He then warned: “The USA has proved itself to be the world’s biggest terrorist by carrying out the attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan and I want to convey to the US leadership that we will take revenge for the attack.”
The Pakistani compulsion to wage the Kashmiri jehad with the help of Deobandi-Wahabi warriors has allowed a new religious stringency to prevail in Pakistani society.
The US attacked the following HUM camps:
- The Salman Fasi camp situated in Jawah, two kms inside Afghan territory from the Pakistani border post of Saidgai. This camp was initially started by the HM of Kashmir with the help of the JEI of Pakistan. Angered over the JEI’s support to Gulbuddin Heckmatyar, the Taliban expelled the HM from the Afghan territory and handed over the camp to the HUM, which renamed it as the Hazrat Amir Mawia camp. When the HUA changed its name as HUM after the US notification branding the HUA as an international terrorist organisation, some members of the HUA, having differences with the HUM Amir, set up a splinter group called the Jamaitul Mujahideen under Mufti Bashir. They have their own training camp in the same area.
- The Khalid bin Waleed camp in the Zhavar area near the Pakistan border: Seven HUM members, including Abu Huraira, an instructor, were killed.
- The Liza camp at Tanai in the Khost area, 40 kms to the west of the Mawia camp. This was run by another HUM splinter group called the Harkat Jehad Islami under one Qazi Saiful Islam Akhtar, possibly identical with Saifullah Akhtar, who was involved with Maj Gen Abbasi, in the coup plot of 1995.
- Another camp close to the Darwanta hydel power station near Jalalabad. This camp originally belonged to Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami. The Taliban captured it in September 1996, and handed it over to the HUM.
Addressing the Karachi Press Club on August 23, 1998 Azizur Rahman Danish, the head of the Sindh branch of the HUM, warned: “The US air strikes have drawn a clear dividing line between the Muslim Ummah and non-believers and this is the beginning of a crusade. The USA will be paid back in the same coin.”
More bodies of Indian officials would be sent in coffins from Kashmir on the days Vajpayee visits Lahore.” He also said that Islams enmity with India was ideological and not just territorial
Addressing a press conference at Peshawar on August 25, 1998 Fazlur Rahman Khalil said that nine HUM members died in the US attack on its camps in the Khost area, of whom five were killed on the spot and the remaining succumbed to their injuries in Pakistani hospitals. In addition, two Tajiks and four Arabs, two of them physically handicapped, were also killed. According to him, the Cruise missiles destroyed four mosques, partially damaged another and burnt 200 copies of the Holy Ouran kept in the camps.
He added: ”The USA calls Osama a terrorist and President Clinton is claiming that all terrorist training camps had been destroyed in the air strikes. Let me tell the Americans that not even one per cent of the so-called terrorist camps run by Osama have been destroyed.”
In another warning to the US on September 1, 1998 Fazlur Rahman Khalil said: ”The USA has struck us with Tomahawk Cruise missiles at only two places, but we will hit back at them everywhere in the world, wherever we find them. We have started a holy war against the US and they will hardly find a tree to take shelter beneath it.”
Khalid Ahmed, a well-known Pakistani analyst, wrote as follows in the issue of the Friday Times, a Pakistani weekly, for the week from August 28 to September 3, 1998: “The national consensus on Kashmir often blinds Pakistan to the isolationist compulsions that arise from it. Internal politics has compelled the removal of Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami from the Afghan jehad and his ally Qazi Hussain Ahmad’s Hizbul Mujahideen from the Kashmir jehad. The vacuum created by their ouster has been filled exclusively with Oeobandi and Wahabi Mujahideen.
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“The Oeobandi HUA and the Wahabi Lashkar-e-Toiba are the main outfits fighting in Kashmir, but their guerrilla training is acquired in Afghanistan. That the jehad in Kashmir is dependent on the Afghan jehad is hidden from no one. That it gives a locus standi to India in Afghanistan is not clear to most Pakistanis. The Pakistani compulsion to wage the Kashmiri jehad with the help of Deobandi-Wahabi warriors has allowed a new religious stringency to prevail in Pakistani society. “
“¦claiming that all terrorist training camps had been destroyed in the air strikes. Let me tell the Americans that not even one per cent of the so-called terrorist camps run by Osama have been destroyed.”
He added: “In 1996, the Lahore High Court openly favoured the Wahabi jurisprudence as some of the judges were found to be of Ahle Hadith persuasion. Prime Ministers and Presidents have been attending Deobandi congregations to demonstrate their new faith. Violent sectarianism is the offshoot of this social change.”
In an editorial in the issue for the week from August 14 to 20, 1998, the same journal warned: “Pakistan is gradually falling under the puritanical faith of Deobandi-Wahabi forces that are allied to the Taliban. In the past two years, for example, Pakistani judges are increasingly falling prey to Islamic extremism… The Pakistani State will become hostage to the Taliban Deobandi brand of Islam by continuing to give succour to the Jamiat Ulema Islam, the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the HUM.”
In an article in the same issue, Ejaz Haider, another Pakistani analyst, said: “A recent report brought out the linkage between Deobandi sectarian organisations in Pakistan and the HUA which has links both with the Taliban and the JUI.” It said that Imams belonging to these organisations were saying in their addresses to their congregations that after consolidating its hold in Afghanistan, the Taliban would not only “liberate” Kashmir, but also rid Pakistan of Shias and Barelvi Sunnis.
HUM is one of the two terrorist organisations of Pakistan, which have an active presence in the US”¦
The HUM has strongly opposed the process for the normalisation of Indo-Pakistani relations. In a statement before the visit of the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to Lahore in February, 1999 for talks with Nawaz Sharif, Fazlur Rahman Khalil warned: “More bodies of Indian officials would be sent in coffins from Kashmir on the days Vajpayee visits Lahore.” He also said that Islam’s enmity with India was ideological and not just territorial. He alleged that it was the US which had pressurised the two Prime Ministers to meet.
The HUM is one of the two terrorist organisations of Pakistan, which have an active presence in the US and have been training Muslim citizens/residents of the US since 1995 for carrying the jehad to the US. The other organisation is the highly secretive Jamaat-ul-Fuqra. If it is ultimately established that the post-September 11, 2001 anthrax scare in the US is The handiwork of jehadi organisations, these two organisations should be at the top of the suspects’ list. Particularly, the Fuqra had exhibited a capability in the past for orchestrating widespread incidents in the US, Canada and the Caribbean islands, which were meant to create more panic and confusion than human casualties. For the past incidents, it had used the fire-bomb tactics and not biological weapons and those incidents were directed against the Hindus and the Jewish people and not against Christians.
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