Ex-major's loyalties embody jihad woes

maomao

Veteran Hunter of Maleecha
Senior Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2010
Messages
5,033
Likes
8,354
Country flag
Ex-major's loyalties embody jihad woes


LAHORE: A former major who trained fighters for war in Afghanistan and occupied Kashmir keeps cropping up in terrorism investigations in Pakistan. But police say the grey-haired grandfather is shielded by his links to the army and powerful intelligence agencies.

The case of Ahsanul Haq shines a light on a murky side of the militancy infecting the country: the extent to which retired members of the security agencies allegedly support or tolerate militants they once nurtured for foreign policy aims.

The recent arrest of another retired army major with alleged links to the suspect in New Yorks Times Square bomb plot rekindled these concerns. The man has since been released, but the army says he was dismissed from the force.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Mr Haq seemed to embody the contradictions of this shadowy struggle. He said he sees nothing wrong with "jihad against infidels" but strongly denies being linked to terrorism.

The most recent allegations against him appear in a report by investigators of last year's ambush of the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.

The document claims Mr Haq gave logistical support to unspecified Taliban and other fighters. It says cellphones used by the attackers were traced to locations close to a large garment factory owned by Mr Haq and his brother.

Senior Lahore police investigator Zulfikar Hameed said the force reported its suspicions to the ISI, which told him the major was not involved.

Therefore Mr Haq was no longer wanted by the police in connection with the attack, he said, though other high-ranking officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they still harboured suspicions about him.

Otherwise calm and soft-spoken, Mr Haq grew angry as he sat in his upscale Lahore home reading the report into the cricket team attack.

"The police are doing this just to say they have completed the case, to get promotions," he said. "This is absolutely wrong."

Mr Haq served in the army when it and the ISI created and fostered fighters in the US-backed war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

After the Soviets were driven out, the ISI trained thousands of young Pakistanis to wage guerilla war in occupied Kashmir.

Following the 9/11 attacks in US, the government of president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf outlawed the most notorious groups, and was believed to have purged several hundred ISI staff for being too close to the extremists.

But the crackdown was patchily enforced, and many of the militants behind the suicide attacks now rocking Pakistan are linked to the outfits created by the ISI. One such group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is accused of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Mr Haq says he served with a Pakistani army unit close to the Afghan border during the jihad against the Soviet Union, supporting fighters there. He left the army in 1990 and says he began working for the ISI to train fighters for Kashmir.

On police radar

In 2007 Mr Haq showed up on the police radar, when a police investigation report identified him as a member of the "Mufti Sagheer" militant network which it said transported bomb-making equipment to Lahore.

Mr Haq said several of the group's members trained under him in Azad Kashmir, but he insisted they had done no wrong.

"These men are behind bars just because they have beards and believe in jihad against infidels," he said.

The police report calls Mr Haq "sympathetic to the core of his heart to the jihadi groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir. He supports jihadi organisations financially."On Nov 1, 2007, came the suicide bombing of a Pakistan Air Force bus in Sargodha. Mr Haq was arrested and intelligence officials said he was suspected of being one of the masterminds behind the attack. They said he had travelled to Afghanistan and met Sirajuddin Haqqani and his father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Taliban leaders blamed by the US for much of the violence against western troops in Afghanistan.

Mr Haq says he was cleared of involvement in the bus attack and "treated like a VIP" during his detention.

Now in his 60s, he says he lives a quiet life devoted to Tableeghi Jamaat.

Authorities say the militants who raided two places of worship in Lahore 10 days ago had stayed at the Tableeghi centre in the days before the attack. — AP

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect...onal/exmajors-loyalties-embody-jihad-woes-860
 

maomao

Veteran Hunter of Maleecha
Senior Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2010
Messages
5,033
Likes
8,354
Country flag
Pakistan: A sad place, indeed

Pakistan: A sad place, indeed


I have to start with the drama fast unfolding in the honourable Supreme Court, and the reaction to it that one meets on the street and on the Internet.

I wonder how conversant My Lords are with cyberspace, especially when one sees the utter abandon with which the Lahore High Court first ordered Facebook banned and a few days later restored.

In the interim Pakistan was made to look like a foolish country with foolish people who did not have any idea about what was good for them and what was not.

But surely, some of them will know what is going about on the Internet, particularly from bloggers from Sindh and Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa about the ethnic makeup of the Supreme Court.

I say what I am saying with extreme humility, and as a good friend and supporter, nay as a loyal servant of an independent judiciary. I merely point out what I do to caution My Lords that parallels are being drawn between the present court and the hanging bench that despatched another Sindhi, that time the brilliant Zulfikar Ali Bhutto via the hangman's noose: the four Punjabis on the bench convicting and the three non-Punjabis acquitting.

A noose that should never have been used according to Nasim Hassan Shah, one of the hanging judges, in several interviews he has given over the last five or so years.

What is the parallel you might well ask? ZAB, an elected leader of great note within the country, and of world renown abroad on the one hand, and the much-maligned Asif Zardari on the other? But this is the whole point, is it not? When the smaller provinces feel badly done by — Bhutto's judicial murder; Nawab Akbar Bugti's cold-blooded and targeted killing; the disappearance of many Baloch and Sindhi activists — the seeming relentlessness of Asif Zardari's pursuit does not enter the equation.

This is what people in positions of authority in this poor and fraying federation must understand, and the sooner the better. Incidentally, the whole argument about ethnicity is just that: ethnicity and not the province in which someone or other resides or is domiciled.

One more time might I suggest too, that in order to demonstrate that they are not only interested in the laying low of the federal government in particular, and politicians and parliament in general, that My Lords step back to give and take some respite, and call other weighty matters before them in suo motu actions as well? At the top of which very long list is the matter of the disappeared which is really attaining alarming proportions.

Critically, it seems an absolute exercise in futility to have a retired judge heading a tribunal of inquiry on the disappeared when a bench of the Supreme Court itself cannot (will not?) summon an army officer above the rank of colonel before it.

To revert to the terrible atrocity perpetrated on our Ahmadi brothers and sisters, first off, my deep gratitude to the Pakistan Army for burying with full military honours the well-considered Maj-Gen (retd) Nasir Ahmed Chaudhry, a 90-year old gentleman who was gunned down in cold blood with the worshippers. Well done, my army, and may this spirit of loyalty and fairness and rectitude guide the high command in other matters too. Today I am a proud former soldier.

My piece of last week was more a personal journey in time: remembering old friends and recalling a time when there was no distinction between Sunnis and Shias and Ahmadis and Bohris and Aga Khanis and what have you, each worshipping his God in his own way, but all equal citizens of the state. This week we must look at the reaction of the state to the killings of Ahmadis as compared to that which is put on display when others are similarly butchered by people who cannot abide those who do not subscribe to their own, narrow beliefs.

For, it is a sad fact that others, whether they be Shias or Sunnis of this or that sect and creed and belief, all have been targets of the obscurantist killers of humanity. Indeed, our Christian and Hindu and Sikh brothers and sisters have likewise been targeted by cruel murderers. But every time that some outrage has taken place, political leaders have bestirred themselves and visited the homes of those killed. Why not this time?

The Ahmadis might be considered non-Muslim by the state; surely they are still Pakistani? Surely, then, all of the protections and succour that a state should provide its citizens are to be extended to them too?

Far more than this, please note that the compensation which is announced immediately for those killed or injured as a result of such wanton acts in the case of others, was announced five days after the event in the case of the Ahmadis (Rs500,000 and 100,000 respectively for those killed and injured). Indeed, look at the language used while announcing compensation: "Jo maraygaey" for those who were killed. Surely there are kinder terms that could have been used, such as "Jo jaan bahak huay"; "Jo halaak huay"; even "Jo faut huay"!

Why are we so cruel towards the poor Ahmadis, can some one please tell me?

Let me add in passing that my Ahmadi friends tell me that the reply of their community to the offer of compensation is that the community is well placed to look after its own, thank you very much, and that the compensation which is to be paid should be transferred to the people of Hunza-Gojal for the relief work which is ongoing and which will surely increase as the disaster widens.

Pakistan is a sad, sad place my friends; a twisted and pitiless and heartless caricature of what our founding fathers had in mind. I am heartbroken. Kudos, however, to Nawaz Sharif for openly saying that the Ahmadis are our brothers. Of course, it is another matter that the obscurantist elements have jumped down his throat! More strength to him I say.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect.../21-kamran-shafi-a-sad-place-indeed-860-sk-04
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top