Investigation of Attacks on Musharraf Points to Pakistani Group
by John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
washingtonpost.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 13 -- Building on clues from a cell phone data card, investigators probing last month's assassination attempts against Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, say they are increasingly convinced that the bombings were partly orchestrated by militants associated with the radical Muslim group Jaish-i-Mohammed, a onetime ally of Pakistan's security services with links to al Qaeda.
Call records from the memory chip, which was found among the debris after two men detonated truck bombs near Musharraf's armored limousine on Christmas, have helped lead to the detention of up to 40 people, including members of Jaish-i-Mohammed and a like-minded group, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, according to Pakistani security officials.
Among those detained for questioning over the weekend were students and teachers at several seminaries in Punjab province affiliated with hard-line Sunni Muslim religious parties that constitute the core of the political opposition in Pakistan's parliament.
Jaish-i-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi have a history of joint operations. Their members have been implicated along with al Qaeda in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in the port city of Karachi.
"We have seen in the Daniel Pearl case that local jihadis can work in harmony with al Qaeda," a Pakistani investigator said. "Unless we have reached to the bottom of this plot against the president, al Qaeda will remain a hot suspect."
The suspected involvement of members of Jaish-i-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, possibly with help from al Qaeda, underscores the threat posed by homegrown militant groups that over the years have been cultivated by Pakistan's security establishment as a strategic asset against enemies in Afghanistan and India.
For almost two decades, successive civilian and military governments in Pakistan have permitted the flourishing of armed Islamic groups as a kind of irregular army -- first in the CIA-backed war against Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan and more recently in the violent conflict with India over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, however, Musharraf ended Pakistan's support for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, which had provided al Qaeda with a haven to train Islamic militants from around the world -- including many from Pakistan. He also vowed full cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Pakistan has since handed over about 500 suspected al Qaeda operatives, most of them foreigners, but has moved far more cautiously against Taliban remnants and extremist groups fighting in Kashmir, both of which still enjoy some public support.
Musharraf also began to attack religious extremists as the main threat faced by Pakistan, a conviction that associates say has only deepened following his narrow escapes on Dec. 14 and Christmas.
Musharraf has recently hinted at a softening of Pakistani demands on Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan, and last week pledged in his accord with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that Pakistan would not allow terrorist groups to operate from its soil. At best, said Ayesha Siddiqa, a former Defense Ministry official who writes on security matters, militant groups "might be diluted over the years."
But Siddiqa, who said she remained skeptical of Musharraf's commitment to cracking down on the extremists, added: "Militancy is not going to go away. The pattern is the whole thing might actually shift to Pakistan" -- especially if Sunni militants start to target Musharraf and his government with the same ferocity they have previously reserved for foreign enemies or members of the country's Shiite Muslim minority.
"They are frustrated because they were working on a particular project, and if they are frustrated obviously we run the risk that they will convert their wrath inwards," Hamid Gul, who ran Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) toward the end of the Afghan war, said of the fighters he still describes as mujaheddin, or holy warriors.
The danger posed by militant groups is considered so serious that those in charge of Musharraf's security recently barred soldiers and police assigned to guard the presidential motorcade from carrying cell phones out of concern that they might be used to coordinate another assassination attempt, officials said.
In a similar vein, Musharraf has told associates that he is reluctantly considering a move into the official president's residence in Islamabad, which would reduce the amount of time he spends traveling on public roads. He currently lives with his wife in the city of Rawalpindi, about 12 miles from the capital, in the elegant colonial-era residence to which he is entitled as army chief of staff.
Although Musharraf's political position has in some ways never been stronger -- he won a vote of confidence last month in parliament and Pakistan's four provincial assemblies -- diplomats judge him so vulnerable to another attack that they have recently begun studying Pakistan's rules of succession.
Investigators said the Dec. 14 attack on Musharraf, in which a bridge in Rawalpindi was wired with explosives, generated few clues. The charge detonated moments after Musharraf's motorcade had passed over the bridge, apparently delayed by U.S.-supplied electronic jamming devices that interfered with the remote control device used to set it off.
The second attack, however, involved suicide bombers driving Suzuki pickup trucks packed with explosives. The assailants' remains and personal effects have yielded an abundance of evidence, investigators say, that has produced a clearer though incomplete picture of the terrorist cell they believe was behind both attempts.
One of the bombers, officials said, was carrying an identity card that allowed investigators to piece together his history as a native of the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir who was once associated with the Islamic militant group Harkat ul-Ansar and later with a faction of Jaish-i-Mohammed.
The same man, officials said, had received training in Afghanistan during the 1990s and subsequently joined thousands of other Pakistanis who rushed to the aid of the Taliban against U.S. forces in the fall of 2001. Arrested by Afghan troops and imprisoned near Kabul, he eventually was returned to Pakistani authorities, who released him in September.
The second bomber has not been identified, but what remains of his face has led investigators to believe he may have been an Afghan or Arab, suggesting another possible al Qaeda link, officials said.
"By all accounts it is a blowback of the strategy we have pursued since 1980," said a senior Pakistani official, speculating that the bombers could have been motivated by anger over Musharraf's perceived softening on Kashmir. "Such a reversal in policy always triggers a desperate response."
The possible involvement of Jaish-i-Mohammed, in particular, has aroused interest in Western embassies in light of the long history of close ties between ISI and the group's leader, Masood Azhar.
A militant cleric who was returned to Pakistan by India in 1999 as part of a deal with the hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar, Afghanistan, Azhar was placed under house arrest following Musharraf's decision in January 2002 to ban Jaish-i-Mohammed and a number of other militant groups. Early last year, however, a Pakistani court ordered his release, and Azhar resumed his fund-raising and political activities.
Following the assassination attempts, some Pakistani officials said publicly that Azhar had "absconded" and that they were unaware of his whereabouts. But other officials said privately this week that Azhar was in his home town, Bahawalpur, under heavy surveillance, and has been questioned in connection with the bombings.
Officials emphasized that they had not determined whether the leaders of the groups were involved in the attacks on Musharraf or whether they were carried out by factions acting without approval from the top.
A link to Jaish-i-Mohammed "was obviously the initial reaction, and that may be true," Interior Secretary Tasnim Noorani said in a telephone interview. "However, there may be other angles to the whole thing also."
Khan reported from Karachi. |
