Warning Bells For Musharraf?

"Oct. 22, 2003 | Last Thursday, a senior White House official called Mariane Pearl and Paul Steiger,the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to report a new, key development in the investigationinto the death of Mariane's husband, Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. "We have now establishedenough links and credible evidence to think that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed" -- the mastermind behind the9/11 attacks -- "was involved in your husband's murder," the official told Mariane.

"What do you mean 'involved'?" Mariane asked.

"We think he committed the actual murder."

So says a sensationalarticle on the kidnapping and murder of Danial Pearl, the US journalist, written by Asra Q. Nomani, thefree-lance journalist, then living in Karachi, in whose house Pearl and his wife Mariane had stayed when hewent on his ill-fated trip to Karachi from Mumbai last year to investigate a report that an e-mail which haddirected Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, to carry out his operation to blow up an American aircraft hadoriginated from Karachi and that the e-mail had been sent by the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra, a Pakistani organisationwith many sleeper cells in the USA, Canada and the West Indies, including in the US Armed Forces.

In the year 2000, a mysterious web site calling for solidarity amongst the Muslims serving in the ArmedForces of the world suddenly appeared and started registering such Muslims. While it could not be definitivelyestablished as to who was behind the web site, Police sources in Pakistan suspected that the Fuqra cells inthe USA were behind it. One does not know whether Pearl knew all this when he arrived in Karachi, but hisinvestigation, for as yet unknown reasons, was focussed on the background and activities of this organisationand its leaders.

In the hundreds of reports -- open as well as confidential -- which had emanated from Pakistan till now onhis murder, the name of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) had not figured. The Pervez Musharraf regime initiallyprojected the murder as the work of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which continues to be active despitethe so-called ban, and then the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the banned Sunni extremist organisation, and thenothers.

Omar Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, who had been working for the Inter-ServicesIntelligence (ISI) since the early 1990s and who used to head the Lahore cell of AL Qaeda, was ultimatelyblamed along with some others. The appeal filed by him against the death sentence awarded to him by theanti-terrorism court and by the other accused against the prison sentences awarded to them has not been heardso far. The hearing on the appeal is being repeatedly postponed on some ground or the other.

Even as the hearing in the anti-terrorism court was on, the Pakistani media reported that the Pakistaniauthorities had in custody some other suspects, including some Yemeni-Balochis, who confessed to murderingPearl. It was also reported that it was on their confession that the remains of Pearl were recovered by thePakistani authorities.

Under the law in any country, when material objects relating to a case are recovered on the basis of aconfessional statement of a suspect, the confession is presumed to be correct unless proved otherwise.Surprisingly, the Pakistani authorities did not charge these new suspects with the murder of Pearl. Theanti-terrorism court, under pressure from the Musharraf regime, refused to take cognisance of the mediareports in this connection and call for the production of the new suspects before the court. It accepted thedenial of the state that any such confession had been made.

While the fact that it was an Yemeni-Balochi, who had slit the throat of Pearl before a video camera, hadsurfaced before, none of the reports so far had identified KSM as the man who did it. The revelation of KSM'srole, if correct, raises a host of intriguing questions for which there are no answers at present:

• Did the Yemeni-Balochi suspects, referred to by the Pakistani media, speak about the role of KSM?  Ifso, did the Pakistani authorities tell the US about it?
  
  
• Did Omar Sheikh mention KSM when he was in the informal custody of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)for some days after his voluntary surrender to a retired officer of the ISI, who was functioning as the HomeSecretary of Punjab in February last year?
  
  
• Did Omar Sheikh tell the Karachi Police about the role of KSM when he was subsequently interrogated bythem?
  
  
• Did KSM tell the ISI about his role when it interrogated him for some hours after his arrest at Rawalpindiin March last before handing him over to the US authorities?
  
   
• Was KSM's role independently known to the Pakistani authorities? If so, up to what level?
  
  
• Did Musharraf himself know about it? Was the US kept informed?
  
  
• If the Pakistani authorities knew about it, why did they readily hand him over to the US whereas they havenot only adamantly refused to hand over Omar Sheikh, but even declined to allow the British to independentlyinterrogate him, as reported by the Daily Times of Lahore?

There has recently been a number of developments, which indicate that the US is probably tightening up thescrew on Musharraf, while continuing to support him openly and showering him with one assistance package afteranother. The first was the premature declassification of a document of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)of the Pentagon, prepared shortly after 9/11, which speaks of the nexus between the ISI and Al Qaeda. The USGovernment could have legitimately rejected the application under the Freedom of Information Act for thedeclassification of this sensitive document on the ground that this could damage the USA's relations withPakistan. It chose not to do so.

The second was the US Treasury Department orders of last week freezing the accounts of the Al Alkhtar Trustof Pakistan and Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia leader, living in Pakistan. The order relating to the Trustindicated that it was funding anti-US jihad not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in Iraq. The orderagainst Dawood spoke of his links with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is a member of binLaden's International Islamic Front.

The US Government generally issues such orders only if it has its own independent information. It does notact on the information provided by others, unless corroborated by its own intelligence agencies. While theorders do not specify wherefrom it got the information, a careful reading would indicate that the informationcame from a senior operative of Al Qaeda, most probably KSM, though he is not mentioned by name.

Why is the US now bringing into the open secret information/findings tending to cast doubts on Pakistan'sdependability as an ally in the war against terrorism? Is it to convey a warning to Musharraf that if Pakistancontinues to help the Taliban against the Hamid Karzai Government and sponsor anti-India terrorists, it won'tdo him any good?

It would be difficult to answer these questions with conviction on the basis of the evidence available tillnow.

An American academic, known to be close to the State Department, recently said in an interview on an IndianTV channel that while the US continued to back Musharraf strongly, he would not rule out the possibility ofthe US and Pakistan coming to a parting of the ways one day, if Pakistan's nexus with the jihadi terroristscontinued.

Musharraf must be a worried man.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, and presently, Director,Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.