A MOSAIC OF TERROR

There are so many groups calling themselves al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban and other names in and near Pakistan’s tumultuous tribal belt that an anti-terrorism expert confessed that he could not remember all of them.


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Terrorists from Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba earned international infamy last month when they carried out audacious, multiple attacks on neighbouring Mumbai, India.

The Army of the Righteous, Pure, or Pious, to render Lashkar-e-Taiba's name in English, is one of many Islamic jihadi groups operating in Pakistan. In fact, there are so many jihadis calling themselves al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban and other names in and near this country's tumultuous tribal belt that retired major-general Jamshed Ayaz, an anti-terrorism expert at the Institute for Regional Studies in Islamabad, confessed that he could not remember all of them.

Matthew Fisher Canwest News Service

Published: Monday, December 29, 2008


Who these shadowy groups are, what motivates them to fight and where, and to which groups they are allied is of crucial importance to soldiers from Canada who are trying to understand the complex war they are fighting across the border in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Taliban, who are all Pushtuns, are led by Mullah Omar, the charismatic one-eyed preacher who is allied by marriage and theology with al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden and who shares with him a $10-million US bounty on his head. But there are other Afghan Taliban leaders, such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, who operate out of Pakistan's North Waziristan district as well as Afghan warlords often based in Pakistan who wrap themselves in jihadi rhetoric but are seldom regarded as men of God.

Both the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida believe in an extremely conservative interpretation of the Koran and have long used Pakistan's tribal areas as a sanctuary. The so-called Pakistan Taliban sprang up when Mullah Omar and his followers were chased out of Afghanistan and into this country after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. After they settled here, they used thousands of mostly Saudi-funded madrassas to inspire young Pakistanis to share their core beliefs and take up their holy war.

But groups in the border areas have always been more loyal to their tribes and clans than to any one leader. As a result, the Pakistan Taliban quickly developed so many fractious components with shifting alliances that television journalist Talat Hussain, who has spent the past few years seeking them out in their mountain redoubts, described them as "franchises more than anything else. There are very loose networks, but they are unstable structures."

Despite being only a few years old, the Pakistan Taliban as a collective already controls most of this country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where they have set up a number of Islamic mini-states. More troubling for Pakistan's future as a unified state, they have slowly been expanding their reign of terror into North West Frontier Province with bursts of violence in many other parts of the country.

Although Jamshed Ayaz said this was "absolute rot," U.S. intelligence agencies, western diplomats and military commanders strongly believe that the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan Taliban have fluid, generally fruitful relations with officers from the Pakistan army's powerful Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, which nurtured the Afghan Taliban when they started in the 1990s.

But not all of the Pakistan Taliban have ties to the ISI. One of its main leaders, the mysterious 34-year-old Bailtullah Mehsud, is this country's most wanted man. He is blamed for masterminding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as well as many suicide bombings and the kidnappings of Pakistani soldiers. However, as Mehsud's gang only fights in Pakistan, it has been spared air strikes by unmanned U.S. Predator drones.

Other important Pakistan Taliban factions are led by Mullah Nazir and the warlord, Gul Bahadur, who is a direct descendent of the legendary Faqir Api, who fought against British rule in the 1900s. Both of these groups are estranged from Mehsud and have made peace deals with the Pakistani army, but because they have fighters in Afghanistan and provide logistical support to al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban, they have been targeted by American drones operating over Pakistan.

To fight the Pakistan Taliban, the new government of Asif Ali Zardari has recently sent the army into parts of FATA where there have been involved in several major battles. As a part of a divide and rule policy, the army has also been handing out weapons to local tribal militias known as lashkars. But this can be a tricky business in these remote regions because the Lashkars, some of whom may be Taliban by another name, could easily turn their weapons against those who gave them to them.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, which killed 164 people in India last month, is not a traditional lashkar and was not believed to have received any arms from the Pakistani government. But it has long had ties to the Pakistani military intelligence since being established in the late 1980s with the goal of conquering Indian Kashmir and its largely Muslim population. The Mumbai attack, which was directed at Israelis, Britons and Americans, as well as India, represented an ominous broadening of its ambitions.

Over time, Lashkar-e-Taiba has developed a broad following in poor rural areas across Pakistan, from which it draws many recruits. Its operations have been funded by the Dawa Islamic charity, which also has ties to the Taliban.

Opinion had been divided in Pakistan about the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist groups and what, if anything, should be done by Zardari's government or the army to check their rising power. While many Pakistanis are furious at the mayhem caused by Mehsud and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and want them severely dealt with, there has also been admiration for the pluck of some Taliban factions for taking on the might of the American army and air force and for Lashkar-e-Taibi for, among other things, attacking the Indian parliament in Delhi in 2001.

"The conflict is changing," said Ahsan Iqbal, an MP and information secretary for the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the smaller half of the Pakistani People's Party-led coalition government. "The distance between Washington and Alaska is a lot less than between Islamabad and the tribal areas. The difference is 100 years. Their social structures and traditions are very different. If you do not understand this, there is little chance for success against them."

Notwithstanding the Pakistan Taliban's proven ability to cause bloody harm almost anywhere, Iqbal and others doubted that they would succeed in what has been called "the Talibanization" of the entire country.

"Things are very bad along the frontier with many different forces pitted against each other," said Syed Jaffer Ahmed of the Pakistan Study Centre in Karachi, "but I would not go so far as to say that this will shatter the nation. I do not think that Talibanization can take place everywhere here."

Afghanistan and some NATO countries such as Canada have favoured opening a dialogue with moderate Taliban. Initial talks sponsored by Saudi Arabia have already taken place.

However, Mullah Omar is a hugely influential figure among most factions of the Pakistan Taliban and, therefore, a key player in any peace deal on both sides of the border - and he can hardly be considered a moderate.

Ayaz Wazir, who was a member of a Pakistani diplomatic mission which met half a dozen times with the Afghan cleric before the 9/11 attacks, favoured including him in any negotiations.

"We have an expression in Pushto that you can fight for 100 years but eventually you will talk," said Wazir, who grew up in a tribal area and speaks the same dialect as Mullah Omar.

"His vision was already well known then, but my dealings with him were normal. He was quite easy to converse with. I originally thought that he was an ordinary mullah. But over time I learned that he was very shrewd."

Talat Hussain, the broadcaster, said "the Americans are not going to touch Mullah Omar. They have to keep a door open. If they take him out, who are they going to talk to?"