[Reader-list] Militant suspects have roots in Kashmir conflict

[Pawan Durani]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-attacks

Down dusty lanes in the southern Punjabi town of Bahawalpur are two
religious schools that are well known to security services on both sides of
the Pakistani-Indian border and further afield.

They do not look like centres of global terrorism. Earlier this week when
the Guardian visited, students poured out of the Dar ul-Uloom Medina at the
end of morning lessons and teachers sat on rope beds drinking tea and eating
bananas. The high-walled, heavy-gated Usman au Ali school in the heart of
the city was quiet.

Yet appearances may be deceptive. Both schools are accused of being
recruitment and logistics bases for Jaish-e-Muhammad, a militant group now
among India's suspects for this week's Mumbai attacks. Elsewhere in
Bahawalpur and in the surrounding villages are other schools and safehouses
linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the other group in the frame.

Both groups have their roots in the conflict over the disputed Himalayan
state of Kashmir. Developing out of irregular militias to fight Indian
security forces in the Indian-administered parts of Kashmir in the early
1990s with the encouragement and support of Pakistani intelligence services,
the groups' fighters have been blamed by the Indian government for a
catalogue of atrocities.

They include a gun and grenade assault on the parliament buildings in Delhi
in 2001, hundreds of violent killings in Kashmir over the last decade and a
half, the 2002 killing of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl, an
airplane hijacking, and bombings in Indian cities.

The result is that although Pakistan's tribal areas along the frontier with
Afghanistan are internationally known as "al-Qaida central", it is towards
the towns and villages of Pakistan's Punjab province that New Delhi's finger
is now pointing.

Islamabad's policy of using such groups as proxies is long-standing.

"Given the power asymmetry between the two neighbours, Pakistan knows that
it is the weaker militarily and that bleeding India is one way of attaining
strategic aims and using paramilitary groups with plausible deniability is
one way of doing that," said Farzana Shaikh of the Chatham House thinktank.

In recent years the dynamic has changed although judging how far is hard. In
2002 Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan's president, banned Jaish-e-Muhammad
and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had been openly fundraising and recruiting.
Assassination attempts on him and the occupation and armed siege of the Red
Mosque in central Islamabad had brought home the perils of trying to manage
the militants, however useful they appeared to be.

Analysts say the militants are more fragmented than before and that although
the Pakistani security establishment maintains some control over some of
them, others have turned against their former patrons. Other outlets for
their energies may also have been sought. Some young volunteers may be
diverted to Afghanistan rather than to Kashmir, where fighting has calmed in
recent years.

With British officials trying to verify Indian statements that at least two
of the militants involved in the Mumbai attacks were British-born, the role
of the Pakistani groups and the role of the Pakistani security establishment
will now come under greater scrutiny than ever.