Pro Al Qaeda, Taliban jehadis behind recent terrorism (Pakistan)

Daily Times ^ | Sat January 8 2005

[Archaean]

KARACHI: Recent attacks on Christians and Westerners in Pakistan were part of a coordinated campaign by Pakistani Islamic militant groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, The Washington Post said on Saturday, quoting military and security sources.

Hours after a grenade attack on a chapel at a Presbyterian hospital killed three people on Friday morning, top security aides to President Pervez Musharraf told him they had intelligence reports that factions of at least two banned Pakistani groups had joined forces for attacks on Westerners and Christians, senior officials familiar with the briefing said.

Security officials said that the top leaders of the banned groups, Harkat ul-Mujahideen and Jaish Muhammad, voluntarily informed Pakistani intelligence officials that some of their ‘trained elements’ had broken ranks to form ‘anti-Christian, anti-West’ strike groups.

“A full-fledged local Al Qaeda is now active in Pakistan,” a security official said. “We have got it from the horse’s mouth.”

Harkat ul-Mujahideen and Jaish Muhammad are two of the most prominent Pakistani Islamic militant groups supporting a 13-year-old guerrilla war in the divided region of Kashmir that is aimed at ending Indian rule there.

“They may not be more than a few dozen in number, but these guys are on a do-or-die mission,” said a paramilitary intelligence official who said he interrogated four suspected terrorists of Harkat ul-Mujahideen al-Almi, the breakaway faction of Harkat ul-Mujaheddin. All four suspects, the official said, admitted participating in a car bomb attack on the US Consulate in Karachi on June 14, which claimed the lives of 11 Pakistanis and the bomber.

“There seems to be some coordination in the recently reported hit-and-run operations in Afghanistan and the terrorist strikes in Pakistan,” a senior Pakistani intelligence official said. Another declared: “There is a Karachi-Kabul connection, and it is becoming clearer every day.”

Karachi, a port city of 10 million, has been the scene of much of the recent violence directed at Westerners. Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped there on Jan. 23, and his remains were recovered there on May 17. A prominent Jaish Muhammad operative, Omar Saeed Sheikh and three others were convicted of murdering Pearl.

“We have drawn the conclusion that a group of between 15 to 20 terrorists is actively trying to kill Christians and Westerners to express their anger against Pakistan’s support for the United States in the war against terrorism,” a police official said. “It looks to be the same chain of terrorists,” said SK Tressler, the minister for minority affairs. “It is clear that terrorists are targeting the Christian community in Pakistan.”

Pakistani intelligence officials said they have found new indications that the attack on the French engineers was coordinated between local and Arab Al Qaeda operatives.

“The Frenchmen were specifically punished for their country’s long-standing support for the Northern Alliance and its consistent anti-Taliban posture,” one official said, referring to the Afghan militia that worked closely with US forces to bring down the Taliban, a radical Islamic movement that provided a haven for Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials also said they have gathered intelligence showing that a former Afghan militia commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, recently contacted his former sympathizers in Pakistan to solicit funds for a new holy war in Afghanistan.

“There seems to be no dearth of weapons and ammunition for the new generation of rebels inside Afghanistan, but they are clearly running short of funds,” said a Pakistani official. Hekmatyar, an ethnic Pashtun, apparently is trying to cash in on mounting sentiments among Pashtuns that Karzai’s government is dominated by ethnic Tajiks from the Northern Alliance, the official said.