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| The Alliance |
| Pakistan's states within the state |
| 2001-09-25 |
A campaign to smash the global terror network has already clashed head-on with Pakistan's two states within a state — the Islamist clergy and the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). By any measure, Pakistan has long been a state sponsor of terrorism. But what the U.S. regards as an integral part of the transnational network is seen in Pakistan as Kashmiri "freedom fighters" — called "terrorists" in India — willing to commit suicide to "liberate occupied Kashmir." Most of them have been trained in Osama Bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. They consider themselves blood brothers of thousands of fellow guerrillas — known as terrorists in the U.S. — from many parts of the Muslim world, from Indonesia's Laskar Jihad organization to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and Filipino ransom kidnappers. Bin Laden was their common mentor and hero. Pakistan has long been their safest of safe havens. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen is a militant group that acts as a link between the Kashmir underground and the Taliban. Gen. Musharraf's declaration of support for the U.S. last week has galvanized extremist religious factions. He received an intelligence report yesterday, according to UPI's sources, that a group known as "The Pious Ones" had issued a contract on his life. The president's security detail is now insisting he wear a bullet-proof vest while driving between the President's House in Islamabad and Army House in Rawalpindi, where he also works into the early hours of the morning and lives with his family. Gen. Musharraf turned down the security request. Former high-ranking officers — such as Gen. Hameed Gul, a retired ISI chief — are also sympathetic to the mujahideen groups that were trained by Pakistan in the 1980s to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Taliban — plural for talib, or student of the Koran — was originally Pakistan's creation under the tutelage of Gen. Gul. It was Gul's idea to call them Taliban, or "students." He turned bitterly against the U.S. after Washington lost interest in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Today, Gen. Gul acts as "strategic adviser" to Pakistan's principal extremist religious parties. When Gen. Musharraf heard that the Foreign Ministry had authorized visas for some Chechen guerrillas earlier this year, military intelligence, not ISI, followed them after their arrival in Pakistan straight to Gen. Gul's house in Rawalpindi. A steady stream of other visitors from Sudan, North Africa and the Middle East goes through his house. Gen. Gul's wife told UPI today that the general was traveling "where he could not be reached." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |