Author: Brahma Chellaney
Publication: The Union Leader
Date: December 3, 2005
URL: http://webarchive.unionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=63657
The South Asian earthquake struck at the epicenter
of a principal recruiting ground and logistical center for global terrorists,
leveling a number of terrorist nurseries and training camps in an area that
serves as the last main refuge of al-Qaida. Much of the quake's destruction
occurred in the two terrorist-infested areas of northern Pakistan where Osama
bin Laden may be holed up -- Pakistani-held Kashmir and the North-West Frontier
Province.
The Oct. 8 calamity brought foreign teams
and troops to that restricted region in Pakistan and gave the international
community the potential leverage to steer the area away from terrorism. NATO
is sending up to 1,000 troops to the quake-hit region in addition to about
1,200 U.S. military men already there. International donors, which have pledged
$5.4 billion in quake aid to Pakistan, can ensure that their aid is not used
to rebuild the terrorist infrastructure destroyed by the forces of nature.
Several hundred members of underground terrorist
groups were reported killed when the earthquake flattened their hideouts and
training schools in the two mountainous regions. Several of these groups have
enjoyed long-standing ties with the Pakistani military, especially its infamous
agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, which reared them as part of its
covert war in Indian Kashmir and its success in bringing the now-splintered
Taliban to power in Afghanistan.
Pakistan granted outside rescuers access to
its restricted areas because it found its own disaster management capabilities
woefully inadequate. Now, the access foreign teams and troops have gained
to the stricken parts -- combined with Pakistan's need for continuing international
aid -- can be leveraged to help that military-ruled country clean up its terror
act. The urgency of that task has been underscored by the death of about 70
festival shoppers in the Oct. 29 New Delhi, India, bombings, which were blamed
on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group.
Pakistan has emerged as a common thread in
the investigations of most acts of international terrorism. As Pakistan military
ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf acknowledged July 21 in an address to the nation
after the London subway bombings, "Wherever these extremist or terrorist
incidents occur in the world, a direct or indirect connection is established
with this country."
Two U.S. reports issued earlier this year
presented a bleak picture of Pakistan's future.
The Congressional Research Service warned
that Pakistan is "probably the most anti-American country in the world
right now." The National Intelligence Council's Global Futures Assessment
Report projected a scenario in 2015 of Pakistan as a "failed state ripe
with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries, lack of command and
control of nuclear weapons and lurching toward extreme fundamentalism."
Musharraf has since 9/11 ridden two horses
-- extending selective anti-terror cooperation to the United States, symbolized
by some high-profile al-Qaida arrests, and maintaining a political alliance
with Islamist parties at home. That way he has managed to pocket billions
of dollars in U.S. aid and helped marginalize the political mainstream. His
standing at home, however, has been undercut by his inept handling of the
earthquake.
The latest calamity highlights the need for
international action to help move Pakistan toward a better future by encouraging
Musharraf to uproot the terrorist complex and take measured steps toward democracy.
The massive international relief operation
can aid the global war on terror by helping the injured and the displaced
in the stricken areas of what remains the last bastion of transnational terrorists.
Donors have pledged to build civil infrastructure of a kind that didn't exist
there before.
That makes it necessary to ensure that international
aid is not illicitly diverted to terrorist groups or employed to rebuild the
"hate factories" that churn out trained and committed extremists.
The aid needs to be used to help foster development and societal de-radicalization
in a region steeped in religious bigotry and teeming with Islamists of different
hues and nationalities.
This necessity has been underscored by the
way the earthquake relief effort is being directed by young militants wielding
AK-47 rifles and walkie-talkies at some of the field camps set up in Pakistani-controlled
Kashmir. In fact, underground extremists, seeking to shore up their standing
among the local people are competing with international teams in relief work,
with the lead being taken by Jamaat ud-Dawa, an offshoot of the terrorist
group that is the main suspect in the New Delhi bombings. Children orphaned
by the quake are being "adopted" by terrorist groups for imparting
what the Jamaat ud-Dawa calls "Islamic education."
The disaster has opened the first real opportunity
for the international community since the post-9/11 launch of the global war
on terror to help Pakistan drain its terrorism-breeding swamps.
In Pakistan, where the culture of jihad is
deeply woven into the national fabric, cleansing the stricken areas of their
terrorist nurseries will not be easy. Despite the large losses they suffered,
underground groups have not slowed their activities, as is evident from the
killing of dozens of their members by Indian border troops while attempting
to sneak in since the quake. What is needed is not just action against such
groups, which keep changing their names, but the complete dismantlement of
the infrastructure of terror in Pakistan.
Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic
studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, India.