The Gathering Storm

At the end of one week of relentless American  and British  airstrikes on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, there have so far  been no signsof either demoralisation in the Taliban and  Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda orof an abatement of the anti-US/UK and anti-Musharraf anger amongst the rural andtribal masses in Pakistan.

The clerical leaders of the Taliban, including its Amir, Mulla Mohammad Omer,and Osama bin Laden and other members of the brain trust of his InternationalIslamic Front For Jehad Against the US and Israel remain as elusive as ever,with unconfirmed reports that they have now been operating from theFederally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), protected by the strongly anti-UStribal leaders of the region.

Despite the claims of the military junta of having effectively sealed theborder in order to prevent the religious elements of the mosques and themadrasas from crossing over into Afghanistan to reinforce the ranks of theTaliban's militia, a large number of students from the madrasas, ex-ervicemenand ex-officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have managed tocross over into Afghanistan to help the Taliban resist the American and Britishtroops, if they launch ground operations in the coming days.

Amongst the retired officers of the Pakistan Army and the ISI, who are nowacting as advisers to the Taliban and the International Islamic Front, areLt.Gen.Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen. Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General of theISI.

It was on their advice that the Ulema council of the Taliban, which met inthe FATA on October 13, 2001, decided to allow a group of journalists, Pakistaniand non-Pakistani, working for the foreign media, to visit Jalalabad andpossibly other places too to see for themselves the civilian casualties causedby the US/UK air strikes.

As against US claims of only one incident in Kabul on October 13 resulting incivilian casualties, the Taliban has been alleging that at least 300 civilians,many of them women and children, have been killed by the bunker-burster bombsdropped by the US planes to smoke out Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, who might betaking shelter in the bunkers.

Lt.Gen.Gul and Lt.Gen.Nasir reportedly told the Taliban leadership thatindependent accounts of the casualties filed by the visiting journalists couldbring pressure not only on the US and the UK to stop the air strikes, but alsoon Musharraf and the regimes in other Islamic countries to re-consider theirsupport to the so-called US-UK war against international terrorism.

Rumblings in Pakistan---in the civil society as well as in the Army and theAir Force---- against Musharraf's action in supporting the US and UK air strikesand providing them with base facilities for emergency purposes in the remotePakistan Air Force (PAF) bases at Jacobabad in Sindh and Pasni in Balochistanhave intensified.

The military junta was surprised by the number of protestors that thereligious parties were able to mobilise and clandestinely bring to Jacobabad onOctober 14 to demonstrate against the US presence, despite the sealing of thearea by the Security Forces.

Anti-US and anti-Musharraf demonstrations, which were till now confined toprovincial capitals such as Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta, are now spreading toDistrict capitals and other small towns, thereby taxing the resources of theSecurity Forces.  The tribals of FATA are practically in a state ofrebellion against the Musharraf regime.

In Karachi, there have been at least three incidents of grenade attacks onSecurity Forces patrol and, taking advantage of the preoccupation of theSecurity Forces with the ant-US and anti-Musharraf demonstrations, Sunniextremists belonging to the Sipah-e-Sahaba have assassinated 20 leaders of theShia community since September 11, the largest number in a single month sinceMusharraf seized power on October 12,1999.

The most active in the violent incidents have been the students of the BinoriMosque madrasa in Karachi from where many of the leaders of the Taliban and theJaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) had passed out, the Jamaat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) ofMaulana Fazlur Rahman of Balochistan, who is looked upon as the mentor of theTaliban, and the Tehrik Nifaz Shariah Muhammadi  (TNSM) of Soofi Mohammadin the FATA.

Of all the Islamic organisations of Pakistan, the TNSM has the largest numberof ex-servicemen, including many retired Commissioned Officers, in its ranks andposes the greatest concern to the military junta.  Many serving seniorofficers of the Army are related to these ex-servicemen.  TheJamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi Hussain Ahmed has been strongly condemningMusharraf, but has so far avoided mobilising its street power against him.

Islamabad and Rawalpindi continue to be rife with rumours of a split amongstsenior Army and Air Force officers.  The serious fire in the GHQ on October9, which lasted nearly five hours, has been compared by the rumour-mongers tothe fire in the Ojheri arms depot in the 1980s.  An Army Court of Enquiryhad allegedly held that the fire in Ojheri was deliberately caused by some ISIofficers in order to conceal their clandestine sale to Iraq of arms andammunition supplied by the US for use against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. In 1988, Mohammad Khan Junejo, the then Prime Minister, who insisted on theenquiry report being released to the public, was sacked by Zia-ul-Haq.

It is now being alleged that the GHQ fire was similarly caused by the military-intelligence establishment in order to destroy all records relating toits links with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  The junta has, however,claimed that the fire was due to a short-circuit.

It is believed  that some of the Punjabi Lt.Gens. had secretly met toconsider their options, if the public anger against Musharraf continued tomount.  Amongst the options reportedly considered was one  to presshim to resign after transferring power to Lt.Gen.Mohammad Yusef Khan, thenewly-appointed Vice-Chief of the Army Staff, a Sindhi, who, in his turn, willtransfer power to a national unity coalition Government to be formed by thepolitical parties.

Musharraf has been trying to cool the anger by claiming that Pakistan'ssupport to the US against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda would bring in not onlyfinancial and military assistance, but also strategic gains in the form of amore favourable Western attitude towards Pakistan on the Kashmir issue and theinduction into Afghanistan, after a collapse of the Taliban, of a UNpeace-keeping force led by Pakistan from which India would be excluded.  Hehas been claiming that the Bush Administration has come to accept that Pakistanshould have a determining role in Afghanistan after the Taliban and that Indiawould have no locus standi there.

Despite the picture of confidence projected by him to the outside world,Musharraf's position continues to be increasingly shaky. 

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