Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
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<strong>Frontline</strong> <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong><br />
1995. One of the hostages was beheaded, another managed to escape,<br />
and the fate of the rest remains unknown. Kashmiri militants privately<br />
acknowledge that the hostages are no longer alive.<br />
On 1 October 1997, the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright,<br />
submitted to the US Congress a list of 30 international terrorist organizations,<br />
which Washington had decided to bring under the purview<br />
of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 1997. HuA was<br />
one of the groups on the list. After being blacklisted by the US administration<br />
it resurfaced under a new banner, HuM. <strong>The</strong> new group was<br />
immediately put on the terrorist watch list by Washington. <strong>The</strong> State<br />
Department report for 1997, released in 1998, accused <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i officials<br />
of supporting Kashmiri militant groups, including HuM.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rise of the Taliban gave a huge boost to <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i militant groups<br />
like HuM. Afghanistan became a base for their operations. <strong>The</strong>ir leaders<br />
shared common origins, personnel and especially patrons. Most HuM<br />
activists came from the same seminaries in the <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i border region<br />
that the Taliban movement had emerged from. <strong>The</strong>se groups were<br />
heavily backed by the ISI, which also patronized the Taliban. Both<br />
were important in furthering <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s strategic interests – to extend<br />
<strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i hegemony over the neighbouring state.<br />
More than 10,000 <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i militants were believed to have received<br />
training in camps run by al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups during<br />
Taliban rule. 48 <strong>The</strong> evidence of their close connection with bin Laden<br />
emerged in August 1998 when scores of <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i militants were killed<br />
in a US cruise missile attack on an al-Qaeda camp in the Afghan southeastern<br />
border town of Khost. A day after the attack, Khalil vowed to<br />
take revenge for the death of his activists. ‘<strong>The</strong> US has struck us with<br />
Tomahawk cruise missiles at only two places, but we will hit back<br />
at them everywhere in the world, wherever we find them. We have<br />
started a holy war against the US and they will find no place to hide,’<br />
he declared.<br />
Khalil was at the meeting in Afghanistan in February 1998 at which<br />
bin Laden announced the formation of an International <strong>Islam</strong>ic Front<br />
against ‘Jews and crusaders’. He was also a signatory of the ruling<br />
issued by the group which had stated that it was the duty of all Muslims<br />
to ‘comply with God’s order by killing Americans and their allies’. 49<br />
On 29 September 2001, <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s government banned HuM, but<br />
its activists soon regrouped under new banners, Jamaat-al-Ansar and<br />
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen-al-Alami. <strong>The</strong>y retained their links with the<br />
Taliban despite the shift in <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s policy.