_20090907Belonging to Harkat-ul Jehad-ul Islami, he was arrested in 1995 for leading ‘Operation Khilafat’, aimed at toppling the Benazir regime and ushering in the Caliphate system. Releases in ’96, he went to Afghanistan where the Taliban’s Mullah Omar made him advisor on political affairs. After the US invasion, he fled Kandahar but was extradited from the UAE in August ’04 for plotting the twin suicide attacks on Gen Musharraf in December ’03. Was mysteriously set free weeks before Benazir returned to Pakistan in ’08. In a posthumous book, she named him as the main suspect in the assassination bid on her on October 18, ’07, in Karachi. Said to be in Waziristan now.

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Qari Hussain Mehsud

September 16, 2009 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Talibanization, Terrorism in Pakistan ·Tagged , , , , ,

Popularly known as the Ustad-e-Fidayeen (Teacher of suicide bombers), he runs camps in South Waziristan to train children to become suicide bombers. A video taken at one of his camps in Spinkai area—which he released himself—shows children as young as seven years old being indoctrinated to wage jehad in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Two major suicide hits claimed on the video were the March 11, 2008, suicide attack on the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) building in Lahore and the November 24, 2007, twin suicide attacks in front of the ISI headquarters in the Faizabad area of Rawalpindi. The Pakistani military demolished Hussain’s Spinkai ‘suicide camp’ during a brief offensive against the Taliban in January 2008. The authorities claimed he too had died in the operation. But the ustad mocked the military a week later, convening a press conference and declared, “I am alive, don’t you see me?” Still at large, he’s wanted by the FIA.

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