Uneasy Ally in Terror War Suddenly Feels More U.S. Pressure
By JOHN F. BURNS
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 20 — By
adding two more Pakistan-based groups
to Washington's terrorism list, President
Bush sharply increased the political
pressures that have gripped Pakistan's
military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, ever
since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United
States, according to Pakistanis with close
links to the Musharraf government.
In naming one of the groups, Ummah
Tameer-e-Nau, Mr. Bush said it had
provided information on nuclear weapons
technology to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda
terrorist group, a charge Pakistan has
insistently denied since the issue first arose in October.
The second group, Lashkar-e- Taiba, accused by Mr. Bush of involvement
in an attack last week on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, is the most
powerful of the Pakistan- based groups fighting Indian forces in the disputed
territory of Kashmir.
After Sept. 11, the issue was Pakistan's support for the Taliban rulers of
Afghanistan, with Washington telling Islamabad it must side with the United
States in its war on terrorism, or be included among the countries that would
be American targets as state sponsors of terrorism.
Within days, General Musharraf abandoned the Taliban and pledged full
support for American military operations in Afghanistan.
That commitment led General Musharraf into a confrontation with militant
Islamic groups in Pakistan, and ultimately to a crackdown that included
detaining several of the most prominent militant leaders and pledging further
steps to break their political power.
With his latest actions, particularly naming Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist
group, Mr. Bush appears to be pushing the Pakistani leader toward even
greater political hazards. Kashmir is a far more sensitive issue for most of
Pakistan's 140 million Muslims than the fate of the Taliban.
"What Bush is demanding now is that Musharraf make the biggest U- turn
yet," a former official with close links to the government said.
"It places the general in an even more difficult position than he was in after
Sept. 11, because what he's been told this time is that he has to abandon the
militant aspects of the Kashmir liberation struggle — and that's an issue that
is much closer to the hearts of most people in Pakistan than the survival of
the Taliban, which mattered a lot to the Islamic militants and to their
sympathizers in the army high command, but not nearly so much to ordinary
Pakistanis."
Placing a terrorism brand on Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, a group founded by a
retired Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist, was another kind of shock from
the Bush administration. Senior Pakistani officials said Mr. Bush, with the
blunt wording of today's announcement, was as much as accusing General
Musharraf of lying in his government's repeated statements that the group
was involved in relief work in Afghanistan and had nothing to do with nuclear
weapons.
"At the very least," a Western diplomat said, "you'd have to say that it's a
huge embarrassment to Musharraf."
General Musharraf, who spent today in Beijing on the second day of an
official visit to China, had no immediate comment on the American actions.
But Pakistani analysts said the fact that the general hurried to China so soon
after the attack on the Indian Parliament last week showed that, at times of
crisis, Pakistani leaders looked at least as much to China as to the United
States for help.
After the attack in New Delhi, India threatened to retaliate with military
strikes against camps in Pakistan where Kashmiri militants are trained. That
prompted new fears, in Washington as well as New Delhi and Islamabad,
that the situation could lead to a wider conflict between two nations that have
both acknowledged having stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Diplomats said they were puzzled that the dispute surrounding the Pakistani
nuclear scientists had been allowed to lead to such a public breach between
Washington and Islamabad. When the two nuclear scientists involved were
first detained in October, at American insistence, Pakistani officials said that
representatives of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. had participated in the
questioning.
This implied, at the least, that the two countries were sharing information and
seeking common ground.
Today, it became clear the effort had failed. Just last weekend, the son of
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, twice arrested in the case with the other
nuclear scientist, Chaudry Abdul Majeed, said both men had been released
and declared innocent. Today, diplomats speculated that General Musharraf
had decided, in releasing the two scientists, to send a signal that Pakistan
was drawing a "line in the sand" of its own, and telling Washington that
Islamabad, at least on issues relating to nuclear weapons, would not be
pushed around.
One Pakistani official said today that General Musharraf was deeply
unhappy about events in Afghanistan. The new provisional government, set
to take office on Saturday, will be, in Pakistan's view, heavily dependent on
the Northern Alliance forces that occupy Kabul, the capital, with an
international force that is likely to lack the firepower and the authority to
challenge alliance troops. Ever since Sept. 11, General Musharraf has said
that Pakistan will not accept an Afghanistan dominated by the alliance, which
has close political and military links to India.
But an even more pressing problem for the Pakistani ruler, on his return from
China, will be the American move against Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Together with another Kashmiri militant group added to the American
terrorism list in October, Jaish- e-Muhammad, the Lashkar group has been
responsible for about 70 percent of all Pakistan-backed militant attacks in
Indian-ruled Kashmir in the last two years, according to Pakistani intelligence
officials.
Through Inter-Services Intelligence, its military intelligence agency, Pakistan
helps to train and arm the Lashkar group, which includes large numbers of
Arab and other foreign Muslims in its ranks, as well as Pakistanis.
Because of its links to Al Qaeda, Lashkar was in Washington's sights from
the moment President Bush declared his war on terrorism, but Pakistan had
hoped to finesse the issue by more closely overseeing the group's military
activities and reducing, and eventually eliminating, its non-Pakistani fighters.
General Musharraf has said repeatedly that the war on terrorism must
distinguish between groups that engage in terror, like Al Qaeda, and other
groups, including Pakistan-based militant groups operating in Kashmir, that
are engaged in "liberation" struggles.
But now, Mr. Bush appears to have sided with India, and has told Pakistan
that any further backing for armed Islamic militant groups operating in
Kashmir will be tantamount to supporting terrorism.
In effect, General Musharraf appears to have been told that Pakistan, after
more than 50 years of battling India over Kashmir, must now abandon the
armed struggle there, and rely henceforth on political means of confronting
India. The question now is whether the general will comply, and whether he
can carry Pakistan's masses with him if he does.
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