BATTLING MILITANCY

Zahid Hussain

Pakistan today faces a growing threat from violent extremists and Islamic militants. This is the result of a combination of factors.

It reflects the fallout of the continuing war in Afghanistan and the limited gains achieved both by the US and Pakistan against al Qaeda, with the organisation showing a remarkable ability to adapt to mounting pressure and find local partners. It also reflects the increasingly violent activism of longer established organisations that have been spawned over the past twenty years but which have been making common cause with militants of more recent vintage.

As militant violence in Pakistan has escalated, it has grown not only in numbers but also in sophistication. A host of violent extremist groups, which were once only loosely associated or were previously at odds with one another; have formed an increasingly interconnected web. Close collaboration is emerging between Pakistani militant groups including the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. In the first several years after the US-led attack on Afghanistan, mainly Pashtun militants based in Pakistan conducted attacks almost exclusively in Afghanistan, seeking to drive the US-dominated coalition forces from the country and overthrow the Hamid Karzai government. Since 2007 they have also turned their guns on the Pakistani military and security agencies, launching attacks of increasing sophistication and intensity, as well as perpetrating an escalating and more violent wave of suicide bombings against civilians in major urban centres across Pakistan. A distinctive Pakistani Taliban movement has evolved with an agenda to establish its retrogressive rule not only in the tribal areas but also in the adjoining Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 144Al Qaeda has grown in strength due to the new alliances it has made with Pakistani militants. Though recent assessments have asserted that al Qaeda has been crippled, and the number of foreign militants operating out of Pakistan’s tribal territories has been estimated at a few hundred, the reality is that there is a new generation of al Qaeda in Pakistan. Comprised primarily of Pakistanis, it includes a flood of new recruits from youth and the educated middle class. This new generation of al Qaeda is strongly committed to the cause of global jihad and has acted as a magnet for radicalised Muslims, including a number of Western Muslim citizens who have travelled to Pakistan to receive training in camps in the tribal regions. The emergence of the local Taliban movement occurred simultaneously with Pakistan’s battle to flush out al Qaeda fighters from the borderlands. This did not happen overnight. It was a consequence of war in Afghanistan and military operations carried out by Pakistan that severely undermined the age-old administrative structure in the tribal areas. The members of the tribal council or maliks through whom the federal government established its authority were either killed or driven out by the militants. A new crop of Pakistani militants or Taliban emerged to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of the administrative system in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) over which the Pakistani government had at best tenuous control. The situation worsened in 2006 as Taliban groups sprang up in the adjoining areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. These militants forcibly closed down video and audio shops, as well as Internet cafes, declaring them un-Islamic. The Taliban also ordered barbers not to shave beards. People were prohibited to play music, even at weddings and traditional fairs, which provided some form of entertainment to the public. The emerging Taliban mostly came from the ranks of the mainstream Islamic political parties, which had ruled northwestern Pakistan from 2002 to 2007. The six-party Islamic alliance known as Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) (The United Council for Action— comprising Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, the two most powerful religious political parties—was swept into power in what was then called the North West Frontier Province after winning pluralities in the 2002 parliamentary elections during the administration of President Pervez Musharraf. The alliance was also a part of a coalition government 145in Balochistan, making it a formidable political force in the country. It was the first time in Pakistan’s history that squabbling religious groups representing different Islamic sects had united in an alliance. The MMA grew from an informal grouping of religious and jihadi groups that took shape following the events of September 11 and the subsequent US military campaign in Afghanistan. Initially, approximately thirty-six Islamic groups united under the banner of the Defence of Afghanistan Council in a show of solidarity with the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden. It was later renamed Defence of Afghanistan and Pakistan Council with the aim of opposing US military action in Afghanistan. In the weeks and months following October 2001 the council organised demonstrations across the country in support of the Taliban regime. The MMA itself was hurriedly cobbled together just before the 2002 polls with the blessings of the military leadership. For the Musharraf regime this alliance represented a counterbalance to its liberal opponents. Their new-found unity was predicated on a shared perception of the post- September 11 world and an anti-US position. Its electoral success came on a wave of strong anti-American sentiments among Pakistan’s Pashtun population. Despite being mainstream political parties, both Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam—the two major components of the alliance—had a long history of active association with jihadist politics. Their members overlapped with those of militant and sectarian organisations. Several militant commanders who had fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir were elected to the National and NWFP state assemblies. Outlawed militant and sectarian groups played a significant role in the MMA’s election campaign. They saw the electoral success of the alliance as a triumph for their cause of jihad. The Islamists used their new-found political power to enforce rigid Islamic rule in the province. Besides pushing for the adoption of Shari’a laws, their administration pledged to end co-education and close down movie cinemas, which it considered as a mark of ungodly Western values. These policies created an enabling environment for extremists within the ruling alliance to press their agenda, which also opposed female education. In July 2005 the NWFP provincial assembly passed the 146controversial Hisba (accountability) law which envisaged the setting up of a watchdog body to ensure people respected calls to prayer, did not engage in commerce at the time of Friday prayers and that single men and women did not appear in public places together. The law also prohibited singing and dancing. Reminiscent of the infamous Department of Vice and Virtue in the Taliban’s Afghanistan the law proposed the appointment of a ‘Mohtasib’ (one who holds others accountable) to monitor the populace and ensure conduct consistent with Islamic tenets. This marked a dangerous step towards Talibanization and establishment of the kind of religious fascism Pakistan had never experienced before. But the law was never to be implemented as the Supreme Court of Pakistan, encouraged by the Musharraf government, struck it down as contrary to the country’s constitution. But other measures taken by the MMA government during its five- year rule provided a favourable environment for extremists who advocated use of force to achieve their objectives. Many activists, particularly from the JUI, broke away from the party and joined the ranks of those militants who were later to form the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2007. JUI had its origin in the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind which was founded by a group of clerics of the Deobandi Muslim movement in pre-partition India. This movement for Islamic revival had first emerged after the 1857 rebellion against British rule. A branch of Sunni Hanafi Islam, their creed is named after a religious seminary established in 1867 in Deoband near Delhi. The founders of the seminary drew their spiritual guidance from Shah Wali Ullah, an eighteenth-century Islamic scholar who endeavoured to bind different Islamic schools of thought. Primarily an anti-British movement, the Deobandis argued that Muslims could coexist with other religions in a society where they were not the majority. That was also the basis of their opposition to the division of India and creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for Muslims. Deobandis initially stressed on how to revive Islamic life while living under a colonial regime, eschewing politics and focusing on Islamic practices and personal belief, as opposed to the overtly political goals promoted by Islamist thinkers such as Maulana Maudoodi and Hassan al Banna, the founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. These ideas inspired the formation of the JUI as a separate 147organisation after independence in 1947. The party had a significant support base in the rural areas of southern NWFP. In the initial years, the organisation functioned strictly as a religious movement, which concentrated on setting up mosques and preaching. But gradually it developed into a politico-religious party, taking part in the political process and elections. The JUI leadership had traditionally been closer to nationalist and progressive parties than to the proponents of political Islam like the JI. In 1971 the party became a coalition partner of the Pashtun nationalist National Awami Party in the NWFP and Balochistan provincial governments. With the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces in the 1980s, the party’s political orientation transformed. With the help of funding from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, the Deobandi clerics established thousands of madrasahs in NWFP and Balochistan along the border with Afghanistan which provided volunteers to fight against communist forces. This brought about a series of transformations of the party, first from a religious movement to a political party and then to a party involved in jihadi politics. The decade long conflict in Afghanistan gave the Islamists a rallying point and training field. Young Muslims around the world flocked to Afghanistan to fight against a foreign invader. The Afghan resistance was projected by the US-led Western coalition as part of the global jihad against communism. The training of guerrillas was integrated in to the teaching of Islam. The prominent theme was that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology under threat from communist atheists. The Afghan war produced a new radical Islamic movement. Besides the holy warriors from Islamic countries, thousands more were recruited from the expanding madrasah network. General Zia-ul-Haq not only ushered Pakistan into its longest period of military rule but also tried to turn the country into an ideological state. Zia argued that as Pakistan was created on the basis of the two­ nation theory and Islamic ideology, it was the duty of the ‘soldiers of Islam to safeguard its security, integrity and sovereignty at all costs, both from internal turmoil and external aggression’. He claimed the state was created exclusively to provide its people with the opportunity to follow, ’the Islamic way of life.’ Preservation of the country’s Islamic character was 148seen to be as important as the security of the country’s geographical frontiers. Zia’s beliefs and politics empowered the clergy. His efforts to Islamise the state and society found ready allies among the religious parties, many of which already had close ties with the military. The Jamaat- e­Islami and other Islamic groups were co-opted by his government with leading figures serving in his martial law cabinet. For the first time in Pakistan’s history the Islamists occupied important government positions. Being in power helped the JI penetrate state institutions. Thousands of party activists and sympathisers were given jobs in the judiciary, civil service and educational institutions. These appointments strengthened the hold of the Islamists on crucial parts of the state apparatus for years to come. The regional and international climate of the 1980s favoured Zia’s orthodox Islamisation, and the alliance with the West served the military’s institutional interests. As a front-line ally of the US in the Soviet-Afghan War, the military benefited from billions of dollars in military and economic aid, while Zia promoted a militant version of Islam to fight the jihad and crush his democratic foes at home. Consequently, the Islamic movements and parties also thrived in this new­found jihadi culture. Jihad became the main pillar of Zia’s vision of an Islamic state and society. Religious parties came to use militancy to further their cause. Afghanistan provided inspiration to an entire generation of Pakistani Islamic radicals who considered it their religious duty to fight the oppression of Muslims anywhere in the world. It gave a new dimension to the idea of jihad, which till then had only been employed by the Pakistani state in the context of mobilising the population against the archrival—India. The Afghan War saw the privatisation of the concept of jihad. Militant groups emerged from the ranks of traditional religious movements, which took the path of an armed struggle for the cause of Islam. While the first Pakistani jihadi groups emerged in the 1980s, by 2002 the country had become home to twenty-four militant groups. Within a decade and a half highly disciplined paramilitary organisations were operating across the country pursuing their own internal and external agendas. The largest among them were the Lashkar-e­Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Harkat-al-Jihad-al Islami (HJI). All these paramilitary groups had similar motivations and goals, and recruited from the 149same kind of people (often unemployed youth from the Punjab and KP Provinces). The only difference was in patronage: HuM and HJI were both strongly linked with the Taliban, whilst LeT had strong links with Wahabi groups in Saudi Arabia. These militant organisations were not clandestine and had not sprouted surreptitiously. Their growth, even when not sponsored by state functionaries was viewed with favour by them. Their activities were no secret and found expression in graffiti, wallposters and pamphlets all over the country, inviting Muslims to join forces with them. They also carried addresses and telephone numbers to contact for training. ‘Jihad is the shortest route to paradise’, declares one of the many exhortations in such literature. ‘A martyr ensures salvation for the entire family.’ Every jihadi organisation had funds to help the families of ‘martyrs’. Although money was not the motivation of these jihadis, funding was essential to sustain the culture of jihad. The state’s patronage helped the jihadis raise funds at public places. The militant groups developed powerful propaganda machinery. Their publications gained a large readership and their messages also became available on video and audiotapes. During the 1980s and 1990s, the objective of the jihadi movements in Pakistan was not like that of Arab Salafists such as Osama bin Laden: to establish a global Islamic caliphate. Their objectives were more in line with the regional strategy of the Pakistani military establishment: the liberation of Kashmir from India and promoting a Pashtun government in Afghanistan. Most of these militant groups served as instruments of Pakistan’s regional policy. In the mid-1990s the JUI was deeply involved with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghan and Pakistani students from the madrasahs run by the JUI formed the nucleus of the Taliban militia, which swept Afghanistan in 1996 to install a conservative Islamic regime in Kabul. The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan encouraged Pakistani militant groups like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e­ Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Afghanistan became a base for their operations. Their leaders shared common origins, personnel and often patrons. Many of the Pakistani militants came from the same seminaries in the Pakistani border region from where the Afghan Taliban movement had emerged. Some of these groups were patronised by 150Pakistan’s intelligence agencies which also supported the Afghan Taliban. Both were important in furthering Pakistan’s strategic interests—to extend its influence in Afghanistan. Almost all the top militant leaders in the tribal region who later formed the nucleus of the Pakistani Taliban movement were initially associated with the JUI. Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Mullah Nazir all emerged from the ranks of the JUI which was the only political party allowed by the authorities to operate openly in the tribal areas (where formally political parties remained banned till a 2008 reform announcement that is yet to be implemented). As a result of al Qaeda’s influence, the leaders rejected the political and democratic path pursued by the JUI, which lead to a falling out between the JUI and the Pakistani Taliban. The new generation of Pakistani Taliban became more brutal than their Afghan comrades. Beheading and public executions of opponents and government officials became common practice. The videos of those brutal actions were then distributed to create fear. These sadistic actions were unknown in traditional Pushtun culture. This behaviour was greatly influenced by Arab and Uzbek militants. The Pakistani Taliban’s creed probably stemmed from Salafi-Jihadism ideology espoused by al Qaeda. It was also the result of Wahabism found in the Saudi-funded madrasahs, which created a new kind of radical Deobandism specific to the Taliban. On 14 December 2007 some forty militant leaders commanding some 40,000 fighters gathered in South Waziristan to form a united front under the banner of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. They unanimously elected Baitullah Mehsud, already the most powerful commander, as ‘Emir’ or supreme leader of the new organisation. The meeting was attended by almost all the top militant leaders operating in the tribal regions and NWFP or their representatives who managed to set aside their differences. Prominent among them were Hafiz Gul Bahadur from North Waziristan, Mullah Nazir from South Waziristan, Faqir Mohammed from Bajaur and Maulana Fazalullah from Swat. The presence of Gul Bahadur and Mullah Nazir, both belonging to Wazir tribe was curious because of their historic rivalry with Baitullah, from the Mehsud tribe. What had likely brought them together was the military assault ordered by Musharraf on Islamabad’s Red Mosque in July 1512007. The Shura or central council not only had representation from all the seven tribal agencies but also from the parts of KP including Swat, Malakand, Buner and Dera Ismail Khan where the Taliban movement was active. The eight-point charter called for the enforcement of Shari’a rule and vowed to continue fighting against foreign forces in Afghanistan. The TTP also declared what it described as ‘defensive’ jihad against the Pakistani military. The newly formed TTP was in fact little more than an extension of al Qaeda. Its formation followed Osama’s declaration of war against the Pakistani state in the aftermath of the siege of the Red Mosque. Its charter clearly reflected al Qaeda’s new strategy to extend its war to Pakistan. Almost all the top leaders of the new organisation, particularly its supreme leader Baitullah had a long association with al Qaeda. Afghan Taliban leaders were also closely involved in the formation of the organisation which implicitly declared its allegiance to Osama and Mullah Omar. The period after the formation of the TTP saw a marked rise in militant activity. Just ten days after its creation former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated a few weeks after her return to the country after a protracted time in exile. A suicide bomber blew himself up after firing gunshots at her as she came out of an election rally in Rawalpindi. The militants who missed her in the previous attack on her election rally in Karachi attack appeared to have finally succeeded in removing the leader who dared to confront them. Baitullah was blamed for a murder which was to completely change Pakistan’s political landscape. The Taliban insurgency spread rapidly with the formation of the TTP and came to engulf all the seven tribal regions as well as parts of the NWFP. The movement was most violent in the Swat valley where the followers of Mullah Fazlullah established a brutal regime until they were driven out by Pakistani military in June 2009. The rise of a distinctive Pakistani Taliban movement represented a new and more violent phase of Islamic militancy in the country. Suicide terrorism, which targeted both the military and civilians, saw a massive rise after the Red Mosque assault when al Qaeda and its Pakistani allies declared jihad against the Pakistani state. This marked a shift in jihadi 152strategy making the government and military the primary targets. In time security forces accounted for more than 60 per cent of the targets as human bombers became the most potent weapons in the militant war. More than 3,000 people, including senior army and intelligence officials, became victims of those attacks between 2007 and 2009. On average ninety people were killed a month in suicide bombings during 2009 with an attack occurring almost every five to six days across the country. Jihadi groups also expanded their attacks to Islamabad. They launched spectacular suicide raids in high security zones, including the Danish Embassy compound and the Marriot Hotel in June and September 2007, which killed more than sixty people. Both these attacks showed the growing power of the militants’ intelligence network. Both attacks were directly linked to al Qaeda backed militants. Despite the rise in suicide bombings the number of casualties in these attacks remained low compared to other violent assaults. But they had much greater impact. Suicide bombing as a weapon had seldom been used by Pakistani militant groups before, though some jihadi groups had used fidayeen raids against Indian security forces in Kashmir. The term ‘fidayeen attack’ was used by the militants for target operations. The concept of fidayeen (self-sacrifice) was different from that of a suicide bomber who blew himself up to kill others. Until then most militant groups considered suicide to be un-Islamic. A fidayee, on the other hand, was one who had to achieve his mission even in the worst of circumstances and come back alive. Suicide attacks were rarely used by the Afghan mujahideen in the War against the Soviet forces in the 1980s, though there were a few incidents involving Arab jihadists. The use of suicide bombings by Pakistani militants was largely a post-9/11 phenomenon. Some clerics had hailed the nineteen hijackers involved in the attack as ‘great heroes of Islam’. The more radical among them had even issued a fatwa giving religious sanction to suicide attacks against American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani soldiers fighting in South Waziristan. This sanction was also used by Muslim sectarian groups to justify actions targeting religious congregations of rival denominations. For militants the Western presence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan was a threat to Islam itself. This view became the ultimate rationale for jihadist militancy in Pakistan. Anybody allied with the enemy 153or those who seemed to be complicit in the war on the side of Western forces such as soldiers charged with safe passage for NATO convoys, civilians, moderate clerics and more recently, the government officials were regarded as fair game. Over the past few years several militant leaders have been killed in operations conducted by Pakistani military and CIA drone strikes, but they have been quickly replaced by new and more aggressive successors. The drone strikes have been a part of the CIA’s ‘secret war’ against al Qaeda in the tribal areas since 2004. But after 2009 there was a marked increase in these attacks. Shortly after his inauguration President Barack Obama ordered an escalation of the strikes as a part of his overall review of Afghan war strategy. In August 2009 Hellfire missiles fired by a pilotless Predator killed Baitullah and his young wife while the Taliban leader was being treated for his kidney ailment in his house in Makin in South Waziristan. His killing was perhaps the most successful strike in the eight-year history of the CIA’s drone operations in Pakistan. The drone strikes have been effective in eliminating leading al Qaeda and other militant commanders. But they have also had serious blowback effects. The escalation and increasing number of civilian deaths have stirred intense anger among the Pakistani public. This so-called secret war has become a focus of both militant rage and public protest. The United States has never officially acknowledged that it is launching the strikes and Islamabad has denied any collaboration. But the drone operations have been carried out with the tacit cooperation of the Pakistani government. With the reported deaths of women and children public anger has surged. The strikes have also spurred a significant rise in the number of recruits joining militant groups. Baitullah Mehsud’s killing, hailed as such a pivotal victory in Pakistan’s war against militants, resulted in only a brief lull in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban. He was quickly succeeded by a fierce commander, Hakimullah Mehsud. Just months after Baitullah’s death, the Pakistani Taliban took its wave of violence to a new level, launching a series of highly coordinated suicide bombings and attacks in the major Pakistani cities targeting even higher-security military installations. The closely synchronised attacks exposed weaknesses in Pakistan’s security apparatus and demonstrated that the militants had become more daring and sophisticated in planning and tactics. The TTP also developed a close nexus with other Pakistani militant 154factions, which had over time mutated into small cells after being proscribed by the Musharraf government in 2002. A new generation of young educated militants from urban areas, most of them splinters of mainstream Islamic political parties including the JI joined the new jihadist movement making it a formidable challenge to the Pakistani state. The movement began to draw young, middle-class professionals who were products of universities rather than of Islamic seminaries. Children of opportunity rather than deprivation, they became the planners of many terrorist attacks that heralded a new phase of militancy sweeping the country after 2007. Meanwhile al Qaeda, operating from the borderland, managed to transform and replenish itself with new recruits from among the Pakistani militant groups. This enabled it to also survive the capture and killing of many of its senior operatives. Founder members mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya, known as ‘Sheikhs’, continued to provide ideological leadership, but the rank and file of the network increasingly comprised the new militants from Pakistan and other countries including Somalia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Bangladesh who managed to slip into the border region. Pakistani intelligence agencies got the first clear idea of how al Qaeda had expanded its network into Pakistan’s urban centres from the arrest of Naeem Noor Khan in Lahore in July 2004. The twenty­ eight year old computer wizard from an educated middle-class family had for years worked as al Qaeda’s communication chief. An engineer by training, Naeem had left a promising career to join the jihad. Information acquired from his computer revealed that Naeem was a key link between bin Laden’s inner circle hiding in the mountainous tribal region and al Qaeda’s operatives around the world. It also provided unprecedented insight into its inner workings and international operations. Naeem was lured into jihad when he was still a student at a top engineering university in Karachi. Although he grew up in a liberal atmosphere he was greatly influenced by radical Muslim causes from Palestine to Bosnia. There were many other Pakistanis from the ranks of JI who were also involved with al Qaeda operating, thus giving the group a new depth in the country. The cadre al Qaeda attracted was ideologically and politically motivated. Thousands of well-trained militants who were battle-hardened in Kashmir and Afghanistan provided ready recruits. 155Pakistani militant groups like JeM, HuM, LeJ and HUJI that had disintegrated into small cells became an extension. The more Islamabad aligned itself with the United States the more young members of militant organisations turned inwards to target the military. The Karachi-based Jundullah (Army of God) was a prime example of the changing face of al Qaeda in Pakistan. The group was founded by Ata-ur-Rehman, a university graduate who was arrested in June 2004 on the charge of masterminding a series of terrorist attacks targeting security forces and government installations. The son of a prosperous businessman, Ata-ur-Rehrnan grew up in a middle class neighbourhood in Karachi. Many of his close relatives were settled in the United States. He turned to militancy after completing his Master’s degree in Statistics in 1991. Rehman was initially associated with Islami Jamiat- e-Talba, the student wing of JI. Like thousands of Pakistani militants he went to Afghanistan in the mid 1990s to receive military training. Rehman formed the group in 2003 after Pakistani security forces captured many top al Qaeda leaders including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. A well-knit cell comprising twenty militants, most of them in their twenties and thirties, Jundullah was the most ruthless of al Qaeda linked groups involved in a spate of violent attacks in Karachi. The group hit the headlines after an audacious attack in June 2004 on the cavalcade of a top army commander in the city. More than eleven soldiers and officers were killed in the raid in a busy street. The emergence of groups like Jundullah showed how new jihadi cells quickly formed after others were wound up. The rise of small terrorist cells made the task of countering them harder. These terrorist groups multiplied with the escalation in the Pakistani military offensives in the northwest and tribal regions. Some of these groups had just four or five members making them hard to detect. Among others who were arrested for association with Jundullah were Arshad Waheed and his brother Akmal Waheed, a neurosurgeon. Both men, in their mid thirties, were also JI members. Doctor Arshad Waheed was a well- known orthopaedic surgeon running his own hospital in Karachi and actively involved with the Jamaat. He moved to Kandahar after the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan apparently to provide medical help to the Taliban. The experience radicalised him further. Back in Pakistan he started mobilising 156people for jihad in Afghanistan. He criticised Pakistani religious political parties for seeking to gain power through elections. Disillusioned with the Jamaat’s politics he became associated with a little known militant group, Jundullah. Official Pakistani investigations showed that the two doctors had close links with al Qaeda. Besides sheltering terrorists they provided financial and medical help to the militants. JI ran an intense campaign for the release of the two doctors. The two brothers disappeared after being released on bail a few months later. They were later spotted in South Waziristan where Dr Arshad Waheed got actively involved with al Qaeda and took the war name, Sheikh Moaz. There he became a trained fighter and also provided medical training. Dr Arshad Waheed was killed in March 2008 when a CIA-operated drone struck his hideout in Dhok Pir Bagh near Wana. An al Qaeda video tape released after his death hailed him as a martyr who was ‘unparalleled in faith, love for his religion, and belief in Allah.’ The Waheed brothers’ role in al Qaeda raised questions about the JI’s connection with the organisation. This was not an isolated case. In 2003 Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured from the house of a leader of the party’s women’s wing in the Rawalpindi cantonment area. The raid produced another important catch: Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, a Saudi Arabian national accused of bankrolling the September 11 attacks. There were several other incidents where JI members were found to have provided refuge to al Qaeda fugitives. In January 2003 two al Qaeda operatives were arrested after a shootout in the house of another leader of the party’s women’s wing in Karachi. In 2003 the security agencies arrested Khawja Javed, a leading physician, and his brother for harbouring senior al Qaeda operatives and their families on their sprawling residential compound outside Lahore. Both were associated with JI. In 2005, security agencies arrested Ahsan Aziz, from Mirpur a town in Pakistani controlled Kashmir. He was another JI member with al Qaeda links. This underscored the support network that al Qaeda enjoyed among mainstream Islamic parties. The association of al Qaeda operatives with JI was not accidental. The country’s most powerful Islamic political party was after all the original face of jihad in Pakistan. In terms of its organisational capability, media skills, political experience and influence within the state institutions, JI emerged as 157the most powerful religious lobby in the country. In many respects JI was the main architect of official Islam in Pakistan. Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, was a leading proponent of political Islam along with Hasan al Banna and Sayyid Qutb, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Maududi’s influence went beyond the sub-continent and his writings gained a wide audience in the Islamic world. Maududi formed the JI in 1941 as an Islamic revivalist movement to promote Islamic values and practices. The basic objective of the party was to seize state power and establish Islamic rule. It pledged not to adopt any illegal or underground means to come to power. ‘It will educate people in the first course about real Islamic values and participate in elections’, the foundation manifesto declared. Maududi was a prolific writer. In hundreds of books and pamphlets he laid out an elaborate ideological vision. He argued that Islam is as much a political ideology as it is a religion and that the basic division in the world was between ‘Islam and un-Islam’. He described the political system of Islam as ’theo-democracy’ a system in which officials would be elected, but would be subject to divine laws interpreted by the theologically learned. Over the years JI increasingly used force to assert its politics. The party’s first venture into military jihad came in 1971 when its cadres sided with the Pakistan Army in opposing independence for Bangladesh. The party members were organised into two militant groups, Al-Badr and Al-Shams, and were trained by the Pakistan Army to carry out operations against Bengali nationalists seeking separation from Pakistan. JI was the only political party that actively supported the military operation which killed thousands of Bengalis and ultimately resulted in the dismemberment of the country less than twenty-five years after its creation. Since the 1970s militancy became an integral part of JI politics. By 1976 the Jamaat’s street power had multiplied and the number of its members and supporters jumped to two million. The party also organised armed groups to intimidate the opposition. As pointed out earlier General Zia’s regime gave the Jamaat unprecedented influence. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, JI found the opportunity to establish itself as the main exponent of Jihad. Maududi died in an American hospital just a few months before Soviet President Brezhnev ordered his troops to march into Afghanistan in 1979. JI, which by then had become completely intertwined with the military, played a major role in the 158Afghan jihad sponsored by the CIA and the ISI. Thousands of its members joined the mujahideen fighting the Soviet forces. It was also the period when the party developed close contacts with Arab jihadists, many of whom were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. There was a very close ideological bond between the two parties striving for international Islamic revolution. Many of these Brotherhood fighters, including al Zawahiri, would form the main nucleus of al Qaeda in later years. During the Afghan Jihad JI was able to build a significant infrastructure, including madrasahs, businesses and charities with the help of generous financial contributions from governments and private individuals in the Gulf States. Thousands of JI cadres received training alongside foreign and Afghan fighters, developing a close affinity with them. By the time of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the party had developed close ties with Islamist groups throughout the world. Islamist liberation movements seeking redress of perceived and real grievances in places remote from Pakistan, such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Southern Philippines congregated in Pakistan. JI raised funds for these groups and provided military training for their members in addition to allowing its own younger members to participate in jihad around the world. Once an ally of the United States, JI now became part of global jihad. Hundreds of its cadres were killed fighting in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. The arrests of al Qaeda leaders from residences belonging to JI members brought the party under national and international scrutiny, but there was little evidence that the party itself collaborated in any terrorist actions. Although JI sympathised with various jihadi movements, it took care not to cross the line from being primarily an ideological-political movement, or in Maududi’s words ’the vanguard of Islamic revolution.’ The rise in the number of cadres from mainstream Islamic political parties joining the militant war against Pakistani forces has made the threat to the country much more serious. Over the years the Pakistani government and the military underestimated and ignored this rising threat. A policy of appeasement from 2001 to 2009 allowed the Taliban to establish control not only in all the seven tribal agencies of FATA but also sweep parts of the KP. Taking advantage of a peace deal with the government in 2009, the 159Taliban led by an instigating cleric, Mullah Fazlullah, not only established retrogressive rule in the Swat Valley but also expanded his influence in the neighbouring districts of Dir and Buner. The advance of the Taliban to areas just 70 miles from the capital raised a nightmare scenario of militants raging out of control. At the same time Baitullah’s supporters stepped up terrorist attacks in mainland Pakistan. The alarming development raised serious concern in Washington and other Western capitals. The Taliban advance finally forced the military to move against them. In the first week of May 2009 the Army launched a three-pronged offensive involving approximately 30,000 troops, backed by air force jets and helicopter gunships, turning a large area of the Swat Valley into a battle zone. It was the bloodiest battle yet in Pakistan’s struggle against militancy. The fighting forced some two million people to leave their homes creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the country’s history. After fierce fighting government forces were able to seize control of the region, but the war was far from over. The military success in Swat dealt a serious blow to the Taliban, and won the praise of the United States and other Western allies, but it also prompted the insurgents to expand the guerrilla war into the country’s heartland. There was a marked increase in suicide attacks on security forces and installations around the country in the months that followed. In a daring attack in mid-October militants attacked the high security Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and held some thirty­ nine officers and civilians hostage for twenty-two hours. The attackers had pulled off a security breach at one of the most sensitive national defence establishments in the country and had threatened the safety of the Army’s top commanders. The GHQ attack was carried out with the objective of sending the message that despite the setback in Swat, the militants still had the capacity to hit wherever they wanted. It was a joint operation by the Taliban and elements of a number of outlawed groups, which are dominated by militants from the Punjab. Such collaboration had been revealed in a number of other terrorist attacks in major Pakistani cities. These signalled the existence of strong bases of support for militant terrorism in the heartland and the emergence of an ever more intertwined nexus between educated professionals and tribal militants. The GHQ attack left the military with no other option but to move against the 160bastion of Taliban power in South Waziristan. The long-awaited offensive began on 17 October 2009, with the deployment of more than forty-five thousand troops, backed by the air force. The massive use of force was considered critical to quickly wind up the operation. With these troops added to those still deployed in the Swat, the size of the total force engaged in the battle reached a record 100,000. Security forces were able to drive out the Taliban fighters from most of their stronghold in South Waziristan by the end of 2009. But the military’s hold remained tentative with most of the insurgent leaders escaping to neighbouring North Waziristan and other tribal regions. The Army extended the operation to the Orakzai tribal agency which had also become the centre for Taliban activities. Despite the military success in Swat, South Waziristan and other tribal agencies, there has been little abatement in the militant violence. Pakistan’s major problem in dealing with rising militancy is lack of a comprehensive and integrated counter-terrorism strategy. In the areas that have been cleared of militants there is still no effective civil administration that has been put in place making it more difficult to consolidate military gains. The use of military force alone cannot win the war against rising militancy, which poses the biggest internal security threat to the country. To reverse the tide of militancy there is a need to take a holistic approach which also includes the political mobilisation of the people to combat terrorism. Although public opinion seems to have turned against militancy, the absence of a concerted government effort to leverage this as part of evolving a coherent strategy means that the most important aspect of reversing the tide of militancy remains to be addressed. Important gains have been made in the past two years, but unless these are reinforced by non-military measures to neutralise the militants and their toxic creed and buttressed by effective governance these gains may turn out to be ephemeral.