The story begins with the Soviet occupationof Afghanistan between 1979 and 1988.
An ally of the US in the ColdWar divide, Pakistan became the nerve centre for planning, coordination,training and execution of anti-Soviet jihad for which many Muslims from the ArabWorld and Southeast Asia, as well as Chechens, the Egyptians, and the Yemeniesvolunteered to assist. In 1984, Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar and formerleader of the Muslim Brotherhood Organisation (Al-Iqwanul Muslamoon) and Osamabin Laden co-founded the Maktab al Khidamat lil Mujahidin al-Arab (MAK, orAfghan Service Bureau) in Peshawar, Pakistan as a forum to disseminatepropaganda, raise funds and recruit mujahideens.
The MAK set up anetwork of offices in thirty-five countries (including thirty in US cities). Thebureau received substantial official patronage from Islamabad and Washington interms of armaments, experts for training, intelligence support and networking.In 1988, Azam and Osama bin Laden set up Al-Qaeda al-Sulbah (The Solid Base) tocreate a worldwide framework of Islamist military and political organisations.After Azzam''s death, Osama turned MAK, together with Al-Qaeda, into a globalterrorist front.
The transmigration of terrorists and theinfrastructure was of such magnitude that many intelligence analysts believedthat the centre of gravity of terrorism had shifted from the Middle East toAsia. This shift manifested itself principally in two forms. Afghanistanreplaced Lebanon as the major centre for terrorist training and infrastructure.
Second, the agenda of jihad waswidened to include local conflicts, making these part of an internationalIslamic jihad. In effect, Afghanistan emerged as the headquarters ofinternational terrorism.
This was due mainly to facilitation by aregime that had no difficulty in identifying state interests with those ofAl-Qaeda.
In Asia, Pakistan remained the major centre facilitatingtransit of terrorist cadres in and out of Afghanistan, as well as the maindisseminator of the jihad cult through its madrasas which provided Islamiceducation to Muslims from all over the world.
The radicalisation andIslamisation of education in Pakistan had been continuing since the militaryregime of Zia-ul-Haq, when the Muslim seminaries received exclusive statepatronage and thereby flourished in pursuit of what Zia-ul-Haq said was ''amission given by God to bring Islamic Order to Pakistan.
''Thesemosque-based schools became the breeding grounds for such militant religiousorganisations as Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP), pursuing strands of violent sectarianfaith in Pakistan. Many such organisations were also requisitioned toparticipate in operations in Afghanistan.
This in turn helped thesereligious militant groups to enlarge their political space within Pakistanisociety as well as in its intelligence and security apparatus.
Oncethe Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, the jihad as well as themujhahideens spilled over to the Kashmir valley and much of the MAK resourceswere diverted to regional conflicts worldwide including Kashmir.
Themujhahideens thus found a new operational arena and a new mission to keep themengaged.
Many Pakistani and Kashmiri groups used the training andoperational infrastructure in Afghanistan and erstwhile Afghan veterans toundermine Indian control of Kashmir.
The induction of Afghanveterans into the Kashmir conflict marked one of the bloodiest phases inKashmiri militancy, beginning in the early 1990s.
Most of thesegroups continued to grow with Al-Qaeda. Many terrorist groups operating fromPakistan became members of the International Islamic Front (IIF), spearheaded byAl-Qaeda under the 1998 fatwa of the World Islamic Front for the Jihad Againstthe Jews and the Crusaders.
This combination contributed tothe reach and lethality of the groups, and changed the nature of militancy inSouth Asia significantly.
The Kashmir issue got mixed up with thepan-Islamist extremist agenda and most of the terrorist outfits, in addition topursuing the separatist/irredentist objectives, increasingly also began workingat the behest of Osama bin Laden.
In the aftermath of September 11,2001, Pakistan made a complete u-turn and became what Washington called ''afrontline state'' and a key ally in the global campaign against terror.
It was ironic especially as it was Pakistan which sponsored theTaliban in Afghanistan.
The Taliban in Afghanistan owed much both tothe terrorist groups operating in Pakistan as well as to the officialestablishment in Islamabad for its conception, empowerment and successes in manyof its campaigns against what became the Northern Alliance, which it fought forcontrol of most of Afghanistan.
There was considerable evidenceto suggest that the Taliban was being strongly supported by the Pakistanigovernment led by Benazir Bhutto. Many of the top leaders in the Taliban werealumni of the Darul Uloom Islamia Binori Town mosque in Karachi.
Itwas in this mosque that many leaders from the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and groups fromPakistan and members of its intelligence agency, met and furthered theiracquaintances.
The head of the Binori Mosque, Mufti NizamuddinShamzai, was the spiritual mentor of Mullah Omar.
As the Taliban wasconsolidating its position in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and Osama kept consolidatingtheir hold on the Taliban, exploiting their reciprocal relationships. (When a USattack on the Taliban after September 11, 2001 became imminent, Musharraf sent ateam of Mullahs led by Shamzai to Kandahar to persuade Mullah Omar to hand binLaden over to the FBI.)
Given the complexity of the relationshipsamong groups and individuals in the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Kashmir axis, it wasnot surprising to find that the immediate success of the ''war on terror'' did notalter the terrorist threat in the subcontinent.
Thus terrorists continued to beactive in most parts of the region especially in the Kashmir valley, which alsoremains as contentious an issue as ever between India and Pakistan in theirbilateral relations.
This has cast a shadow on the prospects of anylong-term peace in the subcontinent. The militant infiltration into Kashmir fromPakistan across the Line of Control continued, threatening to become aflashpoint for a wider India-Pakistan conflict.
Militancy in Kashmirhas kept both India and Pakistan on the edge, especially as the threshold formajor conflict-one involving terrorism-has been dangerously low in the regiongiven the historic animosity between the nations.
New Delhi, whichbecame victim to the Al-Qaeda brand of terrorism immediately after September 11,with attacks against the national Parliament in December 2001, also supportedthe global campaign against terror, and has been emphasising the need to takeinto account the entire range and complexity of its international linkages,especially on the role of Pakistan''s Inter Services Intelligence in pushing theinsurgents inside the Indian territory.
The December incident broughtnuclear armed neighbours to the brink of a major armed conflagration as bothsides mobilised troops along the international border.
Pakistan hasarrested several key Al-Qaeda operatives-Ramzi Binalshibh, Abu Zubaida andKhalid Sheikh Mohammed among them. But the nation continues to be a haven forglobal terrorism.
Groups which had thus far confined their activitieseither to separatist campaigns in Kashmir or to sectarian killings, have nowcome to take up the world jihad mantle at the behest of Al-Qaeda.
Prominent among them are groups like Jaish-e- Mohammad, (JeM),Sippah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).
There are new formulations andconfigurations-the emerging links between the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HI) ofGulbuddin Heckmatyar and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) thatis now consolidating a wave of resistance against the Hamid Karzai government inAfghanistan.
Many new groups with strategic links among the existingones have emerged, such as Lashkar-e-Omar (2002), the Muslim United Army (2002)and 313 (2003).
A wave of terrorist attacks tied to Al-Qaeda and itsaffiliates commenced after the formation of the new configurations, beginningwith the killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl.
The March 17, 2002grenade attack on a church in Islamabad, in which five persons, including thewife of an American diplomat and her daughter, were killed, (the HighCommissioner of Sri Lanka to Pakistan was injured among others), the May 8, 2002killing of eleven French nationals, followed by the June attacks on the AmericanConsulate in Karachi, as well as attacks on foreign tourists on the KarakoramHighway were all believed to have been committed at the behest of the newconfigurations.
But sponsoring terrorism is like riding a tiger.Pakistan itself has to pay a heavy price for its support for the Taliban.
Even though Musharrafdemonstrated wisdom by supporting the US-led war on terror against the Talibanin neighbouring Afghanistan, the country continues to be caught in a verycomplex web of terrorist activity, with greater radicalisation of extremistgroups.
Karachi has reportedly emerged as a hub of Al-Qaedaactivities after the collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and has provided asafe haven and support-including financial support-to many Al-Qaeda fugitives.
Many Al-Qaeda operatives are also believed to have taken refuge inthe tribal areas in western Pakistan and in the North West Frontier Province(NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Populatedby conservative ethnic Pashtuns who share intimate religious and tribal linkageswith their counterparts in Afghanistan, these tribes also hold vehementanti-Western and anti-American sentiments.
The influx, at the least,has dangerously increased the terrorist threat to Pakistan. Reports that manyothers such as Jose Padilla, the man plotting a ''dirty bomb'' attack inWashington, transited through Pakistan even after September 11, have put thenation under intense international scrutiny.
Terrorism does bite the handthat feeds it.
