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A barrage of U.S. cruise missiles several years ago didn’t sap Fazlur Rehman Khalil’s devotion to holy war, and two subsequent bans issued by Pakistan’s government haven’t silenced his invective against Jews and Americans. But Khalil, who co-signed Osama bin Laden’s 1998 edict that declared it a Muslim’s duty to kill Americans and Jews, is not leading his holy warriors from inside a secret mountain cave. He lives comfortably with his family in this city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, next to his harem Koranic girls’ school and bookshop, just down the street from a police checkpoint. And he still is urging his followers to fight the United States.
Rather than do it himself, of course
President Pervez Musharraf has been promising to dismantle militant groups since early 2002, shortly after he allied Pakistan with President Bush’s campaign against Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks. Bin Laden is presumed to be hiding along the mountainous Afghan border, but several militant groups remain active in Pakistan. None of their leaders has been prosecuted, and some may be under the protection of senior government officials.
| Comes as a surprise, doesn't it? I know. Floored me, too... |
Afrasiab Khattak, former head of Pakistan’s human rights commission, said he believed Musharraf was more determined to fight militants after surviving two assassination attempts in December. But the general faces opposition in his own government.
It seems like Musharaff is more determined to fight the ’bad militants’, like al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but he continues to allow ’good militants like Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed to recruit private armies for Jihad
When Al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, killing 224 people, the United States retaliated by firing cruise missiles at two terrorist training camps run by Khalil in Afghanistan. Khalil vowed dire revenge. After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, he re-established himself in Pakistan. Islamabad has banned his militant groups twice in the last three years, but it left him free to regroup. He renamed his organization and continued to preach hatred. Khalil and his organization’s latest incarnation, Jamiat ul Ansar, or Group of Helpers, openly defy the most recent ban, imposed in November.
| Perv is afraid of them. He has no support from the secular parties (such as they are) because they oppose the military grabbing the power — and more important, the boodle — from them. Splitting with the fundos would leave him with no support except the military, which has historically allied itself with the turbans. |
One of the platforms for his message is a stridently anti-American monthly magazine, Al Hilal, which identifies Khalil as its "chief patron." Khalil uses it to raise funds, notify supporters of meetings and activities and urge volunteers to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The back cover of November’s issue was an ad for the "All-Pakistan Training Convention of Jamiat ul Ansar Activists" at Khalil’s headquarters, the Jamia Khalid bin Waleed Mosque, across from an army base on the edge of Islamabad. Last month’s cover showed a giant fist holding a sword, rising from flames in the desert to slash the U.S. flag. The issue features a call to arms in which Khalil says Muslims should be united into one nation, or caliphate, that would replicate the Khilafat-i-Rashida, the model governance of the four caliphs who ruled immediately after Muhammad — an often-stated goal of Bin Laden.
| Also an oft-stated goal of Hezb ut-Tahrir in particular and most other Islamo-nut groups in general... |
A headline says that "moujahedeen attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan have bankrupted America politically, economically and mentally," and adds: "Due to the blessings of jihad, America’s countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon."
| Yup. I can feel it coming, any minute now... |
"Eagles of Jamiat ul Ansar: Our motto is to impose Khilafat-i-Rashida on the whole world to get rid of the cruel and powerful," Khalil writes. "This is your moral and religious obligation — to help financially those few people who are sacrificing their lives so that they can concentrate on their battlefront and ultimately de- feat non-Muslims." Khalil’s magazine lists his address and the phone number of his militant group’s office. Yet Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, who controls civilian security forces, says he doesn’t know where Khalil is and doesn’t consider him a threat. "We haven’t heard of [Khalil] doing anything significant — even, I would say, half-significant," Hayat said last week. "I can assure you," he said, "there are many more people who pose greater threats than this gentleman. He would be very small fry if you compare him to the others against whom we have directed our security apparatus to keep a strict watch on."
| That could actually be a true statement. We don't hear about many operations by Jamiat ul Ansar, and we look for them daily. Either they're buried in other operations that're attributed to Jaish and Lashkar-e-Taiba, or the whole thing's a scam that keeps Fazl Khalil living high on the donations of the faithful without actually having to do much in return except rant and fulminate on paper... |
In Washington, a senior State Department official said that despite some problems, the U.S. did not see "cause or justification to doubt the sincerity of President Musharraf’s commitment to fight terror, root and branch."
Back in the mid 90’s, Khalil’s group, then known as Harkat ul Ansar, was the largest Deobandi Jihadi group in Pakistan. It also had a presence in Burma, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya and the Phillipines; by their own admission. But after Khalil openly signed Bin Ladin’s declaration of war, and some of his training camps in Afghanistan were bombed by Clinton, it was decided that Khalil had gotten to big for his own good. So the international component of his group split off into the Harkatul Jihad Islami, while the ISI allegedly organised a plane hijacking to bust out Massod Azhar from an Indian prison. Azhar then used his popularity among the Jihadis to take away about 75% of Khalil’s Jihadis. Khalil’s group never recovered, and he was reduced to being a minor player in Jihad.
Times reporters visited the mosque listed in Khalil’s magazines as his headquarters to request an interview. Men who identified themselves as senior teachers from an adjacent Koranic school detained them and roughed them up, releasing them only after Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed intervened. State-run print and broadcast media, which answer to the information minister, then launched a campaign in defense of Khalil’s headquarters, portraying it as nothing more than a school for children with no links to any militant organization.
| Still more indication the fix is in... |
Another of Pakistan’s radical Muslim clerics, Maulana Masood Azhar, has an alliance with Bin Laden dating to the 1993 attacks on U.S.-led forces in Somalia. Musharraf banned Azhar’s Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Mohammed, in early 2002, and ordered his detention after an attack on India’s Parliament that left 14 people dead, including the five attackers. In October, Azhar went on a fundraising tour for his militant army, renamed Khuddamul Islam, or Servants of Islam. Traveling from one mosque to another, he preached holy war at widely publicized "jihad conferences." Local reports said he collected sacks full of cash. Less than two months later — and two years to the day after Azhar’s arrest — two suicide bombers tried to kill Musharraf by ramming minivans packed with explosives into the general’s motorcade. Investigators say one of the attackers belonged to Azhar’s banned militant group. Pakistani police said they went looking for Azhar and [Hafiz] Saeed after their renamed militant groups were outlawed in November, but couldn’t find them.
| "Yeah. We knocked, but they wudn't there..." |
Last week, the interior minister said he didn’t know where either man was. Police have questioned and released dozens of suspected militants, including Azhar supporters, in recent days. A government document viewed by The Times leaves little doubt that Pakistani intelligence agencies have tracked Azhar’s organization for a long time. The intelligence report is dated Sept. 15, 2002, more than eight months after Azhar’s group was first banned. It lists 21 district offices, including several mosques, in the eastern city of Lahore alone. Among five requirements for recruits, it listed: "Willingness to sacrifice (even suicide bombings/attacks)." The three-page brief also gives details of the group’s membership form, the name of its weekly newspaper, and the names and phone numbers of its chief financiers. |