Author: Susan B. Glasser
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 3, 2001
In the courtyard of a home high
on a Pakistani mountaintop, a congregation of village men has arrived to
congratulate Azaker Abbasi on the death of his son. They shake his hand,
they smile. Abbasi's son, Zia ul-Haq, has died a martyr, they say, in the
faraway north of Afghanistan.
The phone call came on Monday. Zia
had died on November 17 in Mazar-e-Sharif. His family doesn't know where
or how. They don't know where he is buried. He was 23. ''I was happy,''
said his mother, Shaheen Akhter, with no sign of emotion. ''He was right
in what he did. He did it for Allah.''
To the south, on the edge of Pakistan's
North-West Frontier Province, in the Hattar village, another mother recounted
a similar tale. ''I feel happy that he was martyred,'' Iqbal said as she
cried big wet tears that spotted her brown head scarf. Her son, Rashid
Sultan, ran away in October to join the Taliban's jihad against America.
He died on November 7 in Mazar-e-Sharif. All he left was a letter to his
relatives, telling them what he could not admit in person. ''God is my
friend, and I am going toward him,'' he wrote. Jaish-i-Muhammad is the
organisation that sent both Rashid and Zia to their deaths in Afghanistan,
according to their families.
All across Pakistan, there are hundreds,
if not thousands, of families whose sons left to fight a holy war officially
opposed by their government. Senior government officials estimate that
as many as 8,000 Pakistani citizens are dead or missing in Afghanistan,
casualties of an unacknowledged army that did battle for the Taliban even
as Pakistan joined the US-led coalition. With the Taliban's collapse in
recent weeks, Pakistan has been unhappily riveted by the plight of its
own warriors but uncertain what to do about it. Many were apparently killed
in the prison uprising in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif last week.
Many others are believed to be trapped in the southern city of Kandahar,
the Taliban's last stronghold. Already this month, officials said, 2,000
Pakistani families in border areas have appealed to the government for
help in locating their missing sons and fathers. But there is no public
mourning for the dead, and those who make it back alive face the threat
of imprisonment.
The government of General Pervez
Musharraf has threatened to arrest and charge fighters returning from Afghanistan.
Some religious leaders who led their students to join the jihad have already
been jailed. And the government has vowed to crack down further on militant
Islamic groups that recruited and sent Pakistanis to Afghanistan.
At the same time, Musharraf has
not been able to disavow completely the thousands of Pakistani jihadis.
He has publicly appealed for humane treatment of Pakistanis taken prisoners
by the Northern Alliance and has privately lobbied - so far unsuccessfully
- for the United Nations or another international group to take charge
of those who surrender. Musharraf's dilemma reflects the ambivalence of
Pakistani society, which remains sharply divided over his decision to abandon
support of the Taliban after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the
US. And as fighters trickle back across the border, some have recounted
their disillusionment and their uncertainty about why they risked their
lives for a cause that pits Muslims against one another as much as against
the US.
Some militant Islamic groups here
have started to reconsider their support for the jihad in Afghanistan.
''Our teachers have categorically stated that jihad can only be launched
against an infidel army occupying an Islamic state, and Afghanistan never
fit that criteria,'' said Qari Salim Jan, 21, a member of the Lashkar-i-Taiba.
''Afghanistan is essentially an intra-Afghan Muslim battle with an infidel
army perched up in the skies.''
But critics on both sides blame
the government for tacitly encouraging young men like Zia and Rashid to
receive military training in Afghanistan right up until September. Even
pro-Western liberals fear that Pakistan has now abandoned such young men
to Northern Alliance warlords who may massacre them. Some militant groups
say they will continue to recruit soldiers.
In Birrot, however, Zia's family
is not entirely convinced. Despite the handshakes, the smiles and the outward
confidence of Zia's mother, Zia's father recalled his own doubts about
this jihad and his many efforts to persuade his son not to fight.
''I didn't want him to go,'' said
Azaker. ''He wasn't equipped to fight. This war is not our war. But I could
not change his mind. He did what he wanted to do.'' (LA Times-Washington
Post)
