The Sounds Of Silence

Forty-five Pakistani army recruits undergoing training at a Punjab RegimentalCentre training school at Dargai, 100 kms north of Peshawar in the North-WestFrontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, were killed and many others were injuredearly on the morning of November 8, 2006, when a suspected suicide bomber rantowards them and blew himself up. Thrirt-eight recruits were killed on the spotand the remaining seven  died later in a local hospital. The school hadabout 130 recruits undergoing training. The suicide bomber struck when they werechanging into uniform after completing their physical training session.

There was hardly any perimeter physical security at the school. The suicidebomber took advantage of this, managed to enter the school premisesunchallenged, reached the vicinity of the trainees, who had gathered together ina group, and blew himself up. The suicide attack  has caused nervousness among some Chinese engineers working in a project for theconstruction of a hydel power station in the hills overlooking the school. Thearmy has strengthened physical security for them, even though there is no fearof any threat to them. The attack on the school had nothing to do with theChinese-aided project.

Mysteriously, a big fire broke out on the night of November 11,2006,  atthe Jaban Power House of Tehsil Dargai, disrupting power supply in the entirearea and damaging equipment worth millions of rupees. The fire, which severelydamaged five turbines, was brought under control after seven hours. The powerhouse, which was set up by the British in 1937, has a capacity of 8.2 megawatts.The local authorities have claimed that the fire was due to a short-circuit andwas not due to a terrorist attack.

The investigation into the suicide attack on the army recruits has not madeany progress so far. The presumption in official and non-governmental circles isthat the suicide attack was, most probably, in reprisal for an air attack on amadrasa at Chenagai in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally Administered TribalAreas (FATA) on October 30, 2006, in which 80 students studying in the madrasawere killed.

There has been considerable controversy regarding the origin of the airattack and the background of the students killed. The local villagers have beenclaiming that the attack was made by an American Predator aircraft, which flewinto the area from Afghanistan. This has been played up by the Pakistani media.However, no Pakistani journalist has been able to explain how illiterate andsemi-literate villagers were able to identify the aircraft as an AmericanPredator  and establish that it flew in from Afghanistan. However, thisversion has been strengthened by a US TV channel, which has quoted unidentifiedPakistani intelligence officials as saying that the attack was carried out by anAmerican Predator aircraft because the Americans had information that Dr Aymanal-Zawahiri, the No.2 to Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda, was in the madrasa at thattime. The Pakistani authorities have denied the presence of any high-level AlQaeda personality in the madrasa when it was attacked.

The Pakistani authorities have claimed that it was they, who carried out theattack because they had received reliable intelligence that the madrasa wastraining suicide bombers for operations in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Army hasreleased a list of persons killed showing all of them to be above 20 years ofage. The religious parties have released their own lists of persons killed,showing them to be below 20 years of age. It is not possible to verify eitherlist at present.

The attack on the madrasa led to a wave of anger and demonstrations all overthe FATA. Nearly 15,000 persons demonstrated repeatedly for a week in the BajaurAgency. During the demonstrations, many volunteered for suicide missions againstthe Pakistan Army and the US. By November 5,2006, the anger had startedsubsiding and it looked as if things were returning to normal in the tribalareas. And then, on November 8, the suicide bomber struck at the army trainingschool.

While local  officials, some Ministers of the Pakistan Government andthe Pakistani media have viewed the suicide attack as in retaliation for the airstrike on the madrasa, Lt.Gen. (retd) Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, the Governor ofthe NWFP who is responsible for supervision over the FATA and who himself is atribal belonging to the FATA, has avoided connecting the two, saying that hewould like to wait for the results of the police investigation.

Mr Rahimullah Yusufzai, a well-known Pakistani journalist who reports to theBBC Pushto service and the News, a daily of Pakistan, has stated that after the suicide attack he received a telephone call from an unidentifiedperson, who claimed that the attack was in retaliation for the air strike on themadrasa and was carried out by a Pakistani Taliban organisation led by one AbuKalim Muhammad Ansari. He also warned of more suicide attacks.

The Pakistani authorities have denied knowledge of any such organisation orperson. Both Dargai and Chenagai are strongholds of an anti-US, pro-Taliban fundamentalist organisation called the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws. Dargai isin the Malakand Division, which is part of the Provincially-Administered TribalAreas of the NWFP. Chenagai is in the Bajaur Agency which is part of the FATA.Maulana Sufi Mohammad, a local leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) in theMalakand area, left the JEI in 1992 due to differences with its leadership andformed the TNSM. When the Americans began their air strikes in Afghanistan onOctober 7, 2001, Sufi Mohammad called for a jihad against the US and enteredAfghanistan along with thousands of his followers. Many of them were mowed downby US air strikes. The survivors, including Sufi Mohammad, fled back intoMalakand.

Gen Pervez Musharraf banned the TNSM as a terrorist organisation on January15,2002, and had Sufi Mohammad arrested . He is believed to be still in jail.The organisation became dormant. When an earthquake struck Pakistan-OccupiedKashmir and parts of the NWFP in October,2005, volunteers of the Lashkar-e-Toiba(LET) and members of the TNSM were in the forefront of the humanitarian reliefwork. Since the Army's own relief work was found wanting, their popularity shotup and Musharraf refrained from acting against them though both had been bannedas terrorist organisations on January 15, 2002.

There has since then been a significant resurgence in the activities of theTNSM in the Malakand Division of the NWFP and in the Bajaur Agency of the FATA.It has been organising pro-Taliban activities and is generally referred to bythe local tribals as the Pakistani Taliban to distinguish it from the AfghanTaliban led by Mulla Mohammad Omar. The TNSM is presently headed by MaulanaFazalullah, the son-in-law of Sufi Mohammad.  Maulana Liaqat, who was incharge of the madrasa destroyed by the air strike and who was killed, belongedto the TNSM. The madrasa was funded by the JEI faction led by MaulanaSami-ul-Haq, who is considered one of the mentors of Mulla MohammadOmar.Sami-ul-Haq has already started a fund collection drive to re-build thedestroyed madrasa.

The Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are greatlyworried over the suicide attack. They are hoping that the investigation willbring out that the suicide bomber was a foreigner and not a Pakistani. Storiesare already being circulated by local military officials that the suicide bomberwas either an Uzbeck or a Chechen or an Uighur. If the suicide bomber turns outto be a Pakistani, it would be interpreted by many in the Pakistani armed forces as meaning that as a result of the pro-US policies of Musharraf, the alienatedsections of the NWFP have started targeting the Army as an institution.

In the past, there had been individual terrorist attacks on officers.Musharraf himself was a target thrice---twice in Rawalpindi and once in Karachi.His former Corps Commander in Karachi (General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, now the ViceChief of Army Staff) narrowly escaped a terrorist strike. Mr Shaukat Aziz, thepresent Prime Minister, escaped an attack in 2004 before he became the PrimeMinister, but he was not from the Army. During the last three years, manyPakistani army officers and soldiers had been killed in the Waziristan area ofthe FATA  during clashes. This is the first time that there had been atargeted attack on a large number of Army recruits in the NWFP, showing that theanger against the Army as an institution, which was previously confined to theWaziristan area, has spread outside the FATA. Next to Pakistani Punjab, the NWFPis the second most important recruiting area for the Pakistan Army.

For the last two years, Musharraf has been the target of personal criticism---initially by Zawahiri and then by bin Laden-- for co-operating with the US.Zawahiri has been projecting him as apostate and calling upon the Pakistan Armyto overthrow him. bin Laden, Zawahiri, Mulla Omar and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar ofthe Hizb-e-Islami as well as the various pro-Taliban organisations have beenmaking a clear distinction between Musharraf and the rest of the Army. Whilecriticising Musharraf, they have been refraining from any criticism of the Armyas an institution. Is their attitude changing as a result of the destruction ofthe madrasa? That is the question worrying the senior Army leadership.

A Predator aircraft of the CIA had made an unsuccessful attempt to killZawahiri in January this year in the same Bajaur Agency. Seventeen days afterthe attack, Zawahiri disseminated an audio message taunting the US for itsbotched up operation to kill him. Will he come out with a similar message on theair strike on the madrasa? If he does, it may throw light on the air strike andpossibly also on the suicide attack. If he does not come out with a message,there will be fierce speculation as to why the silence this time.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.