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| Afghanistan/South Asia | |||
| Primer on al-Qaeda in Karachi | |||
| 2004-06-16 | |||
| Al-Qaida has spread its tentacles across Karachi, creating a cobweb of affiliated groups and cells that are not even aware of each other, Pakistani intelligence officers told United Press International. One of the groups Pakistani authorities busted during the weekend is known as Jund-Allah or the Soldiers of God. "We had never heard of this cell before. It’s a total surprise for us," said Karachi’s police chief Syed Kamal Shah. Shah said the group had 18 or 19 members and "police have so far arrested only eight, the rest are still at large." Police say they also have arrested Jund-Allah’s leader Ata-ur-Rahman, also known as Omar or Ibrahim. Those interested in the war against terror had seen Jund-Allah’s name before on CDs propagating al-Qaida ideology and often distributed free at various mosques in Pakistan. But it is the first time that Jund-Allah has been associated with terrorist attacks. But Pakistani law enforcement agencies are not just worried about the missing members of Jund-Allah. "We are more concerned about the groups that we do not know about, dozens of little Jund-Allahs spread across the city," says a senior intelligence official who did not want to be identified. After the arrests, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said police had "broken the backbone of" the group responsible for most of the terror attacks carried out in Karachi during the last six months. But investigations conducted by UPI show, the arrests have only exposed one of dozens of terror cells al-Qaida and Taliban operatives and their supporters are running in Karachi. With a population of more than 15 million, Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city and the commercial hub. During the last 20 years, it also has become the headquarters of regional terrorist groups and drug gangs. It all started after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when the United States and its allies, including Pakistan, helped establish dozens of armed groups to fight the Soviet occupiers. Most of these groups were based in Pakistan and returned to their hideouts after carrying out hit-and-run attacks inside Afghanistan. Almost all major groups had offices in Karachi, the region’s only all-weather port, where arms shipments from the West arrived. Some of these groups were also involved in drug trafficking. Since they were using the money they raised from this lucrative trade for financing their wars against the Soviets, both the Americans and the Pakistanis ignored them. Some of the money from this trade and the weapons brought for Afghanistan stayed in Karachi. The weapons were often sold to dozens of ethnic and sectarian groups who also appeared on the scene during the Afghan war. The Afghan war had two immediate affects on Karachi, groups that were using sticks and bricks to fight with each other now had access to AK-47 assault rifles and they too tapped into the drug money to finance their own private wars. "With the help of the drug mafia, they established a subterranean network, which is still intact," says a retired official of the Pakistani military agency, ISI. "So, when al-Qaida appeared on the scene, it simply connected to this network," the official said. Al-Qaida’s need to develop its links to Karachi’s underworld further increased after December 2001, when U.S. forces defeated its Taliban patrons in neighboring Afghanistan, taking away the training camps and bases it had established in that country. The first strong evidence of al-Qaida’s presence in Karachi came more than two years ago when its operatives kidnapped and later beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl. The group identified itself as Harkat-ul-Mujahedin-e-Alami, the international movement of holy warriors. "But when we started arresting its people, we discovered their links to known al-Qaida operatives," says Shah, the Karachi police chief. "We arrested almost all known members of this group." Although police interrogated Harkat men for months, the interrogation did not lead to the discovery of other al-Qaida cells in Karachi. An al-Qaida training manual, discovered and published by UPI in February, shows why. "There’s no need for one group to be aware of the existence of other groups. Group leaders should never contact each other. Members of one group should not even know that there are other groups operating in the area," says the manual. "If one group is busted, other groups should immediately become inactive and wait to see how much information police have retrieved from the busted groups before resuming their activities." "No body should contact the nazm (the executive), if they need your help, they will contact you. There is no need to disclose your real identities and personal details to other members of the group," says the manual while explaining how to deal with police interrogation and how to work after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. "No place is safe, not even in a Muslim country. The enemy has access to all Muslim governments, their agencies and their data. So we must never forget that we are living in hostile conditions all the time," the manual says. Working on these instructions, all al-Qaida cells in Karachi went underground after the busting of Harkat-ul-Mujahedin-e-Alami. "After assessing the damage and securing their tracks, they soon resurfaced," says a senior official of the Karachi police. "Although we did not know that there was an organization called Jund-Allah, it was already working secretly," said the Karachi police chief, Shah. Pakistani police say that Jund-Allah is more radical than the Harakat
There are certain common elements in the new terror groups emerging in Pakistan. All of them, at one stage or another, have been trained in Afghanistan, mostly at al-Qaida camps, many of their members are ethnic Pashtuns from the areas bordering Afghanistan and have lost close relatives and friends in the anti-terror war. "They all seem to believe that they have been wronged and they use this to justify giving away their lives in suicide attacks," said a Pakistani intelligence officer. Pakistani investigators say the terrorists are turning to bombing as their favorite method because it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to get other weapons. "There is no more a Taliban government in Afghanistan and nobody else in the region is interested in arming them," said the intelligence officer. "So they go for the easiest option, making bombs. They can make a powerful explosive with 200-250 aspirin tablets and some commercial chemicals easily available in the market. For timers, they use the gadget that comes with washing machines," said the Pakistani intelligence officer.
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| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 The heat from counterterrorism forces is not good for the smooth operation of the drug business. Maybe someone could foment a war between the drug cartels and the jihadis. |
| Posted by: virginian 2004-06-16 5:44:12 PM |