The group is at the center of a tense diplomatic standoff, set in what may be the world’s most dangerous flashpoint. The U.S. State Department has urged Pakistan to outlaw Harkat ul-Mujahedin as a terrorist organization. For one thing, the Americans believe the group was responsible for the Indian Airlines hijacking in late December, in which more than 150 passengers were held hostage for a week and one was killed. But the group’s leaders deny engaging in terrorism of any sort, and so far Pakistan has refused to ban them. Last week the White House announced Bill Clinton’s long-awaited plans for a March visit to India and Bangladesh. Pakistan was conspicuously missing from the itinerary. The question is whether Pakistan’s pragmatic military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, can keep a lid on the radicals around him. Some of the most dangerous individuals belong to a phalanx of pro-Islamic officers immediately below him. “There has been an alarming fundamentalist Islamic trend in the Army,” a senior military official told NEWSWEEK. “The struggle at this stage is what kind of society Pakistan will be.”
Pakistan’s distress is reflected in the Kashmir conflict. Through a series of exclusive interviews with the guerrillas themselves, as well as armed-forces officers and militant Islamist clerics, NEWSWEEK has been told that the rebels are linked to the Pakistani military’s InterServices Intelligence Directorate (ISI)–the agency that organized and armed the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. The Pakistani government has repeatedly denied any connection to the insurgency–but some of Pakistan’s leaders seem to be supporting the rebels despite the denials. “Kashmir runs in the blood of almost every Pakistani,” says Gen. Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for Pakistan’s armed forces. “There is no way we can expect Pakistanis to stop moral, diplomatic and psychological support for the Kashmiris.”
On the contrary, their passion for the cause keeps growing. Witness the triumphant national tour of Masood Azhar. The Muslim cleric, 31, spent six years in an Indian prison until the hijackers traded their hostages for his freedom. He condemns the jetliner’s seizure and denies any connection with it. “I’m not a hero,” he told NEWSWEEK. “People come to listen to me because of their concern for Kashmir. A world that talks about human rights should welcome my freedom.” Hardly anyone in Pakistan knew his name before the hijacking. But his fame has grown fast. Some 10,000 enthusiasts welcomed him last month in Karachi. They crowded into a lane outside a local mosque and cheered as he promised to enlist 500,000 volunteers to march across the border into India.
Azhar and his heavily armed followers go where they choose in Pakistan. The utter lack of interference from police or soldiers appears to suggest at least tacit official approval of the paramilitary marches. At times the rallies begin to resemble some bizarre gathering of motley Rambo impersonators, parading through the city streets with a fantastic variety of weapons. Strangest of all are the bodyguards who follow him everywhere. Even while he talked to NEWSWEEK at a private apartment in Karachi, the six men formed a protective half-circle around him. Their weapons included an Uzi and an AK-47. One of them was wearing a football helmet and white tennis shoes, laces untied–an outlandish get-up even by Kashmiri standards. The military insists it can’t legally interfere with the public displays of firepower. “Unfortunately,” says Qureshi, “these are all licensed weapons.”
Inevitably, some of those marchers turn up in Kashmir–“licensed weapons” in hand. At the Lahore headquarters of the Kashmiri insurgent force Harkat-i-Jihad-i-Islami, a fighter identifies himself as Hazrat, 32. He says he has just returned from a tour of duty behind India’s lines. In preparation, he underwent six months of special military training, building the mental and physical toughness needed for survival in the cold, mountainous Kashmiri terrain. He tells of slipping past the “Line of Control” into Indian-held territory with a small group of fellow militants. “The launch” is the fighters’ term for the crossing. After their launch, the raiding parties spend the next three months living in the open, communicating with other rebel units by radio under a strict hierarchical command. By Hazrat’s estimate, the various insurgent groups have a combined strength of some 5,000 fighters.
Authorities in Pakistan deny giving operative support to the insurgents. The truth is something else, according to a military official and sources in two of the separatist groups, all of whom requested anonymity. They say the rebel groups are chiefly sustained by the same clandestine network that served as paymaster, quartermaster and taskmaster to the mujahedin during the Afghan war–a conduit largely supervised by the Pakistani military’s ISI. As in Afghanistan, the militant groups use Pakistan as a staging ground and rear base; Pakistan’s military covertly provides logistical support like fuel and radios, the sources say, as well as some arms and ammunition. Much of the funding comes from another Afghan-era network, a financial web of private donors in Pakistan and Arab states.
Afghanistan’s veterans moved on to other embattled lands after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal. They dispersed to Bosnia, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria–and by the thousands to Kashmir. Many fighters there are already talking about where the next front for their jihad (holy war) will be. The breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya is often mentioned. “Our mission is not confined to Kashmir or Pakistan, but extends to Chechnya and the world,” says Zarar Ahmad’s friend Abdullah, at the Harkat ul-Mujahedin office in Peshawar. “We want to bring revolution and an Islamic way of life. Jihad is the way to bring about revolution in the world.”
Washington has to proceed with extreme caution. Sanctions against Pakistan can only worsen the appalling economic and social conditions that have already bred a generation of anti-Western extremists in places like Afghanistan, Sudan and Pakistan itself. And what would be gained? Musharraf, who seized power in a coup last October, insists he needs a chance to carry out his own moderate revolution in Pa-kistan, curing the country’s desperate economic and political corruption. And sources in Washington say there’s little chance that the White House will make good on its threat to leave Pakistan out of the president’s South Asian trip. Experts worry that such a snub might add to the region’s instability, worsening the threat of outright war and a possible nuclear exchange between Islamabad and New Delhi.
Such a risk is unacceptable. That’s why practically any gesture of accommodation from Islamabad will probably be rewarded by a visit from Clinton. And Musharraf has wasted no time proving his good will. Already he is speaking of a possible visit to Afghanistan. His agenda would likely include talks on the status of Osama bin Laden, the Afghans’ resident Saudi radical, wanted by the United States for allegedly masterminding the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Not that anyone expects the Afghans to extradite their ill-behaved Saudi friend.
It’s equally unlikely that Pakistan’s government will crack down on the Kashmiri militants. Few Pakistanis would stand for it. “Why is America troubled with us?” demands Fazalur Rehman Khalil, the leader of Harkat ul-Mujahedin, denying any role in the Indian Airlines hijacking. “Our war is with India, not the United States.” Maybe. Nine members of the group were killed in August 1998 when U.S. cruise missiles blasted bin Laden’s training bases in Afghanistan, as punishment for the embassy bombings. The jihad has spread from Afghanistan to Kashmir and Chechnya. It surely will not stop there.
