Both the ISI and Al-Qaeda advocate jihad and establishment of an Islamic caliphate, with the only minor difference being that the ISI wants Pakistan to be the leader of such a global Islamic regime . n the early hours after the Peshawar school massacre, some naïve analysts have argued that Pakistan’s resolve to fight against the jihadists will be strengthened. Some peace activists have argued on social media that the mass slaughter of Peshawar’s school children offers an opportunity for India and Pakistan to work together to counter the terror groups in the region. However, the Pakistani military is fully capable of unilaterally crushing the jihadism in the region, but it will not do so. Given the nature of the regime in Islamabad which protects some jihadist commanders, persuades many others to work for it and fights those who do not see Pakistan as a sharia-compliant state, it is unlikely that Pakistan will see better days over the next decade. This is mainly because the Pakistani military’s ISI itself is a jihadist organization like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It operates through terror groups such as the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaatud Dawa and the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) whose leader Maulana Masood Azhar is protected in Bahawalpur. While the Pakistani army conducts the charade of anti-Taliban military operations in Waziristan which are generally meant to obtain funds from the U.S., it openly protects the jihadist hubs in Muzaffarabad, Muridke, Bahawalpur and Rawalpindi. The ISI, which protected Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, continues to protect Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. In recent years, the Taliban commanders, especially those belonging to the Haqqani Network, were found in Rawalpindi, not in Waziristan Pakistan army doesn’t need to kill thousands of Taliban footmen, it only needs a will to eliminate a dozen militant commanders who publicly roam the streets and Pakistan’s television studios, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Maulana Abdul Aziz, Syed Salahuddin, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, Maulana Masood Azhar, Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi, among others. Pakistani jihadism is very much visible Read on.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 06:57:51 +0000
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