The al Qaeda connection?

NWFP was hit by another terrorist attack on Tuesday afternoon when a suicide bomber blew up his car in Charsadda bazaar. More than 30 people were killed and nearly 100 others injured, including several women and children. It was the third suicide bombing since Saturday in the battle-ridden province. Suicide attacks have become a routine occurrence during the past few weeks all over Pakistan, especially in NWFP. A spate of terror attacks in recent days is obviously a backlash against the military operation in South Waziristan against the militants. According to a Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman, the militants have retreated from various areas in South Waziristan as part of their war strategy and its fighters will launch a guerrilla war once the Pakistani military enters deep into all areas of South Waziristan. If the Taliban have actually managed to retreat from South Waziristan, they have either gone to North Waziristan or crossed the border into Afghanistan. When the Pakistan army was deployed for the first time since independence in FATA in 2004, the US and Pakistan agreed upon a hammer and anvil strategy whereby the US-led NATO forces were playing the role of the hammer in Afghanistan while the Pakistani forces played the role of the anvil in our tribal areas. The roles have reversed now. Successive military operations against the local Taliban have crippled their organisation, which is why they could now be crossing the border to safeguard their interests. The alarming factor is that the ‘anvil’ is nowhere to be seen as the NATO forces have vacated more than half a dozen key security checkposts on the Afghan side of the Pak-Afghan border opposite South Waziristan. In these trying times when Pakistan is in the midst of a civil war, the international community needs to come forward and help it. Instead, the NATO forces are leaving the door open for the TTP to cross over to the Afghan side without any repercussions. This would obviously undermine the military operation.

The Afghan Taliban, on the other hand, have strongly denied any association with the TTP’s campaign, strategy or tactics. Afghan Taliban commander Abdul Mannan condemned suicide bombing and termed it un-Islamic and wrong to target innocent people in blasts. He said the Afghan Taliban leaders have not crossed the border and are not hiding in Pakistan, but are targeting coalition and NATO forces from Afghan soil. With these remarks coming from the Afghan Taliban, it seems as if there is some other force helping the local Taliban and from the pattern of suicide bombings, it could well be the al Qaeda network. It is quite apparent that the TTP is getting massive funding from some source and proper training to carry out successive terror attacks all over Pakistan. The al Qaeda leadership has on a number of occasions declared war against the state of Pakistan, which makes it all the more probable that this global terror network could be supporting the TTP in its fight against the state of Pakistan.



The military is trying to eliminate the militants from the tribal region but it seems as if the country does not have enough funds for the purpose. This can be gauged from Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s statement that the government is now using development funds for the capacity building of law-enforcement agencies in a bid to improve security. If al Qaeda is actually helping the local Taliban, it is not only alarming for our country but for the whole world. Fighting the militants on this scale requires heavy-duty finances; it is time the international community, especially the US, rises to the occasion and helps Pakistan in this common cause. Peace and stability in this region, once achieved, will translate into peace all over the world. *

Second Editorial: The Maoist threat in India

The Maoist revolutionary movement is increasingly posing the most serious internal threat to India’s present order since independence. Resurrected from the unlikely soil of the defeated Naxalite movement of the 1960s and 70s, the Maoists have not only regrouped, in the words of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, they represent a critical challenge to India’s much vaunted democracy. In a ‘red’ arc stretching from West Bengal down to Andhra Pradesh, enfolding en route such states as Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand and infesting in all nine states, the Maoists, albeit divided into at least four factions, have found a modicum of unity and cooperation for the task of waging a guerrilla struggle for the rights of the downtrodden and marginalized and for the creation of a socialist state.
The threat is by now acute enough to prompt calls for transferring some Indian troops deployed since long in Indian Held Kashmir to the Maoist-hit states. The call came from Home Minister P Chidambaram, but unfortunately for him and the police and paramilitary forces battling the Maoist guerrillas, has been turned down by the Defence Ministry. The ministry and army headquarters are reluctant to accede to the demand that Rashtriya Rifles battalions be involved in direct action against the Maoists entrenched in the forests of the ‘red’ arc. The home minister’s view, in the light of the mixed record of the police and paramilitary forces in combating the insurgency, is that the army will have to get involve d sooner or later, such is the growing alarm over the spread and consolidation of the Maoist revolutionary wave. The military has so far held firmly to its position that the army should only be used as a last resort for internal security matters. However, an army commanders’ conference last month has responded to the home ministry’s request by suggesting deployment of the newly raised 120 paramilitary battalions before seeking a role for the army. Further, the army has suggested the establishment of a national anti-Naxal operations training centre under the supervision of the army and the appointment of military advisers of the rank of brigadiers and major generals for the affected states.
Although talk of a gradual withdrawal of some troops from Indian Held Kashmir has been in the air for some time given the decline in the level of militancy in the area, to be replaced by police and paramilitaries, the military seems to be going slow on this policy, partly perhaps because of tensions with Pakistan since the Mumbai attacks, partly because the record of neither the military nor the police and paramilitary forces in quelling the insurgency in Indian Held Kashmir smells of roses as far as human rights are concerned. It is unlikely the Indian high command would seriously contemplate pulling some of its forces out of Indian Held Kashmir so long as relations do not improve with Pakistan and, even more significantly, the recent dialogue offer to the dissident parties in IHK, which has received a mixed response, does not show signs of promise of a political settlement with those demanding the right of self-determination.