Anti-Christian Terrorism

This is to be read in continuation of the articles titled SectarianRoots Branching Out and TerroristMeteorites And Pakistanisation Of Al Qaeda

Since the Afghan war of the 1980s, Pakistan has seen two waves of old or conventional terrorism, involvingthe use of hand-held weapons, explosive devices and suicide bombers.  The first wave was between 1988,when the Soviet troops started leaving Afghanistan, and 1996 and the second wave, which started after October7, 2001, is continuing.

Amongst the factors which caused the first wave were: 

• The parting of the ways between Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment and the Mohajir QaumiMovement (MQM--since renamed Muttahida Qaumi Movement), which was created by Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s tocounter the influence of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP),  and the Sindhi nationalistparties.  When Altaf Hussain, the founding father of the MQM, stopped doing the bidding of the Army andthe ISI, the latter created a split and instigated the newly-created MQM (Haqiqi-Real) to indulge in acts ofterrorism against the MQM.
  

• The parting of the ways between the old guard of the Sindhi nationalist movement led by the late G.M.Syed,which hobnobbed with the Army and helped it in countering Benazir, and a new generation of Sindhi nationalistsled by Qadir Magsi, the founder of the Jiye Sindh Progressive Party (JSPP), which refused to be the tool ofthe ISI and the Army and took to acts of terrorism against the Army as well as the two factions of the MQM.
  
  
• The increase in the activities of Al Zulfiquar founded by the late Murtaza Bhutto, brother of Benazir,which was used by the late Jam Sadiq Ali, the Army-favoured Chief Minister of Sindh, to discredit Benazir andher party after her dismissal as Prime Minister in August,1990.
  
  
• The collusion between the military-intelligence establishment and the Sunni-extremist Sipah-e-SahabaPakistan (SSP), another brain child of Zia,  and its offspring the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) .
  
  
• The peeling-off of the foreign mercenaries from Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops fromthere.  This  was in three directions: Some sections of the Arab mercenaries and those from Centraland South-East Asia and China  returned to their countries of origin and took to terrorism there. The remaining Arab dregs entered Pakistan and were given shelter in the local madrasas from where they trainedand equipped jehadis of various hues and sent them to Chechnya, Dagestan, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, SouthernPhilippines and other places.  The Pakistani dregs belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), theHarkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) were diverted by the Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI) to India's Jammu & Kashmir to step up terrorism.  The Pakistani dregs of the SSPspread out in Pakistan and started targeting the Shias.

Osama bin Laden, who was living during this period initially in Saudi Arabia and subsequently in Khartoumin the Sudan, had only limited influence over these dregs.  Ayman-al-Zawahiri of Egypt, who subsequentlybecame No.2 in Osama's Al Qaeda, exercised greater influence over the Arab dregs, who had stayed behind inPakistan, many of them of Egyptian origin.  These dregs stepped up acts of terrorism in Pakistaniterritory, with their favoured targets being US, Egyptian and Iranian nationals and Shias, both clerics andintellectuals.

The activities of the MQM, the MQM(H), the Sindhi nationalists and  Al Zulfiquar were largely focussedin Sindh and made Karachi practically non-governable for nearly six years till 1996 and were free of anysectarian or anti-US or pro-Saddam overtones.  While anti-establishment feelings largely motivated theactions of the MQM, the Sindhi nationalists and Al Zulfiquar, the MQM (H) functioned and continues to functionlargely as the mercenary force of the ISI for neutralising the MQM.

As against this, the activities of the Arab and Pakistani dregs, which  were concentrated  inKarachi,  Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), had a complex mix of motives--anti-Shia,anti-US and pro-Saddam.  While there were  attacks on individual officers of the provincialadministrations, their actions were largely free of anti-ISI and anti-Army overtones.

None of the organisations mentioned in Paras 5 and 6 directed their acts of terrorism against the Hindu andChristian minorities, each of which constitute about 1.5 per cent of Pakistan's total population (130 millionplus).  The destruction of the Babri Masjid by a Hindu mob in India in December,1992, led to a wave ofattacks by Islamic fundamentalist elements on Hindu places of worship in different parts of Pakistan, buttheir violent actions were, by and large,  not directed against members of the Hindu community.

The years 1993,1994 and 1995 saw some of the worst acts of terrorism in the history of Pakistan.  In1994, the Government of Benazir Bhutto decided to create the Taliban to restore law and order in Afghanistanto facilitate the construction of the oil and gas pipeline project of UNOCAL, the US company, and the overlandmovement of cotton from Turkmenistan to the textile mills of Pakistan, which were facing difficulties due tothe failure of the cotton crop in Pakistan  for three years in succession.

Maj. Gen.(retd)Nasirullah Babbar, Benazir's Interior Minister, who was entrusted with this task, the thenMaj. Gen.Pervez Musharraf, who assisted him, and the ISI succeeded in persuading/pressurising the variousPakistani and Arab dregs, which were indulging in acts of terrorism in Pakistan, to join the Taliban and helpit in the capture of power in Afghanistan.  Thousands of these dregs moved back to Afghanistan and playedan active role in helping Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, and his group in capturing power insouthern Afghanistan initially and subsequently in the Herat region  near the Iranian and Turkmenistanborders and in Eastern Afghanistan.  They ultimately captured Kabul itself in September,1996, andextended their sway further to the North.

The movement of these dregs back to Afghanistan resulted in a  decline of terrorist violence inPakistani territory and in the increase of anti-Shia violence in the Hazara areas of Afghanistan.  Anti-Shiaand anti-Iranian acts of terrorism continued to take place in Sindh and Punjab, but with reduced intensity. Particularly, the Arab dregs no longer posed a major law and order problem for the Pakistani authorities.

bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from the Sudan in 1996.  Initially, he took up residence inJalalabad and, after September,1996,  shifted to Kandahar, the headquarters of the Taliban Amir. Alongwith him came his so-called 055 Brigade, which was originally set up to take care of his physical security. Initially, he rallied round all the Arab dregs of the 1980s anti-Soviet war which had been fighting along withthe Taliban under his leadership to constitute an exclusively Arab terrorist organisation, which has come tobe known as Al Qaeda and set up its training infrastructure in Eastern Afghanistan. In 1998, he rallied roundthe various Pakistani dregs and other terrorists from Southern Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar,Bangladesh, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), the Xinjiang region of China, and Chechnya in Russia under hisleadership in a united front of like-minded terrorist organisations which has come to be known as theInternational Islamic Front for Jehad against the US and Israel.  In the formulation of this united frontstrategy, he would appear to have been influenced  by a similar strategy adopted before 1994 by Carloswho, after embracing Islam, was living in Khartoum at the same time as bin Laden before he was kidnapped bythe French, with the complicity of the Sudanese intelligence, in August,1994, and taken to Paris.

bin Laden gave this International Islamic Front an exclusively anti-US and anti-Israel motivation and, forthis purpose, he used not only the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the Western presence inSaudi Arabia, but also the economic sanctions imposed against Iraq and the repeated US and British aerialstrikes against Iraq for arousing the anger of the cadres of the Front and inducing them to come forward tocarry out suicide missions as acts of punishment against the US.

The year 1998 saw the beginning of the wave of new terrorism, which ultimately culminated in 9/11 and ledto the US-led war against international terrorism operating from the epicentre of Afghanistan.  bin Ladenhad always taken care to maintain good relations with Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment andrefrained from organising any acts of terrorism against US targets in Pakistani territory, in order not tocreate difficulties for the Pakistani Army and the ISI.  Even today, despite Musharraf's seemingco-operation with the US against the Taliban and  Al Qaeda, he has not publicly uttered any strong wordsof criticism against Pakistan's military dictator.

While there was no evidence of any Iraqi financial or other material assistance for bin Laden, Iraq hadreasons to be gratified by the anti-US activities of bin Laden's International Islamic Front and SaddamHussain viewed bin Laden as an objective ally in his own fight against the US.  After the explosionsorganised by Al Qaeda in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August,1998, the US started pressurising the Taliban andthe Nawaz Sharif regime in Pakistan to co-operate in the capture and deportation of bin Laden to face trial inthe US.  During this period, an emissary of Saddam visited Kandahar with an offer of sanctuary in Iraq ifbin Laden was forced to quit Afghanistan.  bin Laden did not accept it.  Thereafter, there was noevidence of any other contact between Iraq and bin Laden.

The post-1995 period had seen the emergence in Pakistan of anti-Christian violence for the first time. There were increasing instances of vexatious prosecutions of Christians under the blasphemy law and there wasconsiderable resentment over the interest taken by the Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and otherWestern non-governmental organisations not only in the violations of the human rights of the Christians andanti-Christian violence, but also in issues such as child labour, rights of women etc.

These anti-Christian feelings acquired added force after the formation of the International Islamic Frontby bin Laden, which designated the Christians (descendants of the Crusaders) and the Jewish people as theprincipal enemies of Islam and after the unsuccessful attempt of Musharraf in 2000 to revise the procedure forprosecution under the blasphemy law in order to prevent vexatious arrests and prosecutions.  He had togive up the attempt due to opposition from the Islamic fundamentalist and jehadi organisations.

He was viewed by these organisations as amenable to the influence of Western non-Governmental organisations. His actions for a greater political role for women were also attributed by them to this influence. Instead ofattacking him directly, these organisations started in 2000 a campaign for the expulsion of all Westernnon-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Pakistan.  During their campaign, these organisations wereprojected by them not as Western, but as Christian NGOs, thereby adding to the growing anti-Christian feelingsin the fundamentalist and jehadi circles.

Thus, anti-Christian feelings had already started manifesting themselves in Pakistan even before 9/11. These feelings have worsened after the US started its air strikes in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.  Thesurviving dregs of  Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Pakistani components of the International IslamicFront, who have taken shelter in different parts of Pakistan since the beginning of this year, have beenprojecting the Bush Administration as acting under the influence of the Christian right.  The USA'sactions in Afghanistan and Pakistan and its support to Israel are being projected as the war of Christianfundamentalism from its epicentre of the USA against Islam. Not only these dregs, now operating fromsanctuaries in Pakistan, but even some sections of the media and pro-bin Laden elements in Saudi Arabia havebeen making allegations of a war against Islam being waged by US-based Christian fundamentalists.  The USmedia is projected by them as controlled by either Christian or Jewish fundamentalists.

This has added to the anti-Christian irrationality in Pakistan and is responsible for the repeated attacks on exclusively Christian targets since October, 2001.  These are in addition to the attacks onWestern targets such as the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the explosion outsidethe Sheraton Hotel in Karachi killing 11 French nationals, the explosion outside the US Consulate in Karachiand the grenade attack on a group of Western tourists travelling to Xinjiang along the Karakoram Highway.Thus, the return of the dregs to Pakistan and the failure of the Musharraf regime to act firmly against themare leading to a new wave of old terrorism of the pre-1996 kind. The increase in anti-Christian violence hasbeen accompanied by a decrease in anti-Shia violence.

The evidence available so far indicates that while there was some Yemeni-Balochi involvement in the murderof Pearl, all other acts of terrorism since October, 2001 -- whether directed against Western or Christiantargets -- were the work of the Pakistani dregs belonging to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad. There is as yet no credible evidence of the involvement of the Arab elements of  Al Qaeda, who have beenlying low.

The Pakistani dregs involved in these acts of violence continue to nurse strong pro-Saddam feelings, butthere is no evidence of any renewed contacts with the Iraqi intelligence.  In the lower and middle levelsof the Pakistani military-intelligence  and nuclear establishments , there has always been considerablesympathy for Saddam.  This became evident during the Gulf war of 1991.  There is a strong possibility of more anti-US and anti-Christian violence in Pakistan as the speculation over the possibility ofUS action to remove Saddam gathers momentum, with the pro-Saddam elements in the military-intelligenceestablishment not exerting themselves to put an end to this new wave of old-style terrorism. 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently,Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)