Part 1 of 2. Bill Verrall looks at the history of two of the radical groups that have been blamed for some of the recent bombings and violence in Pakistan. He shows that the history of these groups reveals a complex web of international intrigue and that the enemies of these groups were once their strongest supporters. He asks to what extent these groups can now be pacified so the USA can implement its new foreign policy in Afghanistan.
In recent times Pakistani insurgents have attacked the Hotel Marriott in Islamabad, the Indian capital Mumbai, the Sri Lankan cricket team and more recently a police training academy in Lahore, Pakistan. It is unclear exactly which group, or groups, is responsible for these attacks. Although arrests may be made and prosecutions bought to bare it is highly unlikely that the people behind these attacks will ever be held responsible because of the symbiotic relationship these groups have with the Pakistan government.
Two groups that are considered to be leading contenders for a number of these bombings are Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami.
The history of both of these organizations is enlightening. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami was founded in the early 1980s along with a raft of other extremist groups. The instigation for this sudden upsurge of extremism was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At that time all these groups were loosely referred to as mujahideen freedom fighters. They were funded and supported by the USA through a compliant Pakistan government. Behind this funding of an obviously violent and religiously motivated extremist group lay America’s greater fear, namely that of a resurgent USSR, with a supposed policy of world domination. During this period of time the USA considered the USSR to be a major threat to its own plans and its own freedom. The deliberate propagation of these extremist groups therefore made complete sense to a government which saw them as the ideal weapons with which to fight the USSR and to wear it down in a war of attrition which the US was confident the USSR could not win. The USA also saw that this was a war in which they would not have to participate directly and which they only had to support with money and arms. To the USA the USSR decision to invade Afghanistan was an opportunity simply too good to resist.
America set about funding, equipping and training resistance groups that would fight the invading Soviets. The vast majority of these groups had a strong Islamic basis. The American leadership saw the growth of radical Islam as the idea proxy vehicle through which they could weaken the USSR. They were in this respect absolutely correct. For reasons of public acceptability the Islamic groups were termed ‘Mujahideen freedom fighters’ and along with many of the very conservative, traditional, ethnic and tribal leadership groups they fought the soviets to a virtual standstill. This aspect of American foreign policy was extremely successful. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) was but one of a number of groups spawned at this time as a result of America’s unwavering concern about the Soviets supposed strength and plans for world domination. American funds and intelligence from the Pakistan military and intelligence services were the foundations upon which these groups grew. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami was thus spawned by the neoconservative policies of the 1970s and 80s. It was funded and armed so that it would undertake terrorist type activities against the Soviet Union. It was encouraged in its fundamentalist ideology because it was this ideology that its creators saw as being necessary to encourage poor, uneducated, provincial Pashtuns to fling themselves into a war against the second greatest military and industrial power on earth.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has an equally interesting history. Lashkar-e-Taiba is the child of the Pakistani Intelligence services. The LeT is the military wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence ISI. It was formed by the ISI in order to precipitate a war in Kashmir. Kashmir is a frontier province between India and Pakistan. Its short history is troubled by rivalry between these two powers. An initial conflict at the time of partition resulted in Kashmir also being partitioned with India receiving the lion’s share.
In 1999 the Pakistan army used its protégés the Lashkar-e-Taiba to launch a surprise attack in Kashmir. Kashmir is so remote and inhospitable that in a longstanding agreement both India and Pakistan withdrew their troops during the extreme depths of winter. Thus the Pakistan irregulars had spectacular early successes against no opposition and occupied a significant section of Indian Kashmir. However, India responded by sending its crack regiments supported by artillery and airpower back into the region and Pakistan’s forces were forced to retreat. Lashkar-e-Taiba has remained an off-shoot of the ISI to this day. Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group many analysts believe to be responsible for the attack in Mumbai on Nov 26 2008 and the attacks in 2009 against the Sri Lankan cricket team.
Although Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami are but two of a large number of such groups, they typify the degree to which these organizations were fostered by large “patron” states. They also typify the fact that the USA and Pakistan have to a large degree lost control of their earlier puppets and are now engaged in counterinsurgency incursions and open warfare against their once pliant clients. Pakistan remains the key to a successful outcome for Barak Obama’s foreign Policy in Afghanistan. The current situation in The Swat valley, Waziristan and more particularly Baluchistan and the general boarder area shows the extent to which past actions by both the American and Pakistani governments have ironically created the greatest difficulties these two states currently face in achieving their goals.
Tomorrow - Part 2 looks at the internal politics of the USA which resulted in the creation of groups such as the Taliban.
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Bill Verrall graduated from Canterbury with a Master in History and Political Science in 1972. He then pursued a career in Education. His last 20 years were as Principal of Fiordland College in Te Anau. He resigned in 2008. He currently spends his time attempting to outthink trout on the waters of Fiordland, reading, and working as a summer ranger for the Department of Conservation.
Tags: Afghanistan, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Pakistan
I’m impressed to see this site branch out into International Relations – nice work David and Bill. It brings back fond memories of my own MA.
And I’m most interested to see where you go with part 2 Bill, there are lots of interesting discussions sitting just on the cusp of where you get to in this post.
If I could push on just a little from the sentiment you express in the final para I’d note that the US’s desire to wage covert war throughout the post-WW2 era lies at the heart of this and plenty of other foreign policy knots the US has found itself in.
Since its creation, the CIA and its masters have been too clever by half in directing covert action. Indeed there’s a very sound case to be made that the focus on covert action as a foreign policy tool as often serverely damaged the agency’s ability to gather intelligence, and the wider foreign policy goals of the US.
There seems to be something deeply addictive about covert action that draws in each and every new Presidential administration, no matter how critical they were before they took office. The apparatus of this part of the state is clearly very powerful or persuasive.
Yes Putting aside the question of morality for the moment and just looking at covert policy I think you are right. However the CIA is not as monolithic as it often appears from the outside and it is subject to the vagaries of US politics along with everythig else There are some who would see the success of 9/11 as lieing at the feet of the Iran -Contra affair This had the effect of alienating the CIA from politicians (especially Clinton) and led to it suffering financial cuts and a swing in policy away from covert action AND humin Intelligence (Humint) gathering. Some see this as a reason why al Qaeda was able to carry out its attack in NY. It also seemed to be behind US reluctance to take covert action against Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11 when it had a number of opportunities to so do. Thus there seems to be a cycle of covert action being in favour, falling out of favour, and coming back into favour.
A strange thought just occured to me It would be intersting to chart the swings of covert action against Hollywoods production of Covert Action (Mission Impossible) type films I wonder if there is a corralation? Or are ‘Action’ movies just good business at any time?
Certainly the CIA is very much a political animal.
I tend to think that a better way of looking at the value placed on Covert Action, or indeed the value that the President places in the CIA is more to do with who occupies the office of DCI (Director of Central Intelligence and head of the CIA and US Intelligence Community before Bush II messed with everything). My view is that Robert Gates was a very good DCI, and he’s been a very good SECDEF too.
I don’t agree that Clinton disliked using the CIA. He didn’t – indeed the CIA was heavily relied on as under most administraions. His national security team though tended (for all sorts of reasons not least of which his relationship with the military) to practise cruise missile diplomacy with Al Qaeda.
But during the Clinton years the CIA was also publicly attacked and undermined for ‘failing to spot’ things it (very arguably in most cases) should have pre-warned the President about. The most obvious (and a failure I’m prepared to accept was a true intelligence failure, rather than simple scapegoating) was the failure to see the nuclear armament in India and Pakistan.
What certainly happened with Clinton (after 1994) was that the Republican majority in Congress attacking the CIA to get to Clinton and wider National Security goals. Part of the Contract With America set them on a collision course with the CIA over Ballistic Missile estimates – over how soon Iraq, North Korea and Iran would have ICBM capability.
Turns out history has proved the CIA under Clinton and Gates correct. But it took a war to convince many people around the world of this. There’s a great sense of irony that the person who led the CIA at this time, against the attacks led by Rumsfeld who was the Republican go to guy on this issue, ultimately ended up replacing him as SECDEF and has had to cope with consequences of the US invasion of Iraq which was predicated on Rumsfeld’s (incorrect) view of missile intelligence…