Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia: Militancy, Politics and Security 9781350986909, 9781838608781

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Prem Mahadevan is a senior researcher with the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zu¨rich. He completed his undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees in War Studies and Intelligence Studies from King’s College London. His first book The Politics of Counterterrorism in India, was published by I.B.Tauris in 2012. He has briefed NATO Headquarters, the Global Counterterrorism Forum and analysts from several European governments about jihadist terrorism directed against Afghanistan and India. Security forces in India have sought his assessments on future threat scenarios and hostage rescue procedures for dealing with ‘active shooter’ incidents. At the request of the Indian Army’s Centre for Land Warfare Studies, in 2014 he authored An Eye for An Eye, a book on the utility of special operations in combating cross-border terrorism. He has lectured at the University of Innsbruck, Austria and the Metropolitan University Prague, Czech Republic and has contributed op-eds on international security to Neue Zu¨rcher Zeitung, Switzerland’s newspaper of record.

‘I have long admired the writings of Prem Mahadevan, not only his excellent works on modern terrorism but across the board of national security studies. His publications are invariably incisive, reliably researched, and brimming with insights. He displays these talents again in Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia, which peers deeply into the hidden dynamics of jihadist militancy in Pakistan. No one can fathom the future of the jihadist movement without coming to grips with its methods in this important South Asian nation; this book is indispensable for that purpose.’ Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science, University of Georgia, USA

‘Mahadevan’s book provides a macro-historical overview of jihadism in South Asia and the role that intelligence has played. His careful and detailed analysis reveals an alarming degree of continuity in the aims of the militant Islamists over time and space; indeed, the demonstration of the longevity of these trends is one of the book’s strengths. The book should appeal to academics and policy-makers alike: the value of the lessons derived are of considerable policy relevance. Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia is a superb, scholarly book and I wholeheartedly recommend it.’ Michael S. Goodman, Professor in Intelligence & International Affairs, King’s College London and Official Historian of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee ‘Contains a wealth of information on the complex dynamics centred on Islamism, jihadism and terrorism, including the relationship between the state and militant groups. The author shows his thorough knowledge of the region, its intricacies, and its long troubled history. Complex inter- and intra-state politics, and regional dynamics, are presented in a manner that is easily understandable to common readers and experts alike.’ Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi ‘Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia approaches its subject from a fresh perspective. It is an important book at the present juncture where wishful thinking, deception and self-delusion continue to dominate the responses of various powers struggling to deal with Islamist terrorism emanating from Pakistan.’ Ajai Sahni, Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi ‘In this informative and fascinating volume, Prem Mahadevan explores how Pakistan became at once a safe haven, a victim, an enabler, and an exporter of Islamist militancy. It is a fascinating journey into the murky domain of the “deep state” and hidden hands. Mahadevan sheds light on dynamics that defy outside analysis.’ Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation

ISLAMISM AND INTELLIGENCE IN SOUTH ASIA Militancy, Politics and Security

PREM MAHADEVAN

I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © Prem Mahadevan, 2018 Prem Mahadevan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7845-3464-6 PB: 978-0-7556-0071-7 ePDF: 978-1-8386-0878-1 eBook: 978-1-8386-0877-4 Series: Library of South Asian History and Culture, volume 18 Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To VV270383, Whose writings, wit, courage and professionalism inspired me

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Foreword Preface Unpacking Layers of Concealment

ix x xvi

Introduction Why this book? Introducing the Pakistani Deep State Islam(ism) is the Answer . . . to Democratic Politics Theoretical Model Chapterization Methodology

1 4 7 11 14 18 20

Part I

Islamism

1.

Jihadism Surviving the Devil’s Wind The Rise of Jamaat-e-Islami The Army and Islamization

25 27 33 40

2.

Pan-Islamism An old (Great) Game in a New Bottle Pakistan: The ‘Ideological Miracle’ The Importance of Networks

48 49 53 60

3.

Sectarianism Geopolitics of Shia-Sunni Conflict Madrassas and Multi-Generational Hatreds

69 72 77

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Ties with Government Cost to Civil Society Part II

81 85

Intelligence

4.

Information Denial Ill-Governed Spaces and Xenophobia Al Qaeda and Operational Security Institutional Weakness and the Deep State

91 94 99 105

5.

Information Collection How do Militant Groups Collect Intelligence? Corruption and the ‘Privatization of Violence’ The Myth of ‘Reverse Indoctrination’

112 113 120 126

6.

Information Manipulation Deception over Afghanistan Manufacturing Discourses Anti-Americanism: A Bridge between the Military, Mullahs and Middle Classes Conclusion

134 137 142 148 154

Reflections and Conclusion 7.

Regional Impact Afghanistan ‘Pashtunistan’ Bangladesh India Pakistan as a Common Factor

161 162 163 174 183 192

8.

Sloping Towards Radicalism ‘Strategic Assets’, Both Overseas and Domestic De-Intellectualization of Jihadism Lack of International Consensus Ripe for Revolt? Or Maybe a Few Decades More?

195 196 199 201 203

Notes Select Bibliography Index

207 244 258

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Graph I.1 From statelessness to state capture. Graphic prepared at Center for Security Studies, ETH Zu¨rich.

15

Table I.1 Intelligence activities of states and non-state actors. Adapted from John Gentry, ‘Toward a Theory of Non-State Actors’ Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security, 31:4 (2016), pp. 484–5

17

Table 3.1 Types of Islamist militancy

71

Table 7.1 Structural characteristics of states that are ideological sources of international terrorism

192

Table 7.2 Structural characteristics of states that provide facilitative environments for international terrorism

193

FOREWORD

Prem Mahadevan’s book addresses the issue of Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism. This is a topic of immense importance, but it is treacherous terrain where objective analysis is often unwelcome. Mahadevan’s book improves our understanding of state sponsorship of terrorism in general and Pakistan’s role in particular, and aims at frank discussion based on published facts. Its author must anticipate both praise and criticism. British military historian Adrian Weale wrote: ‘International terrorism rarely happens without a state sponsor, directly or indirectly’. State sponsorship may take many forms, including protection, financial and logistics support, training and technical assistance, all of which increase the terrorists’ operational capacity. In return, the terrorists, directly or indirectly, serve the sponsoring state’s interests. In response to the emergence of contemporary international terrorism in the late 1960s, the United States and its allies sought to create an international consensus aimed at outlawing terrorist tactics. This diplomatic effort achieved success only partially. Not all nations cooperated, and some saw the terrorist phenomenon as an opportunity to engage in surrogate warfare against foes they chose not to openly confront. Taking on foreign terrorist groups directly was difficult. They resisted diplomatic pressure and offered few lucrative targets for military operations. Some governments tried to buy immunity with disengagement and appeasement, not interfering with foreign terrorists on their territory, even paying them bribes, so long as they carried out their attacks elsewhere. Other nations attempted to deter terrorist attacks by imposing economic sanctions or conducting retaliatory military operations against

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their more vulnerable state sponsors. In the Export Administration Act of 1979, the United States Congress authorized the president to prevent exports to certain countries for national security reasons, including state sponsorship of terrorism. It was a mild step, but it led to the first official list of state sponsors. Pakistan was never put on this list, although many think it should have been. In his 2015 book, World Order, Henry Kissinger wrote: ‘Pakistan . . . tolerates, when it does not abet, violent extremism, including terrorism in Afghanistan and India.’ Although Pakistan would angrily refute this charge, it is an assessment that many American as well as other officials readily endorse. This seeming consensus, however, masks a deeper complexity. Exactly how does Pakistan abet some of the dramatic terrorist attacks abroad for which the country has been blamed? Are these attacks carried out by largely autonomous groups that Pakistan’s intelligence service supports for its own reasons but cannot entirely control and will not abandon? Or are these attacks planned or encouraged by rogue elements within or formerly with the intelligence service that its leadership and parent military organization do not control, but do not wish to openly confront? Or does approval, if not in detail, then in broad terms, come from Pakistan’s senior military leadership with perhaps even a nod from elected civilian officials, so long as it is plausibly deniable? These questions lie at the heart of understanding Pakistan’s role in the region and the world and deciding how to engage its government. The US approach has been to enlist Pakistan—sometimes menacingly, but always at a price—to serve American objectives. This has worked for short periods, but not without generating distrust and hostility on both sides, which ultimately dooms cooperation. Pakistan could be correctly described as an important historical ally of the United States. From 1955 until its dissolution in 1979, Pakistan was a member of the Central Treaty Organization, an awkward alliance cobbled together to contain Soviet influence in Southwest Asia and the Middle East. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan served as a conduit for US (and Arab) funds and weapons to the Afghan resistance. Pakistan again cooperated closely with the United States in dismantling Al Qaeda after 9/11. The apparent cooperation, however, was inconstant and always complicated. Other CENTO members were unwilling to support Pakistan in its wars with India and opposed Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus.

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The alliance ultimately proved to be an unworkable coalition and it fell apart in the 1970s. In the 1980s, CIA officials who worked with Pakistani officials during the campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan were aware that Pakistan’s intelligence service was pursuing its own interests in how it allocated externally provided funds and weapons to the mujahidin formations in Afghanistan, but in order to further America’s own strategic goals, the US tolerated Pakistan’s secrecy and ulterior goals. The success of this operation in persuading Soviet forces to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 encouraged the idea among some Pakistani officials that the contacts and capabilities they had created during the Afghan war could be employed to escalate a guerrilla war aimed at driving India out of Kashmir. The United States largely ignored Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. Pakistan could not. Its government provided crucial support to the Taliban and helped the group come to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Pakistani officials sympathetic to Osama Bin Laden may also have been instrumental in establishing the relationship between the Taliban and Al Qaeda, although there is no evidence that Pakistan as a whole supported or had significant influence over Al Qaeda. However, the Taliban gave Al Qaeda a safe haven from which to operate and Pakistan continued to support the Taliban after Al Qaeda launched its global terrorist campaign. (Even after 9/11, while hunted by the United States, Osama Bin Laden resided peacefully for years in Abbottabad, Pakistan—a virtual guest of the Pakistan military, which controlled the town.) The US National Commission on Terrorism in 2000 recommended that the Taliban government of Afghanistan should be identified as a state sponsor of terrorism. More controversially, the commission also noted that there are ‘states that, while they may not actively support terrorists, seem to turn a blind eye to them,’ and suggested that Pakistan, although very helpful at times, openly supported terrorists who threatened to kill US citizens, and therefore the commission recommended that Pakistan be designated as a nation ‘not fully cooperating against terrorism’. The timing turned out to be critical. US relations with Pakistan were already at a low point. In 1990, the United States had suspended most military and economic assistance to Pakistan because of growing suspicions about Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Pakistan’s test of a nuclear bomb in 1998 prompted additional sanctions. The Pakistani army’s overthrow of

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the country’s civilian government in 1999 led to a suspension of all US economic and military aid. However, the commission’s recommendation came just fifteen months before the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 terrorist attacks completely altered strategic calculations in Washington and made Pakistan’s cooperation essential. The United States gave Pakistan’s then president, General Pervez Musharraf, the choice—‘You are with us or against us.’ In his memoirs, Musharraf recalls the choice more vividly: ‘If we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age.’ Pakistan became an ally in the Global War on Terror. As always, cooperation was complicated. Pakistani officials assisted the United States in capturing more Al Qaeda operatives than anywhere else in the world. These included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, whom Pakistanis arrested and turned over to the United States. It was a different story with the Taliban. Even while providing an essential supply line for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan protected fleeing Taliban leaders and fighters and directly assisted their recovery, enabling them to resume their military operations against NATO forces in Afghanistan by 2004. It should be pointed out here that some in the US government thought that it was a strategic mistake for the United States to conflate the Taliban with Al Qaeda. The Taliban did not commit specific terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan and Taliban commanders have argued that they were not aware of Bin Laden’s plans to attack the United States, which they would never have approved for fear of provoking American retaliation. At the same time, Afghanistan continued to provide Al Qaeda with sanctuary after it began its terrorist campaign against US targets in Africa and Yemen, and when faced with a demand to surrender Bin Laden after 9/11, refused to do so, knowing that it meant war. Despite official cooperation after 9/11, many Pakistanis, including those among its political and military elites, still viewed Americans as the principal enemy. American counterterrorist officials in Islamabad recall working closely with their Pakistani counterparts while Pakistani imams publicly called for volunteers to wage jihad on American soldiers in Iraq. Americans were angered by the revelations that the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme had shared critical information and contacts with North Korea, Iran, Libya and possibly others, by the 2007 ambush of American soldiers on the Afghan-Pakistan border

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allegedly by Pakistani forces, and by Pakistan’s harbouring of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. Meanwhile, the highly publicized shooting of Pakistani assailants by a CIA contractor in Lahore in 2011, the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, and mounting civilian casualties from American drone strikes aimed at other Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders hiding in Pakistan exacerbated Pakistani hostility. The shifting sands of US-Pakistan relations have recently been illustrated by the rapidly changing attitudes of the Trump administration. In a major speech on US policy in Afghanistan on 21 August 2017, President Trump warned that the United States ‘can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond . . . Pakistan has sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people,’ he said. ‘We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists we are fighting. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately.’ The president’s threat prompted condemnation from Pakistan, which postponed a planned visit by the US Secretary of State while its parliament voted for a resolution to consider suspending supply lines to the US-led NATO mission in Afghanistan. Less than two months later, however, President Trump was publicly thanking Pakistan for securing the release of an American hostage and her family held captive for more than five years by the Haqqani network, one of the terrorist organizations the United States accused Pakistan of harbouring. Trump added that the United States was starting to develop a much better relationship with Pakistan. How should this turnabout be interpreted? That the United States laid down the law to change Pakistan’s behavior toward the terrorist groups it harbours? Or that Pakistan once again demonstrated sufficient usefulness to fend off US threats? It seemed like another episode in a long history of diplomatic playacting. The United States periodically expresses its frustration and anger with bellicose threats, which the Pakistanis know are not to be taken literally, but nonetheless respond with threatening noises of their own, meanwhile placating Washington with some gesture of goodwill— just enough to set things back on their usual course of mutual dependency and distrust.

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The inconsistencies and contradictions in Pakistan’s policies, at least from a Western perspective, in part reflect deep divisions in Pakistan’s society and ruling institutions. Radical Islamists compete with more secular elements within the intelligence service, military and civilian leadership for control of the country’s destiny. At times, Pakistan seems to be at war with itself. Prem Mahadevan, however, extensively refers to academic and journalistic sources from within Pakistan to point out that these divisions do not run along the lines Western analysts posit. Another factor in Pakistan’s seemingly inconsistent behaviour is the country’s implacable hostility towards India to which all else is subordinated. India is the reference point for almost every policy decision in Islamabad. US Cold War objectives and, more recently, America’s global counterterrorist campaign are the concerns of a distant and transient ally. They matter to Pakistan only in terms of how the benefits that derive from that relationship can be exploited to address the Indian threat. The penalties that the international community can impose rarely outweigh Pakistan’s fear of military weakness, leading to further dismemberment and loss of territory. It is this fear which drives Pakistan’s fierce nationalism, its deliberate exaltation of revanchist goals, and the promotion of religious extremism as a means of bolstering national unity and maintaining national purpose. In this informative and fascinating volume, Prem Mahadevan explores how Pakistan became at once a safe haven, a victim, an enabler, and an exporter of Islamist militancy. It is a fascinating journey into the murky domain of the ‘deep state’ and hidden hands. Mahadevan sheds light on dynamics that defy outside analysis, but his conclusion remains dark and sobering: Repelled by the sheer complexity and seeming intractability of Pakistan’s challenge, most governments, including India, have adopted a hands-off, high tolerance approach so long as what happens in Pakistan, except for the occasional terrorist attack, stays in Pakistan. That leaves the field open for evermore powerful non-state actors. Mahadevan’s work contributes significantly to scholarship on terrorism, covert warfare and counterintelligence in South Asia. It deserves wide readership. Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation

PREFACE UNPACKING LAYERS OF CONCEALMENT

As of early 2018, the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS, also known as Daesh) is in retreat. After exploding onto the world stage in June 2014 with its capture of Mosul, the group has been hit by Iraqi government counterattacks, its fighters decimated by Western airpower. Its response has been to encourage terrorist attacks in Western homelands. Between September 2014 and August 2017 there were 63 incidents in Europe and North America, killing 424 people (not counting the perpetrators). Just 11 of the attacks accounted for 386 deaths, showing that the majority were initiated by terrorists who were either poorly trained or outright inept.1 Some analysts have suggested that ISIS is following a two-pronged strategy of encouraging operations by locally recruited amateurs, to mask preparations for larger, coordinated attacks by well-trained combat cadres.2 Whether or not this is true, Western policymakers have focused on preventing domestic radicalization, enhancing already stringent border security regimes and supporting indigenous resistance movements to ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The resurgence of ISIS, which suffered 95 per cent personnel losses in 2008–11, has triggered a realization among security analysts that jihadist terrorism is not going to disappear easily.3 Each generation of militants is succeeded by another that is more indiscriminate in its targeting policy. Mobilization speed is roughly doubling between generations. There have already been three waves: the Soviet-Afghan

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War (1979–89), the Iraq War (2003– 10), and the Syrian Civil War (2011– present). Another five to ten years of insecurity can be anticipated.4 Whether or not a fourth wave emerges during this timeframe depends on whether militant Islamism finds a safe haven within which to consolidate. In this regard, developments in South Asia merit concern. While ISIS is drawing the fire of policymakers from Washington to Sydney, in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region its rival Al Qaeda is making a steady comeback. Together with the Taliban, this group now controls or contests an estimated 40 per cent of Afghan territory.5 The group is playing a long game, as documents captured in May 2011 from Osama Bin Laden’s residence in Abbottabad reveal. Al Qaeda does not lack strategic patience and ‘has been able to mitigate setbacks, or even turn them to its advantage. The group’s vision of a multi-generational jihadist struggle has enabled it to think and act strategically, pursuing long-term objectives while passing up ephemeral or unsustainable victories.’6 While ISIS was able to spring a strategic surprise in summer 2014 by its methodical use of sleeper agents to infiltrate local government structures in Iraq, now Al Qaeda is using the same methods. It could meet with similar results. Two events which occurred in Pakistan in July–August 2017 could, in the medium-term, help Al Qaeda significantly expand its presence in South Asia. One was the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by an army-dominated anti-corruption tribunal. Seasoned observers such as former US Central Intelligence Agency official Bruce Riedel summed up Sharif’s ouster with the words: ‘The most dangerous country in the world just got even more unstable.’7 A Pakistani commentator made an equally telling statement, that Sharif fell victim to the same ‘powers that be’ which three decades ago, had used him to covertly undermine another civilian politician, Benazir Bhutto.8 Some Pakistani writers have obliquely referred to the country’s military as being behind Sharif’s misfortunes in 2017.9 The second alarming event was the formation of an above-ground political party by the international terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Operating through its front organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa, LeT has been seeking to capitalize on current disarray within Pakistan’s political system by launching its own candidates for future general elections. The move has been seen in some quarters as a bid by the

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Pakistani army and intelligence community, whose ties with LeT have been documented by local journalists, to obtain immunity for the group’s leadership from American counterterrorism pressure.10 If so, it backfired within days, when US President Donald Trump accused Islamabad of ignoring the activities of twenty terrorist organizations active on Pakistani soil. While he got the number wrong—thirteen groups designated as ‘terrorist’ by the US government are active in the AfPak region—his open criticism of Pakistan for being duplicitous in counterterrorism was unprecedented for an American president.11 LeT’s elevation to mainstream politics may be partly organic; after all, the Sunni sectarian terrorist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, operating under the pseudonym of Ahle-Sunnat Wal Jamat (ASWJ), has contested elections despite being banned. As one Pakistani writer has observed, all that stands between a terrorist leader and elected office, notwithstanding the plethora of strict laws that exist only on paper, is the personal courage of the local administrator responsible for accepting candidacy papers. Since this official has no physical protection whatsoever against the consequences of doing his job and enforcing the letter of the law, it is unrealistic to expect Pakistan to keep terrorists from infiltrating its political system.12 Even if LeT’s political avatar is solely contrived by patrons in the security bureaucracy, it portends a period of intensified terrorist violence in South Asia. The group has long been a friendly competitor to Al Qaeda for dominance of regional jihads.13 According to informed commentators, due to increasing international scrutiny, it has now partnered with Al Qaeda to strike India. The logic seems to be that if a stateless Arab group is perceived to attack civilian targets in India, international opinion would not call out the Pakistani security establishment for failing to restrain LeT. Thus in June 2017, the two jihadist organizations formed a task force called Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (‘Supporters of Holy War in India’). The new group’s membership was overwhelmingly Pakistani, which proved to be a weakness. Indian security forces, relying on pre-existing knowledge of LeT networks, moved swiftly to hunt down many of its top operatives in August 2017.14 However, it is certain that attempts will be made by Pakistanbased jihadists to regroup and launch spectacular terror attacks. In such an eventuality, New Delhi and the international community will have to decide how far to confront the source of terrorism. Just as

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amateur jihadists in the West divert attention from large-scale ‘Islamic State’ conspiracies, and ISIS operations distract policymakers from Al Qaeda’s resurgence, so does Al Qaeda obscure the rise of militant politics in Pakistan. Groups such as LeT serve as the South Asian equivalent of Hizballah—a dual-use covert instrument.15 Hizballah and LeT allow their patrons to project disruptive power domestically and against neighbouring states on a deniable basis. In South Asia, the value of such groups is not limited to Pakistan. China, sensing that jihadist terrorism has the potential to keep India’s military stretched between two fronts, has repeatedly used its binding veto in the UN Security Council to block American counterterrorism initiatives against Pakistan-based jihadists.16 Terrorism is a subset of geopolitics in South Asia, much as it is in the Middle East. The Syrian Civil War has demonstrated that local regimes see value in tolerating domestic and cross-border jihadist operations, in order to discredit political opponents and expand their regional influence.17 Further to the east, a similar process is unfolding in South Asia, with consequences that could be far graver due to the presence of three confirmed nuclear powers. A survey of developments in the region since the Soviet-Afghan War, is thus necessary.

INTRODUCTION

This book is about intelligence tactics and Islamist strategy. It examines how the two created a safe haven for Arab militants in the AfghanistanPakistan (AfPak) region. Three popular assumptions will be challenged. First, that a state cannot simultaneously be both—a victim and a sponsor of terrorism. Second, that official support for jihadism is limited to ‘rogue’ elements acting beyond government control. And third, that such support is limited to military and intelligence communities, with civilian politicians staying blameless. Instead, the book will argue that the resilience of jihadist militancy in South Asia is due to an over-ground political infrastructure enmeshed with legitimate institutions of statehood. Readers are advised to keep two themes in mind: multi-generational conflict and inter-generational rivalry. Analytical timescales are long when studying Islamist militancy. This is because, unlike other world religions, Islam is still in the grasp of its founding myths.1 Orthodoxy runs deep among an Arab-Asian-African youth bulge struggling to find gainful employment. Those seeking work prospects in the ‘jihadosphere’ tend to fall into two categories, being either petty criminals or history-obsessed intellectuals.2 The latter sympathize with terrorist acts from a safe distance, as long as these are carried out in the name of religion. They, as well as the actual foot soldiers who kill, see themselves as carrying on an honourable conflict inherited from their ancestors. They feel an unstoppable momentum, pushing them toward a pre-destined place in world events. For the sake of outperforming those who preceded them, they are prone to endorsing and carrying out ever higher levels of violence.

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The book focuses on Pakistan, because since the 1980s, this country has been the regional epicentre of Islamist militancy. As American journalist Fareed Zakaria commented, ‘[F]or a wannabe terrorist shopping for help, Pakistan is a supermarket.’3 Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, estimated that at the end of the 2000s, there were 237 religious organizations in the country, of which 104 were violent groups oriented towards foreign targets, 82 towards domestic (sectarian) targets, while 24 were engaged in politics and 26 in proselytizing.4 South Asian countries consider Pakistan as a source of instability, with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Iran all accusing Islamabad of hosting transnational terrorists, or at the very least, doing nothing to curtail their actions.5 Within Pakistan itself, there is a popular saying: ‘Yeh jo dehshat gardi hai, is ke peechay wardi hai’ (‘Behind this terrorism is military uniform’).6 It reflects a belief that militancy within the country is either a by-product of covert operations launched by the army-controlled intelligence services against neighbouring states, or even a deliberate policy outcome aimed at undermining civilian supremacy in government. Yet, a strange dichotomy exists between what is unofficially said and what is stated for public record. As German scholar Siegfried Wolf observes: The fact that Pakistan is sponsoring terrorism is no longer a secret; due to its distorted world view and subsequent justifications, it considers terrorism a form of legitimate self-defence and a way to promote its interests; both civilian (former President Zardari) and military (former COAS [Chief of Army Staff] and President Pervez Musharraf) retired elites acknowledge the country’s involvement in state terrorism. However, Pakistani officials (serving military top echelon and official civilian leadership) continue to deny and downplay any links with terrorist organizations in general and terrorist activities in particular. Due to the secret nature of these relations, Islamabad can distance itself from any accountability for the actions of the jihadists. Furthermore, as they deny links to terror groups, they hope to avoid censure by the international community. In this context, the strategy of downplaying the phenomenon of state sponsorship is often used as an instrument in Pakistani diplomacy.7

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The late summer of 2017 saw a chill in US– Pakistani relations after President Donald Trump dispensed with long-standing official euphemisms and said that: The Pakistani people have suffered greatly from terrorism and extremism. We recognize those contributions and those sacrifices. But Pakistan has also sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars. At the same time, they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change. And that will change immediately. No partnership can survive a country’s harbouring of militants and terrorists who target US service members and officials. It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace.8 The response from Islamabad, at both governmental and nongovernmental levels, was anger. But, as retired ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi reflected four days later: Pakistan has undermined its role as a key peacemaking neighbour and finds itself today at the receiving end of Afghan resentment, Indian hostility and US pressure . . . it relies on protestations of innocence and proxies to bring about a ‘friendly’ Afghanistan whose friendship is measured in terms of distancing itself from India. This entails an unnecessary and self-defeating contempt for Afghanistan’s sovereign independence.9 There it is again—a divergence between what is officially stated and what is privately thought. Yet, despite such inconsistency, few scholars have ventured to ask the question: Why Pakistan? Why not remote and rugged Afghanistan next door, or India with its supposedly tense Hindu-Muslim relations? Or Bangladesh with its explosive mixture of poverty and overcrowding? What was special about Pakistan that made the country host to international terrorists, many of whom neither knew local languages nor had personal connections among the population? Some writers, such as Saleem Shahzad, attempted to get behind the conventional narrative.10 This narrative painted the Pakistani state as a bystander while Arab militants flooded into the ethnic and linguistic

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distinctness of South Asia. While writing about linkages between the Pakistani military and terrorist groups, Shahzad became a nuisance to asyet-unknown persons who murdered him.11 Other Pakistani journalists stopped asking about the state’s relationship with jihadist networks. Only a handful, such as Khaled Ahmed, offered up an explanation for why Al Qaeda chose Pakistan as a safe haven: because the Pakistani state is itself extremist. Such extremism pervades at a systemic and not merely individual level.12 The book draws much of its core data from a content review of two Pakistani monthly magazines, published in English. These are the Herald (all issues between 1990 and 2017 were consulted) and Newsline (issues between 1993– 2017). Both contain ample reportage and commentary that contradict the boilerplate protests from Islamabad officialdom about being scapegoated every time a terrorist attack in the West is traced to Pakistani territory. If ordinary citizens, journalists and academics can warn about the slow re-engineering of Pakistani society along militant lines, the state machinery with its infinitely superior resources for collecting and analyzing data would have a more detailed estimate of the jihadist malaise. Its failure to acknowledge the scale of this malaise undermines the already feeble efforts being made by private individuals to protest against creeping radicalization.

Why this book? Islamism in the Indian subcontinent has been understudied by Western scholars. This is a pity, because pre-1857 India was the third cultural centre of Islam worldwide, after Arabia and Persia.13 The modern Pakistani state attempted to inherit this status, by forging a narrative about its own origins lying in a Muslim conquest of India from 711 CE onwards. The conquest allegedly continued for a millennium until the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707 CE. Thereafter, resentful Hindus and their rapacious British allies joined forces against the Mughal Empire, replacing it first with colonial and then Hindu rule.14 The Muslims of South Asia were reduced to a stronghold called ‘Pakistan’—‘Land of the Pure’—which remained the last vestige of the once subcontinent-wide Islamic realm.15 Out of this nation-building narrative developed a revanchist Pakistani mindset that, by the 1970s, perceived existing territorial boundaries as ephemeral obstacles to the

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resurrection of past Islamic glory, a mindset strikingly similar to that held by Arab ideologues of wider regional jihads. When it comes to political militancy, there is a connection between street-level thuggery and refined intellectual arguments. Several writers have pointed out that jihadist terrorists do not carry out attacks until they have some kind of scholarly-legal cover.16 Higher issues of strategy are decided by reference to an ideational framework, in which historical precedent and clerical opinion are the guiding markers. The bar is not high; a fatwa (religious edict) by an obscure alim (religious scholar) is sufficient to catalyse true believers into immediate action. Informal substate networks thus play a vital role in egging radical Islam towards violence. Unfortunately, as far as South Asia is concerned, much of the scholarly literature examines jihadism from a statist perspective.17 For example, the Kashmir conflict is often viewed as a territorial dispute, in isolation from the wider pattern of jihadist militancy in the region.18 This book looks beyond specific incidents, at larger trends and narratives, to answer the question: Why Pakistan? It builds on arguments advanced by Frederic Grare that Islamist militancy is a tool of political control, in addition to being a geopolitical instrument.19 The wielders of this tool are members of Pakistan’s Deep State—a conglomerate of top military and civilian officials intent on retaining their personal and institutional privileges by any means, including covert abetment of terrorism. Hence the term ‘Deep Terrorism’ has been coined by observers of the country.20 Sceptics would argue that rather than a unitary Deep State, Pakistan is driven by elite factions competing for influence and working at cross-purposes. This counter-argument does not negate the book’s central premise that a fundamental(ist) consistency runs through Pakistani state policy towards Islamist militancy. Such policy is to promote militancy overseas and only calibrate it domestically without fully squashing it. In studying the impact that religion has on statecraft, the book aims to advance scholarship on terrorism and intelligence. During the 1950s, Western academics developed the ‘doctrine of modernization’, which held that religion was peripheral to international relations and antithetical to societal progress. Since then, intelligence analysts have tended to underestimate the impact of personal belief on political behaviour. A former Director of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) surmised after 9/11 that such ethnocentricism was

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responsible for imposing a historically ignorant paradigm upon threat assessment. According to this paradigm, specific outlier events are seen as items to be reported rather than as parts of a larger current rooted in distinctly non-Western discourses. The two regions most affected by the analytical distortions of Western experts have been the Middle East and South Asia.21 As this book will demonstrate, shared connections between Islamists in both these parts of the Muslim world have stronger implications for international security than hitherto recognized.

Unravelling the false dichotomy between ‘mainstream’ modernists and ‘rogue’ rejectionists One objection to the book’s argument might be from those who see Pakistan as caught in a binary choice between a modernist ‘Aligarh school’ and a rejectionist ‘Deobandi school’. Proponents of this view regard the latter as a fringe movement, and believe that Pakistani elites mostly subscribe to the Aligarh school.22 Descended from Aligarh Muslim University (founded in 1875 by Anglophile Indian Muslims), the school combines Islamic values with respect for Western science and technology. In contrast, the Dar-ul Uloom (House of Learning) madrassa in Deoband and its affiliates across South Asia would have nothing to do with values associated with the former colonial rulers. They represent a nativist pushback against Western imperialism. The ‘Aligarh-versus-Deoband’ dichotomy is false, because it overlooks a grey area which has been captured and expanded over decades by bureaucratized and politically active Islamist groups with militant inclinations. The two most prominent are Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). One is a political party with a militant wing, the other a militant organization with a political fac
ade. Both have played a crucial role in Arabizing Pakistani society, making the country a safe environment for Middle Eastern jihadists to operate within since the 1980s. Both use technology developed in the West to spread extremist ideas. Neither has enough popular support to allow it to come to power through elections, but each has enough disruptive potential on the ‘street’ to frighten mainstream politicians. And that is the point: Pakistani Islamists have rarely won more than 5 per cent of the popular vote, but this is partly because they avoided competing with established political parties. Instead, they preferred to manipulate government processes from outside or, at most, with one foot in the system.23

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The other foot remained free to kick at any elected politician who dared curtail their influence. By studying networks that connect Islamist parties with terrorist activities and shadowy protectors within state institutions, this book brings to light the process of jihadist subversion. Unlike radicalization, which is a bottom-up process, subversion starts at neither the top nor the bottom of society, but squarely in the middle class. It features long-term planning and placement of sympathizers in key positions within the official bureaucracy. It features a mix of foreign funding and ideas, and domestic activism. And it delivers a destructive punch to civil society, whose physical impact is felt only gradually and is less than its full potential. The book will argue that, by degrees, militant Islamists have begun controlling parts of the Pakistani state. It hypothesizes that the method by which this infiltration of government institutions occurred was identical to that adopted by the Islamists’ original enemy, the long-dead British East India Company.24 By controlling information flows to decision-makers at every level of administration, as the British formerly did while usurping political authority from the Mughals, today’s adherents of radical Islam in South Asia seek to remake local power equations along lines convenient to themselves.

Introducing the Pakistani Deep State The main question of this book is: Why did Pakistan become a safe haven for Arab militants during the Soviet-Afghan War and continue to be so since? To the best knowledge of this writer, no academic study has, thus far, examined this specific issue. Instead, it is merely noted that during the Soviet-Afghan War, a ragtag assembly of Arab aid workers, criminals and ideologues descended on the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar. Unable to return to their home countries once the conflict ended, over time, some went on to form Al Qaeda and others remained independent or joined different militant groups. Importantly, all of these foreign volunteers lacked a co-ethnic constituency within Pakistan. Yet, the most militant managed to stay put in Pakistan for more than two decades, crossing over into Afghanistan at will as that country descended into civil war and ungoverned spaces mushroomed across its expanse.

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No explanation has been provided, either by Pakistani government officials or international scholars, for how the Arabs remained in Pakistan, when there were at least two highly publicized police crackdowns against them in the 1990s. Neither is any explanation forthcoming for why Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden could live safely, down the road from Pakistan’s premier military academy. Even after 9/11 supposedly catapulted Islamabad to the status of a ‘frontline ally’ against terrorism, Al Qaeda operatives remained safe in large Pakistani cities.25 As the late Saleem Shahzad observed, those arrested in the 2000s usually were communicating with a wider network, which allowed Western intelligence agencies to locate them. Had they remained silent, it is possible that they would never have been found since the Pakistani government was in no hurry to locate them.26 Clearly, there was something other than the mere convenience of having Afghanistan as a nearby sanctuary, which made Pakistan an attractive base for Islamist militants. That additional ‘something’ was the Deep State. Within South Asia, its existence is not a secret.27 Ahmed Rashid, Faisal Bari and Tariq Khosa (respectively, a Pakistani journalist, a professor and a former head of the country’s Federal Investigation Agency) have written about it. Bari points out that ‘[t]he deep state does not act alone. It has allies that they use for some period and for specific issues. And most political parties and leaders have served as allies at one point or another.’28 Khosa criticizes the Deep State’s proclivity to shelter violent extremists on the assumption that while some are hostile to itself and need to be suppressed, others are strategic assets. He appeals to Pakistan’s intelligence agencies: There are no pro-state or anti-state militants. They all pursue a violent agenda. The formation of private militias and the creation of violent organisations, with or without covert political objectives, is patently illegal and unconstitutional. Take heed: the monsters you create today will come to haunt and hunt you tomorrow. Please restrain, restrict, detain, arrest and prosecute the leaders of proscribed militant organizations. Cleanse the swamp that breeds the mosquitoes. The deep state helps create the nonstate actors. These militants are likely to unravel the state of Pakistan.29

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Rashid, who has leftist sympathies (a rarity in Pakistan), blames the West for perpetuating the existence of the Deep State: ‘Pakistan’s civilians, politicians and intellectuals are helpless; they cannot make the deep state see sense as long as the West continues its duplicitous policies of propping up the military-intelligence establishment in opposition to popular society while demanding that the Pakistani civilian government wrest back control of the country.’30 An American journalist, Dexter Filkins, writes that the Deep State tolerates attacks upon India by its terrorist proxies, even if it does not directly orchestrate these. The purpose of such tolerance, as interpreted from past examples of crossborder terrorism, seems to be to thwart any peace initiatives between New Delhi and Islamabad that are launched by elected civilian politicians. The Deep State does not allow deviations from the rigid policy script it has set for Pakistani relations with India, or the rest of the world.31 When confronted with domestic challenges, the Deep State’s stock response is to deflect local militancy towards a foreign target. India is not the only victim. As Tariq Ali has observed, the rise of the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s was fuelled by a cynical logic that religious militants should be given a country of their own to (mis)rule, lest they become a law and order problem within Pakistan itself.32 Islamabad’s spies aided the Taliban in every way possible, including participating alongside them in combat operations. Former US ambassador to Kabul James Dobbins has suggested that this process of ‘extraversion’ continued into the 2000s, commenting that, as far as Islamabad is concerned, ‘aspirations of Pakistan’s Pashtuns are to be projected onto Afghanistan by the Government of Pakistan rather than being focused on Pakistan.’33 The Deep State is a concept that comes from Turkey, a country that former Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf once declared as a model for his own regime. At its most basic, it has three components: a militaryintelligence complex, a complicit judiciary, and a roster of organized crime syndicates ready to employ strong-arm tactics against dissidents. Importantly, all three components function at their best when concealed behind a fac
ade of electoral democracy. Unlike Turkey, Arab dictatorships did not really have a Deep State, because they were dominated by personality cults built around a single, immovable despot. A proper Deep State is a collective dictatorship, not an individual one. Like its Turkish counterpart, the Pakistani Deep State has evolved out of a need

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to combat the twin threats of separatism and Islamism. It has sought to undercut the mobilizational base of Islamists, by first appropriating their rhetoric and, thereafter, promoting ultra-hardline splinter factions who lack a popular constituency. Like its Turkish counterpart, it uses criminal gangs as proxies to discredit and attack ethno-nationalist movements. And finally, like its Turkish counterpart, it assumes that the supreme national interest of the entire country is identical with its own partisan interest.34

‘Government within a government’ Pakistan’s tryst with shadow governance may have begun as early as 1951. That year, the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated. A commission of enquiry was appointed to identify the perpetrators. The assassin himself had been killed immediately upon arrest. In a plot twist all too familiar to conspiracy theorists, the aircraft carrying the commission members and their documented findings exploded mid-air between Rawalpindi and Karachi. Thereafter, public discussion about the high-profile murder ceased.35 In an eerie echo of these events, military dictator Zia-ul Haq was killed in 1988 when his aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff. Travelling with him was his trusted advisor and former spy chief, Akhtar Rehman. Both were persuaded by unknown officials within the militaryintelligence establishment to travel on the doomed aircraft. The slipshod manner in which the post-incident investigation was conducted, with few cross-examinations of witnesses and no autopsies on the bodies of the aircraft crew, suggested a cover-up. No culprit was identified although technical analysis showed the crash had resulted from sabotage.36 During the following years, more hints emerged that a ‘government within the government’ was operating in Islamabad. In 1990, a group of officers within the powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate were found plotting to overthrow the elected prime minister, in cooperation with opposition politicians. Sacked from the agency, they found employment with the civilian-run Intelligence Bureau. A couple of years later, the then chief of the army, known for being suspicious of hardline Islamists, complained to Pakistan’s president that his life was at risk from the same Intelligence Bureau.37 He died shortly thereafter under unexplained circumstances that some took to be the result of poisoning. This last death, more than any other, suggests that the

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Deep State does not confine itself to a handful of military institutions, such as the ISI or operations branch of Army General Headquarters (GHQ). Rather, its sympathizers may be spread within ostensibly civilian organizations, connected by informal networks. It is important to add that one of the textbook characteristics of a Deep State is to militarize civilian intelligence systems, by seeding them with serving or retired military personnel. This process has been ongoing in Pakistan for several decades and was accelerated in the late 1990s.38 Although this book relates primarily to Pakistan, it encompasses the whole of South Asia. As such, readers may ask: Why should Pakistan alone be the focus? Why did India not develop a Deep State, especially since both countries were parts of a common imperial realm for centuries? What differences account for their divergent political trajectories? Answers may lie in the fact that much of what today constitutes ‘Pakistan’ was on the administrative margins of Mughal and British India. Legal, educational and industrial infrastructure was concentrated in regions which after 1947 remained part of independent India.39 For what became Pakistani territory, colonial officials had maintained order by a swashbuckling mix of militarism, paternalism and authoritarianism. These areas had the least exposure to democratic styles of governance before the British surrendered their Indian Empire.40 Consequently, they were more receptive to strong-man politics than was the core region of pre-1947 India.

Islam(ism) is the Answer . . . to Democratic Politics Political Islam, often called ‘Islamism’, has been a tool of the Pakistani Deep State since at least the 1970s. During the civil war of 1971, military officials used the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) to create death squads in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). This marked the first time that collusion between Islamists and the army resulted in mass killings. Under the Zia-ul Haq regime (1977 – 88), Islamist fortunes soared, partly due to Zia’s personal religiosity and partly because he used JeI to overthrow a civilian prime minister. For their utility, JeI leaders were initially rewarded. That is, until Zia began to worry about their long-term political goals and shifted his patronage to rival Islamist parties, thereby pre-empting any challenge to his rule.

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In contrast, across the border in India, Islamism has remained a nonviolent and law-abiding movement. This is partly due to demography— Muslims constitute around 14 per cent of India’s population and feel vulnerable to Hindu majoritarian reprisals. Even militant Islamists have to consider the impossibility of prevailing in a context where numerical odds are stacked against them. In any case, the vast majority of Indian Muslims stay aloof from agitational politics, because they have a stake in parliamentary democracy. Unlike Pakistan, where minorities are officially discriminated against, India is a secular state whose judiciary and legislature provide avenues for public grievances to be addressed. M.J. Akbar, a leading Indian Muslim intellectual, credits this factor as explaining the difference between the benign passivity of his coreligionists in India, and their aggressive counterparts in Pakistan.41 Violent revolution seems more attractive when a country is ruled by a feudal-industrial political class and a praetorian military—especially, if the latter pays itself massive handouts from the national budget and engages in lucrative side-businesses, squeezing civilian entrepreneurs out of their own domestic markets.42 At this juncture, it is helpful to introduce the concepts of ‘relative deprivation’ and ‘value dissynchronization’. The former is ‘a state of mind in which there is an intolerable, perceived gap between people’s goals and existing opportunities to attain them legally.’43 When combined with value dissynchronization—a situation where there is a gap in collective norms between socio-economic classes, and between public rhetoric and private behaviour of the ruling elites—political violence is an almost certain outcome. This is because societies characterized by high levels of value dissynchronization are susceptible to revolutionary ideas imported from abroad. Thus, Arab jihadist preachers found a warm welcome in Pakistan—an ideological climate characterized by steep income disparity between classes and a military regime that championed Islamic values, but whose leaders quietly schooled their children in the West. Foreign ideas, when imported into a local conflict, tend to favour the systematic destruction of symbols and personalities associated with the status quo regime. This is because proponents of such ideas do not have an indigenous support base which needs preserving. The case of Bolshevism in Czarist Russia is a prime example. Nurtured by exiled dissidents and financed by German intelligence during World War I,

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upon seizing power through the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks single-mindedly annihilated institutions of the imperial state. Not concerned with popular support or the legality of their actions, they focused only on creating a militant vanguard which would the purge the country of opposition and drag the masses at gunpoint towards any utopia envisaged by the party leadership. Islamism was strongly influenced by Bolshevik insurrectionary doctrine, as this book will demonstrate. But that in itself does not explain why only Pakistan and not India as well, became a sanctuary for international terrorists. Another factor was the consistent efforts of the Pakistani state, during both military and civilian rule, to promote PanIslamism. Together with the existence of a Deep State, this was the crucial variable which accounted for the difference between Indian and Pakistani Islamism.44 Both began as strands of a common movement, whose origins lay in resistance to British colonial rule. But whilst Indian Islamism remained connected to native patriotism, and was emotionally tied to the territory of India, Pakistani Islamism mutated into a claim to speak for all the world’s Muslims, regardless of nationality. Several writers have opined that rather than any foreign machinations, it has in fact been the Pakistani state’s own celebration of Pan-Islamism which has weakened its political fabric.45 For, how can the current borders of Pakistan be considered definitive and inviolate, if the constituency they are meant to represent extends far beyond their actual limits? In defining ‘Islamism’, this book uses a formulation developed by Irfan Ahmed in his landmark work Islamism and Democracy in India. Ahmed identified four components of political Islam: (1) The aim of establishing an Islamic state within a certain piece of territory (2) A degree of popular legitimacy derived from the Holy Quran and the Hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammad) (3) A fixation with attaining and thereafter preserving purity, and (4) A desire to exclude other identity groups, rather than win them over through assimilation.46 Point 3 is especially relevant to understanding the peculiar nature of Pakistani Islamism, with its exclusionary and sectarian focus. An obsession with ideological/religious/sectarian purity has made

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Pakistan an inwardly paranoid state, perceiving foreign agents as active in subverting any of its citizens who might not be quite so pure.47 Thus, Shias are suspected of being Iran loyalists, Pashtuns are viewed as potentially conspiring to create a separate homeland, and Baloch and Sindhi nationalists are supposedly working for Indian intelligence. In its self-constructed beleaguerment, the Pakistani Deep State sees Islamists as natural allies because they, more than any other political grouping, are committed to preserving the ‘ideological frontiers’ of the country, and possibly expanding them—a process which can be easily accommodated within the ‘secular’ logic of geostrategy and terms such as ‘strategic depth’. This convergence between the Deep State and Islamists means that militant groups affiliated with Islamist organizations are not ‘non-state actors’. Rather, they are ‘para-state’ actors, used for the attainment of known geostrategic objectives, while providing a veil of plausible deniability to their sponsors.48 Not only the Pakistani intelligence community, but even its proxies have resorted to outright denials when accused of involvement in terrorist incidents.49 The manner in which Lashkar-e-Taiba (the military wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa) at first disclaimed responsibility for the 2008 Mumbai massacre in India, only to own up to it later, is a case in point.50 Since this group is known to be particularly close to the Pakistani military and intelligence community, it is hard to argue that the Mumbai attack was the work of a ‘rogue’ or a ‘non-state actor’. This book shall explore such covert relationships and their regional impact.

Theoretical Model The book fuses two analytical models to explain how Islamists, both within and without the Deep State, deny and manipulate information flows in order to achieve their objectives. The first is the ‘stage evolutionary model’ developed by Peter Lupsha in the 1990s to explain how organized crime syndicates gradually take over state institutions. He identified three phases in a criminal network’s evolution.51 First, it begins as a violent hardcore that prioritizes its own survival over every other goal, including expansion. During this phase, it is vulnerable to being crushed by the state as well as rival, better-established crime networks. So it denies information about its activities to potential

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opponents, by staying secretive and disciplined. If it manages to survive the initial offensives directed at it, it proceeds to accumulate additional resources to mount a counter-attack. During this second phase, it collects information about its enemies and their vulnerabilities, as well as identifies opportunities for its own growth. Finally, if it succeeds in overcoming its closest rivals—other criminal syndicates— it assumes control over their insider contacts in the government and starts to control the flow of information, both public and classified, about its own activities. By this final stage, the criminal group has become almost at one with the state, with corrupt officials at senior levels being on its payroll and ensuring that no challenge can be mounted to its shadow supremacy. A graphic adaptation of Lupsha’s model to intelligence flows may look like Graph I.1. During the first stage (information denial), a criminal network is operating defensively. Even if it aggressively targets its adversaries, its intentions are pre-emptive rather than expansionary. From the second stage onwards, a more consistently offensive posture is adopted as the network seeks to expand at the cost of its rivals. And at the third stage, the network is acting completely offensively because its purpose is to control policy debates about itself, and suppress any move towards

Graph I.1 From statelessness to state capture. Graphic prepared at Center for Security Studies, ETH Zu¨rich.

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authorizing police action even before this gains traction among the local political class. Lupsha’s model is a single-actor model. That is, it considers the behaviour of one criminal network only, and treats all other networks, including those of law enforcement agencies, as either targets or threats. So it can afford the luxury of being sequential and easily divided into three distinct stages. But with militant networks, there is a key difference: while criminals operate only for themselves, militants are usually dispersed among different groups that simultaneously compete with each other and yet have a common ideological goal. Depending on where a particular militant network lies in terms of its bureaucratic and organizational evolution, it can focus primarily on denying information about its activities, while also making secondary and tertiary efforts to collect and manipulate information. The manner in which newly-formed jihadist groups use beheading videos as a self-marketing tool is an example of information control. By doing this, they seek to shape the public discourse about themselves and attract funding from sponsors looking for a suitably uncompromising faction to support. But they also reconnoitre targets for future attacks and are constantly alert to the danger posed by police informers and technical surveillance. Unlike criminal networks, which operate sequentially, militant networks operate simultaneously across the spectrum of intelligence activities, denying, collecting and manipulating flows of information all at once. Another way of modelling how Islamists operate is to divide their intelligence activities in terms of the type of actor. John Gentry provides a table for analysing how the nature of intelligence differs between governments, violent networks, and non-violent advocacy groups (see Table I.1). Gentry’s model demonstrates that militants, whether terrorists or insurgents, prioritize counterintelligence.52 Using passive measures (keeping information secret by tight control over gossip) and active measures (identifying and neutralizing government informers), militants make themselves a hard target to hit. When they engage in information manipulation, it is often against the backdrop of some violent paramilitary action (such as a massacre for which responsibility is claimed by a non-existent or ‘phantom’ organization). Advocacy groups meanwhile, focus primarily on manipulating the public and political view of

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Table I.1 Intelligence activities of states and non-state actors. Adapted from John Gentry, ‘Toward a Theory of Non-State Actors’ Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security, 31:4 (2016), pp. 484 –5 Type of intelligence activity

Government

Terrorist/ Over-ground Insurgent group political front

Counterintelligence Conducted as a Conducted as (passive and active) lesser priority to highest priority political and military intelligence

Active counterintelligence rare, passive CI mostly relies on discretion to mask long-term political ambitions

Information collection

All-source, with special reliance on technical surveillance for value-addition

All-source, but with greater reliance on HUMINT* for value-addition

OSINT** and overt HUMINT

Covert action

Secondary mission, often limited to foreign targets and using information operations

Primary mission, aiming to provoke indiscriminate reprisals from targeted state/ community against uninvolved population, relying on paramilitary means

Primary mission, but with activities observable to host government and relying entirely on information operations

*

HUMINT: Human intelligence. OSINT: Open source intelligence.

**

themselves. To the extent they engage in counterintelligence, it is with the aim of keeping their long-term intentions hidden. Their present-day capabilities, on the other hand, are usually arrayed in plain sight.

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Governments, being mainly focused neither on counterintelligence nor information manipulation (at least not in democratic states), often miss out that militants and over-ground political activists might be reinforcing each other in bringing down the existing order. Even when such insight permeates the official decision-making process, paralysis can result as a non-dictatorial state cannot easily use preemptive force to quell a nascent uprising.

Chapterization This book uses the two analytical models described above to explain how militant Islamists are slowly taking over Pakistan. In the process, they are tearing the Pakistani state and people away from their subcontinental roots, and replacing the ‘Indian’ identity with an ‘Arabic’ one. As one of the country’s most eminent scientists, Pervez Hoodbhoy, has observed: For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years.53 The book is divided into two parts of three chapters each, plus a twochapter conclusion. The first part deals with Islamism in Pakistan. Chapter 1 traces the history of jihad in South Asia, beginning with the 1857 revolt against the East India Company and continuing to the formation of Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941 and the Islamization of Pakistan under Zia-ul Haq after 1977. Chapter 2 focuses on the role played by geopolitics, starting with the Turco-German jihad of World War I and continuing to the Soviet-Afghan War and its aftermath. It aims to demonstrate that Pan-Islamism has been instrumentalized by intelligence agencies for over a century. Pakistan has been one of the biggest users of this tool, but so is Saudi Arabia—a point which, in the interests of trade ties, was overlooked in Western discourse until recently.54 Finally, Chapter 3 explains the peculiar

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impact that sectarianism has had on Pakistani Islamism, setting the stage for the emergence of an indigenous and inward-looking terrorist movement. This movement is partly entwined with the outwardoriented one that Islamabad sponsored. With the first part of this book providing a backgrounder, the second part delves into details of how jihadist groups, and their patrons in the military-intelligence community, deny, collect and manipulate information to serve their strategic (i.e., long-term) purposes. Chapter 4 details the security precautions used by terrorist groups, many of which have been learnt from Al Qaeda’s tradecraft. It demonstrates that fear of betrayal and assassination is a powerful disincentive to law enforcement officials that would hold them back from engaging in any form of counterterrorist activity. Chapter 5 shows how the Deep State has eroded the larger state apparatus’ monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, by promoting factionalism among political militants. It cites the example of the Muttahida Quami Mahaz (MQM) in Karachi during the 1990s, as well as support for organized crime syndicates. Involvement with organized crime has enriched key individuals in the security apparatus at the expense of institutional integrity. Lastly, Chapter 6 traces the efforts of the Pakistani intelligence community, specifically the Inter Services Intelligence, to control and manipulate perceptions of itself and its jihadist proxies. It looks at instances of ‘reflexive control’ by the ISI, wherein foreign governments were manoeuvred into taking action detrimental to their own interests, because they relied on biased reporting from Islamabad. The final part of the book examines the impact that the intelligenceIslamist nexus in Pakistan has had on three South Asian countries. These are: Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. Chapter 7 is the largest in the book. Divided into three sections, it begins by explaining how the unresolved Afghan-Pakistani dispute over the Durand Line, a colonial artefact whose legitimacy Kabul does not recognize, has engendered a siege mentality in Islamabad. The result has been over four decades of proxy warfare in Afghanistan, with Islamabad backing militant Islamists for the purpose of undermining every Afghan government, except the Taliban. Next, the chapter looks at the slow but relentless comeback of Islamists in Bangladesh since the mid 1970s. Such a comeback has been all the more remarkable because the Islamists had been discredited for killing a sizeable portion of the country’s

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intelligentsia in 1971. It demonstrates that the processes of institutional penetration which Pakistani Islamists are using are also being played out on the other side of South Asia. The only difference is that in Bangladesh a strong secular and ethno-nationalist movement is resisting the Islamists. The last section of the chapter illustrates how jihadist groups based in Pakistan have been used to target India, ostensibly for geopolitical purposes but also due to ideologically-driven or ‘astrategic’ motives. Certain terrorist attacks by Pakistan-based groups served no military purpose, other than to momentarily discredit Indian intelligence agencies for failing to prevent the attacks. They did, however, take place with at least the tacit encouragement of the ISI, raising questions about this agency’s role. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Steve Coll, in his book Directorate S, comes to the damning conclusion that the ISI was fully complicit in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. According to a review of his work, published in The Economist on 8 February 2018, his research into the US war in Afghanistan demonstrates that in international efforts to combat Al Qaeda, ‘Pakistan has more often been a hindrance than a help.’ The concluding chapter of this book suggests that Islamism in Pakistan is not a fringe movement, but has a large, if dormant, constituency. This constituency will have to decide for itself, the extent to which it will endorse the use of violence for political objectives. Until such time, it is best left in a cordon of isolation. Since that is in any case what the Islamists want, there is hopefully no ground for disagreement between jihadists and those who oppose them.

Methodology A word about sources. To offset accusations of bias, this book uses Pakistani academic and journalistic writings for approximately 65 per cent of its data. Another 25 per cent comes from Western and Bangladeshi scholarly literature. Less than 10 per cent comes from Indian academic sources (mostly dealing with colonialism and independent India). A survey of the over 640 unique references listed in the endnotes would confirm these percentages, which are indicative of the wide range of perspectives sought. In total, 27 years’ worth of Pakistani English-language news reports have formed the informational bedrock of this book.

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Usage of these particular sources carries its own risks. The Englishlanguage press is split between critics of the Deep State and apologists for it. Journalists who have exposed intelligence agencies for harbouring international terrorist fugitives have been detained (one was allegedly made to sign an undated suicide note).55 As discussed in Chapter 6, the ISI expends considerable effort in manipulating public opinion through carefully planted news stories. This is truer of the Urdu yellow press than relatively elitist broadsheet English newspapers and magazines, but the latter are not immune. Any disinformation leaked to them may be subjected to more rigorous scrutiny by readers, but eventually, as in all intelligence-related matters, the truth is impossible for outsiders to obtain. For this reason, the book does not depend on media reports for operational details, except when these concern events long past and which can be investigated through independent channels. Furthermore, the book attempts, as far as possible, to triangulate important pieces of information. By ‘triangulation’, what is meant is that such information is cited in the book if it is confirmed by three independent sources. Finally, the analytical focus of the book is on macro-historical trends, extending from the emergence of anti-colonial jihadism to the present day sectarian and irredentist militancy plaguing South Asia. It is thought likely that no media management effort, no matter how well-resourced, can alter basic facts that have been organized in this book to decipher a larger pattern that spans several generations.

PART I ISLAMISM

CHAPTER 1 JIHADISM

Over the last 200 years, the concept of ‘jihad’ in South Asia has morphed from an indigenous, nation-protecting asset into a foreign, nationdestroying instrument. This transformation is all the more remarkable because it has hitherto been unnoticed by regional scholars. Jihad originally meant resistance to British colonial depredations—an undertaking which reached its apogee in 1857. Described as ‘the greatest armed challenge to imperialism the world over during the entire course of the nineteenth century’, the 1857 Uprising was a time where ‘jihadi’ or ‘mujahid’ were not threatening terms, as they are today, but badges of honour for Muslim civilians who volunteered to fight for the freedom of their country and the defence of their community.1 Stung by the unity which some—but not all—Hindus and Muslims (the latter included both Shias and Sunnis) had demonstrated during the Uprising, the British subsequently portrayed jihadis as foreign agents. Advocacy of religious war against the colonial regime was attributed to conspiracies by the Arabian-inspired, Sunni supremacist ‘Wahhabi’ movement. In a classic example of narrative shaping intended to divide the Indian populace, British writers airbrushed the fact that jihadi calls for annihilation of the foreign occupier had been accompanied in many places by exhortations for continued Hindu-Muslim harmony.2 Instead, the jihadis were depicted as enemies of both Christianity and Hinduism, a perception which endures to this day. For instance, the assassination in 1882 of the Viceroy of India, Lord Mayo, has been cited as an act of jihad. It remains little known that the killer—who had previously collaborated with the British against his countrymen—spent his last earnings in jail

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purchasing flour cakes for Muslim prisoners and sugar for the Hindu ones. While there is still a statue to Lord Mayo at the place of his death, independent India has as yet paid no tribute to the assassin.3 Pakistani spymaster Hamid Gul, known for vitriolic post-retirement tirades against the West, argued in 1995 that a deliberate effort was being made to conflate ‘jihad’ with ‘terrorism’. Citing the Soviet-Afghan War—in which he played an important role—he pointed out that covert operations which served Western strategic interests during the Cold War had been legitimized as part of a global ‘jihad’, while those that did not were labelled as international ‘terrorism’ in the 1990s. In Gul’s interpretation, ‘jihad’ retained its original purpose—‘to fight for one’s rights.’4 His views were shared by many, who ennobled jihad as representing the patriotic defence of one’s homeland against a militarily stronger (and usually foreign) opponent. Gul overlooked the fact that time did not stand still within the framework of his analysis and that the world had undergone seismic changes in 1989– 91. The end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union meant there was no longer a need for the West to tolerate ultra-rightist political forces in the developing world, particularly when these obstructed free market economics. His argument does, however, make a valid point in that it notes a reflexive hostility on the part of the West towards militant Islamism. The resulting storyline, which has gained credibility after 9/11, holds that jihad is a purely retrograde concept seeking to preserve or remake Muslim societies along medieval lines. As part of this storyline, the Dar-ul Uloom (House of Learning) in the town of Deoband in northern India has been associated with not only jihad but also ‘jihadism’—a new association that is mostly untrue.5 This chapter argues that ‘jihad’—the defence of an invaded or occupied Muslim homeland—is different from ‘terrorism’—the killing of noncombatants by indigenous rebels or foreign-born mercenaries to a measure greater than the number of active-duty security personnel killed. When ‘terrorism’ attempts to masquerade as a popularly supported and religiously sanctioned ‘jihad’, the result is a peculiar hybrid called ‘jihadism’. Denounced by its critics and venerated by its practitioners, jihadism captures the sympathy of a large demographic who denounce its methods but praise its objectives. In South Asia, jihadism has come to occupy this middle space partly because it has an illustrious pedigree of

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anti-colonial resistance. It is viewed as a means to preserve a hard-won sense of sovereignty. However, the permeation of fascist and Bolshevik ideas into political Islam during the twentieth century, together with the use of Islamists for domestic control and foreign policy, has made jihad an instrument of statecraft. It has since become more a tool of elite intrigues than a step towards personal and collective self-defence. Jihad in South Asia was a response to the slow erosion of Muslim supremacy by British encroachment. The Dar-ul Uloom played a crucial role in keeping alive the spirit of resistance even after all hope of victory was crushed in 1857– 8. However, the emergence of Jamaat-e-Islami and anti-Hindu sentiments among a fringe of the Indian Muslim community switched the focus of jihad from defence to offence. Fantasies about an Islamic Utopia led to Sharia law being touted as the best form of government for all mankind.6 After Pakistan was created in 1947, the military and intelligence establishment of that country used Islamists to discredit mainstream civilian politicians and manipulate popular opinion in favour of military rule. In the process, the army itself became radicalized to the point where it partly adopted the worldview of its clients. Thus, in the 1970s, a Pakistani brigadier could write a book called The Quranic Concept of War, which legitimized the sustained use of terror as an instrument of military strategy. According to one American reviewer, this book stands out among contemporary jihadist literature as a visionary treatise for terrorist groups fighting the West.7

Surviving the Devil’s Wind There is little doubt that the 1857 Uprising featured brutality by all sides. Partly out of a need to impose order by any means, and partly due to sheer savagery, the British by far exceeded their Indian adversaries in terms of war crimes committed. By winning the military conflict, they also won the right to craft a meta-narrative that glossed over their transgressions. Yet, historical events do not unmake themselves just because they are excluded from the meta-narrative of a particular era, nor does their impact disappear. Rather, the impact is felt after a generational gap when changed political circumstances facilitate the telling of an alternative story, to make better sense of current realities. In the twenty-first century, it is necessary to revisit the legacy of 1857 upon Islamism in India, to understand how deep runs the idea of jihad.

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First, a crucial falsehood has to be corrected: that the Aligarh school of religion-based politics is more moderate than the Deobandi school. This is true only through the long-distance telescope of Western scholars, but has no validity in the indigenous Indian context. Both schools share a belief that Islam is a foreign entity in South Asia. Their founders, whether Anglophile or Anglophobe, were afflicted by the Andalusia Syndrome, which equated the loss of India to infidels in the nineteenth century with the Christian reconquest of Spain in 1492 CE.8 Sir Saiyid Ahmed Khan, the leading ideologue of the Aligarh school, emphasized his non-Indian genealogy.9 To some extent, he did so out of status anxiety because it was common for ruling classes of the Mughal Empire to look down on indigenous converts to Islam. But it is also possible that Sir Saiyid was motivated by a larger sense of Muslim identity, which he valued more than any emotional connection with the land and native culture of India. In contrast, Deobandi scholars emphasized patriotic identification with one’s native soil, which after 1947 has tied them to the Indian nation-building project. As early as 1938, they issued a fatwa stating that loyalty to country and loyalty to religion were not mutually exclusive.10 It was possible, according to the Deobandi school, for Muslims to live in a multi-faith and secular state, without striving for political supremacy as long as they were free to practise their religion. The physical and the spiritual realms were to be kept sufficiently apart, to allow for a greater degree of political accommodation than that afforded by the Aligarh school. This point is important, because it explains why Indian Muslims—to the limited extent they even follow the edicts of Deobandi clerics—have remained much more moderate than Pakistani Muslims. The latter live in a country whose founding fathers subscribed to the Aligarh school’s Two Nation Theory—an exclusivist belief that different religions cannot coexist in harmony. To be sure, there have long been clerics in South Asia who held that syncretic policies corrupted Islam and made it vulnerable to a steady erosion of power. Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi (1564–1624), for instance, criticized Mughal Emperor Akbar for allowing Hindu customs to be absorbed into Muslim daily life. Sirhindi called for a revivalist pushback against religious over-tolerance, which he felt was destroying the moral fabric of the Islamic realm. His ideas influenced the Naqshabandi strain of Sufism to such a degree that Naqshbandis become committed advocates

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for the purification of Islam in late-medieval India. They called for a revival of old traditions, which had been displaced by Hindu-Muslim assimilation.11 The most distinguished of them was Shah Waliullah (1703–62) from Delhi. Although not an Arab, Waliullah is often identified as the man who imported ‘Wahhabism’ into South Asia. He and the actual founder of the Wahhabi movement, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, had been students in Medina under the Indian Naqshbandi scholar Muhammad Hayat of Sindh. Upon completion of their studies, which had encouraged them to re-interpret religious law, both returned to their places of origin to start social movements. Wahhab went to the Nejd in Arabia, while Waliullah returned to Delhi. Unlike his Saudi counterpart, who faced a barren ideological climate in which to preach, Waliullah had to contend with the highly charged courtly discourse of the Indian subcontinent’s imperial centre. His reform movement provided an answer to the burning question of the time—why had Muslim power been in decline since the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707? According to Waliullah’s explanation, the decline occurred because the Mughal Empire had deviated from its Arabic origins and become contaminated by indigenous practices absorbed from the lands of India. As a reform movement with an Arabist slant but native roots, the Waliullah movement was indeed a forerunner of Deobandism. However, it was not, strictly speaking, the South Asian version of Wahhabism because it subscribed to the Hanafi school (madhab) of Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh). In contrast, Wahhabism became a reform movement within the much smaller and more austere Hanbali madhab.12 When the 1857 Uprising broke out, it was proclaimed as a jihad by leading Islamic scholars in Delhi. The overall aim was to restore Muslim rule over the Mughal Empire, which had been usurped by the British over many decades. As early as 1803, Shah Waliullah’s son, Shah Abdul Aziz, had declared that Delhi could no longer be considered Dar-ul Islam (House of Islam) because the Mughal Emperor was a figurehead of British rule. The city was henceforth deemed Dar-ul Harb (House of War). Readers may discern an attempt here to copy the famous Mardin fatwa, which was issued by the medieval cleric Ibn Taymiyyah following the Mongol occupation of the Middle East in the thirteenth century. The fatwa is generally held to have made a rigid distinction between Muslim-ruled lands and those occupied by non-Muslim invaders. The proclamation of a similar fatwa a full 54 years before 1857 shows that European colonization

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of the Islamic world, no matter how well-disguised, was both noticed and resented by native elites. Similar resistance movements would also be mounted throughout the nineteenth century in Russia and the Nile Valley in Africa.13 In India, the banner of revolt was first raised by Saiyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831), a charismatic preacher from the town of Rae Bareli, in 1826. After a two-year stay in Arabia, he returned to India determined to restore Islam to its past glory. He first spent two years building a clandestine infrastructure for political and religious subversion in occupied territories, with its headquarters at Patna in central India. Then, when he judged that preparations for an insurrection were complete, he emigrated to the borderlands near Afghanistan to launch a holy war. The immediate enemy of Saiyid Ahmed Barelvi was the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh, which he viewed as an easier prize than British-occupied territory. At first, the British were happy to allow Saiyid Ahmed to harass the Sikh ruler, having calculated that this could hasten their own conquest of India. However, when Barelvi proved altogether too popular among Indian Muslims for their comfort, they supported Ranjit Singh in crushing the jihadi army at the Battle of Balakot in 1831. Saiyid Ahmed died on the battlefield, but fear of a Muslim rebellion seeped into the British psyche. Colonial administrators became vigilant against further uprisings.14 During the fighting of 1857, the most feared and capable opponent of the British was a Qadiri Sufi named Ahmadullah Shah (1810–57). Originally from a princely state near modern-day Chennai (a south Indian city also known as Madras), he spent two decades travelling in Europe and became a skilled military commander, before turning to religion. He had already been identified as a potential threat by the British and arrested. He was awaiting execution when the first clashes between British and Indian soldiers erupted in May 1857. Within a short while, he organized a resistance force and inflicted a humiliating battlefield defeat upon the British. His most important act during the Uprising was to issue a statement calling for the restoration of Islamic rule in India, preferably with a sovereign of Arab descent. Given that Ahmadullah Shah himself was most likely of Afghan lineage yet born in southern India, his statement shows the depth of religious solidarity that existed among Islamic forces fighting the colonial occupier. Similar commitment may have been lacking among some Hindus, who either supported the colonizers or were prepared to switch sides depending on how the fighting went.15

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After the British had extracted their revenge (known as the Devil’s Wind), by instituting mass hangings of suspected opponents, the Muslim revival launched by Shah Waliullah and Shah Abdul Aziz, forged in blood by Saiyid Ahmed Barelvi, and ably defended by Ahmadullah Shah, collapsed. One of the leading supporters of the 1857 jihad declaration, Maulana Fazlul Haq Khairabadi (1798 – 1861), later wrote about its failure while in exile. His book Al-Thurat al-Hindiya (The Agitation of India) was written in Arabic but translated into Urdu. In a marked slight, Khairabadi used the term ‘shahadat’ (martyrdom) while referring to the deaths of Muslim fighters but not to Hindu ones killed by the British. He described those who refused to participate in the revolt as apostates. He perceived the conflict as a war between true Muslims and a Christian-Hindu alliance. To account for the fact that not all Hindus supported the British, he described the collaborators as Hindus who had been Westernized.16 Thus, suspicion of Western education and culture has a long tradition among South Asian Islamists. It is seen as a way of re-programming native elites such that they become servile partners in an occupation-byproxy. Hindus in nineteenth-century India were more receptive to being schooled in the English language than Muslims—a bias which, to some degree, endures to this day. For Muslims, the displacement of Urdu by English (and later Hindi) as the official language of government was a reminder of their own subjugated status. It was therefore at this level, much below the threshold of violence that would trigger a harsh British response, that advocates of jihad prepared the next phase of their struggle.

The House of Learning During the fighting of 1857, a series of intense battles took place in Saharanpur district, some distance east of Delhi. In a town called Thanabhawan, Muslim clerics declared their support for the wider jihad being waged across northern India. One of these clerics was 25-year-old Maulana Muhammed Qasim Nanautawi (1832 – 80). After the British reconquered the area, he and his closest associates disappeared. Later, they took advantage of an amnesty to resurface. The maulana’s burning hatred for the occupation forces never disappeared, though, as the following quote illustrates:

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The English have perpetrated boundless acts of tyranny against the Muslims for their fault, if at all it was a fault, of the uprising of 1857 and their relentless endeavour for the independence of this country thereafter. They have left no stone unturned to plunder and obliterate the Islamic arts and science, Muslim culture and civilization.17 According to legend, Muhammed Qasim had a dream in which the town of Deoband was revealed to him as the site from which the next phase of jihad would begin. In the courtyard of a decrepit old mosque, with a solitary student and just one teacher, he started what eventually became the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband, ‘the second-most important Islamic academic institution in the world after Cairo’s al-Azhar.’18 The new madrassa was revolutionary for its time; it was the first Islamic seminary in India to be modelled on the British system of higher education, with a fixed syllabus, class timetable and regular faculty members. Yet, unlike its Anglophone predecessor Delhi College, whose organizational strengths Muhammed Qasim had observed closely, it emphasized a frugal lifestyle for teachers and students. English was forbidden as a medium of instruction; classes were delivered in Arabic (hence, the seminary was known locally as the ‘Arab madrassa’). In a context where both elites and commoners scrambled to ingratiate themselves with the c olonial occupiers, by learning English and seeking government jobs, the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband represented an intellectual fightback, offering a proud sense of identity and access to an alternative world where Muslims were not third-class subjects.19 Since its founding in 1866, the Deobandi school of political Islam has proven immensely successful in providing a counter-narrative to the ‘civilizing’ discourse that accompanies free-market capitalism led by the West.20 Perhaps this success can be traced to the school’s ability to simplify life for impoverished South Asian Muslims, many of whom struggle with the economic complexity of globalization. As a countercurrent of colonialism, Deobandism emphasizes patriotism and abjuring of materialism. The emotional appeal of the latter cannot be underestimated in societies like modern-day India and Pakistan, where income disparities based on lineage and patronage are so marked that hard work is no guarantee of success.

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During World War I, scholars from the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband attempted to collude with German and Turkish agents to orchestrate an Islamic uprising in India.21 The conspiracy was uncovered and 222 clerics were arrested in the summer of 1915 for plotting to overthrow the colonial government. This (non)event was significant, because it marked a return to active political involvement on the part of the Deobandi movement, which had hitherto avoided challenging British rule, beyond distancing itself from the colonial administration. Although there is little evidence that Muhammed Qasim Nanautawi had intended that the Darul-ul Uloom should be a springboard for another 1857-type violent jihad, it is certain that he supported a slow process of spiritual and intellectual rearmament among Indian Muslims. Thus, shortly before his death, he allowed the madrassa’s first student, Mahmud-ul Hasan, to set up a militant group named the Samaratut Tarbiyat (Results of Training), whose members were called ‘fedayeen’ (men of sacrifice), an ominous name later associated with suicidal terrorists.22 This section has shown that ‘jihad’ in South Asia has been a multigenerational endeavour, dating back at least to Shah Waliullah in the eighteenth century. For a long time, it was an elite-led movement with the middle classes and peasantry responding more to the emotive call of the term than to its intellectual reasoning. Unlike other parts of the world, the innate conservatism of South Asia has meant that most political upheavals have been triggered less by economic conditions, than by cultural and religious dissonance.23 Partly due to greater urbanization, this began to change in the twentieth century as the heartlands of British India began to organize politically according to a party system.24 While in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, many clerics believed in continuing the violent jihad begun by Saiyid Ahmed in 1826, elsewhere new ideas were beginning to emerge. These were not as openly confrontational as the territorially defined jihad of the warrior Sufis, but they were even more aggressive in an ideological sense. The next section shall describe how militancy linked up with politics.

The Rise of Jamaat-e-Islami The Muslim ulema (clergy) had been one of the principal victims of the Devil’s Wind in 1857– 8, constituting roughly 25 per cent of the 200,000 Muslims massacred by the British.25 For this reason, they were

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highly regarded by the oppressed masses over the following decades. During the twentieth century, the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband and its affiliated madrassas in India and Pakistan issued almost 250,000 edicts on which behavioural codes were permissible for Muslims, and which were not. This level of involvement (some would interpret it as intrusion) with the personal lives of practising Muslims was accepted because the Deobandi movement was perceived as genuinely representing the interests of Islam and its adherents.26 There was, however, a rival movement brewing within the educated, urbanized Muslim c ommunity. Alarmed by the introduction of democracy in India, in the form of the 1882 Local Self-Government Act, Sir Saiyid Ahmed Khan, an Anglophile Muslim, set himself the task of training Muslim elites to counter Hindu politicians.27 The instrument he chose for this purpose was Aligarh Muslim University, which had been established in 1875. Sir Saiyid believed that British rule was beneficial for Indian Muslims, since it protected them from the majoritarian tyranny of Hindus. His views were at variance with those of the Deobandi ulema, who wanted to prepare Muslims to resist the British. Herein lies the origin of the myth that the Aligarh school is more ‘moderate’ than Deobandism: Sir Saiyid and the adherents of the Aligarh school were collaborators with the British occupation of India and therefore more palatable to the latter. They were not actually different from the Deobandis, since both believed that Muslims were a distinct, diasporic nation within the Indian socio-cultural context. It was in this ideologically competitive context that Saiyid Abul ala Maududi (1903–79), a Deobandi graduate, had his thinking shaped by international and domestic events. Maududi came from a fiercely conservative family opposed to Western education. After World War I, he attempted along with other young dissidents to emigrate to Afghanistan. His efforts were frustrated by the Afghan authorities and he returned disillusioned to Delhi in the early 1920s. At this time, he was still a follower of Deobandism and, as such, open to cooperation with Hindus against the common colonial enemy. However, through the 1920s, his perception of Hindu politicians grew unfavourable and he imbibed the communal prejudices of the Aligarh-educated Muslim elite. He felt that Hindu leaders had devalued the contributions made by Islam to India. Yet, he could not bring himself to support the continuation of British rule. Adrift in ‘No Man’s Land’ between two

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opposing camps, he decided to launch his own political party in 1941. Thus, in August of that year, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) was formed with 75 members. The timing was unintentionally symbolic, as the world was then riveted by the titanic clash unfolding in Eastern Europe between fascism and Bolshevism, two ideologies that had fired the imagination of anti-colonial intellectuals across much of Asia and Africa.28 To understand JeI and its peculiarly conspiratorial approach to seizing power, one has to understand Bolshevism. Maududi spent five years studying Western philosophy before immersing himself in research on the Russian Revolution.29 He was impressed by how a small vanguard of revolutionaries could drag an ignorant mass behind them by capturing the institutions of government. The key was to seed other political parties, as well as the government bureaucracy, with revolutionary sympathizers. At a suitable time, when other parties had discredited themselves by infighting, a tightly disciplined core group could swiftly seize the levers of power and create a totalitarian state.30 JeI modelled itself on a Leninist paradigm, albeit with overtones of facism. Its leaders believed that if numerically small parties could come to power in Germany and the Soviet Union, then they, who ‘represented’ India’s 80-millon strong Muslim population, would be an unstoppable force. Maududi and his followers were not the only ones to hold such extreme ideas; as mentioned before, the onset of democracy had unleashed ideological competition among Hindus and Muslims. The most popular Muslim party in the 1930s was the Khaksar Tehrik, a clone of the Nazi party, which even created suicide squads in anticipation of the battles which would restore the glory of Islam.31 This party went defunct with the creation of Pakistan in 1947, but JeI endured with a similar agenda. As British India was partitioned, so too was Jamaat-e-Islami. One chapter remained in independent India and became Jamaat-e-Islami (Hind). The bulk of membership however, remained in what became Pakistan. Given the ongoing war over the kingdom of Jammu & Kashmir, a third chapter was set up especially for this territory and was known as JeI(J&K). Over subsequent decades, the Pakistani chapter grew associated with international Islamist militancy, motivating revolutionaries across the Arab world. The Kashmiri chapter initially supported a rebellion against the Indian government in 1988 but later renounced violence, while the Indian chapter never was militant at all.

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This differential in the behaviour of Jamaat-e-Islami across three different locations suggests that there was something unique about the Pakistani political, economic or cultural context, which made the party more prone to militancy here. That something was the Pakistani army, whose willingness to use Islamists for political and geopolitical purposes made JeI an instrument of both ‘jihad’ and ‘jihadism’.

Link to Al Qaeda In 2003, following the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at a house owned by a JeI leader in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the party came under critical scrutiny. Reports by local journalists disclosed that on at least two occasions that same year, JeI activists had sheltered Al Qaeda fugitives and impeded police efforts to apprehend them.32 The party leadership denied any connection with international terrorism, but its claims were not wholly credible. While JeI was not the only entity implicated in protecting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (a serving major of the Pakistani army was court-martialled for facilitating the terrorist’s movements), the Islamist party had previously made no secret of its support for Osama Bin Laden and hostility to the United States. Whether or not it provided operational support to terrorist attacks was one question, but did it provide ideological support? A look at its track record of supporting the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s suggests that it did, but this is hardly conclusive. During the Cold War, the West viewed radical Islamists as a counterweight to the atheistic Soviet Union. JeI involvement with Afghan resistance forces as well as thousands of Arab volunteers who flocked to the Afghan-Pakistan border was not a secret. In fact, the party was encouraged to take a leading role in organizing the jihad because it added a layer of deniability to Islamabad’s official support for the mujahideen. So, to accuse it of aiding Al Qaeda based on a single example derived from a completely different context would be a fallacy. However, there are more solid grounds on which JeI can be identified as a vehicle for militant Islamism: the writings of Maududi himself. In 1927, the angry 24-year-old (‘angry’ because he was not recognized as an alim or religious scholar by the ulema) penned an Urdu book entitled Al-jihad fıˆ’l-islam (Jihad in Islam). In contrast to those who suggested that jihad was meant only for defensive purposes, Maududi made clear that he conceived of jihad as an offensive weapon to spread the

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territory of Islam.33 There was no question of peaceful coexistence; the relationship between Islam and other faiths had to be one of domination. In adopting this worldview, Maududi was influenced by Bolshevik ideas about world revolution, and the notion that all mankind awaited a liberator from Western capitalism. He believed that the Sharia (Islamic Law) provided a roadmap for building an egalitarian society free from class or ethnic biases. The previous year, while attending a prayer meeting in Delhi, he heard the speaker ask that a servant of Allah step forward to protect Indian Muslims from Hindu extremists. Maududi developed a ‘saviour complex’ from that point onward, seeing himself as a man of destiny with a special mission to promote the Islamic faith not just within the territory of India, but also overseas for the salvation of other societies. To justify this clearly imperialistic aim—which did not sit well with the conventional notion of jihad as a ‘just’ war waged in self-defence—he used the concept of ‘jahiliya’ or ignorance.34 According to Maududi, a social system that had yet to organize according to Islamic principles was at a lower level of political and spiritual evolution than those which already had. Maududi was mirroring the same paternalistic mindset that Occidental scholars had adopted towards the non-industrialized peoples of the Orient. His condescension appealed to other ideologues in the Islamic world, who were wrestling with the reality of Western power and their own helplessness to topple it. Two of these were Hasan-al Banna and Saiyid Qutb in Egypt. Maududi decreed that every ‘true Muslim’ would strive for the creation of an Islamic state where only Sharia law would exist. Qutb took his idea further, and postulated that the use of violence in pursuit of this objective was justified. Thus, what Maududi started, Qutb continued. Since the latter is regarded by many commentators as the intellectual founder of the modern jihadist movement, Maududi’s own role in shaping the militant Islamism c urrently associated with Al Qaeda cannot be ignored. JeI and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (created by Hasan-al Banna in 1928) have long had a symbiotic relationship. In 1952 – 5, JeI’s student wing in Karachi was advised by a Brotherhood member from Egypt who lived in the city. Based on his suggestions, the party created an administrative structure that allowed it to increase its on-campus profile in Pakistani universities.35

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JeI’s views on education explain its preferred methods for building up support in Pakistani society. Having observed the spread of Deobandism, Maududi decided in 1941 that his new party should set up its own schooling system. The idea was that, over decades, alumni of JeI schools could enter government and eventually reach positions of power, from which they might influence political events in the party’s favour.36 In prioritizing the education sector as one where the party would build long-term influence, Maududi ensured that the multigenerational indoctrination begun in 1866 by Muhammed Qasim Nanautawi could continue in an era of democratic politics. What was needed was an updated messaging strategy, by sculpting the minds of urbanized, middle-class Muslims instead of just focusing on the impoverished masses who made up the bulk of Deobandi madrassa students. What made JeI important as a conduit for anti-Western militancy was that many of its supporters (both active and passive) were products of ‘Westernized’ backgrounds. Unlike the more rustic and rural-based Deobandi parties of Pakistan such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), JeI appealed to the upwardly mobile segment of the urban population.37 Its adherents usually had some exposure to Western lifestyles and consumer products, before becoming ‘born again’ Muslims as they grew older. Having developed familiarity with Western culture, their contempt for it was all the more pronounced once they signed on to JeI’s project of building an Islamic state. A hostile observer might suggest that many JeI sympathizers were in fact rejectionists, externalizing their personal failures to find a lucrative space in the globalized knowledge economy. In any case, they were aware of world events and were more engaged with political issues in the Middle East than ordinary Pakistanis.38 In 2005, a Pakistani journalist noted that According to circles with access to US intelligence officials operating in Pakistan, a large number of foreign students who attended the Maulana Maudoodi Institute in Lahore have been involved in Al Qaeda sponsored acts of terrorism. Named after the JI’s [sic] founding father, the institute was established in 1986 for imparting Islamic education to needy foreign students. Most of the students admitted to the institute belonged to families of militants who had died fighting in Chechnya, the Philippines,

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Central Asia and the Arab states. The Jamaat was responsible for their education and housing.39 This was not the only time JeI had been found supporting militancy in Central Asia, among other places. In the early 1990s, with encouragement from the then Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Javed Nasir, the party funded, trained and recruited for the Islamic Resistance Party in Tajikistan. Logistical bases were set up in the Afghan cities of Kunduz and Jalalabad, from where retired ISI officers worked with JeI to coordinate supply deliveries to the Tajik rebels.40 This operation, which may have been an example of a self-initiated ISI paramilitary action, jeopardized Islamabad’s diplomatic relations with Moscow. In a similar vein, JeI hosted 100 Uighur dissidents from China’s restive Xinjiang province at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, causing a major embarrassment to the Pakistani government.41 The embarrassment was not so great, however, as to prompt the Deep State to expel the dissidents back to China; it seems the ISI accurately guessed that Beijing did not wish to upset military-to-military relations with Islamabad by protesting too strongly. JeI was the first religious party in Pakistan to weigh in on matters of foreign policy. In this, it followed the example of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Both parties had begun their existence by opposing nationalism (which was viewed as a Western tool intended to fragment the global Islamic community). Both parties had to work hard to regain credibility with the local populace after Pakistan and Egypt attained independence.42 During the 1970s, both experienced an uptick in political fortunes as a result of appeasement by insecure dictators in the aftermath of military defeat (the Six Day War for Egypt, and the Bangladesh War for Pakistan).43 Both parties used the rhetoric of nationalism and national security to raise their profile at the expense of left-wing rivals. It was from this trend that anti-American slogans entered the lexicon of Pakistani religious parties.44 Previously, criticism of the United States had been the preserve of left-of-centre politicians, such as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). But in order to weaken mainstream political opponents, from the late 1970s onwards, Pakistani dictator Zia-ul Haq encouraged JeI to take over the anti-American narrative. As discussed in the next section of this chapter, the Islamist party was a client of the Pakistani

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Deep State and so was trusted to represent the military’s interest in domestic politics. As Pakistan adjusted to the structured c haos of democratic governance in the 1990s, Islamist parties found themselves in the enviable position of being simultaneously courted by civilian politicians and used by the military.45 This gave JeI, as the most organized and disciplined party in the country (both among religious and mainstream parties), unexpected influence over policy-making. In 1992, it made an unsuccessful demand that all ‘liberal’ officials in the foreign service, including ambassadors, be sacked so that the country could pursue an unabashedly ‘Islamic’ foreign policy.46 While pursing such rhetoric, JeI became Arabized to a large degree. After 9/11, when American agencies were hunting down Al Qaeda members in Pakistan, they discovered that the Saudi-dominated group had built a logistics and communications network partly by recruiting among JeI-affiliated urban professionals.47 In 2009, when a mosque in Rawalpindi’s military area was targeted by suicide terrorists, investigators found that the mastermind came from a family with strong JeI connections.48 Irrespective of whether the top leadership of the party plans terrorist attacks (an accusation which has not been made at official levels), what seems clear is that some JeI members are strongly sympathetic towards Arab jihadists.

The Army and Islamization Academia and Islamism share at least two common traits: both yearn for intellectual freedom and to stay within an ivory tower, above pedestrian issues like fundraising. And both fail to meet this lofty ideal, instead finding that necessity dictates some measure of closeness towards financial backers in government. Islamic thought holds that any religious scholar who is dependent on state patronage for his livelihood ought not to be trusted or respected. The North Indian Sufi cleric Jalal ad-Din Rumi argued that ‘[t]he worst of scholars is he who accepts help from princes, and whose welfare and salvation is dependent upon and stems from fear of princes.’49 Yet, JeI somehow managed to do both— become a recipient of government aid while retaining credibility with its constituency. Although there have been tensions within the party over its ties to the official establishment, to a large extent these were resolved by expelling dissident members, some of whom went on to form even

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more extreme organizations.50 Part of the explanation for how JeI managed to square this particular circle lies in the fact it was not only being used by the Pakistani state, but it too was using the Pakistani state. According to Maududi’s conception, ‘social change would result not from violent toppling of existing order by mobilizing the masses, but by taking over the centres of political power and effecting large scale reforms from the top down . . . . Islamic revolution would unfold within the state structures rather than with the aim of overthrowing them.’51 Thus, JeI encouraged the less intelligent members of its student wing to join the military, having realized that this institution, not civilian politicians, would determine the political future of the country. As the party’s influence over official policy increased, high-minded unease about its relations with a ‘not-yet-Islamic’ government apparatus declined. No doubt one contributing factor was that, in later decades, officers with a background in JeI student activism were favoured by army promotion boards for senior command appointments.52 The army was infiltrated from the top down. Since at least the 1950s, when JeI launched a movement to declare the minority Ahmediyya sect as non-Muslims, the Pakistani army has used the party as a foil against civilian politicians. Following Islamist-led street demonstrations in 1953, army chief Ayub Khan elevated himself into the role of defence minister. Between 1953 and 1958, Pakistan had five prime ministers and two governor-generals (a colonial-era title, equivalent to the country’s president).53 But it had only one army chief who, after making sure that all civilian leaders were discredited among the masses, staged a coup d’etat. Ayub Khan, having seized power extraconstitutionally, spent the next decade using Islamists to legitimize and consolidate his unelected position. In 1961, the military dictator ordered the drafting of a blueprint to Islamize the country. Entitled ‘Pakistan Nationalism’ (sic), the resulting document set an ambitious goal of re-writing Pakistani history. Relations with India were to be portrayed as historically adversarial. Any suggestion that Hindus and Muslims shared common values was to be expunged from public discourse. Instead, from that point onward, India was to be projected as a land of primitive peasants whose living standards had improved under Mughal rule. According to the document, the people of West Pakistan (today’s Pakistan) were true descendants of this

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glorious empire, while the people of East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh) were lowly converts from Hinduism whose Islamic identity was less than complete.54 Ayub Khan was a Sandhurst-educated, whisky-drinking army officer.55 He did not fit the conventional view of a religious bigot. And indeed he may not have been one, at a personal level. But he imbibed all the Indophobic prejudices of his former colonial masters and those of the Aligarh school of Muslim politicians (he was actually a student of Aligarh Muslim University). He was also willing (due to political expediency rather than personal c onviction) to project himself as defender of the Islamic faith. So great was his need for clerical validation that one of his loyalists suggested the dictator title himself ‘Amir-ul Momineen’ or Commander of the Faithful.56 Incidentally, this was the same title that the Taliban’s first leader Mullah Mohammad Omar adopted in the 1990s. Irrespective of how Anglicized Ayub may have been in interpersonal relations, the fact remains that he set Pakistan on a confrontational path with India, using historical determinism as a rationale for open-ended and interminable hostility. His successor as army chief, Yahya Khan, was an alcoholic and a womanizer—a perfect example of value dissychronization in a conservative South Asian society. In retrospect, a combination of anger over Yahya’s policy mistakes and disgust over his hedonistic lifestyle seems to have led to the Pakistani army’s turn to religiosity during the 1970s. During the civil war of 1971, as East Pakistan fought for independence from West Pakistan, Yahya brought four JeI leaders into his cabinet. He did so on the advice of a JeI sympathizer, Major General Sher Ali Khan, who at the time was serving as Minister of Information and National Affairs. JeI was tasked to form so-called ‘peace committees’ in East Pakistan, ostensibly to promote dialogue. In reality, the party used its extensive network among university students to identify Bengali intellectuals who favoured separatism and helped in their elimination by the army.57 During the 1970s, civil-military intrigues helped JeI grow more powerful in the establishment without having to broaden its support base among the masses. In a classic example of how the Deep State operated, Director-General ISI Ghulam Jilani Khan advised the civilian prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to appoint a JeI sympathizer to the post of army chief. This officer, Zia-ul Haq, had been part of a conspiracy

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to overthrow Bhutto in 1973 but had switched sides at the last moment without being detected.58 He even managed to wipe his own trail clean by presiding over the court-martial of his fellow plotters. Yet, Ghulam Jilani Khan recommended him to Bhutto as a loyal officer. It was a fatal piece of advice. After Zia had overthrown Bhutto and had him sentenced to death in a sham trial, the deposed prime minister wondered if he had been strategically deceived by his own intelligence chief.59 As mentioned earlier, JeI spearheaded Pakistani support for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Army during the 1980s. This decade marked the high point of its influence. Not only was military dictator Zia-ul Haq an admirer of Maududi; he was also friendly with Tufail Mohammed, Maududi’s successor as JeI chief. It was perhaps no coincidence that JeI student activists were at the forefront of the 1977 protests which gave Zia an opportunity to depose Bhutto. Possibly as a reward, Zia ensured that while all other student activism on university campuses was banned, JeI could maintain its presence in Pakistani academia. This in turn ensured that once Zia began sending army officers to attend courses at civilian educational institutions, they came into further contact with JeI.60 A supposedly apolitical army (in that it did not distinguish between civilian political parties) was becoming decidedly Islamized. According to one estimate, recruitment and promotion policies during the Zia years (1977–88) led to approximately 30 per cent of the army officer corps becoming Islamic fundamentalists by the 2000s.61 This trend was not accidental—one of Zia’s most famous decrees was to change the army’s motto from ‘Unity, Faith and Discipline’ to the Arabic ‘Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi sabeelillah’ (Faith, Obedience to God, and Jihad in the way of Allah).62 In 1984, the dictator ordered military commanders to appoint ‘prayer wardens’ for each urban locality. A total of 100,000 wardens were duly recruited to observe the daily lives of civilians for signs of un-Islamic behaviour or a failure to observe prayer rituals. State funding for small town madrassas was also substantially increased, a decision which later ensured that the country would have no shortage of religiously charged but scientifically illiterate job-seekers.63

Jihadization of the army? According to one journalist writing in 1990, ‘Many in Pakistan believe that the Pakistan Army’s finest victory was won in a war that it did not

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fight itself—the Afghan War, circa 1979–89.’64 The conflict was venerated as a jihad whose success was all the more spectacular in that it caused the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. At least, that is how radical Islamists choose to interpret causality between those two discrete sets of events. While the self-congratulation of Arab adventurers in Peshawar and their local hosts can be dismissed as delusion, a more serious question is whether the Pakistani military had similar views. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there was indeed an ‘Afghan generation’ within the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus. However, through a steady process of institutional culling, the most outspoken officers were retired from service in the 1990s. It remains unclear as to how watertight are the boundaries between these retired officers and their junior colleagues who are still in service and have risen in rank. Hasan Askari-Rizvi, a researcher on the Pakistani military, suggests that former military personnel play a crucial role in subverting their juniors who are still in uniform.65 The army leadership, even when it has been unsympathetic to such fraternization, has been unwilling to curb personal expression of religious beliefs for fear of a backlash. Thus, as part of a long-standing unofficial policy, the military does not enforce its own regulations prohibiting officers from keeping flowing beards.66 Until 2007, the possibility of serving military personnel being radicalized was not taken seriously. However, this changed when a total of 800 soldiers surrendered or defected to the Pakistani Taliban, in defiance of orders to fight the latter. Indoctrinated by years of religiously defined propaganda, the soldiers could not bring themselves to fight fellow Muslims—especially since they believed their own government was blindly obeying the dictates of an infidel power (the United States). Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif, himself a former air force officer, described the moral quandary: The Pakistan army’s biggest folly has been that under Zia it started outsourcing its basic job—soldiering—to these freelance militants. By blurring the line between a professional soldier who, at least in theory, is always required to obey his officer, who in turn is governed by a set of laws, and a mujahid who can pick and choose his cause and his commander depending on his mood, the Pakistan army has caused immense confusion within its own ranks. When soldiers who cry ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ when mocking an

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attack are ambushed in real life by enemies who shout ‘Allah-oAkbar’ even louder, can we blame them if they waver in their response . . . . The Pakistan army has, over the years, cultivated an image of 180 million people with nuclear devices strapped to its collective body, threatening to take the world down with it.67 More than a disciplinary problem (which is serious but still manageable), there is a risk that figures within the army’s decisionmaking structure might harbour jihadist perspectives. This would raise the spectre of a ‘rogue’ action potentially involving use or theft of nuclear weapons. The 1999 Kargil Crisis between Pakistan and India serves as a potent indicator. Of the four generals who planned the covert incursion into Indian territory, one was a JeI supporter (chief of general staff, Mohammed Aziz), one was linked to Osama Bin Laden (commander of the intruders, Jamshed Gulzar) and one was a c ommitted Taliban supporter (corps commander, Mehmood Ahmed).68 Only army chief Pervez Musharraf, whose social status in a Punjabi and Pashtundominated institution was weak because his family hailed from India, may have been motivated by strictly professional considerations. For the rest, it is possible that ideological prejudices mixed with innovative planning to produce a hare-brained scheme that was neither subjected to critical analysis by outsiders, nor took full account of escalatory risks. To better understand the impact that religion can have on military decisions, it might be instructive to look at Pakistan’s neighbour Iran. As discussed in Chapter 3, the 1979 Shia revolution in Iran had a powerful impact on the Pakistani military, not least because it threatened to unleash Shia militancy against an unpopular regime. To pre-empt such militancy, the Zia government appropriated on behalf of the Sunni Muslim community some of the ideology-led thought processes that shaped Iranian grand strategy in the 1980s. Kamran Taremi has done a brilliant job of decoding Tehran’s strategic behaviour by citing the concept of Tavakkol, or putting one’s faith in Allah. According to him, Iranian military doctrine held that: [T]he fate of battle is decided not by the number of men an army can field, nor by the quality and quantity of arms that it bears but by the strength of faith in the soldiers and their officers. The stronger their faith, the more certain is victory. In other words,

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faith can compensate for inferiority in numbers and weaponry. That is not to argue that in war the size of the armed forces, the quality of its weaponry, and its strategy and tactics are insignificant. The latter is undoubtedly important, but it is the former that plays the decisive role. In the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, blood is victorious over the sword. Here, blood symbolizes a warrior’s willingness to die for his cause, whilst sword stands for men and their arms. In sum, the winner in war is the side that is spiritually superior, though it might be materially inferior.69 The above quote can be compared with the Pakistani high command’s planning for the Kargil incursion. According to a former general, the operation unfolded along the lines of ‘[B]y the Grace of God, we will put 10,000 rounds over there and Inshallah the enemy will be routed.’ Logistical and tactical analysis in anticipation of wider hostilities was considered almost heretical because, according to the planners’ mindset, ‘You cannot quantify God’s Grace.’70 Small wonder that Indian commanders at Kargil were surprised—neither the Indian military nor the intelligence community shared the Pakistani Islamists’ penchant for risk-taking, and could not conceive that their opposite numbers would risk nuclear war just to occupy some barren hilltops within easy range of Indian artillery.

The Pakistanization of Al Qaeda This chapter has demonstrated that jihad and jihadism can be viewed as two distinct types of activity. One is defensive and territorial; the other is aggressive and transnational. The chapter has shown that jihad in South Asia is a multi-generational affair, with personal connections between key individuals playing an important role in carrying through the ideological focus of earlier generations. Lastly, the chapter has shown that the roots of both jihad and jihadism lie in politics, past and present. It has argued that the boundaries between state and para-state actors are not clear-cut. Islamist infiltration of the army has been a contributing factor in sustaining jihadist violence in South Asia. Every year through the 1990s, hundreds of serving military personnel attended indoctrination sessions and martial arts camps held by groups such as the Tanzeemul Ikhwan, which is committed to building an Islamic

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state in Pakistan.71 A 2004 report on the emergence of a Pakistani branch of Al Qaeda described the network as a joint project of JeI and the Pakistani army. It suggested that the army was ‘an ideology-driven machine specializing in covert warfare, conducted largely through nonmilitary cadres of “like-minded groups”.’72 The next chapter describes how Arab jihadists found their way to Pakistan in the first place and came to enjoy the hospitality of its home-grown militants.

CHAPTER 2 PAN-ISLAMISM

Pakistan is a country with a split identity, torn between a desire to culturally integrate into the Arab Middle East while being held back by governance deficiencies that are peculiar to densely-populated South Asian states. Lacking great natural wealth, unlike oil-rich Arab regimes, it has used Pan-Islamism and human capital to enhance its ‘soft power’ within the Islamic community of nations.1 In the process, due to the weakness of its administrative institutions, it has undermined its own sense of nationhood. To understand how this happened, as with Islamism, it is necessary to study Pan-Islamism within a larger historical context. The notion of a universal Muslim identity gained popularity in the West during the nineteenth century, as a way of justifying the colonial takeover of Islamic lands.2 Projecting this unfamiliar identity to domestic audiences as backward and hostile to societal progress, Western imperialists sought to depict themselves as deliverers of better living standards. As great power competition intensified in Europe however, the global community of Muslims became a tool of subversion, to be instrumentalized for specific and short-term military purposes. Divide-and-conquer policies followed in the Middle East a century ago have made present-day Islamists intensely wary of the threat posed by counter-ideologies and counter-narratives. They are hardened to state propaganda offensives, and do not waver from their primary mission. A useful lesson that can be divined from the ‘blowback’ of supporting Pan-Islamism is that intelligence agencies should not use a strategic

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instrument (ideology) for transient and tactical purposes, especially when they will have to deal with the long-term effects of that ideology.3 Pakistan has yet to fully absorb this lesson. From its earliest days, but especially since the 1970s, the country has tried to leverage Pan-Islamism for purposes of statecraft. In this regard, one mass movement is of great importance: the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ). This apolitical entity is the largest non-governmental organization in the Muslim world , and has served as a transmitting medium that connects Islamist militants from across the world, and especially the West, to South Asia. TJ is not a militant organization itself, but it provides a recruitment channel for such organizations. Together with Jamaat-eIslami, over several decades it has played a crucial role in converting Pakistan into a base area for global jihadists. In the process, informal personal networks have on occasion overridden the power of institutions. In particular, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has been influenced by high-level jihadist sympathizers in government, to the point where the state has practised a self-contradictory policy of pursuing jihadists while allowing them to escape at the same time.4 Although it might be tempting to ascribe such tensions to the coherent (if Machiavellian) plans of the Deep State, from contemporary and subsequent commentary it appears as though the policy inconsistency has resulted from a genuine conflict of desires. Pakistan wants the global prominence that PanIslamism gives it, but does not want to be openly associated with autonomously planned terrorist attacks on friendly and neutral countries. To get around this dilemma, it has initiated a tactic of talking tough on counterterrorism and following up with cosmetic action intended to demonstrate a symbolic commitment to the pledges made. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has exploited such policy ambivalence to develop in-country affiliations and boost its local presence.

An Old (Great) Game in a New Bottle The historian John Ferris has advanced an intriguing hypothesis about the ‘Great Game’ between the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia during the nineteenth century. Ostensibly, the contest was about carving out spheres of influence. But Ferris suggests that the popular interpretation was misleading. The real objective, according to him, was to enable British dominance over Afghanistan, in order to contain the

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threat of an Islamic invasion of colonial India. Ever since the uprising of 1857, British strategists had come to fear a dual ‘internal-external’ challenge to their subcontinental primacy. Mindful that the main reason for their victory in 1857–8 had been the lack of coordination among their Indian adversaries, they worried that a better-planned uprising, timed to coincide with a foreign invasion, would succeed in breaking India free from their grasp. Afghanistan, the source of many Islamic raids on India and a necessary transit corridor for any threat from further afield, was vital ground. To quote Ferris: ‘the concept of an internalexternal threat assumed that Britain’s hold was weak, while a small detonator fired beyond the Hindu Kush could spark the explosive in the magazine, the population of India. Under this logic, external threat was a euphemism for an internal one, and what is usually taken as fear of Russia primarily was fear of Islam.’5 Irrespective of whether readers agree with Ferris’ interpretation, there seems little doubt that colonial strategists were concerned about the subversive potential of Pan-Islamism. Their fears focused on the Ottoman Sultanate, whose ruler besides being a sovereign head of state, was viewed by the Muslim faithful as the leader or Caliph of the global Islamic community (the ummah). From the late eighteenth century onwards, the ummah had experienced a series of military catastrophes at the hands of Western powers. The Dutch seized Java, the British supplanted the Mughal Empire, the French colonized North Africa and the Russians occupied Central Asia. Only the Ottoman Sultanate remained free of Western dominance, representing a space where Muslims were still in control of their own destinies. This space began to shrink after 1881, when the British and French seized parts of the Ottoman realm. In particular, the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 was a hard blow to Muslim dignity. Whereas previously relations between London and Constantinople had been cordial—cemented in a common desire to contain Russia—by the turn of the century a new power alignment had emerged . Britain, Russia and France were allied against Germany and Austria-Hungary, and a reluctant Turkey was increasingly pulled into the Germanic orbit. By an accident of history, the British, French and Russian empires between themselves eventually came to control half of the world’s then Muslim population of 270 million.6 A beleaguered Ottoman Sultanate began to consider how this divided demographic could be turned into a strategic asset.

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After their anti-colonial surge had been brutally suppressed in 1857, the advocates of jihad in India retreated into isolationism. The Ottoman Caliph’s continuing sovereignty gave them a sense of pride in an otherwise ideologically and spiritually barren context, where India was no longer part of the Islamic world, being ruled by non-Muslims. When relations between the British and the Caliph deteriorated in the 1880s, Indian Muslim intellectuals were at a loss over how to deal with the situation. Collaborationists like Sir Saiyid Ahmed Khan, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University, took a narrow view that urged continuing subservience to the colonial regime in India. Nativist patriots from the Dar-ul Uloom in Deoband, on the other hand, took the view that loyalty to fellow Muslims came above loyalty to a foreign occupier.7 A breaking point came in 1912, when Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia attacked the Ottoman Sultanate in its own heartland. To many Indian Muslims, this territorial aggression was analogous to the British annexation of Awadh, which was one of the major grievances against colonial rule in 1857. The attack on the Ottoman realm galvanized clerics across India. Prayers were called for the Caliph’s victory against infidel forces, and donation campaigns were organized in large cities. British authorities observed these developments with growing unease, which was gleefully noted by German diplomats posted in India. In an ominous development, graduates of Aligarh Muslim University, a supposedly Anglophile institution, organized a medical mission to Turkey. Of the mission’s 22 members, seven were from the university. Their departure from India and arrival in Turkey was publicized at both ends of the journey, being projected as a novel and laudable demonstration of support for a fellow Muslim people. Although the mission was active on the ground for only five months, the high-level contacts it forged with the Ottoman elite endured for many years thereafter.8 Meanwhile, the Ottomans were preparing for a programme of subversion among Indian Muslims. Beginning in 1912, when a new intelligence service was created in Constantinople, the Sultanate had recognized that its ideological reach to Muslims living on the territories of its foes could be a force multiplier in any future war. A third of the British Indian army consisted of Muslims. If a sizeable portion could be induced to rebel against colonial rule, Britain’s offensive capability at the global level would plummet. With this conception in mind, Ottoman intelligence operatives began visiting India from February 1914

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onwards, in the guise of journalists, aid workers and diplomats. A popular cover used was that of the Turkish Red Crescent Society.9 The stage was being set for a religious insurrection, which, if it ever happened, could be ennobled by the title of ‘jihad’.

A tale of two fundamentalisms When the much-anticipated war broke out in Europe that summer, Constantinople was tilting in favour of Germany but not yet fully committed. Careful persuasion on the part of German diplomats finally secured Ottoman support in November 1914. That month, the SultanCaliph issued a fatwa calling upon all Muslims to slay the infidel occupiers of Islamic lands. In itself, this declaration meant little because, as one Dutch scholar noted, many of the world’s Muslim population were unaware that they even had a common sovereign.10 However, it was the logic behind the fatwa that was interesting. Although the Ottomans had been considering how to use religion as an instrument of geopolitics for some years, the real authors of the fatwa were in Berlin. The edict was swiftly translated by German academics into French, Persian, Arabic and Urdu, for wider circulation in the territories of the Allied Powers. Germany at the time had an empire that encompassed only 2.6 million Muslims, less than 1 per cent of the ummah. In contrast, British India alone had 57 million Muslims.11 German planners therefore assumed that their overseas assets were invulnerable from any risk of ‘blowback’ from the Ottoman announcement of jihad. The British, on the other hand, would potentially be crippled. This calculation was flawed, as subsequent events proved. Resentment against white-skinned Westerners could not be precision-guided only towards British, French and Russian nationals. Even Germans working as liaison officers to the Ottoman forces felt the heat of the jihad, as their reluctant Turkish allies viewed them with hostility and suspicion for being ‘non-believers’. The Germans were not the only Western power to use Islam as a geopolitical tool. Recognizing that the Ottoman Sultanate still had a strong emotional appeal for the world’s Muslims, the British set out to fragment this appeal by promoting Arab nationalism. With breathtaking cynicism, British mandarins encouraged a Wahhabi revolt against Ottoman rule in Arabia. Anglophone scholarship at this point of time assumed that the Arab world was going through a transformation of the kind Europe had experienced after 1600—a shift away from a

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common religious identity and towards distinct nation-states organized on the basis of ethnicity. To undercut the authority of the Ottoman Sultan over his co-religionists, the British encouraged local strongmen to consider themselves his equal. One scholar describes the process thus: Pan-Islamism had frightened the British into subsidizing Wahhabism and the Sherifiate of Mecca, which in turn had convinced the Germans that they needed to try harder still to strengthen the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph’s hold on his far-flung subjects. It was like a race to the reactionary bottom, to see which ‘infidel’ power could conjure up the purist strain of fundamentalist Islam [sic].12 Pan-Islamism did not affect the outcome of World War I. But it did awaken a spirit of religious solidarity which later transmuted into political grievance when the victorious Allies dismembered the Ottoman empire. Watching from afar, angry young Islamists such as Maududi concluded, accurately, that nationalism was a tool being employed by Western imperialists to keep Muslims disunited. Knowledge that colonial masters were setting one group of Muslims against another d id not stop imperial designs at the time, but served to harden future generations against the use of similar tactics. The British did not help their own credibility by being quick to drop Arab nationalism as a political cause once it had served its purpose against the Ottomans. From the 1920s through to the 1940s, they switched to supporting local Islamist movements. Pan-Islamism was now regarded as a dead phenomenon, and the new policy focus was on how to combat increasing Arab demands for self-determination, as well as Zionist and Soviet communist infiltration of the Middle East. Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Islamic Liberation Party in Palestine were seen as useful proxies for these purposes. Even if hard to control directly, they at least served the purpose of deflecting Arab anger away from the British Mandate and towards external adversaries.13

Pakistan: The ‘Ideological Miracle’14 For roughly 60 years after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, Pan-Islamism receded as a political (and geopolitical) force.

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It would re-emerge during the Soviet-Afghan War with a fury that has not yet subsided as of the late 2010s. During this timeframe came a significant development: the creation of Pakistan as the world’s first ideological state. Soon after its formation, the new country attempted to reinvent itself as a Middle Eastern state.15 Its location in South Asia was portrayed as an accident of geography. Civilizational links with India were downplayed with the eventual aim of being replaced altogether by an ‘Arabic’ identity. In the process, India was depicted as an innately hostile country, hatred of which unified the Pakistani people. More importantly, some within the Pakistani military came to believe that even the territorial limits of Pakistan were but temporary and destined to expand as the global ummah emerged from the shackles of colonialism. Pakistan, according to such ideologues, was a ‘citadel of Islam’ and not merely a place on the map.16 As the spike in world oil prices brought sudden wealth and power to some Arab countries, Pakistani intellectuals saw a higher design. They felt proud to be part of a religion that was growing more prosperous as a result of what seemed like divine munificence.17 Lacking comparable mineral assets, the country’s leaders invested in Pan-Islamism. Starting with the left-leaning Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and continuing thereafter under Zia-ul Haq, human capital was used as a connector to the rest of the ummah. Two organizations were particularly useful for this purpose: the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) and the International Islamic University (IIU).

Tablighi Jamaat TJ was founded in 1927 near Delhi in British India. Its goal was to prevent Hindu revivalist movements from ‘re-converting’ impoverished Muslims back to Hinduism. The movement’s founder, Muhammed Ilyas Kandhalawi (1885– 1944), observed that many Indian Muslims, who were descendants of indigenous converts to Islam, did not practise their faith rigorously. Instead, they continued to use Hindu customs which made them easy prey for Hindu activists, urging them to rejoin the fold. Kandhalawi started TJ as a proselytizing movement that would educate lower and middle-class Muslims about the central precepts of their religion. In doing so, he revolutionized Islamic education. Traditionally, only an alim (religious scholar) could tell another Muslim how to behave in an Islamic manner. With TJ, every Muslim, regardless of education and income, was conferred that same right as long as s/he set a strong

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personal example of orthodoxy.18 The resulting status jump meant that for many TJ activists, long years of study in a madrassa could be skipped merely by adapting certain aspects of personal behaviour to conform to Islamic codes. TJ has long been suspected of being a ‘gateway to terrorism’.19 This view is partially correct. Only partially, because there is little doubt that the movement itself is focused on strengthening personal spirituality and is avowedly apolitical. However, its emphasis on ‘purifying’ Islam of assimilatory tendencies fits neatly with the agenda of more openly political and anti-Western actors such as Jamaat-e-Islami. TJ activists during elections tend to favour Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a religious party founded in 1945 and consisting of a faction of Deobandi scholars who, unlike the mainstream Deobandi leadership, supported the creation of Pakistan. JUI is an Islamist party with a lower-class and mostly rural support base that is particularly strong in Pashtun areas bordering Afghanistan. As such, its demographic overlaps considerably with the target audience of TJ. In contrast, JeI with its urban and relatively elitist support base, is not an easy match for TJ’s semi-mystical message and oral-based methods of mass communication, which rely on personal contacts at the village level.20 There is, however, one arena where the memberships of TJ and JeI overlap considerably, and it makes for an incendiary mix. This is the Pakistani army’s officer corps. Ever since 1979, when Zia-ul Haq became the first Pakistani head of state to attend a TJ ijtema (rally), the movement’s adherents within the armed forces have grown.21 Admittedly, Zia allowed TJ activists a d egree of freedom that has since been somewhat curtailed—freedom to proselytize within military bases for instance, or invite serving military personnel to rallies and conventions—but the overall impact of TJ has been to ‘shariatize’ the military. As Pakistani author Farzana Shaikh has observed, most army personnel come into contact with transnational Islam not through surreptitious connections with militant groups, but above-ground meetings with non-violent entities such as TJ.22 Continuous exposure to the movement’s message of Islamic universalism creates an exaggerated sense of grievance over the suffering of fellow Muslims overseas. TJ has been associated with some of the oldest militant organizations in Pakistan, albeit in an indirect sense, as a feeder of recruits. These are the Deobandi Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI), formed in 1980, and its

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splinter group, the Harkat-ul Mujahideen (HuM), formed in 1985.23 Since HuM has been formally allied with Al Qaeda since 1998, there is a suspicion that the Arab jihadist group has used the HuM-TJ relationship to create operational networks in Southeast Asia, which has a very small Arab population but an extensive presence of TJ activists.24 In another alarming sign, a network of army officers who were TJ supporters planned a coup in 1995. Their organization, Jihad bil Saif (Jihad through the Sword), may have been a rogue group with no connection to the mainstream TJ movement. But journalistic reports at the time consistently noted the influence of TJ preachers upon the conspirators, as well their superiors in the military.25 The latter had allowed the distinction between army and civilian personnel to become blurred to the point where a parallel leadership structure, placing jihadist ideologues at the top, seemed to have taken over a section of the officer corps. From an international security perspective, TJ’s massive global presence is an important consideration. By 2013, the movement had an estimated 70 million followers in over 150 countries. Owing to its apolitical nature, its presence was sometimes encouraged by local governments in countries where Islamist parties were suppressed. In the former Soviet republics, for instance, it has been seen as a vehicle for keeping track of ultra-conservative elements within Muslim communities.26 Elsewhere, it has been an instrument for spiritual recovery of incarcerated criminals. This is where its role in international terrorism gets murky. According to John Cooley, TJ provided part of the infrastructure for recruiting and transporting ‘Arab Afghans’ to fight the Soviet army during the 1980s. He describes how TJ missionaries went into prisons in Tunisia and mentored inmates there, eventually motivating them to travel to Pakistan where they were formally recruited by the ISI to fight in Afghanistan.27 Other, scattered comments indicate worry among security experts that the movement provides cover for militant Islamists. Its annual ijtema at Raiwind, a city in Punjab where the movement’s Pakistani branch is headquartered, serves as an informal recruitment fair for jihadism.28 Credible sources say that Western nationals seeking personal engagement with Islam have gone to Raiwind only to be lured by jihadist headhunters into signing up for militant activities back home. According to one estimate, in the 2000s, 80 per cent of French jihadists and their supporters were TJ

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members.29 In 2011, the Pakistani interior minister claimed that all foreign terrorists arrested in the country had visited the headquarters in Raiwind. For their part, Pakistani security forces have sometimes recovered firearms from the movement’s ijtema venue.30 Establishing conclusively whether radical Islamists use TJ’s supposedly ‘apolitical’ infrastructure to facilitate violent activities has been difficult, because TJ markazes (centres) remain off-limits to police searches.31 Anecdotal evidence suggests that militants sometimes hide in markazes when being hunted by law enforcement agencies. Investigating the movement’s wider ambitions is near-impossible, because it is careful not to leave a paper trail. Its credo emphasizes discretion: na kharcha, na parcha aur na charcha (no expenses, no documentation and no gossip).32 Its numerous chapters abroad, including in the West, avoid non-Muslims unless the latter make the first move by connecting with a local markaz. For the most part, TJ does not seek to win over new converts to Islam but rather, to fortify the faith against corruption by other religions, especially in contexts where coexistence is necessary. The global headquarters of TJ is located in New Delhi, but the Raiwind-based Pakistani branch of the movement has a semiautonomous identity, and is reportedly the richest religious organization in Pakistan. Its members include at least one former president of the country, several ISI chiefs and other senior officers, artists, musicians, sportspersons and business tycoons.33 Its internationalism appeals both to the upper and lower classes of society, because it is cosmopolitanism sans Westernization. One Indian scholar has observed that the growing prosperity of rural Muslims in South Asia embarks them on a trajectory towards Pan-Islamism, precisely because it steers them away from Western influences. First, to signal their improved socio-economic conditions, many do away with indigenous names and adopt ‘Arabic’ names and dress codes. In doing so, they seek to showcase that they have become more ‘international’, but in a culturally acceptable sense. Once they have accumulated enough money for the journey, they go on pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj pilgrimage). Upon their return, their status is further enhanced for having become Hajjis. Now having acquired the material trappings of wealth, they further cement the impression of a personal transformation by volunteering for Islamic charities or proselytization organizations like TJ.34 The particular need for an Arabic identity among upper middle-class Pakistanis

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(especially those with experience of living in the West) might be explained by the fact that they feel doubly discriminated against. Unable to integrate into Western societies and yet ridiculed back in their home environment for being too ‘foreign’, they seek a third identity which they can adopt on their own terms.35

International Islamic University While domestic and overseas proselytization is one way of emphasizing Pakistan’s role as a beacon of Pan-Islamism, the Zia regime also invested in educational infrastructure for this purpose. In 1980, it created the Islamic University (IU) at Islamabad. Unlike TJ, which projected a message of Pan-Islamism through personal examples of spirituality, the IU also emphasized formal argumentation with the purpose of winning over new religious converts. It had a more overtly political mission in seeking to build a case for the intellectual and moral superiority of the Islamic way of life over all alternatives. To this extent, it was similar to JeI and many of its domestic students were supporters of this party. In 1985, the university was renamed as the International Islamic University (IIU). Its formation and maintenance were funded by Saudi Arabia and Egypt with Pakistan being the third biggest contributor. The faculty of 200 were mostly from these three countries. The student body encompassed 52 countries, with 40 per cent of the students being foreigners. The medium of instruction was Arabic and English. University officials claimed that all students were admitted only after clearance from Pakistani intelligence agencies.36 Yet, the Pakistani interior minister admitted in 1995 that the institution had become a meeting place for international terrorists. Most of the faculty were Egyptian nationals (up to 80 per cent were foreigners whose teaching credentials, as well as the identities of their students, had not been subject to detailed scrutiny). A June 1995 report by the FIA concluded that ‘the university has become a hub of terrorist activities’.37 The Kuwaiti-Pakistani jihadist Ramzi Yousef, who was arrested in 1995 for trying to bomb multiple airliners over the Pacific, was first a student and later a frequent visitor to the campus. Using foreign contacts he met at the university, Yousef set up an import-export firm in Karachi that served three purposes, all linked to international terrorism. First, it generated revenue for operations. Second, it served as a bomb-making school for Arab jihadists based in Pakistan, who lacked local contacts and, due to

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language barriers, could not obtain any. Finally, it provided a network with which to target the Saudi royal family, a fixation of many Arab terrorist financers including Osama Bin Laden.38 While at the IIU, Yousef came into contact with the anti-Shia militant organization, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (discussed in Chapter 3). He was thus in a position to connect foreign terrorist operatives with local suppliers of weaponry and explosives.39 The IIU seems to have been a physicalized version of TJ, in that it too engaged in the advancement of Pan-Islamist ideas. But unlike the amorphous proselytizing movement, the IIU had a fixed location. Moreover, it had not been conceived of by the ulema, but by government bureaucrats eager to use religion as a bridge to wealthy states in the Middle East. In 1982, it established the Institute of Da’wat and Qirat, renamed in 1985 as the Academy of Da’wah and Training of Imams. Set up with a presidential grant of two million rupees (a considerable amount in those days), the Academy’s first chairman was the brother of a senior JeI functionary.40 This was not the only occasion in which the Islamist party was associated with a missionary entity whose reach extend ed far beyond Pakistan’s borders. The alleged spiritual leader of the 1995 conspiracy was an army colonel from the education corps, whose brother was a JeI member of the National Assembly (the lower house of Pakistan’s parliament).41 As an institution, the IIU combined characteristics of both TJ and JeI, which made it attractive for domestic and foreign radicals who were veering towards violence but needed an ideological framework to guide them. During the Soviet-Afghan War, they received such a framework through the Arab faculty employed at the university, especially the Palestinian scholar Abdullah Azzam (better known as Osama Bin Laden’s mentor). Another of Azzam’s contemporaries was Hafiz Mohammed Saeed , who went on to found the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which became one of Al Qaeda’s closest allies in South Asia.42 It was Azzam who, in 1984, formally resurrected the concept of PanIslamism in an electrifying fatwa named Defence of Muslim Lands. The Palestinian argued that it was both a collective and individual responsibility of Muslims worldwide to help the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, since the Afghans were fighting a war not of their own choosing but which had been forced upon them and were, moreover, the militarily weaker side. The fatwa set a precedent for the idea that

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Muslims who were not themselves suffering from any kind of oppression could identify with and support resistance movements against a nonMuslim power. It made nonsense of any armchair distinction between terrorists, mercenaries and freedom fighters, by ennobling all categories of actor as ‘jihadis’. If Maududi’s JeI had provided a quasi-imperialistic model for viewing humanity as ripe for Islamist revolution, Azzam and his legion of ‘Arab Afghan’ followers gave the concept a militaristic edge. Azzam’s journal, Al-Jihad, mentioned the need for a university which would train Arab volunteers in the key principles of Islamic warfare as well as provide practical instruction in guerrilla tactics.43 From what transpired over the following decade, it appears as though these tasks were split between different institutions, with the IIU and JeI taking care of the socialization process of Arabs and helping them adjust to the unfamiliar contexts of South Asia, while Al Qaeda provided the paramilitary training that would make them effective combatants. During the 1990s, according to press reports, the university’s students adorned dormitory walls with portraits of Osama Bin Laden.44 And as late as 2013, Pakistani police discovered that Al Qaeda was operating a technical research laboratory in the house of an IIU lecturer. Among the gadgets recovered were surveillance equipment and a drone prototype which was being flight-tested for use in future attacks.45

The Importance of Networks A survey of 608 Pakistani students taken in the late 2000s found that 43 per cent viewed the ummah as a tangible reality rather than as an abstract concept. The next largest percentage (29 per cent) chose not to give an answer.46 While it is important not to read too much meaning into such numbers, the fact remains that a sizeable portion of urban Pakistanis seem to identify with a larger Islamic community that transcends their own state. This tendency to seek psychological reassurance in belonging to a broader cultural entity can be found in countries that are ‘frontier territories’ situated away from their own civilizational core. It explains why, for instance, East European nations seem to have a more concrete idea of belonging to a greater ‘Western Civilization’ than many West European countries. Not being geographically close to a non-Western nation, the latter do not have the same status anxiety as their former Soviet bloc counterparts. In a similar vein, Pakistan is situated as a

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borderland between the Arabic core of the Islamic faith and ‘infidel’ India. Dwarfed by its giant neighbour, the Pakistani state and society must continuously define themselves in Pan-Islamic terms to gain a sense of parity. In doing so, they collaterally provide a welcoming environment for transnational jihadists. At the time Azzam published his fatwa, about 15 Arabs were fighting in Afghanistan. A year later, that figure had risen to 100. But in the next four years, until 1989, almost 5,000 new volunteers arrived to fight the Soviets. Three developments led to this surge. The first was the introduction of the kafil system. Every Friday, mosques in wealthy Arab countries would encourage those who, for personal reasons, were unable to travel to Afghanistan, to sponsor someone else in their place. Several individuals, eager to secure a place in paradise by proxy, took up the offer. The financier would not only fund a fighter’s travel to the Pakistani city of Peshawar, the staging point for the anti-Soviet jihad, but also undertake to support the latter as long as he remained in Peshawar. Governments helped as well. Airline passengers from Saudi Arabia who were travelling to fight in the jihad received 75 per cent discounts on tickets. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Rabita Alam Islami publicized the kafil system such that it eventually extended to non-Arab countries. Upon arrival in Pakistan, fighters were hosted in JeI guesthouses until they got acclimatized to their new surroundings, after which many found their way to one of the officially sponsored Afghan resistance groups.47 The second development was the Battle of Jaji in April-May 1987. An intense encounter between Arab Afghans and Soviet regular troops, it was later mythologized in Azzam’s Al-Jihad as a brilliant victory by an outnumbered group of jihadis over the Soviet Army’s elite Spetsnaz.48 In a foretaste of the kind of fictionalized marketing used after 2014 in Iraq and Syria by the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (or Daesh), the Arab Afghans inflated their own combat achievements in order to attract funding from overseas donors. Their Afghan partners, who did most of the fighting, knew better than to object to this self-aggrandizement which also helped raise funds for their own war effort. By 1989, Arab NGOs in Pakistan were receiving monthly donations that totalled up to US$ 20 million.49 Stories about easy battlefield victories fired the imagination of many Arab teenagers who sought a quick thrill during their summer holidays. Some travelled to Pakistan to show solidarity with the Afghans.

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Although few saw combat, the net effect of this trend was to popularize the idea of supporting the Afghan jihad through a physical (as opposed to rhetorical or financial) commitment.50 The third development which massively increased the inflow of Arab fighters also occurred in 1987. That year, several Egyptian terrorists found refuge in Pakistan. Some of them, such as Islamic Group (El Gama’a El Islamiyya) functionary Talat Qasim, had close ties with the leadership of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami.51 With the latter being on cordial terms with the military dictatorship of Zia-ul Haq, the abrupt psychological shift from fugitive to quasi-official state guest was very reassuring to Arab Islamists. While in Egypt engaging in any kind of oppositional activity meant being labelled a ‘terrorist’ in the national media, Pakistan had a relatively free press and was Islamist-friendly. Even by the standards of Saudi Arabia, which favoured ‘official’ Islamism, the media in Pakistan was able to report more accurately on national and international developments—an unheard-of luxury in the desert kingdom where crime stories were not reported because, officially, crime did not exist.52 By 1992, it was estimated that 20,000 foreigners were living in Pakistan, of whom the majority had been sponsored by JeI. Some were former criminals who reinvented themselves as religious warriors, others bona fide NGO workers, while a third category were revolutionary militants masquerading as NGO workers. Islamabad started facing problems after members of this third category bragged to audiences back home about their safe haven in Peshawar. The Pakistani government (by now under civilian leadership) came under pressure from brotherly Muslim states to curtail militant Arab activities—something it was loath to do for fear of exposing the weaknesses of its own institutions. Even the ISI and JeI had been unable to keep track of the foreigners who initially entered the country on 30-day tourist visas and then either extended these locally with help from Islamist parties, or disappeared into its thinly policed and loosely governed border areas.53 As diplomatic pressure mounted, Islamabad took cosmetic actions against Arab militants. In October 1992, it detained 300 foreigners in Peshawar and touted the operation as an example of its commitment to counterterrorism. What was left unsaid was that the overwhelming majority of those detained were genuine NGO workers who had overstayed their visas. Foreign militants were left untouched.54

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Six months later, Pakistani officials faced a grilling at the hands of their Arab counterparts during a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Karachi. The Arabs wanted to know if Pakistan was serious about stopping international terrorist attacks being planned from its soil. Russia and the United States, meanwhile, started showing signs of impatience due to their own terrorist concerns. Moscow was unhappy that ISI officers were supporting Islamist rebels in Tajikistan and continuing to destabilize Afghanistan, in violation of the agreement under which Soviet troops had been withdrawn from the country in 1989.55 The United States, having experienced an Islamist terrorist attack in New York in February 1993, was pressing for a swift curtailment of the Deep State’s activities. From Washington’s perspective, a coterie of hardline ISI officials and JeI ideologues were steering Pakistan’s foreign policy towards Pan-Islamist interventionism, while Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif feigned helplessness. One of Sharif’s own advisors claimed that the prime minister had struck a deal with JeI: in exchange for their acquiescence in his domestic agenda, he would not interfere with their covert activities in support of foreign militants.56 The ISI, meanwhile, was being led at this time by a known supporter of Tablighi Jamaat, whose extreme views on religious orthodoxy had aroused scepticism even among his peers in the military fraternity. This was Lieutenant General Javed Nasir, who, coincidentally, was related by marriage to the Director-General of the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau.57 The IB was a civilian agency that had been progressively militarized during the Zia dictatorship. Together with JeI chief Qazi Hussein Ahmed, these two spymasters were perceived as exerting a malign influence over the politically immature Sharif and conducting ‘rogue’ operations.58 Sharif gave in to American pressure and sacked Nasir, while promising that JeI support for militancy would cease. This promise was not kept, although Washington did not expect it would be. Having observed Pakistan’s working relations with proxy warriors during the Soviet-Afghan War, it anticipated that Islamabad would as a next step privatize covert operations by subcontracting to para-state actors and claiming to have no control over these.59 The prediction proved accurate. From 1993, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), then a relatively unknown organization, became one of the most active militant groups in South Asia. Founded by Hafiz Saeed, a former student leader of JeI who had

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worked in Saudi Arabia before meeting Abdullah Azzam at the IIU in Islamabad, LeT belonged to the Ahle Hadith school of Sunni Islam, which was closer to Wahhabism than Deobandism.60 It was more of an Arab organization than a South Asian group. In 1994, it hosted Chechen militant Shamil Basayev and, together with the ISI, arranged for him to meet senior government officials.61 In coordination with Harkat-ul Mujahideen (which was a Deobandi group), it ran training facilities for international terrorists. The ISI encouraged such cross-training as a way of ensuring that Sunni militants did not develop ideological differences which could spill over into domestic conflicts back in Pakistan.62 As LeT’s fortunes rose, so did those of a parallel jihadist organization that at the time could not be identified by intelligence agencies. It later became notorious as Al Qaeda. In 1992, Egyptian security officials determined that a wide-ranging terrorist network which they named al-Tanzim al-Dawli (‘the international organization’) was operating against Western and Israeli targets. This network combined Sunni political grievances with Shia battle tactics and mobilizational techniques.63 Later, Israeli scholars would reveal that Palestinian militants had connected the two opposing sectarian strand s and created a potent fusion of Sunni suicide terrorism—a phenomenon unheard of in the early 1990s, which became Al Qaeda’s trademark.64

Connecting with local partners According to Pakistani columnist Mahir Ali, Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden had been talent-spotted by Saudi intelligence. During the Soviet-Afghan War, US officials suggested that it would be a huge propaganda coup if a junior member of the Saudi royal family could be persuaded to fight the Soviets. Since no Saudi prince was prepared to take the risk, the best that Riyadh came up with was the son of a wealthy industrialist.65 Bin Laden relocated to Pakistan, where he was perceived by both Saudi and Pakistani intelligence handlers as a useful instrument, albeit for different reasons. The Saudis wanted to use his personal funding networks to establish independent contacts with the Afghan resistance, which would lie beyond Pakistani supervision.66 Since the ISI insisted on monopolizing all intelligence liaison with the resistance, the Saudis preferred to have their own man representing their interests, ostensibly as a private citizen. From the Pakistani side, the ISI sought to coopt Bin Laden into three pet projects of the Deep State: defeating the

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pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, destabilizing the US-friendly civilian government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (who came to power in Pakistan in 1988), and recruiting Arabs to fight the Indian Army in the Kashmir theatre.67 Once the Saudis dropped Bin Laden in the 1990s (after he criticized the royal family), the ISI struck a fine balance between not championing him openly—so as to avoid annoying Riyadh—and protecting him from assassination. After the Saudi millionaire had been almost bankrupted in Sudan as a result of bad business deals and forced to seek refuge in Afghanistan, it interceded with the Taliban regime to host him.68 In 1998, the agency ferried members of the Pakistani press to interview him—a meeting during which he made his famous declaration of war against the West and Israel.69 By the turn of the millennium, most of his bodyguard detail consisted of Pakistanis, since they were less vulnerable to recruitment by Arab intelligence services.70 But even more than state patronage, perhaps the greatest asset which Arab jihadists exploited in Pakistan was the ability to forge marital alliances. Ever since arriving in the country, they had been prized matches for local brides because, as one Pakistani journalist observed, ‘Arabs are a sort of colonial masters [sic] for the entire Muslim ummah due to the fact that Islam was born in Arabia, Mecca is in Arabia and the Koran is written in Arabic.’71 A number of foreign fighters went on to wed Pakistani women, especially in the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan.72 In doing so, they gained protection from extraneous pursuers, under the time-honoured code of tribal hospitality. This code was leveraged in 2001–2, after the US invasion of Afghanistan forced many top Al Qaeda operatives to flee back to Pakistan. Those with a daughter of marriageable age wasted no time in building new ties with tribal leaders, who in turn pledged support against the infidel Americans. Since the Arabs, having lived in the region for a long time, had adapted to tribal customs, wore native attire and spoke the local language, they were seen as an integral part of the community and thus entitled to its support.73 The fact that they were often good neighbours, sending free meals to local households and paying inflated prices for essential commodities, won them many friends as well.74 After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Al Qaeda established contact with the Iraqi resistance using a Pakistani militant called Sohail Akhtar, who was already notorious for coordinating attacks on expatriates living in Pakistan. Together with another Pakistani called Gul Hasan,

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Akhtar facilitated an exchange of correspondence between the two distant operational theatres—South Asia and the Middle East.75 It was through these efforts that Iraqi insurgents were able to train their Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in sophisticated bomb-making techniques. There remains one question: in a context where state weakness is a genuine problem, how far can the ISI be accused of wilfully sheltering Osama Bin Laden from Western counterterrorism efforts? In the absence of access to intelligence data, conjecture of any kind can only be illinformed. But Pakistani writer Ayesha Siddiqa does make a pertinent point, when she suggests that the ISI has sufficient institutional strength to resist the proclivities of senior officers, both serving and retired, if they run contrary to established policy.76 This can be interpreted in positive and negative ways. On the one hand, it offers hope that a single ‘rogue’ general in the agency cannot influence overall policy in support of maniacal schemes aimed at millennial-scale destruction. On the other, it also indicates that when the overall consensus is to cooperate only sparingly with foreign governments in counterterrorism, personal relationships with senior officials—which the US and UK intelligence communities have spent much effort in cultivating—are of limited value. Eventually, Pakistan became a safe haven for Islamist militants due to powerful historical and political forces which outlasted any bureaucratic friendship. For its part, the ISI seems not to have made a strenuous effort to break ties with jihadist groups. If writers like Imtiaz Gul (one of Pakistan’s most distinguished newspaper reporters) are to be believed, the agency protected terrorists from Arab security services. Gul cites the example of Ahmed alKhadir, a foreigner implicated in the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. The bombing killed 18 people and was the firstever suicide attack in Pakistan. After being located in Peshawar by Egyptian agents in 2001, he fled to Afghanistan. The Egyptians suspected that ISI officials, who had been asked to arrest him, instead arranged his escape.77 The story seems plausible, since it is virtually a replay of a 1994 incident, wherein Pakistan signed a counterterrorism agreement with Egypt but simultaneously allowed several Egyptian terrorists to disappear from sight, claiming it could not find them.78 Some scholars argue that while the ISI has Pan-Islamist sympathies, its operational culture is driven by a rational understanding of its own

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institutional interests and Pakistani strategic interests. They point to the manner in which the Deep State switched its patronage from Jamaat-eIslami to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in the 1990s. As already mentioned, JeI is focused on a slow takeover of the state, by seeding the Pakistani middle class with sympathizers who can enter government service and work their way up in organizational hierarchies. JUI in contrast, is also committed to creating an Islamic state in Pakistan but lacks a coherent blueprint for doing this. Those scholars who argue that the ISI and Pakistan army are not driven by ideological considerations point out that if the military-intelligence complex were susceptible to Islamist thought, it would have continued supporting JeI. Instead, from the mid 1990s, the ISI began using JUI as its primary link to overseas Islamists, including the Afghan Taliban. This shift happened for three reasons. First, JUI had a larger recruitment base because, unlike the elitist JeI, it drew its support from impoverished rural communities, especially Pashtuns living near the Afghan border. Its ideology was less sophisticated and thus easier for semi-literate or illiterate voters to grasp. This meant it could supply larger reserves of cheap, easily expendable manpower for ISI covert operations against Afghanistan and India. Second, due to its affiliation with Deobandi madrassas across South Asia, it had extensive infrastructure which could be used to project influence further afield.79 Islamabad was interested in the 1990s about the prospect of a trade corridor linking Central Asia’s Muslimmajority states with international markets, through the port city of Karachi. Finally, domestic reasons contributed to the ISI’s decision to cultivate a strategic relationship with JUI. During the years when the ISI mounted a forward thrust into Central Asia, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) formed the government in Islamabad. The PPP wanted to win Islamist votes, but was sceptical of allying with JeI, due to the latter’s history of cooperation with the PPP’s d omestic opponents. Hence, the civilian government prioritized relations with JUI as a political alternative, granting this party a similar degree of influence over foreign policy as JeI had previously enjoyed.80 There has thus been a strong convergence between the Pan-Islamist preferences of individual officials, influenced by movements such as Tablighi Jamaat, and the imperatives of Pakistani statecraft. Just as the Germans discovered during World War I that Pan-Islamism cannot be calibrated to focus only on mutual enemies, so did the Americans find

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much later that this particular ideology boomerangs on those who promote it. The very idea of Pan-Islamism undermines the notion of national sovereignty, especially when this is defined by artificially created borders inherited from a colonial mapmaker. Pakistan has been struggling since the 1980s to deal with the domestic fallout of Pan-Islamism, as Sunni and Shia militants, disregarding Islamabad’s claims of sovereignty, have clashed on Pakistani soil at the instigation of foreign patrons. The next chapter examines how the Deep State has tried to deflect domestic militancy onto foreign targets, in effect strengthening the cyclical relationship between its own loss of internal control, and overseas adventurism.

CHAPTER 3 SECTARIANISM

In 1995, a former head of the ISI’s counterintelligence desk warned that, if left unchecked, sectarian tensions could threaten the political integrity of Pakistan.1 His prediction has not come true, but educational failures have combined with opportunistic politics to foster bitter Shia-Sunni conflict within the country. Meanwhile, the Pakistani Deep State has tried to copy Saudi Arabia’s model of domestic security, by promoting an exclusionary brand of Islamism. This brand emphasizes religious purity to an exaggerated and unsustainable extent. But while ‘extraverting’ domestic revolutionary violence towards foreign targets, the Deep State has also created an entrepreneurial climate for religious radicals. The loudest and most provocative ideologues are attracting the most donations from private sponsors, leaving little room for de-radicalization efforts. While political leaders in Islamabad are fixated with winning Islamist votes, civil activists and low-ranking law enforcement officials are bludgeoned into silence, sometimes literally. Since the Afghan Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, Al Qaeda has found Pakistani sectarianism a viable substitute for reconstituting its networks in South Asia. Local Sunni supremacists provide their Arab counterparts with an infrastructure for outsourcing Muslim-on-Muslim attacks (or ‘takfiri’ operations) on a deniable basis. Sectarian militants in Pakistan share Al Qaeda’s ideology and many of its objectives but not its ethnic composition. This makes them perfect ‘deniable’ tools for both Al Qaeda and the Deep State. The latter, like its Turkish counterpart, seeks to contain minority ethno-nationalism by emphasizing the country’s Islamic identity over all others.

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The enthusiasm with which successive Pakistani regimes promoted Pan-Islamism has allowed Arab jihadists to influence local conflicts. While ostensibly declaring an intention to fight ‘terrorism’ of all kinds, the Deep State has avoided confronting militants who attack other Pakistanis, as long as they do not assail the Deep State itself. It has used sectarian militants for tactical purposes, such as weakening mainstream politicians and providing a recruitment service for overseas power projection. For their part, sectarian militants are careful to keep one operational foot abroad in order to be of continued use to the ISI and the army. In return for this utility, they enjoy free rein—albeit within implicit boundaries—domestically. Before going into how sectarian militancy became a public order threat in Pakistan, it is necessary to orient readers to some facts. Pakistan is a country whose population is over 97 per cent Muslim. Of this, more than 80 per cent belong to the Sunni sect, and the remainder are mostly Shias. The Sunnis are divided into what can loosely be called sub-sects: Barelvi, Sufi, Deobandi, Ahle Hadith and Ahle Sunnat. Most Sunni Pakistanis describe themselves as Ahle Sunnat, a catch-all term which indicates they are either indifferent or unaware about which school of Sunni jurisprudence they belong to. However, there is a general view in the academic and media community that around 60 per cent of Pakistanis could be categorized as Barelvis, owing to their willingness to assimilate nativist rituals into their Islamic faith.2 Between 1947 and 1977, the country had only one murder that was officially recorded as motivated by sectarian hatred.3 But in the next two decades, over 4,000 people were killed in sectarian attacks, the majority being Shias.4 Events in the 1980s and 1990s are thus critical to understanding how two sects of Islam, which tolerated each other even if they did not fraternize openly, developed an antagonistic dynamic. By the 2000s, sectarianism had displaced domestic ethno-nationalism as the main cause of political killings in the country. An April 2009 survey of 6,000 Pakistanis found that 65 per cent believed that Sunnis were ‘better Muslims’ than Shias.5 Although this was a more reassuring finding than would have been the case if Shias had been labelled as ‘nonMuslims’, the survey did indicate that regardless of sub-sect, Pakistani Sunnis hold a majoritarian worldview that places Shias in a lesser position to themselves.

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Such a development, in a perverse way, represents success for the Deep State because it over-rides local identities founded on ethnicity.6 Instead of banding together vis-a`-vis Islamabad, tribal elders in areas adjacent to Afghanistan, both Baloch and Pashtun, are busy fending off attacks by Arabized youth who want to impose Taliban-style governance. With the obsession that radical Islamists typically have for homogeneity, the main issue has been whether deviationism from ‘true’ Islamic rituals can be permitted. For Sunni supremacists, the answer is clearly ‘negative’. To enforce this worldview, they are prepared to trigger pogrom-style upheavals. While believing that they represent only Islam, in fact sectarian militants are partly serving the agenda of political strategists and intelligence experts in Islamabad, who are trying to emulate Saudi Arabia’s policy towards Islamism. Thomas Hegghammer, in an excellent study of Saudi security policy towards jihadists, has categorized violent Islamism into five types.7 These are shown in Table 3.1. All five kinds of terrorism are found in Pakistan, but not in Saudi Arabia. Hegghammer describes certain features of the Saudi state and society which permit the ‘extraversion’ of domestic militancy towards overseas adversaries. He suggests that Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth has allowed it to offer financial sweeteners to both the general population and the religious establishment, such that revolutionary violence has few supporters. Whenever a political challenge is mounted against the House of Saud, the government’s response is to facilitate or, at least, not interfere with the emigration of religious militants. In the political and religious establishment’s way of thinking, surplus manpower that cannot be gainfully employed is best disposed of in faraway wars where Table 3.1

Types of Islamist militancy

Category

Objective

Revolutionary Pan-Islamist

To overthrow one’s own ruler To defend the Muslim community at large from non-Muslim threats, both physical and cultural To enforce a rigid moral code upon ordinary members of society in accordance with Sharia law To intimidate or exterminate a rival sect, usually Shias To ‘liberate’ one’s own territory from a non-Muslim occupier

Vigilantist Sectarian Irredentist

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Saudi citizens fight as mercenaries. Interestingly, this was the same logic that prevailed in post-revolutionary France before Napoleon Bonaparte seized power.8 Pakistan lacks three of Saudi Arabia’s assets in containing internal tensions. First, it is much poorer and the security apparatus is not as well-resourced. Hence, suppression of domestic challenges tends to be brutal, featuring intensive use of military and paramilitary forces, including airstrikes against rural communities. Law enforcement agencies play a secondary role. This predilection for a militarized response to any domestic challenge generates lasting hostility that festers until circumstances permit it to erupt in a fresh round of fighting. Second, there is no Pakistani equivalent of the Saudi royal family, which can be seen as a genuinely national institution representing the interests of all segments of the population. Instead, there are political parties that scramble for power during elections, and lose any right to govern when they are voted out or toppled by the military. Without continuity of leadership, there is no unique charisma associated with any section of the nativist elite. The military thus assumes the role of shepherding the country during times of turmoil, but, as a colonial inheritance, even its legitimacy is circumscribed. Finally, family and clan structures in Pakistan are less enduring than in Saudi Arabia, due to psychological displacement caused by high rates of urbanization and in-country migration. Not being held down by parental influence or concerns about clan honour, many Pakistani youths are drawn towards the camaraderie that can be found in militant organizations.9 The only asset that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan actually share is a common view that the state machinery must present itself as Islamic and must enjoy the endorsement of the ulema. In Saudi Arabia, such endorsement is purchased by handing out government jobs. In Pakistan, a similar attempt has been made during periods of military rule, albeit less consistently, to award state employment to clerics in the hope this will give them a stake in the army’s continued dominance over the political system.10

Geopolitics of Shia-Sunni Conflict This section will describe, in chronological order, how domestic and foreign factors interacted to foster sectarian militancy in Pakistan.

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The starting point was the 1979 Iranian Revolution, although in terms of wider Islamic history, Shia-Sunni tensions date back to the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. As Pakistan’s neighbour and the world’s biggest Shia country, Iran’s affairs had a direct impact on Pakistan due to both geographic proximity and ideological significance. Shortly after the 1979 revolution, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) advised Pakistani president Zia-ul Haq to introduce a special tax, called zakat. According to this, 2.5 per cent of the money held in the private bank accounts of Pakistani citizens would be collected for charity.11 Zia’s announcement of the new tax was met with fierce opposition from a restive Shia minority that had been invigorated by developments in Tehran. The same year that Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, Zia had executed the Shia politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he had overthrown in a 1977 coup. Hostility to the military regime was thus mixed with resistance to the new tax, which Shias felt should have not arbitrarily been imposed on them as their own school of jurisprudence did not require it. On 5 –6 July 1980, a massive street protest in Islamabad intimidated the government and Shias were exempted from zakat collection. However, such assertiveness on the part of a minority sect infuriated militant Sunnis, who argued that Shias ought to be classed as non-Muslims and barred from political office. Around this time, Iran was known to be funding Shia groups in Pakistan, including the Imamia Students’ Organization (ISO) which had been set up in 1972 at the University of Engineering and Technology at Lahore. By 1977, ISO had developed contacts with Tehran, which were strengthened after the Iranian revolution. ISO activists provided much of the manpower for the July 1980 demonstration.12 So it was little surprise that many Sunnis inside and outside the military government perceived the concession on zakat as a surrender to Iranian proxies. Into this simmering mix of majoritarian anger stepped two Arab powers, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, both eager to contain Iranian influence. Riyadh viewed the creation of an Islamic Republic in Khomeini’s Iran as a direct challenge to its own paramountcy over the Muslim world. It responded by increasing funding for Pan-Islamist charities worldwide, hoping to limit the Shia contagion that threatened to spread to nearby Sunni countries, possibly reaching Saudi Arabia’s own oppressed Shia minority. For its part, Iraq was locked in a vicious war with Iran, a war which Baghdad tried to portray as a civilizational struggle to protect all Sunni

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Arabs from a barbarous Persian horde. Pakistan was fertile ground from which Iraqi intelligence could launch a covert offensive against Tehran. Following the 1980 demonstration, with the tacit support of the Zia government, Iraq funded an anti-Shia organization in Karachi called Sawad-e-Azam.13 Among the city’s mainly Barelvi population, the new entity was incongruous because it was Deobandi. While Barelvis shared the hostility of other Sunnis towards Shias, they were less inclined to support violence, preferring to focus their anger on those who insulted the Prophet Mohammad or local Muslim saints. Deobandis, on the other hand, were more open to attacking other sects if this was required to purify Islam—a result of the long-standing focus of the Deobandi school on ‘Arabizing’ South Asian Muslims.14 Saudi Arabia followed Iraq in promoting Sunni supremacists. In Punjab, Jamiat Ulema-e-Ahle Hadith, a Saudi-funded charity, launched an anti-Shia movement. This in turn created political space for the Deobandi Pashtun-centric party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), to expand its network in Punjab. Saudi charities penetrated into the Pashtun heartland near the Afghan border, under the guise of assisting Afghan war refugees. Economic migration from the Northwest Frontier Province to wealthy Gulf economies had increased the tribal population’s awareness of Saudi-Iranian tensions.15 Thus, anti-Shia views resonated with Pashtuns as well as Punjabis, providing JUI with an opportunity to win a new ethnic constituency without alienating an old one. The party gained control over an anti-Barelvi organization in Punjab called Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba. Relations between Deobandis and Barelvis were traditionally poor because the former resented that the Barelvi movement, despite being created in 1880, 14 years after their own, had won more adherents among Pakistanis.16 In 1985, as Pakistan’s military government prepared to hold elections for the first time in eight years, JUI focused on expanding its share of the votebank at the expense of Shia politicians hostile to the army. It installed its deputy amir (leader) for Punjab province, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, as head of Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba. Jhangvi, as his name indicated, came from the district of Jhang in southern Punjab, where the largest landholdings were concentrated among Shias. Most Sunnis in the district were either impoverished serfs or petty landowners unable to match the money power and patronage networks of their Shia counterparts.17 A consortium of 18 Sunni landlords and traders, with

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support of Pakistani intelligence agencies, financed Haq Nawaz Jhangvi as he took control of Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba (ASS) and redirected its energies away from Barelvis towards Shias. Upon realizing what the group’s abbreviated name meant in English, it was hastily renamed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). Between 1985 and 1989, it remained a subsidiary of JUI before splitting from the Pashtun party over ideological differences. SSP went on to become the principal vehicle for sectarian terrorism in Pakistan, although it was perhaps not the first to draw blood. In February 1990, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi was gunned down by unidentified assassins. His supporters believed the killing had been orchestrated by Iran and responded by killing the Iranian consul-general in Lahore. Through the 1990s, sectarian terrorism in Pakistan was a deadly game of football between Tehran and Riyadh. The former set up cultural centres in major cities of the country, and local government officials suspected these were used to fund and arm Shia militants. Such concerns appeared to be justified when an attack was carried out against the SSP chief in 1994 using rocket launchers. Stunned, SSP created a paramilitary arm called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) to eliminate Shia intellectuals while the parent organization, i.e., SSP itself, entered into power-sharing deals with mainstream political parties. In doing so, SSP leaders hoped to gain immunity from prosecution by law enforcement agencies, as direct military patronage was no longer possible in an era of civilian rule. Their stratagem worked; to a large extent, the Punjab police were prepared not to aggressively pursue LeJ cadres, even those wanted for murder, as long as police officials were not attacked.18 Thus, LeJ avoided harming policemen even as it attacked Shia professionals and shrines which had a nominal protective security detail provided by the authorities. It was only in 1997 that this state of wilful coexistence began to change. After yet another Iranian diplomat was killed in February 1997, a senior police official attempted to hunt down the perpetrators. LeJ operatives assassinated him, and began to kill other policemen who showed a desire to enforce the letter of the law. An escalatory dynamic built up, as Sunni policemen were motivated to avenge colleagues killed by Sunni terrorists. One of the reasons the latter became more willing to confront police was the crossover of mafia hitmen into sectarian groups.19 Previously, those attracted towards anti-Shia politics tended to

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be Islamist sympathizers who fell under the influence of a charismatic preacher or combat veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War.20 From the mid 1990s, a new type of actor entered the scene as organized crime syndicates sought political cover for their racketeering activities. Noticing the immunity that radical Islamists enjoyed from police action, they infiltrated their own gunmen into sectarian parties and militias. It was a mutually beneficial step: the criminals, many of whom were known to police, received protection from arrest and the militants gained access to illicit finances which reduced their dependence on state patronage.21 Sectarian killings, meanwhile, began to look more like mafia-style contract killings, with cash bounties placed on Shia professionals who were thereafter dispatched through close-range headshots.22 Organized crime and sectarianism both arose from a milieu of youth frustration. Both types of activity provided unemployed and underemployed Pakistanis a sense of status which otherwise lay beyond their economic reach. One journalist observed: A major draw is the clout a religious militant enjoys with the law enforcement agencies. A four-by-four with tinted glasses and a suspicious number plate with occupants sporting militia clothing, long hair and beards are bound to arouse suspicion and get the vehicle pulled over at any checkpoint in the country. If you are a religious militant, however, you are simply waved through with a level of ‘respect’ unthinkable for most Pakistanis. Being above the law holds great appeal for the jobless. What’s more, belonging to a militant organization gives otherwise powerless men a strong sense of identity in an increasingly fragmented social structure.23 In January 1999, LeJ activists made an assassination attempt on Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which finally led to concerted action against the group. Within months, 36 members were killed, several apparently while in police custody. Survivors fled to Afghanistan, where they set up training camps in partnership with Al Qaeda. Following the 2001 US invasion, many returned to Pakistan, where they spent two years rebuilding their networks and raising their prestige among ordinary Pakistanis. They did this by assisting the crossborder Taliban insurgency against American forces. During such time,

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they practised careful operational security, being meticulous about vetting new recruits in order to eliminate Western spies trying to gather information on Al Qaeda.24 But while LeJ lost the forbearance of the Punjab police, it took care to remain useful to the Pakistani army. From the mid 1990s, SSP and LeJ cadres volunteered to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISI-backed jihadists in the Indian province of Jammu & Kashmir. By supplementing the military’s own geopolitical objectives while limiting anti-Iranian attacks to a few sporadic incidents, Sunni supremacists ensured that the army-intelligence combine did not conclude that the costs of tolerating such militants exceeded the benefits. In provinces beyond Punjab, police action against SSP leaders still needed high-level government approval, so that arresting officers could be confident that they would not later be politically sacrificed.25 This climate of legal ambiguity allowed SSP leaders to make inroads into one sphere which was off-limits to law enforcement agencies: the politically aligned education sector.

Madrassas and Multi-Generational Hatreds In 1994, an ominous event happened in Malakand division, which was part of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province (formerly called the Northwest Frontier Province). Shortly before local by-elections were to be held, an uprising broke out among hill tribesmen, demanding the imposition of Sharia law in the division. The civilian government in Islamabad, as well as the military leadership, were at a loss to deal with this situation. They knew how to crush ethno-nationalist insurgencies, but in a country whose official name included the phrase ‘Islamic Republic’, how could a movement calling for stricter implementation of Islamic laws be condemned as anti-national? For the first time, Pakistan’s Deep State faced a situation wherein an internal security challenge could not be crushed by brute force and slush funds. Alarming reports came in that some of the tribesmen were ex-soldiers led by a former ISI major, whose brother ran a militant madrassa in the area.26 Eventually, after using community leaders to open talks with the insurgents, the government agreed to their demand. This development was little-noticed outside Pakistan, but it set the tone for things to come.

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Whenever faced with an ‘Islamic’ threat, the response of Pakistan’s Deep State has been to yield. Since the events in Malakand in 1994, militancy has become cyclical. A surge in violence tends to be followed by a limited government crackdown, and then a period of quiescence before the next surge appears. In part, this is because Islamist control over educational infrastructure is so strong that each crop of hardened militants can be replaced even before it has been fully eliminated. Younger militants compete to outdo earlier generations, a phenomenon that has been observed in Pakistan’s tribal areas since the 1990s and especially since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.27 The biographies of Pakistani Taliban leaders illustrate this. Baitullah Mehsud, who attained notoriety for allegedly ordering the killing of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007, was a bus conductor. His successor, Hakimullah, was a dropout from a village madrassa. The mastermind behind the massacre of 132 schoolchildren in Peshawar in 2014, Mullah Fazlullah, operated ski lifts at a tourist resort before turning to militancy.28 Fazlullah’s father-in-law was a cleric who initially led the 1994 Malakand uprising before switching to a mediatory role and brokering the deal that introduced Sharia law. It was his arrest and imprisonment in the period 2001– 8 that cleared the stage for Fazlullah to build himself up as a viable leader for militant Islamists. While the cleric was a controllable nuisance for Pakistani authorities, Fazlullah was more hardline, perhaps because he felt a need to establish his own brand name.29 Academic research into Pakistani sectarianism has thrown up a fascinating argument: that selective and time-limited patronage of senior clerics in the 1980s later prompted a ‘revolt of the petty-ulama [sic]’.30 Like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s military regime tried to buy the loyalty of the religious establishment through awarding its members government jobs. Initially, there was an intention to extend such privileges to all madrassa graduates.31 Hence, the regime opted to recognize sanads (graduation certificates) of madrassas as being the educational equivalent of a formal certificate from a state or private school. This was smart politics but poor economics. Madrassa education consisted of a decade of learning the Quran by rote in the original Arabic script, and studying the theory and practice of religious argumentation. The entire curriculum was designed by religious scholars, for students who wanted to devote their lives to a

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similarly esoteric calling, away from world affairs.32 It was excellent at familiarizing next-generation clerics in oratory and the theatrics of charisma-manufacture. It was not meant to be a vehicle for socioeconomic upliftment. But in promising the ulema steady employment, the military government created high expectations without the accompanying means to fulfil them. The end of army rule in 1988 and a subsequent decade of poor economic performance ended favouritism towards madrassa students and their teachers. Only the senior-most clerics of prestigious madrassas continued to enjoy such patronage. Graduates of less illustrious madrassas found themselves unable to access the same economic opportunities offered to their predecessors. With no marketable skills to land a place in the formal economy, they turned to political demagoguery as a way of attracting donors. A ‘madrassa start-up’ culture emerged, wherein clerics who were not properly trained or wellconnected enough to land an appointment at a prestigious seminary set up one of their own using foreign money. At the time, Arab states (especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) were lavishly funding Sunni madrassas in Pakistan in order to harden the country’s Sunni identity and wall it off from Iranian influence. Up to 60 per cent of madrassas’ operating money came from overseas sources, making these institutions vulnerable to the prejudices of their sponsors.33 Due to Riyadh’s partiality towards Deobandis, who had more in common in Wahhabism than all other Sunni sub-sects except the Ahle Hadith, Deobandi madrassas eventually constituted 64 per cent of the total number in Pakistan, despite the country’s Deobandi population amounting to only 15 per cent.34 A system of specialization appeared, wherein madrassas in Punjab provided religious indoctrination while those in the then Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan provided military training. By the mid 1990s, the Punjab police estimated that 42 per cent of seminaries in their jurisdiction were brainwashing children from lower-class families, inciting them to hate Pakistanis of other sects.35 Several 1990s’ media accounts indicate that law enforcement authorities had a detailed picture of the number and location of sectarian madrassas in the province. But this information was not acted upon. Although there were 40,000 foreign nationals studying in Punjab alone (out of a total madrassa student population of 218,000), the government did not investigate

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them. It argued instead that these foreigners were not engaged in any violence within the country, and what they did overseas was not Pakistan’s problem. The bulk of them were, in any case, not enrolled in madrassas controlled by overtly anti-Shia groups like SSP or LeJ, but with the more mainstream JUI and JeI. The political influence of the latter parties meant that any police action against their students was unthinkable.36 As for domestic militants, the security community felt these posed a small threat that could be eliminated anytime if it got out of hand. At one level, this assessment was correct: in 1995, it was estimated that less than 0.5 per cent of Punjab’s 60 million inhabitants supported either Sunni or Shia sectarian militancy.37 Ayesha Siddiqa, a critic of the security establishment’s habit of mollycoddling Islamists, later presented a case study of southern Punjab in which she identified five reasons why sectarian terrorism was not being aggressively combated. One, the local administration was quick and categorical to dismiss any problem of militancy as a figment of Western imagination. There was a reflexive denial of the very existence of sectarian tensions on a scale sufficient to trigger violence. Two, whatever groups did exist were not considered serious security threats because they were home-grown and presumably less radicalized than those that regularly sent fighters to Afghanistan (in fact, they were sending fighters, albeit in small numbers). Three, these groups were patronized by state agencies for the sake of containing Shia militancy and for fighting India, and thus were thought unwilling to risk the wrath of the state. If they misbehaved, support for them could be cut off. Four, since these groups co-existed with local mafias and political militias affiliated with various parties, they were not seen as a threat on the same scale as groups which enforced a rigid social code to the exclusion of all alternatives, as had happened in Malakand. Thus, the definitions of ‘radicalization’ and ‘Talibanisation’ adopted by the Pakistani state apparatus were sufficiently narrow as to preclude its application to southern Punjab. Lastly, there was a naı¨ve belief that because Sufi Islam predominated in the region, militant groups could not find strong support there. The social hold of pir (spiritual teacher) families would prevent mullahs from building a strong following. But as Siddiqa noted, it had been the failure of these leading families in the community, with their progeny dominating national and provincial politics only for the sake of self-enrichment,

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that had generated a bottom-up backlash in the first place. In the process, a political space emerged for Deobandi and Ahle Hadith groups to move in.38 For their part, madrassas were happy to take advantage of the government’s complacency. One virulently sectarian chain, known as Zia-ul Quran, provides a typical example of how funding sources were disguised. It had over 500 publications, from whose sales it allegedly managed to cover most of its operating costs. Another madrassa, Minhajul Quran, allegedly benefited from sales of over 800 publications supposedly authored by a single man. Local authorities had neither time nor manpower to expose the falsity of such claims. Tracking the syllabus was also difficult, except through direct observation over an extended period of time. Students at sectarian madrassas, for instance, were cautioned orally by their teachers never to admit to being sectarian if asked by an outsider.39 Discipline was fierce, with students being chained, sodomized by their teachers and hung upside down from trees.40 Astonishingly, the parents of many students were so wretchedly poor that they reconciled to the fact that their wards were being physically abused. They simply chose to view such ordeals as a form of collective spiritual investment, which would grant them all a better existence in the hereafter.

Ties with Government Complacency was not the only factor at work. Successive Pakistani governments, both civilian and military, have passively tolerated or actively sponsored sectarian groups. In the main, the beneficiaries have been SSP and LeJ, as well as SSP’s parent organization, Jamiat Ulema-eIslam. But during the 1990s, Shia organizations benefited as well from a loose alliance with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Furthermore, between 1979 and 1996, Iran is believed to have supported Shia militants in Pakistan with funding and weaponry, supplied through a network of consulates and cultural centres throughout the country. Such sponsorship only stopped due to concern that Sunni sectarian groups, backed by Pakistani intelligence agencies, might retaliate by fostering rebellion among the Baloch minority in Iran.41 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, sectarianism was an instrument by which the military could discredit civilian political parties, and project

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itself as the sole defender of national unity. For their part, the centre-left PPP and its centre-right opponent, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) curried favour with SSP and thus indirectly with LeJ. Although SSP and LeJ were theoretically separate organizations, it was widely suspected that they were merely the political and military wings of a common network of Sunni supremacists. The split between them was perceived as a public relations gimmick meant to protect the SSP leadership from retaliatory attacks by Shia militants wherever LeJ conducted a massacre of Shias.42 Such precautions were not unfounded—although much fewer and less centralized, Iranian-supported Shias coalesced into a militant group of their own by 1993, called Sipah-e-Mohammed Pakistan (SMP). This group had ties with the leading Shia party, the Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan, but its real domestic patron was the PPP. Since the latter party was led by a Shia family, and since Shias had provided much of the popular resistance to military rule in the 1980s, SMP had strong connections with PPP youth activists. These connections allowed the group to set up a territorial base in the central Punjab village of Thokar Niaz Beg, which was a PPP stronghold.43 To understand what happened in the 1990s, one has to understand the acrimonious relationship that existed between the Pakistani military and the PPP. The end of military rule in 1988 had brought the PPP to power in Islamabad. This had been anticipated with dread by those army and intelligence officials who made their careers suppressing the party on behalf of the Zia regime. They organized an opposition alliance of Islamist parties, led by a then relatively unknown industrialist called Nawaz Sharif.44 The young man came from a rich family that was bitterly hostile to the PPP and, thus, ready to be used by the security establishment as a civilian proxy. Nawaz Sharif had been already mentored for several years by the military governor of Punjab, Lieutenant General (Retired) Ghulam Jilani Khan. This officer, in turn, was the same individual who as ISI chief in 1976 had duplicitously advised PPP leader and then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to appoint Zia-ul Haq as army chief.45 The cultivation of Nawaz Sharif by Ghulam Jilani Khan was a powerful example of how the Deep State operated. During the late 1980s, a handful of senior ISI officials, both serving and retired, worked with the agency’s political cell to raise the profile of right-wing opponents of the PPP. The idea was that the party should be seen by the

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conservative electorate as not sufficiently ‘Islamic’. Overall control of the ‘black propaganda’ campaign rested with the head of the ISI’s Internal Security Wing (or ‘S’ Wing), Brigadier Imtiaz Ahmed. Known as ‘Billa’ or ‘cat’ due to his cunning, this particular officer was viewed with suspicion by his ISI peers for being ever-ready to engage in ‘dirty tricks’.46 So it may have come as little surprise within the agency that in the final days of military rule, a series of massacres took place across Pakistan, which had markedly sectarian undertones. These killings ensured that the new civilian PPP government inherited a mess which it would struggle to clean up. First, in summer 1988, Sunni tribesmen backed by Arab jihadists (later thought to be funded by Osama Bin Laden) rampaged through the Gilgit region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Around 700 Shia villagers were killed and 14 hamlets razed over an eight-day period. The mayhem was allegedly supervised by the military regime’s Minister for Northern Areas, Qasim Shah.47 Once violence had subsided, local authorities began constructing a large Sunni mosque in Gilgit township, a clear sign that they had no sympathy for the massacre victims or the survivors. At the other end of the country, in Sindh province, two massacres within hours of each other killed 250 members of the Muhajir community. The Muhajirs were descendants of Indian Muslims who had emigrated to Pakistan in 1947 and had a high representation of Shias, although the community itself was not exclusive to either sect. The Sindh massacres were later attributed by PPP chief Benazir Bhutto to ‘intelligence agencies’ aiming to ruin the incipient alliance between her Sindhidominated party and the Muhajirs.48 If such was indeed the purpose, the ploy worked. The PPP and the Muttahida Quami Mahaz (MQM), the main organization representing immigrants from India, remained at loggerheads for much of the following decade. This is not to suggest the PPP was only a victim. The party entered into an opportunistic alliance with SSP in 1994, going to the extent of arranging the ‘escape’ of a notorious terrorist called Riaz Basra from police custody.49 Basra was thought to be involved in the killing of the Iranian consul-general in Lahore in 1990. He was recaptured and killed in police custody in 2002. During the eight years he was on the run, living in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, there were suspicions that he and his 500-man criminal gang that eventually became Lashkar-eJhangvi received protection from secret patrons in the military

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establishment.50 One of Basra’s subordinates accused him of being an agent provocateur—a claim that was not unreasonable, given the counterintelligence methods contemporaneously being used against Shia militants.51 Unlike SSP and LeJ, Sipah-e-Mohammed did not benefit from highlevel protectors. Although it had some well-wishers within the PPP, the latter party was itself beleaguered by challenges from the political right and could not offer any cover to a terrorist group with a minority support base. Due to lack of political interference, law enforcement agencies in Punjab were able to dismantle Sipah-e-Mohammed’s networks between 1994 and 1996. The Shia group was so heavily penetrated by police informers that it fragmented into hundreds of cells, whose membership typically did not exceed six activists.52 At most, it could carry out retaliatory murders of Sunni leaders in response to LeJ assaults, but even these were sporadic. With LeJ, the opposite happened: upon ‘escaping’ from the police in 1994, Basra consolidated three ultra-militant SSP splinter groups into a common organization and made himself its chief.53 From a counterintelligence perspective, such a move suited the Deep State’s interests: by bringing scattered cells of Sunni militants under one roof, Basra had made it easier for security agencies to monitor them and calibrate violence levels. Whenever action was taken against Sunni groups, it was largely cosmetic. For instance, in late 1995, federal authorities ordered a crackdown in Punjab province. But even as police set about carrying out Islamabad’s orders to arrest the roughly 350 militants operating there, another order arrived stipulating that those arrested could only be held in custody for 90 days. Policemen were exasperated at the government’s self-defeating stance but powerless to oppose it.54 At least part of the problem was political rivalry between PPP functionaries at the federal level and PML ministers who formed the provincial government in Punjab. The latter already supported SSP even as federal officials tried to win it over through a combination of threats and concessions.55 As part of this horse-trading, arms licences were liberally issued to sectarian militants. According to one estimate, between 1988 and 1995, 1.5 million such licences were issued in Punjab, of which 80 per cent had only cursory background checks conducted.56 Signs of political accommodativeness were all too visible. Those arrested for killing the Iranian consul-general in 1990 (besides Riaz

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Basra) spent their incarceration with every material comfort they asked for, including mobile phones.57 When in 1999 LeJ activists tried to kill Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, SSP leader Azam Tariq was released from police custody in return for a promise that there would be no further assassination attempts against Sharif or his family.58 During the military regime of Pervez Musharraf, Tariq was again courted by officialdom in order to obtain his support for the government in the National Assembly.59 By the time of his assassination in 2003, the SSP leader had been indicted for ordering the murders of at least 103 Shias, but never convicted. Instead, he was elected to parliament four times.60 Sectarianism eroded the integrity of Pakistani institutions. Even law enforcement agencies were not immune, as shown from an extreme event on 22 January 1998. A court in Sargodha in Punjab province, specially set up to try terrorism-related cases, announced a guilty verdict against several accused in a murder case. The victim had been a Shia official of the city, and his killers had been allowed to escape from the crime scene by complicit police officers. The court found both the accused, as well as their police patrons, guilty. However, instead of arresting them, policemen on guard duty at the court took the judge hostage and held him in captivity until all the accused left the court unmolested. The police force subsequently seized all local newspapers to prevent the story from appearing in the media. The infuriated judge refused to rescind his verdict and eventually was supported by the provincial chief minister, who calculated that it would not be in his party’s interests to have the judiciary hostile to the government. But the incident demonstrated the extent to which government institutions had been corrupted from within and their professionalism destroyed.61

Cost to Civil Society The main weakness in Pakistani counterterrorism efforts is that they rely less on administrative strength and civil-military coordination and more on the colonial-era strategy of divide and rule. By factionalizing militant groups into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ components, the Deep State attempts to deflect domestic terrorism abroad. In keeping with this approach, leaders of militant groups are either coopted into international jihadist projects, or eliminated if they serve no useful purpose within Pakistan itself. Unfortunately for the Deep State, divide-and-rule works both

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ways. Even a stateless actor such as Al Qaeda can use the same persuasive techniques employed by government intelligence operators to win new adherents to its cause. Thus, it has successfully exploited the loophole presented by Pakistan’s tolerance for jihadist groups fighting Afghanistan and India, and embedded itself with them. The Harkatul Mujahideen, for instance, one of the many jihadist groups patronized by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, is thought to have faked an internal rift so that it could continue enjoying Pakistani state protection while simultaneously aligning with Al Qaeda. Government officials refused to discuss this hypothesis in public, as it would have indicated that they were so incompetent as to support the very same organization they claimed to be fighting in the name of international counterterrorism.62 JUI’s footprint in sectarian terrorism is faint, but not invisible. As a Deobandi party, it has an inherently hostile perspective towards nonSunni and non-Arab Islam. Accordingly, even though the party itself has no connection to terrorism, its worldview pushes its members more towards Sunni supremacist groups than is true of other mainstream parties. JeI would have fallen into the same trap, had it not sensed the danger early enough. In 1990, it formed a militant youth wing called Pasban, which was active only for a couple of years.63 During this time, Pasban kept the younger JeI activists united and prevented them from being drawn away by sectarian recruiters.64 However, it needs to be said that in 1994 a faction of JeI members did grow disillusioned with the main party and set out to form a more hardline group of their own. JUI helped link up Pashtun tribal manpower with Punjabi militant narratives. Besides Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, other party activists were involved in sectarian violence, often in locations different from their place of origin. A 2007 police study found that of 162 ‘most wanted’ terrorists in the country, 77 were Punjabis and a large number of the 37 Sindhis on the list were of Punjabi ethnicity.65 Attacks outside the Northwest Frontier Province claimed by the Pakistani Taliban were actually executed by operatives of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.66 Extremist madrassas in central Punjab tended to have a large number of Pashtun students, brought there by the inter-provincial network of militants that shadowed above-ground political infrastructure. This same infrastructure was used to transport weapons from the tribal areas to cities in Punjab, from where they could be used for terrorist attacks.

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The March 2009 assault on a visiting group of Sri Lankan cricketers was one example.67 With its experience in training international terrorists in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was able to prepare jihadist groups, carefully nurtured by the Pakistani Deep State, to wage war against their own controllers. Arab instructors taught Sunni sectarian terrorists how to build improvised explosive devices using common household ingredients, a skill the latter lacked because they relied on criminal contacts to obtain illegal firearms and on military contacts for factorymanufactured explosives.68 Al Qaeda also exploited ideological and personal fissures within Deobandi organizations, managing, in 2003, to win over a faction of the Karachi-based and Punjabi-dominated Jaish-eMohammed (JeM). This Kashmir-focused group had been set up three years earlier with strong ISI support. Tensions among its leadership over the disbursement of funds provided an opportunity for Al Qaeda to win over JeM’s military chief.69 In what turned out to be a significant embarrassment for the Pakistani intelligence community, one of its own ‘strategic assets’ became not just a liability but a domestic security threat. JeM activists were involved in two assassination attempts on the Pakistani army chief and president, Pervez Musharraf, that occurred in December 2003. Whenever pressured by the international community to act against terrorist groups, Islamabad would rationalize any cosmetic measures that might result as being directed against domestic terrorists who were threatening the country. But its behaviour was rather duplicitous. For instance, in 2002, Musharraf announced a crackdown on SSP as part of a nation-wide offensive against militant networks. Yet, the country’s English-language media observed that the crackdown left the group largely unaffected. Any arrests of its members were limited to lowranking administrative staff or street activists who had no criminal record. This led to speculation that the government deliberately went after such individuals, knowing they were not involved in violent activities and could not be convicted of any crime. Meanwhile, those SSP operatives accused of murder or perpetrating acts of violence were not rounded up.70 As a result of its self-contradictory stance on terrorism, Pakistan did its own civil society considerable damage. Between 1980 and 2015, the annual number of domestic terrorist attacks rose by 1,400 per cent, from

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168 to 5,400.71 Over the 1990s, just 26 sectarian attacks cost the economy 59 billion rupees from first, second and third order economic effects.72 The targeted killing of scores of Shia doctors in Karachi led to an exodus of medical professionals from the city.73 Overall, the lethality of terrorist incidents increased five-fold in the 2000s compared to the previous decade, partly as a result of skills imparted by Arab jihadists.74 The outbreak of a fresh proxy war between Sunni Arab states and Shia Iran in Iraq, following the 2003 American overthrow of Saddam Hussein, was another contributory factor. That year, the first-ever suicide bombing against Pakistani Shias was carried out by Sunni militants.75 Although it was not the first time such a bombing had occurred in Pakistan—since the previous year, militants had been attacking Westerners in the country using such methods—the attack on Shias marked a turning point. It showed that, as far as Sunni sectarian groups were concerned, Shias were beyond the pale of Islam, and were as eligible for mass slaughter as any non-Muslim. This chapter concludes the first part of the book. It has provided background or ‘strategic’ information on how militant Islam survives in Pakistan by forming a close linkage with political interests. Even if the origins of sectarian terrorism were partly foreign, the sustaining dynamics that allowed it to continue in Pakistan were derived from local politics. Islamabad cannot therefore claim to be merely a passive victim of foreign geopolitical rivalries—a stock explanation for the high levels of violence on Pakistani soil. The next part of this book will look at tactics—specifically, how militant groups deny, collect and manipulate information, sometimes independently and sometimes through the Deep State, to ensure that no permanent damage can be done to their support structures.

PART II INTELLIGENCE

CHAPTER 4 INFORMATION DENIAL

This chapter is the first of three, which will examine how radical Islamists in South Asia have weaponized information. Using the theoretical framework advanced in the introductory chapter, it posits that para-state and non-state actors can succeed in denying critical information to their opponents. Whether planning an attack, or evading neutralization by security forces, jihadists learn how to protect secrets. The chapter suggests that, in the case of South Asia, Pakistan’s ill-governed borderlands, together with the anonymity of its congested cities, have allowed terrorists to burrow into local support networks and escape detection. On certain occasions, they appear to have been abetted by the Deep State. The institutional weakness of government agencies plays a big role in ensuring these terrorists remain untouched by international efforts to bring them to justice. The same weakness permits the Deep State to function unimpeded. Why is any of this relevant for foreign governments? Logically, Pakistan’s terrorist problem should be its own to solve, as long as it can be contained within the country’s borders. But such containment is difficult because of interlinkages that have developed between jihadists, organized crime syndicates and the Deep State. All that jihadists have to do is remain discreet about their operational plans in such a hospitable environment. If the interests of the Deep State converge with those of the jihadists, as they sometimes do, the technological superiority of Western intelligence processes is cancelled out by the hostility of the human terrain within which their informational product must be acted upon.

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To provide an analogy familiar to Western readers, one may consider the Irish Republican Army’s successful guerrilla war against British forces in 1919 – 21. Immortalized in the 1996 film Michael Collins, the IRA’s counterintelligence campaign was a textbook case of how a militarily weak force can increase its striking power by blinding its opponent. The film shows anonymous assassins, in a series of coordinated and surgical attacks, killing policemen who run informers against the IRA. In real life, Collins, the IRA’s military chief, also penetrated the British spy network in Ireland. Owing to his willingness to employ ‘walk-ins’—Irish patriots in the security bureaucracy who offered to switch loyalties—he was remarkably well informed about counter-measures the British were planning against his organization. Some successes fell into his lap without any effort, such as when his cousin sister, a postal service employee, was entrusted with keeping safe the most sensitive encoded files of the British occupation forces. She immediately told Collins about her new job, prompting him to exclaim: ‘In the name of Jesus, how did these people ever get an empire?!’1 Collins was a master of active counterintelligence—the aggressive but clandestine penetration of a hostile intelligence system, such that it can be used against its owners without them knowing it. He benefited from well-situated pockets of support within a larger Irish population that was generally passive, and not willing to side either with the British government or the IRA. Jihadist groups that attack domestic targets today rarely enjoy such favourable conditions. Most of the time, the targeted government succeeds in portraying them as fanatics and criminals, limiting their popular base considerably. Instead of active counterintelligence, they have to focus on passive counterintelligence—the protection of secrets—by exercising strict discipline over all insiders privy to sensitive information, including on-the-spot execution of suspected leakers. Irrespective of whether these leakers are consciously betraying their own ‘side’, a mere suspicion of being associated with the government cause is enough to produce a guilty verdict and a death sentence. Once, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a petty trader was killed along with every member of his family merely because he had dared to sell watermelons to local policemen. At the time, Western and Pakistani security forces had been attempting to monitor local communities in order to track

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down Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.2 The incident served as a reminder of the kind of mindset they were up against. For the purpose of carrying out domestic terrorist attacks, passive counterintelligence is sufficient. But when operating against overseas targets, the necessary long-distance coordination generates electronic trails which intelligence agencies of hostile states can detect. In these cases, active counterintelligence is needed to block any local police action (in the host country, not the target country) that might be launched against the network. Such active counterintelligence requires pockets of support within the state security apparatus as well as a generally quiescent civilian population, undecided about whom to support. In the Pakistani case, hardline Islamist parties have contributed to building a general mood of moral ambivalence. By suggesting that groups which are regarded in the Western world as terrorist entities are in fact being unfairly persecuted, Islamists muddy the discursive waters and create narrative space for terrorists to find sympathizers, both inside and outside of government. They also lubricate the flow of information to the terrorists. This chapter is divided into three sections, each consisting of ‘paired’ concepts. The first section looks at ill-governed spaces and local xenophobia. It suggests that informational denial is easiest in a locality where state representation is weak. It does not imply that an ‘ill-governed’ space is the same as an ‘ungoverned’ space. The latter does not even display a veneer of bureaucratic governance, but depends for its daily economy on barter and a sense of personal trust born out of clannishness and xenophobia. An ill-governed space, on the other hand, can have a notional presence of civil administrators, but the local population by habit and custom do not submit to their authority. The second section examines how Al Qaeda’s strategically weak position as a terrorist group without a long-standing state ally or protector forces it to rely on informational denial through passive counterintelligence. Other jihadist organizations that have adopted its copybook tactics have also imbibed its respect for operational security, which makes preventing their attacks or tracking their cadres very difficult. Finally, the last section highlights how the weakness of legitimate state institutions creates operational space for the Deep State to continue protecting and using jihadists for its own purposes.

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Ill-Governed Spaces and Xenophobia Although the borderlands of Afghanistan-Pakistan might be the first parts of South Asia that come to mind when thinking of lawless regions, one need not go that far. The megapolis of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, provides an illustrative case. Beginning in the 1980s, as the Zia dictatorship worried about domestic resistance to martial law, the Deep State built up paramilitary factions in ethno-linguistic parties. The idea was to keep civilian politicians divided and quarrelling among themselves, and position the military as a ‘neutral’ arbiter, just as the British had done in colonial India when ‘managing’ Hindu-Muslim tensions.3 Tensions, which the highest levels of the colonial administration knew, helped perpetuate foreign rule as a supposedly benign and non-partisan force. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Zia regime started distancing itself from Jamaat-i-Islami, having recognized that this party wanted to seize power for itself, not perpetuate military rule indefinitely. Since the mainstream centre-left Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was already opposed to the government, Zia needed a third civilian option to use against the other two parties in Sindh, the PPP’s home province. He found it in the muhajir community—the descendants of Urduspeaking migrants from India. Despite leaving behind their property in post-1947 India to become citizens of the new Pakistani state, their parents had still been regarded as unwelcome intruders by Sindhis. Many had joined JeI during the first three decades of Pakistan’s existence, hoping this would hasten their assimilation into Pakistani society. By the late 1970s, a younger generation of Pakistan-born muhajirs had started to reconcile to their own ethno-linguistic distinctness. Their native language, Urdu, was the official language of Pakistan but only used in private life by 12 per cent of the population.4 In a forerunner of what happened with Arab and South Asian immigrants in Europe from the 1990s onwards, with many second- and third-generation European citizens becoming born-again Muslims, Pakistan-born muhajirs rediscovered their own distinctness in an unfavourable socio-economic environment. The Zia government helped the muhajirs set up their own political party, eventually called the Muttahida Quami Mahaz (MQM) and provided firearms to enable it to break JeI’s hold over student unions.

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It had been JeI which introduced firearms on university campuses after 1977, during the first years of Zia’s military rule.5 The MQM was initially unable to match this firepower, but made up for material shortcomings by adopting a tightly-controlled command structure built around its party chief, a former cab driver named Altaf Hussain.6 To establish its credentials as a protector of muhajirs, it began targeting Pashtun settlers in Karachi who were grabbing the city’s best real estate at the expense of lower middle-class muhajir families. With Karachi being the entry port for international arms supplies to the Afghan mujahideen, and local Pashtuns dominating the trucking business, the MQM found itself at a disadvantage in sourcing firearms. It got around this by purchasing weapons from Pashtuns themselves. In a microcosmic example of how even ethno-linguistic communities in Pakistan fragmented as a result of poverty and the psychological dislocation of rural-to-urban and inter-provincial migration, one Pashtun arms dealer, when asked by muhajirs if he had qualms about selling them guns which would be used to kill fellow Pashtuns, replied, ‘What kind of Muslim are you? I can’t eat Pashtuns. I need my bread.’7 Later, after the restoration of civilian rule in Pakistan and the PPP’s victory in the 1988 general elections, this party and the MQM ran a thriving barter system trading firearms (which the PPP got access to while in government) and cars (which the MQM stole from Karachi’s business community). As a result of this process, Karachi was carved up into ethnically distinct areas, each dominated by its allegedly ‘representative’ political party or faction. The MQM itself was split into two factions as a result of ISI machinations, which triggered an extremely bloody turf war on the city’s streets. It was not just Karachi which saw the slow weaponization of politics. Elsewhere in Pakistan, loss of faith in the overburdened criminal justice system led to vigilantism. For instance, during 1995, at least a dozen courtroom murders occurred in Punjab because one of the parties to a dispute was convinced that the other side had bought off the judge and that justice (as defined by themselves) would never be done.8 While this was going on, Islamist organizations like JeI, as well as openly militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, were constructing residential enclaves where their followers could secede from the rest of the country. Within these enclaves, Islamists and militants lived Saudi-style lives in a contrived Utopia. What went on here was nobody’s business, least of all

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that of the Pakistani state. Due to the secretive nature of such sites, it was easy for known terrorists to hide within them. For instance, Lashkare-Taiba spokesman ‘Abdullah Ghaznavi’ would telephone media offices purportedly from Indian territory, using untraceable numbers. It was not until after the 2008 Mumbai attack had focused international attention on this group that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to identify him as Abdullah Muntazir, the official spokesman of LeT’s parent group Jamaat-ud-Dawa, who was based at JuD’s sprawling 200-acre campus north of Lahore.9 The emergence of sectarian militancy took matters one step further. While civilian Islamists like JeI or pro-military militants like LeT/JuD were nominally loyal to the Pakistani state, sectarian terrorists had no compunction about setting up no-go areas, where security forces could not venture. One example was the Shia stronghold of Thokar Niaz Beg near Lahore. In July 1994, police and militants from Sipah-eMuhammed Pakistan (SMP) traded gunfire for nine hours, which only ended when the police surrendered. They were disarmed, stripped naked and paraded before the village inhabitants.10 All that the government could do to avenge this humiliation was to register several cases against the SMP leadership which limited the latter’s freedom of movement to Thokar itself. But within its boundaries, their authority still reigned unchallenged. The SMP patron-in-chief was a former army major and, of his two sons, one was a senior police official while the other served in the ISI.11 With this level of institutional penetration, the SMP did not have to worry about direct police action against its base. The group eventually had to be penetrated by police-controlled agent provocateurs over a period of years, and worn down by internal intrigues.12

Tribal loyalties Polarization between in- and out-groups helped Al Qaeda find anonymous refuge in Pakistan after 2001. By intermarrying with local communities in the tribal areas along the Afghan border, senior Al Qaeda leaders like Ayman al-Zawahiri obtained the protection of entire clans.13 In such regions, the Pakistani state only maintained a notional administrative presence. Inherited from the colonial British era, the local system of governance consisted of so-called ‘political agents’ who bribed tribal chiefs to keep the area quiet. But during the decadelong Soviet-Afghan War, the authority of these elders was undermined

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by Saudi-funded clerics who established themselves as an independent power centre. After the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the clerics invoked memories of the 1980s to justify shelter for those fleeing persecution by a non-Muslim occupier. Tribal elders were unable to reassert their authority when local populations were pulled away by the mullahs. This resulted in the collapse of a century-old system for gathering human intelligence that had operated at relatively low cost and upon which the tribal areas’ submission to Pakistani sovereignty had depended.14 Al Qaeda fighters made themselves popular by paying above-market rates for basic commodities.15 For practical and ideological reasons, it was hard for local communities to turn on them. What Pakistan’s tribal areas demonstrated during much of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden—a stubborn refusal to yield to temptations and threats, unless these were specifically directed at a single individual whose personal resistance could be broken—has been observed in other conflict regions worldwide. Northern Ireland is an example. Even if villagers in remote areas bordering the Irish republic were not supportive of irredentist militancy, they still ensured that the presence of security forces was reported to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), which was considered a terrorist group by the British. One police officer rationalized this phenomenon with the observation: ‘It’s that old basic natural human thing that my own people are my own people even if I don’t agree with them.’16 The safety provided by local tribesmen allowed Al Qaeda to reorganize for attacks and connect with local partners. A 2006 Pakistani media report described a group active along the AfPak border called Al-Jihad that was led by Arabs, hosted by Afghans, trained by Central Asians and receiving logistical support from Pakistanis. Jihadist recruits from Western countries would arrive in Pakistan, travel to South Waziristan, before crossing over into the Khost province of Afghanistan to receive explosives training. Al-Jihad’s Pakistani affiliate was Jamaatul-Furqan, a splinter faction of the ISI-supported and JUI-aligned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed.17 The Pakistani Taliban proved a formidable ally as well. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, its members were not interested in retaining the goodwill of local communities and were more ruthless in attacking soft targets.18 But even before the Pakistani Taliban were officially formed in late 2007, the Pakistani state had

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begun to cut deals with militant groups in the tribal areas, hoping to deflect their destructive energies towards any target other than itself. This cemented the alliance between tribal insurgents and foreign terrorists. Over a two-year truce period (2004–6), Taliban fighters avoided attacking security forces but killed over 200 tribal elders, degrading the government’s main source of human intelligence.19 When hostilities recommenced in 2007 between the government and Al Qaeda-affiliated Pashtun tribesmen, the latter had a strong intelligence advantage because they knew the operational environment better. Once the army launched operations against the Pakistani Taliban, the insurgents were able to build a surveillance network to shut down information flows to the government. Since in rural communities low literacy rates were common and many families did not own a television set, radio was the easiest way to reach a wider audience. The Taliban invested in setting up pirate radio stations, whose sole purpose was to harden local minds to government outreach efforts. Those listening to insurgent broadcasts were typically women and children, bored with mundane lives and eager to participate in a larger communal venture. They helped in thought policing, since the Taliban, in a move that would be familiar to students of totalitarianism, paid children 50 rupees daily to report on their family members.20 The certainty of death if caught working for government agencies or Western forces, ensured that no one was ready to become a source, nor did they have much opportunity to make contact with potential handlers based outside the immediate area. During the army’s clearance operations, officers commented that the militants seemed to have a more effective intelligence capacity than the state, and that situation reports from the official security establishment were so garbled as to give an impression that the security forces were fighting each other rather than an insurgency.21 While the military battled it out in the tribal areas, in Karachi the Taliban created no-go areas of their own. Police informers were either killed or forced to flee from Pashtun-dominated neighbourhoods. Flyers were pasted on walls advising shopkeepers of whom they should call, if they received extortion demands from a non-Taliban ‘tax collector’.22 From the shopkeepers themselves, the Taliban extracted 3,000 rupees as a monthly payment—a rate that was thought reasonable by those paying up, since it bought them freedom from harassment by

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other criminal elements.23 Occasionally, to send a signal to law enforcement agencies, the Taliban would kill a police official in such a way as would prompt general panic. For instance, in 2012, a traffic police sub-inspector was randomly shot dead by an unknown gunman who most probably used a long-range night vision sniperscope to make the kill on a crowded road after sunset. From this incident, people in the immediate vicinity at once understood the implications: if the police were not safe, neither were they. For their part, the police suffered from a serious shortage of patrol vehicles. They knew that if they got into a fire fight with the Taliban, it could be hours before backup arrived.24 This made them more reluctant to venture out and show their presence in high-risk communities and, in turn, cemented the counterintelligence wall the Taliban was building around these communities. The counterintelligence wall could also be found in universities and was not limited to only Pashtuns. Islamist parties such as JeI developed an intricate system of recruitment which foreclosed dual loyalties. New entrants to the party found themselves being pulled into a moral and intellectual universe where they were cut off from their former lives. Their new social circle became other Islamists, who made sure to treat them with a human warmth that was missing in their daily existence. This feeling of being appreciated and valued meant that even if they did not care whether Pakistan had an Islamic system of government, new JeI members became committed to the organization’s activities out of a sense of friendship.25 Western intelligence operatives, as part of longstanding tradecraft that emphasized cultivating government sources, had few meeting points with those who were close to terrorist planners. This was because the planners were hidden behind a screen of sympathizers, of which activists of above-ground Islamist parties such as JeI and JUI were but the first layer.

Al Qaeda and Operational Security Al Qaeda mastered terrorist tactics by copying the Shia militia Hizballah. Osama Bin Laden was personally inspired by Hizballah’s head of special operations, Imad Mughniyeh, into striking spectacular blows against the West. In the world of international terrorism, Mughniyeh was a brilliant tactician who pioneered the use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) in suicide attacks. Recognizing

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the value of engineering students to a bomb-making network, he recruited many from Beirut University.26 Years later, researchers studying Sunni terrorist groups noticed a surprisingly strong correlation between engineering studies and militant Islam—a proclivity which Mughniyeh ably exploited in the 1980s.27 Hizballah developed techniques which became standard practice among Arab jihadists. Some of these, such as using pseudonyms to mask a group’s involvement in highly provocative attacks, were inherited from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Back in the 1970s, the PLO had created a deniable faction known as ‘Black September’ to carry out international terrorist strikes on Israeli citizens. The ploy offered a double advantage: killing Israelis while simultaneously giving Western governments a reason to look away from the PLO’s involvement in such attacks and continue treating it as a semi-legitimate political actor. When Hizballah kidnapped Western citizens in Beirut during the 1980s (a provocation that even the PLO had abstained from), it did so through clan-operated gangs that used a total of 17 aliases.28 When targeted by Western law enforcement agencies, Hizballah proved surprisingly resilient due to its three-layered infrastructure. One layer consisted of networks that focused only on propaganda and recruitment, and were the most visible. The second consisted of those networks which dealt with fundraising through both legal and illegal sources. The third layer was the best protected, in terms of secrecy. It consisted of networks that handled operational logistics, target reconnaissance and surveillance, and direct action. Each network was sufficiently compartmentalized that the discovery and disruption of a single cell within the network could not do irreparable damage. The other cells would simply break all contact with its members, leaving police investigators with no leads to follow up.29 While studying jihadists’ failures from the 1970s and 1980s, Al Qaeda came to appreciate the value of tight organizational control. It diagnosed the cause of failure as an over-eagerness to expand rapidly, thereby diluting vetting standards and allowing government agents to infiltrate jihadist ranks. Instead of enhancing the quantity of its recruits, Al Qaeda focused on preserving their quality.30 It accepted that to launch a global struggle with a minuscule manpower base would require preparing successive generations for a long war. Poorly motivated volunteers had to be avoided, as they would bring the organization into disrepute by

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turning to crime, or by switching sides when things got tough. The group accepted that a trade-off would have to be made between coordinating a long-distance attack, which required regular communication between cells, and maintaining secrecy. It prioritized secrecy. In a diktat similar to Soviet intelligence doctrine, Al Qaeda insisted that every proposal for an attack should be accompanied by a security review of how the plan could be stopped from leaking.31 Even after an attack, the group would typically deny responsibility while praising the motives of the supposedly unknown attackers and describing them as heroes. This is similar to the ‘shoot-deny-applaud’ posture adopted by Russian officialdom with regard to events in Crimea in spring 2014, and in eastern Ukraine thereafter.32 The approach seeks to avoid the negative repercussions of an aggressive act while simultaneously portraying that act as provoked by the victim’s own behaviour. As a technique of psychological warfare, it is effective because Western media agencies are not intellectually resourced to cope with the phenomenon of ‘fake news’ in an age where digital technology makes information available at an exponentially faster rate than it can be screened for factual inaccuracies. Obfuscation of the investigatory trail is an integral part of jihadist practice. In a fascinating example of reinventing operational practice as ideological necessity, one trainer told a group of volunteers for suicide bombings that, when detonating their explosives, they needed to bend their heads down so that the head could be fully destroyed. Otherwise, the rest of their bodies would enter heaven while the head would be left behind in this world.33 He of course did not explain the real reason, which was that police investigators could trace the identity of a suicide bomber and his network of associates, by recovering the head and identifying it.

Skill-sharing with Pakistani groups Al Qaeda shared its skills with other jihadist groups through the 1990s by publishing a manual entitled Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad. With 800 pages of instructions on weapons handling and 250 pages on operations planning, the Encyclopedia was a handbook of terrorist tradecraft. It summarized hard-learned lessons from the Arab experience of jihadism for the benefit of a future generation of South Asian militants. A compact disc version was circulated in Pakistani bazaars.

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Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan provided hands-on training in its concepts.34 The two Pakistani groups which may have been most impacted by such training were Lashkar-e-Taiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, albeit for different reasons. LeT, being an Ahle Hadith organization, was ideologically closer to Al Qaeda’s strain of Arabian-influenced Salafism than other jihadist groups, including LeJ. Like Al Qaeda, it had ambitions of becoming an international vanguard for the eventual reestablishment of a Caliphate. And, like Al Qaeda, it had sympathizers within the Pakistani security establishment.35 Best of all, the extent of such sympathy was far more openly expressed, since LeT at that time (the 1990s) was yet to be designated an international terrorist entity by the United States. In contrast, LeJ was a Deobandi group with an avowedly sectarian agenda, aimed at promoting Sunni supremacy. As such, it was less of an ideological fit with Al Qaeda, which attempted at least superficially to rise above Shia-Sunni disagreements. But its partial estrangement from the Pakistani state after clashing with law enforcement agencies in 1997–9 brought it closer to the Arab group. As a gathering of fugitives, many of whom were unable to surface in Pakistani society, its operational reality was similar to that of Osama Bin Laden and his network of Arab Afghans. Consequently, LeJ proved an eager student of Al Qaeda counterintelligence tactics. It compartmentalized its activities into cells of two to three men, who came together to implement a task, before going their separate ways.36 Unlike Lashkar-e-Taiba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi did not have a tightly controlled hierarchical structure with its own bureaucracy. It therefore devolved planning authority to middlemanagers, who became the key link between senior leaders in hiding and the actual triggermen, the latter being freshly-recruited and thus unknown to police.37 After Al Qaeda was ousted from Afghanistan, LeT provided its members shelter in Pakistani cities while LeJ helped attack Western interests in-country. LeJ activists were indoctrinated about operational security as envisaged by Al Qaeda. According to a 24-page manual recovered from a captured terrorist in 2004, the group’s members were told: You should try not to tell your family members about your whereabouts and also avoid meeting them as this could land you in

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trouble. Our relation is with God and whatever we are doing is for God and all other relationships are meaningless. Therefore, try to avoid making friends and keeping in close touch with your relatives.38 They were also hardened to the idea of accidental encounters with the police, in order to steady their nerves: If you are travelling in a car or on a motorcycle, always keep its documents with you. Always avoid arguments with traffic cops if you break a traffic signal, as arguments could get you in trouble. If you are not carrying any weapon, never hesitate to allow your car to be searched if stopped by patrolling police, particularly if you have not been identified.39 One is reminded of the 9/11 hijackers, who were psychologically prepared to avoid confrontation with American security officials. One of them was so confident in his ability to remain undetected that he even contacted local police at one point to report a car accident.40 Pakistani police officials admitted in 2004 that any arrests of fugitive militants were due to the latter’s own mistakes than any intelligence or investigative work by law enforcement agencies. They described a jihadist web where even the lowliest operatives had been sensitized to the importance of communications security. Face-to-face conversations were preferred over telephonic ones. Whenever telephones were used, it would be from crowded locations with background noise to frustrate any eavesdroppers. Contingency plans were activated through sending SMSs, each referring to a specific type of action. For instance, cadres would be instructed to go on the run through texting the number ‘721’ to them; a weapon could be procured if the asker SMSed ‘730’. Given the hundreds of thousands of SMSs sent daily in Pakistan, it was hard for security agencies to monitor these short signals in real time and get ahead of the action they were intended to trigger.41 For its part, Lashkar-e-Taiba used its well-entrenched public visibility to create an elaborate access control system that blocked off infiltration by Western intelligence agencies. Its front organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, fulfilled the roles that were typically assigned to Hizballah’s first and second infrastructural layers: propaganda and

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recruitment, and fundraising. Only the actual planning of terrorist attacks was kept separate by a security firewall, although JuD and LeT remained parts of the same entity. In effect, when viewed together they represented what Al Qaeda may have looked like if it had ever been able to develop a political, administrative and educational infrastructure in Pakistan. JuD adopted protective measures similar to those of any semiclandestine entity. A journalist who tried to access one of its public offices in Lahore described the experience: To get in, one has to prove that one has serious business inside the building; be accompanied by some responsible member of the organization; be a regular member of the congregations that attend daily and Friday prayers there; or be a madrassa student. Otherwise, one can try to plead with the men inside the small reception room next to the barrier for hours without success.42 While JuD focused on denying physical access to potential spies, its terrorist wing was more sophisticated and concentrated on denying information to known spies. For instance, when informed by the ISI that one of its reconnaissance agents, an American national named David Headley, was likely working for Western intelligence agencies, LeT resolved to continue using him to scout targets in the Indian city of Mumbai. Its planners correctly assessed that Headley’s mission was probably to gather information on Al Qaeda, and that his handlers in the West would prioritize this task over providing forewarning to India about an imminent terrorist strike. If at all they did alert the Indian government, it would only be at the very last minute, by which time the attack would be able to proceed anyway. All that LeT needed to do was make sure Headley did not learn the exact date of the operation for which he was conducting reconnaissance—a simple precaution that served its purpose.43 As it came under sustained pressure following the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda had to outsource the planning of terrorist operations to Pakistani partners and remain quiescent itself. British officials acknowledged in 2008– 9 that 75 per cent of all terrorist plots targeting the United Kingdom were found to have a strong Pakistani connection, being either planned or facilitated in the South Asian

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country.44 The Arab group depended for its survival on the hospitality of local militants, and needed to train them to detect and eliminate intelligence threats. It launched a security awareness campaign, using money as a lubricant. Pamphlets were circulated in South Waziristan, where many of its cadres had taken refuge among local tribesmen. The pamphlets offered over US$8,000 to anyone who killed a Pakistani or Western soldier and $3,000 for killing a Pakistani spy. For the more daring, unspecified financial rewards were promised in case anyone attacked army installations, even makeshift ones like vehicle checkpoints.45 Through these methods, Al Qaeda made itself at home in Pakistan by forcing all potential competitors for the control of information out of its immediate vicinity.

Institutional Weakness and the Deep State For its part, the Pakistani state made for a benign operating environment due to a combination of weakness and complicity. It was only partially able to enforce pre-existing laws, and when such enforcement clashed with the interests of the military and intelligence leadership, lack of capacity became a convenient excuse to avoid taking action. Generally, civilian police were left to combat terrorism while the military, as the main political force, monopolized both publicity and material rewards for counterterrorism. A 2008 report by the International Crisis Group quoted police officials complaining that, although their men faced existentialist dangers, the army misrepresented itself as the country’s main counterterrorist agency.46 Multiple journalistic sources indicate that the army, through the ISI, actually calibrated the level of success achieved by the police. It did this through the simple mechanism of denying them independent ownership of technical collection systems. Instead, the ISI was made the nodal agency for electronic interception of terrorist conversations.47 While such an arrangement could ostensibly be justified to avoid asset duplication, it also had the (not entirely unexpected) side-effect of ensuring that the police would be reliant on the army and ISI’s goodwill if they were to dismantle terrorist networks. In a situation where the Pakistani Deep State differentiated between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorists depending on the identity of those targeted, this was a necessary precaution to keep the military’s strategic assets safe.

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If, in the process, the police looked incompetent for being unable to pursue terrorists, it was no bad thing because it contrasted the ineptitude of civilian institutions vis-a`-vis the military. For decades, Pakistani police have appeared incapable of effective counterterrorism. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, leader of the Sunni militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba, and his successor Riaz Basra, founder of LeJ, built their personas on a platform of populist tricks. These necessarily included making the police look stupid. Jhangvi, on one occasion, turned up for a political rally with an ‘unsuspecting’ police escort, despite being subject to an arrest warrant at the time. After delivering a fiery speech, he disappeared and remained untraceable.48 Likewise, Basra attended a public gathering held by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and got himself photographed standing within a few feet of the man.49 He sent the photograph to law enforcement agencies, who were hoping that his confederates would betray him for the five million rupee reward that had been announced for information leading to his arrest. These instances, both of which were known to the Pakistani journalistic community, contributed to an overall crisis of confidence that the police could keep civil society safe. Investigatory foul-ups in the aftermath of terrorist attacks did not help the police’s reputation. Since the 1990s, it has been standard practice for Pakistani law enforcement agencies to blame unsolved bombings on a ‘foreign hand’.50 Typically, this is a reference to India but can also mean Israel or the United States, depending on the situation. On many occasions such claims backfired because, shortly after the police announced foreign culpability for a bombing, a local (usually sectarian) group would take responsibility and supply videotaped evidence demonstrating that the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin. Yet, despite the new information, the authorities would invariably desist from investigating religious institutions that might be linked to the attack. Such restraint stemmed from fear of what their enquiries might reveal. It was not really misplaced; in the mid 1990s, policemen hunting for Ramzi Yousef, the Al Qaeda terrorist wanted by the United States for planning simultaneous bombings of intercontinental airliners, found their work jointly impeded by Jamaat-e-Islami and the ISI. The religious party and its Deep State patron warned the police that Yousef’s associates, who were being arrested in order to locate him, were advancing the ‘cause of Islam’.51

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It seems as though worry about upsetting the ISI also caused Pakistani police to ignore the proliferation of radical madrassas across the country. At one point, civil authorities in Sindh allegedly had to gather data from news reports in order to compile an intelligence picture of the number and locations of seminaries in the province, since the police had not collected such information themselves.52 Even when civilian officials tried to enforce formal regulations against madrassas, such as the need to track their funding sources, the porosity of Pakistan’s economy allowed these efforts to be circumvented. According to the International Crisis Group, by the early 2000s, the amount of money received from hawala (unregulated) donations made overseas totalled the government’s annual revenue from direct income taxes. Of this total amount, 94 per cent was being routed to religious parties and educational institutions, with the state apparatus unable to impede the flow.53 Police forces were hamstrung by resource constraints. Karachi’s bomb squad was rendered inoperative in the 2000s by the death of its chief. The local government was thus forced to call out the navy’s explosive ordnance disposal team every time a suspicious package was reported.54 The city police operated without accountability and gave little thought to falsely claiming credit for solving cases that were actually going nowhere. In one farcical example, it claimed to have identified a mysterious assassin who had carried out a high-profile shooting. The problem was, in the following days, the police’s own records revealed that the man in question had been killed while in police custody seven years earlier. Initially, the force tried to brazen its way out of the public embarrassment. Later, it was compelled to admit that it had been too quick to close the case and declare an investigatory ‘success’.55

Risk of physical elimination Such fudging was partly a result of inability to protect policemen from reprisals. Assassination has been a real possibility for police and intelligence officials who pursue terrorists too assiduously. For all the political discourse about Pakistani jihadists being ‘non-state’ actors, the fact remains that they possess an uncanny ability to surgically home in on targets they want eliminated. Such precise targeting data can only be obtained in a permissive operational environment, where conducting surveillance on a marked man is easier due to inside help or extremely lax personal security procedures. In 1997, Sunni sectarian militants killed

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the brother-in-law of the Punjab home minister, an event which led to other police officials writing public letters of apology to the militants, seeking forgiveness.56 Between 2000 and 2006, at least 111 Karachi police officials were killed mysteriously, many of whom had been dismissed or suspended from duty and, thus, were rendered ineligible to receive state-funded bodyguards. The only common link between them was that they had all previously worked on counterterrorism investigations.57 Partly as a result of this example, when the Karachi police later set up a specialist counterterrorism unit, it could not find volunteers to staff it. Nor was the danger limited to provincial-level law enforcement personnel. Two officers of the Intelligence Bureau, a civilian agency under federal control, were killed in Karachi in March 2008 while on their daily commutes home. Both worked in counterterrorism.58 The ability to wreak vengeance on top-rank government functionaries has been a factor in retarding Pakistani police efforts against terrorism. A Senior Superintendent of Police, who likely played a crucial role in the custodial killing of Riaz Basra, was himself murdered later by unknown assailants. A Deputy Inspector General of Police was killed in what the government publicly described as a botched robbery attempt, but what his colleagues told the media was a ‘hit’ orchestrated to punish him for too closely investigating a suicide bombing at an army camp.59 In light of this, it was hardly surprising that when one factional leader of the Pakistani Taliban told policemen in his area of operations to either quit their jobs or be killed, 700 out of a total force of 1,700 deserted their posts.60 With the slow erosion of police numbers and physical presence, Islamist militants have gained control of their own informational environment to an unprecedented extent. In August 2015, this point was spectacularly driven home when a double suicide bombing killed the Punjab home minister, along with 16 others, at his residence. At the time, the minister had been supervising a crackdown on LeJ.61 To solve terrorism cases, police investigators have relied on one of two methods: either they wait until a paid informer overhears gossip in the militant community about who the perpetrators might be or, if the case has international ramifications, they wait to receive technical assistance from foreign intelligence agencies. Tellingly, they do not always expect help from Pakistani intelligence agencies.62 Yet, even when provided with actionable intelligence, the police often lack the capacity to take

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down a terrorist hideout unaided. In 2009, only a few thousand personnel from the entire country’s police strength of 380,000 were trained to confront armed opponents. Punjab, the richest province, was best prepared. But, even there, 25 per cent of policemen were issued automatic weapons. The average police trainee fired a total of 65 rounds during six months of training, and had no mission-specific preparation for combating terrorism.63 Pursuing armed militants was treated on par with beat policing—a grotesque misrepresentation of operational reality. Even much-touted efforts to create Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units flopped, due to lack of institutional awareness in how to support and sustain such units. Such ignorance was endemic. In the 1990s, the Punjab police had raised a 1,500-man commando unit called the ‘Elite Force’ to combat terrorism. Instead of being kept together as a cohesive entity—which is the primary strength of SWAT teams—many of the unit’s operators were dispersed and rotated back to routine police duties after completing training. A security expert commented in disgust about the waste of money that the force represented, arguing that ‘if there is no effective command structure and the units are not kept intact, it’s like having an F-16 without a pilot.’64 Unsurprisingly, with no esprit de corps to uphold, even Elite Force-trained policemen succumbed to the same temptations as regular policemen. In 1999, the force was rocked by a scandal when one of its members was found to be holding a second job—as ringleader of a gang of motorcycle thieves.65 Unlike the police, militants did not have to avoid collateral damage. In seeking to deny intelligence to the government, they would be much more indiscriminate than those who collected intelligence on their activities. For example, both the Pakistani Taliban and Sipah-e-Sahaba targeted the Shia Hazara community of Baluchistan as an ethnic group, and not merely as individuals. Hazaras had opposed the Afghan Taliban through the 1990s and were suspected of informing on them to Western intelligence agencies after 2001. As the Afghan Taliban were based in Quetta (the so-called ‘Quetta Shura Taliban’), militants made every effort to expel or intimidate Hazaras, who numbered 300,000, through shooting rampages and suicide bombings. Likewise, Shias from Gilgit were attacked across Pakistan, because members of their community were thought to have assisted in the capture of Al Qaeda operatives in Karachi, such as 9/11 plotter Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. (Gilgiti Shias had a

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grievance against Arab Afghans since 1988, for having assisted in the massacre of 700 Shias by Pakistani Sunni militants.)66 While jihadists set about eliminating anyone suspected of informing on them, Pakistani intelligence agencies, in the opinion of informed journalists, spent most of their time focused on preserving the army’s political authority. Even during periods of civilian rule, the politicization of intelligence detracted substantially from the effectiveness of counterterrorist efforts. Imtiaz Gul, reporter for the Friday Times, has suggested that poor quality manpower and low pay structures, when coupled with lack of institutional oversight, diminished the effectiveness of Pakistani spy agencies against terrorism.67 Another writer asked: ‘why is it that the activities of a small wing or the illegal detentions carried out by these agencies is all that we ever hear about? And it is not simply because most of the “good” work of these agencies is carried out in secrecy, away from the eyes and ears of society. Perhaps it is because they have rarely excelled at what should have been their primary tasks.’68

Counterterrorist efforts frustrated by the Deep State Instead of public security, intelligence agencies served the interests of the Deep State, even when these clashed with the policy objectives of elected governments. This has been going on since the 1990s, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to get the Afghan Taliban to deport Osama Bin Laden were frustrated by a group of high-ranking army and ISI officials. The latter told Taliban chief Mullah Omar to only obey instructions from the Pakistani army chief of general staff, an officer who was sympathetic to militants. Six years earlier, US officials had informed Sharif of a comparable subterfuge, when he learned that his trusted ISI chief, Javed Nasir, had been supporting separatist militants in friendly countries like Sri Lanka.69 As journalist Ahmed Rashid notes, the ISI played games with foreign partners as well. One of Al Qaeda’s top operatives, Abu Zubaydah, lived in Peshawar for several years in the 1990s while working as a subcontractor for the ISI. His job was to vet Kashmiri volunteers for Afghan training camps. When asked to extradite him, the agency denied any knowledge of his whereabouts.70 His arrest in 2002, from a safe house managed by Lashkar-e-Taiba, only occurred because Western intelligence agencies provided specific and real-time information, leaving the ISI with no choice but to act on it.71

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Perhaps the best assessment of the Pakistani Deep State’s links with Al Qaeda was made by British scholar Shaun Gregory: The crucial point is not that the ISI is aiding Al Qaeda directly— although some of its operatives may be—but rather that Pakistan’s geopolitical interests, and in particular the ISI’s promotion of panIslamist jihad, make it an unreliable ally for the West and plays into Al Qaeda’s hands.72 He further notes: Almost all of the leading Al Qaeda figures captured or killed in Pakistan were located by US or Western intelligence, rather than by the ISI. Indeed Pakistan’s formulation that they ‘will act on actionable intelligence’ neatly passes the onus to the United States and the West to initiate operations against Al Qaeda.73 Pakistan’s inability to follow through on its promises to combat jihadist terrorism were partly caused by gaps in capability, and partly by gaps in resolve. The Deep State operated with impunity in the same ill-governed spaces that jihadists did, and with agendas that were not entirely opposed. Yet, due to the transnational orientation of militant Islamism in South Asia, Western governments were compelled to rely on Pakistan to help combat their domestic terrorist threats. They did so, apparently aware of the unreliable nature of this ‘ally’. Several researchers have found that information received from foreign partners, particularly those with a focus on domestic intelligence collection, is perhaps the most crucial component of building a threat assessment of jihadism.74 But with Pakistan as a partner, that threat assessment can only be patchy, since Islamist militants in that country have human terrain advantages in preserving their secrets. The next chapter examines how they move beyond defensive postures, into the realm of actively seeking intelligence for growth purposes.

CHAPTER 5 INFORMATION COLLECTION

Pakistan is a tolerant country—it allows a broad range of militant groups to operate within its borders, from indigenous to foreign, de-centralized to personality-dominated. The intelligence practices of these groups, and their relationship with the Deep State, remain wellguarded secrets. But a review of academic and journalistic sources, together with inductive analysis of militant movements elsewhere in the world, provides a snapshot of how they operate. This chapter examines militant intelligence collection over the course of three sections. The first section describes the nature of intelligence activities by sub-state actors, whether they are ‘non-state’ rogue entities or ‘para-state’ proxy warriors. It suggests that their focus is mainly on target acquisition. Counterintelligence is weak for all but the most disciplined and bureaucratized militant organizations. When such intricately layered organizations do exist, they become capable of assessing their external environment, and especially the international system, with some objectivity. This makes them doubly dangerous because they calibrate their violence accordingly, taking advantage of fissures in the intergovernmental consensus against terrorism.1 The second section looks at the role played by organized crime in corrupting state institutions and making them vulnerable to militant infiltration. By allowing law enforcement agencies, including federal paramilitary forces, to become stakeholders in conflict economies, the Pakistani security establishment has inadvertently opened its doors to poorly vetted militant sympathizers who rise within the ranks until they reach positions of influence. Such positions do not need to be very senior; on the contrary,

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the closer a militant sympathizer is to grassroots-level police operations, the more useful s/he can be to ‘fellow-travellers’ still operating underground.2 Using a case study of police operations in Karachi during the 1990s, this section demonstrates how the Deep State created a culture of impunity that corroded the instruments of law and order, to the point of a general breakdown in public security. Finally, the last section examines media reportage about linkages between the Deep State and militant operations, and considers whether ‘reverse indoctrination’ has occurred—is the client now controlling the patron by ‘turning’ the same intelligence operatives originally meant to oversee militancy?

How Do Militant Groups Collect Intelligence? In 1992, the American scholar J. Bowyer Bell analysed how insurgent and terrorist groups gather and use intelligence. The thrust of his argument may be summarized as follows: There will be a persistent rebel demand for technical details, tactical intelligence, and counterintelligence but rarely a demand for strategic intelligence. The committed already know the direction of history and the answers to the major strategic questions. Every rebel assumes that the movement has caught the rising tide of history, assumes that it will secure justice and that the example of the faithful will stir up insurrection among others, and knows that the enemy is inherently flawed, doomed by history. The need is to begin, to act, to revolt, and so to accelerate history. Rebel intelligence is data about means, not ends.3 According to Bell, ‘[r]ebel intelligence, even the most focused, is fractured by the prism of faith—and almost always a faith alien to the orthodox.’4 Hence, it is necessary for government analysts to aggressively ‘red-team’, i.e., to make a conscious effort to understand how terrorists and insurgents see the world. Such comprehension is essential so that security planners can estimate the long-term threat that militants pose, by gauging their political resilience.

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Long-term perspective As mentioned in the introductory chapter of this book, jihadism is a multi-generational threat. It relies on historical forces to achieve its aim. Newer generations of militants learn from their predecessors’ tactical and strategic mistakes. If, as with some Pakistani groups, they are backed by a professional intelligence service, they can develop a sophisticated understanding of their operating environment and strike for long-term, strategic effect. But such state support only strengthens their resources and situational awareness; it does not, by itself, guarantee that they will emerge victorious. For that, the first challenge they must face—alone— is survival. Information denial is the initial step towards gaining control of their environment. If security forces cannot locate rebels, they cannot eliminate them. But information denial at the level described in Chapter 4 is mostly passive, with a few active penetrations of government agencies whenever rebels are lucky enough to find a defector-in-place. Information collection has an altogether different purpose: to help a terrorist or insurgent movement expand its activities. Active counterintelligence measures are used not just to protect the militant network from being dismantled, but to identify individuals among the security forces, whose physical elimination would deal a severe blow to government intelligence capabilities. Targeted killing is, therefore, the end-goal of active counterintelligence as far as most terrorist groups are concerned. For this, they need to sustain their informer networks long enough. Here is where the question of time becomes important. Anecdotal evidence from low intensity conflicts worldwide points towards a patient rebel infiltration of government ranks, lasting many years. The Vietcong would send female operatives to English-language courses so that they could work as lowly secretarial staff on American military bases.5 The Irish Republican Army would recruit children in grammar schools, grooming them to become sleeper agents who could grow up to work in the government security bureaucracy, and bring down the system from within.6 Hizballah elevated the spy game to a new level, when it succeeded in ‘turning’ trusted Israeli intelligence sources and used them to lure both Israeli special forces and intelligence operatives into traps on more than one occasion during 1997 – 2000.7

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Active counterintelligence is a luxury that many terrorist groups do not have, particularly if the demands of operational security require that they be compartmentalized into small cells under a loose command structure. When a ready sanctuary is not available on the territory of a supportive sovereign state, adopting such a de-centralized structure becomes essential. To have a top-down command hierarchy would risk losing everything if, as happened with the Peruvian leftist group Shining Path in 1992, the overall chief is neutralized.8 But when a terrorist group adopts a networked system of operations, what is gained in terms of survivability is lost in terms of efficiency.9 Networked structures have at least a partially bottom-up management style, with subordinate cadres enjoying considerable leeway to initiate their own operations using whatever resources they can raise. This makes their activities more difficult to track but also less prone to innovation. Networks are less capable of developing institutional memories because they are dependent on a few linkmen to connect their component parts. Removal of even one of these linkmen, whether by arrest or death, weakens the operational capacity of the entire network until a trusted replacement can be found.10 In contrast, with bureaucratic, hierarchically-structured groups, personnel files can be kept, succession lines preagreed upon, and strategic infiltration-penetration operations launched against enemy governments. All that is needed is a safe haven, from which the basic ‘staff work’ essential for planning a long-term and phased campaign can be carried out. In the late 1990s, Al Qaeda had such a safe haven in Afghanistan, which was why it was able to gather, in detail, all the operational information needed for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa and the 9/11 attacks thereafter.11 Similarly, the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba was able to plan a multilocational and synchronized attack on Mumbai in 2008, because it had a secure planning and training area in Pakistan (in fact, as Pakistani government officials revealed in their own subsequent investigation, there were several specialized training sites dotted across Pakistan).12 To understand the difference, it is helpful to contrast the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with Hizballah. Although FARC was organized according to a pyramid structure, its commanders had a great deal of freedom to recruit new cadres and launch attacks. This meant government spies had little difficulty in penetrating the group, due to cursory vetting. Why the FARC insurgency lasted as

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long as it did (over 50 years) had more to do with the government’s weakness than the insurgents’ strength. Like the rebels, Colombian security forces were unable to maintain the impermeability of their own ranks to intelligence penetration. The rebels understood the value of insider information and would use penetration agents, including ‘honeytrapped’ security officials, to thwart counterinsurgency efforts.13 Both sides proved adept at target acquisition (identifying and reconnoitring an attack site) but not at counterintelligence.14 With American technical support, the Colombian military pulled off some impressive coups, such as surreptitiously taking control of a FARC communications network and misdirecting it to release high-value hostages being held by the group. Hizballah, on the other hand, benefited from a physical sanctuary in Lebanon and Iranian and Syrian state sponsorship, as it launched crossborder operations against Israel. It was thus able to maintain tight discipline over its cadres and space out its operations, ensuring the basic integrity of internal communications. Furthermore, with Iranian backing it penetrated the highest levels of the Lebanese security community in 1998, when one of its sympathizers became head of army counterintelligence. Over the following years, the Lebanese military was seeded with Hizballah activists, appointed to sensitive jobs by a handful of agents sitting at the apex of the power structure. The result was a marked improvement in Hizballah’s active counterintelligence. By 2011, the group was using commercially available software to monitor cell phone data for signs that a caller might be working for Israeli intelligence. Among these were irregular usage of a secondary mobile phone, for brief periods, for calls made to the same set of numbers. Once a name was flagged up, Hizballah agents would mount surveillance of the suspect, which was usually enough to produce evidence of guilt.15 Due to its backers among Middle Eastern governments, Hizballah has gone on to become one of the most sophisticated terrorist groups in the world, capable of being considered a ‘shadow state’. The extent of its intelligence reach is illustrated by the following anecdote: on one occasion, agents from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) flew to the Tri-Border Area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay to discreetly observe Hizballah activities. Since the group had carried out bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina during 1992– 4, concern

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about its presence among the Lebanese diaspora in Latin America had grown. Minimum advance notice was given to the host country and there was no official welcoming party at the airport. After the FBI agents had deplaned and were walking across the tarmac, their pagers went off, signalling that they should call their New York office, which was supervising the mission. They called immediately and learned that a mysterious fax had come in. It contained only a picture of the FBI agents who had disembarked from the plane a few minutes ago.16

Tactical reconnaissance in Pakistan In Pakistan, there is a split between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorists, depending on whether they target the Pakistani security forces. ‘Good’ terrorists like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are left free to use the country’s sovereignty as a political shield behind which they can gather intelligence on overseas targets. Media reports in 2009 revealed that LeT had compiled surveillance reports of at least 320 possible targets worldwide, of which just 20 were in India.17 Its base in Punjab—a province with high emigration levels to the West—allowed the group to build logistics and intelligence networks extending to Europe and North America. In contrast, ‘bad’ terrorists who were at war with the Pakistani state, such as factions of the Pakistani Taliban, were focused on gathering tactical intelligence for local use. Interrogation by Pakistani police of captured informants working for terrorist groups revealed a pattern: the informant would adopt a disguise and enter the immediate vicinity of a target, observing levels of vigilance and scouting for vulnerabilities. In some cases, the disguise could be that of a fruit-seller (as was used in the targeted killing of a police official) or a beggar (used in the killing of the Pakistani army’s surgeon-general). Surveillance would be mounted over several days to establish a pattern and lull any security forces personnel, who might be present, into complacency.18 On other occasions, the surveillance would be carried out once and recorded on video for repeated viewing by the attack planners. For a 2002 attack on the US consulate in Karachi, for instance, the terrorist reconnaissance team posed as a wedding party and traversed the road in front of the consulate with much fanfare, filming the compound’s security strongpoints.19 Whether fugitive non-state actors looking to strike back at the establishment, or favoured para-state actors scrutinizing foreign targets,

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Pakistani jihadist groups followed Al Qaeda’s copybook.20 Rather than rely solely on penetration agents (working inside or close to the targeted locations), they preferred to insert one of their own intelligence operatives into the target’s vicinity. In doing so, they hedged against the possibility of exaggeration by untested sources, who may have had a vested interest in either protecting a site from attack, or encouraging an attack under any circumstances. All terrorists, regardless of their ethnic origins, have to be economical in their use of resources; even a rich jihadist organization cannot afford the reputational cost of too many failures. To ensure that planning for an attack takes ground realities into consideration, a certain amount of redundancy is built into the process of creating a target folder. Such practice is not new. In 1986, one US Secret Service agent commented: Terrorists usually have good intelligence. Detailed sketches and other residue obtained from terrorist operations indicate that their planning and their surveillance notes are considerably more detailed and carefully done than are the average security plans for the target facilities. They know exactly what they are doing and do it quite well. Examination of captured material after a terrorist attack often reveals much more detailed preparation given to the attack than is given to the defense.21 This statement holds especially true for the 2008 raid on Mumbai by ten suicidal gunmen from LeT: the attack planners anticipated several seemingly minor hitches that may have otherwise detracted from the gunmen’s focus, such as how to deal with inquisitive locals who could alert the police before the attack commenced, and where the nearest police stations were situated. Lashkar-e-Taiba had a high level of skill in intelligence tradecraft because of its close ties with the Pakistani intelligence community and the military. The main scout for the 2008 Mumbai attack, a PakistaniAmerican named David Headley (original name: Daood Gilani), told US and Indian interrogators that he had been trained by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).22 He also revealed that the ten gunmen who attacked Mumbai had been trained by former members of the counterterrorist hostage rescue unit of the Pakistani army special forces. In light of such disclosures, LeT appears to be a jihadist version of Los Zetas, the Mexican

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drug cartel which, by recruiting former special forces personnel into its ranks, introduced a new level of brutality to inter-cartel violence. The Zetas mastered both human intelligence collection, as well as active counterintelligence, due to the skills obtained from ex-soldiers.23 One assessment held that they were ‘smarter and better strategists than the Mexican military itself.’24 Unlike Los Zetas, which attracted military personnel by offering much higher salaries than the government could, LeT offers Pakistani soldiers opportunities to wage war on India which they cannot avail of as formal employees of the state machinery. Being subject to the discipline of a uniformed service, special forces soldiers, no matter how much they may wish to exploit Indian vulnerabilities through hit-and-run raids, cannot act on their own. Upon retiring from the military (or, as is suspected in some cases, taking a long and unpaid ‘leave’), they are free to act as they wish. LeT connects with such individuals at the level of ideology rather than materialism. Most government intelligence services, on the other hand, operate according to a recruitment paradigm inherited from the late Cold War, which prioritizes the monetization of information.25 Western spy agencies, in particular, developed considerable expertise in technical collection but never matched the Soviet bloc in the narrow field of old-fashioned espionage.26 This deficiency lingers in counterterrorism intelligence efforts, such that when highly bureaucratized and publicly visible jihadist groups such as LeT conduct recruitments of Pakistani military personnel, there is little opening for foreign intelligence services to suborn one of the recruits and turn him into a human source. This is not to suggest that a purely dichotomous relationship exists between ideology and materialism. The two can and do overlap, but not in ways that favour the government intelligence apparatus. Rather, the corruption of state agencies by organized crime networks weakens the integrity of vetting processes and allows terrorists to enter government service. In Pakistan, there have been certain attacks on ‘hard’ or protected targets, such as military bases or unmarked vehicles, where inside help has been strongly suspected.27 These include an attack on Army General Headquarters in 2009, an attack on a naval base in 2011 and three attacks on regional offices of the ISI.28 All the abovementioned operations showed signs of being enabled by ‘rogue’ elements within the military.

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Lest this seem a problem confined only to the national security establishment, it needs to be mentioned that the civilian police is not immune. One of the jihadists involved in the 2002 abduction and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl was a junior official of the Special Branch in Karachi.29 Police in Punjab had a similar shock in 2010 when it was discovered the head of their Special Branch’s computer department was a jihadist spy previously arrested for planning bomb attacks. After being released for lack of evidence, he lay low for a few years, before applying for a low-level clerical job with the force and subsequently being transferred to the Special Branch. There, he ended up overseeing the electronic documentation of all handwritten intelligence reports compiled by the police. His unmasking had parallels with an earlier scandal, when Al Qaeda was found to have a human source inside the Punjab police who leaked information about the travel itineraries of senior government officials, allowing them to be targeted for assassination.30

Corruption and the ‘Privatization of Violence’ Pakistan did not become a host for jihadist groups solely because of the Soviet-Afghan War. There were also conditions intrinsic to the country, which fructified in the 1990s and ensured that the state machinery lost control over parts of its territory. To some extent, this loss of control was self-inflicted. In seeking to limit the strength of political movements which could challenge the military’s right to interventionism, the Deep State gradually shared its monopoly over the legitimate use of force with para-state actors who did its bidding. In a slow process that paralleled, but did not mirror, the privatization of violence in Russia following the democratic transition in the 1990s, the post-Zia Pakistani state allowed conflict entrepreneurship to subvert its enforcement agencies.31 The building blocks were already in place; Zia’s regime was notoriously corrupt. To preserve his power, the military dictator doled out favours to the army at the expense of the civilian taxpayer. Gifting prime real estate to fellow generals and allowing the army to become a commercial player in the economy prolonged his rule, and also created a vested interest for the army to resist any future civilian attempt to limit its political authority. With provincial governorships being awarded to Zia cronies, public administration at various levels became a cover for

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racketeering. One of the most prolific ‘entrepreneurs’ was the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province, Fazle Haq. Described as ‘Pakistan’s Noriega’, he oversaw a ballooning heroin trade in the country, as raw opium was cultivated and processed into finished heroin at makeshift laboratories across the tribal areas.32 Members of Zia’s entourage were implicated by Western governments for smuggling heroin.33 With their help, narcotics revenue in Pakistan rose from $384 million in 1984 to $1.8 billion in 1992.34 Western and Pakistani writers claim that the Pakistani army used vehicles from the National Logistics Cell (NLC) to transport heroin from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to international shipping points in Karachi. Since NLC lorries were anyway used to ferry army supplies to the Afghan mujahideen from warehouses in Karachi, the system ensured that no suspicions were raised about what cargo they carried on the return leg of their journey.35 Together with a thriving illicit arms trade, consisting of weapons siphoned off by ISI operatives in the frontier cities of Peshawar and Quetta, drugs ensured that the Soviet-Afghan War presented significant opportunities for personal enrichment within the military regime.36

City of death With the restoration of civilian rule in 1988, the ‘action’ shifted south towards Karachi. The two most influential political groups in Sindh province, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Quami Mahaz (MQM—its original name had been Muhajir Quami Movement) were at each other’s throats.37 Although the army high command initially supported the MQM, by 1991, it switched to the PPP. One of the reasons may have been the MQM’s criticism of military corruption and interference in civilian governance. Army spokesmen levelled charges of street hooliganism and extortion against the party, but these could have applied to any other mainstream political organization in Karachi, including the PPP.38 The army claimed that the MQM was different: the party, whose constituents were descendants of 1947-era immigrants from India, supposedly harboured separatist ambitions. As proof, army officials produced a map which had purportedly been recovered from an MQM office. The map suggested that the party wanted to attain independence for the city of Karachi from the rest of Pakistan. On the basis of this ‘evidence’ the army launched an offensive

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against the MQM in June 1992, having previously bribed some of the party’s leaders to form a ‘dissident’ faction. The dissidents front-ended the attack and lent it a veneer of legitimacy among the local population. One journalist observed that this ploy was ‘a grim throwback to the last days of East Pakistan, when right-wing groups like the Al Badr and Al Shams were trained and armed by the army to tackle proindependence Awami League activists and intellectuals before Bangladesh broke free.’39 It took almost two decades before the map was acknowledged by high-ranking ISI and army officials to have been a forgery, concocted to justify the military crackdown.40 Although these officials did not explain the reason for the subterfuge, one eminent Pakistani columnist voiced his own suspicions. Shortly before the crackdown occurred, the army’s public image had been dented by the massacre of nine villagers in a land dispute at Tando Bahawal village in Sindh province. The officer who conducted the massacre tried to cover it up as an anti-banditry operation.41 Within two weeks, as media reportage on the army’s abuses of power started to mount, the army high command ordered troops to move into Karachi as part of a law enforcement effort. Yet, the supposed target of this deployment, the MQM, already knew what was coming and made sure that its cadres went underground beforehand.42 Only the media and civilian bystanders were present on the city’s thoroughfares to watch the military crackdown unfold. Apparently, the MQM suspected that it was being used a convenient distraction to re-focus the media’s attention away from Tando Bahawal. Over the next six years, until 1998, Karachi was afflicted by a level of urban violence unseen in any major city outside a war zone. The two factions of the MQM battled it out in alleyways, their favourite tactic being close-range assassination with firearms.43 For informational support, both sides recruited human sources. In the case of the dissident faction, such recruitment allegedly extended to filming the rape of young boys and blackmailing them to spy on the main MQM group.44 The army meanwhile supported the dissident faction through operations that were supposedly conducted by the city police, but actually took place outside the police command structure. Initially, Field Intelligence Teams, manned by soldiers and with a token police presence, conducted raids against the MQM. Later, after the army was withdrawn from the streets, the raids were conducted by the Rangers, an army-officered

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paramilitary force.45 These operations involved house-to-house searches of entire neighbourhoods. They presented an opportunity for unbridled extortion—multiple accounts suggest that innocent youth were arrested, falsely charged with terrorist offences, and their families forced to sell jewellery and heirlooms to raise ransom money and secure their release from custody.46 Policemen accompanying the raiding parties were not mute spectators either. Many were suspected of moonlighting as spotters for criminal gangs, which would use the information gained from search parties to break into those homes which showed signs of hidden wealth.47 One reporter described the security forces’ methods as follows: Usually when a youth is picked up by the rangers or police, the elders of the community go to the police station to vouch for the boy’s innocence. After a bit of benchwarming and pleading on the elders’ part, a member of the lower staff will take one of the elders aside and explain how the boy is in a tight spot, the police have evidence of his involvement in a number of crimes, and what it will cost to have the boy released. The average rate for releasing innocent boys is generally between 10,000 and 20,000 rupees. The longer he is in custody the higher the rate and, of course, if the youngster is guilty the price shoots up.48 In other words, the police were not just corrupt—for the right price, they were willing to be both corrupt and complicit in abetting the escape of a genuine criminal from custody. The press noted that the presence of drug traffickers tended to increase in precisely those neighbourhoods from where security forces had forced the MQM to flee.49 The reason was not hard to find: policemen were happy to ignore the drug trade, in return for a cut of the profits. By keeping traffickers out of its strongholds, the MQM was capping the city-wide earning potential of the police force. So it had to go. On the other hand, if drug traffickers were slow to pay protection money as demanded by the police, they were speedily eliminated.50 The ‘privatization’ of violence collaterally led to a ‘privatization’ of intelligence, as different profit-making networks strove to stay ahead of their competitors. After the US-led invasion of Afghanistan pushed Taliban militancy inside Pakistani borders, organized crime became the

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crucial link that connected radical Islamists, street-level gangs (and their local sources of information), and government institutions that were supposed to maintain domestic order. In the aftermath of the Pakistani army’s 2004 incursions into the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan, Taliban supporters from these areas relocated to Karachi.51 Here, they made contact with the city’s Pashtun settlers, who provided them with two assets: impoverished youth, bereft of social moorings and ready to be brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers, and money.52 In some cases, the two lines of supply converged: militants kidnapped young boys and threatened to use them as suicide bombers if the parents did not pay a ransom.53

Criminality buys information Kidnapping provided an excellent cover for militant activities in urban areas. It used the same tools of intelligence-gathering: focused surveillance of a human target over many days, to identify and establish his routine and vulnerabilities therein. Jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban sub-contracted kidnapping syndicates in Karachi and other large cities to procure victims for them, who could then be used as hostages in political negotiations. The abduction in 2010 of the son-in-law of a serving top general was one such case.54 The victim was chosen by the Pakistani Taliban, and snatched from Lahore by a local gang with links to the sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, who were anyway allied with the Taliban. The gang arranged for him to be hidden in its safe-houses while search parties were looking for him, and then surreptitiously transported to North Waziristan in the tribal areas. For their trouble, they were financially compensated. Thereafter, control over the victim’s fate rested with the Pakistani Taliban as negotiations dragged on. Finally, in March 2012, the victim was released after 18 months in captivity and the payment of a substantial ransom.55 Monetary interests created a common platform between criminals, jihadists and former military personnel. Al Qaeda hired an ex-army major to abduct wealthy Pakistanis across the country when it faced a funding shortage. The officer, it must be said, was also motivated by personal and ideological interests: his brother, a retired army captain, had been killed in action while fighting alongside Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Even so, his willingness to assist an Arab, non-Pakistani group target his fellow-citizens suggests just how weak ideas of

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nationhood and sovereignty had become in a country permeated by both militant and mafia networks.56 Interestingly, from press reportage of extortion practices, it seems that criminal groups usually had a detailed intelligence picture of their potential victims’ net worth and current liquidity.57 When conducting kidnappings, they sometimes went to the extent of setting up cover businesses along the route that the victims would have to be transported. For instance, in 2012, Karachi police discovered that some small enterprises along the Super Highway that led out of the city were actually observation posts for kidnapping gangs.58 Cash has undermined Pakistani defences against terrorism in other ways too, notably in the realm of identity theft. By the end of the 2000s, the country’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was uncovering 50 cases annually at its Quetta office alone of foreign nationals being issued local identity papers which they were not entitled to possess.59 While it might be tempting to dismiss this as a consequence of loose administration along the Afghan border, in fact the fake identity racket was strongest in Lahore. Here, staff of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) sold biometric information to terrorist fugitives which helped them forge ‘genuine’ identity documents. On one occasion, FIA officials raided a NADRA branch in the city and discovered that the employees were running a photocopying business literally across the street, which served as a cover for the production of false papers.60 With such opportunities for criminality to eat away at the integrity of governance, one might be tempted to believe that state actors’ patronage of militant groups, too, is a result of ‘rogue’ behaviour on the part of isolated individuals. The reality is more complicated, however. While the Deep State remains above ideology and is committed only to the perpetuation of its own power, its instruments are susceptible to ‘influencing’ by jihadist logic. What some scholars have described as ‘reverse indoctrination’ is more subtle; often, it is not the intelligence agencies themselves which are permeated with pro-militant sentiments (after all, who would want their understudies to start telling them what to do).61 Rather, personnel from other services of the Pakistani security establishment, including those which are on the periphery of the state’s association with jihadist groups, imbibe radical ideas in an effort to boost their self-importance. Pakistan does indeed have a problem with

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‘rogue’ operatives, but that is only because they overstep the limits of their role and adopt the Deep State’s policies as their own.

The Myth of ‘Reverse Indoctrination’ A curious factor which deserves closer scrutiny is why several of Pakistan’s proxy wars as well as domestic support for militant groups originated from the Intelligence Bureau (IB). While the ISI gets much attention for having sponsored the Taliban and other radical Islamists, the IB’s role has been virtually ignored. Yet, it was this agency which organized the Islamist underground in the Indian province of Jammu & Kashmir after 1947. It was the IB which supported Sikh separatists in the early 1970s before the ISI took over their training.62 It was the IB which spearheaded Islamabad’s outreach to Durrani Pashtuns in Afghanistan during the 1990s, who went on to form the Taliban. The ISI had spent the whole duration of the Soviet-Afghan War cultivating the Durranis’ arch-rivals, the Ghilzai Pashtuns, which put this particular agency at a disadvantage when the IB’s backing of the Taliban paid off and the latter emerged as a serious politico-military force in Afghanistan.63 Lastly, the IB was responsible for the bloody factional split within the MQM in Karachi. As admitted by one former army official, much of the killing that took place in the city during the 1990s was due to the MQM dissident faction being given a free hand by its controllers in the intelligence community.64 To understand the IB’s contribution to Pakistani jihadism, and particularly why ‘reverse indoctrination’ of intelligence personnel might only be a myth, one has to recognize two points. First, the IB is responsible for maintaining the domestic security of Pakistan, a task it shares with the ISI’s political and counterintelligence wings. Second, the IB has been subject since the 1980s to a creeping militarization, which began under the Zia regime and has continued ever since. So, even if it is ostensibly a ‘civilian’ agency, it is only partly one. Moreover, its focus on internal affairs might have resulted in the agency persisting with the old colonial-era policing tactic of setting criminals against each other. Used with good effect by the British against the Thugee cult in nineteenthcentury India, the technique acquired a murderous edge along the Afghan frontier, where it led to vigilantism funded by government money. In Pakistan, police officials (the IB being originally a

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police-dominated agency) have touted the virtues of using one group of criminals to fight and weaken another. One journalist quoted a senior police officer: ‘I usually patronize small groups of criminals and allow them to commit minor illegal activities. In return, they provide information about the bigger criminals; sometimes they even kill [the bigger criminals] to weaken them.’ On occasion, the authorities would provide arms to the smaller group of criminals in order to embolden them to attack the larger groups.65 Interestingly, groups that are supposedly clients of the Deep State also suspect it of playing this game against them: engineering provocative actions which can then be scapegoated onto them. Thus, MQM dissidents accused intelligence operatives of carrying out atrocities in their name, while Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam suggested the ISI was manipulating local Taliban groups to ratchet up violence, in order to weaken the party as a political actor.66 Even Jamaat-e-Islami accused unspecified ‘intelligence agencies’ of inserting agent provocateurs into its rallies in order to serve hidden agendas.67 And the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which murdered hundreds of Pakistani Shias during the 1990s and 2000s, was thought to have been formed by a government spy. Doubts about his true loyalty existed both inside and outside the group, and were only reinforced when he was killed in police custody after being unofficially detained.68 In some respects, the Soviet-Afghan War may have transformed Pakistan’s intelligence culture. Besides allowing the ISI to gain expertise in covert paramilitary operations (courtesy of the American Central Intelligence Agency), it also brought the agency closer to Saudi intelligence. Previously, all contact between Islamabad and Riyadh had been through the IB.69 By strengthening ties with the Saudis, Pakistan may have also picked up on the idea that the best way to contain domestic militancy was to deflect it towards a foreign target. Thus, in addition to supporting radical Islamists in Afghanistan and India for the sake of long-standing foreign policy objectives (a submissive government in Kabul and territorial concessions in Jammu & Kashmir), the ISI might have adapted the police/IB ploy of using one group of terrorists to contain the domestic threat posed by another. Such a trajectory would explain why the LeT scout used to reconnoitre targets in Mumbai later told US and Indian interrogators that the 2008 attack was approved by the ISI. Going by his words:

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The ISI . . . had no ambiguity in understanding the necessity to strike India. It essentially would serve three purposes. They are (a) controlling further split in the Kashmir-based outfits (b) providing them a sense of achievement and (c) shifting and minimizing the theatre of violence from the domestic soil of Pakistan to India.70 A German scholar, Hein G. Kiessling, in his seminal book Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan, made the following observation: Any analysis of the Mumbai events must ask the question whether the leadership of the ISI and GHQ [Army General Headquarters] were informed beforehand about the planned terror attacks. One answer common among writers on intelligence matters is the idea of ‘an ISI within the ISI’; but the author thinks this is erroneous. This phrase might have been deliberately created by the ISI itself. Pakistan’s prime intelligence service is a strictly led, efficiently run organization, with no room for groups pursuing their own secret agenda. An operation such as Mumbai attacks, which needed expert technical assessment, money and time to prepare, could not have been carried out or kept hidden without the knowledge of the service’s leadership. Considering the political explosiveness of the event, the COAS [Chief of Army Staff] as well would have to have been informed.71 Kiessling’s assessment matches the opinion of some other experts, that the ISI pursues Pakistani strategic interests through a geopoliticsoriented and realism-based framework.72 Norms and ideologies have little role in its decision-making process. Nor does Western criticism of cross-border terrorism. Whatever covert actions have brought the agency international opprobrium have been conveniently labelled as ‘rogue operations’ in order to spare Islamabad diplomatic embarrassment. Such an explanatory model shows why, in the hours after the 9/11 attacks, at least five ISI officials advised the Taliban on how to resist the inevitable American invasion, even as the agency’s chief (coincidentally in the United States on an official visit) was assuring the Americans of all possible help in counterterrorism.73 This officer was later dismissed by the Musharraf regime, under American pressure, for double-dealing

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Washington. Although he had promised support in bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice, upon returning to Pakistan, he advised the Taliban government in Afghanistan against cooperating with the United States. Not only that, he is also alleged to have assured Al Qaeda that it would not be targeted by the Pakistani military unless it first attacked Pakistani soldiers.74 When Washington learned of these side deals, it successfully demanded his removal. This episode has two implications: (1) The ISI allows its personnel to initiate their own operations based on a loose and expansive interpretation of where Pakistani national interests lie. (2) Such interpretations are almost never contradictory to the overall direction of long-standing official policies, thus allowing outlier behaviour to, over time, assume an organizational orthodoxy. To deny the existence of system-wide radicalization within the Pakistani armed forces, a discourse is put forward that only a handful of personnel harbour extremist ideas. One possible example of such a cover-up was the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003. Some Pakistani journalists believe that the Al Qaeda operative was actually being sheltered by serving army officials. When the Americans discovered this, the Pakistani security establishment decided to hide the truth by ascribing his support network to Jamaat-e-Islami. At that time, the Islamist party was seeking to obstruct the military regime’s efforts to perpetuate army rule. Implicating JeI for shielding an international terrorist fugitive was one way of reminding it of its own vulnerability, if it went too far in criticizing the military.75 Since the ISI draws the majority of its manpower (and all its officers) on rotational postings from the Pakistani military, the agency is not immune to broader trends sweeping across the armed forces.76 For several decades, anti-American and anti-Western sentiment has been building up in mainstream Pakistani politics. This has affected the security establishment far more pervasively than has the domestic agenda of jihadist groups. Thus, while a relatively small number of soldiers do actively support terrorist attacks on their own government, seeing it as an instrument of the West, a much larger proportion openly condemn domestic terrorism while being ambivalent or sympathetic to anti-American terrorism.77

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Outflanked by popular radicalism A similar phenomenon had previously developed in colonial India, to the detriment of the British Raj. Hoping to keep the British-Indian army free of nationalistic sentiment, the colonial authorities had opted to ‘watch the shores rather than the sea.’78 They thought that as long as the army remained pro-British, opinions of the larger Indian (civilian) population did not matter. This was a catastrophic miscalculation because, over time, Indian soldiers began to imbibe ideas that were seeping into the civilian population from which they themselves had been recruited, and where they still had family members anchored. What happened was not ‘reverse indoctrination’—since the average infantryman was not an agent-handler running spies within the Indian nationalist underground—but a larger process of attitudinal change, in tandem with evolving societal values. A modern version of this process is unfolding in Pakistan. Assessments of the radical group Hizb-ut Tahrir (HuT) provide cause for concern. The organization has been trying for years to win over members of the Pakistani armed forces. In one case, it approached two officers who were training at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, in the United Kingdom. The officers had British-Pakistani relatives, who were also HuT members and so allowed the group to use their homes to cultivate the officers over social interactions.79 Within Pakistan, HuT has been reaching out to serving military personnel via mobile phone messages. According to Maajid Nawaz, a former HuT activist who became a counter-radicalization specialist, the Islamist group itself is not a threat due to its small size. Rather, the real danger comes from the fact that ‘the extremist narrative is getting very popular in Pakistani society.’80 Accordingly, there have been instances of military personnel with no direct connection to intelligence work, supporting jihadist groups. Air force technicians have sabotaged American fighter aircraft flying bombing sorties from Pakistani airbases. A security officer of military dictator Pervez Musharraf was found to be a HuT member, who had helped another ‘rogue’ army officer smuggle prohibited military items into the country.81 A serving brigadier and four majors were convicted in 2012 for attempting a revolt on behalf of HuT.82 But the most sensational examples were provided by two assassination attempts against Musharraf in December 2003. Orchestrated by Al Qaeda, these were carried out by two distinct

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jihadist networks in the Pakistani military. Independently of each other, and controlled by a tightly compartmentalized command structure, the networks planned bomb attacks against Musharraf’s official motorcade. A total of 57 servicemen were arrested over the following weeks, of whom five later received death sentences. Investigators found that one of the bombs had been assembled with explosives stolen from an air force base. They also learnt that some of the army personnel involved in the plots had previously hosted fleeing associates of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (arrested that same year) in the army’s own hostels.83 A similar but less severe shock came in 2004, when the country’s third highest general, the corps commander of Karachi, was attacked while travelling in a convoy. The attack failed to kill him but left six soldiers, three policemen and one military intelligence employee dead. Its precision led commentators to speculate that it must have been enabled by inside information from the military, a suspicion which was later verified.84 Such events may not be aberrations (unless the definition of ‘aberration’ is substantially stretched). As mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book, in 1995, a number of army officers were arrested for planning a coup against the military leadership. Interestingly, Pakistan at the time was being ruled by an elected civilian government but, still, the conspirators focused on capturing power from the army high command, which was seen as the final arbiter of political legitimacy. Over 30 officers were accused of involvement in the plot, which envisaged them massacring all the top generals at a commanders’ conference and then seizing news broadcast stations to declare the formation of a truly Islamic state.85 Spiritual guidance was provided by a cleric from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. Overall supervision rested with another cleric who ran a madrassa set up by Tablighi Jamaat dissidents. Unlike the main TJ organization based in Raiwind, the dissidents believed in the necessity of violent revolution to transform Pakistan from an ‘impure’ condition into an Islamic utopia.86 Although the attempt was thwarted before it could be launched, it marked one of the most high-profile instances where domestic revolutionaries inspired by a Pan-Islamist agenda were found in the military. It is not just the armed forces, however, which have been permeated with militant sympathizers. Even civilian policemen, whose colleagues deal more closely with the grisly fallout of terrorist attacks, are not

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immune. One of the assassination attempts on Musharraf was guided by information leaked to the bombers in real time from a Special Branch official attached to the dictator’s protection detail.87 In at least three cases in 2003–4, policemen acted as suicide bombers against Shia mosques, having previously used their powers of entry and investigation to scout these premises. A security officer in the Punjab chief minister’s residence was also found to have ties with Al Qaeda.88 All these incidents give life to the idea that ‘reverse indoctrination’—a backward flow of radical ideas from jihadist clients to intelligence patrons—explains the involvement of Pakistani state actors with terrorism. Rather, the problem is more complex; like every intelligence agency, the ISI has expertise in paramilitary operations. It employs this expertise in pursuit of strategic interests laid down by the army leadership, to which its top management are subservient. Just as the East German Stasi once supported international terrorist plots, including, allegedly, the bombings of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983, so too does the ISI assist militant Islamists in attacking Western troops in Afghanistan, besides Afghan and Indian security forces.89 But the Pakistani Deep State is more than just the ISI, or even the army leadership. These institutions dominate it with the assistance of civilian collaborators. As Frederic Grare observes: The interests of both military and civilian elites have always partly converged. Over the years, the military has developed a ‘saviour complex’, firm in the belief that not only does it have the professional skills necessary to run an army, but that it is also the only institution capable of running the country. Moreover, the military has always felt entitled to economic privileges that it considers a just and honest reward for preserving the integrity and stability of the country. The civilian elite are motivated by greed and addiction to power that the military is willing to accommodate, provided the civilians play by its rules.90 This chapter has shown how the Deep State has used proxy warriors and death squads to create an operational environment, where non-state actors and para-state actors coexist and independently collect information needed for violent activities. It has shown how organized

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crime has eroded the institutional soundness of the government apparatus, allowing sensitive information to be used for serving narrow private interests. And it has demonstrated that rather than a small number of ‘bad apples’, the Pakistani security community (both civilian and military components) are susceptible to wider jihadist appeals. The next chapter looks at how these appeals are rationalized and magnified, through both official and unofficial channels, including in the guise of geopolitical agendas.

CHAPTER 6 INFORMATION MANIPULATION

This chapter examines the last and highest level of jihadist control over information: that of perception management. It describes an informational ecosystem wherein militant Islamists can simultaneously project a three-layered public image of themselves. At one level, this image is self-aggrandizing to their extended constituency, while, at another, it is confusing to the international community. At a third level, it is demoralizing to the opponents of militant Islamism. Such triple messaging is enabled by a network of sympathizers within the Pakistani middle class. The same middle class constitutes the main recruitment base of media organizations (both public and private) as well as the government apparatus. In effect, Islamists in partnership with the Deep State control the Pakistani discourse on terrorism. Such discourse, as Pamir H. Sahill, a journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has observed, is both factually misleading and blatantly self-serving. It locates the source of Pakistan’s terrorism problem as lying outside the country’s borders, thereby exonerating the security apparatus from the onus of failing to control violence levels. It fuels a long-standing argument that Pakistan has an interest in actively shaping Afghanistan’s future, for the sake of protecting its own citizens from jihadists based on Afghan soil. It elicits sympathy from Western countries, who are coaxed into disbursing developmental and reconstruction funding in gratitude for much-exaggerated ‘sacrifices’ that the Pakistani army has made in combating terrorists. Most importantly, according to Sahill’s interpretation of over 400 government reports and media

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commentaries on terrorism, the dominant discourse camouflages the Deep State’s efforts to enhance its own domestic power under the guise of fighting terrorism.1 Sahill’s view is echoed by Isaac Kfir, a scholar who suggests that despite the very high death toll from terrorist violence in Pakistan, a closer look at the fatality rate reveals a mixed picture. Most of the dead are members of minority groups, either sectarian or ethnic. Barring a few high-profile attacks, the bulk of everyday terrorist incidents in Pakistan have been directed at identity groups that are already marginalized by mainstream society and thus deemed ‘safe’ to kill. There is actually a clerical term for such marginalized persons: wajibul-qatal (‘worthy of death’).2 Militants know that by attacking such persons, they neither risk a massive public backlash nor a comprehensive crackdown by the Deep State, with all the instruments of military and intelligence power at its disposal.3 Much like the Pakistani army inflates the risks faced by its own soldiers in counterterrorism, while ignoring the contributions made by civilian policemen, so too are impoverished Shia, Pashtun and Baloch victims of terrorism instrumentalized to serve the political agendas of the Punjabi-dominated army leadership.4 Academic research on the Pakistani media landscape has found that anti-Americanism is a popular phenomenon. Bashing a distant hate symbol, which either cannot or will not react, is a safe way to boost television ratings and print copy circulation. It also conforms to the security apparatus’ guidelines about how far public intellectuals— journalists and academics—may go while criticizing governance policies. (Criticism of the army’s interventions in politics or its undermining of elected governments is forbidden, as is any debate about the role of religion in nation-building.)5 This does not mean, of course, that propagating anti-Western commentaries automatically leads to terrorism. But unrestricted propagation of such views provides a discursive framework within which conspiracy theories and vitriolic proclamations, including incitement to violence, can be made under the pretext of exercising democratic freedoms of self-expression. For instance, a serving ISI chief once told a German reporter that Pakistani militant leaders were only exercising their right to ‘freedom of opinion’ whenever they made stirring speeches urging young men to fight Western soldiers in Afghanistan.6

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Democracy has been a great enabler for both militant Islamists and the Deep State, by allowing them to hold up ‘public opinion’ as a posthoc legitimating factor for their transgressions. What passes for public opinion in Pakistan is, in the view of one French sociologist, not a single and coherent mainstream political position. Rather, it is merely a cover for endless competition between small and elitist interest groups, each fraudulently claiming that its own policy preferences have mass support.7 Like Peter Lupsha’s stage-evolutionary model of organized crime—from which this book draws inspiration for its three-part distinction between information denial, information collection and information manipulation by Islamist groups—the transition of a nonstate/para-state actor from outlaw/client status to covert control of government is a process facilitated by electoral fac
ades and institutional weakness (Lupsha had argued that a successful criminal group evolves through three phases: predatory, parasitic and symbiotic. These phases reflect its transformation from a vulnerable ‘start-up’ that can be crushed by the superior power of its rivals and the state machinery, through to an organization that penetrates the state machinery, and finally a shadow government that controls the state machinery.)8 This chapter demonstrates how the Deep State, comprising the military and intelligence community, gained control over Pakistan’s information space jointly with Islamists. First, it describes how the ISI deceived the United States during the 1980s that the best anti-Soviet fighters among the Afghan mujahideen were religious fundamentalists. Then, the chapter continues on to the democratic interlude of the 1990s, when the ISI floated a myth that Pakistani hostility to the United States stemmed from recent, objective grievances. In the process, the deeper xenophobia and ‘Arabized’ Islamist sympathies which motivated sections of the country’s middle classes were left unmentioned. Finally, the chapter describes how in a newly privatized media market during the 2000s, radical groups gained access to the mainstream population through overt political and charity-based activities. This last section of the chapter highlights the truism, stated by Indian scholar Ajai Sahni, that ‘[t]he most difficult phases of counter-terrorist campaigns are periods when terrorist violence combines with “overground” political movements and mass mobilization.’9 Pakistan is not being controlled by Islamists, but neither is it controlling them or their institutional patrons.

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Deception over Afghanistan The US intelligence community seems to have a breathtaking predisposition towards optimism, if its assessments of Pakistani decision-makers are any indication. On two occasions, 20 years apart, American analysts misread the personality and intentions of key players at the apex of Pakistan’s Afghan policy. First, in 1987, the Defence Intelligence Agency produced a biographical sketch of the then head of Pakistan’s ISI. Major General Hamid Gul was thought to be a proWestern officer, based on the limited personal contact that American diplomats had previously had with him in tightly controlled settings. Gul himself was proficient at mouthing American idioms and told the Islamabad station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency that he was a ‘moderate Islamist’. It seems that the station chief, Milton Bearden, had little difficulty reconciling the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘Islamist’ because he accepted Gul’s recommendation that Afghan resistance leaders who were not explicitly Islamist could be marginalized in favour of the ISI’s clients. In the process, the CIA acquiesced in the ISI’s support to radical factions of the resistance, who hated the United States as much as they did the Soviet Union. One Afghan secular intellectual, appalled at the CIA’s gullibility, warned the agency: ‘For God’s sake, you’re financing your own assassins.’10 But the CIA bought the ISI’s line that only ultraconservative Islamists were fighting in Afghanistan with any determination. To be fair, the Pakistani agency’s logic did make sense at an abstract level, even if it did not match ground reality. Since the Americans wanted to prevent the spread of communism internationally, it was easy for the ISI to argue that installing a highly conservative Islamist government in Kabul would block any ideological thrust by Moscow into South Asia. The Soviets would be kept out, and collaterally, so would the Americans who had no enduring interest in Afghanistan anyway. In the process, the ISI would gain privileged access to a regime that could self-identify with Pakistan as a brotherly Muslim country, and ideally, accept the territorial status quo along the disputed AfghanPakistani frontier (for more details see below and Chapter 7). What the CIA became a victim of was ‘reflexive control’ emanating from the ISI. Developed by Soviet intelligence experts during the Cold War, reflexive control is ‘a means of conveying to a partner or an opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily

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make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action.’11 By not cultivating its own human sources on the ground in Afghanistan, the CIA grew dependent on the ISI for political assessments of the country’s leadership intrigues. The ISI perpetrated such dependence by insisting that the CIA would not develop independent assets among the resistance groups. All aid to them was to be distributed via Pakistani intermediaries.12 By acting as the West’s gatekeeper to Afghanistan, Pakistan effectively shut the gate on the West. In effect, it exploited the cultural ignorance of American (as well as British and Saudi) intelligence managers to sell them a narrative about its own prowess in running human sources in Afghanistan. This narrative was not totally untrue; Pakistan did indeed have extensive contact with Afghan Islamists, but that was developed for the narrow purpose of intimidating Kabul. Six years before the CIA got interested in supplying arms to the Afghans, the ISI was already running weapon supplies and providing military training to Islamist guerrillas, in a bid to force the Afghan government to stop laying claim to Pashtundominated areas of Pakistan.13 An unnamed Afghan leader later told a Pakistani journalist that the Americans were making a strategic mistake by being over-reliant on ‘someone else for their information without realizing the ulterior motive of that someone else.’ The Pakistani journalist, himself a critic of the Deep State, noted that the ISI wanted to ‘superimpose our military agenda over the Afghan right to selfdetermination.’14 Pakistan’s favourite client among the Afghans was a warlord named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was trusted by the ISI because he was an Islamist, not a Pashtun nationalist, and could be expected to bury Kabul’s irredentist demands that the Afghan-Pakistani border be renegotiated to reflect ethnic realities. An ISI brigadier (who was no friend of the Americans but nonetheless dealt closely with them in the course of official duties), described Hekmatyar as an ‘excellent administrator’ who was ‘scrupulously honest’.15 These were rather different words from those used by other observers, who warned that Hekmatyar’s fanaticism made him a prime candidate to become ‘Afghanistan’s version of the Ayatollah Khomeini’ once the Soviets withdrew. Eventually, the CIA woke up to the discrepancy between what it was hearing from the ISI and from other sources, and began to send arms to his rival, Ahmed Shah Massoud. The latter had been consistently

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deprived of funds and weapons by the ISI because, unlike Hekmatyar, he had an autonomous powerbase within Afghanistan and was therefore not obliged to accept Pakistan’s instructions. Massoud was also far more effective as a battlefield commander against the Soviets, a fact that the ISI successfully hid from the Americans for much of the war. Eventually, when the CIA established working relations with Massoud, Hekmatyar was so furious that he put out a contract for killing the CIA field officer who was handling the negotiations. It may not be a coincidence that another Massoud supporter, the Palestinian cleric Abdullah Azzam, was mysteriously killed as competition between Massoud and Hekmatyar intensified. Azzam was the spiritual leader of the Arab Afghans who were flocking to South Asia by the late 1980s to wage jihad. His prote´ge´, Osama Bin Laden, went on to consolidate several of the Arab Afghans into a new organization called Al Qaeda. Bin Laden switched policies and began supporting Hekmatyar over Massoud.16 The end of the Soviet-Afghan War saw a minor power struggle within the ISI between so-called ‘hardliners’ and ‘moderates’. Like many distinctions, these factions were arbitrarily defined based on superficial differences. On the one hand were officers led by Hamid Gul, who believed that the Soviet withdrawal had left Central Asia (especially the southern republics of the Soviet Union) susceptible to a Pan-Islamist rebellion. On the other hand were ISI officials who believed that Pakistan only needed to install an Islamist regime in Kabul to protect its interests, but should not venture further into Soviet territory proper.17 From an Afghan perspective, they were no more ‘moderate’ than the ‘hardliners’, since they still advocated a future where Afghanistan would be a client state, submissive to Islamabad’s geopolitical dictates. All shades of opinion in the Pakistani security establishment—whether personally sympathetic to Islamism or not—thought that exerting control over Afghanistan was an inherent right. They viewed such control as a fitting reward for having supported the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. The fact that it had mostly been Afghans themselves who had done the fighting and dying was conveniently forgotten. As one writer observed in the mid-1990s: Pakistan’s military establishment has been transfixed by the conviction that in some obscure manner, Pakistan’s role in aiding the victory of the Mujahideen over Moscow’s placemen has earned

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Islamabad the right to decide who should or should not rule in Kabul. Afghanistan, it seems, is far too important to be left to the Afghans.18 Pakistani covert interference in Afghanistan thus did not end with the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. For that matter, it had not begun with the Soviet invasion of 1979. The ISI used American and Saudi money to push forward specific regional interests that Islamabad shared with no one else. Its success could be attributed to the fact that, during an era of superpower competition, nobody cared about the fate of an impoverished, landlocked country like Afghanistan. But to pull off the same trick twice, on an American security establishment bloodied by the 9/11 attacks and subsequent war in Afghanistan, was a singular achievement. Here, the Americans made the second error of judgement referred to at the start of this section, 20 years after the first. Like Hamid Gul’s appointment as ISI chief, the elevation of Ashfaq Kiyani to the post of army chief in 2007 was welcomed by the United States. He was seen as a ‘moderate’ for having trained in the United States and delivered top Al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al-Libbi to the West in 2005, a time when major terrorist attacks were being planned against British and American targets. Washington expected a positive working relationship.19 As insurance, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, attempted to bond with Kiyani over dinners and golf, meeting the man over 30 times in the course of four years. But for all his efforts, Mullen came away empty-handed.20 The United States was willing to ignore Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism against India, including the 2008 Mumbai raid, in the hope that Islamabad would cooperate in shutting down jihadist networks that were targeting US troops in Afghanistan.21 Foremost among these was the so-called ‘Haqqani network’ led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the SovietAfghan War with close ties to Al Qaeda. Instead, the United States discovered that Islamabad was as disinterested in stopping attacks against American soldiers as it was against Indian civilians. Mullen eventually went public with his frustration over Pakistani double-dealing in September 2011, when he told the US Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘the Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s InterServices Intelligence Agency.’22 Unsurprisingly, by that stage, his friendship with Kiyani had all but evaporated, leaving the question as to

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whether the Americans only obtained a measure of personal cordiality from the Pakistani army leadership, with no real behavioural change from the 1980s. Islamabad’s stock response to American accusations of playing a double game has been that it is struggling to cope with a regional mess created by a ‘fair-weather’ and transactional partner (the United States). The blame for instability in Afghanistan rests with Washington, according to this view. One former US diplomat counters such allegations by noting: While Washington has plenty to answer for in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Pakistanis conveniently overlook the fact that it was their support for the Taliban, and the subsequent decision by these supposed Pakistani clients to ally themselves with Osama bin Laden, that generated the problem in the first place. This reflects an unfortunate Pakistani tendency to blame others for the nation’s problems, whether the agent be the United States, India or the political opposition. Since problems always stem from the behaviour of others, Pakistan itself is absolved from primary responsibility for resolving them. This is precisely the kind of reaction one would expect from a governing class whose primary motivation is to preserve its own narrow set of interests.23 The manner in which Pakistan has constructed a grievance narrative, placing itself as a victim at the centre of geopolitical conspiracies against its ‘legitimate’ interests (however expansively defined), offers a clue as to the Deep State’s real purpose. Rather than convincing foreign governments about the rightness of its own arguments, the Pakistani army, through the media wing of the ISI, seeks to diffuse criticism of its policy of regional brinkmanship. One of the most impressive examples of ISI perception management came in 1998, in the weeks after US Tomahawk missiles struck six Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Among the camps hit was a facility named Salman Farsi, which was co-hosted by the ISI and the Pakistani Deobandi group Harkat-ul Mujahideen.24 As the first bodies from this camp were dispatched to Pakistan, the ISI swung into damage control mode. It planted stories in Pakistan’s English-language media, aware that these would be picked up by Western intelligence agencies, that a number of sectarian terrorists wanted in Pakistan had taken refuge in Afghanistan. The idea was to momentarily distance Pakistani officialdom

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from the Taliban regime, and concoct a difference of views between Islamabad and Kandahar (the spiritual base of the Taliban) which would ease international pressure on Pakistan for having used Afghan territory to conduct terrorist training.25 Accusations about the Taliban harbouring sectarian terrorists surfaced just at the same time as the United States had been putting behind-the-scenes pressure on Pakistan to help capture Osama Bin Laden. The aim may have been to create an alibi for the Americans’ benefit and indicate that Islamabad had no control over events in Afghanistan.26 Throughout its intervention in Afghanistan, the Pakistani militaryintelligence cabal has used Islamist political parties as a front for pursuing its own agendas. During the Soviet-Afghan War, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) was the official host within Pakistan of Hekmatyar and his private militia, Hizb-e-Islami. Once the war ended, the Pakistani foreign office sought to maintain the fiction that JeI’s actions were autonomous and had no government support. The party’s sponsorship of Hekmatyar in his powergrabbing drive towards Kabul (which was a violation of the Soviet withdrawal agreement) as well as its support for radical Islamists beyond Afghanistan was supposedly not Islamabad’s business.27 The problem was, this narrative unravelled as one friendly foreign state after another, from brethren Islamic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Algeria, continuing to Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’ China, complained about JeI.28 Among other things, the party was supporting separatist insurgents in China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang province. When quiet protests elicited no response from Islamabad, a furious Beijing leaked press statements directly accusing the ISI of condoning such activity. This finally led to consternation within the Pakistani policy community, with one official asking: ‘Who is running Pakistan’s foreign policy? Is it the jamaat [sic] or the government?’29 In the face of intense international pressure, Pakistan reduced its tolerance for JeI’s foreign partnerships (but only as regards those countries deemed friendly or too important to antagonize). Afghanistan and India both remained targets of cross-border attacks supported by Pakistani Islamists.

Manufacturing Discourses Whenever bilateral dialogue between the United States and Pakistan gets tense, American envoys are forced to hear a litany of historical

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wrongs their side has committed. According to the Pakistani narrative, Washington left Islamabad in the lurch after the Soviet-Afghan War. The best example that Pakistani officials trot out is the 1990 US suspension of F-16 aircraft sales, due to (accurate) suspicions that Pakistan was a proliferator of nuclear technology. Yet, as Pakistani journalists have pointed out, the Deep State turned hostile to Washington for reasons other than the Soviet-Afghan War.30 Foremost among these was American pressure to restore civilian rule after the death of Zia-ul Haq in August 1988. During Zia’s 11 years in power, the army leadership had become accustomed to the material comforts of political supremacy. Shortly before the dictator died, he had sacked his civilian prime minister after the latter declared an intention to cut the army’s budget.31 Following the aircraft crash which killed Zia, American diplomats lobbied his successor as army chief, Mirza Aslam Beg, to allow general elections. Given its understanding of the political pulse of the country, the army knew what was coming next: Benazir Bhutto, whose father had been overthrown by the military in 1977 and later hanged, would become prime minister. What was galling to the generals was how deeply the Americans invested in strengthening Bhutto’s stature, going to the extent of negotiating on her behalf with other civilian leaders, including Islamist politicians backed by the army.32 To weaken Bhutto, the Deep State engaged in ‘black’ or unattributable propaganda. It already had a civilian infrastructure which could be used for this purpose. During the 1980s, the military regime had inserted retired army officials into numerous high-ranking administrative posts. Zia felt that by seeding the government apparatus with retired and re-employed army officers, he could ensure regime stability.33 More than a decade later, another military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, used the same tactic to stall demands from civilian politicians that he give up power. The militarization of Pakistan’s civil services has been an ongoing process since 1948. The army had anyway been awarded a 10 per cent quota in federal government services, which allowed it to annually place 250 military personnel in civilian posts.34 Benazir Bhutto’s arch-rival, Nawaz Sharif, who had been groomed by former ISI chief Ghulam Jilani Khan to challenge her, served as the army’s top man in government during the 1990s.35 Sharif inducted soldiers into the civil services at a rate that exceeded the 10 per cent annual quota and allowed them to take

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over key positions in the civilian police. (To a large extent, the army crackdown on the Muttahida Quami Mahaz (MQM) in Karachi during 1992–4 was an example of microcosmic military rule, since the city police was subordinated to the army’s command hierarchy. The crackdown took place during Sharif’s first term as prime minister.)36 During the Musharraf dictatorship (1999–2007), the merger between the military and civilian elements of the Deep State accelerated. Musharraf more than doubled the military complement of Pakistan’s main anticorruption agency, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) so that his loyalists could blackmail civilian politicians. In the four years that immediately followed his seizure of power in October 1999, a total of 1,027 serving and retired military personnel received jobs in the national administrative service, even as 700 professional bureaucrats from the service’s in-house cadre were still awaiting posting orders.37 A creeping militarization appeared in academic and policy discourse. According to one journalist: [G]overnment-financed think tanks are teeming with retired officers from the armed forces. The Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad, once considered a very impartial think tank, now boasts 32 retired army officers in its total strength of 50. The institute’s chief, Major General (retd) Jamshed Ayaz, is a former ISI officer who has brought the agency’s culture into what is essentially an academic institute. Even the material he receives from international conferences and seminars is first whetted [sic] by the ISI before being included in the institute’s library.38 Ayesha Siddiqa, a prominent critic of army corruption in Pakistan, has warned that the military has been systematically ‘taking “intellectual control” of society. The exercise of this control involves domination of historical, social and political discourses; anyone who questions such establishmentarian discourses is dubbed a traitor.’39 Her views have been echoed by Princeton University scholar Aqil Shah, who has asserted that the ISI parcels out information and access to scholarly resources, based on how willing academicians and journalists are to push its preferred narrative onto unwitting audiences.40 With the civilian apparatus staffed at various levels by army officials or their acolytes, the political dawning of Benazir Bhutto in 1988

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represented a manageable threat to military supremacy within Pakistan. In less than a year, her government was being destabilized from within and without by a public relations campaign orchestrated by the army’s Military Intelligence Directorate. Since one of Benazir’s first moves as prime minister had been to remove Hamid Gul as ISI chief and appoint a retired general of her own choice to the post, the army retaliated by removing the ISI’s political cell from the agency’s control and placing it under Military Intelligence. Together with the army’s official media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Military Intelligence planted stories about corrupt government ministers. For this, they reactivated contacts with journalists who had been on the ISI’s payroll during the Zia dictatorship. The head of Military Intelligence personally briefed journalists about Benazir’s alleged unwillingness to take firm action against bandits in Sindh province and described her party as little more than a family-run fiefdom with no national-level legitimacy. One reporter with close ties to the army went even further, alleging that, during her years in opposition to Zia’s regime, Benazir had used the Indian diplomatic mission’s official pouch to correspond with overseas supporters.41 Army chief Mirza Aslam Beg proved astute at manipulating the Americans during this period. Knowing of their concern regarding the ISI’s Afghan operations, he told US officials that he was keen to reduce the agency’s institutional power and bring it firmly under military control.42 To achieve this objective, he claimed to have ensured that ISI activities concerning Afghanistan and Kashmir were supervised by a serving major general. Through this simple verbal ruse, Beg scored two objectives: preventing civilian interference with the army’s covert offensives against Afghanistan and India, and simultaneously assuaging Western concerns about ISI ties with militant Islamists such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The serving officer who headed ISI covert operations reported to Beg and gave the army leadership a backchannel to influence the agency without the knowledge of its civilian-appointed chief.43 Beg also invented the discourse about Pakistan needing ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan to balance against a conventional military threat from India.44 For more than two decades thereafter, Pakistani spokesmen justified their country’s interference in Afghanistan to Western interlocutors by citing India as an existentialist danger. Yet, Beg’s notion of strategic depth contradicted every traditional usage of the

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term. In military strategy, strategic depth refers to the manoeuvrable space that exists in front of a strong defensive line, not behind it. By citing Afghanistan as a source of strategic depth, Beg was implicitly stating that his soldiers could not hold off an Indian offensive and would have to flee into Afghanistan as fugitives. One Pakistani journalist mocked the notion, asking ‘Does it mean that, if attacked by India, the Pakistan army has the luxury of retreating up to the Afghan border?’45 From 1990 onwards, India replaced the Soviet Union as the main justification for Pakistani transgressions in Afghanistan. The Indian intelligence service, known as the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), was projected in domestic press coverage as a sponsor of international terrorism. It served as a convenient replacement to the KGB, which had previously been Islamabad’s favourite villain. According to the reputed Pakistani columnist Ayaz Amir, the Pakistani secret service had found it fashionable during the 1980s to accuse the KGB of orchestrating Pashtun and Baloch subversion, but— To the dismay of the secret service, the KGB has lost all credibility as a figure of secrecy and terror. But into this great void, created by the ignominious retreat of the KGB, has stepped another shadowy presence: RAW—the Research and Analysis Wing of the Indian secret service. If, previously, the KGB was spreading the seeds of subversion in Pakistan, now it is RAW.46 To plant media stories exonerating itself of blame for the country’s misfortunes, the army turned to a strategy first applied by the Zia regime in 1985: cultivating the tabloid press with conspiracy theories to discredit the army’s political opponents. Zia had earlier introduced the concept of lifafa (envelope) journalism, wherein packets full of money were slipped to supposedly ‘independent’ newsmen on the government payroll.47 The ISI and ISPR refined this system during the winter of 1989–90, while the army leadership focused on conducting an image makeover through an extravagant three-corps war game codenamed Zarb-e-Momin. Veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid, who was covering the spectacle, noted: [N]ever before in the history of Pakistan has the army been more accessible to journalists, more open and candid in their criticism of the government or more conscious that the media is vitally

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important to get their message across . . . . For the army, this realization—that the media, no matter how dismal or controlled, can make or break governments—is unprecedented. ‘It is the media that forges public opinion, not the political parties’, says a military officer.48 Since 9/11, the public relations campaign of the Pakistani army has assumed even greater importance. To cover up incidents where serving soldiers have been suspected of assisting terrorist groups, the ISI has worked out a fairly effective system. It distracts public attention by taking ownership of storytelling and guiding the emergent narrative along lines favourable to the army. For instance: following the May 2011 US raid on Abbottabad which killed Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, the military leadership came under fierce domestic criticism. Although initially caught unprepared by the raid and the popular backlash, the army was able to astutely shift public discourse away from its own failures, as well as criticism of its ambiguity towards militant Islamists, towards a directionless debate about violation of Pakistani sovereignty by a perfidious America. The ISI and ISPR completely took over responsibility of briefing the media and shut out the civilian information ministry from the process. To build an anti-American mood, the army leaked a story that it was cutting the number of US military personnel in Pakistan by 40 per cent and put out other media commentaries that it needed more funds to purchase modern equipment that would prevent such ingressions in the future.49 This insatiable appetite for additional funds to underwrite its own existence has attracted criticism from civilian experts in Pakistan. One former diplomat has compared the army’s praetorianism to similar cases in other Muslim countries, while observing: [F]or all their faults of aggrandizement, opportunism and unbridled lust for power, the Algerian and Turkish armies are, unquestionably, products of revolution and entirely home-grown. But no such credit can be given to the Pakistan army which is a legacy of colonial rulers, had no role at all in the freedom struggle of Indian Muslims for Pakistan, and has consistently behaved like a colonial army. And yet, its grab for power has far outstripped its Algerian or Turkish counterparts . . . . Unlike Turkey or Algeria,

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the Pakistan army has not tied itself to the petard of the political fief only. The extent and unbridled involvement of the Pakistan army in the everyday life of the country and its citizens is not only staggering, but also unparalleled. There is no other army in the world with such varied and far-flung interests and involvement in the economic and commercial life of the country.50 One of the tactics the Deep State uses to shape domestic and international perceptions, and insert disinformation into public debates on behalf of its Islamist proxies, is to splinterize the mainstream media. Zia did this in 1985 even as he appointed a civilian prime minister to give his regime a fac� ade of legitimacy. Musharraf did the same in 2002, and for the same reason. On both occasions, there was a mushrooming of sensationalist media outlets, which were happy to carry ‘alternative facts’ as per ISI dictates. Through this measure, the army ensured that, if its civilian clients stepped out of line, they could be swiftly discredited even as the military as an institution appeared professional and aloof from petty political intrigues. There was also another reason: the army needed a mechanism through which it could signal its resistance to American pressure, whether on the need for greater democratization or, later, on the need to desist from using proxy warriors against Pakistan’s neighbours.

Anti-Americanism: A Bridge between the Military, Mullahs and Middle Classes Expatriate Pakistanis in the Persian Gulf countries played a significant and often overlooked role in realigning the country from its Indic genealogy to an Arabic identity. They provided a bridge between the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism of the Middle East, and the political culture of South Asia. As early as 1990, a doctoral thesis by Jonathan S. Addleton noted: [L]arge scale migration to the Middle East (was) . . . the single most important economic event in Pakistan during the 1970s and 1980s. No other occurrence had such a pervasive impact on so many areas of Pakistan’s economy and society. The most obvious indicators—foreign exchange earned and employment generated—only partially capture this significance.

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Changed social relationships, increased expectations, new vocational opportunities, faster information flows—all these developments stemmed, in large part, from the large-scale movement of Pakistani workers to the Middle East.51 Interestingly, district-level migration patterns to the Middle East threw up some interesting place names for the high-migration sites: Abbottabad, Attock, Swat, Peshawar, Gujrat, Sialkot, Jhelum, Lahore, Rawalpindi. The highest migration levels between 1971 and 1988 had taken place in the north of Pakistan, especially northeastern Punjab and the eastern districts of the Northwest Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). The rest of Punjab showed medium levels of migration. Tellingly, Sindh showed low levels of migration to the Middle East and Baluchistan almost none at all.52 Two decades later, American scholars found that the same areas from where migrations were highest were also the locations where the Ahle Hadith group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) had its highest recruitment levels.53 The puritanical Ahle Hadith school is the closest South Asian equivalent to Saudi Wahhabism, even more so than Deobandism. It is therefore unsurprising that LeT had made a point of targeting Western nationals and Jewish tourists in India, when it carried out its 2008 attack on Mumbai. Of all Pakistani terrorist organizations, it had imbibed the globalist vision of Al Qaeda to the maximum extent, together with rabid anti-Semitism. Hostility to the United States became a shared factor across the political spectrum, but it had originally begun within the innards of Pakistan’s feudal elite, from which both civilian politicians and the army’s top generals came. Vague resentment over potential neoimperialism hardened over time as it acquired a populist edge. The use of Pakistani airspace for surveillance over-flights of the Soviet Union, the appointment of an obscure diplomat as prime minister in 1953, shortly after he returned from an ambassadorial post in Washington, and the political instability that wracked Pakistan during the 1960s and 1970s, all combined to create a suspicion that the country’s leadership was overly subservient to the Americans. The banning of the Communist Party in 1954 added fuel to a slow-burning flame. It gave leftists ammunition to allege that there had been a grand conspiracy to preempt mass resentment over Pakistan’s decision to join CENTO a year later.54 During the Vietnam War, there was much delight within the

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left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party government over the US’ military failures in Southeast Asia. It was during this period that the first conspiracy theories started to poison public views of America. Some villages refused to accept milk distributed for school children by US aid agencies based on rumours that the milk came from sows and not cows.55 The year 1979 marked a break from past trends, with the occurrence of the Iranian Revolution. For the first time, Pakistan’s religious parties began to express views that were openly hostile to the West. Previously, their hatred had been concentrated on the atheistic Soviet Union, so much so that a JeI supporter took it upon himself to kill a visiting Polish vice-president at Lahore in 1960 (he described it as an act of personal jihad and expressed no regrets). From 1979, a second wave of antiAmericanism broke even as the Soviet Union again topped the Islamists’ hate-list due to its occupation of Afghanistan. But the third wave in 1990, when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and prompted a Western-led coalition to go to war against Iraq, was a game changer. Expatriate Pakistanis and their middle-class relatives back at home mobilized street demonstrations in support of Saddam, in partnership with parties such as JeI. Regardless of his aggression against Kuwait, he was seen as an Islamic leader rising up against Western hegemony, which was being felt all the more acutely as the erstwhile Soviet hegemon was crumbling.56 Saddam’s swift defeat at the hands of predominantly American military forces cast a pall of gloom across Pakistani Islamist groups. It made the Islamists realize that they could not afford to distance themselves from the Pakistani army, which was their sole patron in the country and also their best conduit for infiltrating the corridors of power.57 For its part, the army leadership realized that the American war against Saddam restored some of its leverage over Washington, which had been declining since the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. In order to avoid giving the impression of being a Crusader alliance against a Muslim country, the Western-led coalition was keen to receive Pakistani endorsement (as well as that of other Islamic countries). The Deep State decided to offer such support, on the implicit understanding that Washington would not protest if the army quietly orchestrated the toppling of elected prime minister Benazir Bhutto and appointed a more pliable leader in her place. Thus, while the world’s media was fixated on the Middle East, a so-called constitutional coup was carried out in

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Islamabad. Benazir was forced out of office by the civilian president, with the army’s support, and the stage was set for a caretaker government, which would shortly give way to the army’s preferred prime ministerial candidate, Nawaz Sharif.58 The endemic emotional and intellectual connection to Middle Eastern affairs, which had existed in South Asian Islamism for centuries, only got mainstreamed in the 1980s. Until then, it had been a predominantly elitist and scholarly phenomenon. But the Pakistani middle-class diaspora in the Persian Gulf, together with civil-military intrigues back at home and the growing importance of Islamist parties as tools for perpetuating such intrigues, created a new space for transnationalism to take hold within the country’s political consciousness. Perhaps no policy measure did more for the propagation of radical ideas than the Musharraf regime’s 2002 ordinance which privatized and liberalized the media. At a time when hostility to the West had already been simmering for more than two decades (if one starts counting from the attack on the US embassy in Islamabad in 1979 onwards), the new and complex media environment magnified the problem. Whereas previously there had been three television stations and only one radio station, by 2010, there were 92 television stations (of which 26 focused on exclusively on news reporting) and 130 radio stations.59 A number of these were controlled by militant Islamists, operating either with or without political cover. As early as 2006, Jamaat-e-Islami operated 30 FM radio channels in northern Pakistan, urging the civilian population to wage ‘jihad’ against India.60 Shortly thereafter, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the political wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, created a social media team by recruiting graduates from Karachi University, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Quaid-e-Azam University and the Institute of Business Administration. In other words, its propaganda was produced not by impoverished and semi-literate madrassa students, but by the alumni of the country’s best institutes of higher education—a reflection of just how deeply extremist ideas had permeated Pakistani society.61 LeT encapsulates the problem of jihadist radicalization and recruitment in Pakistan. It operates under the cover of a charity organization (Jamaat-ud-Dawa) which conceals the group’s more unsavoury activities from the public. Although upper-class Pakistanis are aware that LeT/JuD is considered an international terrorist

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entity, they form a relatively small proportion of the country’s media-consuming population. A survey of 382 stories on the group, carried across six Urdu and seven English newspapers with nationwide circulation, found that the English media was more prone to cover LeT critically and gave its violent actions more attention. In contrast, the much larger Urdu media provided significantly less coverage to the group, and when it did, focused on JuD’s engagement with community welfare programmes.62 Thus, as American scholar, Joshua White, presciently observed the age-old academic categorization between moderates and extremists falls flat in the case of Pakistan. Much of the popular support for LeT, despite its officially acknowledged role as a terrorist organization, comes from a sophisticated media manipulation strategy that compartmentalized the group’s public image across different sections of the country’s demographic.63 LeT’s primary focus is to recruit fresh manpower and raise funds to keep itself in business as a parallel state structure, albeit one sheltered from international countermeasures by the formal sovereignty afforded to the larger Pakistani state. Towards this, it has developed an impressive programme of community engagement, going further than the country’s many Deobandi militant organizations by engaging women as recruiters. As one researcher has observed, LeT organizes public meetings where the mothers of LeT cadres killed in India narrate stories of their sons’ bravery. The net result is to create a martyrdom cult which neatly obfuscates the fact that the dead men were driven to carry out suicidal missions out of socioeconomic desperation. Lack of viable employment prospects at home made the idea of travelling to Jammu & Kashmir to fight on behalf of an alien people against an alien state more attractive than it would normally have been.64 While Lashkar-e-Taiba is the best-organized militant group at discourse manipulation, Deobandi groups and Islamist parties are also stakeholders in the private media market. The Sunni sectarian outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, for instance, has long been considered an unambiguously terroristic entity but still managed to publish an Urdu magazine called Inteqam-e-Haq, which was circulated to politicians, government bureaucrats and police officials.65 Even Al Qaeda made its presence felt after 9/11, while supposedly being on the run from US counterterrorism efforts. The Arab group used local militant organizations as proxies for distributing its propaganda. For example, it published a magazine called

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Hattin, named after the site of a famous Muslim victory during the Crusades. As of 2009, the magazine also had an Urdu edition which was discreetly sent to local militant groups that already published their own books and journals. These latter publications were accessible at newsstands across Pakistan.66 Another conduit for radical messaging was the large number of Pakistani militants who had entered the education sector or the media during the early 2000s. Anticipating that 9/11 would bring about a tightening of government controls over madrassas, these new-generation Islamists focused on entering precisely those professions which would give them both social respectability and access to public debates.67 Over time, they worked their individual career paths into positions from where they could undermine de-radicalization efforts launched by either the Pakistani state or international aid agencies. Critics have noted that, since 2008, Pakistani militant organizations were able to freely use social media to spread radical messages without interference from government agencies. Yet, the latter were quick to block those Twitter and Facebook accounts which protested the growing tide of sectarian and jihadist militancy sweeping through the country.68 This trend fits well with the observation made by American scholar, Stephen Tankel, that the Pakistani state machinery is acutely concerned about wider reputational damage caused by the presence of terrorist groups in the country.69 Instead of attempting to restrict their activities, however, the state’s focus has been to muzzle domestic media commentary about such groups, so that the international community remains ignorant of the extent of their sway. To some extent, the formal Pakistani state (and even the informal Deep State) is genuinely unable to cap the proliferation of militant propaganda. The sheer number of illicit radio transmitters operating along the Afghan-Pakistani border, run by militant organizations at war with the Pakistani security forces, is a national embarrassment. Over a three-month period during 2006 alone, local authorities seized 73 transmitters and forced another 26 off-air. However, these measures met with spirited resistance from Islamist leaders, who argued that security forces should first stop regular government radio broadcasts from airing ‘un-Islamic’ content such as musical programmes, before they blocked pirate broadcasts that only urged listeners to become ‘good Muslims’.70 The majority of illicit transmitters were inexpensive (costing between

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8,000 and 50,000 rupees) and could be easily replaced. In 2009, the ISPR estimated that 36 operated in just the Buner district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Intelligence officials were uncertain about whether to block them, since the government lacked any real human sources among the area’s militants. Listening to the broadcasts was a cheap way of obtaining intelligence on the militants’ plans, even if it allowed them to recruit more youth. The fact that many transmitters were mobile and would often broadcast from local mosques also complicated the situation, since any effort to seize them would inflame public sentiment.71

Conclusion Perhaps the biggest obstacle to any government counter-action against militants, both domestic and international, is the support which they receive from various Islamist parties. As a general rule, a measure of political cover is necessary for any terrorist organization to survive police repression. In Pakistan, parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam act as a bridge between militant groups and the Deep State. Such over-ground Islamists are needed by both sides, because they provide post-hoc legitimacy to jihadists and sectarian militants, and also serve the army’s agenda of undermining the larger and more established civilian political parties. For a relatively small organization, JeI has a disproportionately large media presence, in keeping with its Bolshevik-style roots. It publishes a daily newspaper (called Jassarat) and several weekly and monthly periodicals, all in Urdu. Its subversive message is largely unseen by the most liberal-minded of Pakistan’s urbanized upper classes but enjoys a sizeable following among the middle classes. Besides its official publications, party sympathizers also independently own media companies in Lahore and Karachi, which conform to its philosophy of mixing religion with politics and shrinking the liberal space that separates the two.72 Among all Islamist parties, Jamaat-e-Islami has been singled out by Pakistani commentators as having the greatest impact in re-engineering the previously open-minded nature of Punjabi society.73 Unlike the terrorist front organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which until August 2017 had claimed to be ‘apolitical’ as far as Pakistani domestic affairs were

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concerned, JeI has long been known to have an interest in seizing power. Yet, due to its periodic usefulness as an instrument for power games between the army and non-Islamist civilian politicians, it has been able to propagate its ideology freely. In the process, it may have been rather too successful. Over the 2000s, election results in Pakistan suggested that JeI’s radicalizing discourse had created political space for JuD to emerge as a mainstream actor in Pakistani society, if ever it chose to do so.74 In August 2017, this finally happened, to the consternation of nongovernmental commentators in Pakistan, as well as Indian and American security experts.75 Among the former, opinion was divided on how much this development was a result of ISI machinations to protect JuD from American punitive action.76 After the 2008 Mumbai attack, JuD had been designated an international terrorist organization by the United Nations. Pakistan, however, failed to meet its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 to take action against the group.77 Instead, in 2011, the ISI had floated a 40-party alliance of Islamists and made the JuD chief its head, in a bid to give him domestic respectability.78 When the US government intensified pressure on Islamabad in 2017 to restrict the group, JuD announced that it was forming a political party, the Milli Muslim League. The new party announced plans to contest the 2018 general elections, expecting that it would run in large part against candidates of the Pakistan Muslim League.79 Having previously benefited from the PML’s financial largesse and political protection, JuD had in effect turned on its civilian benefactor.80 Interestingly, this happened at a time when tensions between the Pakistani army and the PML were high, raising the question of whether JuD had become a new instrument of military control over politics. In the face of international criticism, the army’s propaganda machinery released a barrage of excuses for having facilitated JuD’s entry into the electoral process. It argued that JuD was being mainstreamed as part of a larger strategy of ‘deradicalization’. By perversely using vocabulary favoured by Western experts, the army and ISI sought to give respectability to what was in effect, state protection of an international terrorist entity. As the Pakistan correspondent of The Economist noted in a scathing article, appropriately entitled Pakistan Is Inviting Its Favourite Jihadis Into Parliament:

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[D]eradicalization is tricky at the best of times, and the conditions that made it work elsewhere in the past simply don’t apply to Pakistan today. Most of all, it needs a state willing to threaten nonstate actors with something they would rather avoid (a military offensive) while proffering the reward of something they want (political influence). In Pakistan, neither condition is fulfilled. In fact, the ‘mainstreaming’ project appears just as likely to strengthen jihadi militants as quell them — and you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder whether that isn’t really the point.81 To further pre-empt criticism of its role in sheltering terrorists who have been implicated in specific incidents, the Deep State uses a simple tactic: blaming the victim. Both India and the United States have been at the receiving end of this tactic. With India, Pakistani diplomats have alleged that New Delhi has not provided sufficient evidence of LeT/ JuD’s involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attack.82 With the United States, Islamabad has periodically claimed that the Americans do not share information about intelligence collection activities conducted on Pakistani soil, thus eroding trust between the two countries.83 In 1995, when an undercover employee of the American National Security Agency and another from the CIA were shot dead in Karachi, Pakistani officials cited the confidentiality of the victims’ jobs as the reason they were not able to pursue the investigation actively and identify the culprits.84 The above chapter concluded the second part of this book. While Part I narrated the history and development of South Asia’s Islamist tradition, both violent and non-violent, Pan-Islamist and sectarian, Part II demonstrated how non-state actors as well as para-state actors could deny, collect and manipulate information according to their preferences. They have been helped by the Pakistani Deep State, a military and intelligence-led consortium of officials, some of who serve in ‘civilian’ roles. The partisan interests of the Deep State have allowed militant Islamists to gain a disproportionate voice in influencing Pakistani domestic perceptions on terrorism. This influence has hampered the development of a civil society consensus against political extremism and cross-border terrorism. It has allowed the Pakistani army to conduct covert paramilitary activities in

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Afghanistan and India without attracting severe international criticism. The final part of this book, spread over two chapters, examines the impact that such policies have had on the wider South Asian region, looking at Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. All three countries have been heavily affected by the violent spillover of jihadism from Pakistan.

REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 7 REGIONAL IMPACT

A June 2016 editorial in the Herald introspected about Pakistan’s poor relations with all its neighbours (except China). The article lamented that such relations resulted from ‘our internal insecurity that is projecting itself onto our external policy.’1 The following month, an article in Newsline blamed Pakistan’s isolation on its being ‘a state which is unwilling to give up its security fantasies in its dealing with the outside world.’2 This chapter demonstrates the validity of both statements for explaining the export of religious militancy from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. Looking at the role played by the Pakistani Deep State, transnational Islamist networks and Arab NGOs, it will argue that Pakistan has become a meeting point for two of the Islamic world’s most powerful social forces: militant Islamism and borderless humanitarianism.3 When combined, these forces have provided the foundation for international terrorism to proliferate in South Asia. Each country (Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India) is examined here separately. This is because Pan-Islamist trends have differently impacted local politics. In Afghanistan, Pakistani support of Islamists stems from the unresolved border dispute over ‘Pashtunistan’. Instead of acknowledging Afghan opposition to the status quo, the Pakistani security establishment has tried to smuggle in a backdoor solution by installing a puppet government in Kabul. It hopes that such a government could be prevailed upon to see the border dispute as Islamabad would like it. The Taliban are favoured by the ISI primarily for this reason. For its part Bangladesh, once a Pakistani colony, has struggled to rid itself of the

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vestiges of Deep State-style politics and adopt secular, d emocratic governance.4 The country’s political intrigues have given the ISI operational space to insert agent provocateurs into the post-1971 context. Jamaat-e-Islami and Tablighi Jamaat, together with a handful of lavishly-funded NGOs, have contributed to drastically eroding Bangladesh’s secular moorings. On the other hand, India has remained largely unaffected by radical Islamism, with the exception of the Kashmir insurgency and cross-border terrorist attacks by groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Afghanistan A US official once explained America’s failure to stabilize the AfPak region with a simple aphorism: ‘Pakistan was the real issue, not Afghanistan.’5 Washington Post journalist Carlotta Gall similarly concluded in 2014 that America had failed to win in Afghanistan because it focused on the ‘wrong enemy’.6 Instead of the Afghan Taliban, which was merely a local proxy, the real antagonist was Pakistan, whose interference in Afghan affairs pre-dates American engagement in the country. Using cross-border networks of ulema, the Pakistani Deep State corroded the political integrity of Afghanistan over many decades and violated its sovereignty. An illustration of this silent invasion is provided by the following estimate: During the decade-long SovietAfghan War, the ISI and Pakistani army trained approximately 85,000 Afghan guerrillas on Pakistani soil to go over and fight the Soviet occupation forces.7 Yet, during the following decade of the 1990s, by the lowest count, over 100,000 Pakistani citizens fought in Afghanistan as part of the supposedly ‘indigenous’ Taliban militia, a political and military force that Pakistani officialdom denied having supported.8 Partly due to such duplicity, Afghan-Pakistani relations have been poor during any phase when Kabul had some measure of independence over its own foreign policy. At the public level, relations have sometimes been even worse than between governments; those considered as terrorists on one side of the frontier may be viewed as freedom fighters on the other side. At minimum, they do not attract the same level of hostility, even if they threaten and kill innocents on the other side.9

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‘Pashtunistan’ Afghanistan was the only country to oppose Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations in 1947. Its objection derived from the arbitrary manner in which Pakistan claimed the border alignments of colonial (i.e., British-ruled) India. These alignments conferred permanence to the Durand Line, the working boundary between Afghanistan and British India. The Line split the ethnically distinct Pashtun community of Afghanistan into two unequal parts, with the larger part living inside colonial territory. When imposed by treaty in 1893, the Line was still intended as a semi-permeable boundary: in exchange for Afghan recognition of its legitimacy, the British recognized that Kabul had residual interests east of the Line. Accordingly, the British undertook to inform the Afghan government before launching any military operations against rebellious tribesmen in the British-controlled part of the Pashtun lands. Interestingly, even the government of Pakistan recognized these cross-border interests of Afghanistan, but only for the first couple of decades after 1947. From the 1970s onwards, Islamabad began unilaterally reinterpreting the 1893 treaty. It constructed frontier roads in an effort to bring the so-called tribal areas more firmly within its control, calculating that Afghan protests would not matter.10 For its part, Afghanistan did not confine itself to diplomatic protests after 1947. According to Pakistani officials in the restive Baluchistan province which borders Afghanistan, Kabul recruited, funded and trained irregular fighters from Pashtun villages on both sides of the Line. Lowlevel guerrilla activity, mostly directed against Pakistani government installations and communications infrastructure, became a regular feature of frontier life. Reports speak of a Deobandi cleric who had previously been a loyalist of the Indian National Congress in British India, Maulvi Ghulam Haidar Jamaldini, as playing a key role in the rebellion.11 Based on this, the Pakistani security establishment floated a theory that the movement for a separate Pashtun homeland (Pashtunistan) was an Indianbacked conspiracy to divide Pakistan internally. In reality, the Indian political leadership at the time (1950s and 1960s) were outspoken in asserting that Pakistan had inherited the same territorial boundaries as British India. Such statements were not made out of altruism, but because New Delhi wanted to set a precedent which could then be applied to its own borders vis-a`-vis Tibet and China.

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Instead of India, it was the Soviet Union which secretly backed Afghan irredentism against Pakistan. Ever since Pakistan had joined the Baghdad Pact in 1955, Moscow had seen value in keeping AfghanPakistani relations tense.12 It had an easy task; there already were border clashes between the two countries’ armies in 1948, 1950 and 1951. The appointment of Sardar Mohammed Daud Khan as Afghan prime minister in 1953 gave fresh impetus to bilateral tensions. Pakistan responded by strengthening the powers of the federal government, thereby undermining provincial autonomy. Kabul saw this as reneging on the 1893 border treaty while also eliminating the prospect of further negotiations about the Durand Line. The government view was widely shared by the Afghan population, and an enraged crowd broke into the grounds of the Pakistani embassy in March 1955 and torched the Pakistani flag. Both countries broke off diplomatic relations, which were only restored upon the mediation of Turkey, Iraq and Iran. During the 1970s, Pakistan suspected that Afghanistan and Iraq (because of its rivalry with Iran) were supporting Baloch separatists.13 The Baloch people were divided between Pakistan and Iran, much like Pashtuns were divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, unlike Kabul, Tehran was hostile to ethno-nationalism among Pakistani frontiersmen. This was because the latter were Sunnis and could make a case for independence from both Shia-dominated Iran and Punjabid ominated Pakistan. It thus cooperated with Islamabad in suppressing a Baloch rebellion between 1973 and 1976. Due to the return of Daud Khan as Afghan president in 1973 (a Pakistani trade embargo had forced his ouster as prime minister in 1963), relations with Kabul were especially tense until Daud’s assassination during the 1978 Saur revolution.14 With his death, the Pashtunistan issue lost salience as Afghanistan came to be ruled by first Soviet and then Pakistani puppets for more than two decades thereafter. Importantly, however, no Afghan government, regardless of how beholden it may have been to Islamabad, recognized the Durand Line as an international border. This reluctance extended even to the Taliban, who in 1997 went to the extent of signalling that they would resurrect Pashtun ethno-nationalist contacts across the Line if Islamabad continued to encroach on and occupy Afghan outposts, which the Pakistani army was doing at the time.15

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For the most part, Pakistani clients in Afghanistan have been Pashtun Islamists from the Ghilzai tribe. This is because the impoverished and rural-dwelling Ghilzais are more sympathetic to calls for Pan-Islamic unity than other Pashtun tribes, who favour nationalist politics that could stoke up irredentist claims to Pakistani territory. The Ghilzais have a 300-year feud with the next largest tribe, the Durranis.16 During the Soviet-Afghan War, ISI strategists played on this feud to keep Ghilzai Pashtuns from rallying to the Durrani-dominated communist government in Kabul. Overlaying the petty politics was the ennobling narrative of fighting a foreign occupier. But once that narrative fell apart with the Soviet withdrawal in 1988– 9, the Pakistan-based Afghan mujahideen descended into internecine warfare along tribal lines.17 The ISI tried its best to help Ghilzai warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar prevail in the resulting civil war, since he was committed to Pan-Islamism over nationalism. But support for Hekmatyar and his tribe cost Pakistan credibility internationally and with other sections of the Afghan population. The hardline Islamist was not only hostile to the West (something ISI officials were not worried about) but was also a perpetrator of serious war crimes. These notably included shelling Kabul between 1992 and 1994, killing over 25,000 civilians.18 Owing to his divisive personality, a trait that was matched by his military mediocrity, Hekmatyar proved unable to unite even the Ghilzais behind him. Eventually, the ISI shifted its patronage to the Taliban who commanded a wider support base among Pashtuns, bringing many Durranis into their fold. Hekmatyar was thereafter kept in reserve as a ‘strategic asset’, to be deployed if ever the Taliban grew uncontrollable. The next part of this section describes how Pakistani secret agents navigated the treacherous rivalries of Afghan politics to ensure that whoever came out on top would be someone Islamabad could do business with.

Ethnic and ideological networks One of the most fascinating aspects of the Soviet-Afghan War was how Pakistan squared the circle between publicly denying it was involved with the Afghan mujahideen and yet being accepted as a stakeholder in the conflict, without whose support a negotiated settlement would be impossible. Islamabad both perpetuated a problem (while denying that any problem existed) and yet offered its services as the problem-solver.

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By the logic of realpolitik, there was no inconsistency; covert blackmail between governments is an integral part of statecraft. But at the level of strategic communication, things were not so straightforward as far as Islamabad’s domestic constituency was concerned. To make the point: Question: How do you tell your people one version of events and then swiftly project an entirely different reality to them when the time for a policy shift comes? Answer: You take a two-pronged approach that combines creative storytelling to domestic audiences and does not honour any promises about a policy change that may have been made to your foreign negotiating partners. This is what the Pakistani military leadership did during the latter half of the 1980s. Islamabad told its own people that it was not supporting Afghan guerrillas. Rather, the latter, out of an expansive sense of Islamic solidarity, were fighting the Soviets both to free their own land from foreign occupation and to defend Pakistan from Soviet invasion.19 It was only natural that at the sub-state level, many Pakistanis suspected this was a falsehood but it sounded so wonderfully heroic that it gained believability (if not actual credibility) among the masses.20 Meanwhile, the Geneva Accords specifying the terms and timeframe of the Soviet withdrawal were being negotiated. Under a puppet civilian prime minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, the Pakistani government agreed to stop supporting the mujahideen once the Soviets had left Afghanistan.21 But a calculated reneging by the Pakistani army occurred in the turmoil that followed Junejo’s dismissal by Zia-ul Haq and the latter’s own death in a suspicious air crash. Instead, the Soviet withdrawal cleared the way for Pakistan to start reengineering the Afghan state and polity as per its own preference, which was to bring Islamists into power. Ostensibly, those Pakistanis who crossed the Durand Line to fight in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviets left, were non-state actors outside Islamabad’s control. The fact that many were serving personnel from the army Special Services Group (SSG), which had a history of supporting Afghan guerrillas in the 1970s against the Daud government, was irrelevant,22 as was the fact that they happened to be mostly Pashtuns. Actually, the latter detail worked well with the government’s official line that events along the disputed border were not

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being orchestrated by Islamabad, but by irate locals who took matters into their own hands. Pakistani soldiers who volunteered for combat in Afghanistan were cautioned that, if captured by Soviet or Afghan security forces, they were to deny their Pakistani nationality and claim to be from Afghanistan itself.23 Since many Afghan guerrillas were actually from the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and merely used Pakistan as a safe haven and logistical base, this claim would have a modicum of plausibility, even if it was false. The bi-directional porosity of the Durand Line, as far as personnel were concerned, contrasted with a uni-directional flow of ideology, money and weapons. For these commodities, traffic was exclusively from Pakistan to Afghanistan. By 1989, ten years of foreign occupation and civil war had destroyed much of village-level infrastructure for religious education in Afghanistan, leaving the ulema dependent on Pakistani madrassas to train future generations of clerics.24 Such infrastructure had never been substantial to begin with. Most Afghan guerrillas fought the Soviets out of a sense of territorially defined patriotism that was superficially wrapped in Islamic discourse, and not out of reverence for Islamist models of governance.25 The latter appealed mostly to a thin sliver of urban intellectuals such as Hekmatyar who had been an engineering student at Kabul University in the early 1970s when he became involved in political Islam. His contemporaries at the same university, who later rose to prominent positions in the Pakistan-backed mujahideen, came from similar backgrounds and had received religious education in either Saudi Arabia or Egypt.26 Cross-border attacks by serving military personnel masquerading as ‘irregular fighters’ have been integral to Pakistani proxy warfare for decades. A 2008 study by British and Canadian academicians calls this ‘tribal focoism’, which is ‘a reliance on imported itinerant insurgents to conduct raids to stimulate an uprising’.27 Rather than engage in Maoiststyle mass mobilization campaigns, which have potential to backfire in the retrogressive and feudal environment of Pakistan’s own domestic politics, the ISI and Pakistani army prefer to conduct provocation operations. Troopers from the Special Services Group are often used to carry out missions which vitiate the political climate in the targeted area, and trigger government repression which can then legitimate retaliatory mobilization among the local populace. Most importantly, such mobilization is motivated by context-specific grievances and not

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universal or ethnically distinct values, thus minimizing the risk of a backflow into Pakistan. However, what works in theory may fail in practice. Pakistan has used tribal focoism to destabilize Afghanistan since the 1970s and promote the interests of the Taliban since the 1990s. But in 2010–11, an example of its inability to fully control its proxies occurred. A veteran ISI operative, retired Colonel Sultan Amin Tarar, was abducted and killed by a faction of the Pakistani Taliban. Tarar was better known by his nom de geurre of Colonel Imam. During his time as Pakistan’s consul-general in Herat, he was perhaps the most prominent ISI official to deal with senior Taliban leaders. A Pashtun who previously served in the SSG, he assumed a larger than life persona during the rise of the Taliban in 1994–6. Also abducted and killed at roughly the same time as Tarar was another former ISI operative, retired Squadron Leader Khalid Khwaja. Their deaths showed that even if one generation of violent proxies is submissive to its intelligence handlers, the succeeding generation may wish to assert independence by alienating its historical patron.28 Waging a multigenerational proxy war brings the risk that future generations of ‘strategic assets’ may be less pliant than their predecessors, especially if they wish to outshine them in militant folklore. A favoured tactic used by the Pakistani security establishment to defuse the risk of rogue proxies is to factionalize an insurgency and shift support among the various factions. An updated version of the divideand-rule approach used in colonial India, factionalization has been practised in Afghanistan and the Indian province of Jammu & Kashmir. In Afghanistan, it began when the ISI organized the anti-Soviet resistance into seven political parties, all based in Peshawar. Four of these were Islamist, with the most favoured in terms of money and weapons being Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami, an offshoot of the Afghanistan chapter of Jamaat-e-Islami. Its local partner in Pakistan was JeI itself, which fronted for the ISI and the Pakistani state. However, Hekmatyar’s failure to unite other Pashtuns behind him led the ISI to look for alternatives. Since JeI had limited reach in Afghanistan beyond urban centres, the agency turned to Pakistan’s other large Islamist party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam. This party was predominantly Pashtun and closer to the original rural simplicity of the Deobandi school, unlike the pseudo-Bolshevist JeI. Thanks to its network of madrassas along the Durand Line—an inheritance of the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband’s patient

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preparation for rising against colonial rule—it had a roster of alumni on both sides of the Line, whom it could call upon for mobilizational purposes. A landmark date was 12 October 1994, when, according to the official Pakistani version of events, a new Afghan militia called the ‘Taliban’ seized an arms depot at the frontier town of Spin Boldak. Previously controlled by Hekmatyar, the depot’s fall to the Taliban signalled that Islamabad was prepared to downgrade, if not outright jettison, Hizb-e-Islami in order to raise more effective proxies in Afghanistan. As one Pakistani journalist has pointed out, the seizure itself may only have been a cover story; throughout 1994– 6, Pakistani border guards assisted the Taliban in seizing control of arms caches and strong points that had previously been held by other Afghan Islamist factions.29 The next part of this section describes how, with the installation of the Taliban in Kabul and opening of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier to foreign jihadist groups, Al Qaeda found a permanent home in South Asia.

Al Qaeda (re)enters the scene In the early 1990s, the ISI made a fateful decision: through its control of recruitment and training processes in guerrilla camps, it fostered operational linkages between the Afghan jihad and the Kashmir one.30 The two movements had been independent of each other, only sharing a common religious denominator and having bases on Pakistani territory. But their dynamics were different. In Afghanistan, the Soviets were an alien occupation force that had arrived in the country in 1979, whereas in Kashmir, the Indian administrative and security apparatus had been entrenched and largely unopposed for four decades since 1947. The outbreak of insurgency in 1988, however, had created grounds for a superficial comparison between the two theatres, both of which Pakistan was covertly engaged in. Just as the Arabization of the Afghan jihad helped isolate the Soviet Union diplomatically, so too did the Pakistani security establishment hope that a similar Arabization could weaken India’s d iplomatic position on Kashmir. Aware, though, that the Kashmir issue was less internationally contentious than the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the ISI did not publicize the Arab link, for fear of setting off panic among Western governments of an ‘Islamist International’ that would promote fundamentalism elsewhere.31

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As already mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book, Arabs had been arriving in Pakistan to fight the Soviets since the early 1980s, but the real surge happened in the latter part of the decade. In 1987, Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, another ISI proxy in the mould of Hektmatyar, began incorporating Arab volunteers in his guerrilla bands in Afghanistan. Haqqani had already established contact with wealthy foreign donors during pilgrimages to Mecca. He ran fundraising offices in Persian Gulf countries and was close to the Saudi intelligence service. His connection to Osama Bin Laden dated back to the construction of a training base in Zhawar in Afghanistan’s Paktia province. The cost of construction was met by the ISI and much of the work was done by Pakistani contractors with whom Bin Laden, through his family’s construction business, had developed an association.32 Unlike the inept Hekmatyar, Haqqani was at the time favourably regarded in Washington and Langley as a Pashtun commander who was effective against the Soviets. Long after events such as 9/11 had made Bin Laden and his confederates, including Haqqani, enemies of the United States, the ISI continued to use the Afghan warlord to its benefit. One of the most important tasks assigned to him and his son Sirajuddin in the mid 2000s was to ensure that the Afghan Taliban did not turn against Pakistan, but instead remained focused on conducting cross-border raids on US troops in Afghanistan.33 Throughout the latter half of the 1990s, Arabs arriving for training with Al Qaeda first had to clear security vetting in Pakistan. Initial contacts between the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership were brokered by the ISI. The Pakistani media, for instance, has reported that Osama Bin Laden was offered refuge in Afghanistan thanks to the agency’s intervention, at a time when the United States was forcing governments worldwide to deny him sanctuary. After being expelled from Sudan in 1996, Bin Laden first met Taliban leaders through the facilitation of the then head of the Binori Town madrassa in Karachi.34 The madrassa was a Deobandi institution which accepted its first students in 1981 and had since been involved with training Afghan ulema, thereby enhancing Pakistani ‘soft power’ and intelligence penetration of Afghanistan. Three of Taliban chief Mullah Omar’s top six advisors studied there.35 Bin Laden’s arrival was welcomed by the Pakistani security establishment because he had the potential to serve as a rallying point for the motley collection of Arab jihadists who remained in Pakistan after the

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Soviet-Afghan War. These jihadists were compromising the country’s international image through their involvement with terrorist activities overseas. By placing Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Pakistan basically outsourced its own increasingly unmanageable terrorist problem.36 Nor did its facilitation end in 1996; according to one American scholar, in 2000 Islamabad pressed the Taliban to take responsibility for Al Qaeda training. Six separate camps were consolidated into three larger facilities and administratively placed under the Taliban Ministry of Defence.37 It seems that the subsequent intermingling of Afghan and Arab jihadists proved beneficial for both sides. Al Qaeda was able to shelter behind the nominal sovereignty enjoyed by the Taliban government while the latter ruled Afghanistan, and the Taliban learnt combat tactics from Al Qaeda. During the long insurgency against the US-led coalition in Afghanistan after 2001, observers were struck by how sophisticated the once famously technophobic Taliban had become in digital intelligence collection. Major tactical actions against Western troops seemed to coincide with political developments back in their home countries. The objective was apparently to trigger a demoralizing public debate in the West about the futility of the war effort. If this was indeed the case, it seems to have worked.38 Covert Arabization of the Afghan jihad by Islamabad had the effect of converting Afghanistan and Pakistan into a single operating space for jihadists (hence the term ‘AfPak’). It gave the Pakistani Deep State as well as religious seminaries political room to offload surplus manpower, thereby alleviating a potential d omestic security problem and simultaneously advancing geopolitical goals. Cross-border movements of fighters occurred on a massive scale. In 1997, an estimated 10,000 Pakistani volunteers crossed the Durand Line at just one checkpoint to fight alongside the Taliban. Upon their return, they narrated stories about poor treatment by their hosts. Unlike Arabs, who were romanticized for having supposedly left better lifestyles to live frugally in the cause of jihad, Pakistanis were used as porters and second-line defensive troops.39 Direct combat with the Northern Alliance opponents of the Taliban was left to seasoned veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War. From other accounts, it appears as though Al Qaeda and the Taliban maintained a two-tier caste system when it came to Pakistani volunteers: those with Western or Arab passports, or experience of living outside South Asia, were given preferential treatment and cultivated as

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long-term penetration agents. They could be used to hit at Western homelands in future ‘special operations’. But Pashtun and Punjabi village boys could offer little by way of additional combat capability, beyond freeing up Taliban manpower for frontline duties. They were treated as easily replaceable mules.40 After the US invasion of Afghanistan, fleeing Taliban fighters leveraged their past connections with the ISI to obtain refuge in Pakistan. By the mid 2000s, they were frankly admitting to Western media that serving ISI colonels funded attacks in Afghanistan, using frontier mosques and madrassas as cut-outs to maintain plausible deniability.41 The situation was slightly different with Al Qaeda: the ISI seems to have done nothing to help international terrorist fugitives escape, nor hindered them either. One speculative media report by a well-known journalist tracked Al Qaeda’s post-9/11 fortunes in Pakistan as follows: of roughly 400 operatives who crossed the Durand Line, 75 escaped to Yemen and Saud i Arabia and 30 travelled to Iran via Baluchistan. Of the remaining 300, 225 scattered across the country and the final 75 holed up in Karachi. By early 2004, 25 of these had been caught and the remainder still enjoyed local support from Pakistani harbourers.42 Those who fled to Yemen and Saudi Arabia used the services of drug smugglers to escape aboard container ships and private yachts. The smugglers were prepared to help because they reasoned that such activity only harmed ‘infidel’ societies to which they were, in any case, feeding self-destructive products.43

Towards an uncertain future Until 2007, tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan were mitigated (but not reduced) by the cooperation that Pervez Musharraf’s government in Islamabad extended to the US War on Terror.44 This ensured that even though cross-border violence escalated in 2005, acts of urban terrorism were rare. The Red Mosque crisis of July 2007 and the re-establishment of democracy in Pakistan from 2008 set the stage for spiralling tensions. December 2007 marked the emergence of the socalled Pakistani Taliban, who carried out attacks against Pakistani security forces and prompted the ISI to search for a means of diverting militant anger away from the military. By allowing elections, the military-led Deep State acquired a civilian fac
ade that served as a handy foil for both governance failures and international criticism of its

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activities. Accordingly, it began to carry out more audacious attacks in Afghanistan, including a suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul that, US officials said, was traced to the ISI leadership.45 Later, the Americans themselves were victims of an assault on their embassy. This event, too, was attributed to ISI by serving US military officials.46 Through all this, Pakistani spokesmen sought to portray their country’s involvement in Afghanistan as motivated by fears of Indian influence.47 But this was a classic example of discourse-shaping that aimed to deflect scholarly attention from the real issue. Far from the public spotlight, bilateral talks between Kabul and Islamabad focused on an altogether different topic: the status of the Durand Line. Pakistan wanted the Line to be recognized by Afghanistan as a legitimate international border. The latter suggested instead that the border dispute be put into cold storage and efforts made to improve bilateral relations in other areas.48 Since Pakistan treats the border dispute as the main source of AfPak tensions, little progress has been made towards building trust. On the contrary, two Afghan presidents since 2001 who were initially well-disposed towards Islamabad turned hostile due to its support of Islamist groups. The first, Hamid Karzai, had been in contact with the highest levels of the ISI from 1984 onwards and benefited from its support when he was appointed Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister in the early 1990s.49 As president in the post-Taliban context, he became a vocal critic of Pakistan. His successor, Ashraf Ghani, initially attempted to rebuild relations but eventually accused Islamabad of waging an ‘undeclared war of aggression’ on Afghanistan.50 So, the cumulative effect of four decades of covert Pakistani interference has been to harden Afghan views of Islamabad’s intentions. Pakistani officials sometimes suggest that Afghanistan is deliberately hosting the Pakistani Taliban as a counter to Islamabad’s use of the Afghan Taliban as a geopolitical instrument. Such officials admit, however, that it is not Afghan policy to destabilize Pakistan and that any collusion between Afghan intelligence officials and the Pakistani Taliban might be the result of localized, low-level cooperation.51 What is undeniable is that intervention in Afghanistan has complicated Pakistan’s own problems with managing sectarianism. The rise of Deobandi militias in the 1990s proved a two-edged weapon that allowed the externalization of the Pashtunistan dispute into Afghan

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territory, but also strengthened Sunni supremacists in Punjab. As one commentator dryly observed in 1998: ‘sectarian violence, which has come home to roost in Pakistan’s largest province—the Punjab, is the fallout of Pakistan’s “open border” policy with Afghanistan.’52 The weaponization of Pakistani society—a consequence of the many illegal arms factories that came up to supply hardware for the Afghan jihad— led to the emergence of militarized criminal syndicates and political parties, besides terrorist groups.53 All this contributed to the state’s erosion of sovereignty. Due to the patronage they have received from elements of the Deep State, some militants have been emboldened to confront the civilian police brazenly. One of the worst examples occurred in July 2001, when a Taliban diplomat in Karachi ordered the killing of a local police official investigating an extortion racket the diplomat was involved in.54 Although the case of Afghanistan has yielded clear examples of blowback, which have damaged Pakistani security interests, the next case study examined in this chapter—Bangladesh—shows that support for Islamism can indeed be an effective method of power projection.

Bangladesh Despite obtaining political and economic independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh has struggled to preserve its ideological autonomy ever since. The country is caught between the Islamizing efforts of the national chapter of Jamaat-e-Islami and Arab non-governmental organizations on the one hand and the secularizing tendency of the centre-left Awami League party on the other. Between the two stands the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP is an opponent of the Awami League and strategic partner of the Islamists, but with a less radical outlook.55 Due to a high degree of contestation between the BNP and the Awami League, the Pakistani ISI has been partly able, through proxies such as JeI (Bangladesh), to influence the country’s political and intellectual direction. In 2017, the Bangladeshi envoy to New Delhi told the international media that the United Nations ought to consider declaring Pakistan a ‘terrorist state’ due to its history of regional disruption through jihadist proxies.56 To understand how political Islam came to provide a foreign power with ideological depth in Bangladesh, it is necessary to briefly go over

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the country’s history. Prior to 1971, Bangladesh was part of a united Pakistani state, which was divided into western and eastern wings separated by a thousand kilometres of Indian territory. On the evening of 25 March of that year, the Pakistani army launched a ‘Night of the Long Knives’-style pogrom against ethno-nationalists in East Pakistan, who were represented by the Awami League.57 The crackdown triggered a full-fledged secessionist movement. West Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas wrote a sensational report for the Times of London, entitled ‘Genocide’, which was carried by the paper on 13 June 1971. The report described systematic war crimes being committed by the Pakistani military. Since all foreign journalists had been deported from East Pakistan and the local press intimidated into reporting whatever the military regime in Islamabad wanted to project, Mascarenhas’ article was the first glimpse the international community had of the situation after the crackdown began. It allegedly influenced Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to start preparing for a military intervention, as millions of refugees poured across the East Pakistani border into India’s north-eastern provinces.58 The intervention, which finally occurred in December 1971, led to the creation of an independent new state, called Bangladesh. The Awami League leader, Sheikh Mujib-ur Rehman, became the first prime minister of the new state. During the nine-month civil war in East Pakistan (April –December 1971), local activists of Jamaat-e-Islami assisted the Pakistani army in killing Awami League cadres. They organized two kinds of vigilante forces. Urban death squads were known as Al Badr and were tasked with hunting down nationalists in the country’s universities. They were manned by the JeI students’ wing, which in East Pakistan was called the Islami Chhatra Shibir. A second group of vigilantes was tasked with rear area security and was known as Al Shams.59 Owing to this history of complicity, when Bangladesh became independent, JeI was banned along with all other Islamist parties. The country’s first constitution, promulgated in 1972, declared that Bangladesh would be a secular state. Events soon took another turn. On 15 August 1975, Mujib-ur Rehman was assassinated along with most of his family by a group of pro-Islamist army officers. His death cleared the way for the creation of a Deep State similar to that in Pakistan. Indeed, there were later suspicions that his own intelligence chief was among the main

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conspirators. The fact that three days before Mujib was murdered, this official had met with key politicians, who helped him take over the reins of government with lightning speed once the coup occurred, suggests a betrayal from deep within Mujib’s inner circles.60 After Mujib’s death, Bangladesh was ruled by two military dictators—General Zia-ur Rehman (1977– 81) and General Hussain Mohammed Ershad (1982–90). Both used political Islam to justify their hold on power. Zia-ur Rehman, like his contemporary Zia-ul Haq in Pakistan, saw religion as a tool that could compensate for lack of democratic legitimacy. Like the Pakistani dictator, he also used it as a bridge-building instrument to wealthy Arab states, whose assistance he needed to build up Bangladesh’s economy. Unlike Zia-ul Haq, however, he did not portray an image of personal piety and thus did not win over the extreme political right. Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh), which had disappeared from the country’s public scene after 1971, re-emerged under his dictatorship. But in contrast to its parent organization in Pakistan, which developed close relations with Zia-ul Haq, JeI (Bangladesh) remained aloof from Zia-ur Rehman’s regime. During the 1980s, it was implicitly hostile to his successor, Hussain Ershad. This raises the question of whether JeI (Bangladesh) was less susceptible to cooptation by military leaders than its Pakistani counterpart because it was more focused on attaining political power for itself, or because the Bangladeshi Deep State was not as strong as the Pakistani one. Both generals, Zia-ur Rehman and Hussain Ershad, made overtures to Islamist parties between 1977 and 1982. The former lifted Mujib’s ban on Islamist organizations and introduced a new constitution, which abrogated the previous commitment to secularism. Upon taking power, Ershad defined Islam as the state religion.61 But since he did not go so far as to declare that Bangladesh would be an Islamic state (which by implication, would have to be ruled by the clergy and not the military), JeI (Banglad esh) perceived him as an opportunist and stayed aloof. Democratic rule was restored in 1990, and has continued uninterrupted since. Power has alternated between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (set up by the military government in 1978 as a centre-right counterweight to the Awami League) and the League itself.62 Meanwhile, JeI (Bangladesh) has entered into issue-specific alliances with both parties, but claims it is not interested in seizing power, or even sharing power, until such time as the country is prepared

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to accept Islamic rule.63 Some commentators believe that such renunciation is eyewash, since JeI has had no hesitation in providing support to the BNP and Awami League, only to desert them at a critical juncture. Each of Bangladesh’s elections since 1990, with the exception of that held in 2008, has been influenced by JeI’s posture on which of the two parties it would support.64 For this reason, it has become a key backstage player in Bangladeshi politics.

JeI (Bangladesh)—a remarkable resurrection For a party widely accused of war crimes against fellow citizens, JeI has enjoyed an impressive turn of fortunes. This has taken place over several decades, as memories of the 1971 civil war are yet to fade completely. The party’s main strength has been its internal discipline and organizational coherence. Its big breakthrough happened in October 2001, when it entered into a power-sharing agreement with the BNP (notwithstanding its previous claims of abjuring political power). Over the next five years, two JeI officials controlled ministerial portfolios for Agriculture and Social Welfare. They used this opportunity to redirect government spending away from public schools and towards religious seminaries. According to one estimate, budgets for the former rose by 9.74 per cent between 2001 and 2005, while those of madrassas rose by 22.22 per cent.65 It was perceived by jihadists across the country that the political alliance between Islamists and the BNP would prevent counterterrorist action, even if significant international pressure was brought to bear against Dhaka. To a large extent, such complacency was justified. Between October and February 2005, the BNP-led government in the national capital, resisted pressure from foreign governments to clamp down on jihadist networks. It was only when Bangladesh was pointedly excluded from an international donor conference, which aimed to allocate aid money to the country, that the BNP was stung into action.66 Even so, while it banned two jihadist organizations, it portrayed the move domestically as a measure to improve the law and order situation rather than as a counterterrorism initiative. While in government, JeI (Bangladesh) is thought to have had at least two high-level protectors in the armed forces: allegedly, one was military secretary to the country’s president and the other was head of the counterterrorism d esk at the Directorate General of Forces

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Intelligence. The DGFI is a joint services military intelligence agency, modelled on the ISI of Pakistan. Officers from the latter played a crucial role in building up the DGFI in the aftermath of the 1975 coup and modelling it to clone the Pakistani Deep State.67 DGFI was used by Zia-ur Rehman and then Ershad to consolidate their respective regimes and suppress democratic movements. For example, according to one Indian analyst, in 1990 Ershad covertly used the agency to trigger three days of anti-Hindu rioting and deflect public attention from protests against his government. The method employed was to plant a false claim in a local newspaper that a prominent mosque in India had been razed. In response, hundreds of Islamists went on a three-day spree of looting, arson and rape targeted at Bangladeshi Hindus.68 Around 10 per cent of army personnel are thought to be sympathetic to JeI (Bangladesh), whose share of the national votebank is estimated at 15 per cent, or 12 million voters. In this regard, JeI dominates the Islamist scene in Bangladesh. Out of 30 religious parties and subsidiary factions, it has captured between 4 and 6 per cent of the popular vote in all general elections except 2008. The remaining 29 groups, even when combined, have accounted for less than 1 per cent. JeI used its five years in government to recruit a large number of Islamist militants into the police. It thereby ensured that those labelled as ‘terrorists’ could either operate unimpeded or, if pursued, evade capture by receiving advance warning of police raids.69 Perhaps as a result of this, even some BNP leaders were d rawn towards Islamist militancy. Senior party functionaries, such a former Post and Telecommunications Minister, were indicted in 2007 for supporting terrorism. Police officials who tried to investigate militant attacks later revealed that their efforts had been stymied by high-level political interference. In this context, it is important to note that Indian policymakers warned in 2002 that they were observing a dual spike in the presence of Al Qaeda terrorists and ISI operatives in Bangladesh.70 While the activities of the latter remain cloaked in mystery, the increased Al Qaed a profile was noted by local media. It will be explored in greater detail in the next part of this section. Like its Pakistani counterpart, JeI (Bangladesh) has been characterized by a certain amount of rigour in its personnel selection. Its two functionaries who served as ministers of Agriculture and Social Welfare between 2001 and 2006 were generally acknowledged to have

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worked efficiently and free of corruption allegations.71 While it was part of the government machinery between 2001 and 2006, it actually represented the more ‘moderate’ Islamist partner of the BNP. A smaller religious party, the Islami Oikya Jote, was also a member of the four-party coalition government. But IOJ was explicit in its hostility to the United States. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks and the American invasion of Afghanistan, its members organized rallies in Dhaka which featured the chant ‘We will be the Taliban, and Bangladesh will be Afghanistan’. Election posters with Osama Bin Laden’s likeness were ubiquitous that fall, causing The Economist to note that he may as well have been one of the candidates running.72 The next part of this section describes how, as in Pakistan, international NGOs functioned as transmitters and receptors that allowed Arab jihadists to find a sanctuary in Bangladesh.

Pan-Islamism comes to the Bay of Bengal The Islamist scene in Bangladesh is slightly d ifferent from that in Pakistan. First, the military and intelligence establishments do not seem to have forged a Deep State that is as cohesive. Second, parties such as JeI, while retaining the same focus on taking power as the parent organization in Pakistan, have operated within an autonomous sub-state framework rather than a tightly controlled para-state one. That is, they have not been openly co-opted to serve the purpose of discrediting civilian governments. The fact that Bangladesh has remained a democracy since 1990, unlike Pakistan, is an indication that the mullah-military nexus has yet to permeate the country’s social fabric and root out the secularism which was one of its founding principles. That said, secularism has certainly been eroded since the 1970s. Since 2001, violence against liberal intellectuals has been a feature of Bangladeshi society. A precedent had already been set in 1994, when the author Taslima Nasreen was compelled to flee the country for writing a novel about growing intolerance. During the Awami League government (1996–2001), this trend was temporarily held in check, but it returned with the BNP’s electoral victory in 2001. Secular journalists thereafter warned of a ‘shrinking of liberal space’ in Bangladeshi politics.73 This shrinking seems to have occurred without top-level institutional guidance from the security establishment, suggesting that, unlike the scenario in Pakistan, instances of military or intelligence support for militant Islamists really are the work of ‘rogue’ elements and d o not represent a corporate position.

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Besides the political infighting mentioned above, another factor which has made Bangladesh a theatre of jihadism has been its link to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. During the 1980s, approximately 3,400 Bangladeshis left home to fight the Soviet Army. Upon their return in the 1990s, they expected the newly democratizing country to embrace the same radical interpretations of Islam they had imbibed from Arab militants.74 But, unlike local militants in Pakistan, who had to choose between aligning with Islamist parties largely subservient to the military and becoming political orphans and thus ‘criminals’, they found a ready host in a relatively independent JeI (Bangladesh). This party had evolved differently from its Pakistani counterpart since the 1970s, due to Bangladesh’s ambivalent relationship with political Islam. For seven years (1972– 8), it had operated underground as a banned organization. During this time, many of its members focused on concealing their party affiliation by joining the national chapter of Tablighi Jamaat. Unlike JeI, Tablighi Jamaat escaped the taint of collaborationism in 1971. While JeI focused on worldly ends (the attainment of power), Tablighi Jamaat differentiated between the worldly and the spiritual (duniya aur deen). Even during the civil war, its congregations included combatants from both sides (albeit without wearing uniforms), each praying for the victory of their own respective cause. As the country slid into political and economic uncertainty in the late 1970s, Tablighi Jamaat’s popularity soared because it gave the impoverished rural and lower middle classes an anchor of stability. Leaders of JeI (Bangladesh) capitalized on this once the ban on religious parties was lifted in 1978. They merged their mobilizational strategy with the proselytizing shadow of the larger, more respected organization. Tablighi Jamaat in Bangladesh, like its Pakistani counterpart, headhunted for youth icons and reputable government officials, whose status as born-again Muslims would inspire others to follow. It was able to build a following within all three branches of the armed forces, although it seems to have made more headway in the technically focused air force than the army. In the political environment of Bangladesh, which has long had sympathies for communism, it was seen as a possible bulwark against leftist militancy. Thus it received tacit encouragement from ruling elites to expand its presence, bringing the country into the fold of world events affecting Islam.75

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For two reasons, 1992 was a crucial year. First, Osama Bin Laden donated funds for a Bangladeshi chapter of Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami, which at the time was only based in Pakistan. Over seven years, according to two captured militants, he financed the construction of 421 madrassas to impart military training to HuJI members.76 HuJI (Bangladesh) eventually became a conduit for the indirect movement of jihadists from Pakistan to India, as well as across Southeast Asia. During the late 2000s, it was associated with several attacks in India that were originally conceived in Pakistan but logistically prepared on Bangladeshi territory. It also became a training forum for Rohingya militants from Myanmar and separatists from Thailand.77 Second, in 1992, an influential Saudi Islamist charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, set up an office in the city of Cox’s Bazar to assist Rohingya refugees. Over the following 13 years, it built 60 mosques and established a presence in 38 districts of Bangladesh, despite being banned by the United States and Saudi Arabia in 2001 for suspected links to terrorism. The region around Cox’s Bazar, in particular, became a safe haven for both Arab and Central Asian jihadists, with a small frontier town called Ukhia specifically mentioned in anecdotal reports as the site of a HuJI (Bangladesh) training camp for foreign militants.78 In this regard, it is useful to note a mysterious event which occurred in December 2001, when a ship from Karachi appeared off the coast of Chittagong in south-eastern Bangladesh. Over 100 Al Qaeda operatives are thought to have landed from this ship, in a joint operation mastermind ed by the Pakistani ISI and supervised by a major-rank officer of the Bangladeshi DGFI. Seven fugitives, all Arabs, were later caught while being sheltered by aid workers of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.79 (It is not clear whether these 100 Arab terrorists in Bangladesh were included in the estimate of 400 Al Qaeda members who crossed over from Afghanistan to Pakistan after 9/11, referred to in the preceding section of this chapter.) During this period, the newly-elected coalition government in Dhaka included the Islami Oikya Jote, which was suspected of having connections to both the Taliban in Afghanistan and HuJI (Bangladesh).80 JeI, meanwhile, was suspected of controlling the country’s largest militant organization, Jamaat ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which had been formed in 1998 with the objective of seizing power through armed revolution. And in turn, JMB was

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thought to have partnered with a less well-known group called the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB). This latter group shot to fame on 17 August 2005, when it carried out nearly 500 low-intensity bombings at 300 locations in 63 of the country’s 64 districts. The shock generated by this wave of attacks prompted the BNP-led government, under severe international pressure, to crackdown on JMJB. After the arrest of its military commander, a former JeI student activist, it emerged that the group had previously been ignored by the police because it was thought to be focused only on targeting leftist militants.81 But the larger question remained: how far did official protection of radical Islamists in Bangladesh extend? One disturbing indication of the answer came in February 2009, when a mutiny broke out in the Bangladesh Rifles, the country’s border-guarding force. Troops protesting about poor service conditions killed 57 officers and took the families of several others hostage. In total, 74 persons were killed before the uprising was controlled . Investigations found that the revolt had been planned over a two-month period with complicity from personnel of the force’s own intelligence wing.82 Besides ground-level grievances, there were indications of external involvement. Predictably, opinion on who was to blame was sharply divided along party lines. The ruling Awami League government, having just won power in a general election, believed that JeI (Bangladesh), in concert with JMJB and upon ISI instructions from Pakistan, was responsible. The fact that senior JeI lead ers had been threatened with arrest and prosecution for the war crimes of 1971 lent the theory some credibility. BNP supporters, on the other hand, took an opposite view that the Awami League itself, with covert Indian support, had staged the mutiny as part of a ‘provocation’ operation.83 The international media, while remaining non-committal, focused on the possible role of the ISI, given the recent occurrence of the Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008, which had pointed strongly to official Pakistani involvement.84 Whatever the truth about the 2009 mutiny, there is a consensus that JeI (Bangladesh), through its student wing, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, is encouraging attacks on liberal thinkers. Bloggers are being especially targeted, because the blogosphere is a contested space in Bangladeshi society. A comparative survey of elite opinion in Bangladesh and Pakistan has yielded interesting findings. In the former country, bloggers and writers in the print media strive to express personal views

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in favour of secularism, even if these are controversial. But in Pakistan, no such effort is made due to the much stronger grip which Islamists have on public discourse. In the absence of an Awami League-type party committed to secular values, Pakistani intellectuals do not feel safe speaking out in favour of religious co-existence.85 Which leads one to speculate that Bangladesh is genuinely torn between Pakistan and India, in terms of its identity. Pakistan offers an exclusivist concept of de-territorialized nationalism based on a shared set of beliefs whose orthodoxy may vary between individuals. India offers an inclusive concept which emphasizes the paramountcy of one’s land of birth as the defining feature of national identity. As the next section will show, this inclusiveness has allowed Indian society to avoid massive religious conflict, despite being adjacent to Pakistan and having a troubled history with its neighbour. In South Asia, India has been least affected by jihadist ideology.

India The world’s largest democracy is not immune from radical Islamism— insurgency in the province of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) indicates that global trends in radical Islamism have some influence, alongside local grievances. But the influence is less than one might expect, given the size of India’s Muslim population which is comparable to Pakistan’s but much less prone to terrorist violence or radicalization. The accommodationist nature of Islamic practice in India forced even political Islam to evolve in keeping with the requirements of democracy and secularism.86 Indian Islamism is an imperial ideology that, like its Pakistani counterpart, seeks to rebuild the Caliphate. But it advocates peaceful means for achieving this objective. And that is the problem as far as some militants are concerned. The latter believe the only way to bring about the Caliphate is through violence.87 Pakistani jihadists have successfully exploited this sense of alienation to create attack networks within India, based on a division of labour. While Indian militants provide intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani militants use their superior weapon- and explosive-handling skills to carry out the actual strikes.88 The division of labour means that many terrorist incidents in India feature a mix of nationalities, which Islamabad uses to dodge Indian accusations that it is sponsoring ‘cross-border terrorism’. Even so,

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an estimated 40 per cent of jihadist attacks in India between 1993 and 2010 were carried out exclusively by Pakistanis.89 This raises questions about the extent to which the Indian security apparatus mobilized effectively to fight the threat of international terrorism as opposed to domestic militancy. The subsequent parts of this section examine the nature of Islamist militancy in India, both outside and inside the province of Jammu & Kashmir, and Pakistan’s contribution to it.

SIMI Militancy in the Indian heartland is a spin-off from the Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). This organization was founded in 1977 as a radical alternative to the existing student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami (Hind). JIH, as the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami will henceforth be referred to, was initially opposed to Muslim participation in Indian elections. True to the scepticism of JeI founder Maududi regarding democratic processes, it insisted that God’s sovereignty cannot be supplanted by that of man. However, by the early 1960s, the party had begun to moderate its position, after realizing that most Indian Muslims were ignoring its proscription on voting.90 Within another two decades, the party had come around to accepting that the best way to improve the living conditions of Indian Muslims was through the ballot box rather than futilely hoping for a Bolshevik-style power grab. The majority of Indian Muslim ulema saw the country as Dar-ul Sullah (abode of coexistence) rather than either Dar-ul Harb (abode of war) or Dar-ul Islam (abode of peace).91 Consequently, they were not predisposed towards violent change, but argued that cooptation of the Hindu majority would lead to Sharia. JIH has explicitly condemned terrorism of all forms, regardless of the identity of the victims. In this, it has taken a stand that sets it apart from some Islamist groups elsewhere, which are reluctant to decry violence against non-Muslims. It has taken this position due to a recognition that the alternative to a secular and democratic India (both qualities that Maududi would have criticized) is one ruled by Hindu fascists. The party is also aware that it is under scrutiny from the Indian government, and so has been careful about receiving money from abroad. It prefers that the bulk of its financial requirements are met by Indian sources, such as advertisements in JIH publications on behalf of Muslim-owned businesses.92

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In contrast, SIMI has been drawn towards violence since 1991, when it split from JIH over the question of how to respond to Hindu extremism. During the decades that preceded the split, Hindu-Muslim riots, usually instigated by the former, had taken a heavy toll of Muslim lives. SIMI was inclined to mobilize Muslim youth for both self-defence and retaliation, but JIH would not endorse militancy. The parent organization had a traditional-minded leadership who viewed the younger cadres of SIMI as precocious usurpers of established authority. An inter-generational clash followed, with SIMI being drawn towards international Islamist militancy. By the time the organization was banned in 2001, it had rhetorically aligned with Osama Bin Lad en, and condemned the United States as an enemy of Islam.93 However, even at this advanced stage of radicalization, some members of SIMI felt uncomfortable enough about the group’s growing militancy to leave it before it turned violent. To manage the problem of Islamist radicalization among its Muslim population, the Indian government opted not to organize for a comprehensive war-like response. Particularly since the militants were Indian citizens and entitled to certain rights, which foreign militants such as Pakistanis had no claim to. Thus, the focus of Indian policing efforts went into building community intelligence networks through engagement with Muslim leaders in various localities. One particularly successful example was the manner in which police in the province of Maharashtra organized joint Hindu-Muslim committees to mediate petty disputes before these could escalate.94 This move ensured that agent provocateurs from outside an area could not stoke inter-religious tensions or spread false rumours for the purpose of inciting a riot. Similar initiatives through the 1990s had shown that even if religious riots did occasionally occur, they could be prevented from assuming nationwide dimensions. In the process, much political space was denied to jihadists from across the border, to subvert Indian Muslims. However, there were other factors at play, which nullified any reason for complacency. 1993 was a crucial year. Multiple bomb explosions in Mumbai introduced India to mass casualty urban terrorism, a phenomenon with which its security forces had little experience. Previous terrorist attacks had mostly been targeted at rural settlements, or security forces personnel. The latter were seen as ‘hard’ or protected targets, and thus more legitimate for attack than ordinary civilians.

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But the 1993 bombings in Mumbai were directed at ‘soft’ targets with no government connection. They represented a shift in ISI covert operations in India, on three counts: (1) The agency was re-assigning responsibility for jihadist activity against India from Kashmiri-dominated militant groups, who were fighting for ethno-nationalist reasons, to Pakistani Punjabi militants, who were fighting out of a wider sense of Pan-Islamist conquest. This meant they were prepared to inflict heavier casualties upon Indian civilians than the Kashmiris were, since they did not care about any resulting backlash against Kashmiris living in Indian cities. (2) The agency was keen to expand its paramilitary operations from J&K to the rest of India. It calculated that it would gain three advantages by doing so: (a) Jihadists would demonstrate the capacity to strike anywhere, weakening the electorate’s confidence in the Indian government and possibly engendering a wider sense of crisis that would dissuade foreign investment into the Indian economy. (b) New Delhi might launch a repressive campaign against the Indian Muslim community, which would alienate the latter and potentially provide the ISI with recruits who could be used for paramilitary actions and/or conventional espionage. (c) Pakistani jihadist groups would be seen as protectors of Indian Muslims, especially if the latter continued to be victims of Hindu-instigated riots. This would negate any disadvantages that might otherwise accrue from adopting a blatant posture of supporting militant attacks on civilians in urban centres.95 (3) Lastly, from 1993 the ISI began using Islamist parties as cut-outs between itself and jihadist groups who were trained and supplied by its own field personnel. The logic was that if Western governments protested about Pakistani involvement in cross-border terrorist attacks, Islamabad could describe the incidents as the work of nonstate actors.96 Thus, Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam provided political cover for terrorist groups that were largely functioning under Deep State supervision.97

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The three changes, d escribed above, represented the emergence of ‘astrategic’ terrorism, carried out for little purpose other than to inflict casualties. Over the next 25 years (as of the time of writing this book), mass casualty attacks in India produced a strong counter-current of Hindu nationalism. This may have suited the perpetrators, since it weakened India’s secular traditions.

JeI, Jammu & Kashmir and the wider jihadist war against India While the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, JIH, has stayed away from supporting any kind of militancy, the same cannot be said for the branch that exists in Jammu & Kashmir. Indeed, JeI (JK), as it is known, played a crucial role in facilitating Pakistan’s entry into the province in the 1980s. Over a ten-year period prior to the eventual outbreak of insurgency in 1988, JeI (JK), with guidance from its parent organization in Pakistan as well as the ISI, took over 2,500 mosques in the Kashmir Valley.98 In the process, the party replaced the indigenous strain of Sufism with hardline political Islam. Pakistani officialdom was clear on the stand that in order to avoid an ethno-nationalist movement emerging in J&K which may prefer independence from both India and Pakistan, the ISI would only lend strategic support to Islamist militants.99 The JeI leadership in Pakistan were delighted by this posture because it made their clients in Jammu & Kashmir arbiters of the insurgency which broke out in 1988. When, in the early 1990s, international pressure began to mount on Islamabad for supporting Islamist proxies in J&K, it used the same approach that it was employing to stave off criticisms of its Afghan policy. It notionally distanced itself from militants in J&K, just as it claimed to have no wish to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s drive toward s Kabul. Behind the scenes, it used JeI as a buffer between its intelligence machinery and the actual fighting units, whom the West was beginning to label ‘terrorists’ or, more commonly, ‘fundamentalists’. Funding responsibility for JeI activities in Afghanistan and Jammu & Kashmir was shifted from the military-dominated ISI to the ‘civilian’ IB. The latter agency had, in fact, become increasingly militarized as a result of the lateral induction of retired military officials and was being run by an old ISI hand, Brigadier (Retired) Imtiaz Ahmed.100 For the record, Islamabad categorically denied that any Pakistani citizens were involved in fighting Indian forces. Only in 1994 did a

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Pakistani news magazine reveal that in the first 12 months of the insurgency, over 1,000 Pakistani Islamists had crossed over to the Indianadministered portion of Jammu & Kashmir to fight as mercenaries, including several sons of senior JeI leaders.101 Their mortality rate was high; repeatedly, media accounts from Pakistan indicate that the Indian military was a more formidable opponent than the Soviet army had been. Conditions in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, were noticeably benign in comparison to the J&K theatre.102 One American scholar concluded, after analyzing the biographies of 141 Pakistani militants killed in either of the two combat zones, that the better cohort of fighters were sent against the Indian Army. Such fighters tended to be products of public schools rather than madrassas—an important finding which indicated higher levels of tactical sophistication. It also demonstrated just how deep a level the radicalization of Pakistani society had reached. Her study found that JeI played an outsized role in supporting militancy on Indian territory, even in comparison to the larger and more numerous Deobandi groups aligned with its rival, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam.103 To some extent, the conflict in Jammu & Kashmir became a profitmaking enterprise for corrupt ISI officials, leading one villager to exclaim to a visiting journalist: ‘This is business, not jihad.’104 Agency officials were allegedly pocketing 200,000 rupees every day from funds being disbursed for supporting a single militant organization in just one sector of the combat zone. The journalist, based on a field trip, observed the scale (and visibility) of official Pakistani involvement: ‘It sounds odd that the infamous linkage between the militants and the Pakistani military establishment—vehemently denied by both sides in public—is mentioned so openly in this part of the world.’ Infiltration of combat teams into Indian territory went as follows: ‘First, the parent militant organization recruits the team members, trains them and issues rations. Then the team is sent to the ISI which provides trekking kits, communication equipment and weapons for shipment across the LoC. Finally, the team goes through the Pakistan Army posts which offer them rest and food on their way in as well as way out.’105 It was during the early 1990s, when Pakistan was both increasing its support to genuinely indigenous Kashmiri insurgents as well as pushing JeI activists into J&K as mercenary ‘non-state’ fighters, that a new group appeared on the scene. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was the military wing of an

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Ahle Had ith organization based in Lahore, called Markaz Dawa wal Irshad (MDI). Later, MDI renamed itself Jamaat-ud-Dawa due to American pressure on Islamabad to clamp down on terrorism. Like other militant organizations fighting Indian security forces, LeT/JuD had its roots in Afghanistan and operated training camps there. Its intervention in Jammu & Kashmir was an opportunistic move, intended to win the ISI and Pakistani Deep State’s favours by selling its combat prowess for use against the Indian Army.106 As a self-marketing strategy, it worked brilliantly: the ISI, Pakistani military and even civilian allies of the Deep State came to see LeT/JuD as a pliant proxy that could hit India but would not threaten domestic revolution inside Pakistan, due to its tiny Ahle Hadith support base. Only around 10 per cent of Pakistanis were followers of the Ahle Hadith school, and even they were sceptical of LeT’s violent excesses in Afghanistan and India. This made the jihadist group an ideal instrument of covert action, which would depend for its long-term viability on the protection of the Deep State.107 During the 1990s and 2000s, a triangular relationship formed between the ISI, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, with the latter being the common link between the other two. LeT fighters served as Osama Bin Laden’s outer security cordon, while the inner one was guarded by Arabs. The group became Al Qaeda’s main partner in South Asia. Documents recovered from Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad suggest that LeT chief Hafiz Saeed corresponded with the terrorist fugitive until Bin Laden’s death in May 2011.108 Due to the combat skills of its fighters, LeT functioned as a hit squad for the Pakistani military and was paid bounties for killing Indian military personnel.109 Its high level of tactical sophistication came from the presence of former SSG soldiers among its training cadre. As experts in Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) employment, they advised LeT to adopt suicidal assault techniques in order to defeat Indian hostage rescue doctrine. Until 2008, such doctrine emphasized containing and negotiating a hostage situation until SWAT teams could be deployed.110 Used to devastating effect in Mumbai, the suicidal assault perfected by LeT was copied by jihadist groups worldwide, most notably by the so-called ‘Islamic State’/ Daesh in Paris in November 2015. Pakistan has sought to depict LeT as an exclusively Kashmir-focused group, thereby implying that its objectives do not extend to the rest of India, much less the wider international community. Not only is such an

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interpretation belied by LeT’s involvement in attacks on the Indian heartland—attacks which it claimed credit for before 9/11 forced a new sense of discretion—but the 2008 Mumbai assault specifically targeted Western nationals. The fact that the group collaterally operates in Jammu & Kashmir does not imply that its ideological objectives stop there. Furthermore, the conflict in J&K is far from a straightforward fight between Indian soldiers and Pakistani mercenaries. According to one estimate, 40 per cent of those killed during the 1990s (the bloodiest decade) were Kashmiri Muslim civilians, 47 per cent were militants of both Pakistani and Indian Kashmiri origin, and 13 per cent were Indian security personnel (both Kashmiri and otherwise).111 If LeT were not an Arabized group with ISI-protected bases in the Pakistani-held regions of J&K, it would still qualify as a terrorist organization due to its attacks on civilians as part of the larger jihadist war against India. Which leads to the question—How effective are Indian security forces in combating Pakistan-based (and Deep State-sponsored) jihadist organizations? Indian intelligence officials insist that their track record has been better than is generally known by the public—a plausible claim since the nature of counterterrorism is that failures are much-debated, but successes are very rarely discussed. Following the 2008 Mumbai attack, intelligence agencies in India have substantially increased investment in both technical and human collection focused on Pakistani terrorists, recognizing that these pose a threat to political stability. There remains, however, a possibility that after a suitably long hiatus, during which international memories of the 2008 attack would have faded, a new cohort of jihadists, together with a fresh crop of officials working within the Deep State, will launch another major assault on India. One needs to consider the 15-year gap between the 1993 simultaneous bombings in Mumbai and the 2008 simultaneous shootings. In the former case, the ISI selected the targets and supplied the explosives used, while in the latter case, the agency was kept informed by LeT of the attack plans.112 Forensic investigations of both cases found the hardware used (explosive detonators and hand grenades) came from Pakistani army ordnance stocks. The communications infrastructure used during the 2008 Mumbai attack, to control the terrorist gunmen in real time, was reportedly supervised by serving officers of the Pakistan army’s Special Communications Organization.113

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Yet, on both occasions, the Indian intelligence machinery was caught off-guard, because they did not anticipate dramatic escalations of covert hostilities. In 1993, the specific element which caught Indian agencies by surprise was the ISI’s successful cooptation of an Indian drug smuggling syndicate to bring explosives into Mumbai. Until this point, organized crime was not perceived, either in India or most Western countries (barring Italy), as a security threat.114 In 2008, Indian agencies were caught unprepared because they did not expect that a group of Punjabi village boys—the typical profile of LeT suicidal gunmen— could learn seamanship within a relatively short period of time and navigate across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai and thereafter, to preassigned attack sites without any local assistance. Only much later did the Indian government realize that LeT had in fact used a PakistaniAmerican reconnaissance agent to identify and map out the targets on a satellite navigation system. This one step, a rare innovation in urban terrorist tactics until then, ensured that previous analytical filters used by Indian threat analysts to weigh up jihadist plots were rendered obsolete. With ISI support for the 2008 Mumbai attack having been debated in American courtrooms, even the Pakistani Deep State has grown hesitant to launch further attacks of similar scale against India. It is therefore likely for some years to use LeT as a raiding force in J&K, ostensibly to emphasize the group’s ‘Kashmiri’ identity over its Pan-Islamist one. Even so, the Deep State is likely to use organized crime networks to give fresh logistical support to Indian jihadists, so as to prepare a narrative space to mitigate future diplomatic embarrassment, if LeT does again carry out a major attack on the Indian heartland. Under such circumstances, Islamabad would probably launch a disinformation offensive. The ISI seems to have calculated that international memory of terrorist attacks is short if they occur in a rhythmic format that can be repeated ever so often. One Indian commentator concurs with this assessment: Most rational Indians are coming to the sad conclusion that the West is least concerned about Indian mass casualties. If the Indians can take them stoically and philosophically (and seemingly forever), there is little reason for the West to get overly concerned. They are concerned, however, about the lives of their own citizens.115

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India has opted to fight Pakistan-based terrorism through a two-pronged approach: continued engagement with pro-peace lobbies within the Pakistani civilian leadership and explicit isolation of the military-led Deep State. But in its eagerness to keep dialogue options open with civilian leaders, New Delhi risks ignoring the creeping radicalization of Pakistani society as a whole, which makes rapprochement efforts unlikely to succeed even in the long term.

Pakistan as a Common Factor According to Satya R. Pattnayak and Thomas M. Arvanites, there have been two kinds of countries that could be termed as ‘sources of international terrorism’: (1) countries that exported a revolutionary ideology, and (2) countries that provided safe havens for terrorist networks to carry out attacks Their work, based on US State Department classifications from the 1980s, found only one state (Cuba) as being both an ideological source of terrorism and also a safe haven for operational planning.116 The two tables below list the defined characteristics of both ideological sources and facilitative sources, and test which of these characteristics is applicable to the four countries in South Asia discussed in this book: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Table 7.1 Structural characteristics of states that are ideological sources of international terrorism Characteristic Colonial history High level of relative deprivation Systemic exclusion of minority groups Tight control over information Coercive control over population

Afghanistan

Bangladesh

India

Pakistan

No Yes

Yes Yes

Yes Yes

Yes Yes

No

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

No

No

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Table 7.2 Structural characteristics of states that provide facilitative environments for international terrorism Characteristic Well connected to information flows Limited capacity for surveillance Close ties to nearby fraternal countries High level of ethnic diversity

Afghanistan

Bangladesh

India

Pakistan

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

All four South Asian countries feature some characteristics that would qualify them as sources of terrorism. All four feature high levels of value dissynchronization, in terms of being ruled by corrupt elites who resort to populist gimmickry to sustain themselves in power, while governance conditions and living standards remain stagnant or deteriorate. The contrast in values is perhaps strongest in Pakistan, where a praetorian military undermines civilian politicians for transparently partisan reasons while claiming to uphold the national interest. But India too, although widely regarded as an economic powerhouse, has lower-order problems with Islamist militancy due to the failure of its economic model to provide jobs to Muslim youth, both urban and rural. Many Indian citizens who joined SIMI and its openly terroristic splinter faction, the Indian Mujahideen, did so due to lack of employment prospects, a problem which led some to emigrate to the Persian Gulf and others to join criminal gangs. In both cases, they came into proximity with talent-spotters from Pakistani jihadist groups.117 The common interference of Pakistan in all three countries suggests that extraversion of internal security threats is the prime reason for jihadist violence in South Asia. Afghanistan has a border dispute with Pakistan which Islamabad is attempting to solve unilaterally through exporting Islamism to counter Pashtun ethno-nationalism. Bangladesh is caught between Pakistani and Indian models of governance— Islamism versus secularism. India is fighting both an irredentist claim advanced by Islamabad in Jammu & Kashmir, and terrorist groups that function under the passive observance of the Pakistani security

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establishment, if not its active complicity. In Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Jammu & Kashmir (considered as part of India in this analysis), local affiliates of Jamaat-e-Islami have played a role in radicalizing youth and steering them towards intolerance. The only exception is the Indian branch of JeI, which operates outside Jammu & Kashmir and has become an advocate of secularism. Interestingly, rather than outright examples of terrorism, most of the activity of Islamist groups has focused on re-framing public preferences away from modernity and towards extreme conservatism. The final chapter of this book will examine Pakistani media sources, to demonstrate how terrorism is slowly giving way to a broader phenomenon of society-wide radicalism. In the process, it will show that Pakistan’s South Asian identity is being replaced by an Arabic one, as part of a historic and unstoppable process.

CHAPTER 8 SLOPING TOWARDS RADICALISM

A movement that began in 1866 in Deoband to raise a new generation of resisters to colonialism has in recent decades become associated with international terrorism. The connection is false, as the original Deobandi movement was aimed at territorial self-defence. Manipulation by politically-ambitious ulema and their Deep State partners in what became Pakistan after 1947 led parts of the movement to adopt an expansionist, totalitarian ideology. While their Indian counterparts focused on succeeding politically within a democratic framework, Islamists in Pakistan built conspiratorial alliances to undermine mainstream parties. Since their short-term objectives matched those of the military and intelligence establishment, the latter used them to keep civilian politicians in check. Thus, the faultline that sustained jihadism in South Asia has had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with civil-military relations. As Olivier Roy has noted in another context, jihadist terrorism does not spring from the radicalization of Islam, but from the Islamization of pre-existing radical tendencies within a society.1 Tensions between the PPP and the Pakistani military led to the coup of 1977 and the decadelong societal Islamization pushed by Zia-ul Haq. Likewise, tensions between the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the army might now be responsible for the continuing drift towards radicalism.2 After his election in 2013, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was suspected of harbouring a grudge against the military for having deposed him in 1999.3 Notwithstanding denials by both sides, the next four years saw signs of a disagreement over security policy. In October 2016, the

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prestigious newspaper Dawn reported a meeting where Sharif’s younger brother Shahbaz accused the military of blocking police counterterrorist efforts.4 The government went to considerable lengths to deny that any civil-military rift existed. But its claims rang hollow, especially since Nawaz Sharif was ousted from the office of prime minister in July 2017, as a result of corruption investigations partly orchestrated by the military.5 At various stages since 1993, Islamabad has been accused by Western countries, particularly the United States, of hosting terrorists, only to brazen out the accusations.6 There have long been suspicions that civilian leaders are both unwilling and incapable of distancing themselves from the military, which, for its own reasons, refuses to abandon its allies in the jihadist community. As a nuclear power with an all-weather patron in China, Pakistan is confident that no external force can pose an existential threat to it, nor impose intolerable costs. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) announced in 2015 has only strengthened this view, bringing a bullish optimism that years of dependence upon Western aid money are about to end.7 In particular, the military-led Deep State has proven resilient and is likely to remain a fixture in South Asia for several decades. In 70 years since Pakistan’s creation, the country has had 28 prime ministers and ten army chiefs. Yet, each prime minister was theoretically meant to serve a five-year term as opposed to three years for an army chief. The skewered balance of institutional strength has meant that, in the words of one journalist, ‘the generals serve their full terms or more than their terms, while the Prime Ministers can be sent home.’8 Since at least the Peshawar school attack of December 2014, the army has been using counterterrorism as a political and rhetorical tool to usurp civilian authority, and is being met with a measure of public support.9 In the process, there have been dramatic gains against militants who threaten the security establishment, but very little has been done against other groups that do not undermine the military’s domestic prestige.10 Thus, the US State Department in July 2017 accused Pakistan of being selective in its counterterrorism policy.11

‘Strategic Assets’, Both Overseas and Domestic Explaining this dichotomy requires more than just looking at specific groups and how well they serve the military’s geopolitical

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agendas vis-a`-vis Afghanistan and India. Germany discovered during World War I that Pan-Islamism is a not a precision-guided weapon that only harms those it is unleashed upon. Likewise, after 2001, the Pakistani Deep State was attacked by splinter cells from the same militant organizations that it nurtured. The reason it continued to shield the mother organizations (such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose operatives tried to assassinate Pervez Musharraf) had as much to do with domestic politics as with the Andalusia Syndrome referred to in Chapter 1. According to its nation-building narrative, Pakistan is the successor state to the Mughal Empire, reduced to its present boundaries when Hindu India broke away in 1947 to form an independent state. India is thus a lost territory for Pakistani Islamists, much as Spain is for Arab Islamists. A review of jihadist propaganda once found that Spain tends to be referred to as ‘Al Andalus’ by jihadist ideologues to this day, even though other European countries are referred to by their regular names. Furthermore, references to a jihad on Spanish soil appear more frequently than for other European countries that follow similar foreign policies. In effect, Spain is a higher priority target of international terrorists not only because it is part of Western civilization, but because it was once part of the Islamic civilization.12 The same holds true for India. Territory that was once ruled by an Islamic sovereign cannot be left unclaimed by a new generation of Islamists, confident that they have caught the rising tide of history. Pakistani jihadists use defensive rhetoric to mask offensive objectives. In this regard, they are similar to the Nazis and the so-called ‘Islamic State’, both of which justified aggression as a preventive action. The Nazis claimed that foreign powers and Jews were plotting Germany’s annihilation, and so Germany was left with no choice but to strike first. Likewise, ISIS has claimed that Western powers are committed to destroying the ‘Caliphate’ and so need to be hit in their homelands.13 By citing the conflict in Kashmir as a source of their motives, groups such as LeT and JeM seek to cover up the fact that their inwardly directed rhetoric covers much more expansionist goals, including reconquest of India, and attacks against Israeli and American targets.14 Pakistani officials consistently wish to divert attention away from this issue, as it makes Islamabad’s inaction against LeT look irresponsible at the international level. But while jihadists use the protection of the Pakistani state, they too have been used by it. Following the Iranian

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revolution, one of the key initiatives of the Zia regime had been to ‘lumpenize’ the ulema so that a charismatic leader with strong middleclass support could not appear out of the madrassa culture and stoke an uprising against the military.15 Putting madrassa certificates on par with qualifications issued by substandard state-run educational institutes served this purpose. It created conditions for an inter-generational clash between established clerics and new graduates unable to get government jobs. Many went off to create their own madrassas, which competed for funding from foreign donors who subscribed to Pan-Islamist ideas. Out of these start-up seminaries came a fresh generation of militants looking for overseas glory. The Zia regime, and the military-intelligence establishment during the 1990s, welcomed Pan-Islamism despite the erosion of Pakistani sovereignty because, according to the army’s thinking, ethnonationalism was the biggest threat to the state’s survival. A terrorist threat arising out of the prospective convergence of unemployed youth and lavish Arab funding may be unpleasant, but it would be manageable in terms of scale. Furthermore, periodic killing of innocents could potentially limit the popularity of anyone claiming political legitimacy in the name of Islam.16 Organized political disturbances, on the other hand, especially of a non-violent nature, could be deadly for a regime with a narrow support base mostly consisting of ex-government personnel. As an illustration, one needs only to note the swiftness with which the police, whose capability limitations have been described in this book, were able after the Peshawar school attack to hunt down militants who lacked a political cover or front organization. Using a system originally developed to deal with bandits, police in Punjab and Sindh would ‘halffry’ or ‘full-fry’ suspects—either shooting through the leg to cripple them, or through the head to avoid the bureaucratic hassle of prosecution.17 Rough justice is accepted in a context where masculinity is associated with physicality, and physicality with violence. If this interpretation of events is accurate, then the Deep State has, for now, succeeded in lowering the risk of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan. It has achieved this by moving the country far enough to the political right to steal the Islamists’ thunder. In keeping with former ISI chief Hamid Gul’s vision, it has softened the revolutionary edge of Pakistani Sunni Islamists. A hard revolution of the kind that occurred in Iran in

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1979 has been avoided.18 But long-term trends give no cause for reassurance. Despite having done much to popularize Islam, the subversive intellectualism of JeI has lately been eclipsed by the street power of Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa.19 With its ties to the military strong and its domestic base weak, LeT/JuD is poised to succeed the Deobandi groups aligned with JUI as the Deep State’s favourite Islamist proxy. Like JeI in 1971, the Ahle Hadith group is being used to create death squads that hunt down Baloch separatists.20 Its leadership has denounced the so-called ‘Islamic State’ in order to avoid a breakdown of command and control within the existing Pakistani jihadist landscape.21 Were it not for such cooperation, the security establishment would, by itself, struggle to prevent the appearance of autonomous cells and splinter networks, whose members are frustrated with the stasis of existing militant hierarchies and eager to forge a new generation of Islamists.

De-Intellectualization of Jihadism While LeT/JuD might be loyal to the Deep State and to the idea that religion is a unifier of ethnically diverse populations, whether it can override the centrifugal effect of Pakistan’s own education system is another matter. Since 1947, there has been a call for the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Pakistan to be subsumed under a meta-narrative that emphasizes Islamic unity and spirituality. In the process, local histories are being rewritten to the point where they become fictional and scientific research descends into farce.22 This process has made senior Pakistani academicians conspiracy theorists, including the Vice Chancellor of Punjab University, the country’s most prestigious higher education institute. The Vice Chancellor, a professor of physics, asserts that the West is controlled by bankers who fund terrorist attacks and seek to remotely control Pakistanis by implanting microchips into their brains.23 Such ideas are a by-product of an intellectual milieu that is already radicalized well before the ordinary pedestrian on the street starts to believe in conspiracy theories. As Vali Nasr has observed, Jamaat-eIslami itself has an ahistorical worldview, which it propagates.24 The main difference between this party and Al Qaeda is where they stand in terms of tactics, not strategy. Both reject the proposition that a diverse society can be a strong and cohesive one, but only Al Qaeda signals its

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rejection exclusively through violence. Both have reengineered Pakistani society over the last two and a half decades, to the point where any form of excess in the name of religion is justified. One journalist observed in 1998: A curious doctrine rules the government’s understanding of the sectarian problem it is currently facing. This doctrine revolves in part around the concept of ‘injured religious sentiments’ and contains four key provisos. The first is that the religious sentiment of all Pakistani Muslims is by far the most fragile commodity known to humankind. The second warns that this sentiment is susceptible to injury from all words contained in the combined dictionaries of the world, as well as most historical facts. The third lays down that to harbour injured religious sentiment is the inalienable right of all Pakistani Muslims. And the last provision decrees that in case of such injury, the injured party must be allowed to indulge in any kind of extra-legal behaviour, which may range from ransacking and torching official buildings to the outright murder of innocent citizens who had nothing to do with actual injury.25 Again, from a domestic security perspective, in the short and medium terms, this can only be a good thing because it puts an implicit limit on how far radical Islamists can win support among Pakistani citizens. In the long term, questions remain. For all the support that China has extended to Pakistan (including shielding Pakistan-based jihadists from international sanctions by employing its veto at the UN Security Council), Beijing has sometimes found Islamabad an unreliable ally.26 The 2007 Red Mosque crisis was triggered by the abduction of Chinese nationals working in Islamabad, an event which prompted the Pakistani military to stampede into a hasty assault of the mosque. Looking back, this crisis can be read in two ways: as a sign that Deep State is keen to preserve its ties with China to the extent of killing Pakistani jihadists, or a sign that Chinese expatriates are not immune from attacks, notwithstanding Beijing’s close ties with Islamabad. Since the early 1990s, Pakistan’s kidnapping industry has prospered by snatching any foreigner who appears an inviting target, regardless of nationality. Some high-profile cases going as far back as 1991– 2 featured Chinese

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nationals—a pattern that never disappeared during the intervening two decades even as economic and military ties between Beijing and Islamabad grew increasingly proximate.27 With the growing presence of Chinese workers in Pakistan, for projects related to CPEC, more attacks and abductions might be expected by ‘rogue’ militants as well as ordinary criminals.28 The loosening grip of the ageing Islamist leadership will place Chinese nationals at risk. Considering that most contracts for CPEC infrastructure creation are being awarded through an opaque process that tends to favour either Chinese companies or enterprises owned by the military, it remains unclear whether ordinary Pakistanis will see CPEC as an economic asset.29

Lack of International Consensus Since 2011, the international community has struggled to assemble a strategic response to the dual challenges of terrorism and radicalism. Attacks on civilians in Europe and North America have highlighted the West’s failure at preventing these two challenges from converging and thus creating a home-grown terrorist threat, while the resilience of Al Qaeda and ‘Islamic State’ has defied most expert predictions. Although rigorous border security and visa screening have made access to Western countries difficult for jihadists, thus rendering 9/11-style catastrophic operations almost impossible, on their own turf these groups have avoided losing. Even the apparently successful (as of early 2018) campaign against ISIS was accompanied by small-scale attacks in Western countries, which appear to have been aimed at psychological attrition. The persistence of radical Islamism in South Asia, as well as in the Middle East, suggests it is a multi-generational phenomenon with a fairly large constituency of supporters and sympathizers. Perhaps an argument can be made that it is, as one JUI politician said in 1997, an Islamic version of communism, in that it maintains the primacy of religion but opposes Western materialism and hegemony.30 The shrinking of the leftist space in Pakistani politics during the Cold War—a process encouraged by both the military and the West—has allowed Islamist parties such as JUI and JeI to champion social causes which have mainstreamed their profile. Despite having a narrow membership base in the 1990s (just 6,100 members in 1994), Jamaat-e-Islami was able to decisively influence the outcome of general elections by offering its

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support to one or another of the larger parties.31 The mere fact that Pakistani Islamists participate in electoral processes does not mean they have accepted democracy as practised in institutionally stronger states such as India, where the military remains avowedly apolitical. Democratic governance, once heralded as a panacea to political extremism in the developing world, is now a possible transmitter for that same extremism.32 The disappointments that followed the 2011 Arab Spring make for a strong example. Toppling dictators and abolishing media censorship has not meant that citizens see an alternative to violent protest. Rather, these developments have allowed well-organized interest groups to penetrate the media and weaponize it for their own purposes. This is also true for Pakistan, as Frederic Grare observes: The media . . . remains the main instrument for the political manipulation of public opinion. The so-called ‘liberation’ of the media through the emergence of new electronic media during the Musharraf administration has not fundamentally changed this situation. To the contrary, it has enabled a vast range of extremists to infiltrate into the public space, some of who almost openly work for the security establishment. The fiction of a free media, moreover, benefited the interests of the military by providing it with a ‘certificate’ of good democratic practices and, therefore, greater international acceptance.33 A superficially open media environment might have reduced the risk of domestic anti-regime terrorism, but it has contributed to the ‘otherization’ of minority groups and foreign cultures. The Islamist obsession with purity is still being articulated, albeit through audio-visual online media rather than merely print newspapers and tape cassettes. Due to its political reorientation away from South Asia and towards the Middle East, Pakistan has inadvertently become subject to conflict dynamics that have afflicted the latter region. ‘Islamic State’ has demonstrated that savagery can win supporters if applied in a manner that polarizes society along preexisting conflict lines. In effect, the Arab jihadist group is practising a focoist model of conflict perpetuation, seeking first to vitiate interreligious or inter-sectarian relations and then offering itself as a protector to one side (Sunni Muslims).34 Riding on the back of its rival’s brutality, Al Qaeda has set itself up as a ‘moderate’ alternative to ISIS, in that it

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supposedly avoids extreme levels of collateral damage and instead concentrates on statist adversaries. The complexity of the current threat environment has forced governments to adopt a ‘down-to-basics’ approach to counterterrorism, which prioritizes homeland security. Once again, as in the 1990s, jihadists overseas are not considered a threat if they lack the capability or demonstrated intention to launch deep-penetration strikes at civilian targets. What they do to their own community, or to those living in close proximity to them, is nobody else’s business.35 This was the same logic that led the United States to initially take a benevolent view of the Taliban in the mid 1990s, when the extremist Sunni group was seen as a possible hedge against Shia Iran and as a glorified road-clearing party that would open up Central Asian markets to foreign trade.36 It was the same view which, after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the growing evidence of Iranian covert support for Shia militias, led Washington towards policy paralysis. An influential section of the Pentagon’s decision-making hierarchy concluded that even if the Iranians were a nuisance, they could become a bigger one if openly antagonized.37 Thus, no consensus is likely to emerge on how to tackle radical Islamists based in Pakistan. As long as these are seen to be a manageable threat, the default setting of Western governments, as well as India, would be to leave Pakistan in its self-imposed isolation, dependent on Chinese handouts. The Deep State, meanwhile, would continue to exist and shelter para-state actors. The ability of these actors to deny, collect and manipulate information in a politically divided and institutionally weak operating context will only gain them more salience in years ahead.

Ripe for Revolt? Or Maybe a Few Decades More? A 2012– 13 survey has found that 80 per cent of terrorist violence in Pakistan could be attributed to just 20 per cent of total causal factors present in the country. This is consistent with the Pareto principle, which holds that in most contexts, an influential minority has a disproportionate impact. Having identified 65 causal factors, the study has determined that 13 are perceived as crucially undermining domestic security. The most prominent is a dishonest political leadership. Other factors include lack of institutional accountability, corruption, inequality resulting from inter-ethnic discrimination,

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unemployment, lack of opportunities for political participation, a faltering judiciary, semi-competent and inadequately-resourced security forces, absence of basic civic amenities, high inflation, presence of foreign military personnel and unsupervised non-combatants, urban overcrowding and, finally, policies formulated in isolation from public opinion.38 In summary, severe deficiencies in governance are responsible for Pakistan’s terrorist problem, which is recognized as a home-grown threat. Although some of these deficiencies are present in other South Asian states too, including India, their effect on Pakistan has been magnified by the country’s civil-military rift and the space this has created for Islamists to function as proxies of the intelligence agencies. However, a reading of the country’s vernacular press would suggest a different picture. Unlike the objective and elitist English media sources cited by this book, vernacular commentary in Pakistan relentlessly pushes conspiracy theories onto a weary populace. As previously observed in twentieth century totalitarian societies, this populace seeks to ‘escape from reality into fiction, from coincidence into consistency.’39 It passively absorbs, and even accepts, reports about American private military contractors or a ‘Zionist-Hindu’ alliance being responsible for terrorist incidents in the country.40 When caught out for sponsoring cross-border attacks, such as in Mumbai in 2008, the Deep State uses such commentary to construct a false narrative implying moral equivalence between Pakistan and other powers. In the process, the ISI in particular sidesteps the reality that for all its claims about protecting Pakistan’s national interests, it has spectacularly failed to do so. As British writer Robert Johnson has observed, ‘[d]espite its fearsome reputation, the ISI has been a singularly unsuccessful organization . . . . it seems they are likely to go on failing and, as in the past, turn to coercion and violence to compensate for their lack of strategic success.’41 The Pakistani spy agency’s impressive talent for ‘failing upwards’ comes down to its skill in manipulating domestic discourse, in partnership with front organizations of radical Islamism. Such manipulation aims to scapegoat all security failures onto feckless civilian politicians from the mainstream parties. As a result of domestic intrigues, Pakistan continues to play a double game on international counterterrorism. Faced with Western criticism, at the time of writing it has made half-hearted efforts to block LeT from being recognized as a political party.42 These efforts, even if temporary, will doubtless be portrayed as a ‘concession’

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deserving of a fresh tranche of Western aid money. Meanwhile, anticipating that Washington will eventually ease off on demands for more stringent action against the group, Islamabad has contrived to yet again drop charges against its chief Hafiz Saeed, who is regarded by both the United States and UN as a global terrorist.43 In the final analysis, Saeed and LeT serve as the Deep State’s secret police, tasked with ensuring that domestic militancy can be seamlessly (re)directed towards foreign targets. Given the revolutionary potential that exists within, Pakistan cannot survive for long unless simmering public anger is deflected without. Resource incapacity and turf warfare between rival agencies ensures that more conventional methods of combating terrorism, such as following the rule of law and enforcing already existing legislation, remain options that can only be used sparingly rather than systematically. The purpose of arresting terrorist leaders is to create a demonstrative effect and cover up the fact that public security remains a much lower priority than political and bureaucratic self-interest. This discrepancy was embarrassingly exposed in September 2017 when a serving official of the Intelligence Bureau petitioned the Islamabad High Court to investigate his own seniors for protecting terrorists.44 More than any single agency such as the ISI or IB, Pakistan’s intelligence culture has been perhaps the biggest culprit in facilitating the mainstreaming of extremism. By combining domestic intelligence, foreign intelligence and covert operations into a single, military-dominated security establishment, the country has ensured that its neighbours have ample reason to suspect that it will deal with domestic threats by simply exporting them across its borders in the guise of ‘national security’ and ‘power projection’. Both these terms are recognizable to Western interlocutors, who for lack of experience have failed to see that Pakistan is exaggerating foreign threats to conceal its inability to handle bigger problems internally. As the world marks the centenary of the cataclysm that was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, it is perhaps timely to wonder if Pakistan can continue relying on disinformation, proxy warriors and Chinese cash to stave off the consequences of its own inadequacy as a state. Czarist rule in imperial Russia was toppled through a multi-generational effort by fanatics who became more bloodthirsty with each leadership change in the armed underground. Should there be a long-term flaw in

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the Pakistani Deep State’s vision for perpetuating its own existence, the impact will be felt by descendants of the country’s military and intelligence personnel. The December 2014 massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar serves as a reminder of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s warning shortly after Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad: ‘You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours.’45

NOTES

Preface

Unpacking Layers of Concealment

1. Lorenzo Vidino, ‘Who was behind the jihadist attacks on Europe and North America?’, BBC, 30 August 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-40000952, accessed 30 August 2017. 2. Nathaniel Barr, ‘ISIS’ Blueprint: The Second Life of an al Qaeda Proposal’, Foreign Affairs, 25 August 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/201708-25/isis-blueprint, accessed 28 August 2017. 3. Truls Tonnessen, ‘Destroying the Islamic State Hydra: Lessons from the Fall of its Predecessor’, CTC Sentinel, 22 August 2016, https://ctc.usma. edu/posts/destroying-the-islamic-state-hydra-lessons-learned-from-thefall-of-its-predecessor, accessed 28 August 2017. 4. Robin Wright, ‘How different – and dangerous – is terrorism today?’, New Yorker, 5 June 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-differentand-dangerous-is-terrorism-today, accessed 28 August 2017. 5. Matt Purple, ‘The enemy that attacked the US on 9/11 is rapidly regaining its strength’, Business Insider, 25 August 2017, http://www.business insider.com/al-qaeda-resurgent-2017-8, accessed 28 August 2017. 6. David Gartenstein-Ross and Nathaniel Barr, ‘Osama bin Laden’s ‘Bookshelf’ Reveals al Qaeda’s Long Game’, Daily Beast, 17 March 2016, http://www. thedailybeast.com/osama-bin-ladens-bookshelf-reveals-al-qaedas-long-game, accessed 28 August 2017. 7. Bruce Riedel, ‘Pakistan’s Generals Strike Again: Sharif’s Ouster Is a Scary Shake-Up’, Daily Beast, 31 July 2017, http://www.thedailybeast.com/pakistansgenerals-strike-again-sharifs-ouster-is-a-scary-shake-up. 8. Yasser Latif Hamdani, ‘What should Nawaz Sharif do’, Daily Times, 31 July 2017, http://dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/31-Jul-17/what-should-nawaz-sharif-do, accessed 28 August 2017.

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9. Hassan Javid, ‘Perils of selective accountability’, The Nation, 30 July 2017, http://nation.com.pk/columns/30-Jul-2017/perils-of-selective-accountability, accessed 28 August 2017. 10. One Pakistani journalist has described LeT as a ‘wholly owned subsidiary of the ISI’. See Arif Jamal, Call for Transnational Jihad: Lashkar-e-Taiba (New Delhi: Kautilya Books, 2015), pp. 77–91. Also see [No author named], ‘Hafiz Saeed’s JuD launches political party in Pakistan’, Hindustan Times, 7 August 2017, http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/hafiz-saeed-s-jud-launchespolitical-party-in-pakistan/story-zfU2ED7WSaj2yROWdAf7xJ.html, accessed 9 August 2017, and Khursheed Sardar, ‘Milli Muslim League: Whither counter-terror narrative?’, Pakistan Today, accessed 9 August 2017, https://www. pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/08/09/milli-muslim-league-whither-counterterror-narrative/, accessed 28 August 2017. 11. Barkha Dutt, ‘Trump gets it right on Afghanistan and Pakistan’, Washington Post, 24 August 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/globalopinions/wp/2017/08/24/trump-gets-it-right-on-afghanistan-and-pakistan/? utm_term¼.8584953e2b98, 28 August 2017, and Glenn Kessler, ‘Trump’s incorrect claim that 20 ‘U.S.-designated’ terrorist groups operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan’, Washington Post, 22 August 2017, https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/08/22/trumps-incorrectclaim-that-20-u-s-designated-terror-groups-operate-in-afghanistan-andpakistan/?utm_term ¼ .68cfaf79479c, accessed 28 August 2017. 12. Mohammad Jibran Nasir, ‘Sleeping with sectarianism: How militants are becoming a political force in Pakistan’, The Nation, 8 November 2016, http:// nation.com.pk/blogs/08-Nov-2016/sleeping-with-sectarianism-how-militantsare-becoming-a-political-force-in-pakistan, accessed 29 August 2017. 13. Wilson John, The Caliphate’s Soldiers: The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s Long War (New Delhi: Amaryllis, 2011), p. 20 and pp. 108– 9. 14. Animesh Roul, ‘Al-Qaeda’s Quiet Resurgence in India’, Terrorism Monitor, 15 August 2017, https://jamestown.org/program/al-qaedas-quiet-resurgencein-india/, accessed 28 August 2017. 15. Ben Hubbard, ‘Hezbollah: Iran’s Middle East Agent, Emissary and Hammer’, New York Times, 27 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/ world/middleeast/hezbollah-iran-syria-israel-lebanon.html, accessed 28 August 2017. 16. Shamil Shams, ‘Why is China “protecting” the Pakistan-based Jaish-eMohammad militant group?’, Deutsch Welle, 8 February 2017, http://www.dw. com/en/why-is-china-protecting-the-pakistan-based-jaish-e-mohammadmilitant-group/a-36974181, accessed 28 August 2017. 17. Charles R. Lister, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency (London: Hurst & Company, 2015), p. 31, p. 47 and p. 53.

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209

Introduction 1. Anwar Alam, ‘‘Scholarly Islam’ and ‘Everyday Islam’: Reflections on the Debate over Integration of the Muslim Minority in India and Western Europe’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 27:2 (2007), p. 251. 2. The term ‘jihadosphere’ has been borrowed from Aaron Y. Zelin, ‘Know Your Ansar al-Sharia’, Foreign Policy, 21 September 2012, http://foreignpolicy.com/ 2012/09/21/know-your-ansar-al-sharia/, accessed 24 July 2017. 3. Fareed Zakaria, ‘Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad’, Washington Post, 10 May 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/09/ AR2010050902447.html, accessed 20 January 2017. 4. Cited in Babar Ayaz, ‘Militancy 101’, Newsline, April 2009, p. 106. 5. John Boone and Michael Safi, ‘Pakistan humiliated by south Asian countries’ boycott of summit’, Guardian, 28 September 2016, https://www.theguardian. com/world/2016/sep/28/pakistan-humiliated-by-south-asian-countries-boycottof-summit, accessed 26 July 2017. Also see Shamil Shams, ‘Unhappy neighbors – Afghanistan, India, Iran wary of Pakistan’s “jihadist support”’, Deutsch Welle, 9 May 2017, accessed http://www.dw.com/en/unhappy-neighbors-afghanistanindia-iran-wary-of-pakistans-jihadist-support/a-38764188, and [No author named], ‘U.S. Urges Pakistan Not To Use Terror Groups As “Proxies” In Afghanistan’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 19 April 2017, https://www.rferl. org/a/us-urges-pakistan-not-use-terror-groups-proxies-afghanistan-mcmastersecurity-adviser/28438192.html, accessed 26 July 2017. 6. Quoting Asad Sayeed in [No author named], ‘Forum: Violence Talk’, Herald, December 2014, p. 37. 7. Siegfried O. Wolf, ‘Pakistan and State-Sponsored Terrorism in South Asia’, in Paulo Casaca and Siegfried O. Wolf, Terrorism Revisited: Islamism, Political Violence and State-Sponsorship (New York: Springer, 2017), pp. 142 – 3. 8. Nora Kelly, ‘Full Transcript: Donald Trump Announces His Afghanistan Policy’, The Atlantic, 21 August 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ archive/2017/08/full-transcript-donald-trump-announces-his-afghanistanpolicy/537552/, accessed 29 August 2017. 9. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, ‘The “Greater Game”’, Dawn, 26 August 2017, https:// www.dawn.com/news/1353881/the-greater-game, accessed 29 August 2017. 10. Syed Saleem Shahzad, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 (London: Pluto Press, 2011), p. xvi. 11. Dexter Filkins, ‘The Journalist And the Spies’, The New Yorker, 19 September 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/19/the-journalist-andthe-spies, accessed 26 July 2017. 12. Khaled Ahmed, Sleepwalking to Surrender: Dealing with Terrorism in Pakistan (Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India, 2016), p. 21. 13. Frederic Grare, Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent: The Jamaat-i-Islami (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), p. 10.

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14. Interestingly, there may be an element of truth in the idea that some Hindus were indifferent to the usurpation of Muslim power by the British, seeing it as a struggle between two sets of oppressors. From contemporary accounts, it appears as though Hindu-Muslim unity during the Uprising was far from complete. The British lost no time in leveraging this through psychological operations intended to provoke rifts between the two communities. Ramesh Rawat, ‘1857 and the ‘Renaissance’ in Hindi Literature’, in Shireen Moosvi ed., 1857: Facets of the Great Revolt (New Delhi: Tulika, 2008), p. 133 and Shireen Moosvi, ‘Rebel Press, Delhi 1857’, in Shireen Moosvi ed., 1857: Facets of the Great Revolt (New Delhi: Tulika, 2008), p. 22. 15. A.H. Nayyar, ‘Insensitivity to the Religious Diversity of the Nation’, in A.H. Nayyar and Ahmad Salim eds, The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan (Islamabad: Sustainable Policy Development Institute, 2004), p. 53. 16. Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Covert Struggle for Control of a ‘Rogue’ State (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), p. 220 and Shahzad, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, p. 135. 17. Kaja Borchgrevink, ‘Transnational links of Afghan madrasas: Implications for the reform of religious education’, Prospects, 43: 1 (2013), p. 74. 18. Ajai Sahni, ‘South Asia: Extremist Islamist Terror and Subversion’, in KPS Gill and Ajai Sahni eds, The Global Threat of Terror: Ideological, Material and Political Linkages (New Delhi: Bulwark Books, 2002), p. 215. 19. Frederic Grare, Reforming the Intelligence Agencies in Pakistan’s Transitional Democracy (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2009), p. 5. 20. Ilija Trojanow, ‘Große Verwirrung’, Medico International, 21 February 2017, https://www.medico.de/grosse-verwirrung-16748/, accessed 24 July 2017. 21. John D. Stempel, ’The Impact of Religion on Intelligence’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence,18:2 (2005), pp. 280– 5, Melanie Phillips, Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within (London: Gibson Square, 2006), pp. 86 – 7 and Dietrich Jung, ‘The “Ottoman-German Jihad”: Lessons for the Contemporary “Area Studies” Controversy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 41:3 (2014), p. 258. 22. Pierre Lafrance, ‘And Yet, Pakistan Exists’, in Christopher Jaffrelot ed., Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation? (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), p. 344. 23. Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (London: Allen Lane, 2011), pp. 151 – 2. 24. William Sweetman, ‘Reviewed Work(s): Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870 by CA Bayly’, Modern Asian Studies, 32: 1 (1998), pp. 245– 6. 25. For examples, see the case of Hadi al-Iraqi in A.M. [Amir Mir], ‘Friends turned Foes’, Herald Annual, January 2004, p. 40 and Abu Faraj al-Libbi in Moosa Kaleem, ‘Meeting the Militants’, Herald, June 2005, p. 75. By early 2004, around 275 Al Qaeda militants were thought to be hiding in Pakistani cities, with 50 in Karachi alone. A.M. [Amir Mir], ‘The Target’, Herald, February 2004, p. 38. 26. Shahzad, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, p. 180.

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27. Pakistan has been described as ‘Exhibit A’ for an example of a Deep State. See Julie Hirschfield Davis, ‘Rumblings of a ‘Deep State’ Undermining Trump? It Was Once a Foreign Concept’, New York Times, 6 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/03/06/us/politics/deep-state-trump.html, accessed 26 July 2017. Another article in the New Yorker magazine traces the term’s origins to the Turkish phrase ‘derin devlet’ and also equates Turkey with Pakistan and Egypt as being the best examples of a state run by a clandestine network of military and intelligence officials, who take it upon themselves to intervene in domestic politics and brutally suppress dissent, regardless of the wishes of the elected civilian government. David Remnick, ‘There is No Deep State’, The New Yorker, 20 March 2017, http://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2017/03/20/there-is-no-deep-state, accessed 26 July 2017. 28. Faisal Bari, ‘The Deep State: Grand narrative and its perpetuation’, Pakistan Today, 28 May 2012, http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/05/28/the-deepstate/, accessed 21 January 2017. 29. Tariq Khosa, ‘The deep state’, Dawn, 18 June 2013, http://www.dawn.com/ news/1019058, accessed 21 January 2017. 30. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Anarchic Republic of Pakistan’, The National Interest, September-October 2010, http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/anarchicrepublic-pakistan-3917?page¼4, accessed 21 January 2017. 31. Dexter Filkins, ‘The Pakistani Dystopia’, The New Yorker, 15 January 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-pakistani-dystopia, accessed 21 January 2017. 32. Tariq Ali, ‘In the Doghouse’, in [No editor named], On the Abyss: Pakistan After the Coup (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 22. 33. Quoted in David Isby, Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires (New York: Pegasus, 2010), p. 72. 34. Jean-Pierre Filiu, From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy (London: Hurst, 2015), pp. 1 – 23. 35. S.K. Singh, ‘Pakistan’, in JN Dixit ed., External Affairs: Cross-Border Relations (New Delhi: Lotus, 2003), pp. 10– 11. 36. Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, Afghanistan The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2001), p. 9 and p. 14. 37. Amir Mir, The True Face of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan’s Network of Terror (New Delhi: Lotus, 2006), p. xvii. 38. Grare, Reforming the Intelligence Agencies in Pakistan’s Transitional Democracy, pp. 38– 9. 39. Marie Lall, ‘Educate to hate: the use of education in the creation of antagonistic national identities in India and Pakistan’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 38:1 (2008), p. 107. 40. Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘India and Pakistan: Interpreting the Divergence of Two Political Trajectories’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 15:2 (2002), pp. 253– 4. 41. M.J. Akbar, The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity (New Delhi: Lotus, 2003), pp. 239 –40.

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42. Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (London: Pluto, 2007), pp. 241– 2. 43. Satya R. Pattnayak and Thomas M. Arvanites, ‘Structural Determinants of State Involvement in International Terrorism’, in Harvey Kushner ed., Essential Readings on Political Terrorism: Analyses of Problems and Prospects for the 21st Century (New York: Gordian Knot Books, 2002), p. 191. 44. Yoginder Sikand, ‘Islamist assertion in contemporary India: The case of the students Islamic movement of India’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 23:2 (2003), p. 345. 45. Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (London: Hurst and Co., 2009), p. 25 and p. 109. 46. Adapted from Irfan Ahmed, Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010), pp. 4 –5. 47. Saad Sarfraz Sheikh, ‘ How Okara farmers have become the latest ‘enemies’ of the state’, Dawn, 23 August 2013, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153506, accessed 27 July 2017. 48. Wilson John, ‘Radical Influences in Institutional Structures and Armed Forces in the Region: An Assessment’, in [No editor named], Counter Terrorism in South Asia (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2011), p. 100. 49. Bruce Hoffman, ‘Why terrorists don’t claim credit’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 9:1 (1997), pp. 3 – 4. 50. [No author named], ‘Lashkar-e-Taiba denies role in Mumbai attacks’, Reuters, 27 November 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-36740420 081127, accessed 27 July 2017 and Kaustubh Kulkarni and Naeem Abbas, ‘Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasab executed secretly, sparks celebrations’, Reuters, 21 November 2012, http://in.reuters.com/article/india-kasab-death-executionidINDEE8AK01N20121121, accessed 27 July 2017. 51. Cited in Stanley A. Pimentel, ‘The Nexus of Organized Crime and Politics in Mexico’, Trends in Organized Crime, 4:3 (1999), p. 13. 52. For instance, see David A. Charters, ‘Eyes of the underground: Jewish insurgent intelligence in Palestine, 1945-47’, Intelligence and National Security, 13:4 (1998), pp. 165– 6. 53. Pervez Hoodbhoy, ‘The Saudi-isation of Pakistan’, Newsline, January 2009, p. 24. 54. Daniel Byman, ‘Saudi Arabia Is a Partner, Not a Friend’, The Atlantic, 30 September 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/saudi-arabiaobama-al-qaeda-terrorism/502343/, accessed 27 July 2017 and Bethan McKernan, ‘Terror funding report: Calls grow for release of “sensitive” Home Office document “pointing finger at Saudi Arabia”’, Independent, accessed 5 June 2017, http://www. independent.co.uk/News/uk/terror-funding-report-home-office-saudi-arabiajihadis-attacks-suppress-tory-uk-release-sensitive-a7773146.html, accessed 27 July 2017. 55. Syed Shoaib Hasan, ‘Press in Chains’, Herald, February 2004, p. 32.

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213

Chapter 1 Jihadism 1. Irfan Habib, ‘The Coming of 1857’, in Shireen Moosvi ed., 1857: Facets of the Great Revolt (New Delhi: Tulika, 2008), p. 6 and p. 9. 2. Farhat Hasan, ‘Religion in the History of 1857’, in Shireen Moosvi ed., 1857: Facets of the Great Revolt (New Delhi: Tulika, 2008), p. 141. 3. Omair Ahmad, ‘The assassin’, Hindu Businessline, 25 July 2014, http://www. thehindubusinessline.com/blink/talk/the-assassin/article6245685.ece, accessed 23 August 2017 and Helen James, ‘The Assassination of Lord Mayo: The ‘First’ Jihad?’, International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 5:2 (2009), p. 10 and pp. 14 – 16. 4. Tahir Mehdi, ‘We must differentiate between terrorism and jehad’, Newsline, February 1995, p. 32. 5. Tariq Hasan, Colonialism and the Call to Jihad in British India (New Delhi: Sage, 2015), pp. 3 – 5. 6. Saleem M.M. Qureshi, ‘Pakistan: Islamic Ideology and the Failed State?’, in Veena Kukreja and MP Singh eds, Pakistan: Democracy, Development and Security Issues (New Delhi: Sage, 2005), p. 94. 7. Joseph C. Myers, ‘Review Essays: The Quranic Concept of War’, Parameters, Winter 2006– 7, p. 109, p. 117 and p. 120, http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/ pubs/parameters/articles/06winter/win-ess.pdf, accessed 23 August 2017. 8. Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan (New Delhi: Manas, 2005), p. 46. 9. Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan, p. 25. 10. Irfan Ahmad, ‘Theorizing Islamism and democracy: Jamaat-e-Islami in India’, Citizenship Studies, 16:7 (2012), p. 892. 11. Francis Robinson, ‘Ulama, Sufis and Colonial Rule in North India and Indonesia’, in C.A. Bayly and D.H.A. Kolff eds, Two Colonial Empires: Comparative Essays on the History of India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), p. 14. 12. Shireen K. Burki, ‘The Creeping Wahhabization in Pukhtunkhwa: The Road to 9/11’, Comparative Strategy, 30:2 (2011), p. 154, p. 169 and pp. 172– 3. 13. Robinson, ‘Ulama, Sufis and Colonial Rule’, p. 17. 14. Michael D. Kasprowicz, ‘1857 and the fear of Muslim rebellion on India’s North-West Frontier’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 8:2 (1997), pp. 1 – 4. 15. Sheshrao B. More, The 1857 Jihad (New Delhi: Manas, 2009), pp. 91 – 9, pp. 196 –7, p. 202 and pp. 406– 7. 16. Tariq Rahman, ‘The Events of 1857 in Contemporary Writings in Urdu’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 32:2 (2009), p. 225. 17. Charles Allen, God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad (London: Abacus, 2007), p. 207. 18. Edna Fernandes, Holy Warriors: a Journey Into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism (London: Portobello, 2006), p. 56.

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19. Ali Qadir, ‘Between secularism/s: Islam and the institutionalization of modern higher education in mid-nineteenth century British India’, British Journal of Religious Education, 35:2 (2013), pp. 132– 3. 20. Timothy Nunan, ‘Why Pakhtun lands have been so volatile for two centuries’, Herald, 29 September 2016, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153543, accessed 28 July 2017. 21. Syed Tanvir Wasti, ‘The political aspirations of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman nexus’, Middle Eastern Studies, 42:5 (2006), pp. 710 – 15. 22. Allen, God’s Terrorists, pp. 261 –2 and p. 267. 23. Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, ‘No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier’, International Security, 32:4 (2008), p. 55. 24. Nasreen Ghufran, ‘Pushtun Ethnonationalism and the Taliban Insurgency in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan’, Asian Survey, 49:6 (2009), p. 1097. 25. Haroon K. Ullah, Vying for Allah’s Vote: Understanding Islamic Parties, Political Violence, and Extremism in Pakistan (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), p. 76. 26. Vern Liebl, ‘Pushtuns, Tribalism, Leadership, Islam and Taliban: A Short View’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 18:3 (2007), p. 505. 27. Jaffrelot, ‘India and Pakistan’, p. 261. 28. Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 51. 29. Ahmed, Islamism and Democracy in India, pp. 52 – 4, pp. 70– 1 and p. 78. 30. V.S. Subrahmanian, Aaron Mannes, Animesh Roul and R.K. Raghavan, Indian Mujahideen, Terrorism, Security, and Computation (New York: Springer, 2013), p. 22. 31. Kalim Bahadur, ‘Islamic Parties in Pakistan: The Social and Political Impact’, in Wilson John ed., Pakistan: The Struggle Within (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2009), pp. 88– 9. 32. Mubashir Zaidi, ‘The Big Catch’, Herald, March 2003, p. 26 and Zahid Hussain, ‘Closing In?’, Newsline, March 2003, pp. 21– 2. 33. Marc Gaborieau, ‘South Asian Muslim Diasporas and Transnational Movements: Tablighi Jama’at and Jama’at-I Islami’, South African Historical Journal, 61:1 (2009), pp. 12– 13. 34. Qureshi, ‘Pakistan: Islamic Ideology and the Failed State?’, pp. 92 – 3. 35. Grare, Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, p. 65. 36. Sikand, ‘Islamist assertion in contemporary India’, p. 338. 37. Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Delhi: Penguin, 2002), p. 6. 38. Gaborieau, ‘South Asian Muslim Diasporas and Transnational Movements’, p. 18. 39. Amir Mir, ‘Unanswered Questions’, Herald, September 2004, p. 32. 40. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Playing with Fire’, Herald, June 1993, pp. 62 – 3.

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41. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Chinese Connection’, Herald, December 1995, p. 37. 42. M.B.A. [Muhammad Badar Alam], ‘Islam in the land of Pharaohs’, Herald, September 2007, p. 95. 43. [No author named], ‘1967 and the rise of extremism’, Al Jazeera, 13 July 2009, http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/03/2008525183592 22993.html, accessed 25 June 2017. 44. Umer Farooq, ‘On the Right-Wing Track’, Herald, June 2012, p. 55. 45. Shaun Gregory, ‘Under the shadow of Islam: the plight of the Christian minority in Pakistan’, Contemporary South Asia, 20:2 (2012), p. 204. 46. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Waiting for the Peace Train’, Herald, April 1992, p. 54. 47. Zahid Hussain, ‘Al Qaeda’s New Face’, Newsline, August 2004, pp. 19 –24. 48. Idrees Bakhtiar and Umer Farooq, ‘Unusual suspects’, Herald, June 2010, p. 50. 49. Robinson, ‘Ulama, Sufis and Colonial Rule’, p. 11. 50. Idrees Bakhtiar and Umer Farooq, ‘Engendering Extremism’, Herald, June 2010, p. 54. Also see UF [Umer Farooq], ‘Rising Rebels’, Herald, June 2010, p. 55. 51. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, quoted in Irfan Husain, ‘Mawdudi and the Pakistani’, Herald, March 2002, p. 40. 52. Mir, The True Face of Jehadis, p. 29. 53. Alizeh Kohari, ‘Power Projection’, Herald, December 2012, p. 51. 54. Yasmin Saikia, ‘Ayub Khan and Modern Islam: Transforming Citizens and the Nation in Pakistan’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 37:2 (2014), pp. 301 –2. 55. Anthony Hyman, Muhammed Ghayur and Naresh Kaushik, Pakistan: Zia and After (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1989), p. 20. 56. Mehtab Ali Shah, ‘Sectarianism—A threat to human security: A case study of Pakistan’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 94:382 (2005), p. 614. 57. John, ‘Radical Influences in Institutional Structures and Armed Forces in the Region’, pp. 109– 10. 58. [No author named], ‘Paying the Price’, Herald, December 2003, p. 74. 59. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), pp. 112 – 15. 60. Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle With Militant Islam (New Delhi: Penguin, 2007), p. 20. 61. Sean P. Winchell, ‘Pakistan’s ISI: The Invisible Government’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 16:3 (2003), p. 378. 62. Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 384. 63. Akmal Hussain, ‘Pakistan’s Economy in Historical Perspective: Growth, Power and Poverty’, in Wilson John ed., Pakistan: The Struggle Within (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2009), p. 51. 64. Tariq Husain, ‘The New Professionals’, Herald, March 1990, p. 30.

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65. Umer Farooq, ‘Islam in the Garrison’, Herald, August 2011, p. 58. 66. Umer Farooq and Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘What’s the Problem?’, Herald, August 2011, p. 59. 67. Mohammed Hanif, ‘Murshid, Marwa Na Daina’, Newsline, June 2011, pp. 27– 8. 68. Amir Mir, ‘The Battle Within’, Herald, October 2003, p. 46 and Zahid Hussain, ‘A General Turn Around‘, Newsline, February 2003, p. 21. 69. Kamran Taremi, ‘Iranian Strategic Culture: The Impact of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Interpretation of Shiite Islam’, Contemporary Security Policy, 35:1 (2014), pp. 17 – 18. 70. Former Force Commander Northern Areas, cited in Nawaz, Crossed Sword s, p. 510. 71. Zahid Hussain, ‘Jihad Begins at Home’, Newsline, February 2001, p. 23. 72. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Ready to Rumble’, Herald, August 2004, p. 63.

Chapter 2 Pan-Islamism 1. Joseph S. Nye, The Future of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), p. 84. 2. Asma Afsaruddin, ‘The Myth of the Muslim World’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 May 2017, http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Myth-of-theMuslim-World/240069, accessed 23 August 2017. 3. Peter Rutland and Andrei Kazantsev, ‘The limits of Russia’s “soft power”’, Journal of Political Power, 9:3 (2016), pp. 408– 9. 4. This is similar to what is seen in other Deep State contexts, including even Italy’s fight against organized crime. See the following documentary: A Very Sicilian Justice: Taking on the Mafia, uploaded 12 July 2016, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v¼QsdkZExBdkQ, accessed 28 July 2017. 5. John Ferris, ‘“The Internationalism of Islam”: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840– 1951’, Intelligence and National Security, 24:1 (2009), p. 59. 6. Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire (London: William Collins, 2013), p. 10. 7. Qadir, ‘Between secularism/s’, pp. 134 –5. 8. Syed Tanvir Wasti (2009), ‘The Indian Red Crescent Mission to the Balkan Wars’, Middle Eastern Studies, 45:3, pp. 394– 8. 9. Wasti, ‘The political aspirations of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman nexus’, p. 712. 10. Jung, ‘The “Ottoman-German Jihad”’, pp. 250 – 1. 11. Lawrence James, The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (London: Abacus, 2004), pp. 119– 21. 12. Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express (London: Penguin, 2011), p. 81. 13. Mahmoud Mourad, ‘Terrorism and Politics: Relations of Time & Place’, in K.P.S. Gill and Ajai Sahni eds, The Global Threat of Terror: Ideological, Material and Political Linkages (New Delhi: Bulwark Books, 2002), pp. 165– 6.

NOTES

TO PAGES

53 –57

217

14. A Pakistani military journal opined that ‘Pakistan is an ideological miracle and not a geographic landmark’, cited in Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 172. 15. Husain Haqqani, ‘The Role of Islam in Pakistan’s Future’, Washington Quarterly, 28:1 (2004), pp. 89– 90. 16. Husain Haqqani, ‘Islamism and the Pakistani State’, 9 August 2013, Hudson Institute, https://hudson.org/research/9952-islamism-and-the-pakistanistate, accessed 27 February 2017, and Khaled Ahmed, ‘The “castle of Islam” concept’, 4 March 2012, Express Tribune, https://tribune.com.pk/story/344993/ the-castle-of-islam-concept/, accessed 27 February 2017. 17. Singh, ‘Pakistan’, p. 33. 18. Jan Ali, ‘Islamic Revivalism: The Case of the Tablighi Jamaat’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 23:1 (2003), pp. 175– 6. 19. Nicholas Howenstein, ‘Islamist Networks: The Case of Tablighi Jamaat’, 12 October 2006, United States Institute of Peace, https://www.usip.org/ publications/2006/10/islamist-networks-case-tablighi-jamaat, accessed 27 February 2017. 20. Gaborieau, ‘South Asian Muslim Diasporas and Transnational Movements’, p. 16. 21. Umer Farooq, ‘Islam in the Garrison’, Herald, August 2011, p. 57. 22. Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan, pp. 154 – 5. 23. Chetan Bhatt, ‘The ‘British jihad’ and the curves of religious violence’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33:1 (2010), p. 53. 24. Maloy Krishna Dhar, ‘Fulcrum of the Eastern Dark’, in Jaideep Saikia ed., Frontier in Flames: North East India in Turmoil (New Delhi: Penguin, 2007), p. 86. 25. Zaffar Abbas, ‘Rebels with a Cause’, Herald, November 1995, p. 29. 26. Bayram Balcı, ‘Reviving Central Asia’s religious ties with the Indian subcontinent? The Jamaat al Tabligh’, Religion, State and Society, 43:1 (2015), p. 6. 27. John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001), pp. 83 –6. 28. Rohan Gunaratna and Anders Nielsen, ‘Al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and Beyond’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 31:9 (2008), p. 789. 29. Phillips, Londonistan, pp. 156– 7. 30. Azmat Abbas, ‘Automatic weapons discovered at Raiwind tableeghi congregation’, Herald, December 2000, p. 31. 31. Imtiaz Gul, ‘Call of the Hour’, Newsline, June 2011, p. 25. 32. Shireen Khan Burki, ‘The Tablighi Jama’at: Proselytizing Missionaries or Trojan Horse?’, Journal of Applied Security Research, 8:1 (2013), pp. 104 –5. 33. Aassia Haroon, ‘Prophetic Times’, Newsline, February 1998, p. 31. It has been suggested that former ISI officials in TJ operate an ‘old boy network’, manoeuvering each other into post-retirement jobs from which they can continue to support militant organizations as ‘private citizens’. Khaled

218

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62.

NOTES TO PAGES 57 –64 Ahmed, ‘Fundamental Flaws’, in [No editor named], On the Abyss: Pakistan After the Coup (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 87. Yoginder S. Sikand, ‘The Tablighi Jama’at in Bangladesh, South Asia’, Journal of South Asian Studies, 22:1 (1999), p. 118. Mohammed Ahmed Khan, ‘A Pakistani Gora in Lahore’, Herald, August 2002, p. 55. Z. Abbas, ‘School for Scandal?’, Herald, December 1995, p. 33. Zahid Hussain, ‘Wages of Terror’, Newsline, December 1995, p. 73. Wilson John, Karachi: A Terror Capital in the Making (New Delhi: Rupa, 2003), pp. 41– 2. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Brothers in Arms’, Newsline, September 2009, p. 33. Jamal Malik, ‘Islamic mission and call: The case of the International Islamic University, Islamabad’, Islam and Christian – Muslim Relations, 9:1 (1998), p. 33. Zaffar Abbas, ‘The Coup That Wasn’t . . .’, Herald, November 1995, p. 28. Amir Zia, ‘Out in the Cold’, Newsline, January 2009, p. 45. R. Kim Cragin, ‘Early History of Al-Qa’ida’, The Historical Journal, 51:4 (2008), pp. 1051– 2. Shaiq Hussain, ‘The Unlikely Target’, Newsline, November 2009, pp. 34 – 5. Mubashir Zaidi, ‘Capital Failure’, Herald Annual, January 2014, p. 36. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Conversatively Hip’, Newsline, August 2010, pp. 26 –7. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘The Foresaken Warriors’, Herald, August 1993, p. 58. Cragin, ‘Early History of Al-Qa’ida’, pp. 1055– 6. Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (New York: Ballantine, 2003), p. 357. Mohammed M. Hafez, ‘Jihad after Iraq: Lessons from the Arab Afghans’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 32:2 (2009), p. 76. Zahid Hussain, ‘Wages of Terror’, Newsline, December 1995, pp. 72 – 3. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘The Foresaken Warriors’, Herald, August 1993, p. 61. A. Rashid, ‘The Last of the Warriors’, Herald, April 1992, p. 53 and A.A. Khan, ‘The Arab Connection’, Herald, March 1993, pp. 54–5. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘Crackdown in Peshawar’, Herald, August 1993, p. 55. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Brothers in Arms’, Herald, May 1993, p. 56. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Turn of the Screw’, Herald, February 1993, p. 29. Ayaz Amir, ‘The Unlikely Spymaster’, Herald, March 1992, pp. 43– 4. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Coming in From the Cold’, Herald, June 1993, p. 57 and Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Noose Tightens’, Herald, May 1993, p. 52. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Noose Tightens’, Herald, May 1993, pp. 51 – 2. Humeira Iqtidar, ‘Collateral Damage from the Afghanistan Wars: Jamaat-udDawa and Lashkar-e-Tayaba Militancy’, Middle East Report, No. 251 (2009), p. 29. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Between Jihad and Terror’, Herald Annual, January 2002, p. 51. Rizwan Qureshi, ‘The Pakistani Connection’, Herald, September 1998, p. 56.

NOTES

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64 –70

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63. Bergman, The Secret War with Iran, pp. 217 – 18 and p. 248. 64. Reuven Paz, ‘The Brotherhood of Global Jihad’, in K.P.S. Gill and Ajai Sahni eds, The Global Threat of Terror: Ideological, Material and Political Linkages (New Delhi: Bulwark Books, 2002), p. 50. 65. Mahir Ali, ‘House of Saud’, Newsline, December 2003, p. 66. 66. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), p. 120. 67. Shaun Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30:12 (2007), p. 1019 and Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 284. 68. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Nab One, Let One Go’, Herald, September 2003, p. 31. 69. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Between Jihad and Terror’, Herald Annual, January 2002, p. 50. 70. Ismail Khan, ‘The Taliban’s New Game Plan’, Newsline, July 2000, p. 64. 71. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Rise and Fall of the Taliban’, Herald, December 2001, p. 34. 72. Ismail Khan, ‘Baitullah Mehsud’, Herald, September 2009, p. 22. 73. Owais Tohid, ‘The Warrior Tribes’, Newsline, April 2004, p. 35. 74. Intikhab Amir, ‘Romancing for Cash’, Herald, November 2006, pp. 58–9. 75. Massoud Ansari, ‘Winning battles, not the war’, Newsline, January 2007, p. 52. 76. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Searching for the Genie’, Newsline, February 2009, p. 54. 77. Imtiaz Gul, The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier (New York: Penguin, 2010), p. 166. 78. Hafez, ‘Jihad after Iraq’, p. 82. 79. Asim Butt interview with Vali Nasr, cited in Navnita Chadha Behera, Demystifying Kashmir (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2007), p. 156. 80. Satish Kumar, ‘Reassessing Pakistan as a Long-term Security Threat’, in Veena Kukreja and M.P. Singh eds, Pakistan: Democracy, Development and Security Issues (New Delhi: Sage, 2005), p. 232.

Chapter 3

Sectarianism

1. Syed AI Tirmazi, Profiles of Intelligence (Lahore, Fiction House, 1995), pp. 129 –30. 2. Jones, Pakistan, p. 10 and Karl Kaltenthaler and William Miller, ‘Ethnicity, Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38:11 (2015), p. 951. 3. That said, until the late 1970s there seems to have been an official effort to play down the existence of sectarian tensions. On 6 June 1963, 116 Shias were massacred in Sindh, in an episode that seems to be not very well known even among Pakistani commentators. Laila Rajani, ‘Heart of darkness: Shia resistance and revival in Pakistan’, Herald, 12 October 2016, http://herald. dawn.com/news/1153276, and [No author named], ‘Eminent religious leaders killed in 25 years’, The News, accessed 28 February 2014, https://www. thenews.com.pk/archive/print/487987-eminent-religious-leaders-killed-in25-years, accessed 31 July 2017.

220

NOTES

TO PAGES

70 –77

4. Amir Mir, ‘Faith that Kills’, Newsline, October 1998, p. 56. 5. C. Christine Fair, Neil Malhotra and Jacob N. Shapiro, ‘Islam, Militancy, and Politics in Pakistan: Insights From a National Sample’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 22:4 (2010), p. 497 and p. 506. 6. Kaltenthaler and Miller, ‘Ethnicity, Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion’, p. 948. 7. Thomas Hegghammer, ‘Jihad, Yes, But Not Revolution: Explaining the Extraversion of Islamist Violence in Saudi Arabia’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 36:3 (2009), p. 400. 8. Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18:4 (1988), p. 787. 9. In a way, they seek to escape the anonymity of urban life by retreating into an ‘identity oasis’ of like-minded individuals, where each of them assumes a special status merely by being a member of the group. Manuel R. Torres, Javier Jordan and Nicola Horsburgh, ‘Analysis and Evolution of the Global Jihadist Movement Propaganda’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 18:3 (2006), p. 418. 10. Hegghammer, ‘Jihad, Yes, But Not Revolution’, pp. 410 – 14. 11. Moniza Khokhar, ‘Reforming Militant Madaris in Pakistan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30: 4 (2007), p. 359. 12. Azmat Abbas, ‘Tentacles of Hatred’, Herald, September 2001, pp. 57 – 8. 13. Z. Abbas, ‘Root Causes’, Herald, December 2003, p. 59. 14. In 1940, the Dar-ul Uloom Deoband issued a fatwa declaring Shias as nonMuslims. After Pakistan was created, Deobandi ulema in that country endorsed the earlier edict. S.V.R. Nasr, ‘The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan: The Changing Role of Islamism and the Ulama in Society and Politics’, Modern Asian Studies, 34: 1 (2000), p. 162. 15. Burki, ‘The Creeping Wahhabization in Pukhtunkhwa’, pp. 164 – 5. 16. Burki, ‘The Tablighi Jama’at’, p. 101. 17. Talat Aslam, ‘The New Sectarianism’, Herald, August 1991, p. 96. 18. Zaigham Khan, ‘Fight to the Finish?’, Herald, Nov –Dec 1998, pp. 50 – 1. 19. Zahid Hussain, ‘Profile of a Terrorist’, Newsline, March 1995, p. 35. 20. Azmat Abbas, ‘New Breed’, Herald, September 1998, p. 18. 21. S.V.R. Nasr, ‘Islam, the State and the Rise of Sectarian Militancy in Pakistan’, in Christopher Jaffrelot ed., Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation? (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), p. 96. 22. Zahid Hussain, ‘Profile of a Terrorist’, Newsline, March 1995, p. 35 and Amir Mir, ‘Faith that Kills’, Newsline, October 1998, p. 55. 23. Azmat Abbas, ‘The Making of a Militant’, Herald, July 2003, pp. 57– 8. 24. Naziha Syed Ali and Massoud Ansari, ‘Mission of Faith’, Newsline, November 2001, pp. 44 – 5. 25. Frederic Grare, ‘Does Democracy Have a Chance in Pakistan?’, in Wilson John ed., Pakistan: The Struggle Within (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2009), p. 6.

NOTES

TO PAGES

77 –84

221

26. Zaffar Abbas, ‘Turban Guerrillas’, Herald, November 1994, pp. 46 – 8. 27. Ghufran, ‘Pushtun Ethnonationalism and the Taliban Insurgency’, p. 1106. 28. Shehzad H. Qazi, ‘Rebels of the frontier: origins, organization, and recruitment of the Pakistani Taliban’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 22:4 (2011), pp. 577–8. 29. Gul, The Most Dangerous Place, p. 90. 30. Mumtaz Ahmad, cited in Nasr, ‘The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan’, pp. 150 –1. 31. Azmat Abbas, ‘The real battlefront’, Herald, November 2001, p. 50. 32. Owais Tohid, ‘The Jehad at Home’, Herald, December 1997, p. 65 and Mazhar Zaidi, ‘Fighting Tools’, Newsline, February 1995, p. 40. 33. Ajai Sahni, ‘South Asia: Extremist Islamist Terror and Subversion’, p. 208. 34. Muhammad Badar Alam, ‘Extremism: How real is the threat?’, Herald, September 2007, p. 93. 35. Hussain, ‘Pakistan’s Economy in Historical Perspective’, p. 53. 36. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘The Wrong End of the Stick’, Herald, December 1995, pp. 36– 7. 37. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘Playing with Fire’, Herald, March 1995, p. 56. 38. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Terror’s Training Ground’, Newsline, September 2009, pp. 23–7. 39. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘Striking at the Roots’, Herald, February 1995, p. 63. 40. Momin Bullo, ‘Inside the Madrassa’, Newsline, February 1995, pp. 36 – 7. 41. Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘The Regional Dimension of Sectarian Conflicts in Pakistan’, in Christopher Jaffrelot ed., Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation? (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), pp. 117 – 18. 42. Zaigham Khan, ‘Blood on the Streets’, Herald, June 1997, pp. 54– 5. 43. Mazhar Zaidi, ‘Behind the Scenes . . .’, Newsline, February 1995, p. 51 44. [No author named], ‘In the Beginning . . .’, Herald, August 1994, p. 36. 45. Abbas Nasir, ‘Pakistan’s Intelligence Agencies: The Inside Story’, Herald Annual, January 1991, p. 29. 46. Idrees Bakhtiar and Zaffar Abbas, ‘Conspiracies Unlimited’, Herald, August 1994, p. 35. 47. Zaigham Khan, ‘A Turbulent Legacy’, Herald, November 1994, p. 53. 48. Syed Ali Dayan Hasan, ‘City of Life’, Herald, September 2000, p. 85 and Zaffar Abbas, ‘Looking back in Disbelief’, Herald, September 2000, pp. 88 – 9. 49. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘The end of Jihad’, Herald, December 2001, p. 21 and Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Brothers in Arms’, Newsline, September 2009, p. 35. 50. Massoud Ansari and Naziha Syed Ali, ‘Crime City’, Newsline, June 2001, p. 30. 51. Azmat Abbas, ‘Lashkar’s big split’, Herald, August 2001, pp. 59 – 61 and John, Karachi, pp. 48–9. 52. Zaigham Khan, ‘Allah’s Armies’, Herald, September 1998, p. 29. 53. Amir Mir, ‘Terror’s Allies’, Herald, August 2004, p. 59. 54. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘The Wrong End of the Stick’, Herald, December 1995, p. 35.

222 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75.

NOTES

TO PAGES

84 –95

Mazhar Zaidi, ‘The Shias Strike Back’, Newsline, February 1995, p. 54. Ismail Khan, ‘A Farwell to Arms?’, Newsline, March 2000, p. 70. Zaigham Khan, ‘The Tragedy of Mominpura’, Herald, February 1998, p. 47. Amir Mir, ‘Unholy Crusade’, Newsline, October 1999, p. 69. Azmat Abbas, ‘Warming Up’, Herald, May 2006, p. 30. Mir, The True Face of Jehadis, p. 124. Zaigham Khan, ‘Courting Trouble’, Herald, February 1998, p. 48. Amir Mir, ‘Terror’s Allies’, Herald, August 2004, p. 60 and Syed Shoaib Hasan, ‘Under Wraps’, Herald, July 2005, p. 60. Aamir Ahmed Khan, ‘The New Guard’, Herald, November 1992, pp. 40–1. Rana Jawad, ‘Punjab’s Killing Fields’, Newsline, September 1997, p. 39. Maqbool Ahmed, ‘Route to Roots’, Herald Annual, April 2008, p. 44. Moosa Kaleem, ‘The Deadly Divide’, Herald, October 2012, p. 33. Umer Farooq, ‘Urban Extremities’, Herald, May 2011, p. 58. Massoud Ansari, ‘Times are a Killin’’, Herald Annual, April 2008, p. 43. Azmat Abbas, ‘Death Wish’, Herald, July 2003, p. 48. Azmat Abbas, ‘Taming the Militants’, Herald, March 2002, p. 24. Shabib Haider Syed, Luqman Saeed and Roger P. Martin, ‘Causes and Incentives for Terrorism in Pakistan’, Journal of Applied Security Research, 10:2 (2015), p. 182. [No author named], ‘Sectarian killings cost nation 59 billion rupees’, Herald, March 2002, p. 18. Hussain Askari, ‘Death Stalks the Lifesaver’, Herald, April 2002, p. 47. Luqman Saeed, Shabib Haider Syed and Roger P. Martin, ‘Historical patterns of terrorism in Pakistan’, Defense & Security Analysis, 30: 3 (2014), p. 224. Massoud Ansari, ‘Valley of Death’, Newsline, August 2003, pp. 20– 3.

Chapter 4 Information Denial 1. Maura R. Cremin, ‘Fighting on Their Own Terms: The Tactics of the Irish Republican Army 1919– 1921’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 26:6 (2015), pp. 919 –21. 2. Evan Thomas, ‘Into Thin Air’, Newsweek, 2 September 2007, http://europe. newsweek.com/thin-air-100565?rm¼eu, accessed 2 August 2017. 3. Ilia Xypolia, ‘Divide et Impera: Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions of British Imperialism’, Critique, 44:3 (2016), p. 231. 4. Syed, Saeed and Martin, ‘Causes and Incentives for Terrorism in Pakistan’, p. 195. 5. Zaffar Abbas, ‘Good Terrorist, Bad Terrorist’, Herald Annual, January 1993, p. 65. 6. Younis Ahmed, ‘The Rise and Fall of Altaf Hussain’, Herald Annual, January 1993, p. 63. 7. Laurent Gayer, ‘Guns, Slums, and ‘Yellow Devils’: A Genealogy of Urban Conflicts in Karachi, Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, 41:3 (2007), p. 530.

NOTES TO PAGES 95 –100

223

8. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘The Crime Game’, Herald, February 1996, p. 85. 9. V.S. Subrahmanian, Aaron Mannes, Amy Sliva, Jana Shakarian and John P. Dickerson, Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba (New York: Springer, 2013), p. 25 and p. 35. 10. Mazhar Zaidi, ‘The Shias Strike Back’, Newsline, February 1995, p. 54. 11. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘Moving Targets’, Herald, August 1997, p. 38. 12. A.A. [Azmat Abbas], ‘Mixed Signals’, Herald Annual, January 2005, p. 40. 13. Gunaratna and Nielsen, ‘Al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and Beyond’, p. 779. 14. Ashley J. Tellis, ‘Pakistan’s Record on Terrorism: Conflicted Goals, Compromised Performance’, Washington Quarterly, 31:2 (2008), p. 17. 15. Massoud Ansari, ‘A Chink in the Armour’, Newsline, June 2005, p. 38. 16. Gaetano Joe Ilardi, ‘IRA operational intelligence: the heartbeat of the war’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:2 (2010), pp. 339 – 40. 17. Massoud Ansari, ‘The Pakistan Connection’, Newsline, September 2006, pp. 61 – 2. 18. Tom Coghlan, ‘The Taliban in Helmand: an Oral History’, in Antonio Giustozzi ed., Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (New Delhi: Foundation, 2009), p. 137. 19. Ghufran, ‘Pushtun Ethnonationalism and the Taliban Insurgency in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan’, pp. 1107 – 8. 20. Khuram Iqbal and Sara De Silva, ‘Terrorist lifecycles: a case study of Tehrik-eTaliban Pakistan’, Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 8:1 (2013), pp. 77 – 8. 21. Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi, ‘Pakistan’s Anti-Taliban Counter-Insurgency’, RUSI Journal, 155:1 (2010), p. 14. 22. Maqbool Ahmed and Mansoor Khan, ‘Troubled North-West Comes to Town‘, Herald, December 2012, pp. 29 – 31. 23. Mansoor Khan, ‘Terror Tax’, Herald, December 2012, p. 31. 24. Mansoor Khan, ‘Perils of being the Police’, Herald, December 2012, p. 32. 25. Akhlaq Ahmad, ‘The Role of Social Networks in the Recruitment of Youth in an Islamist Organization in Pakistan’, Sociological Spectrum, 34:6 (2014), p. 470. 26. Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran, p. 97. 27. Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, Engineers of Jihad, Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, Sociology Working Papers: Paper Number 2007 – 10, https://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/200710.pdf, accessed 2 August 2017. 28. Marc R. DeVore and Armin B. Sta¨hli, ‘Explaining Hezbollah’s Effectiveness: Internal and External Determinants of the Rise of Violent Non-State Actors’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 27:2 (2015), p. 349. 29. Carl Anthony Wege, ‘Anticipatory Intelligence and the Post-Syrian War Hezbollah Intelligence Apparatus’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 29:2 (2016), p. 247.

224

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TO PAGES

100 –105

30. Mark E. Stout, Jessica M. Huckabey, John R. Schindler with Jim Lacey, The Terrorist Perspectives Project (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2008), pp. 208– 9. 31. Gaetano Joe Ilardi, ‘Al-Qaeda’s Counterintelligence Doctrine: The Pursuit of Operational Certainty and Control’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 22:2 (2009), p. 249. 32. Oleg Kashin, ‘There Are No ‘Killers’ in Vladimir Putin’s Russia’, New York Times, 2 March 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/opinion/thereare-no-killers-in-vladimir-putins-russia.html?_r¼0on, accessed 22 March 2017. 33. Shafiq Ahmad, ‘Training to Explode’, Herald, April 2007, p. 96. 34. Anna Rathbone and Charles K. Rowley, ‘Al Qaeda’, in Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich Schneider eds, The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, p. 7, https://link. springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-0-306-47828-4_30.pdf, accessed 2 August 2017. 35. Arif Jamal, ‘Who’s afraid of the Islamic State?’, Herald, 24 June 2015, http:// herald.dawn.com/news/1153173, accessed 2 August 2017. 36. Amir Mir, ‘Terror’s Allies’, Herald, August 2004, p. 59. 37. Zaigham Khan, ‘Raising the Stakes’, Herald, October 1997, p. 53. 38. Mazhar Abbas, ‘The Way of the Terrorist’, Newsline, May 2004, p. 44. 39. Ibid., p. 45. 40. Gaetano Joe Ilardi, ‘The 9/11 Attacks – A Study of Al Qaeda’s Use of Intelligence and Counterintelligence’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 32:3 (2009), p. 181. 41. Massoud Ansari, ‘The Harvest of Hate’, Newsline, June 2004, p. 35. 42. Muhammed Badar Alam, ‘Business as Usual’, Herald, December 2009, p. 58. 43. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, The Siege: The Attack on the Taj (New Delhi: Penguin, 2013), p. 58. 44. Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Gordon Brown: 75% of UK terror plots originate in Pakistan’, Guardian, 14 December 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/ dec/14/mumbai-terror-attacks-india, and Dean Nelson, ‘Pakistan: origin of three-quarters of all terror plots’, The Telegraph, accessed 10 April 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/5135394/ Pakistan-origin-of-three-quarters-of-all-terror-plots.html, accessed 2 August 2017. 45. Haider A.H. Mullick, Pakistan’s Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies (Hurlbert Field, FL: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2009), p. 52. 46. Imran Awan, ‘Policing Pakistani Style in the Theatre of Terror’, Asian Criminology, 8: 3 (2013), pp. 195– 7. 47. Aoun Sahi, ‘Lahore Under Attack’, Newsline, April 2009, p. 35 and Moosa Kaleem and Khawaja Akbar, ‘That dreaded call for money’, Herald, June 2011, p. 29.

NOTES

TO PAGES

106 –111

225

48. Abdus Sattar Qamar, ‘In Cold Blood’, Herald, March 1990, p. 25. 49. Azmat Abbas, ‘Law and Disorder’, Herald Annual, January 1999, p. 101. 50. A Karachi police official from the muhajir community, detained by the Punjabi-dominated paramilitary Rangers in 1996 on suspicion of terrorism, described to a journalist how his interrogation went: ‘They kept telling me to call myself a Hindustani [Indian] while they hit me, and finally, after I don’t know how many hours of this they asked me who I was and I said, ‘You’ve been telling me I’m a Hindustani so that’s what I must be’. See Sameera Daudi, ‘Terror squads’, Newsline, January 1996, p. 42. 51. Zaffar Abbas, ‘Our Master’s Voice’, Herald, May 1995, p. 19. 52. Massoud Ansari, ‘Dawn of Another Night’, Newsline, October 1999, p. 73. 53. Zahid Hussain, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, Newsline, March 2004, pp. 25– 6. 54. Syed Shoaib Hasan, ‘Karachi’s bomb squad goes bust’, Herald, April 2004, p. 36. 55. Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘Shock after Shock’, Herald, August 1997, p. 48. 56. Azmat Abbas, ‘Tentacles of Hatred’, Herald, September 2001, pp. 60 – 1. 57. Syed Shoaib Hasan, ‘Mean Streets’, Herald, March 2006, pp. 34 – 5. 58. Massoud Ansari, ‘Times are a Killin’’, Herald Annual, April 2008, p. 44. 59. Massoud Ansari, ‘Winning battles, not the war’, Newsline, January 2007, p. 53. 60. C. Christine Fair and Seth G. Jones, ‘Pakistan’s War Within’, Survival, 51:6 (2009), p. 165. 61. Imran Gabol, Irfan Haider and Haseeb Bhatti, ‘Punjab home minister Shuja Khanzada killed in terror attack’, Dawn, 17 August 2015, https://www.dawn. com/news/1200807, accessed 22 March 2017. 62. Massoud Ansari, ‘Mishandled All the Way’, Herald, November 2007, p. 91. 63. Aoun Abbas Sahi, ‘An unequal fight’, Newsline, June 2009, p. 38. 64. H.I. Jafri, ‘Black Knights’, Herald, December 1994, pp. 37 – 8. 65. Azmat Abbas, ‘Law and Disorder’, Herald Annual, January 1999, p. 101. 66. Azizullah Khan, ‘The Guessing Game’, Herald, August 2003, p. 38 and Amir Mir, ‘Why Shia Hazaras?’, Herald, August 2003, pp. 40 – 1. 67. Imtiaz Gul, ‘Call of the Hour’, Newsline, June 2011, p. 24. 68. Massoud Ansari, ‘Everywhere and Nowhere’, Herald, November 2008, p. 28. 69. B. Raman, ‘To counter a covert aggressor’, Frontline, 17:3 (5– 18 February 2000), http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1703/17030150.htm, accessed 25 August 2018. 70. Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008), p. 48 and pp. 224 –5. 71. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’, Herald, June 2002, p. 30. 72. Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’, p. 1023. 73. Ibid., pp. 1029– 30.

226

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111 –115

74. Daniel Byman, ‘The Intelligence War on Terrorism’, Intelligence and National Security, 29: 6 (2014), p. 840, p. 849 and p. 860 and Erik J. Dahl, ‘The Plots that Failed: Intelligence Lessons Learned from Unsuccessful Terrorist Attacks Against the United States’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 34:8 (2011), p. 622.

Chapter 5

Information Collection

1. A former top-ranking official of the Indian intelligence service has revealed that during the 1980s, when India was suffering from cross-border terrorism in its Punjab province (adjacent to Pakistani Punjab), Western intelligence agencies withheld counterterrorist cooperation. Not only that, but the United States actually encouraged Pakistan in destabilizing India. Post 9/11, such indifference to terrorism has disappeared, but only insofar as attacks on Western homelands are concerned. [No author named], ‘CIA, ISI encouraged Sikh terrorism: Ex-R&AW official’, Rediff.com, 26 July 2007, http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/26raw.htm, accessed 3 August 2017. 2. Justin R. Harber, ‘Unconventional Spies: The Counterintelligence Threat from Non-State Actors’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 22:2 (2009), p. 222 and p. 229. 3. J. Bowyer Bell, ‘The armed struggle and underground intelligence: An overview’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 17:2 (1994), p. 118. 4. Ibid., p. 121. 5. Lincoln B. Krause, ‘Insurgent intelligence: The guerrilla grapevine’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 9:3 (1996), p. 301. 6. Ilardi, ‘IRA operational intelligence’, pp. 337 – 9. 7. Clive Jones, ‘A reach greater than the grasp’: Israeli intelligence and the conflict in south Lebanon 1990–2000’, Intelligence and National Security, 16:3 (2001), p. 12. 8. Russell W. Switzer Jr., Sendero Luminoso and Peruvian Counterinsurgency, Master of Liberal Arts Thesis, University of New York, May 2007, p. 67, http://etd.lsu. edu/docs/available/etd-01242007-200500/unrestricted/russswitzerthesis.pdf, accessed 3 August 2017. 9. Mette Eilstrup Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones, ‘Assessing the Dangers of Illicit Networks: Why al-Qaida May Be Less Threatening Than Many Think’, International Security, 33: 2 (2008), pp. 19 – 33. 10. Peter Neumann, Ryan Evans and Raffaello Pantucci, ‘Locating Al Qaeda’s Center of Gravity: The Role of Middle Managers’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 34:11 (2011), p. 838. 11. Gaetano Joe Ilardi, ‘Al Qaeda’s Operational Intelligence – A Key Prerequisite to Action’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 31:12 (2008), pp. 1077 – 80. 12. Tariq Khosa, ‘Mumbai attacks trial’, Dawn, 3 August 2015, https://www. dawn.com/news/1198061, accessed 21 April 2017.

NOTES

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227

13. John A. Gentry and David E. Spencer, ‘Colombia’s FARC: A Portrait of Insurgent Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security, 25:4 (2010), pp. 463 –4. 14. Douglas Porch and Jorge Delgado, ‘“Masters of today”: military intelligence and counterinsurgency in Colombia, 1990– 2009’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:2 (2010), pp. 284– 5 and p. 290. 15. Carl Anthony Wege, ‘Hizballah’s Counterintelligence Apparatus’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 25:4 (2012), pp. 774– 6. 16. William Costanza, ‘Hizballah and Its Mission in Latin America’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 35:3 (2012), p. 198. 17. Randeep Ramesh, ‘Mumbai attackers had hit list of 320 world targets’, Guardian, 19 February 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/ feb/19/mumbai-attacks-list-targets, accessed 3 August 2017. 18. Massoud Ansari, ‘Enemy at the Gates’, Herald, January 2010, p. 18. 19. Massoud Ansari, ‘Suicide City’, Newsline, June 2004, p. 24. 20. Martin Rudner, ‘Al Qaeda’s Twenty-Year Strategic Plan: The Current Phase of Global Terror’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36:12 (2013), pp. 968–9. 21. Harvey J. McGeorge, ‘Tactics and techniques of terrorists and saboteurs’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 8:3 (1986), p. 297. 22. For US court documents pertaining to the Headley trial and the role of Pakistan’s ISI, see http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/ 1520.pdf, and http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2013/images/01/24/terrorcase. pdf, accessed 3 August 2017. 23. Graham H. Turbiville Jr., ‘Firefights, raids, and assassinations: tactical forms of cartel violence and their underpinnings’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:1 (2010), p. 132. 24. Lisa J. Campbell, ‘Los Zetas: operational assessment’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:1 (2010), p. 55. 25. Stan A. Taylor and Daniel Snow, ‘Cold war spies: Why they spied and how they got caught’, Intelligence and National Security, 12:2 (1997), p. 102. 26. Kristie Macrakis, ‘Technophilic Hubris and Espionage Styles during the Cold War’, Isis, 101:2 (2010), p. 383. 27. Umer Farooq, ‘Red Alert’, Herald Annual, April 2008, p. 54. 28. Imtiaz Gul, ‘Call of the Hour’, Newsline, June 2011, p. 25. 29. Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 199. 30. Shahnawaz Khan, ‘One Black Sheep Too Many’, Herald, February 2011, pp. 62– 3. 31. Vadim Volkov, Who is Strong When the State is Weak: Violent Entrepreneurs in Post-Communist Russia, paper presented at the conference ‘Russia at the End of the Twentieth Century’, Stanford University, 5 – 7 November, 1998, https:// web.stanford.edu/group/Russia20/volumepdf/Volkov.pdf, accessed 3 August 2017.

228

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121 –124

32. M. Emdad-ul Haq, Drugs in South Asia: From the Opium Trade to the Present Day (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 201. 33. Kshitij Prabha, ‘Narco-Terrorism and India’s security’, Strategic Analysis, 24:10 (2001), p. 1880. 34. Loretta Napoleoni, Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks (London: Pluto Press, 2003), p. 83 and p. 91. 35. S. Kalyanaraman, ‘India and the Challenge of Terrorism in the Hinterland’, Strategic Analysis, 34:5 (2010), p. 704. 36. Mary Ann Weaver, Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan (New Delhi: Penguin, 2002), pp. 77 – 8. 37. Zafar Abbas, ‘The Fatal Flaw’, Herald Annual, January 1993, pp. 67 – 70. 38. Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘Looking back in Anger’, Herald, December 1994, p. 34. 39. Mohammed Hanif, ‘City of Death’, India Today, 15 July 1995, p. 40. 40. Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘Spies who came in from the cold’, Herald, September 2009, p. 21. 41. Initially, there was even an attempt to portray the deceased as ‘Indian agents’. That was how television channels first broke the news of the killings, before contrary reports started coming in. Hasan Mujtaba, ‘Justice in Flames’, Newsline, September 1996, pp. 88 – 90. 42. Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘Beyond the Battlefront’, Herald, August 1995, p. 26. 43. Hasan Mujtaba, ‘Death City’, Newsline, November 1994, p. 60. 44. Mohammad Hanif, ‘Young Guns’, Newsline, July 1995, p. 39. 45. Azhar Abbas, ‘Rule By Proxy’, Herald, November 1995, p. 53. 46. Arif Hasan, ‘What is Karachi Really Fighting For?’, Herald, September 1995, p. 59. 47. Hasan Zaidi, ‘Return of the Mafias’, Herald, November 1995, pp. 56 – 7. 48. Sameera Daudi, ‘Terror Squads’, Newsline, January 1996, p. 42. 49. Azhar Abbas, ‘Law of the Jungle’, Herald, August 1995, p. 30. 50. Ghulam Hasnain and Hasan Zaidi, ‘The Politics of Murder’, Herald, March 1996, p. 31. While this laissez-faire economy was thriving, the Pakistani army was not to be left out. Instead of directly extorting money from criminal gangs and ordinary civilian traders, it resorted to more sophisticated methods of thievery. One of these was to run a counterfeit beverage business. Misusing the army’s official right to manufacture aerated drinks for consumption by its own personnel only, some officers posted in Karachi set up a side-business selling falsely branded drinks to civilians. These were made with water that testers had deemed unfit for human ingestion, but that did not stop the officers from making a heathy profit. Even protests by civilian authorities, who were aware of the practice and pointed out its illegality according to the army’s own regulations, were ignored by the garrison commander. Azhar Abbas, ‘Khaki Cola’, Herald, October 1997, pp. 92 – 3. 51. Maqbool Ahmed, ‘In the Name of God’, Herald, October 2008, p. 74. 52. Johnson and Mason, ‘No Sign until the Burst of Fire’, p. 66. 53. S.A. [Shafiq Ahmad], ‘Assassins for Sale’, Herald, February 2007, p. 41.

NOTES

TO PAGES

124 –130

229

54. Nasir Jamal and Mohammad Faisal Ali, ‘Professionals, Amateurs and Con Men’, Herald, April 2012, p. 45. 55. Jam Sajjad Hussain, ‘Son-in-law of Gen Tariq wins freedom for Rs 300m’, Nation, 16 March 2012, http://nation.com.pk/national/16-Mar-2012/son-inlaw-of-gen-tariq-wins-freedom-for-rs-300m, accessed 8 April 2017. 56. Khaled Ahmed, ‘Who kidnapped Shahbaz Taseer?’, Friday Times, 2–8 September 2011, http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue¼20110902& page ¼ 8, accessed 8 April 2017. 57. Ghulam Dastageer, ‘Forced Donations’, Herald, April 2012, p. 65. 58. Maqbool Ahmed, ‘All it takes is a Gun and a Cell Phone’, Herald, April 2012, p. 59. 59. S.N. Khan and Shahzada Zulfiqar, ‘Terror ID’, Herald, July 2010, p. 49. 60. S.N. Khan, ‘Cracking the Code System’, Herald, July 2010, p. 51. 61. Sushant Sareen, The Jihad Factory: Pakistan’s Islamic Revolution in the Making (New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2005), p. 26. 62. Sashanka S. Banerjee, A Long Journey Together: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge, 2008), pp. 66–8. 63. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Pakistan and the Taliban’, in William Maley ed., Afghanistan and the Taliban: The rebirth of fundamentalism? (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001), pp. 74– 6. 64. Zahid Hussain, ‘Back to the Barracks’, Newsline, December 1994, p. 31 and Zahid Hussain, ‘Karachi is not Burning’, Newsline, December 1994, p. 32. 65. Quoted in Moosa Kaleem, ‘Fighting Crime With Crime’, Herald, April 2012, p. 53. 66. Ismail Khan, ‘Politically Savvy’, Herald, September 2007, p. 98. 67. Adnan Adil, ‘The Invisible hand’, Newsline, March 2006, p. 30. 68. Azmat Abbas, ‘Prisoner Under Wraps’, Herald, April 2002, pp. 24 –5. 69. Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 372. 70. Interrogation Report of David Coleman Headley, compiled by the Indian National Investigation Agency, p. 61, http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/ case_docs/1602.pdf, accessed 8 April 2017. 71. Hein G. Kiessling, Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan (Noida: HarperCollins, 2016), p. 214. 72. Ashley J. Tellis, ‘Pakistan’s Record on Terrorism’, p. 15. 73. Winchell, ‘Pakistan’s ISI’, p. 383. 74. Imtiaz Gul, ‘The terror nexus’, Herald, September 2011, p. 13. 75. C. Christine Fair, ‘Militant Recruitment in Pakistan: Implications for Al Qaeda and Other Organizations’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 27:6 (2004), pp. 495 –6. 76. Carey Schofield, Inside the Pakistan Army (New Delhi: Pentagon Security International, 2011), p. 112. 77. Sairah Irshad Khan, ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, Newsline, June 2011, p. 21. 78. Richard Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 89– 90.

230

NOTES

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130 –136

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

Umer Farooq, ‘Brothers in religion’, Herald, August 2011, pp. 60 – 1. Umer Farooq, ‘Islam in the Garrison’, Herald, August 2011, p. 56. Imtiaz Gul, ‘Reinventing the Army’, Newsline, July 2011, p. 18. Imtiaz Gul, ‘Jihadis in the Ranks’, Newsline, September 2012, p. 20. Ibid. Massoud Ansari, ‘“Divine” Mission’, Newsline, July 2004, pp. 46– 9. Zahid Hussain, ‘Rebels in the ranks’, Newsline, October 1995, p. 41. Zaffar Abbas, ‘The Sufi’s order’, Herald Annual, January 1996, pp. 92 – 3. Zaffar Abbas, ‘The Pakistani Al Qaeda’, Herald, August 2004, pp. 56 – 7. Zahid Hussain, ‘Al Qaeda’s New Face’, Newsline, August 2004, pp. 24 –5. Marian K. Leighton, ‘Strange Bedfellows: The Stasi and the Terrorists’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 27:4 (2014), p. 651. 90. Grare, ‘Does Democracy Have a Chance in Pakistan?’, p. 8.

Chapter 6

Information Manipulation

1. Pamir H. Sahill, ‘The Terror Speaks: Inside Pakistan’s Terrorism Discourse and National Action Plan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2017), p. 10, http:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1284448, accessed 4 August 2017. Subscription provided by ETH Zu¨rich. 2. Kashif N. Chaudhry, ‘Does PUC condemn sectarian violence?’, Daily Times, 9 June 2014, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/10-Jun-2014/doespuc-condemn-sectarian-violence, accessed 19 April 2017. 3. Isaac Kfir, ‘Sectarian Violence and Social Group Identity in Pakistan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 37:6 (2014), p. 458. 4. The first Pakistani casualties in the War on Terror were not soldiers, but six policemen guarding a convoy of Al Qaeda prisoners being taken to Peshawar. On 19 December 2001, they were killed in an escape attempt and at least 48 prisoners fled out of a total of 195. Mubashir Zaidi, ‘Slipping through the net’, Herald, August 2002, p. 51. The Pakistani army suffered its first casualties on 26 June 2002, when ten soldiers were shot dead during a house search in South Waziristan. The army’s response was to use local elders to carry out house searches and thereby avoid any risk to its own troops. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Terror Strikes Back’, Herald, July 2002, pp. 37 – 9. 5. Asma Jahangir, ‘Missing in Action’, Newsline, February 2016, http://newsline magazine.com/magazine/missing-in-action-2/, accessed 4 August 2017. 6. Susanne Koelbl, ‘Terror Is Our Enemy, Not India’, Der Spiegel, 9 January 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pakistan-s-new-intelligence-chiefterror-is-our-enemy-not-india-a-599724.html, accessed 18 April 2017. 7. Pierre Bourdieu, cited in Amelie Blom, ‘The ‘Multi-Vocal State’: The Policy of Pakistan on Kashmir‘, in Christopher Jaffrelot ed., Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation? (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), p. 303. 8. James Cockayne and Daniel Pfister, ‘Peace Operations and Organised Crime’, GCSP Geneva Papers, No. 2 (2008), p. 18.

NOTES

TO PAGES

136 –143

231

9. Ajai Sahni, ‘Responding to Terrorism in Punjab, and Jammu & Kashmir’, in S.D. Muni, Responding to Terrorism in South Asia (New Delhi, Manohar: 2006), p. 67. 10. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 174 –5 and p. 182. 11. Timothy L. Thomas, ‘Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 17:2 (2004), p. 237. 12. Encarnacio´n Ferna´ndez Ruiz-Ga´lvez, ‘Afghanistan: Why Has Violence Replaced Political Power?’, in Jesu´s Ballesteros, Encarnacio´n Ferna´ndez Ruiz-Ga´lvez, and Pedro Talavera eds, Globalization and Human Rights Challenges and Answers from a European Perspective (New York: Springer, 2012), p. 86. 13. Gul, The Most Dangerous Place, pp. 2 – 3. 14. Nasim Zehra, ‘Out in the Cold’, Herald, January 1990, p. 42. 15. Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan The Bear Trap, p. 40. 16. Brian Glyn Williams, ‘Afghanistan after the Soviets: From jihad to tribalism’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 25:5– 6 (2014), pp. 938 – 42. 17. Zaffar Abbas, ‘Whose Government is it anyway?’, Herald, May 1992, p. 36c. 18. Anthony Davis, ‘How the Taliban Became a Military Force’, in William Maley ed., Afghanistan and the Taliban: The rebirth of fundamentalism? (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001), p. 70. 19. Massoud Ansari, ‘Over to You, Parvez’, Herald, October 2007, p. 104. 20. Declan Walsh, ‘Mixed Legacy for Departing Pakistani Army Chief’, New York Times, 28 November 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/29/world/asia/ mixed-legacy-for-departing-pakistani-army-chief.html, accessed 19 April 2017. 21. [No author named], ‘The inside story of the CIA-ISI immunity deal’, The News, 21 December 2012, https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/amp/627274-theinside-story-of-the-cia-isi-immunity-deal, accessed 20 April 2017. 22. Owen L. Sirrs, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate: Covert action and internal operations (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 238 – 9. 23. John R. Schmidt, ‘The Unravelling of Pakistan’, Survival, 51:3 (2009), p. 39. 24. Behroz Khan, ‘Remains of the Day’, Newsline, September 1998, p. 40. 25. Rahimullah Yusufzai, ‘Exporting Jihad?’, Newsline, September 1998, p. 39. 26. Behroz Khan, ‘Sectarian Spillover’, Newsline, October 1999, p. 76. 27. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Intelligence Test’, Herald, April 1991, pp. 42 – 3 and Ayaz Amir, ‘The Sour Revolution’, Herald, May 1992, p. 41. 28. [No author named], ‘The Spooks are back’, Herald, February 1993, p. 32. 29. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Turn of the Screw’, Herald, February 1993, p. 29. 30. One journalist noted that ‘The US military involvement in the Gulf [the 1991 war against Iraq] is described by sources in the military elite as the “classic overreach” of a “declining superpower going into debt to maintain yesteryear’s prestige.” In the post-war scenario, it is believed that a popular wave of

232

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

NOTES

TO PAGES

143 –151

anti-Americanism may engulf the entire region, which may result in nationalist and fundamentalist movements against the pro-US kingdoms and shiekhdoms [sic] – in such a context, the stoppage of US aid to Pakistan is viewed as “God’s greatest blessing”’. Z. Abbas, ‘Risky Business’, Herald, February 1991, p. 32. Alizeh Kohari, ‘Power Projection’, Herald, December 2012, p. 52. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Diplomatic Immunity’, Herald, October 1990, p. 29. Karamatullah K. Ghori, ‘Army Takes All’, Newsline, March 2003, p. 66. Zahid Hussain and Amir Mir, ‘Army to the Rescue’, Newsline, May 1998, pp. 22– 3. Abbas Nasir and Talat Aslam, ‘Images of the Decade’, Herald, January 1990, p. 31. Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘Operation Sindh’, Herald, June 1992, p. 26. Mubashir Zaidi, ‘The Real Military Rule’, Herald, October 2003, pp. 49 – 51. Ibid., p. 51. Umer Farooq, ‘General perception’, Herald, December 2012, p. 39. Aqil Shah, The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 279. Abbas Nasir, ‘The Invisible War’, Herald, January 2008, pp. 88 –9. Ahmed Rashid, ‘View from the Bunker’, Herald, March 1990, pp. 19– 20. Abbas Nasir, ‘The Invisible War’, Herald Supplement, August 1990, p. 10. Ahmed Rashid, ‘End of Empire?’, Herald, March 1991, p. 24. Tariq Husain, ‘The New Professionals’, Herald, March 1990, pp. 28– 9. Ayaz Amir, ‘A RAW Deal’, Herald, September 1990, p. 67. Idrees Bakhtiar, ‘Dark Side of the Press’, Herald, November 2003, pp. 67– 8. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Sleeping Through the Blitz’, Herald, August 1990, p. 34. Umer Farooq, ‘General perception’, Herald, December 2012, p. 42. Karamatullah K. Ghori, ‘Army Takes All’, Newsline, March 2003, pp. 63 – 5. Quoted in [No author named], ‘The Gulf Stream’, Herald, Election Special 1990, p. 47. [No author named], ‘The Gulf Stream’, Herald, Election Special 1990, p. 49. Anirban Ghosh, Arif Jamal, Christine Fair, Don Rassler and Nadia Shoe, The Fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death (West Point: US Army Combating Terrorism Center, 2013), pp. 27– 8. Hasan Mujtaba, ‘Friends, Foes or Masters?’, Newsline, September 1998, p. 46. Ibid., pp. 47 – 8. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Brothers in arms’, Herald, March 1991, p. 29. Talat Aslam, ‘The Grand Illusion’, Herald, March 1991, p. 61. Ahmed Rashid, ‘Security Blanket’, Herald Supplement, August 1990, p. 24. Huma Yusuf, ‘Pakistani media regulation borders on censorship’, Al Arabiya News, 17 October 2010, http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2010/08/11/116322. html, accessed 21 April 2017.

NOTES

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151 –155

233

60. Smruti S. Pattanaik, ‘“Old” Islamists and “New” Radicals: Understanding the Politics of Religious Radicalisation in Pakistan and its Implications’, Strategic Analysis, 35:4 (2011), p. 593. 61. Mohammed Shehzad, ‘Blame it on Allah’, Newsline, December 2012, p. 33. 62. Muhammad Feyyaz, ‘The discourse and study of terrorism in decolonised states: the case of Pakistan’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 9:3 (2016), pp. 460 –1. 63. Joshua T. White, ‘Beyond moderation: dynamics of political Islam in Pakistan’, Contemporary South Asia, 20:2 (2012), p. 181. 64. Farhat Haq, ‘Militarism and Motherhood: The Women of the Lashkar-iTayyaba in Pakistan’, Signs, 32: 4, (2007), pp. 1024– 8. 65. Zaigham Khan, ‘Raising the Stakes’, Herald, October 1997, p. 53. 66. Wajahat Ali, ‘The Word of Jihad’, Herald, June 2009, p. 33. 67. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Terror’s Training Ground’, Newsline, September 2009, p. 28. 68. Mohammad Shehzad, ‘The War Within’, Newsline, December 2013, p. 27. 69. Stephen Tankel, ‘Confronting Pakistan’s Support for Terrorism: Don’t Designate, Calibrate’, Washington Quarterly, 39:4 (2016), p. 175. 70. Shafiq Ahmad, ‘Radio Wars’, Herald Annual, January 2007, p. 137. 71. Nadia Jajja, ‘Radio Active’, Herald, June 2009, pp. 20 – 1. 72. Marco Mezzera and Safdar Sial, Media and Governance in Pakistan: A controversial yet essential relationship (The Hague: Clingendael, 2010), p. 19, https://www. clingendael.nl/sites/default/files/20101109_CRU_publicatie_mmezzera.pdf, accessed 21 February 2017. 73. Kiran Hassan, ‘The Role of Private Electronic Media in Radicalising Pakistan’, The Round Table, 103:1 (2014), p. 74. 74. Pattanaik, ‘“Old” Islamists and “New” Radicals’, p. 582. 75. Noor Zahid, ‘Skepticism Abounds as Pakistani Terrorists Move into Politics’, Voice of America, 9 August 2017, https://www.voanews.com/a/skepticismabounds-pakistani-terrorists-move-into-politics/3979755.html, accessed 26 August 2017. 76. Umair Jamal, ‘What Is Behind the Political ‘Mainstreaming’ of Jamaat-udDawa in Pakistan?’, The Diplomat, 8 August 2017, http://thediplomat.com/ 2017/08/what-is-behind-the-political-mainstreaming-of-jamaat-ud-dawa-inpakistan/, accessed 26 August 2017. 77. Bill Roggio, ‘UN declares Jamaat-ud-Dawa a terrorist front group’, Long War Journal, 11 December 2008, http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/ 12/un_declares_jamaatud.php, accessed 26 August 2017. 78. Umer Farooq, ‘Politics of Defence’, Herald, May 2012, p. 28. 79. [No author named], ‘Beware JuD’s electoral ambitions’, Daily Times, 9 August 2017, http://dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/09-Aug-17/beware-juds-electoralambitions, accessed 26 August 2017. 80. Nirupama Subramanian, ‘It was Shahbaz vs. Malik in court, while Hafiz Saeed walked free’, The Hindu, 19 May 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/news/it-was -shahbaz-vs-malik-in-court-while-hafiz-saeed-walked-free/article2032443.

234

81.

82.

83. 84.

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155 –162

ece, and [No author named], ‘Pakistan’s local govt allocates Rs 350 million to JuD school’, Rediff.com, 18 June 2013, http://www.rediff.com/news/report/ pakistans-local-govt-allocates-rs-350-million-to-jud-school/20130618.htm, accessed 26 August 2017. Memphis Barker, ‘Pakistan Is Inviting Its Favorite Jihadis Into Parliament’, Foreign Policy, 4 October 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/04/pakistanis-inviting-its-favorite-jihadis-into-parliament/, accessed 16 October 2017. [No author named], ‘Pakistan asks India for more evidence for 26/11 Mumbai terror attack’, Indian Express, 30 June 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/ india/india-news-india/pakistan-asks-for-more-evidence-for-2611-2885785/, accessed 4 August 2017. Huma Yusuf, ‘Conspiracy Fever: the US, Pakistan and its Media’, Survival, 53:4 (2011), p. 100. Azhar Abbas, ‘Clueless in Karachi’, Herald, March 1996, p. 18.

Chapter 7

Regional Impact

1. [No author named], ‘Pakistan’s foreign policy betrays deep domestic insecurities’, Herald, 11 June 2016, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153426, accessed 7 August 2017. 2. Nadir Hassan, ‘A Friendless Existence’, Newsline, July 2016, http://newslinem agazine.com/magazine/a-friendless-existence/, accessed 7 August 2017. 3. Timothy Nunan, ‘Why Pakhtun lands have been so volatile for two centuries’, Herald, 29 September 2016, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153543, accessed 7 August 2017. 4. If readers are inclined to question the use of the word ‘colony’ here, they are invite to consider the following observation from Pakistani journalist Babar Ayaz’s book What’s Wrong With Pakistan?: ‘The total government expenditure in 20 years (1950 – 70) in Pakistan was US $30.95 billion, out of which West Pakistan extracted the lion’s share of US $21.49 billion meaning over 69 per cent, while East Pakistan, despite having 55 per cent population, was doled out only US $9.45 billion, which was just 30.45 per cent of the total’, quoted in Amir Zia, ‘Root Causes’, Newsline, October 2013, http://newslinem agazine.com/magazine/root-causes/, accessed 7 August 2017. 5. Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2013), p. 176. 6. Carlotta Gall, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan 2001– 2014 (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2014), p. 49, p. 89, pp. 149– 51, p. 159 and p. 188. 7. Mir, The True Face of Jehadis, p. 3. 8. Lawrence Ziring, ‘Pakistan: Terrorism in Historical Perspective’, in Veena Kukreja and M.P. Singh eds, Pakistan: Democracy, Development and Security Issues (New Delhi: Sage, 2005), p. 193 and Azmat Abbas, ‘Trail of Terror’, Herald, August 2002, p. 48. 9. Zaffar Abbas, ‘Hijacking the Future’, Herald, March 1994, p. 46.

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10. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Home to Roost?’, Herald, July 1997, p. 65. 11. Paul Titus and Nina Swidler, ‘Knights, Not Pawns: Ethno-Nationalism and Regional Dynamics in Post-Colonial Balochistan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 32: 1 (2000), pp. 53– 62. 12. George L. Montagno, ‘The Pak-Afghan De´tente’, Asian Survey, 3:12 (1963), pp. 618 –621. 13. Mullick, Pakistan’s Security Paradox, pp. 22– 3. 14. Marvin G. Weinbaum and Jonathan B. Harder, ‘Pakistan’s Afghan policies and their consequences’, Contemporary South Asia, 16:1 (2008), p. 28. 15. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Home to Roost?’, Herald, July 1997, p. 64. 16. Johnson and Mason, ‘No Sign until the Burst of Fire’, p. 51 and pp. 70 – 1. Also see Vikram Jagadish, ‘Reconsidering American strategy in South Asia: destroying terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 20:1 (2009), pp. 45– 6. 17. Williams, ‘Afghanistan after the Soviets’, pp. 934 – 45. 18. A. Saikal, ‘Afghanistan’s ethnic conflict’, Survival, 40:2 (1998), pp. 116– 18. 19. A. Rehman, ‘Ziaul Haq: Master of Illusion’, Herald, 23 August 2016, http:// herald.dawn.com/news/1153499, accessed 7 August 2017. 20. As British psychologists have discovered in a series of experiments, whether or not one believes a narrative is less influenced by what facts they objectively know, as what they want believe as the ‘truth’. Ben Tappin, Leslie Van Der Leer and Ryan McKay, ‘You’re not going to change your mind’, New York Times, 27 May 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/opinion/sunday/ youre-not-going-to-change-your-mind.html?mcubz¼0, accessed 7 August 2017. 21. Ayesha Siddiqa, ‘Who’s calling the shots?’, Newsline, July 2016, http://newsline magazine.com/magazine/cover-story-whos-calling-shots/ and Umer Farooq, ‘At the military’s beck and call’, Herald, 27 March 2016, http://herald.dawn. com/news/1152906, accessed 7 August 2017. 22. Davis, ‘How the Taliban Became a Military Force’, p. 44. 23. Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 375. 24. Borchgrevink, ‘Transnational links of Afghan madrasas’, p. 75. 25. Ruiz-Galvez, ‘Afghanistan: Why Has Violence Replaced Political Power?’, p. 85. 26. Ghada Hashem Talhami, ‘Muslims, Islamists, and the Cold War’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 14:1 (2003), p. 118. 27. Julian Schofield and Reeta Tremblay, ‘Why Pakistan failed: tribal focoism in Kashmir’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 19:1 (2008), p. 23. 28. Rahimullah Yusufzai, ‘Spy or Intermediary?’, Newsline, March 2011, pp. 35– 6. 29. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘The ISI-Taliban Nexus’, Herald, November 2001, p. 22. 30. Jones, Pakistan, p. 27. 31. Reuven Paz, ‘Global Jihad’, in Barry Rubin ed., Guide to Islamist Movements, Volume 1 (London: M.E Sharpe, 2010), p. xxxvi.

236

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170 –173

32. September 1999 analysis of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, cited in Gul, The Most Dangerous Place, p. 152. 33. Thomas Ruttig, ‘Loya Paktia’s Insurgency: The Haqqani Network as an Autonomous Entity’, in Antonio Giustozzi ed., Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (New Delhi: Foundation, 2009), pp. 73 – 6. 34. Azmat Abbas, ‘Death Wish’, Herald, July 2003, p. 48 and M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Between Jihad and Terror’, Herald Annual, January 2002, p. 50. 35. Kamal Siddiqi, ‘Seeking Salvation’, Newsline, September 1997, p. 52 and Naziha Ghazali and Massoud Ansari, ‘School for Salvation?’, Newsline, June 2000, p. 82 and p. 85. 36. Behroz Khan, ‘Afghanistan’s Nation of Islam’, Newsline, September 1998, p. 37. 37. Sean M. Maloney, ‘Army of darkness: The jihadist training system in Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1996– 2001’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 26:3 (2015), pp. 519 –20. 38. Sean M. Maloney, ‘A violent impediment: the evolution of insurgent operations in Kandahar province 2003– 07’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 19:2 (2008), pp. 210– 11 and p. 214. 39. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Dancing with Death’, Herald, August 1997, p. 91. 40. Fair, ‘Militant Recruitment in Pakistan’, p. 495. 41. Khokhar, ‘Reforming Militant Madaris in Pakistan’, p. 362. 42. A.M. [Amir Mir], ‘The Target’, Herald, February 2004, p. 38. 43. Massoud Ansari, ‘Sea How They Run’, Newsline, April 2004, p. 42. 44. Allan Orr, ‘Recasting Afghan strategy’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 20:1 (2009), p. 112. 45. Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, ‘Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say’, New York Times, 1 August 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/08/01/world/asia/01pstan.html, accessed 13 June 2017. 46. Missy Ryan and Susan Cornwell, Reuters, ‘U.S. says Pakistan’s ISI supported Kabul embassy attack’, Reuters, 22 September 2011, http://www.reuters.com/ article/us-usa-pakistan-idUSTRE78L39720110922, accessed 13 June 2017. 47. Robert D. Kaplan, ‘Behind the Indian Embassy Bombing’, The Atlantic, August 2008, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/08/ behind-the-indian-embassy-bombing/306949/, accessed 13 June 2017. 48. Rahimullah Yusufzai, ‘Still in the anger mode’, Newsline, December 2016, http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/still-anger-mode/, accessed 7 August 2017. 49. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘Visionary or Puppet?’, Herald, March 2002, p. 55. 50. Sammar Abbas, ‘Pakistan waging ‘undeclared war of aggression’ against Afghanistan, Ghani tells Kabul Process’, Dawn, 6 June 2017, https://www. dawn.com/news/1337775/pakistan-waging-undeclared-war-of-aggressionagainst-afghanistan-ghani-tells-kabul-process, accessed 13 June 2017. 51. Ali Arqam, ‘Crossing the Line’, Newsline, October 2015, http://newslinemagazine. com/magazine/cover-story-crossing-the-line/, accessed 7 August 2017.

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237

52. Ismail Khan, ‘Prisoners in Panjshir’, Newsline, February 1998, p. 60. 53. Tara Kartha, ‘The diffusion of light weapons in Pakistan, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 8:1 (1997), pp. 73– 4. 54. Syed Shoaib Hasan, ‘Crime and punishment’, Herald, December 2001, p. 28. 55. Anand Kumar, ‘Domestic Politics of Bangladesh and India – Bangladesh Relations’, Strategic Analysis, 38:5 (2014), p. 652. 56. [No author named], ‘Bangladesh says UN should consider declaring Pakistan terror state: envoy’, The Nation, 28 September 2016, http://nation.com.pk/nati onal/28-Sep-2016/bangladesh-demand-un-should-declare-pakistan-a-terrorstate-bangladesh-envoy, accessed 7 August 2017. 57. Major Gazi Mohammed Tauhiduzzaman, ‘Military preparation for “Operation Searchlight”’, Independent, 26 March 2016, http://www.theindependentbd. com/home/printnews/38507, accessed 15 June 2017. 58. Mark Dummett, ‘Bangladesh war: The article that changed history’, BBC News, 16 December 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16207201, accessed 15 June 2017. 59. Some sources indicate that there were actually three types of vigilante units: The Razakars, which were organized by ordinary JeI workers, Al Badr, which was organized by Islami Chhatra Shibir, and Al Shams, which was organized by the Muslim League (a centre-right party based in West Pakistan with close ties to the military). See Sikand, ‘The Tablighi Jama’at in Bangladesh’, p. 113, Ali Riaz, ‘Islamist Politics and Education’, in Ali Riaz and C. Christine Fair eds, Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 123, Nayanika Mookherjee, ‘Denunciatory Practices and the Constitutive Role of Collaboration in the Bangladesh War’, in Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly eds, Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), p. 49 and [No author named], ‘A leaf from history: After Operation Searchlight’, Dawn, 3 March 2012, https://www.dawn.com/news/699975, accessed 15 June 2016. 60. A.S.M. Ali Ashraf, ‘The Discourse of Security and Intelligence in Bangladesh’, in A.S.M. Ali Ashraf ed., Intelligence, National Security and Foreign Policy: A South Asian Narrative (Dhaka: Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs: 2016), p. 41. 61. Moinul Khan, ‘Islamist militancy in Bangladesh: why it failed to take root’, Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 6:1 (2011), pp. 56 – 7. 62. Zafar Abbas, ‘Dhaka: 20 years after’, Herald, December 1991, p. 28. 63. Ishtiaq Hossain and Noore Alam Siddiquee, ‘Islam in Bangladesh politics: the role of Ghulam Azam of Jamaat-I-Islami’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5:3 (2004), pp. 395– 6. 64. Sreeradha Datta, ‘Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh: The Threat from Within’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 30:1 (2007), p. 153. 65. Haroon Habib, ‘17 August 2005: Milestone of Terror’, in Jaideep Saikia ed., Bangladesh: Treading the Taliban Trail (New Delhi: Vision Books, 2006), p. 256.

238

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177 –182

66. Sumit Ganguly, ‘The Rise of Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh’, United States Institute of Peace, Special Report, 1 August 2006, https://www.usip.org/ publications/2006/08/rise-islamist-militancy-bangladesh, accessed 16 June 2017. 67. Dhar, ‘Fulcrum of the Eastern Dark’, p. 66. 68. Bibhuti Bhushan Nandy, ‘DGFI: State Within a State’, in Jaideep Saikia ed., Bangladesh: Treading the Taliban Trail (New Delhi: Vision Books, 2006), pp. 177 –8. 69. Anand Kumar, ‘Jamaat and its Agenda of Islamic State in Bangladesh’, Strategic Analysis, 33:4 (2009), p. 542 and p. 544. 70. Sinderpal Singh, ‘“Border Crossings and Islamic Terrorists”: Representing Bangladesh in Indian Foreign Policy During the BJP Era’, India Review, 8:2 (2009), pp. 153–5 and Julfikar Ali Manik, ‘My Puppet, the Fanatic’, Outlook, 9 July 2007, http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/my-puppet-thefanatic/235030, accessed 16 June 2017. 71. MD Saidul Islam, ‘“Minority Islam” in Muslim Majority Bangladesh: The Violent Road to a New Brand of Secularism’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 31:1 (2011), p. 135. 72. Harsh V. Pant, ‘India and Bangladesh: Will the Twain Ever Meet?’, Asian Survey, 47: 2 (2007), p. 238 and p. 242. 73. Datta, ‘Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh’, p. 148. 74. Khan, ‘Islamist militancy in Bangladesh’, p. 58. 75. Sikand, ‘The Tablighi Jama’at in Bangladesh’, pp. 114 – 20. 76. Sahni, ‘South Asia: Extremist Islamist Terror and Subversion’, p. 235 and Anand Kumar, ‘Terror Financing in Bangladesh’, Strategic Analysis, 33:6 (2009), p. 909. 77. Tariq Hashmi, ‘Islamism beyond the Islamic heartland: a case study of Bangladesh’, in Ishtiaq Ahmed ed., The Politics of Religion in South and Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 38. 78. Bertil Lintner, ‘Islamist Fundamentalism in Bangladesh’, in Jaideep Saikia ed., Bangladesh: Treading the Taliban Trail (New Delhi: Vision Books, 2006), p. 65. 79. Ibid., pp. 70 – 2 and E.N. Rammohan, Insurgent Frontiers: Essays from the Troubled Northeast (New Delhi: India Research Press, 2005), pp. 109– 10. 80. Matthew Aaron Rosenstein, ‘Superpower and the Imperilled Democracy’, in Jaideep Saikia ed., Bangladesh: Treading the Taliban Trail (New Delhi: Vision Books, 2006), p. 33. 81. Jaideep Saikia, ‘Introduction’, in Jaideep Saikia ed., Bangladesh: Treading the Taliban Trail (New Delhi: Vision Books, 2006), p. 15. 82. A.S.M. Ali Ashraf and Noor Mohammad Sarker, ‘Intelligence Failure in South Asia: A Comparative Analysis’, in A.S.M. Ali Ashraf ed., Intelligence, National Security and Foreign Policy: A South Asian Narrative (Dhaka: Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs: 2016), p. 246. 83. Samia Huq, ‘Discussing the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) rebellion: non-Islamist women and religious revival in urban Bangladesh’, Contemporary Islam, 5:3 (2011), pp. 276– 7.

NOTES

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239

84. Dean Nelson, ‘Pakistan in the frame over Bangladesh uprising’, The Telegraph, 1 March 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/ 4902794/Pakistan-in-the-frame-over-Bangladesh-uprising.html, accessed 16 June 2017. 85. Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, ‘Battleground Bangladesh: Extremists attack bloggers’, Newsline, June 2016, http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/ battleground-bangladesh-extremist-attacks-bloggers/, accessed 7 August 2017. 86. Taberez Ahmed Neyazi, ‘Global Myth vs. Local Reality: Towards Understanding ‘Islamic’ Militancy in India’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 29:2 (2009), p. 169. 87. Sikand, ‘Islamist assertion in contemporary India’, p. 344. 88. Stephen Tankel, ‘Indian Jihadism: The Evolving Threat’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 37:7 (2014), p. 573 and p. 578. 89. Arjun Subramaniam, ‘Challenges of Protecting India From Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 24:3 (2012), p. 403. 90. Ahmad, ‘Theorizing Islamism and democracy’, p. 895. 91. [No author named], ‘Islamic extremism in India’, Strategic Comments, 15:3 (2009), p. 1. 92. Bruno De Cordier, ‘Challenges of Social Upliftment and Definition of Identity: A Field Analysis of the Social Service Network of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Meerut, India’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 30:4 (2010), pp. 481–5. 93. Subrahmanian et al., Indian Mujahideen, Terrorism, Security, and Computation, pp. 25– 9. 94. Farrukh B. Hakeem, M.R. Haberfeld and Arvind Verma, Policing Muslim Communities: Comparative International Context, Policing the Muslim Community in India (New York, Springer, 2012), p. 89. 95. K. Sreedhar Rao, ‘India and the Threat of Radical Islam’, Strategic Analysis, 32:5 (2008), p. 726. 96. Saroj Kumar Rath, ‘New terrorist threat to India’s internal security: the danger from Pakistan’s “Karachi Project”’, Defense & Security Analysis, 30:3 (2014), p. 199. 97. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Secret Mission’, Herald, February 1993, p. 25. 98. Behera, Demystifying Kashmir, p. 154. 99. Amir Mir, ‘Past Imperfect’, Newline, July 2005, p. 46. 100. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Turn of the Screw’, Herald, February 1993, pp. 27 – 9. 101. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘Kashmir Chalo’, Herald, November 1994, p. 29 and p. 33. 102. Taimur Siddiqui, ‘The Soldiers of Allah’, Newsline, February 2001, p. 25. 103. C. Christine Fair, ‘Who Are Pakistan’s Militants and Their Families?’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20:1 (2008), p. 57. 104. M.I.K. [M. Ilyas Khan], ‘Business as Usual’, Herald, July 2003, p. 39 and M.I.K., ‘Caught in the Crossfire’, Herald, July 2003, p. 40. 105. M. Ilyas Khan, ‘The Waiting Game’, Herald, July 2003, p. 37 and M.I.K. [M. Ilyas Khan], ‘Business as Usual’, Herald, July 2003, p. 38.

240

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189 –196

106. Amir Zia, ‘Out in the Cold’, Newsline, January 2009, p. 46. 107. Milos Popovic, ‘The Perils of Weak Organization: Explaining Loyalty and Defection of Militant Organizations Toward Pakistan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38:11 (2015), p. 925. 108. Rob Crilly, ‘Mumbai attack “mastermind” Hafiz Saeed linked to Osama bin Laden’, The Telegraph, 4 April 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/asia/pakistan/9186009/Mumbai-attack-mastermind-Hafiz-Saeedlinked-to-Osama-bin-Laden.html, accessed 7 August 2017. 109. Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, ‘India’s response to terrorism after 13 December 2001’, Conflict, Security & Development, 3:2 (2003), pp. 278– 80. 110. S. Hussain Zaidi and Rahul Bhatt, Headley and I (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 80. 111. Bibhu Prasad Routray, ‘India’s internal wars: counterinsurgency role of central police forces’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 24:4 (2013), p. 658. 112. S. Hussain Zaidi, Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts (New Delhi: Penguin, 2002), p. 73. 113. Arabinda Acharya and Sonal Marwah, ‘Nizam, la Tanzim (System, not Organization): Do Organizations Matter in Terrorism Today? A Study of the November 2008 Mumbai Attacks’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 34:1 (2010), p. 10. 114. D.C. Pathak, Intelligence: A Security Weapon (New Delhi: Manas, 2003), p. 31 and p. 156. 115. G.D. Bakshi, The Paradox of Pakistan: Collapse or Caliphate (New Delhi: Manas, 2010), p. 30. 116. Pattnayak and Arvanites, ‘Structural Determinants of State Involvement in International Terrorism’, pp. 192– 6 and p. 200. 117. Shishir Gupta, Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Gurgaon: Hachette India, 2011), pp. 2 – 3 and p. 74.

Chapter 8

Sloping Towards Radicalism

1. Olivier Roy, ‘Who are the new jihadis?’, Guardian, 13 April 2017, https:// www.theguardian.com/news/2017/apr/13/who-are-the-new-jihadis, accessed 29 August 2017. 2. [No author named], ‘Which has been Pakistan’s most significant political schism?’, Herald, 23 November 2016, http://herald.dawn.com/news/ 1153208, accessed 7 August 2017. 3. Syed Talat Hussain, ‘All the General’s Men?’, Newsline, September 2014, http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/cover-story-all-the-generals-men/, accessed 7 August 2017. 4. Cyril Almeida, ‘Exclusive: Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military’, Dawn, 6 October 2016, https://www.dawn.com/ news/1288350, accessed 7 August 2017.

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5. Mahmood Hasan, ‘Panamagate takes Nawaz Sharif down’, Daily Star, 31 July 2017, http://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/bystander/panamagate-takesnawaz-sharif-down-1441075, and Aqil Shah, ‘Pakistan’s Court Sets a Dangerous Precedent’, New York Times, accessed 28 July 2017, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/07/28/opinion/why-ousting-nawaz-sharif-sets-a-dangerous-precedentfor-pakistan.html, accessed 7 August 2017. 6. Seth G. Jones, ‘The Terrorist Threat from Pakistan’, Survival, 53:4 (2011), p. 85. 7. Ahmad Rashid Malik, ‘Mutually beneficial CPEC’, The Nation, 2 May 2016, http://nation.com.pk/columns/02-May-2016/mutually-beneficial-cpec, accessed 7 August 2017. 8. Syed Talat Hussain, ‘Not on the same page’, Newsline, November 2016, http:// newslinemagazine.com/magazine/cover-story-not-page/, accessed 7 August 2017. When Hussain wrote these words in 2016, the number was 27 prime ministers. Since then, one more civilian politician has come in to take over the reins from a deposed prime minister. 9. Saroop Ijaz, ‘Raheel Sharif: The man of every hour’, Herald, 28 March 2017, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153703, accessed 7 August 2017. 10. Baqir Sajjad Syed, ‘US allegations of selective anti-terror action rejected’, Dawn, 21 July 2017, https://www.dawn.com/news/1346611, accessed 7 August 2017. 11. Baqir Sajjad Syed, ‘US allegations of selective anti-terror action rejected’, Dawn, 21 July 2017, https://www.dawn.com/news/1346611, accessed 30 August 2017. 12. Manuel R. Torres Soriano, ‘Spain as an Object of Jihadist Propaganda’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 32:11 (2009), p. 938 and pp. 944–8. 13. Gareth Thompson, ‘Parallels in propaganda? A comparative historical analysis of Islamic State and the Nazi Party’, Journal of Public Relations Research, 29:1 (2017), p. 57. 14. Ashley J. Tellis, The Menace That Is Lashkar-e-Taiba, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Outlook, March 2012, http://carnegieendowment. org/files/LeT_menace.pdf, accessed 30 August 2017. 15. Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: WW Norton & Co., 2016), pp. 161 – 2. 16. Zahid Hussain, ‘The Rise and Decline of Political Islam’, Newsline, February 1998, p. 44. 17. Sher Ali Khan, Fareedullah Chaudhry and Shakeel Ahmed, ‘Punjab’s “encounters” with sectarianism’, Herald, 21 October 2016, http://herald. dawn.com/news/1153564, and Moosa Kaleem, ‘Police “fry” suspects to fight crime’, Herald, 21 September 2016, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153535, accessed 7 August 2017. 18. Hassan Ali Shahzeb, ‘Gul’s Wish List’, Newsline, July 1996, p. 95. 19. Interview with Vali Nasr, conducted by Muhammad Badar Alam, ‘Extremist movements have emerged to make a splash but have quickly failed’, Herald, September 2007, p. 99.

242

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20. Afrasiab Khattak, ‘Baloch in the eye of storm’, The Nation, 17 June 2017, http://nation.com.pk/columns/17-Jun-2017/baloch-in-the-eye-of-storm, and Saad Sayeed and Syed Raza Hassan, ‘Would-be suicide bomber sheds light on suspected Pakistani militant web’, Reuters, 7 August 2017, https://www. reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-militants-network-idUSKBN1AM0W6, accessed 7 August 2017. 21. Abid Hussain, Umer Farooq, Ghulam Dastageer and Sher Ali Khan, ‘Islamic Republic versus Islamic State’, Herald, 3 November 2016, http://herald.dawn. com/news/1153362, accessed 7 August 2017. 22. Abdul Majeed Abid, ‘Ideological Wasteland’, Newsline, October 2014, http:// newslinemagazine.com/magazine/ideological-wasteland/, accessed 7 August 2017. 23. Syed Imam Haidar, ‘The State of Science in Pakistan’, Newsline, July 2014, http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/the-state-of-science-in-pakistan/, accessed 7 August 2017. 24. Salman Haqqi, ‘Interview: Dr Vali Reza Nasr’, Newsline, December 2014, http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/interview-dr-vali-reza-nasr/, accessed 7 August 2017. 25. Aamar Ahmed Khan, ‘The Doctrine of Injured Religious Sentiment’, Herald, February 1998, p. 49. 26. Rahimullah Yusufzai, ‘Not Guilty’, Newsline, 1997, pp. 55– 6. 27. Mazhar Abbas, ‘The Plot Thickens . . .’, Herald, June 1991, pp. 73 –4 and Jaffer Bilgrami, ‘The Saindak Incident’, Herald, November 1992, p. 78. 28. [No author named], ‘CPEC, other projects being supported by 30000 Chinese workers: Ambassador Khalid’, The Nation, 24 August 2017, http:// nation.com.pk/national/24-Aug-2017/cpec-and-other-projects-beingsupported-by-30000-chinese-workers-ambassador-khalid, and Drazen Jorgic and Brenda Goh, ‘Braving security fears, Chinese seek “Silk Road” riches in Pakistan’, Reuters, 28 August 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chinasilkroad-pakistan-insight-idUSKCN1B801X, accessed 29 August 2017. 29. [No author named], ‘Business with China’, Dawn, 29 August 2017, https:// www.dawn.com/news/1354633/business-with-china, accessed 29 August 2017. 30. Hasan Mujtaba, ‘Young Guns’, Newsline, September 1997, p. 51. 31. Aamer Ahmed Khan, ‘Down But Not Out’, Herald, February 1994, p. 67 and Zahid Hussain, ‘Che´ Hussain!’, Newsline, September 1993, pp. 54 – 5. 32. Lakshmi Krishnamurti and R. Swaminathan, ‘Preface’, p. v and B.S. Raghavan, ‘An Overview of the Themes and Issues’, pp. 2 – 3, both found in Lakshmi Krishnamurti, R. Swaminathan and Gert W. Kueck eds, Responding to Terrorism: Dilemmas of Democratic and Developing Societies (Chennai: Bookventure, 2003). 33. Frederic Grare, ‘The Challenges of Civilian Control Over Intelligence Agencies in Pakistan’, in A.S.M. Ali Ashraf ed., Intelligence, National Security and Foreign Policy: A South Asian Narrative (Dhaka: Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs: 2016), p. 338.

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243

34. Andrew Hosken, Empire of Fear: Inside the Islamic State (London: Oneworld, 2015), pp. 45– 6. 35. Moeed Yusuf, ‘The Big Question: Are we losing the War on Terror?’, Newsline, March 2017, http://newslinemagazine.com/magazine/big-question-losingwar-terror/, accessed 7 August 2017. 36. Amin Saikal, ‘The Taliban: Pakistan’s Geopolitical Instrument, America’s Problem’, in KPS Gill and Ajai Sahni eds, The Global Threat of Terror: Ideological, Material and Political Linkages (New Delhi: Bulwark Books, 2002), p. 39. 37. David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 523. 38. Muhammad Sohail Anwar Malik, Michael Sandholzer, M. Zubair Khan and Sajjad Akbar, ‘Identification of Risk Factors Generating Terrorism in Pakistan’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 27:3 (2015), pp. 550– 4. 39. Katri Pynno¨niemi and Andras Racz, Fog of Falsehood: Russian Strategy of Deception and the Conflict in Ukraine (Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2016), p. 30. 40. Humeira Iqtidar, ‘Conspiracy Theory as Political Imaginary: Blackwater in Pakistan’, Political Studies, 64:1 (2016), p. 201 and p. 205. 41. Robert Johnson, ‘Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence’, in Philip H.J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustafson, eds, Intelligence Elsewhere (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), p. 135. 42. Madeeha Anwar, ‘Pakistan Electoral Body Bars Political Party Due to Terror Ties’, Voice of America, 12 October 2017, https://www.voanews.com/a/ pakistan-bars-political-party-due-to-terror-ties/4068627.html, accessed 17 October 2017. 43. [No author named], ‘Hafiz Saeed: A Stunt?’, The Nation, 16 October 2017, http://nation.com.pk/editorials/16-Oct-2017/hafiz-saeed-a-stunt, and webpage of the US Rewards for Justice programme, https://rewardsforjustice.net/ english/hafiz_saeed.html, accessed 17 October 2017. 44. Malik Asad, ‘Intelligence Bureau accused of ‘protecting’ terrorists by one of its own spies’, Dawn, 26 September 2017, https://www.dawn.com/news/1360119/ intelligence-bureau-accused-of-protecting-terrorists-by-one-of-its-own-spies, accessed 17 October 2017. 45. James Lamont, ‘Clinton warns Pakistan on militant “snakes”, Financial Times, 21 October 2011, https://www.ft.com/content/93147c90-fbc7-11e0-928300144feab49a?mhq5j¼ e7, accessed 17 October 2017.

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INDEX

9/11 attacks 26, 128 – 9 1857 Uprising, 25, 27, 29 –32, 50 Academy of Da’wah and Training of Imams, 59 Addleton, Jonathan S., 148– 9 Afghan War, 44 Afghanistan, 2, 162– 74 and border dispute, 193 and Britain, 49– 50 and civil war, 7 and deception, 137 – 40, 141 – 2 and Durand Line, 19 and JeI, 36, 39, 43 and jihadism, 33 and Maududi, 34 and Pakistan, 9, 134, 145–6, 161 and Al Qaeda, 115 and TJ, 56 and US invasion, 65 see also Soviet-Afghan War Ahle Hadith school, 64, 70, 79, 149, 189, 199 Ahmadullah Shah, 30, 31 Ahmed, Brig Imtiaz, 83, 187 Ahmed, Irfan, 13 Ahmed, Khaled, 4 Ahmed, Mehmood, 45 Ahmed, Qazi Hussein, 63

Ahmediyya, 41 aid, 150, 177 Akbar, Emperor, 28 Akbar, M.J., 12 Akhtar, Sohail, 65 – 6 Algeria, 147 – 8 Ali, Mahir, 64 Ali, Tariq, 9 Ali Khan, Liaquat, 10 Aligarh Muslim University, 34, 51 Aligarh school, 6, 28 alim (religious scholar), 5, 54 Amir, Ayaz, 146 Andalusia Syndrome, 28, 197 Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba (ASS), 74– 5 anti-Americanism, 39, 129, 135, 148–54 anti-Hinduism, 27 anti-Semitism, 148, 149 Arab Spring, 202 Arabs, 7–8, 52–3, 57–8, 61–3, 170–1 and jihadism, 12, 69– 70, 71 and Kashmir, 65 armed forces, 27, 41, 55 – 6, 72, 78 – 9 and Afghanistan, 166 –7 and Bangladesh, 177 – 8, 182 and Bhutto, 150– 1 and jihadism, 43 – 5, 46–7, 130– 1 and the media, 146 – 8

INDEX and MQM, 121– 3 and police, 105 and politics, 143– 5 and Sharif, 195– 6 and the Taliban, 98 arms, 94 – 5, 138– 9 Arvanites, Thomas M., 192 Askari-Rizvi, Hasan, 44 Aurangzeb, Emperor, 4, 29 Austria-Hungary, 50 Awami League, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 182 Ayub Khan, 41– 2 Aziz, Mohammed, 45 Aziz, Shah Abdul, 29, 31 Azzam, Abdullah, 59, 60, 61, 139 Al Badr, 175 Baghdad Pact, 164 Balakot, Battle of, 30 Balochs, 14, 135, 146, 199 Baluchistan, 109, 163, 164 Bangladesh, 2, 11, 19– 20, 161– 2, 174 – 83 and governance, 193 and Islam, 42 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182 Banna, Hasan-al, 37 Barelvi, Saiyid Ahmad, 30, 31 Barelvis, 70, 74 Bari, Faisal, 8 Basayev, Shamil, 64 Basra, Riaz, 83– 5, 106, 108 Bearden, Milton, 137 Beg, Mirza Aslam, 143, 145– 6 beheadings, 16 Bell, J. Bowyer, 113 Bhutto, Benazir, 65, 83, 143, 144– 5, 150– 1 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 39, 42 – 3, 54, 73, 82 Bin Laden, Osama, 8, 64– 5, 93, 142 and Afghanistan, 170– 1

259

and Bangladesh, 181 and death, 147 and Hekmatyar, 139 and Hizballah, 99 and IIU, 60 and ISI, 66 and JeI, 36, 45 and LeT, 189 and Saudi royal family, 59 and Sharif, 110 BNP see Bangladesh Nationalist Party Bolshevism, 12 – 13, 27, 35, 37 bomb-making, 58 – 9, 66, 99 – 100 Britain see Great Britain British Empire, 4, 7, 11, 29 – 33, 34 and Afghanistan, 49 –50, 163 and Indian Army, 130 and jihadism, 25 – 6, 27 and Ottoman Empire, 50 –1, 52–3 Bulgaria, 51 Central Asia, 39, 50, 67 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 137 –9 Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), 149 China, 39, 142, 163, 200– 1 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), 196, 201 Christianity, 28 CIA see Central Intelligence Agency class, 12, 57– 8 Clinton, Hillary, 206 Cold War, 26, 36, 201 Coll, Steve, 20 Collins, Michael, 92 Colombia, 115 – 16 communism, 53, 137, 149 Cooley, John, 56 corruption, 15, 120– 1, 123, 143 –5 counterintelligence, 16, 17 – 18, 92 – 3, 114 –15 counterterrorism, 66, 105 – 6, 108, 203, 204 –5

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CPEC see China-Pakistan Economic Corridor crime networks, 10, 14– 16 see also organized crime Daesh see Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Dar-ul Uloom (House of Learning), 6, 26, 27, 32– 3 Daud Khan, Sardar Mohammed, 164 Deep State, 5, 7 –11, 14, 19 and Bangladesh, 175– 6 and Islam, 69– 70, 198– 9 and jihadism, 125– 6 and Al Qaeda, 110– 11 Defence Intelligence Agency, 137 democracy, 136, 179, 202 Deobandi school, 6, 26, 27, 28, 32 – 3 and codes, 34 and ideology, 195 and madrassas, 79 and sectarianism, 74 Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), 177– 8, 181 Dobbins, James, 9 drugs, 121, 123, 172, 191 Durand Line, 19, 163, 164, 167, 173 Durrani tribe, 126, 165 East India Company, 7, 18 East Pakistan see Bangladesh education, 31, 32, 54 – 5, 58 –60, 199 and JeI, 37– 9, 43 see also madrassas Egypt, 37, 39, 58, 62, 66 and Britain, 50 and Al Qaeda, 64 Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, 101– 2 Ershad, Gen Hussain Mohammed, 176, 178 extortion, 124–5 factionalization, 168 FARC see Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

ASIA

fascism, 27, 35 fatwas (religious edicts), 5, 28 – 9, 52, 59– 60 Fazlullah, Mullah, 78 fedayeen (men of sacrifice), 33 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 116 –17 Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), 125 Ferris, John, 49 – 50 Filkins, Dexter, 9 France, 50, 56 – 7 Gall, Carlotta, 162 Gandhi, Indira, 175 Gentry, John, 16–17 geopolitics, 18, 52, 72 – 7 Germany, 33, 50, 51, 52, 197 Ghani, Ashraf, 173 Ghilzai tribe, 126, 165 Ghulam Jilani Khan, 42, 43, 82 Grare, Frederic, 5, 132, 202 Great Britain, 92, 97, 104 – 5; see also British Empire Greece, 51 Gregory, Shaun, 111 Gul, Maj Hamid, 26, 137, 139, 145 Gul, Imtiaz, 66, 110 Gulzar, Jamshed, 45 Hajj pilgrimage, 57 Hanafi school, 29 Hanbali school, 29 Hanif, Mohammed, 44 – 5 Haq, Fazle, 121 Haqqani, Jalaluddin, 140, 170 Haqqani, Sirajuddin, 170 Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, 181 Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI), 55– 6, 181 Harkat-ul Mujahideen (HuM), 56, 64, 86 Hasan, Gul, 65 Hasan, Mahmud-ul, 33

INDEX Hattin (magazine), 152–3 Hayat, Muhammad, 29 Hazaras, 109 Headley, David, 104, 118 Hegghammer, Thomas, 71 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 138 – 9, 142, 145, 165, 167 Herald (magazine), 4 heroin, 121 Hinduism, 4, 12, 27, 54 and Muslims, 25– 6, 28 – 9, 31, 34, 184– 5 Hizb-e-Islami, 142, 168– 9 Hizb-ut Tahrir (HuT), 130 Hizballah, 99– 100, 114, 116–17 Hoodbhoy, Pervez, 18 HuJI see Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami HuM see Harkat-ul Mujahideen Hussain, Altaf, 95 HuT see Hizb-ut Tahrir IB see Intelligence Bureau Ibn Taymiyyah, 29– 30 identity theft, 125 IIU see International Islamic University ill-governed spaces, 93, 94– 9 Imamia Students’ Organization (ISO), 73 imperialism, 6, 25, 29– 30, 48, 50 see also British Empire India, 2, 9, 183– 92 and Afghanistan, 145– 6, 163 and army, 130 and Bangladesh, 175, 181 and democracy, 34, 35 and independence, 11, 197 and Islamism, 12, 13, 28 – 9, 30, 31–3, 37, 162 and jihadists, 20, 25 – 6, 27 and Kargil Crisis, 45 and Kashmir, xii and LeT, 104, 119 and Muslims, 54 and Ottoman Empire, 51– 2

261

and Pakistan, 41 – 2, 54 and terrorism, 193– 4 see also, 1857 Uprising; Mumbai massacre Indian Mujahideen, 193 Indian Rebellion see, 1857 Uprising Indo-Pakistani War, 42 information denial, 114 intelligence, 110, 112, 126– 7 and Bangladesh, 177– 8 and collection, 113 – 20 and India, 190– 1 and Islamists, 16 –17 and Pakistan, 205 and police, 108 – 9 and ‘privatization’, 123 – 4 and Al Qaeda, 8 see also counterintelligence; Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate Intelligence Bureau (IB), 10, 126 –7 Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, 10, 11, 19, 127 – 9, 204 and Afghanistan, 137 –40, 141 –2, 165, 170, 172 –3 and Bangladesh, 174, 182 and Bin Laden, 64 – 5 and ideology, 66–7 and India, 186, 191 and Jammu & Kashmir, 187, 188, 189 and JeI, 39 and jihadism, 49, 132 and JuD, 155 and Mumbai massacre, 20 and police, 105, 106 –7 and Al Qaeda, 110–11 and TJ, 63 International Crisis Group, 105, 107 International Islamic University (IIU), 54, 58–60 IOJ see Islami Oikya Jote IRA see Irish Republican Army Iran, 2, 45– 6, 75, 82

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and Afghanistan, 164 and Hizballah, 116 and Revolution, 73 – 4, 150, 197– 8 and USA, 203 Iraq, 65 – 6, 88, 150, 203 and Afghanistan, 164 and Iran, 73 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 92, 114 ISI see Inter Services Intelligence Islami Chhatra Shibir, 175, 182 Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ), 179, 181 Islamic Liberation Party, 53 Islamic Resistance Party, 39 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 197, 202– 3 Islamic University (IU), 58 Islamism, 4 – 5, 11–14, 33 – 4, 93, 197 and the army, 150 and Bangladesh, 174– 5, 175–9 and Deep State, 10, 198 – 9 and India, 28– 33, 183– 7 and Iran, 45–6 and madrassas, 78 – 9 and militancy, 1 – 2, 5 – 7, 71 – 2 and Orthodoxy, 1 and radicalism, 69, 71, 195– 6, 201– 2 see also Jamaat-e-Islami; jihadism; Pan-Islamism; sectarianism; Tablighi Jamaat ISO see Imamia Students’ Organization Israel, 64, 100, 114, 116 Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), 182 Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), 87, 197 Jaji, Battle of, 61 Jamaat-e-Islami (Hind) (JIH), 184– 5, 187 Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), 6, 11, 18, 27, 33– 6 and Afghanistan, 142, 168– 9 and Bangladesh, 174, 175, 176– 9, 180, 182

ASIA

and counterintelligence, 99 and government, 40 – 1, 42–3 and IIU, 59, 60 and India, 194 and intelligence, 67, 127 and Jammu & Kashmir, 187– 92 and the media, 151, 154– 5 and mujahirs, 94 –5 and Pasban, 86 and police, 106 and politics, 201– 2 and Al Qaeda, 36– 40 and Sharif, 63 and sponsorship, 62 and tactics, 199 – 200 and TJ, 55 and zakat (tax), 73 Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), 6, 96, 103 – 4, 154 –6 and Jammu & Kashmir, 189 and the media, 151 – 2 Jamaat ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), 181 – 2 Jamaldini, Maulvi Ghulam Haidar, 163 Jamiat Ulema-e-Ahle Hadith, 74 Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), 38, 55, 67, 81, 127 and sectarianism, 74 – 5 and terrorism, 86 Jammu & Kashmir, 35, 126, 183, 186, 187 –8 and LeT, 188– 90, 191 see also Kashmir JeI see Jamaat-e-Islami JeM see Jaish-e-Mohammed Jhangvi, Haq Nawaz, 74 – 5, 86, 106 JIH see Jamaat-e-Islami (Hind) Al-Jihad, 97 Jihad bil Saif (Jihad through the Sword), 56 jihadism, 19, 85– 6, 197 – 8, 199 – 201 and, 1857 Uprising, 29– 32 and Afghanistan, 170 –2

INDEX and the army, 43–5, 46 – 7, 130– 1 and Bangladesh, 180, 181 and beheadings, 16 and counterintelligence, 92 – 3 and generations, 114 and history, 25–7, 33 and IIU, 58– 9 and India, 20, 183–6, 190– 2 and Kashmir, 169 and Maududi, 36–7 and scholars, 5 and subversion, 7 and TJ, 56– 7 and tribal areas, 97 – 8 see also Al Qaeda JMB see Jamaat ul Mujahideen Bangladesh JMJB see Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh JuD see Jamaat-ud-Dawa JUI see Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Junejo, Muhammad Khan, 166 kafil system, 61 Kandhalawi, Muhammed Ilyas, 54 Karachi, 94, 95, 98– 9, 121– 3 and police, 107, 108 Karbala, Battle of, 73 Kargil Crisis, 45, 46 Karzai, Hamid, 173 Kashmir, 5, 35, 65, 169, 186 Kfir, Isaac, 135 KGB, 146 al-Khadir, Ahmed, 66 Khairabadi, Maulana Fazlul Haq, 31 Khaksar Tehrik, 35 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 73 Khosa, Tariq, 8 Khwaja, Khalid, 168 kidnapping, 124– 5, 200 – 1 Kiessling, Hein G., 128 Kissinger, Henry, xi Kiyani, Ashfaq, 140 –1 Kuwait, 79, 150

263

language, 31, 32 Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ), 75, 76– 7, 81, 82, 83–5 and intelligence, 127 and the media, 152 and Al Qaeda, 102–3 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), 4, 59, 63– 4, 96 and India, 191 and intelligence, 117, 118 – 19 and Jammu & Kashmir, 188– 90 and the media, 151 – 2 and Mumbai attacks, 115, 149 and politics, 204– 5 and Al Qaeda, 102–4 Lebanon, 116 LeJ see Lashkar-e-Jangvi LeT see Lashkar-e-Taiba al-Libbi, Abu Faraj, 140 Lupsha, Peter, 14–16, 136 madrassas, 78– 80, 81, 107, 181, 198 and Afghanistan, 167, 168– 9, 170 see also Dar-ul Uloom Malakand, 77 – 8 marital alliances, 65, 96 Markaz Dawa wal Irshad (MDI), 189 martyrdom, 31, 152 Mascarenhas, Anthony, 175 Massoud, Ahmed Shah, 138 – 9 Maududi, Saiyid Abul ala, 34–5, 36–8, 41, 43, 53 Mayo, Lord, 25, 26 MDI see Markaz Dawa wal Irshad Mecca, 57 media, the, 62, 101, 122, 151 – 4, 182 –3, 202 and conspiracy theories, 204 Mehsud, Baitullah, 78 Mexico, 118 – 19 Middle East, 6, 48, 54, 148 – 9, 151, 202 see also Arabs militant networks, 16– 18 military see armed forces Milli Muslim League, 155

264

ISLAMISM

AND INTELLIGENCE IN SOUTH

Minhaj-ul Quran, 81 minorities, 12, 13– 14, 41 Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh, 36, 129 Mohammed, Tufail, 43 MQM see Muttahida Quami Mahaz Mughal Empire, 4, 7, 11, 28, 29, 41– 2 Mughniyeh, Imad, 99 – 100 muhajirs, 83, 94 –5 mujahideen, 36, 165 Mujib-ur Rehman, Sheikh, 175– 6 Mullen, Adm Mike, 140 Mumbai massacre, 14, 20, 115, 149, 156 and LeT, 118, 190 Muntazir, Abdullah, 96 Musharraf, Gen Pervez, 2, 9, 45, 85, 172 and the army, 144 and assassination attempts, 87, 130– 2 and the media, 151 and propaganda, 143 Muslim Brotherhood, 37, 39, 53 Muslims see Islamism Muttahida Quami Mahaz (MQM), 19, 83, 94– 5, 126, 127 and the army, 121– 3, 144 Myanmar, 181 Nanautawi, Maulana Muhammed Qasim, 31– 2, 33, 38 Naqshabandis, 28– 9 Nasir, Lt Gen Javed, 39, 63, 110 Nasr, Vali, 199 Nasreen, Taslima, 179 National Accountability Bureau (NAB), 144 National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), 125 nationalism, 39, 41 – 2, 52 –3, 187 Nawaz, Maajid, 130 Nazism, 35, 197 Netherlands, the, 50

ASIA

NGOs see non-governmental organizations Nile Valley, 30 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 61, 62 Northern Alliance, 171 Northern Ireland, 92, 97 nuclear weapons, 143 oil, 54, 71 Omar, Mullah Mohammad, 42, 110 Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), 63 organized crime, 14 – 16, 19, 76 – 7, 112, 123 – 5, 191 Ottoman Empire, 50 – 3 Pakistan, 27, 161 – 2, 205– 6 and Afghanistan, 145 –6, 162–74 and Arab militants, 62 – 3 and Bangladesh, 174– 83 and Bin Laden, 64 – 5 and Islamism, 4 – 5, 13– 14 and Jammu & Kashmir, 187– 9 and JeI, 35 – 6, 37–8 and jihadism, 85 – 6 and the Middle East, 54 and nationalism, 41 – 2 and Pan-Islamism, 48, 49, 60 – 1 and politics, 6 – 7, 201– 2 and Al Qaeda, 47, 104– 5 and sectarianism, 69 – 85 and security, 112 – 13 and terrorism, 2 – 4, 134– 6, 203 – 5 and TJ, 57 and USA, 140–3, 149 – 50 see also armed forces; Deep State; Inter Services Intelligence; Karachi; Punjab; Sindh Pakistan Muslim League (PML), 82, 84, 155 Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), 67, 81, 82– 4, 94, 121 Palestine, 64

INDEX Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 100 Pan-Islamism, 13, 18, 48– 9, 53 –4, 66– 8 and Bangladesh, 179– 83 and colonialism, 50 and IIU, 59 and Pakistan, 60– 1 paramilitary activities, 16 Pashtuns, 14, 67, 74, 86 – 7, 95, 126 and Pashtunistan, 163, 164 Pattnayak, Satya R., 192 Pearl, Daniel, 120 Peru, 115 Peshawar, 7, 61, 62 PML see Pakistan Muslim League police, 105– 9, 112 – 13, 120, 123, 131– 2, 198 politics, 6 – 7, 38, 39– 41, 155 see also democracy; geopolitics PPP see Pakistan People’s Party propaganda, 143, 151– 3 Punjab, 74, 79– 80, 86 – 7, 149, 173 – 4 and police, 108, 109 Al Qaeda, 7, 8, 64 and Afghanistan, 115, 169– 72 and Bangladesh, 178, 181 and counterintelligence, 93 and IIU, 60 and Iraq, 65–6 and ISI, 110– 11 and JeI, 36– 40 and kidnapping, 124–5 and LeJ, 76– 7 and LeT, 189 and the media, 152– 3 and Musharraf, 130–1 and operational security, 99 – 105 and Pakistan, 4, 20, 47, 49, 86 and police, 120 and sectarianism, 69, 87 and security, 19 and tactics, 199–200, 202– 3

265

and TJ, 56 and tribal areas, 96, 97, 98 see also Bin Laden, Osama; Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh Qasim Shah, 83 Qasim, Talat, 62 Qazi, Ashraf Jehangir, 3 Quranic Concept of War, The (book), 27 Qutb, Saiyid, 37 Rabita Alam Islami, 61 radicalism, 69, 71, 183, 195 – 6 radio, 98, 153– 4 Raiwind, 56 – 7 Rana, Muhammad Amir, 2 Rashid, Ahmed, 8, 9, 110, 146– 7 R&AW see Research and Analysis Wing Red Crescent Society, 52 Red Mosque crisis, 172, 200 reflexive control, 137– 8 Rehman, Akhtar, 10 religion, 5 – 6, 28–9 see also Hinduism; Islamism Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), 146 reverse indoctrination, 125–9 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 115– 16 Rohingyas, 181 Roy, Olivier, 195 Rumi, Jalal ad-Din, 40 Russia, 12 – 13, 30, 50, 63, 101 and Revolution, 35, 205 see also Soviet Union Saddam Hussein, 88, 150 Saeed, Hafiz Mohammed, 59, 63 – 4, 189, 205 Sahill, Pamir H., 134– 5 Sahni, Ajai, 136 Saiyid Ahmed Khan, Sir, 28, 34, 51 Salman Farsi, 141– 2 Samaratut Tarbiyat (Results of Training), 33

266

ISLAMISM

AND INTELLIGENCE IN SOUTH

Saudi Arabia, 18, 29, 62, 58, 59 and Bangladesh, 181 and Bin Laden, 64, 65 and intelligence, 127 and Iran, 73 and Islamism, 69, 71 – 2 and madrassas, 79 and sectarianism, 74 Sawad-e-Azam, 74 sectarianism, 13–14, 19, 69 – 77, 81– 5 and Afghanistan, 173– 4 and madrassas, 79 – 81 and violence, 86 –8, 96 secularism, 12, 179, 183 Serbia, 51 Shah, Aqil, 144 Shahzad, Saleem, 3 – 4, 8 Shaikh, Farzana, 55 Al Shams, 122, 175 Sharia law, 27, 37, 77 Sharif, Nawaz, xvii, 63, 82, 106, 110 and the army, 143 – 4, 151, 195– 6 and assassination attempts, 76, 85 Sher Ali Khan, 42 Shia Muslims, 14, 45, 109– 10 and sectarianism, 70, 73 – 7, 80, 81–2, 83– 4, 88 al-Shibh, Ramzi Bin, 109 Shining Path, 115 Siddiqa, Ayesha, 66, 80– 1, 144 Sikhism, 30 SIMI see Students’ Islamic Movement of India Sindh, 14, 83, 94, 149 Singh, Ranjit, 30 Sipah-e-Mohammed Pakistan (SMP), 82, 84, 96 Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), 59, 75, 77, 81, 82, 85, 87 Sirhindi, Sheikh Ahmed, 28– 9 SMP see Sipah-e-Mohammed Pakistan social media, 152, 153 South America, 116– 17

ASIA

South Asia see Afghanistan; Bangladesh; India; Pakistan Soviet-Afghan War, 7, 26, 54, 59 – 60 and Bangladesh, 180 and Bin Laden, 64 – 5 and intelligence, 127 and Pakistan, 162, 165 – 7 and volunteers, 61– 2 Soviet Union, 26, 44, 149, 150 and Afghanistan, 137, 164 see also Soviet-Afghan War Spain, 28, 197 Special Services Group (SSG), 166, 167, 189 spy agencies, 119 SSP see Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan stage evolutionary model, 14 – 16 Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), 184– 7, 193 Sufism, 28 – 9, 80 suicide attacks, 66, 101, 189 Sunni Muslims, 25, 45, 64, 102 and sectariansim, 69, 70, 71, 73 – 7, 79, 81– 2, 83–4, 86–7 surveillance, 117, 149 Syria, 116 Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), 49, 54–8, 180 Tajikistan, 39, 63 Taliban, the, 67, 126, 168 and, 9/11 128– 9 and arms, 169 and Bin Laden, 65 and Hazaras, 109 and kidnapping, 124 and Pakistan, 9, 78, 97 – 9, 162, 172– 3 and Pakistani army, 44, 45 and Al Qaeda, 171–2 and terrorism, 141– 2 and USA, 203 Tankel, Stephen, 153 Tanzeemul Ikhwan, 46–7 Tarar, Col Sultan Amin, 168

INDEX Taremi, Kamran, 45– 6 Tariq, Azam, 85 technology, 6 Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan, 82 telecommunications, 103 terrorism, 99– 101, 134– 6, 192 – 4 and Bangladesh, 178, 182 and Encyclopedia, 101 – 2 and IIU, 58– 9 and India, 20, 184–7 and intelligence, 117– 18 and LeT, 64 and networks, 115 and Pakistan, 2 – 4, 203– 5 and police, 105– 6, 107– 9 and sectarianism, 75, 86 – 8 and tactics, 102–5 and TJ, 55, 56– 7 and the West, 201 see also counterterrorism; jihadism; Lashkar-e-Taiba; Al Qaeda Thailand, 181 Thokar Niaz Beg, 82, 96 Tibet, 163 TJ see Tablighi Jamaat tribal areas, 65, 96 –9, 165, 167– 8 Trump, Donald, 3 Tunisia, 56 Turkey, 9, 10, 33, 147– 8 see also Ottoman Empire Two Nation Theory, 28 Uighurs, 39 ummah (Islamic community), 50, 54, 60 United Nations (UN), 155, 163 United States of America (USA), 65, 203 and Afghanistan, 76, 97, 139 – 40, 171, 172 and Bin Laden, 170 and Hizballah, 116– 17 and intelligence, 156 and JuD, 155 and LeT, 205 and Pakistan, 63, 140– 3, 196

267 and the Taliban, 128 – 9 see also 9/11 attacks; anti-Americanism; Central Intelligence Agency; Trump, Donald

value dissynchronization, 12, 42, 193 Vietnam War, 114, 149 – 50 vigilantism, 95 – 6, 175 Wahhab, Muhammad ibn Abdul, 29 Wahhabism, 25, 29, 52 –3 Waliullah, Shah, 29, 31, 33 War on Terror, xiii, 172 World War I, 33, 52 –3, 197 xenophobia, 93, 94 – 6 Yahya Khan, 42 Yemen, xiii, 172 Yousef, Ramzi, 58– 9, 106 Zakaria, Fareed, 2 zakat (tax), 73 Zarb-e-Momin, 146 – 7 Zardari, Asif Ali, 2 al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 96 Zetas, Los, 118– 19 Zia-ul Haq, Muhammad, 10, 11, 18, 42– 3, 54 and Afghanistan, 166 and the army, 143 and Bangladesh, 176 and corruption, 120– 1 and JeI, 39 and the media, 146, 148 and mujahirs, 94 and Pan-Islamism, 198 and radicalism, 195 and TJ, 55 and zakat (tax), 73 Zia-ul Quran, 81 Zia-ur Rehman, Gen, 176, 178 Zionism, 53 Zubaydah, Abu, 110