Posted: 17-08-2009 by: Thomas Ruttig

The U.S. reckons that such an arrangement would be acceptable to the new civilian government in Islamabad because it can end the agency’s interference in Pakistan’s domestic politics and thus prevent future military takeovers. Taking away the agency’s authority to deal with the militants could help the United States meet its goal of severing the ISI’s alleged links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

When the proposal was first discussed with Pakistan’s civilian government, they were not sure they could accomplish this task since they felt that the civilians were still too weak to take on the ISI. Boucher’s statements indicate that the Americans believe that Asif Ali Zardari’s victory in the September presidential elections has created a civilian regime in Islamabad with all the powers it needs to reform the ISI (Dawn, September 17). In the hostile environment that exists in Pakistan today as a result of U.S. cross-border raids into Pakistan and the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, any American policy overture and declaration is bound to be viewed with immense suspicion, and the calls to de-fang the ISI are no exception. With anti-Americanism on the rise, any person or institution targeted by the United States automatically becomes popular and gains favor with the masses. While not all Pakistanis are enamored with the ISI, most view its performance on the external front favorably. To some extent, this is evident even in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where in reaction to U.S. cross-border violations a tribal jirga in Miranshah declared that they would fight alongside the Pakistan Army against any intruders and threatened to attack Afghanistan if the violations did not stop. In the same vein, the extremist militants hiding in FATA have gained greater sympathy and support from the local tribesmen just because they are actively opposing the U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Implications for Pakistan’s Stability

Beset as it is with enormous internal challenges ranging from soaring inflation to extreme insecurity to crippling energy shortages, the Zardari – Gillani government truly finds itself in a bind. While the U.S. administration might incorrectly assume that the civilian government is now in a strong enough position to take on the Army by attempting to transform the ISI, the truth is that the ever-present danger of yet another military take-over is precisely what must be giving Zardari and Gillani sleepless nights. Given that the United States would like to ensure the stability of the newly established democratic order in Islamabad, pitting the Zardari - Gillani regime against the powerful Pakistan Army at this stage could well amount to tolling its death bell. Many believe the ISI is indeed more powerful than the people sitting in cabinet or holding other offices of power. Additionally, there is doubt over whom, if anyone at all, controls this entity (The News, Sept.18). Having a military person at the helm of affairs in former President Musharraf was precisely what was keeping the Pakistan Army quiet and satisfied. With his departure from the scene, the Army returned to viewing the political set-up with utmost wariness and would not hesitate to intervene whenever it perceives that the vital national interests of Pakistan are being compromised by the civilian government.

Impact on the War on Terrorism

From the Pakistani perspective, supporting the Taliban stemmed from the country’s security imperative of “strategic depth,” predicated on having a friendly regime on the north-western frontier. President Musharraf’s decision to withdraw all support for the Taliban and support the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan created a quandary that left the ISI stuck in the middle – it could neither go against what Musharraf wanted nor could it allow its influence and linkage with the Taliban to be completely broken. As such, a dichotomy crept up into Pakistan’s posture towards Afghanistan in general and its support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism in particular. It is highly probable that Musharraf went along with this duplicitous policy of simultaneously supporting the United States without compromising the ISI’s links with the Taliban.

Despite its help in fighting al-Qaeda, the ISI is viewed with deep suspicion by U.S. officials who believe that it retains links to the Taliban and other militants blamed for supporting attacks on U.S. forces. While it is true to state that the ISI has strong links with the Taliban, it is equally important to understand that the maintenance of those links is perceived by most in Pakistan to be an insurance against the possibility of an anti-Islamabad and pro-India Afghanistan. While eliminating the menace of religious extremism and militancy from FATA is definitely construed by Pakistan to be in its national interest, the possibility of an unfriendly Northern Alliance-dominated and pro-Indian regime in Kabul is certainly not in line with Pakistan’s national aims and objectives. From the Pakistani perspective, the war in Afghanistan must end with a favorable and supportive regime in power in Kabul, even if this is made up of the Taliban. From the U.S. point of view, the possibility of the Taliban being allowed to come into power is not considered. It is against this backdrop that one must view the involvement of the ISI with the Taliban – not as abetting terrorism but as protecting Pakistan’s national interest.

An approach based on separating al-Qaeda from the Taliban might allow the U.S. and Pakistan to work together to achieve their respective aims. Currently, the threat faced in Afghanistan is two-fold: the one posed by the international jihadis of al-Qaeda and the other from the local Taliban. While the former is the focus of U.S. and Coalition forces, the latter is the primary threat with which the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments must contend. Whereas the former is threatening virtually the entire world with acts of terrorism, the latter is essentially a liberation struggle against a foreign invasion of Afghanistan. In order to win in this campaign, it is vital that a rift be driven between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In the implementation of this strategy, the ISI can play a significant role, not only because of its links with the Haqqani group but also its ties with Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

In a significant development, the latest shuffle at the senior level of the Pakistan Army saw Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj, the ISI Director General, being replaced after merely a year in office by Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha. While some construe this as an attempt to remove known Musharraf loyalists from power, others contend that this could well be an attempt to harmonize the efforts of the military and the ISI in fighting terrorism, since the new DG ISI oversaw the conduct of all military operations against terrorist elements in FATA in his previous assignment as Director General Military Operations at GHQ (Dawn, Sept. 30).

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the imperative of curtailing of its involvement in Pakistan’s domestic situation, the ISI’s external role needs to be maintained, and its links with the Taliban need to be exploited by the United States and Pakistan to their own respective advantage. To avoid the possibility of setting Pakistan’s democratic development back at least a decade, it is vital that any strategy implemented must be seen to further the interests of both allies rather than being perceived as being detrimental to the interests of either. The appointment of Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha as the DG ISI is a significant step in the direction of harmonizing the military and intelligence components of the War on Terrorism and could be a major step in removing U.S. apprehensions regarding the ISI.

Notes:

1. The only exception to this rule was the appointment during the late Benazir Bhutto’s tenure as Prime Minister of Lieutenant General (Retired) Shamsur Rehman Kallu, which was very short-lived and has never been repeated.

Publication: Terrorism Focus Volume: 6 Issue: 3

January 28, 2009 03:41 PM Age: 3 yrs

By: Raffaello Pantucci

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier tours a German ISAF contingent in Afghanistan (German Federal Foreign Office photo)

Speaking in accented but fluent German, Abu Talha al-Alamani made al-Qaeda’s most direct threat to the German nation yet in a recent video, saying that Germans were “naive and gullible” if they thought they could “emerge unscathed” from being the third-largest troop provider in the NATO alliance in Afghanistan (al-Faloja.info, January 19). The video, released by al-Qaeda’s al-Sahab media wing and entitled “Das Rettungspaket Fuer Deutschland” (The Rescue Package for Germany), first emerged on jihadi websites on January 17 (though it is dated October 2008). The video showed a turbaned individual identified as Abu Talha al-Alamani (Abu Talha the German) brandishing weapons in a rocky environment, before switching to a direct picture of him preaching to the camera. In the half-hour video, Abu Talha declares that it has been his “wish to blow myself up for Allah since 1993,” and provides a nuanced overview of the German political environment highlighting the nation’s involvement in Afghanistan. [1] Germany currently provides over 3,300 troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and has agreed to increase the size of its deployment to 4,500 troops.

The speaker in the video was identified by Germany’s Interior Ministry as Bekkay Harrach, a 31-year-old Moroccan-born German citizen from Bonn who is a long-term jihadi. Injured by Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank in 2003, Harrach has been in a training camp in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region since 2007 and was already on the radar of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the German external security service) (Der Spiegel, January 24; Bild, January 19). German authorities have verified that they believe the recording is authentic and stated that Harrach is believed to be in contact with the higher echelons of al-Qaeda, with further contacts to militants in Frankfurt, Brunswick, and Ulm (Munich Focus Online, January 22). There are reports that Abu Talha is part of the cross-border Haqqani Network, living in Waziristan under the personal protection of Siraj Haqqani, noted for his extensive use of suicide tactics (Spiegel Online [Hamburg], January 25). As Interior Ministry State Secretary August Hanning put it, Harrach is a “very serious Islamist” and the direct targeting of Germany in this way “is a cause for concern” (AFP, January 20, 2009).

The video release came as a suicide car bomber struck near the German Embassy in Kabul, killing four civilians and an American soldier. In a subsequent claim of responsibility, the Taliban declared that the mission was carried out by a local named Shum-ul-Rahman and claimed that the attacker was targeting vehicles carrying German forces near the Embassy (Dawn [Karachi], January 17; Daily Times [Lahore], January 17, The Times, January 18). An unspecified number of suspects in the Embassy attack were seized in overnight raids on January 23 by Afghan troops supported by ISAF forces (AFP, January 23).

In propaganda terms, Germany has long been a rhetorical and ideological target for other groups based in the Pakistani border regions. The Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), an off-shoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), has been operating out of Waziristan with direct tentacles into Germany. [2] The group releases videos with German, Russian, Uzbek, Turkish, and Arabic translations and has claimed responsibility for a group of plotters called the “Sauerland Group,” who were arrested in Germany in September 2007 while planning a bombing campaign timed to coincide with a Bundestag (German Parliament) vote on whether to extend the German military’s mandate in Afghanistan (Der Spiegel, September 4, 2008; and see Terrorism Monitor, November 8, 2007). A few months later, the group also claimed responsibility for sending young Turkish-German Cüneyt Ciftci to carry out a suicide bombing that killed two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan (Der Spiegel, March 15, 2008). Another German convert active with the group, Eric Breininger (who was a roommate to one of the Sauerland plotters), has released videos taunting the German intelligence services who claimed that he was on his way back to Germany to carry out an attack (Bild, September 26, 2008). Breininger (a.k.a. Abdul Ghafar al-Alamani) remains at large.

More recently, in the week before Harrach’s video surfaced, the IJU released another video which showed forces fighting in Afghanistan, including an attack on a helicopter. In the same week, a further video was issued by the IMU in German, in which four individuals who appeared to be Arab and spoke good German called upon their German brethren to come and join the fight in Afghanistan. Since the release of Harrach’s video, al-Sahab has re-released a previous video showing the June 2008 attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad with German subtitles. A recent statement from the German Ministry of the Interior warned, “Attacks in Afghanistan are increasingly targeting Germans. Germany is being named more and more in warnings published on the Internet. The latest threat explicitly warns Germany only” (AFP, January 18).

This rhetorical escalation comes as more details emerge of the threat to Germany from al-Qaeda and affiliated groups in the Afghan-Pakistan region. The IJU’s increased use of German in videos, the presence of German nationals (both converts and second generation immigrants of Turkish or Arab descent), and clear evidence that a network appears to exist to send individuals back and forth from Germany to “jihad lands.” The connective tissue between these young Germans and al-Qaeda’s core has been provided by individuals like 45-year-old Pakistani-German Aleem Nasir, who is currently on trial in Germany on charges of supporting terrorism. Nasir was picked up by Pakistani intelligence services while seeking to board a plane back home from Lahore on June 18, 2008, and claims he was beaten in Pakistani custody (Pak Tribune, August 31, 2007; IHT, September 23, 2007). Nasir has also been identified as Bekkay Harrach’s contact with al-Qaeda (Der Spiegel, January 24).

For German authorities, the specter of the 2004 Madrid bombings hangs in the air. In that instance, al-Qaeda claimed a strategic victory when they ascribed the defeat of the Aznar administration (which had sent Spanish forces into Iraq) by the current Zapatero administration (which subsequently withdrew the forces in line with a campaign promise) to the Madrid bombings. Public reaction to terrorist attacks can be unpredictable and the known public antipathy in Germany to their forces’ deployment in Afghanistan is something that al-Qaeda has likely identified as a possible target. With this new targeting of a German audience by al-Qaeda’s media wing, rather than the IJU’s, the pressure is clearly being ratcheted up further.

Notes:

2. For a detailed analysis of the IJU, please see, Guido Steinberg, “The Islamic Jihad Union,” SWP Comments, (German Institute for International and Security Affairs - Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik), April 2008: http://www.swp-berlin.org/en/common/get_document.php?asset_id=4883.

Roundup of Kabul Suicide Gang Reveals Ties to Pakistan

Publication: Terrorism Focus Volume: 6 Issue: 5

February 19, 2009 05:04 PM Age: 3 yrs

By: Mukhtar A. Khan

Suicide bombings have become a regular insurgent tactic in Afghanistan since 2005, with a special focus on Kabul in the last year. The number of such attacks have grown considerably during the recent years in Kabul, culminating in the February 12 suicide bombings that targeted public buildings in the Afghan capital, killing 26 people and injuring more than 50 (Afghan Daily [Kabul], February 12). Perhaps to the surprise of Afghanistan's national security services, these devastating attacks came only days after security forces announced the roundup of a gang of suicide bombers in Kabul.

Since January 2008, Kabul has witnessed six deadly suicide attacks. In most cases, they were claimed by the Taliban. On February 3, Afghanistan's government announced it had traced and broken up the terrorist group behind these attacks. The group is alleged to have drawn its members from two jihadi groups - the Haqqani network and the Kashmir-based Harakat-ul-Mujahideen. Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) announced the arrest of seventeen members of the Kabul suicide group in connection with six suicide bombings since March 2007. This terrorist group was headed by a 23-year-old Pakistani bomb-maker known as Yasir, with all six of the suicide bombers coming from Pakistan (PakTribune, February 3; Deutsche Welle, February 3). An NDS spokesman named two other Pakistani ringleaders as Ezatollah and Rahimollah. Other members of the group were responsible for laying mines, carrying explosives, guiding the suicide bombers and scouting locations for attacks (Pajhwok News, February 9).

Most recently, the group is believed to be responsible for the deadly January 17 suicide attack on a convoy travelling the road between an American base, Camp Eggers, and the German embassy in the central Kabul district of Wazir Akbar Khan. Five people, including a U.S. soldier, were killed in the bombing (Daily Outlook Afghanistan, [Kabul], January 20). The NDS claims the suicide bomber was a native of Pakistan's Swat region named Abdullah. Located in Pakistan's restive North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Swat has been the scene of intense fighting in recent months between Taliban militants and Pakistani security forces. Afghan officials claimed that it was the same gang of Kabul suicide bombers who entered the Ministry of Culture and Information - in the heavily fortified part of Kabul - and killed two people last October (AFP, October 31, 2008).

The group was also suspected of a November 27 suicide attack near the US embassy that killed four civilians and wounded up to 17 (Daily Annis [Kabul], February 6, 2009). In a single week, from November 27 to December 5, 2008, the gang conducted three suicide attacks. A November 30 suicide attack on a convoy of German embassy diplomats missed the target and resulted in the killing of two Afghan civilians. Only a few days later, on December 5, a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into an Afghan army convoy, killing 13 people including six Afghan National Army soldiers. (Radio Television Afghanistan/ RTA, [Kabul], February 7).

Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) is a Pakistani militant group which was established in 1985, aiming to oppose the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. However, at the end of Soviet-Afghan war in 1989, the group entered Kashmir to fight Indian troops. It is suspected that during the past few years HuM has once again started exerting influence in Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan's tribal areas and the NWFP. The United States has added HuM to its list of designated terrorist organizations (U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, April 30, 2007).

The continuing suicide attacks inside Kabul have gained momentum at a time when the new administration of President Barack Obama is planning a troop surge in Afghanistan and possibly a new counterterrorism strategy. A suicide bombing in Urozgan Province that killed 27 policemen at the same time the NDS was announcing the roundup of the Kabul cell demonstrates the difficulty authorities face in eliminating the threat of suicide attacks (Voice of Jihad, February 2; Afghan Islamic Press, February 2).

Hafiz Gul Bahadur: A Profile of the Leader of the North Waziristan Taliban

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 9

April 10, 2009 10:50 AM Age: 3 yrs

By: Sadia Sulaiman

Militants of the Waziristan Taliban

Before the signing of the September 2006 Peace Agreement, the Central Asian militants expressed their disapproval with the June ceasefire agreement and refused to comply with Bahadur’s directives, saying that they never consented to the agreement. This led Bahadur to assemble a five-member jirga comprised of senior NWA Taliban commanders to negotiate with the Central Asian fighters. According to reports, the jirga sent a clear message to the Central Asians that they had no other choice but to honor the truce (Daily Times [Lahore], August 4, 2006).