Pakistani Deobandis Challenge Musharraf

M. S. Iyengar

The past two months have seen a rapid escalation in sectarian violence and general lawlessness in Pakistan. Incidents that merited special attention were the assassination of Maulana Nizamuddin Shamzai in Karachi and the series of bombings that targeted Shiites. Pakistan watchers may recall that these incidents have usually followed participation of the Pakistan Army in US led counter-terrorist actions. The most recent case is the Pakistani operation against suspected terrorists in Waziristan. General Musharraf himself has spoken at great length about the threat to his life from Jihadi groups. Most Pakistani sources, including Gen. Musharraf himself, blame three groups; Jaish-e-Mohammed, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin-al-Aalmi, and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi for all acts of terrorism in Pakistan. These three groups have been accused of collaborating with Al Qaida by the Pakistani government.

The Jaish-e-Mohammed is led by Maulana Masood Azhar. He is an influential Pakistani Deobandi preacher in the Jihad community. The Jaish-e-Mohammed is a partner of the Pakistan Army’s intelligence service, the ISI, in its covert war in Kashmir. The Jaish-e-Mohammed came into existence after Maulana Azhar was released from an Indian jail in exchange for the hostages of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999. The Jaish-e-Mohammed was founded in Karachi at the Jamia-ul-Uloom-Islamia – Banuri with the support of the highest ranking Deobandi clerics in Pakistan, including Maulana Nizamuddin Shamzai. A large portion of its initial asset base came from an older Jihadi group called the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin (HuM). After its formation, the Jaish went on to mount a brutal campaign of terror in Jammu and Kashmir. Its penchant for suicide attacks made it a poster boy for the Islamist struggle in Kashmir and attracted it several influential backers including Osama Bin Laden himself.

The Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin-al-Aalmi is allegedly an offshoot of the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin.  The Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin was a partner of the ISI in the covert war in Afghanistan. HuM cadre were also involved in terrorism in Kashmir and other parts of India. In the events that preceded the fall of the Taliban government, HuM cadre went to Afghanistan in large numbers to fight against American forces attempting to capture Bin Laden after Sept. 11, 2001.  As readers may recall Gen. Musharraf had committed Pakistan to assisting the US in its war against the Al Qaida after Sept 11, 2001 and a lot of HuM cadre were killed in US offensives against the Taliban. The Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin-al-Aalmi is allegedly made up of elements of the HuM that seek to avenge this.

The Laskar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) is an offshoot of the Anjuman Sipaha Saheba Pakistan organization, which was started by Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi in the Jhang district of Punjab. Maulana Haq Nawaz was a Deobandi preacher who urged poor Sunni farmers to take up arms against Shia landlords in the Jhang. This appeal resonated among the poor in the eighties and soon a number of people joined the Sipaha Saheba Pakistan (SSP). The SSP eventually split up and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) was formed under the leadership of Riaz Basra.  Elements of the LeJ participated in the Afghan Jihad, and also fought alongside the Taliban. Domestically in Pakistan the LeJ is believed to have been involved in a vast number of sectarian killings. The LeJ leader Riaz Basra was also involved in an attempt to kill Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with an improvised explosive device outside his hometown of Raiwind. LeJ cadres are generally close to the Deobandi church but they retain a uniquely strong sense of anti-Shia feeling.

There have also been reports emanating from the Wana area that a group of Pakistani Army officers have defected to side of the terrorists holed up alongside the late Nek Mohammed’s lashkar in Waziristan. There are also reports of writ petitions being filed against the Pakistan Army leadership on behalf of another group of Pakistani army officers up to the rank of colonel. In these petitions it is alleged that the aforementioned Pakistani officers are being secretly held under arrest, in contravention of Pakistan Army rules, on the orders of General Musharraf. Per ISPR spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, these officers are under investigation for involvement in an attempt to kill Gen. Musharraf. Both these incidents of serious indiscipline highlight that there is considerable opposition to Gen. Musharraf in the officer corps of the Pakistan Army.

When the convoy of Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat was challenged in the early hours of the morning in Clifton, it brought considerable public scrutiny on the Corps Commanders committee of the Pakistan Army. As a result of this scrutiny, opinion editorials in newspapers are now openly talking about the cavalier manner in which Gen. Musharraf has filled the Corps Commanders with his relatives. For example, Gen. Shahid Aziz Siddiqui, the Corps Commander of Lahore, is a direct cousin of Gen. Musharraf. Similarly Gen. Hayat is allegedly related to Gen. Musharraf through his wife’s side. This allegation of nepotism could simply have its roots in the minds of disgruntled Pakistani Army senior staff that may have been sidelined in the promotion process. One finds this explanation debatable if one goes through the service records of the people that Musharraf has promoted. What is however beyond debate is that Musharraf needs to surround himself with people whose loyalty is beyond doubt. While this is true for all leaders, in the case of Musharraf and the Pakistan Army Corps Commanders, this takes on a very ominous significance.

Before one begins to put all the pieces laid out here together one must recall some key facts about Pakistani Islam. A majority of Pakistan’s population are from the Sunni sect. The Sunnis of Pakistan fall roughly under three sub-sects, the Barelvis, the Deobandis, and the Alhe Hadithis. The Barelvis are a majority of the population. They comprise most of the lower socio-economic sections of Pakistan. The Alhe Hadithis are a minority, but there are very close to Wahhabi groups in Saudi Arabia, and hence their leaders are among the richer people in Pakistan. The Deobandis of Pakistan are somewhere in the middle.

It is important to understand where the Deobandis of Pakistan came from. Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband in India is the Islamic equivalent of Harvard or Oxford in the West. Indian Deobandis were a major influence on educated Indian Muslims in British India. The positive effect of their scholarship was felt in better part of the Islamic world. Many social and legal codes throughout the Islamic world were shaped by the thinking of Indian Deobandis.  In British India, the Deobandis formed a political group, the Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islami-e-Hind (JUI-H) to protect their political interests. After partition this organization split up and the Pakistan branch broke away after the Indian branch of the JUI-H opposed partition. After the partition a number of educated Indian Muslims left for Pakistan, and took up very influential positions in government there. The result is that the bulk of the administration, army and judiciary in Pakistan are dominated by Deobandis. Deobandi thinking continues to be a major influence on Pakistani government policy. During the period of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rule of the Pakistani Army dictator Gen. Zia ul Haq, the power of Pakistani Deobandis grew enormously. Several major Deobandi learning centers, such as the Jamia-ul-Uloom Banuri and the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania at Akora Khattak, became centers for the promotion of a new brand of militant Islam. Influential preachers from these institutions became respected voices in Pakistan and were given powerful positions on the Council of Islamic Ideology, a body setup by Gen. Zia to shape Pakistani national policy. An infusion of funds and arms from Saudi Arabia and western intelligence agencies, created huge standing armies of radical Deobandis in Pakistan. The role of leading Pakistani Deobandi Ulema in creating the Taliban has been well documented now, and the links between these Ulema and Osama Bin Laden are public knowledge. Major Deobandi organizations in Pakistan like the Harkat-ul-Mujaheedin, dominate the nodal body for the Kashmiri Jihad, the Muttahida Jihad Council. Pakistani elements of a Deobandi religious order, the Tablighi Jamaat which had a great following among some sections of the Pakistani Army was also found to be involved in an attempt to depose the elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and to impose Islamic rule in Pakistan. The leader of this coup attempt Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam Abbasi, once the ISI head of station in New Delhi, was jailed for treason in 1995. Gen. Abbasi was released after Gen. Musharraf ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. Gen. Abbasi immediately went on to establish a new organization, the Hizb-allah, comprising former military officers that would aim to establish Islamic rule in Pakistan. To summarize in all the Jihads run by the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the Pakistani Deobandis had a major role.

After Sept 11, 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power, and to capture Osama Bin Laden. At this time, all Pakistani Deobandi Ulema vociferously opposed the US and condemned Gen. Musharraf’s cooperation with the US forces. Huge rallies were organized and the public sympathy generated in this process for the Islamist cause, brought the Pakistani Deobandi led Islamist political alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal to power in the recent parliamentary elections. Since then almost every single day in the Pakistani National Assembly, MMA legislators have called for the ouster of Gen. Musharraf. Most MMA office bearers publicly challenge the fairness of the referendum that Gen. Musharraf claims to have won.  High ranking Pakistani Deobandi Ulema like Maulana Shamzai had strongly opposed any move by the Pakistan Govt. to participate in the US counter terrorist activity. In the aftermath of the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling scandal, the Pakistani Deobandi Ulema once again led the charge against the Govt. of Pakistan for having sold out the Pakistani Nuclear Program. The year 2002 saw the most intense Indo-Pak standoff to date. During this period the Govt. of India succeed in forcing Gen. Musharraf to act against major anti-India terrorist groups in Pakistan. The leaders of several groups were placed under house arrest, and their groups declared terrorist organizations in Pakistan. The ISI unit responsible for coordinating these groups was also asked to curtail its activities. Most of the groups shut down were Pakistani Deobandi outfits. By contrast the Alhe Hadithi outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, headed by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, was spared the axe and continues to operate with impunity in Pakistan today.

From the perspective of people in the Pakistani Army intelligence community, the Ahle Hadithis are a very useful group. Being a minority in Pakistan, they are constantly under the threat of assimilation from the other Sunni sub-sects. As their brand of Islam is very close to the Wahhabi church of Saudi Arabia, these groups usually attract a lot of funding from Saudi sources. In addition to this there are numerous internal fractures, mostly along caste lines within the Ahle Hadith groups in Pakistan, so this makes it easy for the Pakistani intelligence community to leverage groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Before Sept. 11 2001, most Pakistan watchers noted that all the international Jihad operations run out of Pakistan, i.e. support to Arab, Chechen, Bosnian, Myanmarese, Malaysian and Indonesian groups was coordinated by Pakistani Deobandi leaders and groups like the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami. At one point of time the ties between the HuM and the Al Qaida were so close that one Indian analyst suggested that the Al Qaida’s Makhtab-al-Khidmat and the HuM were practically indistinguishable entities. After Sept. 11, 2001, one no longer sees this connection. The Lashkar-e-Taiba however seems to be growing in profile and spread. On a daily basis we are treated to reports about American, British, French and Australian Muslims getting trained at LeT camps in Pakistan to commit terrorist acts in western countries. Another interesting fact that came to light recently was that a Pakistani national had been trained at a LeT facility and asked by Al Qaida operatives to participate in Sept 11, but the Pakistani defected and informed the FBI. Tragically this intelligence input did not receive the attention it merited. The LeT has also been involved in promoting terrorism against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The LeT leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, has been making statements about the possession of nuclear weapons and other WMD. A number of analysts privately admit that the LeT may already have the know-how to make chemical and biological weapons. The involvement of A. Q. Khan with the LeT has been subject to some speculation also. The sudden rise in profile of the LeT in the last three years, led one Indian analyst, Shri. B. Raman to characterize the LeT as the “new standard bearer of the Al Qaida and the International Islamic Front”.

This rise in profile of the LeT appears to have come at the expense of the Pakistani Deobandi groups. It is not uncommon for the Pakistani intelligence community to play off one group against another to ensure that a control is maintained on things. While this sort of `friendly football’ would be fine under ordinary circumstances, in the current atmosphere in Pakistan, this is a very bad idea. The Musharraf government is increasingly being perceived as being anti-Muslim. That label attracts all sorts of bad vibes, and it drives the Islamic religious fanatics into a homicidal frenzy. The Indian Deobandis were extremely consistent in their opposition to British colonial rule. Conditions in Pakistan today, are reminiscent of the worst days of colonial power. Pakistani Deobandis must feel a deeply ingrained sense of anger over the perceived failure of the Pakistani Army to protect Pakistan, and Islam from the Americans. Given the extent to which the Pakistani Deobandis penetrate the bureaucracy, the Army and the judiciary, this anger must be quite palpable to Gen. Musharraf.