Posted on 07/10/2004 11:26:57 PM PDT by JimBr
Outside View: Pakistani jihadis in Iraq
By Kaushik Kapisthalam A UPI Outside view
Atlanta, GA, Jul. 6 (UPI) -- It is well known by now that the forces confronting the soldiers of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq include a significant number of foreign "jihadis." While U.S. attention seems to be largely focused on the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al Tawhid force, one group that hardly gets a mention in U.S. media is the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT, is a Pakistani Salafist (Wahhabi) jihadi group that was formed in 1987 as the armed wing of the Markaz Da'wa wal-Irshad (MDI) or "Center for Religious Learning and Social Welfare."
Pakistani Salafists Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Mohammad Saeed of the University of Engineering and Technology of Lahore set up LeT with seed money from a mysterious Saudi "sheikh," who many believe was Osama bin Laden. Another founding member of the LeT was bin Laden's mentor, Abdullah Azzam, who also had a role in the founding of the Palestinian group Hamas.
Although confused by many analysts as a "Kashmiri" group, LeT in fact is mainly made up of Pakistani Punjabis with a smattering of Afghans, Arabs, Bangladeshis, Southeast Asians and the occasional Western Muslim recruit. Though the LeT's nominal goal was to help Pakistan annex Kashmir, it fit in well with its grand plans of establishing an Islamic Caliphate. The LeT sees Hindu majority India as an obstacle on par with the United States and Israel to the Islamist dream of creating a unified empire that spans the entire Muslim world. The LeT is still active in Kashmir while simultaneously being faithful to its original goal.
In April, Indian journalist Praveen Swami broke a story about a prominent LeT ringleader named Dilshad Ahmad being arrested in Iraq and then under interrogation by U.S. authorities. A few other people were also arrested with Ahmad. Dilshad Ahmad has many aliases, including Danish Ahmad.
Ahmad, a long-time Lashkar operative from the Bahawalpur area of Pakistan's Punjab province, was LeT's Operational lead for its campaign of violence in India between 1997 and 2001. Ahmad is also known to be a confidante of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the second-in-command in the Lashkar military hierarchy. In 1998, Dilshad Ahmad addressed a major LeT conference in the group's headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore, arguing for the need to extend the organization's activities outside Kashmir. Given all this, Ahmad's presence in Iraq should have sent alarm bells among U.S. authorities. But so far there has been no public mention of the LeT arrest in Iraq.
Among all the Pakistani jihad groups, there are many reasons why the Lashkar-e-Taiba is most suited to operate in Iraq. Firstly, unlike the Deobandi jihadi groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the LeT does not have any political ambitions inside Pakistan. The Deobandis have built a powerful political movement within Pakistan, but their political participation has also resulted in periodic bouts of serious tension with the Pakistani Army, which although highly supportive of jihad in Afghanistan and India, nevertheless brooks no challenge to its vice-like grip on political power within the nation. In contrast, the LeT-led Pakistani Salafist movement has traditionally stayed apolitical and instead focused on global jihad outside Pakistan. Given this, the LeT has had a free hand to operate within Pakistan.
Another aspect of LeT's activities is its charitable wing, the Dawa. In fact, the current name of the LeT's parent group is Jamaat-ud-Dawa or the Party of Preaching.
Through its charitable wing, the LeT attracts many doctors, engineers and educated professionals to its cause. This could provide a great cover for the LeT to infiltrate into a strife-torn nation like Iraq. The LeT also has strong links within the Saudi Islamists as well as parts of the royal family.
According to LeT's own past claims, a significant portion of its funding comes from Saudi sources, given its Wahhabi ideals. LeT also makes it compulsory for its recruits to learn Arabic, which means that its members can find it easier to mingle with Iraq's Arabic speaking population. For all these reasons, it is not surprising that the LeT sees Iraq as a golden opportunity to strike at the biggest target -- America.
Last but not least, LeT has a proven track record of operating far away from its Pakistani base. Recently convicted "Virginia Jihad" members in the United States were LeT members. Another LeT cell was recently busted in Australia with plans to blow up a nuclear reactor, among other targets.
What perplexes most analysts is why the United States has not pressed Pakistan to shut down the LeT in the first place. Under pressure from the United States and military threat from India, Gen. Pervez Musharraf banned the LeT in January 2002. While more than 2,000 terrorists were arrested, all but a handful were released after a few weeks.
But what happened with the leaders was egregious. LeT's Emir Hafiz Saeed was whisked away to a safe house of Pakistan's sinister intelligence service, the ISI. After a few months, he was released without any charges being pressed against him. To make up for the inconvenience, the Pakistan government even paid him a fat stipend.
Things got so blatant that U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell had to issue a harsh statement about the farcical ban, which forced the Pakistanis to act. Even then, the Pakistanis placed LeT on a "watch list," which is laughable since the group was banned first and then put on watch after renaming itself. To make things clear, LeT organized a 150,000-man strong rally just hours after being put on the "watch list." At the rally, Emir Saeed promised the faithful that LeT's jihad would continue in Kashmir as well as in Iraq.
LeT's publications, which are still freely available in Pakistan, have long been a harbinger of the group's plans. Of late, LeT's official statements have concentrated on Iraq more than Kashmir. In fact, a recent editorial in LeT's weekly publication "Ghazwa" (Arabic for a raid; 9/11 is described by al-Qaida as a "ghazwa") called for sending "mujahideen" to Iraq to take revenge for U.S. actions in the Abu Ghraib prison as well as for the "rapes of Iraqi Muslim women."
Praveen Swami and Pakistani reporter Mohammad Shehzad recently broke a story which claimed that as many as 2,000 Pakistani men have signed up for LeT's armed operations in Iraq, based on their leader's calls for jihad. Pakistan's border with Iran is very porous and could provide an easy opportunity for LeT's fighters to enter Iraq from the east. Notably, Dilshad Ahmad was reportedly captured in Basra, which is close to Iran.
LeT also has close ties with al-Qaida. In April 2002, top al-Qaida leader Abu Zubaida was arrested from a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. But the Pakistani officials did not arrest the local LeT leader who had housed Zubaida. LeT also prides itself in its fighters' ability to be brutal. French Islamism experts Maryam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy note in their recent book that LeT teaches its members such methods of killing as beheading and eviscerating victims to inflict maximum fear. Given this, unless the LeT is checked, we can expect more brutality by jihadis in Iraq.
This whole saga also points out the danger in allowing nations like Pakistan to make distinctions between "good terrorists" (who don't attack Americans) and "bad terrorists (who target Americans)." Perhaps the U.S. authorities did not want to press Musharraf on LeT because they thought that the group was not directly targeting Americans.
LeT's Iraq campaign has exposed the hollowness of such a strategy. One hopes that the United States will now press Musharraf forcefully to close down the LeT and similar groups and make sure the general does not adopt a revolving-door strategy for terrorists as he has been doing until now. There are no good terrorists in the war on terror.
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(Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance commentator on U.S. policy on South Asia and its effects on the war on terror and non-proliferation.)
Only one sentence offered to this important connection?
Methinks the General is doing some compromising that he hopes will keep him alive a little while longer.
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