Pakistan's Jihad
Roggio, Bill
Pakistan’s Jihad In the war on terror, Islamabad is both with us and against us BY BILL ROGGIO & THOMAS JOSCELYN Just two days after the gunmen’s siege in Mumbai ended, Pakistani president...
...It should not come as a surprise if someday we fi nd ISI-backed terrorists laying siege to New York or Washington, just as they lately brought carnage to Mumbai...
...Let’s destroy America wherever its troops are trapped...
...Former President Pervez Musharraf conducted multiple purges of the ISI after the September 11 attacks and attempts on his own life, but they had limited effect...
...Data on the number of attacks and total casualties vary by source...
...The LET and several sister organizations also backed by the ISI began attacking India proper long ago...
...American intelligence agencies confronted the Pakistani government with evidence of direct ISI involvement in the bombing of the Indian embassy, the New York Times reported in August...
...Contrary to President Zardari’s claims, the LET is no “stateless actor...
...Pakistan’s Jihad In the war on terror, Islamabad is both with us and against us BY BILL ROGGIO & THOMAS JOSCELYN Just two days after the gunmen’s siege in Mumbai ended, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari went on CNN’s Larry King Live to plead his case...
...After the Indians left their positions, LET members moved in...
...In fact, FBI agents visited Chitral in early 2006 to assess the reports...
...Such is the depth of cooperation between the LET and Pakistan’s military establishment...
...An aide to President Karzai told reporters that “evidence and documents [had] been seized with [Akbar] proving his destructive activities in Afghanistan...
...Thomas Joscelyn is the senior editor of the Long War Journal...
...U.S...
...The ISI not only gives these groups safe haven and trains and supplies them, it also frequently coordinates their movements...
...By the early 1990s, the LET emerged as one of the ISI’s primary instruments for waging its proxy war against Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir...
...Given the ISI’s deep roots within Pakistan’s culture and its capacity to drive policy even against the wishes of the elected offi cials, curtailing the power of this rogue agency will be diffi cult at best...
...Consider one telling example...
...The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan,” Vernon said in an interview...
...Zardari had hoped for improved relations with India, but he was powerless to stop the Mumbai attacks...
...In 1992, there were 3,920...
...Fifty-four people, including an Indian defense attach?, were killed in the July 7 bombing...
...After President ul-Haq threw the full support of his military behind the movement and turned on the spigot of Saudi petrodollars, radical Islam really took off...
...The president of Pakistan has essentially admitted what we should all know by now: There is currently no political force inside Pakistan capable of reining in the ISI and its many jihadist allies...
...The ISI launched the full-scale jihad in Jammu and Kashmir, but it did not stop there...
...Even before the Indian authorities had brought the rampage to an end, they were laying blame on their neighbor to the north...
...In fact, bin Laden and his spiritual mentor, Abdullah Azzam, reportedly played instrumental roles in the LET’s founding...
...Nash said multiple U.S...
...The slide read: “ISI involved in direct support to many enemy operations . . . classifi cation prevents further discussion of this point...
...On that day, terrorists detonated seven bombs on Mumbai’s commuter rails...
...The ISI allegedly trained the LET terrorists responsible and provided other logistical support for the operation...
...But according to Swami’s estimates, which we fi nd to be conservative, more than 41,000 people, including Indian forces, terrorists, and civilians, died between 1988 and 2005...
...And we have given [President Musharraf] information...
...According to Akbar, he had escorted Osama bin Laden as he traveled from Afghanistan’s Nuristan province into the mountainous district of Chitral in northwestern Pakistan in 2005...
...The gunmen plus the planners, whoever they are, [are] stateless actors who have been holding hostage the whole world...
...The most recent and damning allegation of ISI perfi dy in Afghanistan was leveled by U.S...
...So, if you defi ne the “state of Pakistan” as the president and his immediate cohorts, his words ring true...
...Indeed, the ISI is now one of the principal backers of radical Islam in the world...
...covert air campaign targeting terror leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas...
...and NATO offi cials backed up Vernon’s statements...
...There is no question that Pakistan has played an instrumental role in the war on terror...
...And an Indianbased organization called the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which is sponsored by the ISI and deeply connected to its Pakistani brethren, has been instrumental in launching attacks inside India...
...According to Indian offi cials, the LET and SIMI were responsible...
...The Muslim world must stand united to confront the United States in its so-called War on Terrorism, which is in reality a war against Muslims...
...Itinerant preachers had made their way back and forth from the Arabian peninsula for centuries, carrying with them a form of Wahhabism, the offi cial state religion of Saudi Arabia...
...After the Kargil war of 1999, LET chieftain Hafi z Muhammad Saeed threatened, “The real war will be inside [India...
...They use it to run a series of networks in Afghanistan...
...In the wake of the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, the ISI reshuffl ed its leadership...
...The most radical madrassas instruct more than 1 million students each year and provide a comfortable abode for terrorists planning attacks...
...One result is that today the president himself is not safe...
...While there have been numerous bin Laden sightings along the Afghan-Pakistani border, he was reported to have been sheltered in Chitral at this time...
...In 1999, conventional Pakistani and Indian forces fought for control of Kargil, a mountainous district in northern Kashmir...
...Past efforts to purge the military of offi cers sympathetic to or openly supportive of the extremist cause have had only limited success...
...Far from being the work of “stateless actors,” the attack was perfectly consistent with the ISI’s longstanding policy of waging jihad against India and its interests...
...In the late 1980s, they met with members of the Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), an Islamist political party in Pakistan, and convinced its leaders to create a militant wing responsible for waging jihad in Kashmir...
...In 2002, Allen notes, Pakistan’s minister of religious affairs “put the total number of madrassas in Pakistan at ten thousand, of which . . . no fewer than seven thousand” are Deobandi...
...A slide in the presentation claimed the ISI was supporting U.S...
...Pakistani intelligence offi cers have been caught aiding America’s foes inside Afghanistan...
...The total number of civilians killed per year, including Muslims, increased from less than 30 in 1988 to more than 1,000 in 1993...
...As the war in Afghanistan came to an end, the ISI began to reallocate its resources...
...From NDS [Afghan intelligence] sources that we had in the opposing camp, [we know] they were offl oading supplies,” Nash told the Army Times...
...They touch upon a central fault line in this war on terror...
...It is the direct result of decisions made by Pakistani administrations decades ago...
...The ISI has ensured their safety...
...The ISI helicopters resupplied a “base camp” in the Tora Bora region in Nangarhar, where Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda fought pitched battles with the U.S...
...But Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were principally responsible for creating and sponsoring the most radical Islamic terrorist groups within the mujahedeen’s ranks...
...Recently, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a Bhutto loyalist, tried to bring the ISI under government control, but met resistance...
...President Musharraf ’s regime, including friendly elements within the ISI, killed or captured hundreds of al Qaeda operatives in the wake of September 11...
...The confl ict over Kashmir was relatively terror-free in the late 1980s, but just a few years later Islamist terrorist groups were launching thousands of attacks...
...The jihadist forces have become entrenched within Pakistani society, which is home to dozens of extremist and terrorist organizations...
...The same mentality compels the ISI and its surrogates to claim territory in the name of Islam...
...Akbar had been tasked by Pakistani intelligence with serving as a conduit to al Qaeda, which was operating along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the Kunar region...
...Of these Pakistani madrassas, 354 (40 percent) openly espoused Deobandism...
...As the attacks in Mumbai illustrate, the ISI continues to sponsor terrorism...
...Veterans of the Afghan confl ict formed the LET’s fi rst cadres, and, using Saudi cash, the ISI quickly expanded the LET’s operations...
...As Charles Allen notes in his masterly work God’s Terrorists, there were only 200 madrassas, or religious schools, on Pakistani soil at the time of the India-Pakistan partition in 1947...
...Indeed, the attacks in Mumbai were yet another wake-up call for the United States and the West...
...Indian authorities captured the lone gunman to survive the assault, and he reportedly admitted being trained by the LET...
...But the ISI’s complicity in the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s terrorism goes far beyond the provision of safe haven...
...In the current crisis, the military shows signs of closing ranks with extremist elements as fears of a confl ict with India increase...
...By 1972, this fi gure had grown to 893...
...In time, a Pakistani variant evolved into its own strain of radical Islam called Deobandism...
...Zardari was partly right...
...The full investigation will take some time to unfold, so it is too early to name all of those responsible...
...Both Jalaluddin and Siraj have close ties with al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden...
...military and Afghan militias before retreating into Pakistan...
...It was the proliferation of Deobandi madrassas that led directly to the birth of the Taliban, which follows the Deobandi creed and continues to fi nd new recruits among students of Islam...
...intelligence offi cials also said “elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops” and were providing intelligence to Taliban and al Qaeda operatives on the U.S...
...Throughout the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United States, as well as other states, all sponsored the Afghan resistance fi ghters or mujahedeen...
...intelligence after a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into the outer wall of the Indian embassy in Kabul...
...The same nexus also gave us the LET...
...Both NATO offi cers and Afghan offi cials have long maintained that the Taliban’s Shura, or leadership council, is based in the Pakistani city of Quetta...
...The state of Pakistan is in no way responsible...
...In December 2006, Afghan security forces captured Sayed Akbar, an ISI offi cer...
...In fact, the LET is and always was a creature of the ISI...
...It is in this context that 10 or more gunmen laid siege to hotels and other locales in Mumbai in late November...
...We should be mindful that ISI-sponsored terrorism is a central component of our enemies’ worldwide designs...
...Nash explained that the resupply efforts took place over the course of three months...
...Lieutenant Colonel Chris Nash, the commander of an embedded training team that advised Afghan border police, dropped a bombshell last September when his presentation on his time in Afghanistan from September 2006 to March 2007 made the rounds on the Internet...
...During the coldest weeks of the confl ict, the Indians ceded the highest ridges for warmer ground below...
...airstrikes this year have occurred in North Waziristan...
...The camp was run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-iIslami, an insurgent group long sponsored by the ISI, as well as the Taliban and al Qaeda...
...India also claims to have intercepted phone conversations between the Mumbai attackers and one of the LET’s leaders in Pakistan...
...Despite these warnings, the Taliban’s leadership has remained free...
...In fact, Indian authorities have reportedly found direct evidence of cooperation between the ISI and the LET in the latest attack...
...Pakistan’s jihad in India and Kashmir is not just the product of a decades-old geopolitical rivalry...
...The Indian embassy bombing was carried out by the notorious Haqqani Network, run by former mujahedeen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj...
...He swore his forces would “unfurl the Islamic fl ag on the Red Fort...
...The assassins were more successful with Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was killed by jihadists in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on December 27, 2007...
...This is not the time to point fi ngers,” Zardari protested...
...The Haqqani Network has been a prime target of these attacks...
...Moreover, this strategy confl icts directly with American interests...
...In turn, the Taliban-dominated tribes pledged to send three million fi ghters to the Indian frontier in the event of a confl ict...
...The Haqqanis have extensive links with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and their relationship with the ISI has allowed their network to survive and thrive in its fortress stronghold of North Waziristan...
...Other anonymous U.S...
...Just as the ISI created the LET and its sister organizations, the ISI has also been the primary benefactor of the Taliban in Afghanistan...
...It is no wonder that in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, the Indians have demanded that the Pakistanis turn Saeed over...
...Zardari had stopped off to chat with an old friend, narrowly avoiding death...
...India has played its part in the violence in Jammu and Kashmir, but the prime mover has been the ISI and its jihadist proxies, including the LET...
...And Zardari wanted the world to know they were wrong...
...Pakistan is both an ally and an enemy...
...The attack left more than 200 dead and 700 or so wounded...
...And the struggle for control of Jammu and Kashmir, territory sandwiched between China, India, and Pakistan that had been disputed since the partition of 1947, would never be the same...
...The United States is now faced with an awful truth...
...And he knows that and I know that,” Karzai told the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2006...
...The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence offi cers and militants who carried out the attack, the offi cials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence offi - cers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region...
...Even so, Zardari’s comments are not altogether meaningless...
...enemies fi ghting in Afghanistan...
...The allure of Islamist extremism runs deep in Pakistan’s offi cer corps...
...We have even given him the GPS numbers of his house, of Mullah Omar’s house, and the telephone numbers...
...Within 24 hours, the announcement that the ISI would be placed under the offi ce of the prime minister had been rescinded...
...Perhaps the most brazen example of the ISI’s support for the Taliban and other terror groups operating in Afghanistan occurred in the mountainous Afghan border province of Nangarhar...
...There are numerous examples that can be cited...
...The United States and India have named the Pakistanbased Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) terror organization as the main perpetrator of the attacks...
...The Haqqanis control large swaths of the tribal area and run a parallel administration with courts, recruiting centers, tax offi ces, and security forces...
...These four organizations have killed hundreds...
...Bill Roggio is managing editor of the website Long War Journal and adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies...
...In all likelihood, neither he nor his supporters had anything to do with the attacks...
...As Praveen Swami, a reporter for Frontline magazine in New Delhi, explains in his book India, Pakistan, and the Secret Jihad, there were only 7 terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir in 1988...
...The support included “training, funding, [and] logistics...
...And there are good reasons to suspect that the ISI had a hand in the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 180 people and wounded nearly 300...
...Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM), another ISI creation focused on Kashmir, has often been the LET’s partner in crime...
...Instead, Zardari said, “I think these are stateless actors who have been operating all throughout the region...
...The ISI offi cers involved in the Kabul bombings were not “renegades,” the New York Times reported, and the intercepts indicated that “their actions might have been authorized by superiors...
...While this made some inroads among Pakistanis, it was not until the late 1970s that Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq made it the offi cial policy of the Pakistani state to support the Deobandis, and radical Islam blossomed...
...The attacks in Mumbai are only the latest demonstration of the tactics the ISI is willing to sponsor in its quest for power in the subcontinent and beyond...
...Mullah Omar is for sure in Quetta in Pakistan...
...Until this latest attack, the most devastating assault perpetrated by these groups in recent years occurred on July 11, 2006...
...The jihadists had proven their merit as guerrilla fi ghters, and the ISI found it convenient to use them elsewhere...
...So has the Hizb-ulMujahedeen (HM), which was founded with the ISI’s help in the late 1980s...
...But it is doubtful that the Pakistani military will comply...
...and Afghan intelligence reports indicated that the ISI “fl ew repeated helicopter missions into Afghanistan to resupply the Taliban during a fi erce battle in June 2007,” according to the Army Times...
...Consider what “retired” ISI general Hamid Gul, who still exerts much influence in Pakistan, said in 2003: God will destroy the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever it will try to go from there...
...This nexus is what fi rst gave us Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and, later, Mullah Omar’s Taliban...
...As Swami explains, the Red Fort in New Delhi “has been a long-standing motif in Islamist Discourse, as old as Partition itself...
...But the changes were most likely cosmetic...
...For many, this is an ideological war...
...Thus, when President Zardari went on CNN to proclaim Pakistan’s innocence, he avoided any substantive discussion of the ISI’s role...
...The jihadist hydra nearly killed Zardari on September 20, when a truck bomb leveled the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad...
...The LET held this strategic battleground until their replacements— regulars in Pakistan’s army—arrived...
...In May 2006, Colonel Chris Vernon, then the chief of staff for Coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, told the Guardian that this was common knowledge...
...Even as Pakistan gave the United States vital assistance in the war on terror, the ISI continued to sponsor America’s enemies behind her back...
...The helicopters made three separate fl ights to resupply the joint insurgent force...
...The consequences of the ISI’s decision are plain to see...
...Afghan president Hamid Karzai went so far as to say he knew the exact location of Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar and had passed on this information to the Pakistani government, only to have it ignored...
...Afghan offi cials said Akbar confessed to conducting “illegal activities” in Afghanistan...
...It is, however, a safe bet that the LET was heavily involved...
...It’s the major headquarters...
...Decades ago the ISI made a pact with the devil...
...According to the website satp.org (South Asia Terrorist Portal), these groups, along with other smaller allied jihadist organizations, are responsible for dozens of attacks inside India between September 2001 and October 2008...
...They have established multiple training camps and safe houses used by al Qaeda leaders and operatives, as well as by Taliban foot soldiers preparing to fi ght in Afghanistan...
...There is no evidence that it can be redeemed any time soon...
...A helo fl ew in the valley, went over to where we knew there was a base camp, landed, [and] 15 minutes later took off,” Nash said...
...Indeed, the extent of the radicalization of Pakistani society is deeply troubling...
...almost 60 percent of U.S...
...The result was the LET...
...But it is now clear that the ISI’s longterm strategy for seizing power throughout South and Central Asia by sponsoring jihadist proxies remains undeterred...
...For the ISI, it is part of a Manichaean struggle between the forces of Islam and the rest of the world...
...Just days after the Mumbai attacks, an army corps commander described Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud as a “patriot” and said the confl ict with the Taliban in the northwest was merely due to “misunderstandings...
...Of course, there is more to Pakistan’s government, including its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful military intelligence organization over which Zardari exerts little control...
...As Praveen Swami notes in his book, the LET’s leadership has openly talked of conquering large swaths of India on behalf of Muslims...
...All of this has important ramifi cations not only for India and Pakistan, but also for the United States and the rest of the free world...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 13
