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Just whose side is Pakistan really on?
An ally in the war on terror or a haven for jihadists? After every outrage, it’s the state in the spotlight, says Christina Lamb
“The moment I heard the first news about the airline plot, I knew it was just a matter of time until we heard the word Pakistan,” said a US intelligence agent. “Whether it’s 9/11, the Bali bombs, 7/7 and now this, Pakistan is always the connection. That’s gotta raise some questions." The roots of Pakistan’s reputation as a haven for jihadists run deep. It was, after all, in the city of Peshawar that Al-Qaeda was born after ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence, started to recruit Arabs to fight in the Afghan jihad.
It was ISI that turned the Taliban from a bunch of religious students into a movement that took over Afghanistan. According to Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, ISI continues to provide a safe haven, training them to fight British soldiers in Helmand.
Whose side is Pakistan on? After September 11, when Pakistan’s leadership was given the blunt choice by President Bush — “you’re either with us or against us” — it had little option. The decision to support Bush’s war on terror turned President Pervez Musharraf from a pariah dictator to a feted world leader.
It was a lucrative move. Pakistan has again become one of the biggest recipients of US aid — just as it was during the Afghan war against Soviet occupiers when ISI was the main conduit for arms and funds. Since September 11, America has dismissed $1.5 billion in debt and provided Pakistan with more than $3 billion in military assistance.
Last year Pakistan was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. It recently placed a $2.5 billion order for American F-16 jet fighters — as much as Afghanistan’s entire annual foreign aid.
However, Musharraf has been walking a tightrope. At home he has been the target of three assassination attempts and much criticism, while abroad his commitment is under increasing question.
Critics point out that the six top Al-Qaeda officials so far captured, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, were all arrested in Pakistan. They were not hiding in caves but living in cities like Karachi and Faisalabad. KSM was picked up in the military cantonment of Rawalpindi.
It was in Pakistan where Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, was murdered in 2002. Pakistan has refused to extradite Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Muslim convicted of the killing, prompting speculation that it fears what he might say.
Sheikh was in ISI custody for a week before the FBI was informed and is reported to have given himself up to his former ISI handler. We also know from official reports that two of the July 7 bombers, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan, travelled to Pakistan.
It was Khan’s second trip. It is still unclear what they did there, but British intelligence believes they underwent training and made martyrdom tapes. What is certain is that on their return the pair rented a place to build bombs.
Pakistan’s problem is that extremist organisations and training camps, such as those linked to the London bombers, were either created by, or supported and used by, ISI.
The camps were set up in the late 1980s with US backing to train fighters for jihad in Afghanistan. Their mission was expanded in the 1990s to send jihadis to the contested province of Kashmir to fight a proxy war with India.
“Pakistan is still in denial,” said Husain Haqqani of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington whose book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, looks at state sponsorship of jihadi groups.
He points out that many senior figures in Pakistan’s military establishment had probably run camps: “The attitude of condoning extremist behaviour is so pervasive that it may be difficult for people to adjust to a new attitude of cracking down on them.”
The difficulty is establishing links between Al-Qaeda and jihadi groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Toiba, Musharraf’s failure to rein them in suggests that they are out of control. “We might have created a Frankenstein,” one Pakistani military officer admitted.
How much the West has been willing to turn a blind eye was shown by its lack of censure over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who provided weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Musharraf’s ludicrous claim that these were the actions of an individual without the knowledge of the state was apparently accepted by Washington, despite evidence of military planes transporting parts.
Those involved in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden have long believed that Pakistan knows more than it has let on and may have tipped off Al-Qaeda leaders, letting them escape. They point out that any time Pakistan has come under pressure from Washington it has diverted attention by arresting an Al-Qaeda leader.
Pakistan is sensitive to such criticism. Officials are quick to point out that Musharraf’s stance has placed his own life in danger and that Pakistan has lost hundreds of soldiers in Waziristan, the tribal area bordering Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda leaders have reputedly been hiding.
After July 7, Musharraf reacted angrily to questions over Pakistan’s role, retorting that the perpetrators were British-born Muslims (and one was of Jamaican origin) — a home-grown problem.
“We don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” said Aftab Khan Sherpao, Pakistan’s interior minister, after last week’s airline plot arrests. “We have been in close collaboration with the US and UK on the war on terror all along.”
The number of people from Britain’s Pakistani community going back to the country makes investigation difficult. There were more than 400,000 visits by UK residents to Pakistan in 2004, with an average stay of 41 days.
Pakistan insists it has taken action on the madrasahs, or religious schools, described as nurseries of terror.
Ijaz ul-Haq, minister for religious affairs, said: “Any madrasahs found involved with militancy or distributing hate material will be closed.”
THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Many Muslims are reluctant to accept the role of fundamentalists in terror attacks. Their scepticism is fed by conspiracy theories that continue to spread on the internet. Among the most virulent are:
The Bin Laden tapes
Bin Laden was never involved in 9/11, but has been used by Washington to justify spending on the military and intelligence services. Bin Laden has been dead more than five years and the US used lookalikes and fake tapes of his voice to issue new threats.
The July 7 attacks
The work of western intelligence services. Confusion over timings indicates a classic “false flag” operation to divert attention from Blair and Bush’s problems. One theory is that the terrorists were framed. Another is that power surges caused the blasts.
9/11, the twin towers
The Israelis were quickly fingered in the Arab world as suspects after the towers collapsed, killing 2,752. This theory is often bolstered with the false claim that 4,000 Jewish employees did not turn up for work that day. Conspiracy theorists say the impact of the planes did not have the power to demolish the towers. The buildings had been rigged with explosives.
9/11, the Pentagon
The relatively limited damage suffered by the Pentagon despite being hit by a passenger jet is held up as evidence that it was a faked attack. Some suspect a guided missile was used.
The Iraq war
The war on terror was a pretext for gaining control of Middle East oil.
The 2004 tsunami
An Egyptian newsletter blamed the tsunami on an Indian nuclear test.
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