Pakistan Army and its Involvement in and Support for Terrorism - Part III

Recent weeks have witnessed significant events that bring out Pakistan armed forces and their deep connections with the terrorists.

First was the dramatic arrest of the fugitive Pakistani terrorist, Faisal Shahzad on May 3 from aboard a flight at New York, for plotting to bomb the Times Square two days earlier. Though the attempt to bomb looked amateurish, soon the connections began to unravel. For one, he was the son of a Retired Air Vice Marshal of the Pakistani Air Force (PAF). Though this might be incidental, one has to be wary of the fact that too many Pakistani military personnel had been involved in terrorism and that living in that cloistered environment could offer opportunities for somebody to link up easily with terrorist organizations. Faisal Shahzad was himself found to be in touch with a Major of the Pakistani Army's Signal Corps, Maj. Adnan Ahmed, even moments before he parked the bomb-laden SUV at the Times Square. As usual, Pakistan Army is trying to confuse and confound the issue regarding Maj. Adnan Ahmed. At one point, Pakistan claimed that the Major had been dismissed much earlier for insubordination in refusing to fight the Taliban when his unit was tasked with that. Another report said that the Major was dismissed after the Shahzad episode came to light. The Major himself claimed that there was some confusion and everything had been cleard up. In any case, when CIA Chief Leon Panatta  and and the NSA General James Jones visited Islamabad requesting access to Maj. Adnan Ahmed, the request was rejected by Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani. The bomb plot prompted Ms. Hillary Clinton to say, "We've made it very clear [to Pakistan] that if, heaven-forbid, an attack like this [Times Square failed car-bomb attack by Pakistani Faisal Shehzad] that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences. I think that there was a double game going on in the previous years, where we got a lot of lip service but very little produced".

Another development during the past few weeks that nailed the Pakistani Army decisively was the interrogation by Indian investigators of David Coleman Headley with one blue and another brown eye. Though he had revealed much information earlier, the Indian investigation, under the US Plea Bargain programme, assumed significance because of the immense knowledge of the Indian interrogators of the various Pakistani terrorist tanzeems that ensured that Headley spoke the truth. The following are now established as facts:

1. Daoud Gilani started off as a US undercover agent who then became a jihadi.
2. Prof. Hafeez Saeed was aware of and indeed directing the 26/11 attack.
3. The ISI and the LeT are inseparable.
4. The Pakistani Army (PA) was directly involved in providing logistical support for the 26/11 terrorists like paying for the boat.
5. The Pakistani Navy's (PN's) frogmen were involved in training the 26/11 terrorists on sea-faring skills. (Earlier Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone survivor of the terrorist team, had described to the Mumbai police how the PN had trained them at the Mangla Reservoir in swimming, diving and underwater combat and provided them with navigation charts, GPS etc.)
6. Headley was in constant touch with at least three ISI officers who held the rank of a Major who asked him to scout sites for terror attacks in Mumbai, New Delhi and other parts of India. He identified them as Iqbal, Sameer Ali and Abdul Rehman Saeed.
7. Serving Pakistani army or ISI officials Major Iqbal, Major Sameer and Colonel Shah were involved in the planning of the 26/11 attacks. Another person who Headley claimed as a 26/11 planner was Major (retd.) Abdul Rehman Saeed who retired from the 6 Baloch Regiment in circa 2002.(In Pakistan Army officers are seconded to the ISI and then conveniently claimed as having retired from the Army. Maj. (retd.) Abdul Rehman Saeed appears to be one such case.)
8. Headley has mentioned another serving officer of Pakistan army — Major Haroon Ashique— as having collaborated with the Laskhar terrorists. Major Haroon Ashique is an ex Special Services Group (SSG) officer and worked with LeT’s operational commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
9. ISI also supplied Indian currency to the 26/11 terrorists.
10. ISI had also trained Headley.
11. The Director General (DG) of ISID Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited LeT’s operations chief Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi and another LeT fugitive Sajid Mir in jail.
12. Ex Pakistani military official Major Abdul Rehman Saeed and Sajid Mir were the chief handlers of Headley. Major (retd.) Abdul Rehman Saeed worked for both LeT and Ilyas Kashmiri's Brigade 313.

 Maj. (Retd) Haroon Ashique, alias Abu Khattab, whom Headley implicated as an LeT collaborator, killed the ex-SSG Chief, Maj. Gen. Feisal Alavi at the behest of Ilyas Kashmiri, the Emir of 313 Brigade. Another brother of Maj. Haroon Ashique, Captain Khurram, who had also joined a terrorist organization had also been killed earlier. Maj (retd.) Abdul Basit was an accomplice of Maj. Haroon Rashi Ashique, also working for the same jihadi organization.

Maj. Haroon Rashid Ashique was also involved in kidnapping rich celebrities for ransom to make money for terrorist organizations. One of the famous cases he was involved in was that of the Karachi Hindu businessman Satish Anand, an uncle of a famous Indian actress.

One can be sure that the above is just a beginning and more will come out because as my earlier blogs show, the connection between pure-as-a-lily State Actors and the more pious Non-State Actors goes back to circa 1947 in Pakistan, the Land of the Purest.

Pakistan Army and its Involement in and Support for Terrorism - Part II

In Part I, we saw about the nexus between the then ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed, ex-SSG Ilyas Kashmiri, and the GHQ attack.

Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed was not the first or the last ISI chief who lost his job for being openly in cahoots with the terrorists. The distinct honour of being the first ISI Chief to lose his job because of his close proximity with the terrorists and fundamentalists goes to Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir. The extreme religious views of DG, ISI, Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir, that sprang directly from his association with the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), ultimately led him to be sacked. In the shuffling of the ISI that followed his dismissal, over two dozen officers were also transferred for their suspected links. No less a person than Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, the well known Pakistani diplomat, has described in her book how ultimately the US and even Pakistan's Arab friends demanded his removal. Of course, the born-again Muslim that he was, Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir was a regular member of the fundamentalist Tablight Jama'at and regularly took part in its congregations and activities. He was not alone in the Tablighi Jama'at congretations(ijtima) at Raiwind near Lahore; he was in the august and regular company of the then President of Pakistan Rafiq Tarar as also Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and Lt. Gen. Naseem Rana, both the latter being former Director General of the 'angelic'  ISI (sarcastically referred to as 'The Angels' within Pakistan because the agents wear white shalwar kameez).

On the eve of the November, 2009 annual convention of the Tablighi Jama'at, 50 former high-ranking officers of the armed forces met under the chairmanship of Lt. Gen. ( r) Javid Nasir for a day in what was termed as "Halqa-e-Khawas" (group of special people), to deliberate on how to take the movement forward, possibly within the armed forces. The well known English-language newspaper of Pakistan, The Nation, reported this faithfully. Apart from Lt Gen (r) Nasir, there were Lt Gen (r) Agha Masood Hasan, former CNS, PN (Chief of Naval Staff, Pakistan Navy), Admiral (r) Karamat Rehman Niazi, Lt Gen (r) Aftab Ahmed and others. The Nation quoted an ex-Army officer as saying "There are thousands of serving armymen who have joined this party and no force disallows the soldiers from practicing their religion,". Such is the hold of the Tablighi on the armed forces. Thus, the non-salafist but equally fundamentalist and radical Tablighi Jama'at has huge following within the armed forces of Pakistan. It is another entirely different matter that the 'pious' Javid Nasir swindled Rs. 3 Billion of EPTB (Evacuee Property Trust Board, of which he was Chairman) funds and fled Pakistan. Probably, these funds were used to fund terrorism and tablighi activities. It may be wothwhile to remember here that the brutal daylight attack on the mosques (officially known as Ibadatgarh because of the law declaring Ahmedis as non-Muslims) of the Ahmedis on May 28, 2010, that killed 95 of them was carried out by a suicide squad which had been assembled in the Raiwind office of the Tablighi Jama’at. Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, attended the mosques run by Tablighi. Several men connected with the aborted UK plane bombing of Aug, 2006 were members of the Tablighi. Tablighi Jamaat members were also involved in a failed coup against Ms. Benazir Bhutto. This coup was staged by Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam Abbassi in Sep. 1995. Several members of the TJ are jailed in Central Asian Republic (CAR) countries for indulging in violence and terror. TJ is therefore not involved only in pure and simple dawah as it usually claims.

Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, who succeeded Lt. Gen. Ahfaq Pervez Kayani as the ISI Chief in September, 2007 was also forced to leave the position by the US as President George Bush complained in August 2008 that it was “impossible to share intelligence on the al-Qaeda and the Taliban with Pakistan because it goes straight back to the militants.” So much so, that when Gen. Ashfaq Kayani went aboard USS Abraham Lincoln to meet with Adm. Mike Mullen in late August, 2008, he took with him his DGMO (Director General of Military Operations), Maj. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha who replaced Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj within a couple of months. Of course, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whose close confidante was Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, promoted him and gave him another plum post. During his tenure as the ISI Chief, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj had planned the 26/11 Mumbai carnage along with LeT and Al Qaeda, especially the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri. Earlier, Nadeem Taj had played a crucial role as the Military Secretary of Gen. Musharraf and a member of the infamous 'Gang of Four' in Kargil and the 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power.

Several months before 9/11 happened in circa 2001, the extremist Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania madrassah in Peshawar organized a meeting on Jan 9, 2001 which was attended, among others, by Gen. Hamid Gul, former DG of ISI and Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, former COAS of the Pakistani Army, wherein a declaration was made to defend Osama bin Laden and attack the Western countries as a sacred duty of Muslims. The significance of the meeting place, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq's Haqqania, could not be lost because it was a nerve production centre of mujahideen and later the Taliban. The noted Pakistani commentator, Zahid Hussain, in his book, "Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam" (Penguin; 2007) writes that in spite of a ban on meetings, the Pakistani government did not stop the January, 2001 congregation and it was conducted with the support of the intelligence agencies.

(To be Continued . . . )

Pakistan Army and its Involement in and Support for Terrorism - Part I

“Iman, Taqwah, Jihad fi Sabilillah”. So says, proudly, the motto of the Pakistani Army. Faith, Fear of Allah, Jihad in the way of Allah was how the Islamist General Zia-ul-Haq changed the motto from Jinnah’s “Ittehad, Yaqeen aur Tanzeem (Unity, Faith and Discipline)”. The Pakistani Army has lived up to the new motto ever since it was coined.

No doubt that the Pakistani politicians and even the ‘usurper’ Generals have used the ‘religion’ card whenever it came to defending their power or defending their country against the infidel Hindu India. Field Marshal Ayub Khan who once ensured that one of the greatest Islamist jihadi thinkers of the previous century, Abu Ala Al Mawdudi was sentenced to death for inciting the Lahore riots against the Ahmedis and who later dropped the honorific adjective ‘Islamic’ from the reference to the Pakistani Republic, had to resort to compromises with the very same Islamist forces he opposed in order to defeat Ms. Fatima Jinnah. It was at the behest of a whisky-swilling and philandering Gen. Yahya Khan that the Pakistani Army encouraged the fundamentalist Islamist party of Jama’at-e-Islami to popularize the slogan, “Pakistan ka matlab kya Hai ? La Ilaha il Allah”. Ultimately, the mard-e-momin, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq made the Objectives Resolution, which disenfranchised the minorities of Pakistan, a Preamble to the Constitution of Pakistan.

Thus, Pakistan Army’s overt contribution to the strengthening of fundamentalism and extremism may be well known. For a long time, India has also been aware of the covert involvement of the Pakistani Army, and of course all sections of the Pakistani Government, in terrorism directed against India. They have been successfully portrayed as pro-Kashmiri freedom fighters by Pakistan, a line of argument accepted by the benefactors of Pakistan because it suits them geopolitically and geostrategically. Once the US and KSA decided to allow the ISID and the Pakistani Army to tactically control the Afghan jihad, and the CIA decided to upgrade the ISID significantly, the situation spun out of control. As it usually happens, such violent terrorists do not always remain committed to their benefactors and they do turn against them if and when the situation so demands. In the process, skeletons begin to tumble out of the cupboard.

Let us look at the emerging connections between terrorism and the Pakistani Army.

The most dramatic event in recent times was the 26/11 carnage at Mumbai. Two main actors of this carnage have spilled the beans. One was Ajmal Amir Kasab, held by Indian police and recently awarded death sentence and the other is a double-agent of US and Pakistani Army, Daood Gilani alias David Coleman Headley. Ajmal Amir Kasab spoke of how a certain ‘Major General saheb’ used to visit their training camps in the company of the LeT emir Prof. Hafeez Saeed and how he personally conducted the tests to select the group that eventually went on the 26/11 mission. For his part, Headley has implicated several Pakistani Army officers, both serving and retired. The serving officers whom he said were ‘handlers of the 26/11 terrorists’ were identified under their possible nom-de-guerre as ‘Major Iqbal’ and ‘Major Samir (Sameer) Ali’. He also identified Major Saeed and Colonel Shah as being involved in the planning of 26/11. Headley has also spoken of a certain Special Services Group (SSG) officer Maj. Haroon Ashique as being a collaborator with Lashkar-e-Tayba’s (LeT) operational commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. Obviously, these serving officers could not have been involved in terrorism without the express knowledge of the Pakistani Army’s top brass. When the Government of India (GoI) handed over a dossier to Pakistan at the recent Foreign Secretary level meeting at Delhi and indicted Major Iqbal and Major Samir Ali, the Pakistani government could only dismiss it as a ‘piece of literature’. Headley’s accomplice in the mass murder was Tahawwur Rana, who was himself a Pakistani Army Captain, who claims to have deserted it. Strangely, both Headley and Rana attended the same military school, the Hasan Abdal Cadet College.

We also know that apart from possibly being agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the CIA of the US, Headley was also involved with LeT and Al Qaeda, especially the Brigade 313 component of the latter. ‘Brigade 313’ is a particularly extremist organization led by another ex-SSG commando, the one-eyed Ilyas Kashmiri. His tentacles into the Pakistani Army are legendary. He lost one of his eyes in an Afghanistan operation when he was part of the Pakistani Army. After the Afghan jihad, the Pakistani Army asked him to direct his attention to the jihad in Kashmir and he joined the Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami (HuJI). He was captured by the Indian Army but escaped within two years. He ran a terrorist training camp in Kotli, his home town, which was frequently visited by the then Rawalpindi Corps Commander of the 10th Corps Gen Mehmood Ahmed. The Rawalpindi-based 10th Corps has responsibility for Kashmir operations and for pushing infiltrators across the LoC. Ilyas Kashmiri has also been described as chief of al-Qaeda’s shadow army—Lashkar-e-Zil, a loose alliance of al-Qaeda-and Taliban-linked anti-US militia which has distinguished itself by conducting unusual guerrilla operations, like the one that targeted the CIA’s Forward Operating Base in Khost on December 31, 2009, killing seven CIA officials. He has reportedly conducted several major military actions in India, including the 1994 Al-Hadid operation in New Delhi, to get some of his jihadi comrades released. He is even reported to have beheaded an Indian Army officer in c. 2000 for which Gen. Pervez Musharraf gave him a cash reward. The dividing line between the Pakistani Army and the Islamist jihadi terrorists thus disappears in most cases.

This does not mean that Ilyas Kashmiri had not hesitated to bite the hands that fed him once. In spite of receiving a cash reward from Gen. Musharraf, he tried to assassinate him later on. The Islamist cause is obviously more important than individuals, friendship and regimental loyalty. He was to prove this point once again in November, 2008 when he eliminated Maj. Gen. (retd.) Feisal Alvi, the ex Commander of his own SSG because he had conducted operations against the Taliban earlier. He used Major Haroon Ashique for this purpose. Later, in December 2009, he mounted an audacious attack on the General Head Quarters (GHQ) itself at Rawalpindi with the possible intention of capturing or killing Gen. Kayani, the Chief of the Pakistani Army. He made use of another ex-Army officer Col. Usman for that purpose.

(To be Continued . . . )

On Why Ajmal Amir Kasab Shoud be Hanged Quickly

26/11 was unlike any other terrorist incident before in India because it was nothing less than an urban warfare unleashed on not only unsuspecting Mumbaikars going about their normal daily business but also on the entire nation. It affected not only the residents of Mumbai but also people from many parts of the world who had come to Mumbai for business and pleasure. For three days, a large part of Mumbai was held to ransom by a mere handful of hardcore terrorists trained and motivated by a determined enemy. The calm voice of the handler asking the terrorists at Chabad House to kill their hostages in cold blood while keeping the mobile switched on because he wanted to hear the gunshots, was most cruel and spine-chilling. That too, after assuring the Rabbi’s wife that no harm would come her way if she followed his instructions. The Rabbi and his wife, as were many others in the Taj and Oberoi hotels, were murdered simply because of religious hatred. The telephone transcripts are there for everyone to see, however much some of the so-called secular brigade might wish to whitewash this and want us to believe otherwise. The rest of the attacks at CST, Cama Hospital and elsewhere were random in nature but were still carried out due to hatred and to instill a deep sense of fear. Kasab was part of this  group that also killed in cold blood the Captain and the crew of M.V. Kuber, who were simple fishermen.

As usual, some voices have been heard for showing mercy to Kasab. While pleading for commuting the death sentence to Kasab, one should not lose sight of the nature of the crime and the attitude of the convict. The convict belongs to a group which wants to wage a jihad against kafir India. It has conducted several fidayeen attacks on India for over two decades now, and continues to espouse its violent policies even after the UN Security Council ban. The 26/11 terrorists were trained in a military-like fashion for the 26/11 mission with extensive reconnaissance conducted before to help the terrorists inflict maximum fatalities and damage. Kasab never felt remorse while being interrogated or even in the court when trials were going on. In the last eighteen months, Kasab never sought forgiveness from the families who have suffered grievously and irreparably because of his actions. He never ever hinted that he understood the futility of it all or expressed repentance. On the other hand, he tried to wriggle out of the situation by spinning stories about how he had been caught by Indian police several weeks before the Mumbai carnage etc. He was caught red handed even as he shot Police Constable Tukharam Omble dead as the brave policeman tried to grab Kasab’s AK47 with bare hands. One is unable to see the use of keeping such an unremorseful, unrepentant, bigotted and violent person supported by a group which swears by jihad against Hindu India, in a maximum security person for the rest of his long life with the constant overhanging threat of attacks by the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) to attempt to release him. Such attempts will certainly lead to more bloodbath. What is the sanctity of a Pakistani jihadi, who has been conclusively proved of mass murder, that we are willing to sacrifice more and more innocent Indian lives ? It is also morally repugnant to ask the very same persons who have lost their loved ones to this mindless terrorist, for no fault of theirs, and the rest of the country terrorized by him, to pay for his maintenance, upkeep and security through their taxes. That would be taking dhimmitude to greater and newer depths.

The basis of the argument of those who hold a candle to showing mercy to such hardened terrorists is that it is simply immoral to take the life of a person however strong the case may be against him/her. It is their argument further that a government cannot partake that act. However, they miss the point that the one of the first duties of any government is to provide security to its people. The common belief is that punishment deters future repetitions of crime thereby protecting society and laws are framed therefore on such a thesis. Even Islam, which is usually claimed to be 'a religion of peace' and to which religion Kasab belongs, prescribes severe punishments for crimes. If 'just punishment' is a false notion, we do not need courts at all as it not only negates man-made laws but even the God-given shariat. Obviously, the Government of India will not be extinguishing the life of an innocent, if and when it finally gathers enough courage to hang Kasab, but one who has on his hands the blood of scores of people he wantonly killed and maimed and who were complete strangers to him and had no quarrel with him whatsoever.

The message that this judgement gives is that India will punish the criminals through legal means after giving even a mass murderer every opportunity to defend himself/herself, however grave his/her crime is. Such arguments as ‘immorality of death sentence’ can be taken to any length and the entire justice system scrapped because any kind of punishment can be argued as immoral. What about the commandos of the National Security Guard (NSG) killing the other nine terrorists in the two hotels and the Chabad House ? Can it be also argued that they were immoral too ? At least in the case of Kasab, it was a judge who after giving every chance to Kasab to prove his innocence, awarded him the death sentence, but, no such opportunity was given to those nine terrorists. Does it mean then, that no armed operation should ever be mounted against terrorists because that may potentially lead to their killing ? Would we be extending the same ‘morality’ argument if the terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb over us and we catch the perpetrators ?

What would be immoral though, is to delay the death sentence handed to a person after it has been confirmed by the highest court of the land. To keep a prisoner, awaiting death sentence, in jail for more than the minimum needed time is a violation of human dignity. We must support Afzal Guru's recent request to hang him rather than keeping him in solitary confinement. Already, India awards death sentence only in the rarest of rare cases and there is no reason therefore to delay such sentences by the Government once they are confirmed by the Apex Court. The practice of pardon by the President through mercy petitions can be only used an escape route in the rarest of the already very rare cases of death sentence in our country; and in cases like those of Kasab or Guru, who waged war against our country, the sentences should be processed forthwith.

Some have argued that a country that achieved its independence through non-violence cannot resort to the crude practice of the State itself hanging a criminal or a terrorist. They also argue that such punishments have not been known to curb crimes by a determined person or a group. It is true that a significant factor for our gaining Independence from the British was our sustained non-violent struggle; but, it must be recognized that it was not the only factor. The same non-violence could not stop Partition, could not prevent the millions from being massacred and could not subsequently prevent the enduring hostility between us and Pakistan. If himsa, in the context of capital punishments, has limitations, so is ahimsa. Besides, we should not mix governance and statecraft with our struggle for Independence or traits that we may follow in our personal lives. We cannot also quote Gandhi ji out of context in his ‘eye for an eye will make half the world blind’ remark. That was made in the context of personal practices, which does not apply even to a society much less a nation state. In any case, there are two obvious fallacies in that statement if we try to interpret it literally as the proponents of non capital punishment argue. If one half of the world has to go blind, then it is as though one quarter of the world is trying to blind another quarter. There are very few people indulging in such violence and the fear of half the world going blind is therefore purely rhetorical. But, even going by the same logic, at least, a quarter of the world would still go blind even if did not retaliate in kind, would it not ? Is that acceptable ?

Again, it is not for killing one person that Kasab is to be hanged as those who repose their faith in the ‘going blind’ theory seem to argue. It is simply not a ‘tit for tat’. The tit here is for a huge tat that ended up in waging war with a country due to religious hatred, taking the lives of many innocent people, orphaning children, maiming so many more and mentally scarring even more people. The argument that Kasab’s execution will only spur an evil ideologue to harden the stance and therefore bring us more of the same, can be equally counter-argued that non-execution will embolden his mentors to mount far more audacious acts because it is then misinterpreted as cowardice and submission to terror. This especially applies to Pakistan where such misinterpretations have gone on since the days of Ayub Khan who famously doled out the ratio of one Pakistani soldier being equivalent to every 10 Indian soldiers. Mrs. Benazir Bhutto whom many Indians mistakenly assume as a dove vis-a-vis India,  raised that ratio to 1:100, for her part !

Rather than wasting our time in the style of an argumentative-Indian, let us get on with the follow up to the judgement and implement it expeditiously now that the verdict is given.

The Fraudulent Theory of 'Non-State Actors' - Part III

By 1970, Pakistan Army had developed close working relationship with the clergy, especially with the Abu Ala Al Mawdudi led Jama’at-e-Islami (JI). One of the reasons was the precarious condition in which the President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, found himself after having announced the Presidential elections in 1965. His opponent in the form of the formidable Ms. Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the Founder of Pakistan, supported by the combined opposition, the high inflation and resultant economic woes, required him to seek the support of the clergy. The aftermath of the campaign by Ms. Jinnah and the 1965 war followed by the Tashkent agreement which was perceived as a surrender by Pakistanis, weakened the Presidency. FM Ayub Khan had already met JI’s chief Maulana Mawdudi twice and allowed him to preach his concept of jihad over Radio Pakistan. This led to concessions being given to the ulema who began to exercise their influence over an Army that was relatively secular till then. It was to be visible in the genocide of several million in East Pakistan in circa 1971 when these Islamist parties sent in their cadres to assist the Army implement its pogrom. Two of the most important ‘non-state actor’ outfits were Isla’ami Jamia’at-e-Tulba (IJT) and Al-Badr, both of which later played a significant role in stoking terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir in 1989. The Al-Badr consisted of the Pashtuns from the same tribal areas in NWFP from where lashkars were formed as ‘non-state actors’ to attack J&K in 1947. The IJT is the militant student wing of the JI. The IJT later sent its cadres to Kashmir for Hizb-ul-Mujahideen to fight India. Both the Al-Badr and the IJT have been close to the ISI. The nexus between the Islamist ‘non-state actors’ and the Pakistani Army grew considerably from then onwards. The Afghan jihad and the growing sectarianism within Pakistan spawned more Islamist jihadist tanzeems in the 80s.

The veteran Pakistani journalist, the late Khalid Hasan, has recalled how Gen. Musharraf in his very first official visit to the US in February, 2002 openly accepted that the LeT and Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD) were only doing jihad outside Pakistan. So, when Gen Musharraf thundered in Muzzafarabad on Feb. 5, 2000 that jihad had shifted from Afghanistan to Kashmir, one could understand in hindsight who was doing jihad and why Pakistan was doing nothing to take action against them. No wonder then that when Dar-ul-Uloom-Haqqania madrassah in Peshawar organized on January 9, 2001 a massive conference to support Osama bin Laden, the former Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Aslam Beg and former ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul openly attended it and pledged their support. Even when Gen. Musharraf had to ban these terrorist organizations under intense pressure after the Indian Parliament Attack on December 13, 2001, he took care that these organizations were not banned in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) or in Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA), both places where they had setup training centres and which they used as launch pads across India and Afghanistan. Promptly, LeT morphed into JuD a few days before the ban was officially announced on January 15, 2002, cleaned its bank accounts, and moved its headquarters to PoK. The support from the highest office in Pakistan to ‘non-state actors’ was quite discernible.

It is not that Pakistan had always meticulously hidden its nexus with ‘non-state actors’. It has sometimes not attempted to overly hide its linkages with them, possibly to send a crude message or to incite a sense of euphoria among Pakistani masses. For example, in 1971, when an Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked to Lahore, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went on board the hijacked aircraft and congratulated the hijackers, later describing them as heroes before they set ablaze the aircraft. On February 5, 1990, the then Chief Minister of the Punjab, Nawaz Sharif, inserted an advertisement in newspapers asking people to ‘pray for success of jihad in Kashmir”. The ruling PPP, led by Benazir Bhutto, not to be outdone in competitive politics, declared that day as a National Holiday. Since that time, Pakistan Army has been providing fire cover for the terrorists to infiltrate into India along the India-Pakistan border. Another recent incident when the ISI did not cover its tracks was in the Haqqani-led and ISI-ordered July, 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. It was meant as a message that growing Indian influence in Afghanistan was unacceptable. The Indian intelligence agencies and the CIA had enough evidence to nail down the ISI, which was promptly passed on to that country which as usual refused to take any action. Even in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, there have been tell-tale signs of State involvement. We shall later see in another post, how Pakistani Army officers have had deep involvement in terrorism for a long time now.

A further proof of Pakistan's complicity in terrorism of the so called ‘non-state actors’ was the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, IC 814, from Kathmandu to the south-eastern Afghan city of Kandahar on Dec 24,1999, with the help of ISI, Pakistani terrorists and Pakistani diplomats in Kathmandu who supplied the would-be hijackers with weapons. The hijackers were helped in Kandahar by their comrades-in-arm, the Taleban as well as ISI-officers who were in constant touch with them during the entire duration of six days that the hijack drama lasted. They and the terrorists released by India in exchange for the passengers, later resurfaced in Pakistan to a hero's welcome and two of them have continued to operate freely till today, including collecting funds for jihad in Kashmir, an activity supposedly banned in Pakistan after the 9/11 events. All three of the terrorists released from Indian jails, Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Zargar, and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, indulged in terrorism against India and the US from Pakistani soil. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh arranged funds for the 9/11 terrorists and also was instrumental in the killing of Wall Street Journal’s reporter Daniel Pearl. The FBI traced USD 100,000 wire-transferred to the WTC terrorist Mohammed Atta and 9/11 leader by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh at the instance of Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, chief of ISI.

The General lost his job on Oct. 8, 2001 after clinching evidence from India. It was the same General, who as Corps Commander, Rawalpindi was one of the “Gang of Four” who planned the Kargil intrusion in 1999 and also the coup on behalf of Gen. Musharraf. He was neither the first nor the last of the ISI Chiefs to lose his job for associating with terrorists. Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, who succeeded Lt. Gen. Ahfaq Pervez Kayani as the ISI Chief in September, 2007 also was forced to leave the position by the US as President George Bush complained that it was “impossible to share intelligence on the al-Qaeda and the Taliban with Pakistan because it goes straight back to the militants.” Earlier too, another Director General of the ISID, Gen. Javid Nasir, was removed from service along with a few dozen officers, for his extreme association with jihadi organizations. As for Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, he surrendered to Brig. Ejaz Shah (Retd.), the then Home Secretary of the Punjab on February 12, 2002. We are now aware that Brig. Ejaz Shah was Omar Saeed Sheikh’s handler when he was in the ISI. Several serving Army officers have been arrested in connection with the case of David Coleman Headly, and two of them were implicated in funding terrorism through him.

Pakistan’s support for terrorism in India is well documented and many terrorists who were captured in India have given detailed accounts of their activities and their sponsors back in Pakistan. Among all those Pakistanis caught in India on terrorism related charges, the most dramatic and prized-catch was that of Ajmal Amir Iman Kasab. Several pointers emerged later as Ajmal Kasab was interrogated. The ten fidayeen terrorists were all Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) operatives, they had been combat trained for several months by members of Pakistan’s serving and/or retired Army and Navy personnel, the Pakistani maritime authorities had supplied them with charts for the sea-borne operation, they were in constant telephonic contact with their cold-blooded handlers back in Pakistan who appeared to be hardened combat veterans and well versed in psychological operations pointing therefore to the involvement of the armed forces, communication facilities between the terrorists and their handlers had been arranged by a division of the Army, and they had been visited frequently at the training centre by a top-ranking General along with the chief LeT, Prof. Hafeez Saeed. The captured GPS confirmed four waypoints-route maps that point to Karachi, Porbander, Diu and the Mumbai coast. It soon turned out that Prof. Hafeez Saeed, ex-Amir of LeT and now JuD, was the mastermind behind the attack. However, even when Prof. Hafeez Saeed had been declared a terrorist by the UN Security Council as a result of this attack, even as he was being implicated by India as the mastermind and the Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice to arrest him, top notch Pakistani politicians like ex-President Rafiq Tarar, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Chief of PML-Q), Mushahid Hussain (PML-Q Secretary)and Sheikh Rashid (ex-federal minister and a self-proclaimed jihadi) condoled with him for a bereavement in his family by visiting his house. All cases brought against him in the Lahore High Court, the Supreme Court and the Anti Terrorism Court (ATC)were dismissed one after the other either for lack of evidence or for being bad in law. The Interior Minister of Pakistan, Rehman Malik, has repeatedly talked of a ‘lack of evidence’ against Prof. Hafeez Saeed as though only other nations have to give that.

In the immediate aftermath of the 26/11 attack, as a nervous Pakistan whipped up war-paranoia, the Taliban jihadis who were mercilessly attacking Pakistan itself from within, ‘offered’ their support to ‘fight India’ and top Pakistani Army and intelligence officials immediately welcomed the offer and termed the Taliban as ‘truly patriotic’. Another Pakistani Army official claimed that “the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) will fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Pakistani Army to save Pakistan, if India attacked that country”. This brings out clearly how the Army forged close links with the jihadi ‘non-state actors’ and were not averse to using them even when a few months earlier the same jihadis had called the Pakistani Army as ‘unIslamic’ ! It was no wonder therefore that several service personnel of the Army, Air Force, ISI and police were found to be involved in the assassination attempts against President General Musharraf in c. 2002 and 2003, in collusion with the very same ‘non-state actors’ that the Pakistani state had assiduously developed.

Several purportedly Islamic charity trusts in Pakistan have been known to fund terror activities internationally. Many of them, Rabita, al-Rashid, al-Akhtar, Wafa Humanitarian Organization, Ummah Tamer-i-Nau, Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, Afghan Support Committee, Aid Organization of the Ulema, al-Aqsa Foundation, and al-Harmain Foundation trusts were identified by the US State department on Oct. 12, 2001 as funding terror outfits. It was incidentally noticed that Gen. Musharraf, the then military-President of Pakistan, was one of the trustees of Rabita trust. The Secretary General of Rabita Trust, Wael Hamza Jalalidin, was one of the founder members of al-Qaeda. The link between al-Akhtar trust and al-Qaeda was established later. However, Pakistan decided to close down the Al-Rasheed and Al-Akhtar trusts only in Feb, 2007 even though the UN Security Council declared them to have links with terrorist organizations as early as 2001. The Pakistani interior minister later explained to the Pakistani population rather apologetically that even though the Pakistani government fought the case of the two trusts in the UN, they had to close them now due to the UN resolution as otherwise the nation will attract economic sanction. This shows the reluctance on the part of the Pakistani government to take action against the front-ends of the terrorist organizations. While Al-Akhtar and Al-Rasheed trusts were collecting funds for Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), the Al-Hilal and Al-Asar Trusts were doing so for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Al-Ershad trust was collecting funds for Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami (HuJI). By June 2008, the US State Department determined that Al Rasheed trust was operating under the new names of Al Ameen Trust while Al Akhtar had morphed into Pakistan Relief Foundation and Azmat Pakistan Trust. Thus, the channels of funding to various terrorist organizations were protected by the State of Pakistan and when action was taken reluctantly, they acquired new names and the Government ignored the new Trusts.

The Punjabis dominate the Pakistani Army (roughly 70%) and the Punjab is also the most fertile ground for recruitment of jihadi terrorists. Organizations like JeM, LeJ, HuJI as well as LeT are centred around Southern and Central Punjab. Since the Army recruits come from the same region where jihadism is widespread, it is natural to expect such sentiments to be carried forward into the Army. By his own admission, the then DG, ISI, Lt. Gen Mahmoud Ahmed admitted as far back as circa 2000, that 15% of the army officer corps were religious extremists. Afghanistan, which has been one of the worst sufferers from the ‘non-state actors’ of Pakistan, has leveled serious accusations against the state of Pakistan for its support. In several interviews, the Afghan intelligence chief, Amarullah Saleh, has accused the Pakistani Army leadership and the Pakistani establishment for their support to ‘non-state actors’.

Since its Independence, Pakistan has also been in conflict with its western neighbour, Afghanistan, over the settlement of its border row with that country. The Durand Line which, by the mere stroke of a British pen divided the Pashtuns, has been the root cause of this problem. Within Afghanistan itself, a society steeped in feudalism and fractured by different identities, any reform had been met with stiff resistance by the feudal landlords, tribal chieftains and the clergy who feared loss of their traditional power. So, when new reforms were initiated by the new Leftist regime after the ‘Great Saur Revolution’ in April, 1978, the traditional stakeholders rose in revolt. The regime, unable to suppress the harassment by Ismail Khan of Herat and the Panjsheri Mujahideen supported by Pakistan, invited the USSR for help by invoking the provisions of the ‘Mutual Defence Treaty’. It was thus the USSR Army entered Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. Pakistan, which had already been hosting Islamists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Rabbani, and Abdulrub Rasool Sayyaf used them in destabilizing the Afghan regime. Unfortunately, a deeply Islamist military General, Zia-ul-Haq was in power at that time in Pakistan and he had already established a close relationship with the wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia in order to stem the rising influence of Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran among the Shi’a of both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. As part of this, he had initiated a large-scale Islamization of the Pakistani society, an initiative already started by the Islamic Socialist Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to retain his power. This led to violent changes within the Pakistani society and the clergy. Not content with the society, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq also started Islamizing the Army. Like his predecessor Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq also turned to JI for support and this allowed JI’s student wing, IJT, unhindered access to all educational campuses across the country where all the other student organizations had been banned. The clerics of JI were affiliated to Army units. Thus a deep entwining with the Islamist ideology took roots within the Army. The Army and the ‘non-state actors’ became inseparable.

Thus Gen. Zia-ul-Haq transformed the charter of the Army from defending ‘frontiers of Pakistan’ to defending the ‘frontiers of Islam’. The motto of the Army was appropriately changed to ‘Iman-Taqwa-Jihad fi Sabilillah’ (Faith, Unity and Jihad in the Way of Allah). Successive Prime Ministers and Presidents have mouthed the same inanity of the Army being defenders of the Frontiers of Islam. Thus, Pakistani state and its armed forces cannot but support those ‘non-state actors’ who claim to be fighting to ‘defend frontiers of Islam’. The need for jihad thus unites the professional Army of Pakistan and the ‘non-state actors’ at the hip. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq appointed the Islamist jihadi and an Afghan veteran Prof. Hafeez Saeed, who founded the LeT later on, to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), an organization created by the State to ensure all laws of the land complied with Islam. So, when the Soviet Army marched across the Oxus river on the eve of Christmas in 1979, the Bear Trap set by the United States was triggered and the resources of the state of Pakistan along with its ‘non state-actors’ were thrown into the jihad. The Pakistani society was militarized with the help of the United States and Saudi Arabia to provide a constant supply of ideologically pumped up mujahideen to fight the evil Red Army. Pakistan’s calculi were two fold in its Afghan venture; one, to install a compliant regime in Kabul that will blunt Pashtun nationalism and allow it to build its ‘strategic depth’ against India and second, to gainfully use the huge army of ‘non-state actors’ including foreign jihadis deployed in the Afghan theatre, in its dispute with India. These overlapping linkages are steadily being revealed in terrorist incidents such as 26/11 where Pakistani naval personnel have helped the terrorists with their maritime requirements, and Army communication experts have been involved in setting up communication links. The still unraveling case of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana reveal their connections with serving and retired Army personnel.

Even as the Afghan jihad was going on, Pakistan simultaneously developed its nuclear weapons in collusion with China and under the benign neglect of the USA, in order to blunt the asymmetry in power between India and herself and also force India not to escalate the tension into a full-blown war whenever the jihadis were later unleashed on India after the conclusion of the Afghan jihad. Thus, Pakistan made a complete and comprehensive investment in its policy and practice of ‘non-state actors’ since the early 80s. After the withdrawal of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) from Afghanistan in circa 1989, the Taliban were created by the Pakistani Army to take control of Afghanistan. So much so, that in the aftermath of the fall of Kunduz to the Northern Alliance in late 2001, the Pakistanis forced the Americans to airlift thousands of Pakistani military officers, soldiers and ‘non-state actors’ who were fighting along with the Taliban.

Pakistan’s ‘non-state actors’ have also wrought havoc within Iran. The Jundullah, a Sunni sectarian terrorist organization, which has recently been implicated in the suicide attack on the Iran Revolutionary Guards in the Sistan-Baluchistan area, has always been accused by Iran as being supported by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. After the recent attack, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged that the attack was planned from Pakistani soil and that the Pakistani intelligence agencies were cooperating with the terrorists. In late May, 2009, Jundullah bombed a mosque in Zahedan in the Sistan-Baluchistan province which angered Iran enough to warn Pakistan that it had “the power and military means to trace and hunt down terrorist groups in Pakistan if such activity is not stopped by Pakistan.” Pakistan routinely denies the presence of Jundullah in Pakistan.

So, how have these ‘non-state actors’ come into being and how are they sustained ? The powerful ISID, the indoctrinated Army & ISI officers both serving and retired leading to a close linkage between the regular Army and the terrorist organizations, the mullahs, the presence under the benign neglect or even support of the Pakistani state of militias of Uzbeks, Chechens, Turkmens, Tajiks, Uighurs, Indonesians and Arabs who have all cut deals with the tribes of NWFP for protection, hospitality and support, the lawlessness of the FATA where the Federal laws of Pakistan do not operate, the huge cache of funds and leftover arms from the Afghan campaign, increasing poverty, an opium industry patronized by the Taleban, Al-Qaeda and the ISI as an easy source of funding for procuring arms and promoting terrorist activities, the spiralling madrassahs generously supported by fundamentalist charity organizations from the Middle East especially the Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, spewing out the strict Wahhabi or Deobandi interpretation of Islam, the capitulation of the Government to the increasing Talibanized approach of these madrassahs, the indoctrination of young minds even in mainstream non-madrassah schools as a state policy, the collective hatred against the Americans, Jews and the Hindus (the Yahud-Hunud-Nasara conspiracy theory meaning Jews-Hindus-Christians were conspiring to deprive the Muslims of their rightful place which is popular in Pakistan ), and above all the State policy to use terror as a weapon against India and Afghanistan all acted as a potent mix, and continue to do so with increasing vigour, in the terrorism brew. Pakistan has also learnt to blame the ‘international community’ for the scourge of ‘militancy and extremism’ in today’s Pakistan forgetting conveniently that it was an equal and willing partner in the Afghan jihad for its own geopolitical and geostrategic reasons and even after the cessation of the jihad there, it nurtured and created more terrorist outfits for its India theatre of operations.

Therefore, all sections of the society such as common folk citizens, mullahs et al and all sections of the State such as the Army, intelligence agencies, bureaucracy, political leaders et al have contributed to preserving, nurturing and helping the ‘non-state actors’. Thus, Pakistan and its ‘non-state actors’ are indistinguishable.

(Concluded)

The Fraudulent Theory of 'Non-State Actors' - Part II

Added to all these are the extremist sectarian outfits that appeared in late 70s and were consolidated during the 1980s using funds from sources abroad. The State identified itself with the Sunni-Hanafi Wahhabi and Deobandi strains of Islam leading to violent clashes with the predominant Berelvis, Sufis and Shi’as. The ‘mother of all terrorist outfits’, Sipah-e-Sahaba-Pakistan (SSP), came into being from which were to emerge later other dreaded Punjab-based terrorist outfits usually referred to as ‘Punjabi Taliban’. The ‘Bear Trap’ that the US devised to disintegrate the USSR led to the immoral use of religion and drugs in the region to launch and sustain the covert war, the effects of which later became devastating for Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Thus, there has been an easy availability of men, material and causes that sustain extremism and jihadi terrorism in Pakistan. The geo-strategic interests originally enunciated by Sir Olaf Kirkpatrick Caroe of the British Empire (the last Foreign Secretary of the British Raj 1939-1945 and later Governor of NWFP March 1946 to June 1947) and later adopted in toto by the United States, placed Pakistan at the centre as far as the Western interests went in the Indian Subcontinent and the Middle East. This has given an undue advantage to Pakistan. Pakistan’s continued reception of largesse from the Western countries and their allies (especially the US, the UK, China, Saudi Arabia and Japan), usually referred to as the ‘3½ Friends of Pakistan’, and a lack of punishment for its crimes have emboldened that country to continue along the same trajectory it set for itself sixty-three years back.

Within Pakistan, the enterprise of ‘non-state actors’ is managed by the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID), which was set up in c. 1948 by Maj. General W.J. Cawthorn of the British Army who was serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army then, and then developed and nurtured by the CIA during the days of Afghan jihad. As ISID became the sole conduit for the distribution of arms and funds pouring in from the US, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and other Arab states during the Afghan jihad days, it developed an enormous clout with the various mujahideen groups which it used to its advantage later in the Punjab and Kashmir fronts with India. The ISID has become far too powerful and sinister that its activities are all encompassing today and go way outside its original charter, earning it the sobriquet ‘state within the state’. The opportunistic support for the Pakistani Army by the United States and its allies never allowed civilian institutions to develop thus turning the country into a security state, many call it as a praetorian state, whose sole purpose has been to defeat India. It thus became easy for the ‘non-state actors’ to thrive under the patronage of the security apparatus of the state. Today, Pakistan boasts of at least three dozen major terrorist outfits and in the eight years since 9/11, Pakistan and Pakistanis have been implicated in over 150 terrorist incidents all over the world for reasons such as providing training, funding, sheltering or supplying manpower.

Pakistan’s single minded obsession to subjugate India has made it use against India whatever means that are available to it. Thus it was that the tribesmen from Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) were mobilized against the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir in Oct. 1947. They, along with de-commissioned Indian National Army (INA) soldiers were sent in as a mercenary force by Pakistan under the command of Major Akbar Khan (later Major General) who operated under the pseudonym, ‘Gen. Tariq’, a reference to the Islamist General who invaded Andalusia in the 8th Century A.D. In his memoirs, “Raiders in Kashmir” published in 1970, and in the interview he gave, Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan has clearly spelt out how everyone in the political and military set up of Pakistan, from Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan down to a lowly Muslim League functionary, was involved in planning and helping the invasion by the tribesmen. These facts have been corroborated by Gen. Mohammed Musa who retired as Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan Army, in his book, “Jawan to General: The Recollections of a Pakistani Soldier” (published 1985).

Another and more important source is the British themselves, especially the then Governor of NWFP, Sir George Cunningham. He had earlier served as a British Political Agent in North Waziristan in 1923-24 and was later also Private Secretary to the Viceroy of India. He was thus well connected with the affairs of the NWFP. By no stretch of imagination was Cunningham a friend of the Congress Party or India and on the other hand, he was close to Mohammed Ali Jinnah. His papers and diary are available in the India Office Records (now part of the British Library in the UK). From his diary jottings ( MSS Eur D670/6 Cunningham Diary File), we can see clear references to how Pakistan employed the tribesmen. On Page 13 dated October 6, 1947, Cunningham states the following: There is quite a lot of talk now of the danger of actual war between Pakistan & India. The Pakistan Government however, will, I am certain, do all they can to avoid it as they feel conscious of their present weakness both in men and particularly in material. Yet them seem to me to wink at the very dangerous activities on the Kashmir Border, allowing small parties of Muslims to infiltrate into Kashmir from this side. This might easily become a casus belli. Page 17 of the above diary is a clincher in more ways. In that page, Cunningham writes: I sent for ABDUL QAYUM, my Chief Minister, last evening and told him what I knew, or pretty well all that had been going on, and who had been instigating our tribesmen to go to Kashmir. He grinned. (Khan Abdul Qayum Khan was the Chief Minister of NWFP between 1947 and 1953) The diary goes on to state in an entry dated October 26, when the invasion had reached outskirts of Srinagar: ISKANDER MIRZA arrived last night from LAHORE. He told me all the underground history of the present campaign against Kashmir and brought apologies from Liaqat Ali for not letting me know anything about it sooner. Iskander Mirza was the Defence Secretary of Pakistan at that time. Of course, the terminology, ‘non-state actors’ had not been coined at that time, but, from the foregoing, the strategy had nevertheless been framed in the very nascent days of Pakistan.

There is considerable evidence that Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah himself blessed the plans of invasion by the ‘non-state actors’ as he was promised celebration of Eid in Srinagar on October 28. In his meeting with Governor General Mountbatten in Lahore on November 1, 1947, Jinnah promised to pull back the tribesmen if Indian troops were also withdrawn, thus inadvertently admitting to who was behind the invasion of the ‘non-state actors’. Again, the Governor of NWFP, Sir George Cunningham states categorically (Page 17 of the same reference cited in the previous paragraph) that when informed of the tribal invasion of J&K as early as two weeks before the actual D-Day, Jinnah replied, “Don't tell me anything about it. My conscience must be clear”.  There is more clinching evidence of Jinnah's direct involvement. Tariq Ali writes how Jinnah decided to use force and chose Capt. Sikander Hyat Khan,  who was the uncle of Tariq Ali and the grandson of the former Chief Minister of the undivided Punjab Sir Sikander Hyat Khan and the son of close Jinnah confidante Shaukat Hyat Khan, to lead the operation.

When the need arose for the Pakistani Army to intervene, following the debacle of the tribesmen who were more interested in plunder and rape at Baramulla as maal-i-ghanimat (war booty), Jinnah even requested the British officers who were then managing the affairs of the Pakistani Army to help them.. Thus, Pakistan used ‘non-state actors’ as the first-line of offence and for reasons of ‘plausible deniability’ from the day that country was born. Later when Pakistan-inspired terrorism was ignited in J&K in c. 1989, the former Director General of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Hameed Gul, admitted to noted Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussain that “It is the years of our work that has resulted in the armed uprising against the Indian forces in Kashmir” thus belying the propaganda that the latest onset of trouble in Kashmir was also an indigenous one.

Pakistan employed a variation of the tactic of ‘non-state actors’ in c. 1965 when it felt that the Indian Army’s morale was low enough for it to take advantage of, especially after a skirmish in the Rann of Kutch where the Indian Army tactically withdrew. It sent this time regulars disguised as local tribesmen until they were discovered by the local shepherds who promptly informed the Indian Army. Though, Pakistan did not use ‘non-state actors’ this time, it claimed the regular Pakistani soldiers as ‘non-state actors’ hoping that India will therefore not be able to escalate the limited attack in J&K across the international borders either in the Punjab or across the Rajasthan-Sind Border. The large scale capture of these Pakistani soldiers along with their identification papers put paid to their lies, but Pakistan was not deterred. History was repeated once again in 1999 in Kargil when the same tactic was employed. This time around, Pakistan sent in its Northern Light Infantry (NLI) disguised as mujahideen 'non-state actors' and even claimed so. India released the wiretapped telephonic conversation between Lt.General Mohammed Aziz, Pakistan's Chief of General Staff and the Army Chief General Parvez Musharraf that nailed the lie. In order to lend credence to its lies, Pakistan even refused to accept the bodies of its slain soldiers, the only country in the world to disrespect dead Army soldiers, all for the sake of  sustaining the lie of the theory of ‘non-state actors’. The large number of casualties in the NLI led to protests in Gligit that had to be handled by the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visiting there personally and rewarding the affected families generously. Pakistan, indeed, placed a lot of reliance and stake not only on ‘non-state actors’, but also fake ‘non-state actors’.

(To be continued . . .)

The Fraudulent Theory of 'Non-State Actors' - Part I

For over sixty years now, India has faced an enduring conflict from Pakistan. What started as irredentism has acquired different dimensions since that fateful day on Oct. 26, 1947 when Indian troops had to be airlifted to save the Princely State of J&K (Jammu & Kashmir ) from marauding tribesmen directed by regular Pakistani Army. Pakistan denied that it was at all involved in the operation and claimed fraudulently that the attack was spontaneous, and arising due to the draconian rule of Maharajah Hari Singh and his ‘scorched earth policy’. The lie of Pakistan’s denials was nailed later on as we shall see subsequently. Anyway, that incident set the precedent for Pakistan to adopt the same strategy of relying on ‘non-state actors’ (or proxy fighters) for the next six decades, in its quest against India.

We all know that Pakistan has always maintained ‘plausible deniability’ in its terrorist operations, some times even in its military operations till the façade gets blown apart in almost every instance. In spite of the bluff being repeatedly called, Pakistan has continued to conduct its terrorist operations against India under the cloak of ‘non-state actors’. Though the term of 'non-state actors' might have been of more recent origin, after the 26/11 terrorist attack in circa 2008, the technique and the intent have been the same since Pakistan gained Independence. It is as if Pakistan had no responsibility at all to capture these ‘non-state actors’ before they crossed over into India or after they returned alive to Pakistan from their ‘missions’; or punish their sponsors and dismantle their infrastructure and support base. In fact, the leaders of Pakistan such as Jinnah, Liaquat Ali, Suhrawardy et al carried their same pre-Independence tactics of violence and terror to manage the new State’s policies vis-a-vis India. A further addition, in later years, to this policy of ‘terror as a tool’ was the creation of ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan that helped Pakistan spawn even more virulent jihadi  ‘non-state actors’ to implement the policy of ‘a thousand cuts to bleed India’. In this process, even the rest of the world has suffered as Afghanistan became a sanctuary for Al Qaeda, under the patronage of Pakistan and its creation, ‘the Taliban’. This game had gone way too far in Pakistan that the Daily Times opined editorially on August 8, 2009 thus: “What India wants from us we can’t do because the power of the clergy and the non-state actors is still too overwhelming.” That powerlessness against the non-state actors has only progressively worsened since the time that editorial was written.

Who are these ‘non-state actors’ and why is Pakistan so ‘powerless’ to control them even as it is invariably proved of their involvement in cross border terrorism directed against India and other countries ? These seemingly simple questions have a long history of facts behind them. Lying at the root of this question is the fierce motivation that drives Pakistan to be one-up on India which it perceives as an implacable and mortal enemy. The different factions of the Pakistani society, though united on that single objective of enmity with India, display different shades of and reasons for that thought. The clergy want India to be conquered religiously, while the military wants India to be defeated and avenged for the series of debacles it has suffered in its wars with that country especially the humiliating defeat in 1971 and the historic surrender of 93000 soldiers. On the other hand, the common folk Pakistani citizens and elites who having been yanked off their identity right from the beginning, and thus raging with castrated impotence, have a consequential hatred for India, while the politicians want to be seen going with all these various groups.

The role of the clergy and the clergy-producing Islamists (who run the madrasseh where the clergy are produced in their thousands in an assembly-line like fashion) is the most crucial in the state of affairs that obtains in Pakistan today. The irony was that in the then undivided India, most of the Islamic clergy, notably of the  JUH (Jama’at-Ulema-e-Hind), were opposed to a partition of India though in the final stages of the act, some of them decided to go with the wind. Some of the Muslim clergy, who later migrated to Pakistan, offered a strange argument that the Prophet founded his Islamic nation on bloodshed and not ahimsa (non-violence) as the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi was doing at that time and so they could not be part of that struggle or of a nation born out of that unIslamic process. Such thoughts permeate Pakistan even today when they think that only violence gets benefits and only Muslims are good at it while non-Muslims are passive. The Deobandi school supported the Hanafi madhdhab. (The Hanafi school of Deobandis, led by Husain Ahmed Madani, supported a united India and the freedom movement of the Congress. Maulana Madani even issued a fatwa in October, 1945 against muslims joining the Muslim League.) However, a small but vociferous section of Deobandi Hanafis led by Maulana Zafar Ahmed Usmani, forbade a united India unless jurisprudence in free India was based on Islam, which meant that Islamists ruled the country. One of the students of Maulana Shabbir Usmani (who was the brother of Maulana Zafar Ahmed Usmani) was Maulana Yusuf Banuri who founded the famous Banuri seminary in Karachi that has been in the forefront of jihad ever since.

Anyway, this dissembling led to the discovery of other such dis-similarities which Jinnah used to advance as reasons enough for a separate Muslim nation. Again, these were based on violence and terror such as ‘Our heroes are your villains’ etc. referring to savage Muslim invaders such as Mahmud Ghaznavi, Shahabuddin Ghori, Ahmed Shah Abdali etc. This passion for violence resulted in the gory 'Direct Action Day'. Little did they realize that in the process they were glorifying the savage Turks (Ghaznavi and Ghori) and Pashtun (Abdali), who looted, plundered and massacred their own ancestors living in the parts which are currently Pakistan. Missiles are named after these 'heroes' in today's Pakistan. Prominent Pakistani public speakers frequently refer to these names to whip-up public sentiment and passion against India. Thus, there has been a convergence of views among the clergy, political class, the Army and the masses as far as India went. The complete support for violence and terrorism among all sections of the Pakistani society and the State is therefore a continuum and can be directly traced to the players like Quaid-e-Azam, Quaid-e-Millat and the clergy.

Pakistani Islamists spread the myth that India is a land where Muslims are persecuted and hence in need of a jihad to liberate their ummah from the kafir and mushraqeen (religiously deviant polytheists, pagans, idolators) Hindus. They wanted to start with J&K (Jammu & Kashmir) which being a Muslim majority State straddling the two countries, rightfully belonged to them, in their scheme of things. An underlying and common thread between the above two views is that Pakistan has been cheated of J&K  and other Muslim princely states (riyaasat) like Hyderabad, Junagadh etc. by the conniving and cunning Hindu Indians and the British at the time of the Partition and so it is their duty to retrieve them from the land of jahliyyah (the dark period of ignorance before Islam was born) in a Ghazwa-e-Hind (Conquest of Hindustan by the Believers). The Ghazwa-e-Hind is itself based on a hadith of doubtful authenticity. This is a reference to a hadith that purportedly says that “A Muslim Army (probably Pakistan army) would Conquer India, after that Hazrat Isa will return and this army would join him in the Middle East to fight the Jews.” For this purpose, various actors of Pakistan whip up ‘war-like passion’ among the Pakistani masses. Stories are told, some of which could be true but most are either apocryphal or utter lies.

(To be continued . . .)