American agencies were and are always aware of the terrorist mafia in Pakistan. Given their reach and the eyes and ears in the sky, the US cannot be oblivious to the presence of safe houses and protected guests. But over the years, Washington has always felt shy of calling a spade a spade with its eyes set on short term gains in the Af-Pak region and the Muslim world. Post- Davis saga there is a new willingness to walk the talk not substantially but in a small measure.
This is apparent from the US Congressional report on militant outfits operating from Pakistan. In a sense the report has no startling details. It pools together bits and pieces of scattered information and thus becomes a ready reckoner on who is who of Pakistani militancy scene.
Broadly, the report prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) as a backgrounder to the American law makers, divides militants into five categories – Globally oriented militants, Afghanistan-oriented militants, India- and Kashmir-oriented militants, Sectarian militants, and domestically oriented.
Globally oriented militants are especially al-Qaeda and its affiliates, mostly Uzbeks, operating out of the FATA and in the port city of Karachi. The Afghanistan-oriented militants include the ‘Quetta Shura’ of Mullah Omar, believed to operate from the Balochistan provincial capital of Quetta, as well as Karachi. ‘The organization run by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, in the North Waziristan tribal agency; and the Hizb-i-Islami party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (HiG), operating further north from the Bajaur tribal agency and Dir district also come under the Afghan oriented category’, the CRS report said.
India- and Kashmir-oriented militants are essentially the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and Harkat ul-Mujahideen (HuM). They are based in the Punjab province and in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. These groups get the maximum support from the establishment, the report stated.
LeT has been designated by the US as a terrorist group. The action was the perfect give away to the fact that the US sees the LeT as a serious threat to its own security and has been tracking its movements from within Pakistan. The Davis affair bears this out – a view shared by the CRS report as well.
In so far the sectarian militant are concerned, this category includes the anti-Shia outfit, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), and its offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the latter closely associated with Al-Qaeda, operating mainly in Punjab.
The domestically oriented groups are largely Pashtun militants who in 2007 closed ranks to become Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone attack last year. TTP has representatives from each of the seven FATA agencies. It has since incorporated the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e- Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) led by Maulana Sufi Mohammed in the north-western Malakand and Swat districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is now the most coherent grouping.
There is no gain saying that North Waziristan is the nerve centre of Pak based and Pak managed Islamist militia. CRS report clearly brings this fact with the observation that ‘by many accounts the North Waziristan tribal agency — home to the al-Qaeda – and Taliban-allied Haqqani network and the TTP forces of Hafiz Gul Bahadar, among others—is currently the most important haven for both Afghan- and Pakistan-oriented militants’.
The Islamist militant groups have given up mutual animosity since 2009, and have become mutually supportive. And it is certainly a cause for concern. To India, and the US, though not necessarily in that order if one goes by plans and planks of terrorists. To what extent the US hastens the Pak military operation in North Waziristan will determine the sucees of the global war on terror.
