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December 24, 2007
Terrorists Having Success In Pakistan
By Muhammad Khurshid
Pakistani security forces have failed in their pursuit against terrorists and Taliban as at the moment they have been getting free hand in killing the innocent people. They have declared their government in Bajaur Agency, tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border, the security forces have been showing dereliction of their duty. They failed in providing security to the people, particularly tribesmen.
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There will be no exaggeration to state that the Pakistani forces have accepted defeat against the terrorists. The terrorists have been killing the people, but still there is debate that these terrorists are criminals or heroes. Pakistani leaders have still been befooling the world. US President Bush has been made a fool of - or he has deliberately been allowing the terrorists to kill people. Most of the tribesmen think the government should initiate decisive action against the terrorists or Taliban.
According to a newspaper comment: the former Interior Minister, Mr Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, was targeted by a suicide bomber again within a span of eight months, leading to a great slaughter of innocent people. It happened on the day of Eidul Azha during the prayer that the erstwhile minister was offering with his family members and the local people in his hometown of Sherpao in Charsadda. The congregation counted a thousand strong devotees out of whom 50 were reported killed while injuries were sustained by a son of Mr Sherpao who himself narrowly escaped. The prayer meeting was firmly guarded and the people who came for namaz were passed through a metal and explosives detector. Nonetheless, the suicide-bomber got inside with 9 kgs of explosives on his body.
Some students of a nearby madrassa were arrested but there is no doubt that Mr Sherpao has been targeted once again because he, as interior minister, spearheaded the government's campaign against terrorism in general and against Talibanisation and Al Qaeda in particular. The bombing was a part of the big spike in attacks in the past six months in which over 600 innocent people have been murdered. The contents of the bomb were found to be typical of the bombs used in the recent past by religious fanatics acting as suicide-bombers for elements operating out of the Tribal Areas which, according to President Pervez Musharraf, could be the headquarters of Al Qaeda. Starting with the Arabs controlled by Al Qaeda, the cult of suicide has caught on in Pakistan. South Waziristan's pro-Al Qaeda warlord Baitullah Mehsud is supposed to have several hundreds of them at his beck and call.
The Tribal Areas are splattered with videocassettes showing beheadings - another Al Qaeda signature - and containing last testaments from the suicide-bombers used to kill official and sectarian targets all over Pakistan. The earliest use of this lethal way of killing came from the jihadi organisations used by the state agencies in Kashmir. Therefore it is impossible to take seriously President Musharraf's observation after the Charsadda bombing that "no Muslims could do the deed". The fact is that not long ago the same organisations that carry out suicide-bombings were not considered non-Muslim. He was himself targeted unsuccessfully by Jaish Muhammad, a darling of the state in Kashmir jihad, and by some personnel of the armed forces considered "true Muslims" by the state. The truth is that, barring a few exceptions, only Muslims carry out suicide-bombing these days, from the recent Al Qaeda bombing in Algeria to the ongoing sectarian mayhem in Iraq.
A couple of months' old statistics about suicide attacks inside Pakistan show that erstwhile jihadi organisations now fighting on the side of Al Qaeda were involved in 27 attacks out of 37. Hafiz Yunis from Dera Ghazi Khan, the sole suicide attacker who has been identified so far, had affiliations with the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine through these jihadi organisations. He blew himself up after an unsuccessful attempt to hit Islamabad airport on February 6 2007. At least ten suicide-bombings have been traced to the Tribal Areas, to the Taliban and to the Uzbeks active there under the auspices of Al Qaeda. Investigations by the law enforcement agencies indicate that suicide-bombers are not crazy individuals but those who make a clear choice about violent action. They are carefully recruited by "minders" who spread around the country looking for potential bombers who are usually teenagers and young men in their early twenties.
A Pakistani psychiatrist who has made a study of the Afghan jihad returnees in the various prisons of the country concludes that the recruits are usually picked up from mosques and not from madrassas. They are youths who believe in the clerical campaign against America and "its allies in Pakistan"; they are also usually in deep depression because of their domestic circumstances.
The religious content in the testament tapes so far appears in references to the divine compensation in the Hereafter and in particular to the holy Quran where it asserts that martyrs remain physically alive even after death. The other references are to the emotion of revenge against action taken by the state against the bombers' relatives, meaning that more suicide-bombers are bred when military action is taken by the state with incomplete success, and centres of anti-state power are left to survive as possible "negotiators" of peace agreements. The families of the "martyrs" are compensated by the "minders" which could actually be another motivation behind the cult of suicide.
That the Charsadda bombing took place despite the security measures taken by Mr Sherpao points to elements that sympathise with Talibanisation as a way of uprooting "un-Islamic" trends from society. Small bombs are routinely made to go off in Internet cafes and music shops of Peshawar, a trend that is now spreading to settled places like Mardan and Swabi too. Fear is an important element in the dissemination and consolidation of a cause.
The End
Muhammad Khurshid, a resident of Bajaur District, tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border is journalist by profession. He contributes articles and news stories to various online and print newspapers. His subject matter is terrorism. He is also heading Voice For Peace working against terrorism in tribal areas. The aim of the Voice For Peace is restoration of peace in Bajaur Agency, tribal areas and whole world. He is looking for freelance and correspondent work from media organizations, to cover the part of the world where Al Qaeda and the Taliban are most active.