International terrorism in its most diabolical manifestation found expression on 11September 2001 when Islamic Jehadis wreaked vengeance and terror in New York and Washington. Their vicious attacks were aimed at two symbolic targets of the mightiest nation in the world, namely the seats of American global military and financial power.

Regrettably for the Islamic world, which may not be largely associated with it, international terrorism is associated with Jehadi terrorism from Algeria to Chechenya to India, Israel and the United States. Islamic terrorism in earlier periods was left wing in nature and confined to the Middle East. The decades of the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the transformation of Islamic terrorism into Jehadi terrorism, generated and dictated by Islamic fundamentalists, under the guidance of Pakistan.

The loci of Islamic Jehadi terrorism shifted from the Middle East to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan became its chief proponent and adopted it as an instrument of state policy to achieve its strategic gains. Today, with Pakistan declaring that it would join the American campaign against international terrorism terrorism, it would be pertinent to highlight Pakistan’s connections with Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and international terrorist organizations.

Pakistan’s active links with Osama bin Laden spans the premiership of Benazir Bhutto to President Musharraf. It is strange that while General Bashir, under US pressure, forced him to leave Sudan in May 1996, Osama bin Laden found sanctuary in Afghanistan under the tutelage and control of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was then the Prime Minister. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) consolidated the Jehadi terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Pakistan also shifted many of its own Kashmiri terrorist camps to the Afghan side to evade global censure. 

Osama bin Laden did not have to set up a terrorist infrastructure on arrival in Afghanistan. It was ready for him in the network of training camps established by Pakistan’s ISI and Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s (Chief, Jamaat-e-Islam) followers in the Pakistani defence establishment. Osama bin Laden’s logistics, communications, training camps, weapons, equipment and explosives were provided by the Pakistan Army.

The Taliban have imposed a medieval Islamic society upon Afghanistan. Terror has been the chief weapon to continue their hold on Afghanistan. The Taliban was also created, organized and assisted by Pakistan to take control of Afghanistan during the tenure of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister. Her Interior Minister, Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar was its architect.

Pakistan’s aim was to have a regime in Afghanistan, which would be Islamic fundamentalist in character and hence immune to Western pressures. Such regime, under Pakistani tutelage, would serve two aims: (1) To provide strategic depth to Pakistan; (2) To host the network of Islamic Jehadi organizations; their being in Afghanistan would provide Pakistan an exit route for deniability of involvement.

The Taliban has been propped up by Pakistan. Even Pakistani authors like Ahmed Rashid have documented Pakistan’s financial grants to Taliban despite its own insolvency. These grants find no reflection in Pakistan’s budget figures. Obviously, the money came from Pakistan Army’s state-sponsored drug-trafficking.

Peshwar in Pakistan emerged as the centre of the pan-Islamic international Jehadi organizations. The first bureau was opened by Dr. Ayman-al-Zawahiri in 1984. He has since emerged as a top aide of bin Laden. In 1993, former Pakisatan Army Chief General Mirza Aslam Beg and Lt Gen Hamid Gul attended the Popular Arab and Islamic Conference (PAIC) in Khartoum. This conference discussed Pakistan’s role in the Armed Islamic Movement and international terrorism. ISI’s front organizations like the Markaz-Dawat-al-Arshad and others have been boasting of their international Islamic terrorist connections and the successes they have had. Today, with the consolidation of pan-Islamic terrorists from all over the Islamic world in these Pakistan-based or Pakistani- sponsored organizations, it would be fair to say that all off them are involved in international terrorism.

The United States had long ignored Islamic Jehadi terrorism, because it felt invulnerable to it. The myth was broken on 11th September. The United States needs to pay heed to what Brigadier SK Malik of the Pakistan Army wrote in his book The Quranic Concept of War in 1979: “Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we impose on him.” The United States has now to decide whether Pakistan provides both the support and the means to eliminate global terrorism.