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Pakistan's jihadi problems

While Pakistan claims to have lost more than 600 of the 80,000 troops it has committed to the campaign against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan and the United States remain unimpressed. In the most recent round of acrimonious exchange, the U.S. State Department's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Henry Crumpton, suggested that Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the extremist outfits had taken shelter on the eastern side of the Durand Line. In parallel, Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta has asked the Musharraf government to do more to fight terrorism. Islamabad has maintained that these allegations were baseless, asserting that it would have certainly tried to apprehend Osama and the others if only it knew their whereabouts. The truth is likely to remain elusive, since independent monitors are not allowed to enter the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Pakistan authorities have failed to convince anyone that they are waging a sustained and intense campaign against the Osama-led jihad. Given the nature of the terrain in the tribal areas, it is understandable that clashes between the Pakistan army and the extremists take place sporadically. However, hardly any information on the campaign is provided in the long intervals between specific operations. In such a situation, it is natural for the world to conclude that Islamabad is not serious about eliminating Taliban and Al-Qaeda sanctuaries within Pakistan.

A less charitable, and perhaps more accurate assessment, is that powerful forces in the establishment, including the military, have not yet cleared the cobwebs in their minds — in thinking through, and operationalising, a policy of no tolerance towards jihadis. It is well known that operatives and partisans of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban move about with ease and propagate their ideology even in those parts of Pakistan where the federal government exercises real control. These organisations apparently face little difficulty in recruiting cadres or raising funds. President Pervez Musharraf has yet to deliver meaningfully on his promise of reforming madrassas so that none of them can function as training schools for jihadis. From the beginning of the U.S.-led war on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it has been clear that Islamabad would not be able to compartmentalise the jihadi groups. India expects the Pakistan government to be more earnest about delivering on the promise of ending cross-border terrorism. The strategy of keeping the Kashmir terrorist groups active while clamping down on outfits operating in Afghanistan was never going to work, for the simple reason there was no question of those who believed they were fighting a holy war of terror accepting a diktat that they should cross only one national border or fight only one enemy. While the positive steps taken by President Musharraf deserve appreciation, it is clearly in Pakistan's interests to get more serious about rooting out the sources of terrorist jihad.

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