ISLAMABAD: A recent wave of religious bloodshed shows that Pakistani extremists and foreign Al Qaeda operatives have rebuilt their deadly alliance in a bid to destabilise the government of key US ally President Pervez Musharraf, security sources and analysts say.
With attacks like the suicide bombing which killed 19 people in Islamabad on Friday and a similar attack in Karachi on Monday which killed five and sparked riots that left six employees of a Kentucky Fried Chicken dead, the rebels want to show they are down but not out following Musharraf’s crackdown on Islamic extremism in Pakistan.
The groups are now seeking to kill or topple the military leader, analysts say.
Musharraf has escaped three militant-linked assassination attempts and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has evaded one, while more than 200 people have died in sectarian bombings and shootings during the past year.
“There is an alliance of opportunity between jihadis, the so-called holy warriors who fought in Indian-held Kashmir and Afghanistan; local Sunni sectarian groups; and foreigners from Osama bin Laden’s terror network,” said Mariam Abou Zahab, a French researcher from the Centre for International Studies and Research at the French Institute of Political Science.
The alliance emerged soon after Al Qaeda militants sneaked into Pakistan after an onslaught by US-led forces in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001 following the fall of the Taliban, Pakistani security officials say.
They were thrown into disarray by army operations which killed more than 300 foreign Al Qaeda-linked suspects hiding in the lawless tribal regions on the Afghan border.
Pakistan has also bagged a series of key Al Qaeda leaders in big cities. Last month it captured alleged Al Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Liby and in 2003 security forces arrested his predecessor Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the self-proclaimed architect of the September 11 terror attacks in the US.
But after lying low for some time, the terror network has now regrouped and the recent bombings are a way of showing it still exists, a senior police official with vast experience in handling anti-terror operations in Karachi said.
“The message is very clear: we can strike at will anywhere we want to. The next one has to be a big one,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Security officials explain that Al Qaeda relies on its Sunni militant and sectarian allies to provide it with contacts and in return finances their score-settling attacks on the minority Shia community.
Al Qaeda gets one big favour back from the groups - they spread chaos and destabilise the regime of their most hated target, Musharraf, they say.
“Some of the militants have a domestic agenda, some have a regional agenda and some have an international agenda,” added the police official.
“And they all compliment each others’ efforts.”
One of the first and most notorious examples of a tie-up between the groups was the videotaped beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002.
“The Daniel Pearl case is where nexus is fully exposed,” the police official said.
“Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohamed executed Pearl, his kidnapping was allegedly planned by a jihadi, Omar Sheikh, and the plan to kidnap him was executed through a network of sectarian operatives of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, one of Pakistan’s most feared Sunni groups,” he added.
Researcher Zahad also pointed to an international dimension, saying that Shias in Pakistan and the Arab world are paying in blood for the decision by Iraq’s Shiites to align themselves with their US occupiers.
A senior Pakistani security official added: “These acts reinvigorate the organisation. If they don’t kill they don’t get funds and donations.”
And they may have scored another major coup with the abduction and murder in Karachi, also on Monday, of a local leader of Pakistan’s main Islamist party, which experts fear could stoke further political and religious rivalry. - AFP
