The interrogation of Muhammed Aquil alias Dr Usman, the only surviving member of the group of nine terrorists, which launched a commando-style attack on the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters (GHQ) at Rawalpindi on October 10, 2009, which lasted a little over 20 hours, has not yet started. He is reported to have been seriously injured, when he tried to blow himself up inside the GHQ to avoid being captured. He is presently under treatment in a military hospital, where army doctors are desperately trying to save his life. The Pakistani authorities now believe that he was the leader of the commando group, which attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March last and the GHQ on October 10-11.
On the basis of a record check, Pakistani investigators say that he is a Punjabi from the Kahuta Tehsil of the Rawalpindi District. He had served as a sepoy in the Army Medical Corps. He resigned from the Army after some years and joined the anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ). When the Pashtun-dominated Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) came into existence after the Pakistani Army commando raid in the Lal Masjiid of Islamabad in July,2007, some of the Punjabi members of the LEJ , including Aquil, floated a new organisation called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab. Its leader's name is given as Farooq. Not much is known about him.
In the 1990s, the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), which came into existence with the encouragement of the late Zia-ul-Haq, floated the LEJ. The SSP and the LEJ projected themselves as different organisations with no links, but Pakistani police officials believed that the SSP was the political wing of the clandestine LEJ. They further believe that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab is a newly-created united front of the LEJ, which seeks to bring together the various anti-Shia and pro-Al Qaeda groups of Punjab to act against the Army as well as the Shias. While the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) is part of this united front, the Laashkar-e-Toiba (LET) is not.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), now headed by Hakimullah Mehsud, and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab share a Wahabist ideology and a common objective of fighting against the Pakistan Army's co-operation with the US. The two organisations share each other's training facilities and sanctuaries. They keep using each other's trained and motivated cadres for their operations. However, the operations of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab are largely confined to the non-tribal belt. The LEJ sometimes acts as the fighting arm of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab and sometimes independently. Al Qaeda acts as the mentor and motivator of all these organisations.
Police sources say that Aquil's name had earlier figured in the investigations into the assassination of the Surgeon General of the Pakistan Army Hafiz Mirza Muhammad Mushtaq Baig last year, the firing of a rocket at a plane carrying Perevez Musharraf in July,2007, and the attack on the SL cricket team in Lahore in March last.
Both the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the LEJ are members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People. Both are strongly Wahabi organisations, but whereas the LEJ is strongly anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-India, anti-Iran and anti-Shia, the LET is only anti-US, anti-Israel and anti-India, but not anti-Iran or anti-Shia.
There is no confirmed instance of the LET indulging in planned anti-Shia violence in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but the LEJ has been responsible for most of the targeted attacks on Shias and their places of worship in Pakistan and on the Hazaras--who are Shias--in Pakistan and Afghanistan.