Author: Ian MacWilliam and Altaf
Hussain
Publication: BBC News
Date: October 24, 2001
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1617000/1617541.stm
Pakistani militants have been crossing
into Afghanistan since the start of the US-led military campaign, vowing
to defend the Taleban regime and Osama Bin Laden.
The issue came to the fore when
one group, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, reported that at least 22 of its members
were killed in a US air strike on Kabul on Tuesday, and Pakistan tried
to obstruct the return of their bodies.
The Afghan opposition has long accused
the Taleban of having Pakistani troops in its ranks - an allegation rejected
by Pakistan.
But it does appear that a growing
number of young Pakistani Muslims who might otherwise have gone to fight
India in Kashmir are now volunteering to fight for the Taleban.
Kashmiri link
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, for one, normally
operates in Kashmir, and links between Afghanistan and armed groups in
Kashmir date back to the early 1980s, before the Taleban emerged.
Prominent Kashmiri militants such
as Mohammad Abdullah Bangroo, alias Khalid-ul-Islam, fought alongside the
Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet occupation.
Likewise, an Afghan militant in
the Hizbul Mujahideen group, Akber Bhai, became a household name in north
Kashmir in 1992.
Afghan militants who fight in Kashmir
are only one foreign contingent among many but for those involved - be
they from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Chechnya - Kashmir and the
Afghan cause are strongly linked as common Islamic causes.
If casualty figures are any indication,
foreigners comprise about 30% of the militants operating in Kashmir, most
of them Pakistanis or from Pakistan-ruled Kashmir. They are followed by
the Afghans.
It has to be said that before the
11 September attacks on America, there was no clear indication of links
between Kashmiri militants and the Taleban or Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda
militant group.
But since the US strikes in Afghanistan,
Bin Laden has become a hero to ordinary Muslims in Kashmir. There he is
seen as a symbol of Islamic resistance to a United States which is involved
in conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims such as the Middle East.
Pakistani volunteers
In Pakistan's western regions, the
Taleban cause is replacing Kashmir as the issue of the day in teashops.
Young men from the Pakistani border
areas often went off to what they called a Muslim holy war in Afghanistan
during the Soviet occupation.
Pashtun people in the region, or
Pathans as they are often known in Pakistan, are ethnically the same as
Afghan Pashtuns, who make up the Taleban's main support.
Many Pashtuns do not recognise the
border and young men in Pakistan have regularly gone off to fight for the
Taleban Afghanistan's civil war for a few weeks or months - often during
their summer holidays.
Taleban supporters in western Pakistan
have been holding rallies at which many have signed up for what they consider
a new holy war against the US, and observers in Peshawar say perhaps several
hundred have actually gone over in recent weeks.
One new development is that many
non-Pashtun Pakistanis are now joining the rush to Afghanistan - Punjabis
and Sindhis from eastern provinces who are traditionally less militant.
There are perhaps a few thousand
Pakistanis now fighting in Afghanistan although no one knows the true number.
