Riding the Jehadi Tiger

Terror, like chickens, comes home to roost. Arrests made earlier this month near Baghdad have blown the lidoff links between the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Islamist groups fighting the United Statesmilitary in Iraq: evidence that ought to cause at least some embarrassment to USA's South Asia establishment,currently in the throes of a grand détente with Pakistan.

Part of the deal seems to have been to give Pakistan's military considerable freedom to continue itssupport to officially-authorised jehadis. If nothing else, the Iraq arrests illustrate the profoundunwillingness of the US' counter-terror czars to learn that riding the jehadi tiger is a profoundlydangerous occupation.

In March - and possibly even earlier - United States forces detained Pakistani national Dilshad Ahmad and fourothers in Baghdad. Details of these detentions, and of the LeT's activities in Iraq, are hazy. However, Ahmad,a long-time Lashkar operative from the Bahawalpur area of the province of Punjab, had played a key role in theLashkar's trans-Line of Control (LoC) operations, serving between 1997 and 2001 as the organisation'scommander for the forward camps from where infiltrating groups of terrorists are launched into Jammu andKashmir (J&K) with Pakistani military support.

Ahmad is believed to have made at least six secret visits to Lashkar groups operating in J&K duringthis period. He also authored several articles on the now-defunct Lashkar website, one describing inparticularly macabre terms the merits of severing Indian soldiers' limbs from their bodies.

A close associate of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the second-in-command in the Lashkar military hierarchy, Ahmadlong had a key role in shaping the organisation's ideological and military agenda: a fact that raises obviousquestions about his work in Iraq. In 1998, he addressed a major LeT conference in Muridke, arguing for theneed to extend the organisation's activities outside J&K.

Ahmad is believed to have played a key role in building the infrastructure for the dozens of Lashkar cells,which have since carried out bombings in several major Indian cities. At least four other Lashkar operativesare known to have been arrested in the intelligence-led operation that ended in Ahmad's arrest, but nothingelse is publicly available on their intentions or origins. US officials had kept a tight lid on news of thearrests until it was first reported in The Hindu on April 1.

For the US, the arrests are a potentially embarrassing election-time reminder that the LeT, proscribed by allmajor western capitals including Washington, continues to operate freely in Pakistan. In January, aspoliticians across the sub-continent prepared for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)Summit in Islamabad, Pakistan took stern measures to put a lid on the LeT's anti-India polemic.

The Lashkar's web-site was shut down, and its overall political and religious chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeedwas barred from addressing a rally in the town of Multan. Soon after SAARC, however, the restraints on theLashkar were lifted. In February, Saeed was allowed to travel to Islamabad to attend the funeral prayersorganised by Pakistani bureaucrat-businessman Zahoor Ahmad Awan, whose son, a Lashkar operative, was killed byIndian troops. Saeed told the assembly that the fighting in Jammu and Kashmir was "the greatest jehad inthe entire history of Islam."

As important, the Lashkar has again been given considerable freedom to continue building its militaryinfrastructure. In the build-up to the Eid festival in March, the organisation, now operating under the newlabel of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, was reported to have raised Rs. 780 million from the sale of hides of sacrificialanimals donated by followers. The Lashkar proclaimed, through advertisements and announcements by loyalclerics, that the proceeds would be used for the "Mujahideen who have sacrificed their lives forIslam" and for "the parents, widows and children of martyrs who waged jehad in Kashmir andAfghanistan." Although this activity seems in express violation of the Pakistan Government's ban onraising funds for jehad-related activities, no real action appears to have been taken against thoseinvolved. Two Lashkar cadres were briefly detained in Karachi during the fundraising drive, a purely tokengesture.

Such activity has serious consequences for India. Police authorities in New Delhi recently arrested threemembers of a Lashkar squad tasked to attack the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The organisation has alsobeen active in targeted attacks on candidates involved in the ongoing Parliamentary elections in J&K, andhave issued warnings to voters not to exercise their franchise. According to police officials in J&K, alittle over half of all terrorist acts in the State are now committed by the organisation. This escalatingmilitary activity is part of a pattern. Pakistan formally banned the LeT in the wake of the 2001-2002'near-war' with India, but soon allowed the organisation to resume operations under a new label, theJamaat-ud-Dawa. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa is on a terrorism watch-list in Pakistan, but publicly collects funds andrecruits cadre for its operations.

In other words, Pakistan seems willing to temporarily close the terror tap - cross-border infiltration is atan all time low, and violence levels in J&K have fallen significantly. But it is becoming clear that thecountry's military establishment isn't willing to seal the pipeline that feeds terror just yet. Washington'stolerance seems to be driven by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's claims that he cannot take on theentire religious right without provoking a major backlash. As a result, Pakistan's military establishment hasbeen able to keep the infrastructure of anti-India terrorism intact. It is worth noting that thisinfrastructure has, historically, imposed great costs on the US. General Zia-ul-Haq's diversion of Afghan warequipment for jehadis in J&K helped build the LeT in the first place, as well as allied jehadigroups now active against Coalition Forces in Afghanistan.

Jehadi groups seem to have largely respected the unspoken US-Pakistan deal - a romance that obviouslycannot speak its name - this time around. Although Lashkar cadre were in the past believed to have fought innorthern Afghanistan and Chechnya, no similar global activity was noticed in Iraq until the recent arrests.The Lashkar's house journal, Majallah ad Dawa, has been relatively restrained in its criticism of theUS occupation of Iraq. In the current issue of the magazine, Saeed calls on believers to "never to makefriends with Jews and Christians," but there is no express call for jehad directed at the US. Bycontrast, Majallah ad Dawa's position on India is more aggressive. One article claims that IndianMuslims have come to realise that "without migration and jehad there is no future"; another,in a recent issue, asks Pakistani school-children to join the jehad and advises them on how to identityIndian soldiers to be attacked.

The lessons seem fairly obvious to anyone who doesn't work in the President George Bush's Administration."As long as someone has a gun in his hand," says a senior Indian military official, "he decideswhen he wants to use it, not you. If someone is walking around with a gun, and you want to stop him from usingit, the only really sure-fire solution is to take it away."

Praveen Swami is New Delhi Chief of Bureau, Frontline magazine, and also writes for its sisterpublication, The Hindu. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.