MONSTER SHE CREATED CAME BACK... - Times of India

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Monster she created came back to take her life

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Pradeep Thakur- 29 Dec 2007

Times of India

 

NEW DELHI: It was the year 1996. Benazir Bhutto as

prime minister of Pakistan had asked Pervez Musharraf,

then her Director General of Military Operations, to

rehabilitate Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in

Jalalabad from Sudan.

 

Bin Laden, who had shifted base to the African country

after the Afghan war, had been thrown out by Khartoum

after intense American pressure. Musharraf brought the

Al-Qaida mastermind to Jalalabad, a city in eastern

Afghanistan, and rehabilitated him.

 

That, a decade later, Al-Qaida should claim

responsibility for Bhutto’s assassination marks not

just a cruel irony, it also underlines once again the

risk of Frankenstein’s monster turning upon the

master.

 

Bhutto’s return to Pakistan this year may have been

marked with her claim to wipe out terrorism, but the

fact remains that it was her interior minister, Major

General (retd) Naseerullah Babar, who played a key

role in raising the Taliban and consolidating Al-Qaida

in Afghanistan.

 

The reason: a desire to secure strategic depth by

controlling Pakistan’s western border, and to have a

say in future Afghanistan affairs.

 

The present day terrorism in India, and now turning on

Pakistan, can, to an important extent, be traced to

that fateful decision taken by the Bhutto government.

 

Taliban soon became host to a menacing jihadi

conglomerate — the Qaida-led International Islamic

Front (IIF) — the components of which included

anti-India gangs like Lashkar-e-Toiba,

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which later became

Jaish-e-Mohhamed, HuJI and others.

 

The objective of the group was to establish Sharia

rule in this important region of Asia, and it was

determined to go to any length, even acquire weapons

of mass destruction, to realise it.

 

After the collapse of Taliban post-9/11, this terror

infrastructure led by bin Laden moved to Pakistan, and

has added to the radicalisation which has claimed so

many innocent lives, including that of the former

prime minister.

 

A look at the history of militancy in the subcontinent

also brings out the fact that Islamic fundamentalism

is a direct result of the efforts of hardline Sunni

groups to subdue Shias, Ahmadias and others.

 

Fundamentalist Sunni outfits like Sipah-e-Sahaba

Pakistan (SSP), which went after Shias, enjoyed the

patronage of influential sections of the Pakistan

establishment.

 

There was an overlap of objectives, of course. Former

Pakistan president General Zia-ul-Haq, follower of

Deobandi sect of Sunnis, set up SSP in 1979 to not

only counter the Shias but marginalised pro-democracy

forces seeking an end of his brutal military regime.

 

Some of the radical elements of the SSP parted ways

and formed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in 1996. LeJ, which

is suspected to have carried out the attack on Bhutto

at the behest of Al-Qaida, is nothing but the armed

wing of SSP like Jaish-e-Mohamed and HuJI which had

also branched out of SSP.

 

The connections of all jihadi groups with each other

are obvious whether they are fighting in Afghanistan,

Pakistan, Iraq or India.

url:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Monster_she_created_came_back_to_ta\

ke_her_life/rssarticleshow/2659917.cms

 

Bhutto-mania @

http://indiasecular.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/bhutto-mania-emotionalism-clouds/

 

 

 

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