Breaking News: Suicide Bomb in Karachi NEWS ANALYSIS

Pressure on Musharraf: Anti-West Forces Brew

By DEXTER FILKINS

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/international/asia/15ASSE.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 14 —In a country rife with extremism and anti-American rage, officials here not only fear new terrorist acts, they expect them.

Last month, after the suicide assault on May 8 in Karachi that killed 11 French workers and three others, Pakistani intelligence officials told President Pervez Musharraf that a number of the country`s most militant Islamic groups, including remnants of Al Qaeda, had agreed to join forces to launch fresh attacks against American targets.

The intelligence officials told General Musharraf, the military leader who has begun an uncertain campaign to neutralize the country`s Islamic extremists, that the survivors planned to stage another suicide bombing as an encore to the one on May 8.

With today`s deadly strike against the American consulate in Karachi, the prediction of Pakistani intelligence appears to have materialized. Pakistani officials suspect that the attack was carried out by a freshly minted coalition of militant organizations drawn from the remnants of extremist groups scattered during a crackdown General Musharraf ordered earlier this year.

The new coalition of militant groups is called Lashkar-e-Omar, formed by guerrilla fighters in January after leaders of several extremist groups had been arrested. Officials said the members of the coalition share a doctrinaire vision of Islam, a hatred of the West and, often, the common bond of having trained and fought in Afghanistan.

According to the Pakistani officials, Lashkar-e-Omar was formed by the survivors of three militant Islamic groups targeted by General Musharraf: Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Sunni Muslim group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. While this last group is known for its sectarian attacks on Shiite Muslim groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad are committed to waging a holy war against non-Muslims.

The officials said the three Islamic groups, as well as stragglers from other militant organizations, reached an ``operational agreement`` to pool their resources and launch joint attacks.

The new coalition, Lashkar-e-Omar, drew its name and inspiration from Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the former leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad accused of masterminding the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

While a group calling itself Al Qanoon took responsibility tonight for the attack in Karachi, Pakistani officials said the claim appeared to mirror a common pattern of larger groups of militant guerrillas spinning off smaller units assigned to stage single attacks.

``There is near unanimity of opinion among intelligence officials that this is the work of the loose coalition of extremist jihadis,`` a senior Pakistani intelligence official said today, referring to Islamic holy warriors, adding that they have ``possible links to Al Qaeda.

``They want to frighten and drive out the foreigners from Pakistan and they want to scare the government into reversing its course,`` he said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, General Musharraf has sided strongly with the United States, abandoning support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and announcing a clampdown on radical Islamic groups in Kashmir.

If the officials are right, today`s attack in Karachi illustrates the difficulties in tracking the contortions of Pakistan`s militant groups, as well as the shortcomings of what critics regard as General Musharraf`s ambivalent effort to part ways with militants whom the Pakistani government long supported.

``There are so many forces that have been unleashed in the past months,`` said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani Army general known for his moderate views. ``We are under pressure from all sides, and from within.``

After Sept. 11, General Musharraf came under intense international pressure to break with the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group whose rise to power in Afghanistan was engineered by the Pakistani intelligence agencies, and crack down on militants at home.

But since then, defeated Taliban and Qaeda fighters have poured in from Afghanistan, Pakistani militant groups have plotted to kill General Musharraf and India`s leaders have massed 700,000 troops on Pakistan`s borders for a possible attack.

Hence General Musharraf`s dilemma: to appease the West and his enemy to the east, he must infuriate the radicals at home.

By many accounts, General Musharraf embarked on a campaign fierce enough to enrage the extremist groups, but not determined enough to break them. The effort appears to have left him more vulnerable than ever before.

He had started off in dramatic fashion. In December, with the Indian Army bearing down on Pakistan`s border, Pakistani officials arrested nearly 2,000 militants, outlawed several militant organizations and froze their bank accounts.

According to an account in The Herald, an influential Pakistani magazine, a group of enraged militants plotted to assassinate General Musharraf on Christmas Day last year. The plot failed.

Yet for all the sensation caused by the crackdown, its fervor was short-lived. Of the 2,000 militants detained, some 1,800 have been released, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group outlawed by Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States.

While General Musharraf promised to block the militants` forays into Indian Kashmir, the militants themselves said the Pakistani government did not finally block the infiltration until last month, when Indian military action seemed imminent. The action enraged Kashmiri militants, some of whom have sworn to kill General Musharraf.

As the Pakistani extremists were walking out of local jails, fighters were arriving from Afghanistan to join the struggle.

While many of the Taliban and Qaeda fighters are believed to have dispersed across the arid wastelands of Pakistan`s northwest frontier, many others are believed to have blended into the sweltering cities of Pakistan`s plains.

A Western diplomat interviewed earlier this week said elements of Al Qaeda appear to have played a role in the three previous terrorist attacks staged in Pakistan since the beginning of the year: the murder of American reporter Daniel Pearl, the grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad that killed five people, and last month`s suicide attack on the French defense workers in Karachi.

The Qaeda fighters appear to have mixed with Pakistani militants dedicated to ending the Indian presence in Kashmir, the diplomat said.

``The trail goes back to Kashmir,`` he said.

Breaking News: Suicide Bomb in Karachi War and terrorism

Jun 14th 2002

From The Economist Global Agenda

Although tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is ebbing after a visit by Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, a massive bomb blast in Karachi has shown that a dangerous terrorist threat remains

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1187468

A HUGE car bomb, thought to be driven by a suicide bomber, exploded near the American consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Friday June 14th, killing at least eight people. The blast came just as Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, wound up his visit to the region. Although Mr Rumsfeld appears to have had some success in curbing the extremism that threatens to lead India and Pakistan into another war over the disputed territory of Kashmir, he can now be less sure about the containment of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda is thought to be behind the latest blast. Last month, the group was blamed for exploding a bomb near the Sheraton hotel in Karachi. That killed 11 French nationals who were working in the city, along with three Pakistanis. Karachi, the country`s biggest port, has long been a hotbed of Islamic extremism shaken by murders and bomb attacks, not only against foreigners but also between rival factions. Although Mr Rumsfeld had praised Pakistan`s efforts to try to hunt down militants who had fled from Afghanistan, the bombing in Karachi shows just how difficult that is in such a chaotic country.

Pakistan was already edgy about reports of al-Qaeda operating within the country. After visiting senior Indian officials, including the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr Rumsfeld had said there were signs that al-Qaeda was also operating in Kashmir. Pakistan was furious and accused him of falling for Indian propaganda. Most Pakistanis see the militants in Kashmir not as terrorists, but as “freedom fighters.” Once Mr Rumsfeld had arrived in Pakistan and had visited the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, he changed his tune and described the reports as “speculative”. He added that he was sure that Pakistan would be able to deal with the al-Qaeda militants if any were found in the part of Kashmir it controls.

That remains to be seen. Wherever the militants lurk, Pakistan is clearly finding it hard to track them down. Some of the country`s military resources have been diverted to deal with the treat of a war with India. Both nuclear-armed rivals have more than a million troops massed along the “line of control”, the disputed border which divides Kashmir. They have been engaged in an almost daily exchange of gunfire.

A deal over Kashmir?

Mr Rumsfeld may have laid the foundations for some of those troops to be pulled back. There are signs of de-escalation, but the situation remains dangerous. Even Mr Rumsfeld admits that diplomatic efforts, however intense, can only go so far to prevent India and Pakistan from escalating the conflict.

Mr Rumsfeld has welcomed India’s decision to end a five-month ban on Pakistani civil aircraft entering its airspace, withdraw its navy from waters near Pakistan and to name, but not yet send, an ambassador to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. But Pakistan wants India to do more.

The peace process, if it is to continue, must now pass through two phases. The first deals mainly with procedure, the second with principle. Each has its pitfalls. If they are overcome, India and Pakistan might finally end the feud that began when they became independent in 1947.

Phase one is a trade: Pakistan is to end support for terrorists fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state. India is to back off from its threat of war and, eventually, to resume talks with Pakistan on Kashmir. Both sides accept this blueprint, but it could easily be botched in execution. Avoiding that was the main object of Mr Rumsfeld’s trip this week.

Each side suspects the other of dragging its feet. General Musharraf has called India’s gestures “a very small beginning”. India demands that Pakistan get on with dismantling the “infrastructure of terror,” including the camps in Pakistani Kashmir where terrorists await orders to cross over. Politics encourages dawdling. For General Musharraf, shutting down the anti-Indian militancy means discarding his main method of keeping alive Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir. He is unwilling to do it without significant Indian concessions, and his country is full of vengeful zealots who will refuse to do it at all.

In India, it is mainly up to the armed forces to verify that Pakistan is blocking infiltration by terrorists across the line. For their part, the armed forces are itching for a fight with Pakistan. If the next terrorist strike in Kashmir is spectacular enough, they could get their way.

But the moderates are making the decisions, at least for now. They have acknowledged that infiltration from Pakistan is down and have started a “calibrated” response. The process would probably survive even another attack. Ending terrorism “is very difficult to achieve on the ground because the disease has spread over 20 years,” says Jaswant Singh, India`s foreign minister.

America wants further de-escalation, starting perhaps with a pullback of the airforce from the border and home leave for soldiers there. But India made it clear that it would do no more until Pakistan reduces infiltration further and starts dismantling militant camps. Much of its force will remain in place at least until elections in Kashmir this autumn.

AP





Rumsfeld at work



Pakistan’s ultimate prize is a dialogue on Kashmir, which is where arguments on principle will come in. Since its founding as the homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, Pakistan has seen Kashmir as stolen property. India’s abuses of democratic norms and human rights in the state add to the indignation. Multi-religious India sees no reason to give up a state that acceded to it legally. It regards the discontent of ordinary Kashmiris as an internal matter. Talking to Pakistan will change none of that.

India wants to cure Kashmiri separatism with elections, which it hopes will produce a popular government willing to negotiate a political deal short of independence (which most Kashmiris want) or accession to Pakistan. Diplomacy is now Pakistan’s main tool for stopping India consolidating its hold over Kashmir. Pakistan counts it a victory that the nuclear panic has drawn third parties into the dispute.

In the past this would have rattled India, which regards Kashmir as a bilateral issue. But India and the United States have become firm allies in the fight against terrorism. But America and other outsiders are unlikely to help Pakistan much on Kashmir. They have neither the power nor the inclination to force India to surrender large additional chunks of the state. At best, they can pressure India to sit at the table and to treat its own Kashmiri citizens decently enough so that General Musharraf can claim to have protected their rights. Perhaps Pakistan is ready for this. “If India addresses the alienation of the Kashmiri people, Pakistan will be perfectly happy to live with the territorial status quo,” says Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani academic now at Stanford University. That might be a formula for a lasting peace.

Dissing Ideologies War and terrorism

Jun 14th 2002

From The Economist Global Agenda

Although tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is ebbing after a visit by Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, a massive bomb blast in Karachi has shown that a dangerous terrorist threat remains

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1187468

A HUGE car bomb, thought to be driven by a suicide bomber, exploded near the American consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Friday June 14th, killing at least eight people. The blast came just as Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, wound up his visit to the region. Although Mr Rumsfeld appears to have had some success in curbing the extremism that threatens to lead India and Pakistan into another war over the disputed territory of Kashmir, he can now be less sure about the containment of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda is thought to be behind the latest blast. Last month, the group was blamed for exploding a bomb near the Sheraton hotel in Karachi. That killed 11 French nationals who were working in the city, along with three Pakistanis. Karachi, the country`s biggest port, has long been a hotbed of Islamic extremism shaken by murders and bomb attacks, not only against foreigners but also between rival factions. Although Mr Rumsfeld had praised Pakistan`s efforts to try to hunt down militants who had fled from Afghanistan, the bombing in Karachi shows just how difficult that is in such a chaotic country.

Pakistan was already edgy about reports of al-Qaeda operating within the country. After visiting senior Indian officials, including the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr Rumsfeld had said there were signs that al-Qaeda was also operating in Kashmir. Pakistan was furious and accused him of falling for Indian propaganda. Most Pakistanis see the militants in Kashmir not as terrorists, but as “freedom fighters.” Once Mr Rumsfeld had arrived in Pakistan and had visited the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, he changed his tune and described the reports as “speculative”. He added that he was sure that Pakistan would be able to deal with the al-Qaeda militants if any were found in the part of Kashmir it controls.

That remains to be seen. Wherever the militants lurk, Pakistan is clearly finding it hard to track them down. Some of the country`s military resources have been diverted to deal with the treat of a war with India. Both nuclear-armed rivals have more than a million troops massed along the “line of control”, the disputed border which divides Kashmir. They have been engaged in an almost daily exchange of gunfire.

A deal over Kashmir?

Mr Rumsfeld may have laid the foundations for some of those troops to be pulled back. There are signs of de-escalation, but the situation remains dangerous. Even Mr Rumsfeld admits that diplomatic efforts, however intense, can only go so far to prevent India and Pakistan from escalating the conflict.

Mr Rumsfeld has welcomed India’s decision to end a five-month ban on Pakistani civil aircraft entering its airspace, withdraw its navy from waters near Pakistan and to name, but not yet send, an ambassador to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. But Pakistan wants India to do more.

The peace process, if it is to continue, must now pass through two phases. The first deals mainly with procedure, the second with principle. Each has its pitfalls. If they are overcome, India and Pakistan might finally end the feud that began when they became independent in 1947.

Phase one is a trade: Pakistan is to end support for terrorists fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state. India is to back off from its threat of war and, eventually, to resume talks with Pakistan on Kashmir. Both sides accept this blueprint, but it could easily be botched in execution. Avoiding that was the main object of Mr Rumsfeld’s trip this week.

Each side suspects the other of dragging its feet. General Musharraf has called India’s gestures “a very small beginning”. India demands that Pakistan get on with dismantling the “infrastructure of terror,” including the camps in Pakistani Kashmir where terrorists await orders to cross over. Politics encourages dawdling. For General Musharraf, shutting down the anti-Indian militancy means discarding his main method of keeping alive Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir. He is unwilling to do it without significant Indian concessions, and his country is full of vengeful zealots who will refuse to do it at all.

In India, it is mainly up to the armed forces to verify that Pakistan is blocking infiltration by terrorists across the line. For their part, the armed forces are itching for a fight with Pakistan. If the next terrorist strike in Kashmir is spectacular enough, they could get their way.

But the moderates are making the decisions, at least for now. They have acknowledged that infiltration from Pakistan is down and have started a “calibrated” response. The process would probably survive even another attack. Ending terrorism “is very difficult to achieve on the ground because the disease has spread over 20 years,” says Jaswant Singh, India`s foreign minister.

America wants further de-escalation, starting perhaps with a pullback of the airforce from the border and home leave for soldiers there. But India made it clear that it would do no more until Pakistan reduces infiltration further and starts dismantling militant camps. Much of its force will remain in place at least until elections in Kashmir this autumn.

AP





Rumsfeld at work



Pakistan’s ultimate prize is a dialogue on Kashmir, which is where arguments on principle will come in. Since its founding as the homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, Pakistan has seen Kashmir as stolen property. India’s abuses of democratic norms and human rights in the state add to the indignation. Multi-religious India sees no reason to give up a state that acceded to it legally. It regards the discontent of ordinary Kashmiris as an internal matter. Talking to Pakistan will change none of that.

India wants to cure Kashmiri separatism with elections, which it hopes will produce a popular government willing to negotiate a political deal short of independence (which most Kashmiris want) or accession to Pakistan. Diplomacy is now Pakistan’s main tool for stopping India consolidating its hold over Kashmir. Pakistan counts it a victory that the nuclear panic has drawn third parties into the dispute.

In the past this would have rattled India, which regards Kashmir as a bilateral issue. But India and the United States have become firm allies in the fight against terrorism. But America and other outsiders are unlikely to help Pakistan much on Kashmir. They have neither the power nor the inclination to force India to surrender large additional chunks of the state. At best, they can pressure India to sit at the table and to treat its own Kashmiri citizens decently enough so that General Musharraf can claim to have protected their rights. Perhaps Pakistan is ready for this. “If India addresses the alienation of the Kashmiri people, Pakistan will be perfectly happy to live with the territorial status quo,” says Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani academic now at Stanford University. That might be a formula for a lasting peace.

Lighting The Nuclear Fire War and terrorism

South Asia’s nuclear winter

May 28th 2002

From The Economist Global Agenda

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1153356

India and Pakistan do not have vast nuclear arsenals, but if a conflict over Kashmir did spiral out of control, the destruction from even a limited nuclear exchange could be enormous. Millions would die instantly, and millions more as services collapse and disease and famine spread. All of Asia would be affected

THREE months ago, the directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of their “Doomsday Clock” from nine minutes to midnight to just seven minutes to, in order to reflect the increased threat of nuclear war. The group, which was founded by scientists who had worked on the first atomic bombs in the second world war, listed the continuing crisis between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir as one of their concerns. While all experts agree that the risk of nuclear war has increased in the subcontinent, there is little consensus about what the exact effects would be—except that it would reach nightmare proportions.

Publicly, at least, there are few firm figures on the numbers of nuclear weapons which India and Pakistan can deploy, let alone their capabilities. The atomic scientists estimate that India has about 30-35 nuclear warheads, which is fewer than Pakistan. Some estimates have put the numbers higher: up to 200-250 warheads in India and around 150 in Pakistan. Some American experts say India has around 60 nuclear warheads and Pakistan about 40.

Apart from secrecy, one reason why the estimates of the nuclear arsenals vary so much is that some of the weapons may not be fully assembled. There are reports that India has enough material stockpiled to make 50-100 more nuclear weapons. Most of the warheads are thought to be below 20 kilotons, equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. This means they are comparable to the nuclear bombs detonated by the United States over Hiroshima in 1945.

Both sides have short and medium-range ballistic missiles which could deliver nuclear warheads. But the majority of the warheads owned by India and Pakistan are thought to be designed to be dropped as bombs by aircraft. India can arm two types of aircraft to do this: the MiG-27 Flogger, which was made by the old Soviet Union, and the Jaguar, which was used in a nuclear role by the British and French air forces. Pakistan has American-built F-16s. Pakistan’s air defences may be better than India’s, even though its armed forces are heavily outnumbered.

Estimates of the level of destruction that could be wrought by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan vary even more than trying to count warheads. Much would depend on the target, the yield of the bomb, the weather and the altitude at which it is exploded. However, the New York Times has reported that a recent intelligence assessment carried out by America’s Defence Department predicted a frightening number of casualties. It says that in a full-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, up to 12m people could be killed immediately and up to 7m injured. This would have further cataclysmic consequences, overwhelming hospitals across Asia, and requiring a vast amount of foreign assistance to deal with radioactive contamination and famine and disease.

Even if both sides tried to limit the use of nuclear weapons the destruction would be terrible. At least 3m people would be killed and 1.5m seriously injured if both sides exploded just one in ten of their likely number of nuclear warheads over big cities, according to a study reported in New Scientist. Further deaths would come from the loss of homes, hospitals, water and energy supplies. Then there would be an unknown number of deaths from cancers that would develop in future years. If the bombs exploded on the ground, rather than in the air, radioactive dust could spread across hundreds of square kilometres. As the prevailing winds are from the west, India risks being the biggest victim of radioactive fall-out in any exchange of nuclear weapons.

Although the casualty figures are horrific, India and Pakistan do not possess enough nuclear weapons for their “mutually assured destruction”, a doctrine which helped to prevent the superpowers from entering into nuclear conflict during the Cold War. It is possible that military planners in India and Pakistan believe that a limited nuclear exchange could provide them with a victory. While the immediate death tolls would be huge, both countries have large populations: more than 1 billion Indians and 140m Pakistanis.

The big causes of concern are that conventional military strikes by one side or another could quickly spiral out of control. No one is sure that the unwritten rules which have contained the military conflict to the Kashmir region hold any more. In recent days, as in previous times of tension, the two sides have exchanged heavy machine-gun fire and mortar rounds across the Line of Control, which marks the unofficial border in Kashmir. But the first country to send a missile, even a non-nuclear one, could trigger a tit-for-tat set of reprisals that both sides could find hard to stop.

Lighting The Nuclear Fire Despite End of Cold War, Danger of Nuclear Conflict

Looms Like Never Before

Interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, leading anti-nuclear activist

and founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility

Interview by Scott Harris

Despite the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the danger of nuclear war -- and the human catastrophe such a conflict could inflict on the planet -- has not diminished. In recent months, India and Pakistan have both threatened to use their nuclear arsenals in any future conflict over the disputed territory of Kashmir. The Bush administration, in its drive for military superiority, has abandoned arms control treaties and embarked on deployment of a controversial missile defense system; proposed the development of new battlefield nuclear weapons and threatened to use nukes against non-nuclear states that may possess biological or chemical weapons.

The specter of terrorist groups acquiring and using nuclear weapons has caused great public anxiety with concerns fueled by the recent arrest of a suspect alleged to be planning to explode a radioactive bomb. These new threats, combined with the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, have provided the White House renewed public support for more aggressive war plans and increased military spending.

Between The Lines` Scott Harris spoke with Dr. Helen Caldicott, a leading anti- nuclear activist for 30 years and founder of the Nobel prizewinning group Physicians for Social Responsibility. Dr. Caldicott, whose latest book is ``The New Nuclear Danger, George W. Bush`s Military Industrial Complex,`` examines the peril she sees in the Bush administration`s nuclear weapons policy.

Dr. Helen Caldicott is author of ``The New Nuclear Danger, George W. Bush`s Military Industrial Complex,`` published by New Press. Contact Dr. Caldicott`s Nuclear Policy Research Institute at (213) 225-5941 or visit their Web site at www.nuclearpolicy.org

http://www.wpkn.org/betweenthelines/

Dispute Over Jammu, Kashmir at Heart

of Rising Tensions between India and Pakistan

Interview by Scott Harris.

For the fourth time in 50 years, India and Pakistan are edging closer to war. Tensions rose shortly after a Kashmiri separatist group launched a Dec. 13 suicide attack against India`s parliament that killed 14 people. The leaders of both nations traded verbal attacks followed by a dangerous buildup of troops along their shared 2,000 mile-long border. India`s leaders charge that Pakistan has failed to rein in terrorist groups which are believed to have been behind the December Parliament attack and an earlier October 1st assault on India¹s Srinagar legislature.

Both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, a fact that alarms many observers who note that the two nations have fought three wars since their founding in 1947. The spark that ignited previous conflicts has been the five decade long dispute over the territories of Jammu and Kashmir ­ a mountainous region both nations claim as their own.

Between The Lines` Scott Harris spoke with Jay Truman, founder and director of Downwinders, a research foundation that works to end nuclear weapons testing and reduce the threat of atomic warfare. Truman discusses the danger of war between India and Pakistan and the historical context which has led to the current conflict.

Untying the Kashmir Knot

Radha Kumar *

The Kashmir dispute, long on the sidelines internationally, has moved front and center since September 11. India has made use of changed opinions since the terror attacks on the United States to pressure Pakistan, which for decades has promoted a jihadist guerrilla movement within Jammu and Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority. When Islamic extremists mounted a murderous attack on the Indian parliament last December, New Delhi responded with a massive troop buildup along its border with Pakistan. The confrontation of the two nuclear-armed neighbors was temporarily contained by U.S. and European diplomacy but could flare up again at any moment. Are there more durable means of containing this 50-year dispute? Is there even a possible solution to the problem? This essay will attempt answers, with the important caveat that it is difficult to con-vey the complex and angry passions that the word ``Kashmir`` evokes.

For confirmation, one only has to visit a website for a Pakistani Islamic university, Markaz ad Dawa`ah Wal Irshad (Center for and Invitation to the Spread of Islam). The site featured a poll that asked whether America`s new war was against Islam or terrorists. The poll was programmed so as to elicit an ``against Islam`` response. Elsewhere, the site quoted a prominent Islamic cleric`s claim that the war in Afghanistan was a clash of civilizations: ``This battle will take [the] shape of the religious war of Hind in which the Muslims stood victorious,`` the cleric said, referring to the Mughal conquest of India.

Markaz ad Dawa`ah is the parent organi-zation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), a militia that the U.S. State Depart-ment added to its list of banned terrorist organizations this past January. Founded in 1994, the Lashkar is based in Pakistan but active in Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir. Its religious center is the 200-acre Markaz complex in Pakistan`s Punjab province, but its training camps are in Pakistani-held Azad Kashmir. Its mujahideen (holy warriors) are mostly Punjabi Pakistanis, and until recently it also drew heavily on the radical fringe of Britain`s Muslim diaspora, mostly of Pakistani origin, who provided it with funds and foot soldiers. After an attack on New Delhi`s historic Red Fort in December 2000, which the Lashkar boasts of on its website, Britain banned the group in February 2001. Since then, the supply of British Muslim foot soldiers has trailed off, though recent reports suggest that as much as $3 million a year still flows from Britain into the coffers of the Lashkar and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Mohammed`s Troops).

*Radha Kumar is a senior fellow and director of the Program on Ethnic Conflict and Peace Processes at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

Breaking News: Suicide Bomb in Karachi Cover story

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article

A state of war

BY TREVOR FISHLOCK

The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?

Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.

Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.

In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.

It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.

Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.

The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.

Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.

Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.

The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.

At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.

Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.

India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.

India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.

Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.

Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.

Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.

Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.

The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.

Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.

In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.

Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.

It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.

It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.

In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.

People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.

Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.

Breaking News: Suicide Bomb in Karachi Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda

By DEXTER FILKINS

New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 — Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today.

The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country`s remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.

They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al Qaeda, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

One man is believed by Pakistani officials to be an associate of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man detained last month on the suspicion that he was trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb intended for detonation in an American city.

He goes by the name Ahmed Muhammad, which Pakistani officials say they believe is a false name, as well as Benjamin. It was unclear whether Benjamin was used as a first or a last name.

Pakistani officials said several of those detained, including Mr. Muhammad, claimed to be American citizens. But the officials refused to verify the nationalities of any of the detainees for fear of what one called the ``legal implications`` that could impede the interrogations.

Mr. Muhammad, a Pakistani official said, was in Pakistani custody and being interrogated by the F.B.I.

Senior government officials in Washington said they had not yet confirmed that the men being held in Pakistan are American citizens. They also said they had not yet independently determined whether the men are connected to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. The American officials also said they had not established a connection between Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Padilla.

Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.

They said some of those detained appear to be Westerners who have been drawn to militant Islam. Pakistani officials said today that they believed that an American citizen who had converted to Islam had been killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir in 1998.

They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.

John Walker Lindh, the American charged with fighting alongside the Taliban, is believed to have attended Mr. Iltimas`s religious school, and Pakistani officials say Richard C. Reid, a British subject and suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in December for trying to blow up a passenger jet with a bomb in his shoe, may also have attended the school.

Mr. Iltimas was taken into custody last month during an American-Pakistani operation in the area, and was released the next day.

Taken together, the arrests of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Lindh, Mr. Reid and others appears to offer a glimpse into a world of alienated Western men who apparently dropped out of society and tried to find fulfillment by converting to Islam and fighting for its more radical causes.

One Pakistani official said some of the detained men believed to be Americans may have converted to Islam while serving time in prison in the United States.

Mr. Padilla, who was raised a Roman Catholic and who had a criminal record, converted to Islam when he married a Muslim woman of Middle Eastern descent. Mr. Reid converted to Islam while serving time in prison.

A Pakistani official said his government was looking into the possibility that Mr. Reid and Mr. Padilla were associates during the time officials say they were in Al Qaeda.

Pakistani officials said five other men believed to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern origin were detained in France today on suspicion of being linked to Mr. Reid.

The officials also said today that they had detained five more people here who are believed to be Pakistani citizens and associates of Mr. Padilla. At least some of those detained are believed to have knowledge of Mr. Padilla`s activities in recent months.

The Pakistani officials said they were also searching for a group of women and children who are believed to have stayed in the same Al Qaeda hideout used by Mr. Padilla and Abu Zubaydeh, the senior Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan on March 27. American law enforcement officials say Mr. Zubaydeh formed a close association with Mr. Padilla. The women and children are believed to be family members of a senior Qaeda member, possibly but not necessarily those of Mr. Zubaydeh.

The Qaeda hideout where Mr. Padilla and Mr. Zubaydeh were alleged to have spent time together is in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province near the Afghan border. It was some time after that association began that Mr. Zubaydeh was arrested and Mr. Padilla allegedly traveled to Karachi, Switzerland and then the United States with his plans to develop the radiation bomb.

To date, Americans have been detained on suspicion of fighting with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda as part of the Afghan conflict. Today, Pakistani officials said they had confirmed that an American convert to Islam was killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir. The officials said they confirmed the man`s death after seeing a story about him in a magazine called ``Blow of the Believer,`` published by the Army of Muhammad, a Pakistan-based group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The story did not identify the man by name.

The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani officials said that after the story appeared, they contacted members of the guerrilla group and were satisfied that the account was accurate. The Pakistani officials said the American man was killed during an operation with Lashkar-e-Taiba, another guerrilla group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The group has been outlawed in Pakistan.

The article is entitled ``The story of an American Shaheed,`` using the Arabic word to describe someone who dies in the act of defending Islam against nonbelievers. The magazine said the man, whose Muslim name was Abu Adam Jibreel al Amrikeeas, joined the Kashmiri movement as a 19-year-old in 1997 and was killed in the fall of 1998 during an attack on an Indian Army base.

The article said Mr. Adam was ``born into a considerably wealthy family,`` and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended the Ebeneezer Baptist Church as a child. Much like Mr. Lindh, who has been described as a precocious young man who explored different religious faiths, Mr. Adam is said to have read deeply about various religions, including Judaism and Buddhism, before finally deciding on Islam.

Breaking News: Suicide Bomb in Karachi August 1914 in Pakistan

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Nuclear war isn`t about to erupt here. I can say that baldly because if it does, then I`ll be vaporized and won`t have to eat my words.

But while Don Rumsfeld`s relentless squinting at leaders here and in New Delhi may help stave off war for now, it still threatens just down the road. And that threat makes Pakistan an eerie place, with the flavor of the languid European summer of 1914.

Warhead-rattling resonates in every dusty alley I`ve prowled in northern Pakistan, along with shrugs at the risks. As a doctor told me cheerfully (she hid behind a black veil with only a slit to reveal her eyes and a bit of nasal cleavage): ``I`m not worried about war, because life and death are decided by Allah.``

Everybody here is behaving irresponsibly. Both India and Pakistan are cavalierly playing with nuclear fire and brutalizing the Kashmiris they claim to be championing, while the Bush administration intervenes tardily to defuse crises rather than taking the initiative to prevent them from occurring in the first place. If a new August 1914 is to be definitively averted, President Bush must show continuing interest in the region when it is hot and also when it is not. But judging from his lack of engagement in countries not in the headlines, I wouldn`t bet that he will.

The next crisis will come with any new big terror attacks in Kashmir. Even if infiltration from Pakistan is halted, there are 2,500 militants already in Indian Kashmir. When they strike, the pressure within India to whack Pakistan will be enormous.

``The Indian Air Force and the Army are raring to have a go, and only political authority is holding them back,`` said Sumit Ganguly, author of the aptly titled ``Unending Conflict,`` an excellent new book on India-Pakistan relations and the three wars between them since independence.

Hamid Gul, a rabble-rousing former lieutenant general and head of Pakistan`s intelligence agency, says that the moment India strikes, Pakistan will call for a jihad against India and invite Muslims from all over the world to sneak into India and wage attacks. He added that Pakistan would also support separatist movements around India and might even bomb India`s high-tech centers.

``If India attacks,`` said General Gul, ``then it`s `Come one, come all, it`s Jihad!` ``

Much of the visible Pakistani society (i.e. males) can be divided between the religious beards and the more secular cheeks, but many beards and cheeks alike seem quite prepared to think what is supposed to be unthinkable. Hamid Nasir Chattha, a prominent politician, noted in a newspaper essay yesterday that Pakistan had spent a fortune acquiring a nuclear capability and suggested that as a result it would be almost a shame not to use it: ``If the use of nuclear is unavoidable for the survival of Pakistan, then it must be used with no hesitation.``

A survey of Pakistani elites published in a recent book, ``Pakistan and the Bomb,`` found that 98 percent believed that Pakistan would be justified in using nuclear weapons ``if India were about to attack Pakistan across the international border.``

The U.S. Naval War College held an India-Pakistan war game not long ago in which each country`s leaders were played by officials from that country. The games began with a terrorist attack, grew into a border war — and then Pakistan covered its retreat by firing four nuclear weapons at pursuing Indian troops. India responded with 12 nuclear warheads. The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency estimated that the result would have been 15 million casualties.

So what can be done?

Many experts agree on what eventual peace in Kashmir will look like: The Line of Control will be turned into an international border between India and Pakistan, and India will grant real autonomy to its Kashmiris. So the Bush administration needs to rouse itself from its diplomatic duff. President Bush has done nothing substantial so far to reduce the risks emanating from any of the four most dangerous places in the world: the Middle East, India/Pakistan, North Korea and (in the longer run) China/Taiwan. Mr. Bush`s aides have quelled crises as they arise, but they have not sought aggressively to make peace in any of these places.

It`s time for the White House to take the initiative and prevent crises instead of just managing them. Appointing a special envoy for peace in Kashmir would be a good place to start.

New York Times

Dissing Ideologies Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda

By DEXTER FILKINS

New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 — Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today.

The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country`s remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.

They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al Qaeda, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

One man is believed by Pakistani officials to be an associate of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man detained last month on the suspicion that he was trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb intended for detonation in an American city.

He goes by the name Ahmed Muhammad, which Pakistani officials say they believe is a false name, as well as Benjamin. It was unclear whether Benjamin was used as a first or a last name.

Pakistani officials said several of those detained, including Mr. Muhammad, claimed to be American citizens. But the officials refused to verify the nationalities of any of the detainees for fear of what one called the ``legal implications`` that could impede the interrogations.

Mr. Muhammad, a Pakistani official said, was in Pakistani custody and being interrogated by the F.B.I.

Senior government officials in Washington said they had not yet confirmed that the men being held in Pakistan are American citizens. They also said they had not yet independently determined whether the men are connected to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. The American officials also said they had not established a connection between Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Padilla.

Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.

They said some of those detained appear to be Westerners who have been drawn to militant Islam. Pakistani officials said today that they believed that an American citizen who had converted to Islam had been killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir in 1998.

They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.

John Walker Lindh, the American charged with fighting alongside the Taliban, is believed to have attended Mr. Iltimas`s religious school, and Pakistani officials say Richard C. Reid, a British subject and suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in December for trying to blow up a passenger jet with a bomb in his shoe, may also have attended the school.

Mr. Iltimas was taken into custody last month during an American-Pakistani operation in the area, and was released the next day.

Taken together, the arrests of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Lindh, Mr. Reid and others appears to offer a glimpse into a world of alienated Western men who apparently dropped out of society and tried to find fulfillment by converting to Islam and fighting for its more radical causes.

One Pakistani official said some of the detained men believed to be Americans may have converted to Islam while serving time in prison in the United States.

Mr. Padilla, who was raised a Roman Catholic and who had a criminal record, converted to Islam when he married a Muslim woman of Middle Eastern descent. Mr. Reid converted to Islam while serving time in prison.

A Pakistani official said his government was looking into the possibility that Mr. Reid and Mr. Padilla were associates during the time officials say they were in Al Qaeda.

Pakistani officials said five other men believed to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern origin were detained in France today on suspicion of being linked to Mr. Reid.

The officials also said today that they had detained five more people here who are believed to be Pakistani citizens and associates of Mr. Padilla. At least some of those detained are believed to have knowledge of Mr. Padilla`s activities in recent months.

The Pakistani officials said they were also searching for a group of women and children who are believed to have stayed in the same Al Qaeda hideout used by Mr. Padilla and Abu Zubaydeh, the senior Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan on March 27. American law enforcement officials say Mr. Zubaydeh formed a close association with Mr. Padilla. The women and children are believed to be family members of a senior Qaeda member, possibly but not necessarily those of Mr. Zubaydeh.

The Qaeda hideout where Mr. Padilla and Mr. Zubaydeh were alleged to have spent time together is in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province near the Afghan border. It was some time after that association began that Mr. Zubaydeh was arrested and Mr. Padilla allegedly traveled to Karachi, Switzerland and then the United States with his plans to develop the radiation bomb.

To date, Americans have been detained on suspicion of fighting with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda as part of the Afghan conflict. Today, Pakistani officials said they had confirmed that an American convert to Islam was killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir. The officials said they confirmed the man`s death after seeing a story about him in a magazine called ``Blow of the Believer,`` published by the Army of Muhammad, a Pakistan-based group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The story did not identify the man by name.

The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani officials said that after the story appeared, they contacted members of the guerrilla group and were satisfied that the account was accurate. The Pakistani officials said the American man was killed during an operation with Lashkar-e-Taiba, another guerrilla group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The group has been outlawed in Pakistan.

The article is entitled ``The story of an American Shaheed,`` using the Arabic word to describe someone who dies in the act of defending Islam against nonbelievers. The magazine said the man, whose Muslim name was Abu Adam Jibreel al Amrikeeas, joined the Kashmiri movement as a 19-year-old in 1997 and was killed in the fall of 1998 during an attack on an Indian Army base.

The article said Mr. Adam was ``born into a considerably wealthy family,`` and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended the Ebeneezer Baptist Church as a child. Much like Mr. Lindh, who has been described as a precocious young man who explored different religious faiths, Mr. Adam is said to have read deeply about various religions, including Judaism and Buddhism, before finally deciding on Islam.

The Perfect Murder Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda

By DEXTER FILKINS

New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 — Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today.

The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country`s remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.

They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al Qaeda, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

One man is believed by Pakistani officials to be an associate of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man detained last month on the suspicion that he was trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb intended for detonation in an American city.

He goes by the name Ahmed Muhammad, which Pakistani officials say they believe is a false name, as well as Benjamin. It was unclear whether Benjamin was used as a first or a last name.

Pakistani officials said several of those detained, including Mr. Muhammad, claimed to be American citizens. But the officials refused to verify the nationalities of any of the detainees for fear of what one called the ``legal implications`` that could impede the interrogations.

Mr. Muhammad, a Pakistani official said, was in Pakistani custody and being interrogated by the F.B.I.

Senior government officials in Washington said they had not yet confirmed that the men being held in Pakistan are American citizens. They also said they had not yet independently determined whether the men are connected to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. The American officials also said they had not established a connection between Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Padilla.

Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.

They said some of those detained appear to be Westerners who have been drawn to militant Islam. Pakistani officials said today that they believed that an American citizen who had converted to Islam had been killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir in 1998.

They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.

John Walker Lindh, the American charged with fighting alongside the Taliban, is believed to have attended Mr. Iltimas`s religious school, and Pakistani officials say Richard C. Reid, a British subject and suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in December for trying to blow up a passenger jet with a bomb in his shoe, may also have attended the school.

Mr. Iltimas was taken into custody last month during an American-Pakistani operation in the area, and was released the next day.

Taken together, the arrests of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Lindh, Mr. Reid and others appears to offer a glimpse into a world of alienated Western men who apparently dropped out of society and tried to find fulfillment by converting to Islam and fighting for its more radical causes.

One Pakistani official said some of the detained men believed to be Americans may have converted to Islam while serving time in prison in the United States.

Mr. Padilla, who was raised a Roman Catholic and who had a criminal record, converted to Islam when he married a Muslim woman of Middle Eastern descent. Mr. Reid converted to Islam while serving time in prison.

A Pakistani official said his government was looking into the possibility that Mr. Reid and Mr. Padilla were associates during the time officials say they were in Al Qaeda.

Pakistani officials said five other men believed to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern origin were detained in France today on suspicion of being linked to Mr. Reid.

The officials also said today that they had detained five more people here who are believed to be Pakistani citizens and associates of Mr. Padilla. At least some of those detained are believed to have knowledge of Mr. Padilla`s activities in recent months.

The Pakistani officials said they were also searching for a group of women and children who are believed to have stayed in the same Al Qaeda hideout used by Mr. Padilla and Abu Zubaydeh, the senior Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan on March 27. American law enforcement officials say Mr. Zubaydeh formed a close association with Mr. Padilla. The women and children are believed to be family members of a senior Qaeda member, possibly but not necessarily those of Mr. Zubaydeh.

The Qaeda hideout where Mr. Padilla and Mr. Zubaydeh were alleged to have spent time together is in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province near the Afghan border. It was some time after that association began that Mr. Zubaydeh was arrested and Mr. Padilla allegedly traveled to Karachi, Switzerland and then the United States with his plans to develop the radiation bomb.

To date, Americans have been detained on suspicion of fighting with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda as part of the Afghan conflict. Today, Pakistani officials said they had confirmed that an American convert to Islam was killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir. The officials said they confirmed the man`s death after seeing a story about him in a magazine called ``Blow of the Believer,`` published by the Army of Muhammad, a Pakistan-based group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The story did not identify the man by name.

The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani officials said that after the story appeared, they contacted members of the guerrilla group and were satisfied that the account was accurate. The Pakistani officials said the American man was killed during an operation with Lashkar-e-Taiba, another guerrilla group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The group has been outlawed in Pakistan.

The article is entitled ``The story of an American Shaheed,`` using the Arabic word to describe someone who dies in the act of defending Islam against nonbelievers. The magazine said the man, whose Muslim name was Abu Adam Jibreel al Amrikeeas, joined the Kashmiri movement as a 19-year-old in 1997 and was killed in the fall of 1998 during an attack on an Indian Army base.

The article said Mr. Adam was ``born into a considerably wealthy family,`` and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended the Ebeneezer Baptist Church as a child. Much like Mr. Lindh, who has been described as a precocious young man who explored different religious faiths, Mr. Adam is said to have read deeply about various religions, including Judaism and Buddhism, before finally deciding on Islam.

Lighting The Nuclear Fire Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda

By DEXTER FILKINS

New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 — Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today.

The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country`s remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.

They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al Qaeda, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.

One man is believed by Pakistani officials to be an associate of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man detained last month on the suspicion that he was trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb intended for detonation in an American city.

He goes by the name Ahmed Muhammad, which Pakistani officials say they believe is a false name, as well as Benjamin. It was unclear whether Benjamin was used as a first or a last name.

Pakistani officials said several of those detained, including Mr. Muhammad, claimed to be American citizens. But the officials refused to verify the nationalities of any of the detainees for fear of what one called the ``legal implications`` that could impede the interrogations.

Mr. Muhammad, a Pakistani official said, was in Pakistani custody and being interrogated by the F.B.I.

Senior government officials in Washington said they had not yet confirmed that the men being held in Pakistan are American citizens. They also said they had not yet independently determined whether the men are connected to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. The American officials also said they had not established a connection between Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Padilla.

Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.

They said some of those detained appear to be Westerners who have been drawn to militant Islam. Pakistani officials said today that they believed that an American citizen who had converted to Islam had been killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir in 1998.

They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.

John Walker Lindh, the American charged with fighting alongside the Taliban, is believed to have attended Mr. Iltimas`s religious school, and Pakistani officials say Richard C. Reid, a British subject and suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in December for trying to blow up a passenger jet with a bomb in his shoe, may also have attended the school.

Mr. Iltimas was taken into custody last month during an American-Pakistani operation in the area, and was released the next day.

Taken together, the arrests of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Lindh, Mr. Reid and others appears to offer a glimpse into a world of alienated Western men who apparently dropped out of society and tried to find fulfillment by converting to Islam and fighting for its more radical causes.

One Pakistani official said some of the detained men believed to be Americans may have converted to Islam while serving time in prison in the United States.

Mr. Padilla, who was raised a Roman Catholic and who had a criminal record, converted to Islam when he married a Muslim woman of Middle Eastern descent. Mr. Reid converted to Islam while serving time in prison.

A Pakistani official said his government was looking into the possibility that Mr. Reid and Mr. Padilla were associates during the time officials say they were in Al Qaeda.

Pakistani officials said five other men believed to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern origin were detained in France today on suspicion of being linked to Mr. Reid.

The officials also said today that they had detained five more people here who are believed to be Pakistani citizens and associates of Mr. Padilla. At least some of those detained are believed to have knowledge of Mr. Padilla`s activities in recent months.

The Pakistani officials said they were also searching for a group of women and children who are believed to have stayed in the same Al Qaeda hideout used by Mr. Padilla and Abu Zubaydeh, the senior Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan on March 27. American law enforcement officials say Mr. Zubaydeh formed a close association with Mr. Padilla. The women and children are believed to be family members of a senior Qaeda member, possibly but not necessarily those of Mr. Zubaydeh.

The Qaeda hideout where Mr. Padilla and Mr. Zubaydeh were alleged to have spent time together is in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province near the Afghan border. It was some time after that association began that Mr. Zubaydeh was arrested and Mr. Padilla allegedly traveled to Karachi, Switzerland and then the United States with his plans to develop the radiation bomb.

To date, Americans have been detained on suspicion of fighting with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda as part of the Afghan conflict. Today, Pakistani officials said they had confirmed that an American convert to Islam was killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir. The officials said they confirmed the man`s death after seeing a story about him in a magazine called ``Blow of the Believer,`` published by the Army of Muhammad, a Pakistan-based group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The story did not identify the man by name.

The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani officials said that after the story appeared, they contacted members of the guerrilla group and were satisfied that the account was accurate. The Pakistani officials said the American man was killed during an operation with Lashkar-e-Taiba, another guerrilla group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The group has been outlawed in Pakistan.

The article is entitled ``The story of an American Shaheed,`` using the Arabic word to describe someone who dies in the act of defending Islam against nonbelievers. The magazine said the man, whose Muslim name was Abu Adam Jibreel al Amrikeeas, joined the Kashmiri movement as a 19-year-old in 1997 and was killed in the fall of 1998 during an attack on an Indian Army base.

The article said Mr. Adam was ``born into a considerably wealthy family,`` and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended the Ebeneezer Baptist Church as a child. Much like Mr. Lindh, who has been described as a precocious young man who explored different religious faiths, Mr. Adam is said to have read deeply about various religions, including Judaism and Buddhism, before finally deciding on Islam.

Dissing Ideologies Pakistani Crackdown Gives Rise to Doubts

South Asia: Curbing Islamic extremism is widely seen as key to easing tensions over Kashmir. But to some, it borders on betrayal.



By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

MANSEHRA, Pakistan -- The first hint of a government crackdown against Muslim extremist groups in this dusty market town came in January, local businessman Jamil Ahmed recalls.

That`s when police told him to stop collecting money for the militant Al Badr organization, which for nearly a decade ran a training camp in the nearby hills. Locals say it was one of eight such camps in the Mansehra area that turned young Pakistani volunteers into Islamic warriors--known as jihadis--and then launched them across the frontier to fight in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir.





By March, jihadi recruiting posters that had lined the streets of this town in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province for years quietly came down, as did billboards proclaiming Indian atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris. Then, Ahmed and other residents say, the camps themselves were closed about two months ago and those who ran them vanished. For political moderates here and in India, that`s good news.

Curtailing the jihadi groups is widely viewed as a vital first step in scaling back a crisis that has led India and Pakistan to mass about 1 million troops on their border and raised the frightening prospect of the world`s first war between two nuclear-armed states.

Pakistani officials say the crackdown in Mansehra is part of a broader move against Islamic militant groups that began tentatively this year and appears to have gradually gained greater purpose. Leaders of many of the militant groups were detained last month, according to authorities.

Today, there is little visible evidence in Mansehra of either the jihadis or their cause.

After initial skepticism, India appears to have accepted that Pakistan has stopped militants from crossing the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but the extent to which their activities inside Pakistan have been halted remains unclear. India, for example, says that at least three training camps still operate in the area around Mansehra--a charge that Pakistan rejects.

``I can say with authority there are no training camps operating now,`` declared army Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is leading Pakistan`s efforts to shut down the extremist groups.

Locals, however, refused to take a foreign reporter to visit the camp locations, saying they were afraid of possible reprisals from ``the agencies``--a reference to Pakistani intelligence organizations, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, that for years have been the jihadis` main backers within the country`s military establishment.

The government`s follow-up on the initial arrests of suspected militant group members has also raised questions about the crackdown`s effectiveness. For example, 21 militants arrested here in April under an anti-terrorism law were set free recently for lack of evidence.

For President Pervez Musharraf, shutting off support for the jihadi groups means stepping back from a decade-old strategy: using religiously motivated fighters to harass India with a persistent, but effective, low-grade guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.

The mountainous, spectacularly beautiful territory, claimed by India and Pakistan, has been the object of two of their three wars in the last 55 years. After suffering defeat twice in conventional conflicts at the hands of superior Indian forces in Kashmir, Pakistan embraced the jihadis in the late 1980s.

Although government support for the jihadis has always been denied publicly, the groups for years recruited openly, published magazines, solicited donations and operated sophisticated training camps.

Two years ago, Al Badr leader Bakht Zameen even brought a group of Pakistani reporters based in Peshawar to the group`s camp near here to watch a colorful graduation ceremony for recruits who had completed basic training before heading for Kashmir.

``The level of discipline was amazing,`` said one witness who declined to be identified. ``It was like watching an army.``

A 22-year-old volunteer jihadi from Peshawar who used the nom de guerre Uqab said in an interview this week that his main training camp instructors were retired Pakistani army members. He went through a camp run by the Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen group two years ago near Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir.

Uqab said the camp offered three types of courses, including three-week basic training and a special forces session that taught recruits how to use a variety of weapons, including hand grenades and rocket launchers. The third course lasted six months and was for suicide bombers.

``Very few people are selected for this course,`` Uqab said.

In recent months, actions attributed to the jihadi groups, including a daylight attack in December on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, have exacerbated political tensions between the two nations.

For Musharraf, moving against the Islamic militants carries considerable domestic risks in a country where the struggle to break India`s grip over Kashmir is imbibed with mother`s milk.

Pakistan`s vociferous fundamentalist Islamic minority already resents Musharraf`s decision to abandon Afghanistan`s Taliban government and side with America and the West in the war against international terrorism after Sept. 11. Some now see Musharraf`s clampdown on the Kashmir militants as dangerously close to betrayal.

``People aren`t happy about this,`` said Junus Khattak, a local leader of Pakistan`s largest religious-based party, Jamaat-i-Islami. ``Jihadi groups should be allowed to operate [in Kashmir]. Their fight is on the side of good, on the side of the oppressed.``

But the biggest danger for Musharraf as he moves forward might not be from an angry populace but from disgruntled elements within his ruling establishment, including the ISI and senior ranks of the army.

Some officers in both institutions see the guerrilla campaign not just as an effective and low-cost response to India`s huge military superiority but also as part of a far larger global struggle to end the oppression of Muslims. As such, these officers have developed strong loyalties to the militants.

``Pakistan had success diplomatically after Sept. 11 when it became the centerpiece of an anti-terror campaign, but militarily, it has suffered a huge setback in Kashmir,`` said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a regional specialist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital. ``The question now is if this really leads to a de-escalation and genuine dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the issue.``

International diplomatic efforts, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s visit to the region this week, are expected to dwell on measures to verify the frontier`s stability and to coax both sides to pull back military forces and, eventually, begin talks.

Many Pakistanis worry that Musharraf has conceded too much. With the jihadis cut off from Indian-controlled areas, they fear, India`s security forces are likely to move more freely against indigenous Kashmiri separatist groups. Any such action from New Delhi would put pressure on Musharraf to unleash the jihadi groups again, especially if there is no progress toward negotiations.

``If he gets nothing [from India], he`ll ask the militants to lie low and consider his options,`` Rais said. ``He`ll keep the structures [of the militant groups] intact.``

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041298jun12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld

I am Ashamed and I Apologize INDIAN EXPRESS

BYWORDS



A word for every occasion



Hindutva’s votaries deploy a distinct vocabulary that leaves others floundering





Mukul Dube



In the world of Hindustani music, a musician speaking of a guru always raises a hand to pinch an earlobe. This is a mark of something between respect and worship.

So hallowed is the name of the teacher that it may not be uttered without taking this precaution. When a Muslim takes the name of Mohammed the Prophet, it is necessary to utter ‘on whom be peace’. The name alone may not be spoken, as that would amount to being disrespectful.

The votaries of Hindutva react in a fashion by coming up with well-rehearsed responses. Their handlers have done their work well. One cannot speak of the infinitely more serious Gujarat events of 2002 without first making a dozen bows in the direction of Godhra.

The gesture will be devoid of meaning, true, it will be just a ritual; but it has been made essential by the howls that arise every time the Gujarat carnage is recalled: ‘‘But what about Godhra?’’

It appears that to the Hindutva mind (though many would argue that that phrase is a contradiction in terms), any attempt to describe the horrors of Gujarat is automatically a defence of what was done in Godhra.

In the same way, no one may speak of Gujarat without being asked, in a practised routine, why there was no condemnation of the forces that forced thousands of innocent Hindus to flee Kashmir?

The innocence of those Hindus is neatly twisted to suggest that the Muslims who were burnt, raped and cut up in Gujarat were essentially wicked beings.

Hindutva holds that any critic of anything in the present time must preface his remarks with an intoned litany of all the evils that have befallen humankind since the beginning of time.

‘Pseudo-secularist’ is the term of opprobrium applied again as an automatic action, by the intellectuals of Hindutva to any Hindu who is dishonest enough intellectually to grant that other religions have a right to exist.

To my knowledge no one has so far explained the prefix ‘pseudo’ in the phrase. Are we to take it that the only ‘real’ secularists are the Hindutva types because although they recognise no religion other than Hinduism, they are willing to tolerate all manner of subdivisions within that paradoxically unitary whole?

Another term which comes out like a gunshot from every Hindutva votary is ‘appeasement’. The Hindu Rashtra ideology holds that non-Hindus, if they must be tolerated, can be tolerated only as sub-human non-citizens with no rights whatsoever. Anyone who is willing to grant them any rights is therefore an ‘appeaser’. Just what is this appeasement? The dictionary definition is not helpful because the word has a distinctly positive connotation.

Can there be any harm in making peace, in making friends, in mollifying, in causing someone to be friendly in return? For Hindutva, clearly there is.

As terms of abuse, Hindutva uses words whose meanings it has not troubled to learn and to which it has therefore given meanings of its own which leave the outsider floundering. This is of a piece with its attempts to replace established bodies of knowledge with its own collections of indefensible half-baked ‘wisdom’ gleaned from dubious and mostly bogus sources.

The Perfect Murder Pakistani Crackdown Gives Rise to Doubts

South Asia: Curbing Islamic extremism is widely seen as key to easing tensions over Kashmir. But to some, it borders on betrayal.



By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

MANSEHRA, Pakistan -- The first hint of a government crackdown against Muslim extremist groups in this dusty market town came in January, local businessman Jamil Ahmed recalls.

That`s when police told him to stop collecting money for the militant Al Badr organization, which for nearly a decade ran a training camp in the nearby hills. Locals say it was one of eight such camps in the Mansehra area that turned young Pakistani volunteers into Islamic warriors--known as jihadis--and then launched them across the frontier to fight in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir.





By March, jihadi recruiting posters that had lined the streets of this town in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province for years quietly came down, as did billboards proclaiming Indian atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris. Then, Ahmed and other residents say, the camps themselves were closed about two months ago and those who ran them vanished. For political moderates here and in India, that`s good news.

Curtailing the jihadi groups is widely viewed as a vital first step in scaling back a crisis that has led India and Pakistan to mass about 1 million troops on their border and raised the frightening prospect of the world`s first war between two nuclear-armed states.

Pakistani officials say the crackdown in Mansehra is part of a broader move against Islamic militant groups that began tentatively this year and appears to have gradually gained greater purpose. Leaders of many of the militant groups were detained last month, according to authorities.

Today, there is little visible evidence in Mansehra of either the jihadis or their cause.

After initial skepticism, India appears to have accepted that Pakistan has stopped militants from crossing the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but the extent to which their activities inside Pakistan have been halted remains unclear. India, for example, says that at least three training camps still operate in the area around Mansehra--a charge that Pakistan rejects.

``I can say with authority there are no training camps operating now,`` declared army Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is leading Pakistan`s efforts to shut down the extremist groups.

Locals, however, refused to take a foreign reporter to visit the camp locations, saying they were afraid of possible reprisals from ``the agencies``--a reference to Pakistani intelligence organizations, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, that for years have been the jihadis` main backers within the country`s military establishment.

The government`s follow-up on the initial arrests of suspected militant group members has also raised questions about the crackdown`s effectiveness. For example, 21 militants arrested here in April under an anti-terrorism law were set free recently for lack of evidence.

For President Pervez Musharraf, shutting off support for the jihadi groups means stepping back from a decade-old strategy: using religiously motivated fighters to harass India with a persistent, but effective, low-grade guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.

The mountainous, spectacularly beautiful territory, claimed by India and Pakistan, has been the object of two of their three wars in the last 55 years. After suffering defeat twice in conventional conflicts at the hands of superior Indian forces in Kashmir, Pakistan embraced the jihadis in the late 1980s.

Although government support for the jihadis has always been denied publicly, the groups for years recruited openly, published magazines, solicited donations and operated sophisticated training camps.

Two years ago, Al Badr leader Bakht Zameen even brought a group of Pakistani reporters based in Peshawar to the group`s camp near here to watch a colorful graduation ceremony for recruits who had completed basic training before heading for Kashmir.

``The level of discipline was amazing,`` said one witness who declined to be identified. ``It was like watching an army.``

A 22-year-old volunteer jihadi from Peshawar who used the nom de guerre Uqab said in an interview this week that his main training camp instructors were retired Pakistani army members. He went through a camp run by the Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen group two years ago near Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir.

Uqab said the camp offered three types of courses, including three-week basic training and a special forces session that taught recruits how to use a variety of weapons, including hand grenades and rocket launchers. The third course lasted six months and was for suicide bombers.

``Very few people are selected for this course,`` Uqab said.

In recent months, actions attributed to the jihadi groups, including a daylight attack in December on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, have exacerbated political tensions between the two nations.

For Musharraf, moving against the Islamic militants carries considerable domestic risks in a country where the struggle to break India`s grip over Kashmir is imbibed with mother`s milk.

Pakistan`s vociferous fundamentalist Islamic minority already resents Musharraf`s decision to abandon Afghanistan`s Taliban government and side with America and the West in the war against international terrorism after Sept. 11. Some now see Musharraf`s clampdown on the Kashmir militants as dangerously close to betrayal.

``People aren`t happy about this,`` said Junus Khattak, a local leader of Pakistan`s largest religious-based party, Jamaat-i-Islami. ``Jihadi groups should be allowed to operate [in Kashmir]. Their fight is on the side of good, on the side of the oppressed.``

But the biggest danger for Musharraf as he moves forward might not be from an angry populace but from disgruntled elements within his ruling establishment, including the ISI and senior ranks of the army.

Some officers in both institutions see the guerrilla campaign not just as an effective and low-cost response to India`s huge military superiority but also as part of a far larger global struggle to end the oppression of Muslims. As such, these officers have developed strong loyalties to the militants.

``Pakistan had success diplomatically after Sept. 11 when it became the centerpiece of an anti-terror campaign, but militarily, it has suffered a huge setback in Kashmir,`` said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a regional specialist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital. ``The question now is if this really leads to a de-escalation and genuine dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the issue.``

International diplomatic efforts, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s visit to the region this week, are expected to dwell on measures to verify the frontier`s stability and to coax both sides to pull back military forces and, eventually, begin talks.

Many Pakistanis worry that Musharraf has conceded too much. With the jihadis cut off from Indian-controlled areas, they fear, India`s security forces are likely to move more freely against indigenous Kashmiri separatist groups. Any such action from New Delhi would put pressure on Musharraf to unleash the jihadi groups again, especially if there is no progress toward negotiations.

``If he gets nothing [from India], he`ll ask the militants to lie low and consider his options,`` Rais said. ``He`ll keep the structures [of the militant groups] intact.``

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041298jun12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld

Lighting The Nuclear Fire Pakistani Crackdown Gives Rise to Doubts

South Asia: Curbing Islamic extremism is widely seen as key to easing tensions over Kashmir. But to some, it borders on betrayal.



By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

MANSEHRA, Pakistan -- The first hint of a government crackdown against Muslim extremist groups in this dusty market town came in January, local businessman Jamil Ahmed recalls.

That`s when police told him to stop collecting money for the militant Al Badr organization, which for nearly a decade ran a training camp in the nearby hills. Locals say it was one of eight such camps in the Mansehra area that turned young Pakistani volunteers into Islamic warriors--known as jihadis--and then launched them across the frontier to fight in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir.





By March, jihadi recruiting posters that had lined the streets of this town in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province for years quietly came down, as did billboards proclaiming Indian atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris. Then, Ahmed and other residents say, the camps themselves were closed about two months ago and those who ran them vanished. For political moderates here and in India, that`s good news.

Curtailing the jihadi groups is widely viewed as a vital first step in scaling back a crisis that has led India and Pakistan to mass about 1 million troops on their border and raised the frightening prospect of the world`s first war between two nuclear-armed states.

Pakistani officials say the crackdown in Mansehra is part of a broader move against Islamic militant groups that began tentatively this year and appears to have gradually gained greater purpose. Leaders of many of the militant groups were detained last month, according to authorities.

Today, there is little visible evidence in Mansehra of either the jihadis or their cause.

After initial skepticism, India appears to have accepted that Pakistan has stopped militants from crossing the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but the extent to which their activities inside Pakistan have been halted remains unclear. India, for example, says that at least three training camps still operate in the area around Mansehra--a charge that Pakistan rejects.

``I can say with authority there are no training camps operating now,`` declared army Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is leading Pakistan`s efforts to shut down the extremist groups.

Locals, however, refused to take a foreign reporter to visit the camp locations, saying they were afraid of possible reprisals from ``the agencies``--a reference to Pakistani intelligence organizations, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, that for years have been the jihadis` main backers within the country`s military establishment.

The government`s follow-up on the initial arrests of suspected militant group members has also raised questions about the crackdown`s effectiveness. For example, 21 militants arrested here in April under an anti-terrorism law were set free recently for lack of evidence.

For President Pervez Musharraf, shutting off support for the jihadi groups means stepping back from a decade-old strategy: using religiously motivated fighters to harass India with a persistent, but effective, low-grade guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.

The mountainous, spectacularly beautiful territory, claimed by India and Pakistan, has been the object of two of their three wars in the last 55 years. After suffering defeat twice in conventional conflicts at the hands of superior Indian forces in Kashmir, Pakistan embraced the jihadis in the late 1980s.

Although government support for the jihadis has always been denied publicly, the groups for years recruited openly, published magazines, solicited donations and operated sophisticated training camps.

Two years ago, Al Badr leader Bakht Zameen even brought a group of Pakistani reporters based in Peshawar to the group`s camp near here to watch a colorful graduation ceremony for recruits who had completed basic training before heading for Kashmir.

``The level of discipline was amazing,`` said one witness who declined to be identified. ``It was like watching an army.``

A 22-year-old volunteer jihadi from Peshawar who used the nom de guerre Uqab said in an interview this week that his main training camp instructors were retired Pakistani army members. He went through a camp run by the Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen group two years ago near Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir.

Uqab said the camp offered three types of courses, including three-week basic training and a special forces session that taught recruits how to use a variety of weapons, including hand grenades and rocket launchers. The third course lasted six months and was for suicide bombers.

``Very few people are selected for this course,`` Uqab said.

In recent months, actions attributed to the jihadi groups, including a daylight attack in December on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, have exacerbated political tensions between the two nations.

For Musharraf, moving against the Islamic militants carries considerable domestic risks in a country where the struggle to break India`s grip over Kashmir is imbibed with mother`s milk.

Pakistan`s vociferous fundamentalist Islamic minority already resents Musharraf`s decision to abandon Afghanistan`s Taliban government and side with America and the West in the war against international terrorism after Sept. 11. Some now see Musharraf`s clampdown on the Kashmir militants as dangerously close to betrayal.

``People aren`t happy about this,`` said Junus Khattak, a local leader of Pakistan`s largest religious-based party, Jamaat-i-Islami. ``Jihadi groups should be allowed to operate [in Kashmir]. Their fight is on the side of good, on the side of the oppressed.``

But the biggest danger for Musharraf as he moves forward might not be from an angry populace but from disgruntled elements within his ruling establishment, including the ISI and senior ranks of the army.

Some officers in both institutions see the guerrilla campaign not just as an effective and low-cost response to India`s huge military superiority but also as part of a far larger global struggle to end the oppression of Muslims. As such, these officers have developed strong loyalties to the militants.

``Pakistan had success diplomatically after Sept. 11 when it became the centerpiece of an anti-terror campaign, but militarily, it has suffered a huge setback in Kashmir,`` said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a regional specialist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital. ``The question now is if this really leads to a de-escalation and genuine dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the issue.``

International diplomatic efforts, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s visit to the region this week, are expected to dwell on measures to verify the frontier`s stability and to coax both sides to pull back military forces and, eventually, begin talks.

Many Pakistanis worry that Musharraf has conceded too much. With the jihadis cut off from Indian-controlled areas, they fear, India`s security forces are likely to move more freely against indigenous Kashmiri separatist groups. Any such action from New Delhi would put pressure on Musharraf to unleash the jihadi groups again, especially if there is no progress toward negotiations.

``If he gets nothing [from India], he`ll ask the militants to lie low and consider his options,`` Rais said. ``He`ll keep the structures [of the militant groups] intact.``

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041298jun12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld

Of Violent Birth and Peaceful Death Pakistani Crackdown Gives Rise to Doubts

South Asia: Curbing Islamic extremism is widely seen as key to easing tensions over Kashmir. But to some, it borders on betrayal.



By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

MANSEHRA, Pakistan -- The first hint of a government crackdown against Muslim extremist groups in this dusty market town came in January, local businessman Jamil Ahmed recalls.

That`s when police told him to stop collecting money for the militant Al Badr organization, which for nearly a decade ran a training camp in the nearby hills. Locals say it was one of eight such camps in the Mansehra area that turned young Pakistani volunteers into Islamic warriors--known as jihadis--and then launched them across the frontier to fight in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir.





By March, jihadi recruiting posters that had lined the streets of this town in Pakistan`s Northwest Frontier Province for years quietly came down, as did billboards proclaiming Indian atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Kashmiris. Then, Ahmed and other residents say, the camps themselves were closed about two months ago and those who ran them vanished. For political moderates here and in India, that`s good news.

Curtailing the jihadi groups is widely viewed as a vital first step in scaling back a crisis that has led India and Pakistan to mass about 1 million troops on their border and raised the frightening prospect of the world`s first war between two nuclear-armed states.

Pakistani officials say the crackdown in Mansehra is part of a broader move against Islamic militant groups that began tentatively this year and appears to have gradually gained greater purpose. Leaders of many of the militant groups were detained last month, according to authorities.

Today, there is little visible evidence in Mansehra of either the jihadis or their cause.

After initial skepticism, India appears to have accepted that Pakistan has stopped militants from crossing the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but the extent to which their activities inside Pakistan have been halted remains unclear. India, for example, says that at least three training camps still operate in the area around Mansehra--a charge that Pakistan rejects.

``I can say with authority there are no training camps operating now,`` declared army Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who is leading Pakistan`s efforts to shut down the extremist groups.

Locals, however, refused to take a foreign reporter to visit the camp locations, saying they were afraid of possible reprisals from ``the agencies``--a reference to Pakistani intelligence organizations, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, that for years have been the jihadis` main backers within the country`s military establishment.

The government`s follow-up on the initial arrests of suspected militant group members has also raised questions about the crackdown`s effectiveness. For example, 21 militants arrested here in April under an anti-terrorism law were set free recently for lack of evidence.

For President Pervez Musharraf, shutting off support for the jihadi groups means stepping back from a decade-old strategy: using religiously motivated fighters to harass India with a persistent, but effective, low-grade guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.

The mountainous, spectacularly beautiful territory, claimed by India and Pakistan, has been the object of two of their three wars in the last 55 years. After suffering defeat twice in conventional conflicts at the hands of superior Indian forces in Kashmir, Pakistan embraced the jihadis in the late 1980s.

Although government support for the jihadis has always been denied publicly, the groups for years recruited openly, published magazines, solicited donations and operated sophisticated training camps.

Two years ago, Al Badr leader Bakht Zameen even brought a group of Pakistani reporters based in Peshawar to the group`s camp near here to watch a colorful graduation ceremony for recruits who had completed basic training before heading for Kashmir.

``The level of discipline was amazing,`` said one witness who declined to be identified. ``It was like watching an army.``

A 22-year-old volunteer jihadi from Peshawar who used the nom de guerre Uqab said in an interview this week that his main training camp instructors were retired Pakistani army members. He went through a camp run by the Hezb-ul-Moujahedeen group two years ago near Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-held portion of Kashmir.

Uqab said the camp offered three types of courses, including three-week basic training and a special forces session that taught recruits how to use a variety of weapons, including hand grenades and rocket launchers. The third course lasted six months and was for suicide bombers.

``Very few people are selected for this course,`` Uqab said.

In recent months, actions attributed to the jihadi groups, including a daylight attack in December on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, have exacerbated political tensions between the two nations.

For Musharraf, moving against the Islamic militants carries considerable domestic risks in a country where the struggle to break India`s grip over Kashmir is imbibed with mother`s milk.

Pakistan`s vociferous fundamentalist Islamic minority already resents Musharraf`s decision to abandon Afghanistan`s Taliban government and side with America and the West in the war against international terrorism after Sept. 11. Some now see Musharraf`s clampdown on the Kashmir militants as dangerously close to betrayal.

``People aren`t happy about this,`` said Junus Khattak, a local leader of Pakistan`s largest religious-based party, Jamaat-i-Islami. ``Jihadi groups should be allowed to operate [in Kashmir]. Their fight is on the side of good, on the side of the oppressed.``

But the biggest danger for Musharraf as he moves forward might not be from an angry populace but from disgruntled elements within his ruling establishment, including the ISI and senior ranks of the army.

Some officers in both institutions see the guerrilla campaign not just as an effective and low-cost response to India`s huge military superiority but also as part of a far larger global struggle to end the oppression of Muslims. As such, these officers have developed strong loyalties to the militants.

``Pakistan had success diplomatically after Sept. 11 when it became the centerpiece of an anti-terror campaign, but militarily, it has suffered a huge setback in Kashmir,`` said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a regional specialist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital. ``The question now is if this really leads to a de-escalation and genuine dialogue for a peaceful settlement of the issue.``

International diplomatic efforts, such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld`s visit to the region this week, are expected to dwell on measures to verify the frontier`s stability and to coax both sides to pull back military forces and, eventually, begin talks.

Many Pakistanis worry that Musharraf has conceded too much. With the jihadis cut off from Indian-controlled areas, they fear, India`s security forces are likely to move more freely against indigenous Kashmiri separatist groups. Any such action from New Delhi would put pressure on Musharraf to unleash the jihadi groups again, especially if there is no progress toward negotiations.

``If he gets nothing [from India], he`ll ask the militants to lie low and consider his options,`` Rais said. ``He`ll keep the structures [of the militant groups] intact.``

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000041298jun12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld