Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [112]
Finally – though it is not clear if this was really a departure from the script, as ISI officers claim in private, or was planned by the ISI as the Indian government believes – the militants began to carry out terrorist attacks on Indian targets outside Kashmir (starting with an attack on Indian soldiers at the Red Fort in Delhi in December 2000). This last development in particular ensured that in the wake of 9/11 Pakistan would come under irresistible US pressure to abandon its active support for the Kashmiri jihad and crack down on its militant allies.
In January 2002, Musharraf formally banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and ordered an end to militant infiltration into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan. From mid-2003 this ban on infiltration has largely been enforced, leading to a steep reduction in violence in Kashmir. As a result, in November 2003 India and Pakistan agreed a ceasefire along the Line of Control in Kashmir, and initiated a dialogue on a possible settlement over Kashmir, which will be discussed further in the Conclusions.
The Pakistani military remained firmly convinced that India would never agree to terms even minimally acceptable to Pakistan unless at least the threat of future guerrilla and terrorist action remained present. Meanwhile, their continued hostility to India was also fuelled by attacks on Muslims in India, and especially the infamous Gujarat massacres of 2002, which were orchestrated by the BJP state government (and which claimed, it should be pointed out, at least ten times as many victims as the Mumbai terrorist attacks, while receiving perhaps one-tenth of Western media notice).
By 2008, as the Taleban insurgency against Pakistan itself gathered pace and an increasing number of ISI officers and informants fell victim to it, the ISI itself had also begun to see the need for a new approach to some of its militant allies within Pakistan. In the meantime, however, various developments had made it far more difficult for the Pakistani military to take effective action.
The military had helped the militant groups root themselves more deeply in Pakistani society, especially in parts of Punjab, exploiting not just the military’s financial assistance but the prestige of taking part in a jihad which most Punjabis saw (and were encouraged by the military to see) as legitimate. The extensive charitable and educational network developed by Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa with military encouragement also served as a way of employing fighters withdrawn from the Kashmir battle. By 2009, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s own resources had made it independent of ISI financial support.
The military is genuinely concerned that if it attacks these groups it will drive more and more of them into joining the Pakistani Taleban – as has already occurred with Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and some sections of Jaish-e-Mohammed. According to Stephen Tankel, some members of Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa did press the organization to revolt against the Pakistani government when Musharraf sided with America after 9/11, but their demands were rejected by the leadership and they left the organization. Since Lashkar-e-Taiba remained focused on Kashmir (and, after 2006, on Afghanistan), and did not attack Pakistan, the ISI did not move against it.27
On 14 January 2010, Jamaat-ud-Dawa condemned the killing of Muslims by suicide bombing as un-Islamic and said that such attacks ‘played into the hands of the US, Israel and India’. It is important to note that LeT and JuD’s hatred and fear of India may act as a deterrent against their joining in revolution in Pakistan – at least, a JuD spokesman whom I interviewed in January 2009 stressed repeatedly his organization’s loyalty to Pakistan as the state that ‘defends Muslims of South Asia against Indian Hindu conquest and oppression’. He promised therefore that the JuD would do nothing to destroy Pakistan.
Pakistani officials have told me that their greatest fears of mass revolt in Punjab concern what would happen if Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa