Beastly Tales From The Jihadi Zoo

Fearful of being fed to the tigers in the forest next door, the inhabitantsof Pakistani's jihadi menagerie have started to turn on the zoo-keeper.

For the past week, top jihadi leaders have staged an unprecedentedhunger-strike to protest against what they see as Pakistani President PervezMusharraf's decision to abandon the 'holy war' in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).At least eighteen top commanders, including the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM)chief Mohammad Yusuf Shah, the Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) MohammadZaki-ur-Rahman, al-Umar's Mushtaq Zargar, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad's (JeM)Abdul Rehman, say they will continue their protests until General Musharrafchanges course.

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, the Muzaffarabad-based HMspokesperson Mohammad Kalimullah said the United Jihad Council (UJC) hadwritten to Pakistan's President a fortnight ago, expressing concern about hisdiminishing support for the jihad in J&K. When Musharraf did notrespond, Kalimullah said, the UJC had been compelled to initiate public protestsagainst what he characterised as a "war in which one hundred thousandKashmiris have sacrificed their lives."

Do the protests herald an end to Pakistani support for the jihad inJ&K? Not quite. Indian signals intelligence officials say there has been noreduction in military communications traffic between terrorists and theircontrol stations in Pakistan. Individual terror cells - witness the recentbombings in Varanasi or the spate of shootouts in J&K - remain active.Although newspapers have reported that the UJC protests have been arrested,their infrastructure remains in place.

What, then, is going on?

It has long been evident that the once-happy marriage between GeneralMusharraf and his allies in jihadi organisations was souring. Lashkarchairman Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, for one, has been increasingly critical of thePakistani President. In a recent article in Ghazwa, LeT's weeklypublication, Saeed wrote: "After 9/11, Pakistan made a foreign policyU-turn to accommodate American interests. It was said that backing US would helpsolve the problem in Kashmir and protect our nuclear programme. But none of thishas materialised."

Instead, Saeed argued in a recent sermon at the al-Qudsia mosque in Lahore,strong international pressures had built up for "the termination of the jihadin Kashmir." "Conspiracies," he asserted, "are being hatchedagainst Pakistan's atomic programme." "President Abdul Kalam, whohelped make India a nuclear power, sits across to discuss matters withBush," the Jamaat ud-Dawa leader noted, "while the father ofPakistan's atomic programme, Abdul Qadir Khan is rotting in a jail cell."

To Saeed, the recent visit of President George Bush to Pakistan, during whichthe United States reiterated calls for an end to jihad in J&K,demonstrated the failure of General Musharraf's policies. "But we arehappy," Saeed said, "for the situation is now more conducive for jihad."An editorial on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa website advises, "It is better ourrulers give up their anti-jihad policies and re-orient the foreign policyof Pakistan according to tenets of Islam (sic)."

None of this polemic is new. At the Jamaat-ud-Dawa's annual Takmeel-e-Pakistan[Fulfilment of the Idea of Pakistan] convention, which was held at Lahore inAugust 2005, Saeed articulated many of the same ideas. He called for mandatoryrecruitment of all Pakistani men to the jihad and the conquest of partsof India, and held the United States of America responsible not just for thecreation of Bangladesh but a still-unfinished conspiracy which would use Indiaand Israel to "ruin Pakistan."

Signs that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa was attempting to integrate itself with thespectrum of anti-Musharraf forces in Pakistan were evident at the convention. Itwas addressed, for example, by Zaeem Qadri, a functionary responsible for thepublic relations work of former President Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim Leaguein Punjab. Maulana Saifuddin Saif, the secretary-general of the MuttahidaMajlis-e-Amal, also addressed the convention. No representatives of thePakistani state, by contrast, were on hand.

Also significant was the fact that a representative of the Pakistan-basedleadership of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) was on hand - the politicalface of the UJC leaders with whom the Lashkar has now allied. APHCrepresentative Abdullah Malik delivered an incendiary address, asserting thatthe jihad in J&K would continue "until the destruction ofIndia." "Pakistan ka matlab kya? La illaha il-Allah [themeaning of Pakistan is that that there is no god but Allah] still resounds underthe guns in Kashmir," he said.

Jihadi groups aren't the only ones to be angry. Ever since at least 2002a wide spectrum of politicians in Pakistan have found it expedient to chargeGeneral Musharraf with selling out in J&K. Figures as diverse as PrimeMinister Nawaz Sharif, Alliance for Restoration of Democracy leader NawabzadaNasrullah Khan, the Jamaat-e-Islami's Qazi Husain Ahmad and the Jamaat-e-UlemaIslam (JUI) chief Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman have at one point or the other made theassertion - even while saying quite the opposite to other audiences.

Does all this mean that there is a fundamental reversal in the decades-longrelationship between jihadi forces and the Pakistani state? No and yesare both valid answers.

Part of the reason why the UJC's protests have surprised experts is that thediscourse on jihadi organisations suffers from a major epistemologicalerror. Pakistan's Islamist armies are often understood, correctly, to have aninternational agenda. Jihadi wars against India or Afghanistan are,without dispute, a central concern for such organisations. What is oftenforgotten is that they also have a domestic agenda: harvesting and expendingpolitical power in Pakistan itself.

To understand the evolving Islamist posture on J&K, one must engage withthe multiple pressures on Pakistani policy-making. Ever since the India-Pakistannear-war of 2001-2002, the United States has been concerned that continued jihadiviolence could lead the nuclear-armed adversaries into a calamitous conflict.Links between Pakistani Islamist groups and both the Taliban and al-Qaeda havealso added increasing urgency to the United States' calls for the jihadizoo to be shut down.

United States pressure, though, isn't the only reason for General Musharraf'schanging agenda. Beset by multiple internal crises, the Pakistani President mustbe acutely aware that his position within the armed forces is increasinglyfragile. Pakistan's corps commanders, although loyal to their chain of command,have demonstrated the will to remove leaders who threaten their corporateinterests. General Yahya Khan, General Ayub Khan and General Mohammad Zia ul-Haqwere all 'removed' from office, after all, by palace rebellion.

As things stand, General Musharraf's position is tenuous as never before. Onthe one hand, his regime is confronted with potentially existence-threateningwars in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. On the other, thebrief economic resurgence, engineered through the massive infusion of foreignaid, which the Pakistani President succeeded in bringing about, has also begunto diminish. Double-digit inflation has alienated General Musharraf's supportersamong the urban middle class, while at once feeding resentment among the growingranks of the poor.

Heading into the 2007 elections, General Musharraf will have few allies.Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Husain Ahmad has said his party will not participatein an election over which General Musharraf presides. Others in the MMA, too,seem to think capitalising on anti-Musharraf sentiments would offer Islamistsgreater opportunities for expansion than backing a process which allowed him acentral role in Government. Neither former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto norNawaz Sharif is likely to back a regime which includes General Musharraf.

In recent months, there have been more than a few signs that jihadiorganisations have been sensing that General Musharraf's regime is edgingever-closer to the abyss. Predictably, some in their ranks now seem to thinkthat joining in a larger Islamist shove might just be in the interests of theirorganisations. Just this month, for example, top Jamaat-ud-Dawa ideologue AbdulRahman Makki joined in Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal protests against GeneralMusharraf, the first time the organisation has ever done so.

Within J&K, too, the traditional supporters of the Pakistani state havebeen distancing themselves from General Musharraf. In an acid January 28, 2006,statement, soon after he met with the Hizb's Shah, Syed Ali Shah Geelani of theTehreek0e-Hurriyat said that the Pakistani President had "no mandate topropose a political solution unacceptable to the people of occupied Jammu andKashmir… It is the Kashmiris who will decide the future of the freedomstruggle, not President Musharraf.''

None of this is, of course, surprising. Pakistan's Islamists have long had aninstrumentalist relationship with the state apparatus, and served its interestsin campaigns as disparate as the war of genocide against Bangladesh nationalistsin 1971; the anti-Soviet campaign, the subsequent Taliban takeover and thecontinuing interventions in Afghanistan; and, of course, the jihad inKashmir; not to mention the training and support provided to large armies of theIslamist terrorist internationale. At once, however, they have been quickto turn on their establishment allies when it seemed that the effort would yielddividends: the Islamist protests that played a major role in underminingPresident Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's regime are a case in point.

A major triumph on J&K could help General Musharraf beat off disaster.Some in New Delhi believe General Musharraf hopes to share a platform with PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh later this year, at which politicians from both sides ofthe Line of Control will begin discussions on the future of J&K - a kind ofgrand version of the round-table held in New Delhi in February 2006. Continuedviolence would, however, make such a dialogue near-impossible.

General Musharraf's tactical interests demand, therefore, that violencesignificantly diminish. Jihadi organisations, though, have neither theintention nor desire to sacrifice their own existence for his perpetuation.Participation in the dialogue process in which they are just one of severalvoices is a less than tempting offer. The terrorists now on hunger strike atMuzaffarabad have, therefore, made it clear that they are looking forward to aPakistan in which their political representatives, not General Musharraf, callthe shots.

Whether the General can find the will - and the resources - to hit back isstill unclear. Just how the impasse in Muzaffarabad ends will make clear whethera decisive break between the Pakistani state and the Islamist armies it hasnurtured for decades is likely - or even possible.

Praveen Swami is Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, FrontlineMagazine, New Delhi. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of theSouth Asia Terrorism Portal