Author: Editorial
Publication: The Navhind Times
Date: October 25, 2001
The news about the killing of as
many as 22 terrorists belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen group, which
is one of the many militant organisations patronised by the government
of Pakistan, is bound to cause embarrassment to the Musharraf cabinet in
Islamabad. According to western media reports, some of the terrorists were
Kashmiris from the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, while some were from Lahore.
It would be difficult for General Musharraf's propaganda machine to convince
the world that the Pakistan government's hands are clean insofar as the
encouragement to terrorism is concerned. The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which
has been operating for several years under state patronage in Pakistan,
has been banned by the US and other nations and its assets frozen, because
of its direct links with the Al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. With
no way out, the Pakistani government had to take action against the group,
ban it and freeze its accounts. Quite a good share of the money in the
group's accounts must be from the war chest of the Pakistani government
itself. However, all this was to throw dust in the eyes of the US and its
allies, because in reality the Musharraf government did not really want
to suppress the group - and other groups it had nurtured.
The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen is operating
openly in Pakistan and across the borders into Afghanistan and India. The
group has offices without name plates inside Pakistan still functioning.
Leaders of the group are accessible to the western media persons for a
reaction on some issue. They can issue and publish statements they want
aired. The other groups, like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba,
too have been operating in very thin disguise inside Pakistan. With the
mass killing of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen militants in Kabul on Tuesday, international
pressure is going to mount on the Musharraf regime to go after the members
of the terrorist groups it has fathered. Will Pakistan throttle its beloved
babies with its own hands? It may not seem emotionally possible, but emotions
have no place in the harsh world of realpolitik. And the realpolitik demands
that Pakistan be fully and whole-heartedly on the side of the international
coalition against terrorism and take comprehensive and decisive action
against its terrorist babies.
It is clear from the way it happened
that the US acted on an intelligence tip provided either by its own sources
or sources of its other allies. The tip about 22 Harkat-ul-Mujahideen militants
holding a meeting in a house in Kabul - all of them Pakistanis - could
not have come from Pakistan. There was so much diplomatic embarrassment
involved that Pakistan would have rather warned the Harkat militants to
disperse had it known that the American air raid on the house was coming.
This incident also means a message from the US to General Musharraf that
it is not relying entirely on him for ground intelligence. It is the first
time a major killing of terrorists has been carried out by the American
fighter planes. It is bound to cause an impact on the minds of other terrorists.
They will have to think twice before gathering again in some place for
a meeting.
The killed included the leader of
the Harkat group Ustad Farid and they were in Kabul to fight alongwith
Taliban. The US dropping of a precision-guided missile on the house was
a major intelligence breakthrough as it was based on specific information
about the meeting of the militants. This also goes to indicate that the
US has been able to smuggle in paid agents across the border from Pakistan
and probably also put some of the Afghans living inside Kabul and other
cities also on the roll. With the Taliban beginning to lose the war, many
more Afghans might be willing not only to switch sides but also to provide
intelligence that could be extremely useful to the US and allied forces.
There are an unspecified number of Pakistanis among foreigners fighting
the war alongwith the Taliban; there are Arabs, Chechens and Kashmiris
too. Many of them are in the Al Qaeda group with Osama bin Laden. The US
attacks are picking out these foreigners with greater interest than the
Afghans. The more Pakistanis die in the war the more precarious Pakistan's
position will be.
