PAKISTAN'S SPONSORED TERRORISM

by Margie Burns

December 7, 2001

It is sad to reflect on how the people of Pakistan are being taken advantage of; millions of Americans number Pakistani immigrants to this country among their friends and acquaintances.

But by any definition of "terrorism," one of its most consistent sponsors in our time is Pakistan. This lesson is so simple it could be taught in fourth-grade geography; only the names are hard.

In December 1999, for instance, an Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked in Kashmir by Pakistan-based groups - Harkat-ul-Mujahedin (HUM), Lashkar-e-Toib, and Hizbul Mujahideen - demanding release of their confederates from Indian prisons. The hijackers called themselves the "united front."

The group called HUM began in the Punjab, Pakistan, in the early 1980s. Undergoing a couple of name changes at times it was briefly outlawed, it has stayed on course with aggression, mostly against India and Afghanistan. As described on the spicy travel web site www.comebackalive.com,

"HUA is the main recruiter and trainer (with help from the Pakistani Secret Service) of young Kashmiris and out-of-work muhajedin from Pakistan. If you are looking for muhajedin time to add to your resume, they will train you for five weeks in the dark arts of light weapons, land mines, booby traps and covert operations and then send you marching over the mountains to raise havoc in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The group is also known for sending eager fighters into Bosnia (all gone home now), Tajikistan (Tajik resistance), Myanmar . . . They have become sort of a Burger King jihad around the world."

Since September 11, the group is officially listed as "terrorist" again; the Pakistani secret service (ISI) still has not been held to account. HUM has kidnapped several Westerners, including tourists; it bans U.S. citizens from visiting Kashmir, with the knowledge and passive consent of the ISI.

HUM played a major role in funneling US aid to the Taliban in the 1980s, via the Pakistani Secret Service; the money, of course, came from the CIA, which spent $3.3B over-all helping the Taliban. HUM is also linked to another Pakistani group, Jamiat-ul-Ulema (JUI), whose leader is openly reported as "the godfather of the Taliban."

Hizbul is a military force supported by Pakistan, operating inside India with an estimated 15,000 fighters. (Al Qaeda has been estimated at 200, though it has probably grown by now, with recent publicity).

Lashkar-e-Toib is largely Afghans, not in Afghanistan but in the Kashmir, where they are routinely sent by the ISI to raise havoc.

HUM, Lashkar-e-Toiba, al Badr and Sipah-e-Sahaba, also Pakistani groups, are all members with al Qaeda of the "International Islamic Front." According to a Financial Times article about rocket attacks on US and U.N. offices in Pakistan in November 1999, "All these Pakistan-based organizations are virulently anti-American in their rhetoric, but only the HUM has been anti-US in its actions too, whereas the other organizations had so far carefully avoided any attacks on US nationals or interests."

Aside from the guerrilla groups, Pakistan also hosts the Saudi Arabian-sponsored Wahhabi religious schools that teach the hardest-line Islam to children with nowhere else to go, where some of the Talibs began. It also has nuclear weapons and has designs on two Muslim-majority regions in India.

Pakistan's secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has been deliberately destabilizing Afghanistan for years. The late Ahmed Shah Massoud, commander of the "united front" in Afghanistan, attributed the Taliban's success to the ISI, which also trained Massoud; even anti-Taliban, pro-U.S. Arab writers consider the Taliban a Pakistan puppet. Ironically, Massoud - one man who might have united enough factions to form some sort of government, described even by the irreverent as genuinely motivated to help his people get a democratic government of their own choosing -- was attacked by suicide bombers posing as journalists on September 9 of this year, and died on September 14.

As the international press has reported - particularly in a detailed article in Le Monde -- Massoud's "journalist" assassins enjoyed a remarkably smooth trip, amounting to a safe conduct, through Afghan territory. Thus it either was visible, or should have been, to Pakistani secret service and to US and Russian secret service. Either way, Massoud's assassination looks like a chip for Vladimir Putin, newly induced to join a "coalition" against the Taliban that, according to the Russian press, several former Soviet countries including Russia had already formed, months earlier.

The Soviet Union failed in several attempts to assassinate Massoud, back when Putin was with the KGB. Now, somehow, two former heroes of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union have recently been assassinated - Massoud and Abdul Haq -- despite the CIA's vigilance. The only opposition figure successfully rescued by the CIA has been Hamid Karzai, based in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war. Good news for Putin all around: on October 22, 2001, the Russian press reported with satisfaction the killing of a Saudi activist in Chechnya, Abu Omar Mohammed As-Seif. As-Seif, regarded as a terrorist by the Russians, is a Wahhabi as well as a Saudi citizen, linked with the Muslim rebels in Chechnya; his death was not reported in the US. Meanwhile, in a development so predictable this column could almost have been written in advance, Karzai, a member of a Pashtun tribe in Pakistan, has been named as head of the new Afghan government.

The military dictatorship in Pakistan - our new ally "against terror" -- has supported, trained, financed and shipped commandos and sneaks against other states - mainly India and Afghanistan -- for years, and the entire Middle East knows it; it poured money and men into a continuous effort to destabilize Afghanistan, and the entire region knows that; it propped up the Taliban regime for its entire short existence, before the abrupt about-face (with Saudi Arabia) following September 11. For the White House to send bombers against pitiful Afghanistan, while at the same moment giving money and photo ops to a smiling General Musharraf, broadcasts the speciousness of ISI, CIA, and US intelligence around the world.

The House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees should recommend against any more money for these entities.

Margie Burns has written for Legal Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Salon.com, and the Baltimore Sun. Originally from Texas, she works in the DC area.