Significance of Qari Saifullah Akhtar’s arrest
Reports say the head of the terrorist organisation Harkatul Jihad al-Islami, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, has been arrested and repatriated to Pakistan from Dubai where he was in hiding after he moved out of Saudi Arabia where he was in hiding earlier. It may be noted that last year, Qari’s Harkat mutated into Harkatul Mujahideen al-Alami and tried to kill President Pervez Musharraf on behalf of Al Qaeda. This arrest marks an important milestone in the war against terrorism by cutting one of the main links between the domestic jihadi movement and Al Qaeda. In order to understand this statement, we must explain the context of the man and the terrorist outfit that he led.
Qari fled Afghanistan after the American invasion in late 2001, taking shelter in South Waziristan before he was spirited out of Pakistan. He led an outfit belonging to the Deobandi mainstream. It was in many ways the ‘mother organisation’, parallel to Sipah Sahaba, from which branched out other better-known jihadi groups. His Harkat was inspired by the Afghan religious leader Nabi Muhammadi (who died in Islamabad as a leader of one of the seven jihadi organisations that fought against the Soviet Union) whose warriors were to emerge dominant as the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Like Maulana Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Muhammad, Qari Saifullah Akhtar — born in 1958 in South Waziristan — was a graduate of the Banuri Masjid in Karachi. He was a crucial figure in Mufti Shamzai’s efforts to get Osama bin Laden and Mullah Umar together as partners-in-jihad. Qari Saifullah Akhtar first came to public view when he was caught as one of the would-be army coup-makers of 1995 led by Major-General Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, but saved his skin by turning ‘state witness’. (Some say he was defiant but was still let off.) After that, he surfaced in Kandahar and from 1996 was an adviser to Mullah Umar in the Taliban government. His fighters were called ‘Punjabi’ Taliban and were offered employment, something that other outfits could not get out of Mullah Umar. His outfit had membership among the Taliban too. Three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to his Harkat.
In difficult times, the Harkat fighters stood together with Mullah Umar. Approximately 300 of them were killed fighting the Northern Alliance, after which Mullah Umar was pleased to give Harkat the permission to build six more ‘maskars’ (training camps) in Kandahar, Kabul and Khost, where the Taliban army and police also received military training. From its base in Afghanistan, the Harkat launched its campaigns inside Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya. It finally became the biggest jihadi militia based in Kandahar located in the middle of the Taliban-Al Qaeda strategic merger.
The Harkat called itself ‘the second line of defence for all Muslim states’ and was active in Burma, Bangladesh and Sinkiang. Because of their common origin in the Banuri seminary, Harkat al-Jihad al-Islami and Harkatul Mujahideen were merged in 1993 for the sake of “better performance” in Kashmir. The new outfit was called Harkatul Ansar, the first to be declared as a terrorist organization by the United States after one of its commanders formed an ancillary organization, called Al Faran, and kidnapped and killed Western tourists from Kashmir in 1995. Qari Saifullah Akhtar fled from Kandahar after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 and hid in South Waziristan.
Qari Saifullah’s outfit was truly international. When the Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami men were seen first in Tajikistan, they were mistaken by some observers as being fighters from Sipah Sahaba, but in fact they were under the command of a Punjabi commander, helping Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev resist the Uzbek ruling class in the Ferghana Valley. Out of the two Uzbeks being sheltered by Mullah Umar in Afghanistan, one was killed and the other was recently wounded during the Wana Operation in South Waziristan. The Harkat used to be entrenched in Karachi, looking after its Burmese warriors. They were located inside Korangi and the area was sometimes called mini-Arakan. The Harkat opened 30 seminaries for themselves inside Korangi, there being 18 more in the rest of Karachi. In Orangi, the biggest seminary was Madrasa Khalid bin Walid where 500 Burmese were once under training. They were later trained in Afghanistan and directed to fight against the Northern Alliance and against the Indian army in Kashmir.
Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami had branch offices in 40 districts and tehsils in Pakistan, including Sargodha, Dera Ghazi Khan, Multan, Khanpur, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Mianwali, Bannu, Kohat, Waziristan, Dera Ismail Khan, Swabi and Peshawar. It also had an office in Islamabad. Funds were collected from these grassroots offices as well as from sources abroad. The militia had accounts in two branches of Allied Bank in Islamabad. Qari Saifullah’s repatriation signals the closing of the Saudi channel of escape for the Deobandi jihadis. But Qari Saifullah was not the only one hiding in that region. There were other less known personalities with contacts who could go at will to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to bide their time when the political heat increased in Karachi and their ‘handlers’ told them to take a sabbatical. For Qari Saifullah Akhtar the sabbatical is now over.
The timing of Qari Saifullah’s repatriation is significant. It happened after the arrest of Al Qaeda operative Muhammad Khalfan Ghailani from Gujrat along with Al Qaeda’s computer genius Muhammad Naeem Nur Khan. It is said that the Pakistani agencies recruited Khan as a double agent and were thus able to communicate with Al Qaeda through him. Because of a premature disclosure of Khan as a double agent in the United States, the slowly tightening noose around Al Qaeda in the UK had to be quickly sprung. The home-coming of Qari Saifullah Akhtar could well be connected with the revelations made in Gujrat. He is a bigger catch than most of us not clued in might actually think. * |
