If the Central Asian Society exists and is meeting in fifty or a hundred years hence, Afghanistan will be as vital and important a question as it is now1
Lord Cuzon, speaking at the annual dinner of society, London, 1908
Governance of Pakistan is to God alone, it is up to Pakistan to carry out God’s commands2
Qazi Hussain Amhed, leader of Jamiat-e-Islami, Islamic political party in Pakistan
INTRODUCTION
1. The rise of Islamic militancy or the jihad culture in Pakistan was directly sponsored by the security forces of Pakistan and is a legacy of Pakistan’s creation as an Islamic state and Pakistan’s involvement in the creation of the Taliban and its rise to power in Afghanistan. Since the arrival of the United States in the region post-9/11 and its support for Pakistan in its fight against Islamic extremism, Pakistan’s home-grown insurgent forces have turned its fight against the state itself in its resistance against a stable and democratic government. This conflict has led to a growth in Islamic extremism in Pakistan’s border regions which have turned into safe-havens for fighters in Afghanistan in their war against the US and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA). Evidence shows that these fighters still receive covert support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and elements of the Pakistani military.
2. Scope. This essay will first explain the roots of Islamic militancy in Pakistan including Pakistan’s involvement in the rise of the Taliban and home-grown extremist groups. This essay will then examine the nature and extent of the conflict between the Islamic militants and the Pakistani government and finally how this conflict is influencing the insurgency in Afghanistan.
3. Aim. The aim of this essay is to explain the causes and nature of the conflict between Islamic extremists and secular forces in Pakistan, and the influence this conflict is having on the insurgency in Afghanistan.
THE ROOTS OF ISLAMIC EXTREMISM IN PAKISTAN
4. While Pakistan was always intended to be a secular state, it has instead become a hotbed for Islamic militancy where a conflict rages between democratic, military and extremist forces. This has come about as a result of a misinterpretation of the founding of Pakistan as well as conflict between different interpretations of Islam in the country. When Pakistan was founded in 1948 it was intended to be a state that protected Muslims from Hindu/Indian oppression. The state’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah a hero among Pakistanis today, advocated a land with a Muslim character but accommodating of minorities and secular government.3 In 1947, Jinnah famously said “you may belong to any religion or caste or creed – this has nothing to do with the business of the state” 4, implying quite clearly that he intended Pakistan to be a secular state. His message however has become ignored or warped by the military and the mullah. Textbooks for school students have been re-written and instead espouse ideologies such as that of Qazi Hussain Amhed, the leader of Jamiat-e-Islami, the most powerful Islamic party in Pakistan; “it is an established fact that Mr. Jinnah did not struggle for a secular Pakistan as it is against the basic creed and faith of a Muslim to sacrifice his life for a secular cause. The driving force behind their tireless effort was . . . setting up a country where people could practice Islam as a state ideology”5. This misinterpretation has helped fuel the Military’s support of Islamic extremism who’s common belief is that military rule best suits the country’s “Islamic identity”6. This has led to a situation where a political culture has been unable to take root in Pakistan, precipitating the long periods of military rule that have characterised Pakistani government since its inception. It was not until the Soviet war in Afghanistan however that the Pakistani military took the country onto a course that would link it inexorably with Islamic militancy.
5. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan seized its opportunity to secure American aid, influence a friendly government on its border, and find a training ground for Kashmiri militants that they could use in their fight against India. Pakistan has been covertly supporting militants in Afghanistan since the early 1970s to counter Pashtun independence movements growing within Afghanistan under the then Prime Minister, Mohammed Daoud. This created problems for Pakistan as the Durand Line, the British drawn border that separates the two countries, directly separated the Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.7 Following the assassination of Daoud and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Pakistani support for Islamists grew. This had the effect of earning Pakistan financial and military support from the US, as well as domestic support from Islamic groups in the fight against the ‘shuravee’, or godless Soviets. The ISI was given direct control over the flow of all ‘aid’ into Afghanistan and became directly involved in the funding and coordinating of the Mujahedeen against the Soviets. The Pakistani intention in funding this insurgency was so that it could have a stake in post-soviet Afghanistan, indeed these Mujahedeen were seen by the army as an ‘added capability’ of another 10,000 fighters which it could employ covertly, or overtly in any war against India.8
6. Following the withdrawal of the Soviets and the end of US economic and military aid, the ISI began support of an Islamic extremist group quickly gaining ground and popularity in Afghanistan, the Taliban. Pakistan provided arms, training, funds, intelligence and diplomatic support, many lower level Taliban were made up of foreign fighters and Kashmir motivated Pakistanis. 9 As the Taliban cemented its control over Afghanistan, ‘Pakistan increased trade to more than $2.5 billion, more than half of the government’s GDP’10. This support would continue and would reach its peak near 2001, when ISI chiefs were attempting to convince the US that the Taliban were ‘good guys’11. 2001 Pakistan had a growing army of Islamists who had strong links to training camps in Afghanistan and the powerful Islamist lobby within the country was attempting to slowly seize power, assisted by the army. On one hand, Pakistan attempted to garner international support by targeting terrorists like foreign Arabs, but continued to fund the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. By September 11, 2001 the Pakistani military had formed unbreakable ties with the Islamic militants that it had trained for the last 30 years, however it would soon become a victim of its own creation as Islamists in Pakistan began their own campaign to carve out their Islamic empire in Central Asia.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SECULARISM AND ISLAMIC MILITANCY
7. The conflict between secularism and Islamic militancy in Pakistan is social, political and military in nature. Social drivers like religion, education and poverty are exacerbating the militant Islam problem giving increased political support and legitimacy to militant Islamic groups. This conflict has reached the stage of full blown insurgency in the North of the country and in the restive province of Balochistan. The growing religious extremism in the country is partly a result of what many see as the west’s marginalisation of Jihad in the Quran as part of an effort to secularise Pakistan.12 Religious groups such as the Jamiat-E-Islami stand opposed to secular ideas as well as other belief systems and instead argue that Sharia law. These religious extremists are finding increasing support amongst Pakistan’s uneducated youth. Pakistan is currently facing an educational depression where a severe lack of government funding for schools has sent Pakistan’s educational system into a morass. This failureWhat little education that exists solely promoted military and Islamic propaganda, school textbooks are developed by the political regime as political manifestos to hate India or non-Muslims.13 The complete lack of a functioning educational system has created generations of uneducated Pakistanis who are ripe for conditioning by Islamic extremists. The educational void has in turn been happily filled by Islamic schools, are Madris (plural of Madrassas). These schools exist to indoctrinate children into radical militant Islam. Found predominantly in the Pashtun belt of northern Pakistan, they have grown in number radically. These schools serve as recruiting grounds for Islamic militant groups as well as resting places for fighters heading into Afghanistan. It is estimated that there are some 12,000 Madris in the country and growing.14 Recently the Pakistani government has attempted to register the Madris and introduce the teaching of Math and Science, however at the protest of the Islamic political parties these plans were promptly shelved, emphasising the growing influence hardline Islamists are having on the Political process in the country. 15
8. The battle between militant Islam and secularism is ultimately focussed upon political change, and therefore a large part of this conflict is taking place in the political arena. In the 2002 Pakistani Parliamentary elections the Islamist political parties won a land-slide number of seats in the Pakistani provinces that border Afghanistan which had become a sanctuary for the Taliban following the retreat in the face of American forces. The marginalization of mainstream political parties and the boost to religious political parties by military rule has fueled secretarianism by militant Islamists in Pakistan. 16 Recently the Islamic political parties have suffered as regular Pakistanis have shown they are not willing to lose their secular government. In the 2008 parliamentary elections the Islamists were routed from NWFP and Balochistan. 17 Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party was the closest of any party to espousing a secular, democratic, antimilitary political culture. Unfortunately Mrs Bhutto was killed in an assassination attempt by a jihadist groups supposedly sponsored by the military unwilling to lose its grip on power in free and fair elections. Replaced by her husband, the PPP won victory in 2008 and formed a coalition government, excluding the Islamic parties. 18 While politically the Islamic parties are losing support, they continue to conduct military, insurgent and terrorist attacks against the Pakistani military and government in order to force political change.
9. Since the US ousting of the Taliban and AL Qaeda in late 2001 – early 2002, Pakistan has experienced a steady rise in militancy and insurgency in its Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) as well as extremist infiltration into the adjacent North West Frontier Province (NWFP). This rise in militant influence has coincided with a rise in suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in Pakistan, ‘in 2007 there had been 56 suicide bombings in Pakistan, which killed just 419 security officials and 217 civilians, compared to just 6 attacks the previous year’19. This campaign of terror reached a peak in 2007 during the infamous ‘Red Mosque Siege’. The Red Mosque was only blocks away from the headquarters of the ISI and the house of President Musharraf. It was run by two extremist brothers trained and funded by the ISI, who espoused their version of militant Islam daily. Militants would ‘sally out of the Mosque to harass women not wearing the Burqah and all-female vice squads attacked prostitutes and kidnapped them for ‘re-education’’20 It was clear the Mosque and its leaders were out of government control and were using it as a stop-over for militants travelling to Afghanistan, all happening in central Islamabad. The military decided to take action, turning Islamabad into a war-zone. An army brigade took 3 days of heavy fighting to clear the almost 10,000 militants who took refuge there. Retaliatory attacks in the NWFP followed and the Swat valley was turned into a fortress by the Islamic militants sheltering there. 21 The military soon began its own campaigns to dislodge the militants that had taken refuge. From 2002-06 the military conducted two dozen counterinsurgency (COIN) operations under the title of Operation Al-Mizan.22 These campaigns were characterised by the heavy use of offensive support platforms, primarily artillery strikes and were not concerned with holding ground and reforming the preconditions that encourage people to turn to militant Islam, but rather clearing insurgents from an area who would move straight back once the military left. These campaigns often ended in a government brokered cease-fire that allowed the government to keep face and left the Insurgents in control of large swathes of territory from which they could base attacks against US forces in Afghanistan.
THE INFLUENCE ON THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
10. Today, Afghanistan and Pakistan are recognised as one, ‘Af-Pak’, with issues such as narcotics, terrorism, money laundering and gun running all being interlinked between the two. 23 US forces recognise that unless the internal conflict against Islamic militancy in Pakistan is resolved, the Taliban will continue to find sanctuaries within the FATA and NWFP. US general Karl Eikenberry announced that victory in Afghanistan could not be achieved unless the sanctuaries in Pakistan were removed. 24 The legacy of military rule and association with militant Islamic groups has created an unbreakable tie between the two, with US military reports showing that insurgents in Afghanistan often receive support and coordination from the Pakistani military and ISI. In 2003-4 US troops on the border with Pakistan as well as US drones watched Pakistani army trucks deliver Taliban troops to the border at night to infiltrate Afghanistan and then return to collect them a few days later. Pakistani artillery may give covering fire to Taliban actions and sources show that medical facilities have been set up in Pakistan to treat wounded Taliban.25 Recently however as the Pakistani military has recognised the threat faced by Islamic militants and its support for militants has lessened, however it is believed that elements of the ISI continue to provide tacit support. The fertile recruiting areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border continue to provide militants for the war in Afghanistan. In the Korengal valley in Kunar province Insurgent fighters recruited from within the NWFP and FATA regularly cross the Durand line to attack military and government targets before withdrawing beyond the reach of US ground forces. The US recognizes the sanctuary regularly provided to the Taliban and insurgent forces in this area and conducts drone attacks against know leaders and bases, and covertly US Special Forces work with Pakistani military forces to track down and kill high value targets (HVTs).26 Some commentators have argued that former President Musharraf deliberately raised the profile of Jihadist groups to make himself more useful to the US – that military rule was the only ‘bulwark’ against Islamic extremism, therefore enhancing his strategic importance in western eyes.27 Without removing the FATA and the NWFP as sanctuaries for Islamic militants as well as ending support for extremists by the ISI the coalition cannot hope to be successful in Afghanistan.
CONCLUSION
11. The Al Zadari government in Pakistan remains committed to a secular democracy after decades of either military or civilian oligarchy rule that accommodated and actively supported the growth of militant Islam in Pakistan. The decades of support have created an out of control force that is fast gaining support amongst the uneducated as well as the educated middle-class of Pakistani society. Emboldened by the success of insurgent forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s home-grown Terhik-e-Taliban has waged a full blown insurgency against Pakistani government forces. This conflict is not a conflict that is exclusive to Pakistan’s restive border regions, but is spilling over onto the streets of Islamabad with increased suicide bombings, attacks on the army HQ in Rawalpindi and the Red Mosque siege. Politically these Islamic militants are attempting to gain support and legitimacy however has been limited by the new era of democracy since the 2008 elections and the deposition of Musharraf. Sanctuaries remain, however, for the Taliban in the FATA and the NWFP from where insurgents can be raised, trained and coordinated in attacks against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Unless these sanctuaries are removed, the US cannot hope for success against the Taliban. Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be viewed in isolation, the conflict between secularism and Islamic militancy in Pakistan has a direct impact on the insurgency in Afghanistan, and if we fail to achieve success in Afghanistan it may further destabilise an already volatile Pakistan.

Notes
1. Rashid, Amhed, Descent into Chaos: Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Threat to Global Security, Penguin, London, 2009, p. 1
2. Aboul-Enein, Yousef, ‘Discourse on Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami and its Founder Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi: Uncovering the Philosophy and Nuance of America’s Adversary in Pakistan’, Small Wars Journal, 2002, p. 1
3. Aboul-Enein, ‘Discourse on Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami’, p. 2
4. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 35
5. Ibid, p. 35
6. Ibid
7. Ibid, p. 36
8. Kartha, Tara, ‘Pakistan and the Taliban: Flux in an Old Relationship?’, Strategic Analysis, Vol. 24, No, 7, p.1309
9. Kartha, ‘Pakistan and the Taliban’, p, 1310
10. Ibid, p. 1312
11. Ibid, p. 1318
12. Hussain, Zahid, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with militant Islam, accessed at www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/5248.html, accessed on 15 Oct 10
13. Aboul-Enein, ‘Discourse on Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami’, p. 2
14. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 234
15. Ibid
16. Ibid
17. Ibid
18. Ibid, p. 228
19. Fair, Christine., Shaprio, Jacob, ‘Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan’, International Security, Vol 34, No. 3, 2010, p. 82
20. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 234
21. Ibid, p, 379
22. Tankel, Stephen, ‘Laskar-e-Taiba in Perspective: An Evolving Threat’, Counter Terrorism Strategy Initiative Policy Paper, Feb 2010, pp. 1-2
23. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 381
24. Ibid, p. 382
25. Lawwani, Sameer, Pakistan’s COIN Flip: The Recent History of Pakistani Military COIN Operations in the NWFP and FATA, April 2010, p. 5
26. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 420

Bibliography
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