03-13-2006, 05:36 AM
Mayhem in the menagerie
New conflict between the United Jihad Council and President Pervez Musharraf reflects a crisis in Pakistan's political life.
â Photo: PTI
DISILLUSIONED: A group of militants laid down arms in Srinagar last Wednesday. Jihadis are angry with what they see as dwindling support from the Pakistani establishment. â Photo: PTI
<b>
FEARFUL OF being fed to the tigers in the forest next door, the inhabitants of Pakistani's jihadi menagerie have started to turn on the zoo-keeper. For the past week, top jihadi leaders have staged an unprecedented hunger strike to protest what they see as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's decision to abandon the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir.</b> At least 18 top commanders, including the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Mohammad Yusuf Shah, the Lashkar-e-Taiba's Mohammad Zaki-ur-Rahman, al-Umar's Mushtaq Zargar, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad's Abdul Rehman, say they will continue their protests until General Musharraf changes course.
Do the protests herald an end to Pakistani support for the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir? Not quite. Indian signals intelligence officials say there has been no reduction in military communications traffic between terrorists and their control stations in Pakistan. Individual terror cells â witness the recent bombings in Varanasi or the spate of fire-fights in Jammu and Kashmir â remain active.
Although newspapers have reported that the United Jihad Council (UJC) protesters have been arrested, their infrastructure remains in place.
What, then, is going on?
A deteriorating relationship
It has long been evident that the happy marriage between General Musharraf and his Islamist allies has been souring. Lashkar chairman Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, for one, has been increasingly critical of the Pakistan President. In a recent article, Saeed wrote: "After 9/11, Pakistan made a foreign policy U-turn to accommodate American interests. It was said that backing U.S. would help solve the Kashmir problem and protect our nuclear programme. But none of this has 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 jihad in Kashmir." "Conspiracies," he asserted, "are being hatched against Pakistan's atomic programme." "President Abdul Kalam, who helped make India a nuclear power, sits across to discuss matters with Bush," the Jamaat ud-Dawa leader noted, "while the father of Pakistan's atomic programme, Abdul Qadir Khan is rotting in a jail cell."
To Saeed, the recent visit of President George W. Bush to Pakistan, during which the United States reiterated calls for an end to the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir, demonstrated the failure of General Musharraf's policies. "But we are happy," Saeed said, "for the situation is now more conducive for jihad." "It is better our rulers give up their anti-jihad policies and re-orient the foreign policy of Pakistan according to tenets of Islam," an editorial on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa website advises.
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 in August last year, Saeed articulated many of the same ideas.<span style='color:red'> He called for mandatory recruitment of all Pakistani men to the jihad, the conquest of parts of India, and held the U.S. responsible not just for the creation of Bangladesh but a still-unfinished conspiracy, which would use India and Israel to "ruin Pakistan."</span>
Signs that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa was attempting to integrate itself with the spectrum of anti-Musharraf forces in Pakistan were evident at the convention. It was addressed, for example, by Zaeem Qadri, a functionary responsible for the public relations work of the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League in Punjab. Maulana Saifuddin Saif, the secretary-general of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, also addressed the convention. No representatives of the Pakistani state, by contrast, were on hand.
Also significant was the fact that a representative of the Pakistan-based leadership of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference was on hand â the political face of the UJC leaders with whom the Lashkar has now allied. APHC representative Abdullah Malik delivered an incendiary address, asserting that the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir would continue "until the destruction of India."
The jihad and Pakistani politics
Does all this mean that there is a fundamental reversal in the decades-long relationship between jihadi forces and the Pakistani state? No and yes are both valid answers.
Part of the reason why the UJC's protests have surprised experts is that the discourse on jihadi organisations suffers from a major epistemological error. Pakistan's Islamist armies are often understood, correctly, to have an international agenda. Jihadi wars against India or Afghanistan are, without dispute, a central concern for such organisations. What is often forgotten is that they also have a domestic agenda: harvesting and expending political power in Pakistan itself.
To understand the evolving Islamist posture on Jammu and Kashmir, one must engage with the multiple pressures on Pakistani policy-making. Ever since the India-Pakistan near-war of 2001-2002, the U.S. has been concerned that continued jihadi violence could lead the nuclear-armed adversaries into a calamitous conflict. Links between Pakistani Islamist groups and both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have also added increasing urgency to the U.S. calls for the jihadi zoo to be shut down.
American pressure, though, isn't the only reason for Gen. Musharraf's changing agenda. Beset by multiple internal crises, the Pakistan President must be acutely aware that his position within the armed forces is increasingly fragile. Pakistan's corps commanders, although loyal to their chain of command, have demonstrated the will to remove leaders who threaten their corporate interests. General Yahya Khan, General Ayub Khan, and General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq were deposed, after all, by palace revolts.
As things stand, Gen. Musharraf's position is tenuous as never before. On the one hand, his regime is confronted with potentially existence-threatening wars in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. On the other, the brief economic resurgence the Pakistan President succeeded in bringing about has also begun to diminish. Double-digit inflation has alienated General Musharraf's supporters among the urban middle class, while at once feeding resentment among the growing ranks of the poor.
Heading into the 2007 elections, Gen. Musharraf has few friends. Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Husain Ahmad has said his party will not participate in an election over which General Musharraf presides. Others in the MMA, too, seem to think capitalising on the anti-Musharraf mood would offer Islamists greater opportunities for expansion than backing a process that allowed him a central role in government. Neither are former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif likely to back a regime that includes General Musharraf.
In recent months, there have been more than a few signs that jihadi organisations have been sensing that Gen. Musharraf's regime is edging ever-closer to the abyss. Predictably, some in their ranks now seem to think that joining in a larger Islamist shove might just be in the interests of their organisations. Just this month, for example, top Lashkar ideologue Abdul Rahman Makki joined in Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal protests against General Musharraf, the first time his organisation had done so.
Within Jammu and Kashmir, too, traditional supporters of the Pakistani state have been distancing themselves from General Musharraf. In an acid January 28 statement, Syed Ali Shah Geelani said the Pakistan President had "no mandate to propose a political solution unacceptable to the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir." "It is the Kashmiris who will decide the future of the freedom struggle," the Islamist leader said, "not President Musharraf."
None of this, of course, is surprising. Pakistan's Islamists have long had an instrumentalist relationship with the state apparatus, and served its interests in campaigns as disparate as the war of genocide against Bangladesh nationalists in 1971 or the jihad against India. At the same time, however, they have been quick to turn on their establishment allies when it seemed the effort would yield dividends: the Islamist protests that played a major role in undermining President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's regime are a case in point.
A major triumph on the Kashmir issue could help Gen. Musharraf beat off disaster. Some in New Delhi believe Gen. Musharraf hopes to share a platform with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later this year, at which politicians from both sides of the Line of Control will begin discussions on the future of Jammu and Kashmir â a kind of grand version of the round-table held in New Delhi last month. However, continued violence would make such a dialogue near impossible.
<b>
Gen. Musharraf's tactical interests demand, therefore, that jihadi violence diminish. Jihadi organisations, though, have neither the intention nor desire to sacrifice their own existence for his perpetuation. </b>Participation in a dialogue process in which they are just one of several voices is a less-than-tempting offer. The terrorists now on hunger strike in Muzaffarabad have therefore made it clear they are looking forward to a Pakistan in which their political representatives, not Gen. Musharraf, call the shots.
Can the General find the will â and the resources â to hit back? Just how the impasse in Muzaffarabad ends will make clear whether a decisive break between the Pakistani state and the Islamist armies it has nurtured for decades is likely â or even possible.
New conflict between the United Jihad Council and President Pervez Musharraf reflects a crisis in Pakistan's political life.
â Photo: PTI
DISILLUSIONED: A group of militants laid down arms in Srinagar last Wednesday. Jihadis are angry with what they see as dwindling support from the Pakistani establishment. â Photo: PTI
<b>
FEARFUL OF being fed to the tigers in the forest next door, the inhabitants of Pakistani's jihadi menagerie have started to turn on the zoo-keeper. For the past week, top jihadi leaders have staged an unprecedented hunger strike to protest what they see as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's decision to abandon the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir.</b> At least 18 top commanders, including the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Mohammad Yusuf Shah, the Lashkar-e-Taiba's Mohammad Zaki-ur-Rahman, al-Umar's Mushtaq Zargar, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad's Abdul Rehman, say they will continue their protests until General Musharraf changes course.
Do the protests herald an end to Pakistani support for the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir? Not quite. Indian signals intelligence officials say there has been no reduction in military communications traffic between terrorists and their control stations in Pakistan. Individual terror cells â witness the recent bombings in Varanasi or the spate of fire-fights in Jammu and Kashmir â remain active.
Although newspapers have reported that the United Jihad Council (UJC) protesters have been arrested, their infrastructure remains in place.
What, then, is going on?
A deteriorating relationship
It has long been evident that the happy marriage between General Musharraf and his Islamist allies has been souring. Lashkar chairman Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, for one, has been increasingly critical of the Pakistan President. In a recent article, Saeed wrote: "After 9/11, Pakistan made a foreign policy U-turn to accommodate American interests. It was said that backing U.S. would help solve the Kashmir problem and protect our nuclear programme. But none of this has 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 jihad in Kashmir." "Conspiracies," he asserted, "are being hatched against Pakistan's atomic programme." "President Abdul Kalam, who helped make India a nuclear power, sits across to discuss matters with Bush," the Jamaat ud-Dawa leader noted, "while the father of Pakistan's atomic programme, Abdul Qadir Khan is rotting in a jail cell."
To Saeed, the recent visit of President George W. Bush to Pakistan, during which the United States reiterated calls for an end to the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir, demonstrated the failure of General Musharraf's policies. "But we are happy," Saeed said, "for the situation is now more conducive for jihad." "It is better our rulers give up their anti-jihad policies and re-orient the foreign policy of Pakistan according to tenets of Islam," an editorial on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa website advises.
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 in August last year, Saeed articulated many of the same ideas.<span style='color:red'> He called for mandatory recruitment of all Pakistani men to the jihad, the conquest of parts of India, and held the U.S. responsible not just for the creation of Bangladesh but a still-unfinished conspiracy, which would use India and Israel to "ruin Pakistan."</span>
Signs that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa was attempting to integrate itself with the spectrum of anti-Musharraf forces in Pakistan were evident at the convention. It was addressed, for example, by Zaeem Qadri, a functionary responsible for the public relations work of the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League in Punjab. Maulana Saifuddin Saif, the secretary-general of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, also addressed the convention. No representatives of the Pakistani state, by contrast, were on hand.
Also significant was the fact that a representative of the Pakistan-based leadership of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference was on hand â the political face of the UJC leaders with whom the Lashkar has now allied. APHC representative Abdullah Malik delivered an incendiary address, asserting that the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir would continue "until the destruction of India."
The jihad and Pakistani politics
Does all this mean that there is a fundamental reversal in the decades-long relationship between jihadi forces and the Pakistani state? No and yes are both valid answers.
Part of the reason why the UJC's protests have surprised experts is that the discourse on jihadi organisations suffers from a major epistemological error. Pakistan's Islamist armies are often understood, correctly, to have an international agenda. Jihadi wars against India or Afghanistan are, without dispute, a central concern for such organisations. What is often forgotten is that they also have a domestic agenda: harvesting and expending political power in Pakistan itself.
To understand the evolving Islamist posture on Jammu and Kashmir, one must engage with the multiple pressures on Pakistani policy-making. Ever since the India-Pakistan near-war of 2001-2002, the U.S. has been concerned that continued jihadi violence could lead the nuclear-armed adversaries into a calamitous conflict. Links between Pakistani Islamist groups and both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have also added increasing urgency to the U.S. calls for the jihadi zoo to be shut down.
American pressure, though, isn't the only reason for Gen. Musharraf's changing agenda. Beset by multiple internal crises, the Pakistan President must be acutely aware that his position within the armed forces is increasingly fragile. Pakistan's corps commanders, although loyal to their chain of command, have demonstrated the will to remove leaders who threaten their corporate interests. General Yahya Khan, General Ayub Khan, and General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq were deposed, after all, by palace revolts.
As things stand, Gen. Musharraf's position is tenuous as never before. On the one hand, his regime is confronted with potentially existence-threatening wars in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. On the other, the brief economic resurgence the Pakistan President succeeded in bringing about has also begun to diminish. Double-digit inflation has alienated General Musharraf's supporters among the urban middle class, while at once feeding resentment among the growing ranks of the poor.
Heading into the 2007 elections, Gen. Musharraf has few friends. Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Husain Ahmad has said his party will not participate in an election over which General Musharraf presides. Others in the MMA, too, seem to think capitalising on the anti-Musharraf mood would offer Islamists greater opportunities for expansion than backing a process that allowed him a central role in government. Neither are former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif likely to back a regime that includes General Musharraf.
In recent months, there have been more than a few signs that jihadi organisations have been sensing that Gen. Musharraf's regime is edging ever-closer to the abyss. Predictably, some in their ranks now seem to think that joining in a larger Islamist shove might just be in the interests of their organisations. Just this month, for example, top Lashkar ideologue Abdul Rahman Makki joined in Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal protests against General Musharraf, the first time his organisation had done so.
Within Jammu and Kashmir, too, traditional supporters of the Pakistani state have been distancing themselves from General Musharraf. In an acid January 28 statement, Syed Ali Shah Geelani said the Pakistan President had "no mandate to propose a political solution unacceptable to the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir." "It is the Kashmiris who will decide the future of the freedom struggle," the Islamist leader said, "not President Musharraf."
None of this, of course, is surprising. Pakistan's Islamists have long had an instrumentalist relationship with the state apparatus, and served its interests in campaigns as disparate as the war of genocide against Bangladesh nationalists in 1971 or the jihad against India. At the same time, however, they have been quick to turn on their establishment allies when it seemed the effort would yield dividends: the Islamist protests that played a major role in undermining President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's regime are a case in point.
A major triumph on the Kashmir issue could help Gen. Musharraf beat off disaster. Some in New Delhi believe Gen. Musharraf hopes to share a platform with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later this year, at which politicians from both sides of the Line of Control will begin discussions on the future of Jammu and Kashmir â a kind of grand version of the round-table held in New Delhi last month. However, continued violence would make such a dialogue near impossible.
<b>
Gen. Musharraf's tactical interests demand, therefore, that jihadi violence diminish. Jihadi organisations, though, have neither the intention nor desire to sacrifice their own existence for his perpetuation. </b>Participation in a dialogue process in which they are just one of several voices is a less-than-tempting offer. The terrorists now on hunger strike in Muzaffarabad have therefore made it clear they are looking forward to a Pakistan in which their political representatives, not Gen. Musharraf, call the shots.
Can the General find the will â and the resources â to hit back? Just how the impasse in Muzaffarabad ends will make clear whether a decisive break between the Pakistani state and the Islamist armies it has nurtured for decades is likely â or even possible.