Author: Bruce Loudon, New Delhi
Publication: The Australian
Date: September 16, 2006
URL: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20420373-2703,00.html
It is mountainous country so remote and inhospitable that it has given Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants refuge, despite the unceasing efforts of the world's most potent and best-equipped intelligence services, using the most sophisticated methods, to track them down.
This is the tribal territory of Waziristan, on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, nominally part of Islamabad's Northwest Frontier Province, but in reality an area where even Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's soldiers now fear to tread.
For this, by all accounts, is the effective heart of the global war on terror. This is from where bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, together with the one-eyed Mullah Omar, notorious leader of the Taliban, are waging their offensive in Afghanistan.
Increasingly, Pakistan is "terrorism central", and as coalition forces in Afghanistan do battle in the southern provinces where the Taliban pose the greatest challenge, what is clear is that Islamabad is now central to the rapidly intensifying conflict there, just as it is to the war on terror being waged across the world.
And when in Havana, Cuba, yesterday General Musharraf sat down for a much-anticipated meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, of India, what was clear was that the Pakistani military ruler is at the centre of a growing firestorm of controversy over just what role the country is playing in the fight against extremism.
Ironically, Musharraf, a Clint Eastwood fan, has titled his memoirs, to be released later this month, In the Line of Fire, and with even influential opinion-formers in Washington increasingly dubious about Pakistan's position, there is little doubt he is facing the heat as never before in the seven years since he seized power in Islamabad from the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif.
The Washington Post, in an editorial, criticised the deal between Musharraf and militants in Waziristan, the remote tribal area bordering Afghanistan where bin Laden and his deputy Zawahiri have their hideouts, and where the resurgent Taliban forces dominate.
Of the deal, the Post wrote: "The cost of this decision will be borne by American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, whose commanders already say that the ability of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters to retreat to Pakistan greatly complicates the challenge of defeating their escalating attacks."
But it was the influential Indian newspaper The Indian Express that drilled down to the heart of the matter, publishing a full-page graphic showing terrorist attacks since 9/11 and highlighting their links to Pakistan - and in so doing, in effect, labelling the country "terrorism central".
It is a charge that will infuriate Islamabad and enrage the normally good-humoured Musharraf.
But it is one that he will find increasingly difficult to defend, as he found when, on his way to the Non-Aligned Summit in Cuba, he stopped off in Brussels to address a gathering of the foreign affairs committee of the European parliament.
For, as The Indian Express graphic showed, time and again since 9/11 - in attacks across the world - there is a Pakistani connection.
Not, it must be said, an official Pakistani connection; but a connection that suggests jihadi terrorists are trained and equipped in Pakistan, or seek refuge there after they have carried out their assaults, or are loyalists of extremist Islamic groups based in Pakistan.
Take, as an example cited by the Express, the July 7, 2005, bombs on London's transport system in which 56 people were killed: three of the bombers had visited or trained in Pakistan. Similarly, when British police uncovered the bomb plot against multiple aircraft last month, it emerged that all the main suspects had links to Pakistan, including ringleader Rashid Rauf, who was arrested there.
In New Delhi in December 2001, five terrorists attacked the Indian parliament, killing 14 people. In October last year, there were multiple bomb blasts in Delhi markets that killed 61. And in Mumbai last July there was a series of blasts on trains that killed at least 187.
The Pakistani link? All the attacks, the Express recalls, were sheeted home to jihadi groups based in Pakistan - Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba among them.
The list goes on. Way back in November 2002, three suicide bombers attacked the Paradise Hotel on the Kenyan coast at Mombasa, killing 15 and wounding 40. Al-Qa'ida claimed responsibility and six Pakistanis were arrested.
Indeed, of the 14 top terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, seven have links to Pakistan: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of 9/11, was captured near Islamabad; Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who also assisted in 9/11, was captured in Karachi; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali was a principal lieutenant to Khalid in Pakistan; Abu Zubaydah was a key aid to bin Laden before he was captured in Pakistan; Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailini, who helped bomb the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, was later arrested in Pakistan; Majid Khan, who was being groomed for a major terrorist role by Khalid, is a Pakistani; and Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan who was regarded as the successor to Khalid, was also arrested in Pakistan.
In fairness to Musharraf, the reality that so many of these top terrorists were arrested in Pakistan - sometimes in bloody gunfights that cost the lives of Pakistani security forces - lends credence to Islamabad's view of itself as being a potent element in the global coalition fighting Islamic terror.
"It's all baloney," one senior Pakistani official said yesterday. "Accusing us of being 'terrorism central' is just crazy.
"We're doing everything we can to assist in the war on terror - bearing in mind the reality of our geographical location and the support that exists for Islamic extremism among many Pakistanis - and to accuse us of being soft on terror is clearly malevolent nonsense."
Indeed, to neutral analysts of Pakistan's role, it does seem all too easy to accuse Musharraf and his administration of being soft on terrorism. But for this they have only themselves to blame, for the reality is that several of the world's most potent terrorist organisations have a presence in Pakistan, frequently operating under the noses of the authorities.
And when - as has now happened - Pakistan effectively sups with the devil and does a deal with Taliban-aligned militants in Waziristan, it is small wonder that the spotlight moves on Islamabad and assertions are made that Pakistan is the weak link in the battle against the jihadists.
In its exposition of what it termed "Pakistan's stamp on international terrorist acts post-9/11", The Indian Express pointed out that at least four major international terrorist organisations have a presence in Pakistan.
Al-Qa'ida is the most obvious of these organisations. But there are others, too. Lashkar-e-Toiba, which seems to be so attractive to Australian jihadists, is one of the most potent and is the military wing of the Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad. There are suspected links between it and Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organisation.
And there is Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has close links to both al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, and Harkat-ul-Ansar.
Musharraf's supporters argue that Pakistan has the runs on the board showing it is doing what it can in a difficult situation to suppress such organisations and thwart their plans. They point out the acute difficulty that any administration in Pakistan would have in balancing the reality of widespread popular support for the jihadist movements against Islamabad's commitment to the war on terror.
But the certainty is that Musharraf is going to come under more pressure as the Taliban fighters step up their onslaught in Afghanistan and, as seems likely, the NATO-led coalition of forces sent to fight them, including Australians, experiences greater losses.
For Afghanistan is a conventional military strategist's nightmare. The wild-eyed, bearded tribesmen of the Khyber Pass and the Hindu Kush once saw off the might of the British army, and more recently demolished all and everything that the Soviet Union threw at them after Moscow's massive land and air invasion of December 1979.
I was in Kabul as the Soviet invasion was occurring. The officers of the Red Army were cocky and confident, strutting the streets with the assertive mien of neo-colonial masters. They believed that in no time they would humble the rag-tag mujaheddin. They didn't. They were ignominiously defeated and put to flight. They were picked off like sitting ducks by fleet-footed insurgents who moved like mountain goats through the rugged and frequently impenetrable terrain.
The mountain men taught the communist invaders a lesson from which Moscow never recovered.
Now the NATO-led coalition - yes, with forces that are far better trained and equipped than were the Soviets - is similarly locked in combat against the fierce, predominantly Pashtun tribesmen who support the Taliban.
The certainty is that the forces have an uphill battle ahead of them, and the harsh reality is that victory is no sure thing, not by a long shot. The coalition is going to need all the help it can get. Hence the demand that Pakistan do more to help. And the renewed focus on what Musharraf is really up to.
All week long, the focus has been on that deal in Waziristan, suggestions of ISI involvement with the Taliban, questions about why Pakistan has made no headway in the hunt for bin Laden, and, of course, references to repeated links uncovered between global terrorism and Pakistan.
It is an uncomfortable set of circumstances from Musharraf's point of view.
As far as it has gone, he has played a significant role in the war on terror since September 11. Without him in Islamabad - and, instead, say, with someone as extremist as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in charge - the global fight against the jihadists would be far more difficult than it is proving to be.
But the way things are going in Afghanistan is such that there is the demand for Pakistan to do more, not less. The world wants Musharraf to clamp down harder, not to pussyfoot around with the Taliban and al-Qa'ida and allow circumstances to persist that allow the world's terrorists, time and again, to operate from within its borders or to seek refuge there.
It is a big call, but it is one that Musharraf has no alternative but to accept if he means what he says when he declares himself to be a fully committed ally in the fight against al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.
To say that Musharraf is "in the line of fire" is, indeed, an understatement.