Every nation has an army, Pakistani army has a nation

Author: Tejinder Singh
16 December 2008 - Issue : 813

Pakistani establishments have acquired great tenacity to strongly believe their own bluffs even in the face of unquestionable proof. President Asif Ali Zardari's first statement that the sole surviving Mumbai terrorist is not a Pakistani to another statement of Foreign Minister that there is no proof against Jamaat ud Dawa proves the point.

The unmasking came in the form of an interview to the Pakistani Dawn newspaper by Amir Kasab, the father of Ajmal Amir Iman alias Ajmal Qasab, the lone Pakistani gunman arrested for the Mumbai terror attacks. The old man, a father of three sons and two daughters, from Faridkot in Okara district of Punjab in Pakistan, has unequivocally admitted that the captured terrorist, whose pictures were beamed across the world, was indeed his son.

Earlier, Britain's Observer correspondent had located Iman's home in Faridkot, Pakistan and got hold of the voters' roll which had the names of his parents Amir Kasab and Noor as well as the numbers on the national identity cards. BBC had also reported that Iman is indeed belonged to Faridkot and had joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba sometime ago.

Iman also revealed to Indian security personnel the identity of his nine other slain gunmen and their addresses in Pakistan. Despite all the accumulated evidence, Pakistani leaders, its expert commentators on electronic media and its diplomatic staff around the globe went to the town to prove that the terrorists are not Pakistanis but Indians. They shamelessly called the heinous terrorist attack as the handiwork of Hindu extremists or Indian Muslims or could be RAW or CIA.

Now, the UN Security Council has succeeded in placing not only Jamaat ud Dawa, the front organization of the Lashkar-e-Taiba on the list of terrorist groups but also four of its top leadership, including its chief Hafiz ul Mohammed Saeed. The earlier attempts by the UNSC to do so for the past three years failed as China conveniently came to the rescue of this terrorist organization by putting a "hold" on the resolution.

Hafiz ul Saeed demanded proof for he ever heading the Lashkar-e-Taiba or he ever promoting terrorism and jehadism. Had he cared to re-read the publications of the organization he is heading he would have got all the proof he needed.

Addressing a press conference in Lahore on December 24, 2001, Hafiz Saeed announced his resignation and the appointment of Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri as the new LeT chief, stated the magazine, Jamaat ud Dawa. He made this announcement soon after the US State Departent had designated the Lashkar-e-Taiba a foreign terrorist organization, and a few weeks before the then President Musharraf was forced to ban the group on January 13, 2002.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa published in its April 10 edition an address by Hafiz ul Sayeed to convocation of students, where he proudly announced that his organization has sacrificed 4500 youth for the Jihadi cause and that preparation for Jihad was a must. He urged students to pray to God so that they could have a chance to sacrifice their lives for Jihad.

According the US Treasury Department, Hafiz Saeed "in 2005, personally determined where graduates of an LeT camp in Pakistan should be sent to fight and personally organised the infiltration of LET militants into Iraq during a trip to Saudi Arabia."

Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, who was one of the four Lashkar leaders placed on UN Security Council list of terrorists, was the supreme commander who had coordinated the Mumbai terrorist attacks and guided the gunmen on the action to be taken while they were holding the hostages. As Lashkar's chief of operations. Lakhvi has directed LeT military operations including in Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq and southeast Asia. Lakhvi was born to Hafiz Aziz-ur-Rahman, a cleric linked to the neoconservative Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadis, on December 30, 1960. He lives in Chika 18L of the village of Rinala Khurd, in Okara—the same south Punjab district from where Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman, the terrorist arrested in the course of last month's massacre in Mumbai, grew up.

Mahmoud Bahaziq, another Lashkar leader to be declared a terrorist, is a Saudi citizen of Indian origin. He is considered the main financier of the LeT and its activities in the 1980s and 1990s and coordinated LeT's fundraising activities with Saudi non-governmental organisations and Saudi businessmen. He is allegedly the brain behind recruiting Indian expatriate Muslims in Arab countries, particularly in Saudi Arabia, and sending them to Pakistan for training and subsequently launching them into terrorist activities in India.

Haji Mohammad Ashraf has assisted the expansion of the LeT in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and coordinating the terror activities there. Ashraf was born on March 1, 1965, and holds Pakistani passport.

Producing evidence to prove the culpability of Pakistan-based terrorist groups and their handlers in the military establishment is not an issue. There is enough now on Mumbai attacks. There was enough evidence of the involvement of Pak military establishment and Lashkar elements in the attack on Indian mission in Kabul in which two senior diplomats were killed besides several others.

The problem is that Pakistani military leadership views the Jehadi groups as their first line of offence and defence and the most effective weapon to bleed India, while maintaining its deniability. The 1999 Kargil war, designed and executed by the former Army chief and President Musharraf, clearly established this strategy. The Northern Areas Scouts, a wing of the Pakistani army, were sent as part of the jehadi groups. President Zardari himself is a victim of the jehadi outfits that the Pakistani army and ISI gave birth and nourished to an uncontrollable giant.

Enjoying "tea" at a Pakistani restaurant in Brussels, Belgium, this journalist, Tejinder Singh was told by Cheema Saheb, Head Chef citing something he heard on a TV talk-show: "Every nation has an army while Pakistani army has a nation."

The day the political leadership tames the army, that day augurs well for Pakistani people and their status in the international community. Until that happens, the world community will have to do the dirty work of corking up these "middle age" mammals.

Zardari faults on promises, terrorism crisis brews on

Author: Tejinder Singh, tsingh@neurope.eu
3 December 2008 - Issue : 810


Will relations between India and Pakistan deteriorate again in the wake of Mumbai mayhem, just like when Pak militants attacked Indian Parliament in December 2001? President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan holds the key to the question but he must remember: "Half measures avail us nothing," a warning from a Western diplomat in Brussels on condition of anonymity.
If the first interview of President Zardari on CNN Larry King Live on December 2 is an indicator, then the Pakistani politician fell flat on his face as he even denied that the person arrested was a Pakistani, saying, "I very much doubt, Larry, that he's a Pakistani."

On the other hand, world Vox Populi is demanding accountability with people of India seething with anger on "live" TV while the Westerners are too shocked to react yet. Like many countries around the globe, this is an election year in India and the present incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government can not afford to ignore public mood beyond a point, said a political commentator adding, "Restraint has a limit. That too in the face of mounting evidence of Lashkar-e- Taiba and al Qaeda in the attack on the country's iconic hotel, 105–year-old Taj in Mumbai."

"The siege of Taj, the adjoining Oberoi Trident hotel and Nariman House (a Jewish centre) lasted 48 hours. Live TV coverage delivered the threat of urban terrorism globally especially to every Indian home in real time," another Western political analyst told Tejinder Singh in Brussels on condition of anonymity.

President Zardari had earlier told Karan Thapar in the Devil's Advocate programme on CNN-IBN (Nov 29): "Let me assure you ... if any evidence points to any individual or group in my part of the country, I shall take the strictest of action in the light of the evidence and in front of the world."

Even as he was giving the interview "live," the TV channels were beaming the confessions of Lashkar terrorist Amjad Amir Kamaal, the lone survivor of the 10-man Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) fidayeen (suicide) squad which sieged Mumbai. Every media outlet in the world has by now carried his "song."

EVIDENCE SCREAMS

A class four drop out, Amjad Amir Kamaal hails from a small village of Faridkot in the Okara district of Pakistan's Punjab province. Top Lashkar commander Zakir-ur-Rehman allegedly promised to pay his family more than 2,500 Euro for participating in the fidayeen attack.

The sources familiar with the investigation point to the evidence: "There are the records of phone calls made by the fidayeen from a satellite phone, which was recovered after the attacks. These calls were made to LeT operations chief, who is known by code-names Muzammil, Yusuf and Abu Hurrera. Also to Zaki-ur-Rahman, whom the gang addressed as Chachu (Uncle), amongst others. There were at least three calls to 'Amir,' who frantically instructed the militants to take a hostage (at Nariman House) to 'make a point'."

Yusuf talked to his killer squad even during the bloodbath. The Sunday Express, Mumbai, reported (Nov 30) that each conversation lasted two to three minutes and the terrorists were given instructions in "Punjabi Hindi" with heavy use of military terminology. "Use cover fire," "use single burst fire," and "use your rounds sparingly" are some of Yusuf's instructions, for instance.

The sources divulged, "an intercept shows, on Nov 27 morning, when the Taj fight was on, his direction was: "Hotel mein aag laga do. Jab public bhaage gi, tum escape kar lena (burn the hotel down and in the pandemonium, you can escape)."

Calling it another give away proof, the reliable sources within the intelligence point to the GPS device that the Jehadis had used to navigate their way to Mumbai from Karachi's Azizabad is another give away, if President Zardari wants any more tell-tale proof.

There are also several other items, to wet his curiosity, like Namaz cap from a shop with the phone code of Multan, packet of wheat flour from a Karachi shop, an empty diesel can of a petrol filling station with a Karachi address, Made in Pakistan dental gel, medicam, Touchme shaving cream and Nestle milk packet, and Toilet paper packet of Zik brothers, Karachi.

PAKISTANI EXPERT TALKS

Ahmad Rashid, one of Pakistan's sane voices, and an authority on al-Qaeda and Jihad, sees a pattern between the attack on Indian Parliament and Mumbai icons. In an interview to the Forbes Network 18, he said: "I think the attacks were strategically planned by al-Qaeda through LeT militants they train. It is trying to work out space for itself in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, FATA. If tensions between India and Pakistan escalate, the (Pak) army will be moved to the Indian borders, as happened in 2002. This will buy a few months to al-Qaeda before the new US administration sends 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan."

This "relocation" plan is in the works, Geo News, a private Pak TV reported Nov 29 quoting a briefing of Pakistan's military and intelligence sources to a select group of journalists.

Geo News also reported (Nov 29) the military establishment decided not to send the ISI chief Lt Gen Shuja Pasha to India. Only a day earlier President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani promised to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Pasha would visit Delhi as requested by him. Gilani's Press Secretary Zahid Bashir told a news agency: "Initially, Indian Prime Minister made a request to our PM that he should send the ISI chief to help in investigations and further intelligence sharing. The PM of Pakistan responded positively."

Nirupama Subramanian in The Hindu (Nov 30) also attributed the "roll back" to the army. "That there could be a change in the government's decision was evident when the military spokesman distanced the army from the announcement by the Prime Minister's office that ISI chief would go to India," she said in her despatch from Islamabad. The "new" decision was taken at 1.30 am on Saturday Nov 29 at a meeting of the troika – President, PM and army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, according to The Nation of Lahore.

"Our hands are clean," Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a press conference in Islamabad on Nov 29 evening. "We have nothing to hide, we have nothing to be abashed of," he went on to say, and, like President Zardari, asked India to "come up with evidence to take strictest action."

TIME FOR ACTION

Now that there is clinching evidence with India, and American intelligence, and counter-intelligence officials, as reported by the New York Times, are "convinced of the mounting evidence" of LeT responsibility for the brutal attack on Mumbai, Pakistan must come out of denial mode.

President Zardari must end talking his way out of trouble. And deliver on his promise. Not for avoiding trouble on the borders with India but to assert his authority as the head of the state, and to rein in his country's intelligence agency, ISI, which has been allowed to "go out- of –control" by his predecessors as a matter of deliberate state policy and as an insurance against American pressures.

Even Zardari could not deny it on the CNN Larry King Live show. On the question of the support of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus for militant movements, President said: "In the past, lots of mistakes have been made, I cannot deny that. But the present government does not support any such action."

A historic opportunity for not only Zardari, but also for Pakistan, to undo the past and to undo the designs of Islamists at home and thus abroad tarnishing the image and reputation of Pakistan on the global canvass. Instead Zardari is singing the old favourite song of Pakistani military asking for evidence, then denying it and the show goes on but the question is till when?