A Looming Crisis, Khaled Ahmed
He was inspired by Burhan Muzaffar Wani, commander of a
Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen, earlier killed by the Indian army;
and he was also inspired by the “defeat” of America at the hands of the
Taliban.
Adil
Ahmad Dar, the 20-year-old school dropout who led the suicide attack at Pulwama
in south Kashmir on February 14, was a Jaish-e-Muhammad “fedayee” warrior,
trained for the job in the Valley. He was inspired by Burhan Muzaffar Wani,
commander of a Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen, earlier killed by the
Indian army; and he was also inspired by the “defeat” of America at the hands
of the Taliban.
One
feared the inevitable: India will associate Pakistan with Dar and
Jaish-e-Muhammad, the terrorist organisation that Pakistan stupidly allows to
survive in Bahawalpur, south Punjab. A lot of anti-Pakistan rage will be
manufactured in India after assuming that Dar actually crossed over into
Pakistan, took instructions and money from the ISI. Indian commentator Rahul
Bedi’s comment came as a relief, reminding India and Pakistan to take joint
action instead of getting into another war of words: “Most militants in Kashmir
are now homegrown.”
Jaish-e-Muhammad
is banned in Pakistan but its leader, Masood Azhar, is allowed to live in peace
in his hometown, in his madrasa Usman-o-Ali, Bahawalpur. His terrorist group
was earlier called Harkatul Mujahideen, associated closely with Osama bin
Laden’s al Qaeda. It became Jaish after an internal division. “Maulana” Masood
Azhar had the ability to raise funds all over the world. In 1993, al Qaeda was
involved in the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in Somalia while performing
duties under the UN auspices, about which Osama bin Laden was to boast later.
While in disguise in India — and up to no good in Kashmir — Azhar was captured
in 1994.
In
1999, an Indian civilian aircraft was hijacked after take-off from Nepal by a
group of terrorists led by Azhar’s brother, Ibrahim. The plane was taken to
Afghanistan where the Taliban government, recognised by Pakistan, arranged for
a swap of Indian passengers with the two al Qaeda terrorists, Umar Sheikh and
Masood Azhar. After their release, both came to Pakistan and began operating
freely. Sheikh, now in a jail in Hyderabad Sindh, came to Lahore, and Azhar
went to the most powerful seminary in Pakistan, Jamia Binoria in Karachi, from
where he issued threatening statements against President Pervez Musharraf.
Azhar
damaged Musharraf more effectively after 9/11 when he attacked the Indian
Parliament and caused a military stand-off between Pakistan and India that
lasted almost a year. He was put under house arrest in his hometown, from where
he had a way of vanishing from time to time. In 2009, according to a report
published in London’s The Telegraph, Jaish-e-Muhammad had acquired a 4.5-acre
compound outside Bahawalpur in addition to the madrasa Usman-o-Ali inside the
city. While local authorities acknowledged that Jaish had spread out of the
city, they denied that the new acquisition was anything more than a cattle
farm.
In
February 2014, Pakistan decided to break the unspoken embargo Azhar’s movement
and got him out of his ISI-protected madrasa to speak to a public gathering of
thousands in Muzaffarabad. His job was to castigate India for unfairly killing
Afzal Guru, a “freedom-fighter” hanged in India for allegedly helping Jaish
mount an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.
Most Pakistanis are tired of the so-called
mujahideen and want India and Pakistan to cooperate instead of notching up
bilateral terrorism, India feeling righteous about the Jaish threat and
Pakistan preening on having captured RAW agent Kulbhushan Jadhav “red-handed”.
Even if it wants to, India will not listen to good sense before the polls and
Pakistan will be the hobby horse to beat up on. And Pakistan, economically
belly-up and subliminally dying to “normalise” through the Kartarpur corridor,
will go on mysteriously tolerating terrorists on its soil who kill its
children.
The writer is consulting
editor, Newsweek Pakistan
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