The Jihadi face of the Jamaat: Is the alliance with the establishment over now? News Analysis Amir Mir Tuesday, November 12, 2013 From Print Edition 795 90 512 6 ISLAMABAD: The track record of the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan shows that the party, which had been an ally of the successive military dictators including Gen Ayub Khan, Gen Ziaul Haq and Gen Pervez Musharraf, has a soft corner for the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership, mainly because of their ideological affinity with them. The founder of the Jamaat, Maulana Maududi, had designed his party to be the vanguard of Islamic revolution that inspired Brotherhood’s chief ideologue, Syed Qutb. And al-Qaeda mostly draws ideological inspiration from Syed Qutb whose last book, ‘Milestones on the Road (1965)’, argues that the Holy Quran presented a blueprint for the establishment of a true Islamic State. Therefore, the JI Ameer Munawar Hasan’s statements giving the certificate of martyrdom to a terrorist (Hakeemullah Mehsud) and deriding the Pakistani soldiers who have rendered their lives in the war against terrorists, must not be shocking for those who are well aware of the Jamaat’s track record. Not long ago, Hakeemullah had named Munawar Hassan along with Nawaz Sharif and Maulana Fazlur Rehman as guarantors for holding peace talks with the PPP government, saying they want them to give a guarantee that the army would not violate the peace agreement. In an unprecedented reaction to the offensive remarks made by the JI ameer, the army spokesman had asked the party to clarify its position on a statement which was largely condemned and hailed only by TTP spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid. “These were irresponsible and misleading remarks, declaring dead terrorists as Shaheed while insulting the Shahadat of thousands of innocent Pakistanis and soldiers of the armed forces. The people whose loved ones have laid down their lives while fighting terrorists and families of martyrs demand an unconditional apology from Munawar Hasan for hurting their feelings”, said the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) in a statement issued. But quite surprisingly, instead of regretting his statement, Munawar Hasan defended it and said he would stick to his position on both Hakeemullah and the Pakistani soldiers. The Shura meeting of the JI which was held at Mansoora a day after the ISPR statement was released also defended Munawar Hasan, saying the Pakistan Army should not indulge in politics by issuing political statements. Interestingly, a cursory glance at Pakistan’s chequered political history illustrates that every time a military dictator toppled an elected government and imposed martial law in the country, the Jamaat had been quick to become an ally of the dictator. Therefore, the Jamaat Shura’s criticising army’s indulgence in politics sounded quite funny. In fact, the ISPR spokesman’s statement against Syed Munawar Hasan and the counter statement coming from the JI Shura have abundantly made it clear that the decades long Mullah Military Alliance [with particular reference to Jamaat] is coming to a fag end, amidst reports of the Jamaat’s alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban connections. In the past, the Jamaat-e-Islami had always worked in tandem with the military and intelligence establishment - be it the jehad-e-Kashmir or Jehad-e-Afghanistan or domestic politics such as the formation of the Nawaz-led Islami Jamhoori Ittehad to topple Benazir Bhutto’s government. However, the Pakistani security agencies had been keeping a close watch on the activities of the Jamaat and its top leadership since the March 2003 arrest of al-Qaeda’s chief operational commander and the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad from the Rawalpindi residence of a local Jamaat-e-Islami leader Farzana Qudoos. It was on March 1, 2003 that an FBI-guided raiding party broke into the modest brick house in the Westridge area of the garrison town of Rawalpindi at around 2.30 a.m. and arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, a Kuwaiti national who had played a crucial part in orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, the owner of the house who was sheltering Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was also arrested during the raid. The Jamaat was subsequently placed under close watch by the security agencies. Almost four months after Khalid Sheikh was arrested, the then interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat had asserted while speaking in the National Assembly on August 13, 2004 that the JI had been supporting the al-Qaeda. Two days later on August 16, 2004, Faisal addressed a press conference and listed a number of incidences in which members of the JI had been tied to the al-Qaeda, and called on its leadership to explain these links. While quoting intelligence findings, Faisal Saleh Hayat confirmed links of the JI activists with al-Qaeda members saying the houses of the JI people were used as hideouts and shelters for the al-Qaeda terrorists. Quoting instances, he reminded that a lady namely Malooka Khatoon w/o Abdul Raheem, an activist of Jamaat-e-Islami was arrested from Clifton, Karachi on October 4, 2002. “She revealed her links with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. On December 18, 2002, Khawaja brothers, who were associated with the Jamaat and who were nabbed from Manawan near Lahore, admitted sheltering an al-Qaeda leader, Yasser Al-Jazeri. On January 4, 2003, an Australian Terrance Jack Thomas was arrested from the Karachi airport for his alleged links with the al-Qaeda network. He admitted using the house of a former Pakistani hockey star and goalkeeper, Shahid Ali Khan as his hideout. Shahid’s wife is a Jamaat activist. On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was nabbed from the Rawalpindi residence of Farzana Qudoos, a local Jamaat leader”. In view of these hard facts, said the interior minister, the Jamaat leadership should explain whether the arrests of the al-Qaeda leaders from the houses of its workers and leaders were a coincidence? While reacting to Faisal’s allegations, the Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmed had denied that his party had any links with the al-Qaeda or other militant organisations. “We do not believe in terrorism. The government is trying to pressuriSe us at the behest of the US, which is the biggest of all terrorists and is responsible for killing thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan”, the national press quoted Qazi Hussain as saying. However, the security agencies are suspicious [even today] about the Jamaat-e-Islami’s alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban links. In fact, Attaur Rehman, an alleged leader of the Jundullah group which was responsible for the June 2004 attack on the motorcade of the Karachi Corps Commander Lt Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat, was once the nazim of the JI’s student wing - Islami Jamiat Tuleba (IJT) - in the Department of International Relations of Karachi University. The interrogation report of the two Pakistani doctor brothers, cardiac surgeon Dr. Akmal Waheed and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Arshad Waheed, motivated the authorities to at least charge sheet the strongest political voice of Islamists in Pakistan and the real mother of many of the international Islamic movements. The doctors, who are ideologically inspired by the Jamaat-e-Islami, were arrested from Karachi in connection with the attack on Corps Commander Karachi that left 10 security personnel dead. According to investigators, the doctor brothers were active members of the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA), which is a JI affiliate. Those who interrogated the doctors had in their possession a videotaped confession by the two brothers, admitting that they used to raise funds for militants besides treating Arab fighters in the South Waziristan agency. However, both the doctor brothers were set free by the courts because of lack of evidence. However, their al-Qaeda connection was confirmed when Dr. Arshad Waheed was killed in a US drone attack in South Waziristan on March 16, 2008. And his death was announced on a 40-minute videotape produced by Al-Sahab, the propaganda organ of al-Qaeda. On the tape, Waheed was eulogized by Abu Mustafa Yazid, the chief operational commander of al-Qaeda who had claimed responsibility for Benazir Bhutto’s killing in Dec 2007. And last but not the least, the security agencies’ concerns about the possible links of Jamaat-e-Islami with al-Qaeda have been heightened with the recent arrest of a six-member team of al-Qaeda’s suicide bombers along with their local handler from the Punjab University. Those detained were operating in friendly territory, which made their blending into the background all the easier. They allegedly had the support of Islami Jamiat Tuleba - the student wing of the Jamaat which has refuted having any link with the arrested ones. But the law enforcement agencies insist that the arrested militants are al-Qaeda operative who were being provided shelter by the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:01:35 +0000
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