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| India-Pakistan | ||
| Plans for a parallel MMA runs into trouble | ||
| 2003-07-25 | ||
THE GOVERNMENTâS EFFORTS TO CREATE A religious alliance to counter the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal have failed to take off primarily because of differences among remaining religious parties, most of which are actually reincarnated versions of banned sectarian and jihadi outfits. Those in the government who earlier cut deals with such groups, notably banned Sipah-e-Sahabaâs Azam Tariq, to get support for the government are now trying to expand the experiment to create a parallel religious bloc and challenge the MMAâs claim of being the only religious alliance in the country.
Azharâs Jaish-e-Mohammad is being encouraged to support the Musharaff government, and although Azhar might be willing (since he is bound to get even more money from his handlers if he agrees), many of the hardcore terrorists in his organisation are opposed to it, and up to 10 small splinter groups are said to have emerged throughout the country. In Azam Tariqâs case, the deal between him and the government was cut when he was in jail. This is why unlike the exiled leaders of the PPP and the PML-N, who were barred from participating in the October 2002 elections, Tariq was facilitated by the government to contest elections from the jail and win from his Jhang constituency. Three weeks after the elections he was released and within three more weeks he announced his support for the PML-Q led coalition and voted to elect Zafarullah Jamali as prime minister. Tariq has renamed his outfit as Millat-e-Islamia Party and launched it formally on April 19 in Khairpur. He also claimed the new party had nothing to do with jihad and jihadi outfits.
The Barelvis are more moderate than the puratanical Deobandis The problem faced by the government in implementing this scheme is to get a Shia and an Ahl-e Hadith party. This would be the same combination the MMA put together before the elections. Ahle Hadith are what Wahabis are called in the subcontinent âIt is almost impossible to get a Shia group and make it part of the alliance in the presence of Azam Tariq,â a source in Islamabad told TFT. Tariq is rabidly anti-Shia and his banned SSP and its even more dangerous terrorist offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are accused of murdering hundreds of Shias in the past decade. âStill, we are trying to sound out some pro-government Shia leaders,â he said. Azam Tariq himself is reluctant to join the alliance despite his recent claims that his new party holds no grudge against Shias. But, say sources, such statements are more for public consumption and for making Tariq more palatable. âIn reality, he knows he cannot move away from the politics of the banned SSP. That is his power-base,â says a source. The region the SSP was founded in was controlled by wealthy Shia landowners, and the backlash from the poor Sunnis against their fuedal lords took the form of the ultra-sectarian SSP. This was encouraged by the Military regime who feared that Pakistanâs Shias were too close to Iran. Meanwhile, some insiders say Masood Azhar has consented to join the alliance. His group has already expelled 12 hardliners from its ranks who were stuck to the manifesto of the proscribed Jaish-e Mohammad, which featured jihad as the supreme cause. But as things stand, the alliance does not seem to be a possibility in the near future. This is probably plan B, if the ISI is unable to split the MMA and convince Fazl Rahman to join the government. | ||
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #3 Actually, I'd have to cut them a little bit of slack. It's on the other side of the world and everybody's named Ahmed or Mahmoud and it's hard for a j-school grad to tell them apart. I read about this stuff every day and it still confuses me. Where I don't cut them slack is in covering Qazi, Fazl, Sami, Hafiz Saeed, Azam Tariq, Syed Salahuddin, Hamid Gul and the rest of the cast of thousands of lunatics littering the Pak political landscape. Most people who don't read the Pak press daily (or Rantburg) have no conception of the virulence toward us lying deep in the hearts of Our Noble Allyâ¢... Or maybe not so deep. |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-7-25 3:57:09 PM |
| #2 Now, folks, HERE is a real Quagmireâ¢: the Pak govt and its opposition parties! One does not hear much about this in the mainstream press because they do not have the memories and intellectual prowess to keep track of all these nutcases and how they interact. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-7-25 2:18:19 PM |
| #1 The ISI is surely the second most negative, reactionary force on the face of this planet after the Saudi royals. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2003-7-25 2:04:30 PM |