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Pakistani jihadi camps still active
 As President Pervez Musharraf renews his crackdown on Muslim militant factions after this month's terrorist bombings in London, new evidence has emerged that Pakistan has continued to let such groups run military-style camps to train guerrilla fighters.
"Say, Chaudry? That's not an elephant in the living room, is it?"
"Why, bless me, I believe it might be!" |
For years, the camps have been only half a secret.
| I'd say maybe 27 percent a secret... |
"Everybody has known they were there, but no one would officially admit it," said a Pakistani official who was interviewed recently and requested anonymity. "And they were kept hidden; no ordinary people could go there."
| "Beat it! Yez can't go in! It's fer cannon fodder! An' it ain't here!" |
Inconveniently for the government, the camps have gotten a bit more public in recent weeks, in Pakistan's press and a U.S. courtroom. (There has been no suggestion that the London bombers attended any such camp.)
| They had to do with Muridke, the Vatican of terrorism... |
While the Bush administration has politely portrayed Musharraf as an essential ally in its global war on terror, the training camps reflect how deeply that role has divided the government and its ruling elite. The camps are used by Pakistan-based militant groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure). For more than a decade, the Pakistan military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate has sponsored such groups to attack India in the conflict over the territory of Kashmir, much as it nurtured the Taliban movement to pursue Pakistani interests in Afghanistan, Western intelligence sources have said.
| They've also, as will be written in dry as dust histories of the War on Terror fifty or sixty years from now, been supporting the Taliban while piously denying the fact, just as they've been maintaining the camps while piously denying the fact. Some of us have been watching the hands, not the lips... |
While the government has aggressively hunted down Arab and other non-Pakistani militants identified with the al-Qaida movement, and while it formally banned Jaish and Lashkar in 2002, it has never dismantled either the Taliban or the Pakistan-based outfits. The local groups simply renamed themselves and have been spared destruction, even though some are suspected of involvement in assassination attempts against Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
| They're currently going through the same old round-'em-up-lock-'em-up routine they've done a dozen times before in the past four years, and three months from now they'll all be back on the streets again. Qazi's not in jug, Fazl's not in jug, Sami's not in jug, Hamid Gul's walking the streets, Mirza Aslam Beg's consorting with big turbans, Sajid Mir's still quietly doing business at the same old stand, Masood Azhar's still free, Hafiz Saeed's still free and ranting, Binori Mosque is full, Agora Khattack is full, God's still in his Heaven and all God's chillun got curly-toed slippers. The guys being arrested are ignorant muscle who don't Know Someone™ and trashy street preachers disturbing the peace by hawking their wares through loudspeakers. They're decidedly not the guys holding meetings in back rooms with smooth-spoken emissaries from Riyadh and Jiddah. |
Pakistani and foreign analysts say the Pakistani militant groups and their training camps have survived largely because the government crackdown so far has been half-hearted.
| Maybe "faint-hearted" would be more accurate, though that's making the assumption Perv actually believes what he's preaching, which probably isn't the case. We're discussing Pakistan, where dissimulation is a way of life... |
Many officers in the army, which is Pakistan's real ruling party, "don't want to eliminate these groups that have fought in Kashmir and Afghanistan, because they think they may want to use them again at some future time," said a foreign intelligence analyst who specializes in Pakistan.
| I think we've mentioned that a time or two here, as well. It could even be us they're quoting, since they don't give a source... |
The problem is, there is no clear separation between the Pakistani groups and the Taliban or al-Qaida. They are routinely seen to overlap, as when Jaish and al-Qaida militants were accused in the 2002 murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.
| Along with muscle from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. It's not little boxes on an organization chart; it's a spectrum that runs from Binny, comfortably ensconced in Sami's guest house, through the armed and dangerous set, to the "fiery" preacher on the street corner. The flow of resources is mostly toward Binny, the flow of planning and support goes down the ladder... |
New evidence of the camps includes this month's cover story in Herald, a Karachi-based news magazine whose reporter toured a training camp hidden up a dirt track in the rugged, wooded hills of Mansehra, a district in north-central Pakistan. Militants carried automatic weapons and wore camouflage uniforms. A dormitory held 60 to 80 sleeping bags laid out on thin mattresses, and another building housed an unknown number of boys taking an "18-day ideological orientation and fitness and arms training."
"Fatimah, I think we should send little Mahmoud to summer camp this year."
"Oh, Ahmed! He's still a baby! How long will he be gone?"
"18 days." |
The Herald article and the government official, who asked not to be named, said that since late 2001, when Musharraf signed on to the U.S.-led campaign against militants, the army has forced camps periodically to reduce their operations or move to more hidden locations. For two years, militant groups have had to shrink or conceal public activities, such as soliciting donations and running recruiting offices. An estimated 13 camps in Mansehra were forced to suspend training last year, the Herald reported, but were allowed to resume in April and May.
"Okay! Coast is clear, guys! You can come out now!"
"Aaaaar! Death to the infidels!" |
A separate account of a camp emerged in a Sacramento, Calif., courtroom last month when the FBI filed an affidavit citing a young Pakistani arrested as he entered the United States. Hamid Hayat told FBI questioners "he attended a jihadist training camp in Pakistan for approximately six months in 2003-2004," the affidavit said. He faces a criminal charge of having lied to U.S. authorities by initially denying having been trained.
| Like I say, dissumulation is a way of life. |
Under questioning, he "described the camp as providing structured paramilitary training, including weapons training, explosives training, interior room tactics, hand to hand combat, and strenuous exercise," the affidavit said. Hayat said his camp was run by al-Qaida and trainees "were being trained on how to kill Americans," the affidavit said. Pakistan's interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, told the Herald its story was "totally baseless."
| And at the risk of repeating myself yet a third time, it's a way of life... |
But such blanket denials, repeated by Pakistani officials over the years, were looking a little more tattered after an admission by Yasin Malik, head of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a Pakistan-backed group.
| They were "tattered" the second time they were used. By now, all that remains is the stitching around the button holes. Apparently the Paks haven't realized, and maybe still don't, that the entire world rolls its collective eyes every time they issue a statement. You can't walk ten feet in Pakland without stepping on somebody's lips... |
Talking with reporters June 13, Malik praised Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, saying "few know of his contributions" to the Kashmiri insurgency against India. Malik glowingly explained that, in years past, he and more than 3,000 other men had been trained to fight at a vast farm Rashid owned near Islamabad. Rashid denied the statement, and the next day Malik said he had been "misquoted by the media."
| I'm not gonna repeat myself a fourth time. You've got the idea by now... |
But the news, once out of the closet, wouldn't go back in. A half-dozen high-ranking Pakistanis from the time - including Army chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg and interior minister Naseerullah Babar - matter-of-factly confirmed it. The new reports of the training camps "corroborate what we already have known for years" from interrogations of guerrillas captured in Kashmir, said B. Raman, a former counterterrorism chief at India's main intelligence agency. "The surprise is that they are now publishing it ... in the Pakistani press."
| Six months from now they'll be denying it again. |
Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-07-23 |
