Pakistani chickens have come home to roost
A concise history of the suicide bomber
By Amir Mir come home to roost
Human bombs made puzzling headlines for Pakistanis till the 9/11 terror attacks. These were a part of stories of death and destruction emanating out of troubled West Asia. Then US-led Allied Forces invaded Afghanistan and exposed Pakistan to the devastation a person strapped with lethal explosives can unleash.

"The government should have nothing to do with any sect"
-- Ahmed Rashid
Writer and political analyst
By Saeed Ur Rehman
The News of Sunday: During the Afghan jehad, the government of Pakistan directly and indirectly supported the Deobandi and Wahabi formations of Islamism. Do you think it will be a good strategy for moderation if the government supports the Barelvi and Sufi aspects of Islam now?

Just when we thought the militants were targeting security forces only, we saw an attack on hotels and just when we thought they were expanding their targets they killed a leading cleric in Lahore who had publicly opposed suicide bombings as against the spirit of Islam.

Of course the hotel bombing in Peshawar was not the first one and we had seen attack on hotels in Islamabad earlier. Nor was Dr Sarfaraz Naeemi the first cleric to lay down his life, Maulana Hasan Jan was killed in Peshawar two years ago on similar grounds.

But the sense that the entire country is dragged in this war is growing.

At times, one cannot figure out the ideological compulsions of those who are out to destroy whatever comes their way, in a cold calculated manner, no doubt. What about the human bombs and how did we get to the point where we are able to create so many of them? The sectarian terrorism of the 1980s did not leave us ever, it appears. It simmered and matured while we experimented with dictatorship and democracy and has struck us once again with a vengeance.

What is worse, the state seems to ally with the erstwhile rivals now, in order to offset the effect of those it promoted earlier on. This is a dangerous recipe. The state must maintain its necessary distance from religious groups and strengthen the political process. We have reached this impasse because of state hobnobbing with the wrong agents outside of politics. Let's not repeat the mistakes again.

And what about the sources of the militants' funding. That remains an unexplored area and even the all-knowing and the mighty feign ignorance.

These are the grey areas of the current war that we have explored in this Special Report. The Information Minister was not available, despite repeated attempts, to give us the government side of the picture.

The rampant forces of chaos

Pakistani Taliban are knocking at the doors of Islamabad, only a few kilometers from the village of Kahuta, which symbolises country's nuclear status. Will they be able to open the doors and enter the capital of the only Muslim nuclear power? The very thought of seeing the Pakistani Taliban entering Islamabad numbs the minds of the western policy -- and opinion-makers. In the absence of any practical solutions and policies, they repeat the mantra "Pakistani nuclear arms are in safe hands, [at least for now]" and go to sleep. Back home in Pakistan, the thought neither scares the population nor rings the alarm bells. Barring a tiny minority, no one seems to be ready to put up organised resistance to the rampaging forces of darkness. In spite of this, the Pakistani Taliban will find it hard to take over Islamabad in the face of resistance from among the other Taliban groups.

The term 'Pakistani Taliban,' coined for the convenience of the western readers, is extremely misleading. The 'Pakistani Taliban' are not a homogenous group like their cousins in the neighbouring Afghanistan. They decided to come under the 'Pakistani Taliban' umbrella only to face the threat the western forces in Afghanistan posed to their existence in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As the American threat recedes, they are more likely to fall apart and get at one another's throats. The likely scene in the near future is going to be a replay of what happened in Afghanistan between the fall of the Dr. Najibullah's government and the rise of the Afghan Taliban in 1996 when the infighting among the Afghan Mujahideen destroyed the entire country. The Deobandi Taliban emerged on the political map of Afghanistan only after all other extremist Mujahideen groups stood defeated as a result of infighting. The 'Pakistani Taliban' are more similar to the pre-Taliban Mujahideen conglomerate.

Pakistan's jehadi groups are exclusionary and sect-based. Most of them are more interested in eliminating the other sectarian groups than non-Muslim infidels. Since the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Islamist jehadist groups from different sects have been getting together to fight a less fortunate or more vulnerable sect, government or even individuals. In the early 1950s, all Islamist parties and groups got together against the Ahmediya community and continued their struggle through mid-1970 to get it constitutionally declared a non-Muslim community. The 1960s witnessed all of them uniting against one thinking individual, Dr. Fazlur Rehman, whose interpretation of Islam differed from those of the mainstream Islamist parties. In 1970s, they came together under the umbrella of the Pakistan National Alliance to dislodge Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto. In 1980s, the same Islamist forces came together to eliminate the different Shia sects and sub-sects, who were with them against the Ahmediya community and Dr. Fazlur Rehman. Interestingly, the Islamist forces flourished under military rules and seem to have lost the initiative to a considerable extent under the two democratic periods since 1950s -- from 1972 to 1977 and from 1988 to 1999. Both these democratic periods came to an end with the rise of Islamist forces, backed by the military.

Pakistan's sectarian divide has been becoming sharper with the strengthening of the Islamist forces. In 1950, the absolute majority of Pakistanis belonged to the Barelvi sect while the Shia Muslims made up nearly 10 percent of the total Muslim population with a tiny Deobandi minority and nearly non-existent Ahle Hadith. Although the Deobandi sect was fairly tiny at the birth of Pakistan, it remained at the forefront of all Islamist movements. Moreover, the Deobandi ulema gave utmost importance to building mosques and setting up madrassas. Hence, the Deobandis emerged as the most active Islamist minority at the end of the first three decades of Pakistan's independence. In 1980, when the Americans decided to wage jehad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Deobandi sect and the Jamat-e-Islami were the only ones who were ready to fight the Soviets. As the Saudis were matching almost dollar for every American dollar, they ensured that the Barelvis and Shia Muslims did not join the Afghan jehad, something the American understood little and cared for least. Consequently, both Shia and Barelvi Muslims are unable to fight the Deobandi jehadi onslaught.

The Afghan jehad and, later, the Kashmir jehad strengthened the Deobandi movement both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan saw the Deobandi parties and groups such as Jamiat Ulamae Islam, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, Haraakatul Ansar, etc. in Pakistan. Afghanistan, where the Deobandi movement was almost non-existent prior to the Afghan jehad, saw the rise of the Taliban movement, a movement of Afghan students who had studied in the Pakistani Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban, like other Afghan Islamist groups before them, ruthlessly eliminated their enemies and restored peace.

When the military junta decided to side with the Americans in their war on terror in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Deobandi jehadi movement was divided on whether to support General Musharraf's tactical alliance with the West. A large section of the Deobandi movement decided to not oppose the Musharraf regime's decision to become part of the anti-terror coalition while a smaller section decided to part with the mainstream jehadi movement and take up arms against Musharraf. For example, the Deobandi groups led by Abdus Samad Sial, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, and Azam Tariq did not oppose the regime in a violent way while the Qari Saifullah Akhtar group and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi planned suicide attacks on the military dictator. On the political front, the JUI (Fazlur Rehman) played the part of a friendly opposition. This explains why most of the terrorists who tried to assassinate General Musharraf belonged to Deobandi groups.

The jehadi groups belonging to the Jamat-e-Islami also decided to not oppose the military regime in any violent way while the parent party also played the friendly opposition as part of the MMA. The Lashkar-e-Taiba under Hafiz Saeed also decided to not oppose General Musharraf regime violently although there were occasional insignificant revolts against this policy within the organisation. As a quid pro quo for not opposing the military regime, they were supported to wage their jehad in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

However, with the passage of time, as the frustration among those who did not oppose General Musharraf violently grew, the violent jehadi factions grew stronger. The policy of not opposing the military regime did pay off and the jehadi organisations succeeded in enlarging their jehadi infrastructure. For a long time, the jehadi groups had been debating when they should wage jehad in Pakistan and turn it into an Islamist state like Afghanistan under the Taliban. Around 2006, a consensus started emerging that Pakistan was ripe to fall like a ripe fruit in the lap of jehadis although there were still disagreements. One of the reasons in these discussions was the growing strength of the Jamatud Dawa, which had emerged as the biggest jehadi group. The Lal Masjid operation was probably the first step towards capturing power in Islamabad by the Deobandis. The six-month old standoff exposed the weaknesses of the Pakistani states, to say the least.

The Deobandis have been on the offensive from Khyber to Karachi since the Lal Masjid operation. However, they understand that Pakistan remains predominantly a Barelvi society and it would not be possible to take over in Pakistan without at least neutralising the Barelvi clergy. If the Deobandi jehadi forces succeeded in neutralising the Barelvi clergy, one of the biggest obstacles in the way of capturing the already fragile Pakistani state would be removed. However, they would have to fight another more ferocious and possibly longer battle with the Ahle Hadith jehadi forces before they could think of occupying Islamabad. The Ahle Hadith jehadi forces may prove to be a lot more ferocious to fight against, probably more ferocious than the Deobandis themselves. The success of Deobandis is surely not certain. However, the civil war among the sects would definitely spread.

Human bombs made puzzling headlines for Pakistanis till the 9/11 terror attacks. These were a part of stories of death and destruction emanating out of troubled West Asia. Then US-led Allied Forces invaded Afghanistan and exposed Pakistan to the devastation a person strapped with lethal explosives can unleash.

Aiming to physically eliminating all those who are siding with the forces of the infidels, the new breed of well-trained and highly-motivated suicide bombers strike not only the western targets but Pakistani security and intelligence agencies also, especially the army, police and ISI, which spearhead the US war against terror in the country.

The security situation in Pakistan has been in utter turmoil for the past two years. In fact, it worsened after the Operation Silence carried out against the Lal Masjid clerics in July 2007. Since then, it appears that the extremist forces have not only gained strength in the tribal areas but also got a foothold in the country's settled areas. As things stand today, hotels, police stations, police training centres, headquarters of intelligence agencies, army check posts, military training centres, government buildings, mosques, processions and markets have become vulnerable targets of the suicide bombers.

Investigations by Pakistani agencies show the involvement of several kinds of jehadi groups in the ongoing spate of suicide strikes including the Lal Masjid brigade, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Jamaatul Furqaan (JuF), Jaish-e-Islami (JeI), Fidayeen-e-Islam (FeI), Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade (ASB) and more.

Human bombs coming from the Lal Masjid brigade are those who have either been linked with Lal Masjid or Jamia Fareedia or had sympathies with the Ghazi brothers due to their ideological affinity. Some other human bombs either had been students of the Ghazi duo or were relatives of those killed in Operation Silence. Authorities who are probing the ongoing spate of suicide bombings in the post-Operation Silence scenario believe that most of the attacks were carried out by young men in their 20s hailing from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of South Waziristan and North Waziristan.

The agencies had forewarned of suicide attacks in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad as soon as the Operation Silence came to an end -- because, more than 500 students of Lal Masjid-run Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia had not returned home after the Operation. They had warned that the potential bombers were hiding in several madrassas and mosques in and around the twin cities, and were determined to blow themselves up any time, anywhere to avenge the killing of kin and friends. Hardly a few weeks after the Operation ended, an 18 year old suicide bomber killed 22 highly-trained commandos of the Special Services Group (SSG) of the army by targeting their Tarbela Ghazi mess, 100 kilometres south of Islamabad on September 13, 2007. The bomber incidentally was the brother of a Jamia Hafsa girl student killed in the Operation, carried out by the Karar Company of the SSG.

The second kind of extremists involved in suicide attacks are those linked to the al Qaeda and Taliban networks based in the Waziristan region on the Pakistan-Afghan tribal belt. In the rocky and far-flung region of Waziristan, Islamic rebels allied with the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda have literally taken control of the entire North Waziristan tribal area along the Pak-Afghan border, thereby gaining a significant base from which to wage their resistance against the US-led forces in Afghanistan as well as the Pakistani security forces, especially through their highly motivated and lethal suicide bombers. Intelligence sources say the Pakistani security forces have mostly been targeted by the bombers trained and dispatched by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) led by Commander Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of the Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan.

According to a senior official of the elite Special Investigation Group (SIG), out of the 26 suicide attacks carried out in 2007, and judging by heads of the bombers recovered from the sites, it transpired that the majority of the human bombs came from one tribe -- the Mehsuds of central Waziristan. These were boys aged between 16 and 20.

In fact, most of the recent suicide attacks carried out after the launching of the Operation Rah-e-Haq by the Pakistan army in Swat have already been claimed by Baitullah -- be it the Peshawar Pearl Continental blast, twin attacks on the Lahore headquarters of the Inter Services Intelligence and the Rescue 15, the murder of Mufti Sarfaraz Naeemi or the fidayeen assault on the Manawan police academy in Lahore.

The man tasked with indoctrinating youngsters and nurturing them as suicide bombers is Qari Hussain, also known as Ustad-e-Fidayeen or the teacher of suicide bombers. Believed to be the main ideologue of Pushtun Taliban working under Baitullah's command, Hussain ran his suicide training camp in Spinkai Ragzai, a small town in South Waziristan. As one such training centre was discovered by the military authorities last year at a government-run school in the Kotkai area of South Waziristan, General Officer Commanding of the 14 Division Major General Tariq Khan told reporters in Dera Ismail Khan on May 18, 2008 that it was like a factory, recruiting nine to 12 year old boys, and training them as suicide bombers.

Qari Hussain is known in the TTP ranks for his strong anti-Shia views and close ties with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). The Pakistani agencies are trying to hunt him down given his status as the one who may have recruited and indoctrinated the largest number of people from Waziristan to carry out suicide hits in the country. On January 17, 2009, Qari Hussain released an unusual video of statements from purported human bombs and footage of deadly attacks they claimed to have perpetrated in Pakistan.

The video showed youth, some in their teens, speaking about their intention to carry out suicide attacks with Urdu militant anthems playing in the background. The two major suicide attacks claimed on the TTP video were the March 11, 2008 suicide attack on the Federal Investigation Agency building in Lahore and the November 24, 2007 twin suicide attacks in Faizabad area of Rawalpindi in front of the ISI headquarters when a bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a bus carrying 35 ISI officers, killing 15 of them on the spot.

Another important sectarian-cum-jehadi group involved in suicide attacks in Pakistan is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi -- a Sunni Deobandi organization, launched in 1996. The Lashkar today is the most violent al Qaeda terrorist group operating in Pakistan, supported by the lethal suicide squad and supervised by Qari Zafar, who has become a trusted member of al Qaeda's hardline inner circle due to his acquaintance with Baitullah Mehsud. South Waziristan-based Qari Zafar, who belongs to Karachi, is not only the suspected mastermind of the September 20, 2008 the Marriot hotel suicide attack in Islamabad but the most sought-after al Qaeda linked terrorist. He is reportedly planning to target key strategic ISI and army installations.

Then next in line is the Swat chapter of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi which is accused of carrying out several suicide attacks targeting the Pakistani security forces. The first such attack was carried out on November 8, 2006 when 45 Pakistan army recruits undergoing training at the Punjab Regimental Centre in Dargai, 100 kilometers north of Peshawar. Another major suicide attack was carried out on October 25, 2007 in Mingora, as two suicide bombers rammed their explosive-laden vehicles into a truck carrying the Frontier Constabulary personnel, killing 33 of them. The attack came following a warning by Fazlullah against the deployment of the security forces.

Then there are a few relatively lesser known jehadi organisations like Jaishul-Islami, Fidayeen-e-Islam and Abdulllah Azam Shaheed Brigade which claim several major suicide hits. The Jaish had claimed the October 9, 2008 car suicide attack on the Anti-terrorist Squad headquarters in Islamabad. The Fidayeen had claimed the September 20, 2008 Marriott hotel suicide hit in Islamabad while the Azzam Brigade had co-claimed along with the Tehrik-e-Taliban the June 9, 2009 attack on the Marriot hotel in Peshawar. These three groups are supposedly based in the Waziristan region.

There are three other jehadi groups which have not yet owned a suicide attack in Pakistan but have been found involved in several such attacks in the past. The first one is Jaish-e-Mohammad led by India's most-wanted Maulana Masood Azhar. The second is Harkatul Jehadul Islami, led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, named by Benazir Bhutto as her would-be assassin in her posthumous book. To recall, the two human bombs that tried to kill Musharraf on December 25, 2003 by ramming their explosive-laden cars into his presidential convoy in Rawalpindi, were later identified as Qari Mohammad Jameel Sudhan, an activist of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Khalique alias Hazrat Sultan, an activist of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami. The third such jehadi group, Jamaatul Furqaan, is led by Maulana Abdul Jabbar alias Umar Farooq, once the chief operation commander of Jaish-e-Mohammad and a close associate of Masood Azhar. The Jamaat is accused of masterminding the March 17, 2002 suicide hit inside an Islamabad church during Sunday service in the diplomatic enclave, killing five people, including an American diplomat's wife and his daughter.

And lastly, there is another jehadi organisation, Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is accused of carrying out fidayeen attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, targeting the Indian security forces. Fidayeen or life-daring attacks are its hallmark. The LeT prefer the term fidayeen to the more common 'suicide attack' because its Wahabi leadership strictly prohibits suicide. The fidayeen attackers seldom return from their penetrate-and-kill missions -- their aim is not to save their lives but to terrorise the enemy.

The Pakistani investigators say all the groups use different mechanisms to attack the targets. The first category of human bombers includes those who hit the military installations with the help of its suicide bombers. They include trained, skillful and motivated terrorists. The second category attack personnel of law-enforcement agencies and government personalities. The third one is deputed to kill the enemy through car bombing or blast by using remote-controlled device.

The Pakistani authorities say the manufacturing of suicide belts in Waziristan has grown to the status of a cottage industry -- one household makes the detonator, another sews the belt, a third molds ball bearings, and so on. These are then collected and paid for by the Taliban.

There are some definite patterns of the suicide attacks being carried out in Pakistan. They say the suicide bomber generally never comes alone; he is charged-up, brainwashed to the last moment and highly-indoctrinated by his handler who ensures that suicide bomber remains charged as he approaches his target.

A study of the life history of 25 human bombs that exploded themselves between 2002 and 2005 across Pakistan highlighted that American atrocities against Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq had charged a majority of them. The study, carried out by an elite intelligence agency, showed that out of 25 human bombs 16 belonged to the lower-middle class while the other nine were from the middle class families. And illiteracy was common among them.

For years, the Pakistani intelligence agencies used to train the jehadi cadres for Jammu Kashmir and Afghanistan. They never waged the holy war on their home ground. But as things stand today, there is a sharp decline in deadly suicide attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, with Pakistan emerging as a favoured target of their attacks. Therefore, the human bombs originally designed by the Pakistani establishment to rip apart the so-called enemies of Islam and Pakistan, are now exploding themselves inside their own country and killing their fellow Muslims. Pakistan's chickens have come home to roost.

One of the unresolved issues of our times is the source of funding for the al Qaeda and the Taliban. While countries like Iran are blamed by Israel and its Western patrons for providing funds to the Hezbullah and Hamas, it is generally believed that non-state organisations and individual donors are giving financial assistance to the above-mentioned Islamic militants' groups led by Osama bin Laden and Mulla Mohammad Omar.

In Pakistan, various theories are heard as to how the Pakistani Taliban are funded and armed. The favourite one is that India uses its diplomatic missions in Afghanistan to support both the militants operating in Pakistan's tribal areas and Malakand division and the Baloch separatists fighting the security forces in Balochistan. The Afghan government too is accused of providing sanctuaries and support to the Pakistani Baloch and allowing Taliban militants to cross over to Pakistan's tribal areas to attack the country's armed forces.

These theories appear plausible as both India and Afghanistan would be tempted to make life difficult for Pakistan and thus settle scores with Islamabad. India would want to take revenge from Pakistan for sending Kashmiri and Pakistani fighters to Indian Kashmir and for its inability to stop terrorists striking in India's cities such as Mumbai. Afghanistan would have a reason to harm Pakistan for allowing the Afghan Taliban and jehadi groups to use sanctuaries in Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) for launching attacks in Afghanistan.

But Islamabad has strangely been shy of sharing evidence with the media to prove India or Afghanistan's involvement in the attempts to destabilise FATA and Balochistan. Recently, the country's interior minister Rahman Malik provided some evidence in the parliament about the presence of Brahmadagh Bugti and other Baloch separatists in Afghanistan. But this wasn't enough to sway public opinion. He is also repeatedly alleging that weapons and fighters from Afghanistan are entering Pakistan and destabilise its tribal areas and adjoining districts.

Pakistani authorities are also claiming that Indian and Western weapons have been seized from militants in Swat and the tribal areas. The US government has admitted that a considerable number of arms supplied to the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police have gone missing and these could have landed in Taliban hands in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, this happens in such kind of wars as keeping track of weapons supplied to forces of other countries is difficult.

Holbrooke, during his recent visit to Pakistan, also stressed the need for looking into the sources of funding for the Taliban. He felt this issue hasn't been sufficiently tackled and promised to focus more on it in future. However, he did repeat the statement that is usually delivered by the US, Afghan and Nato authorities about the Taliban getting donations from individuals in the rich Arab countries including those in the Gulf and using drug-money to fund their war effort.

There is no doubt that everybody in a position of power in Afghanistan is benefiting from drug-money. The Taliban control several districts in the southwestern Helmand province, which produces most of the opium poppy in Afghanistan and is the major supplier of both opium and heroin. They would derive profit by both offering protection to the poppy farmers and controlling the smuggling routes and market. But there is also no doubt that the Afghan authorities too benefit from the drug trade because they run the airports and border crossing-points from where the drug-trafficking takes place. The Afghan soldiers, police and warlords also man the roadside checkpoints that have to be crossed by drug-traffickers and they certainly get their share and commission while allowing the contraband to pass through. Often, they become involved in drug-trafficking due to the fact that this is very lucrative.

Afghanistan is often described as a narco-state. There have been allegations that powerful warlords and even President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, were involved in drug-trafficking. The Karzai family has denied the allegations and blamed their political rivals for spreading lies about it. However, the fact remains that only a few drug-lords have been arrested or punished in Afghanistan. The US-led Nato forces, particularly Britain which was supposed to lead the Western effort to eradicate poppies and drugs in Afghanistan, cannot absolve itself of the responsibility for being unable to check the huge rise in cultivation of opium poppies and conversion of opium into heroin.

Some of the money that the Afghan Taliban are able to earn from drugs could also be coming to Pakistan. But there is no way to quantify this amount. Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan often claim that they survive and fight by getting donations from supporters and well-wishers. They also maintain that weapons in their use are mostly captured from security forces in the two countries. Arab money from private donors surely make a sizeable contribution to their funds. It is to attract Arab donors that the Afghan Taliban publish one of their magazines, Samood, in the Arabic language. The more effective they are in the battlefield and the more effectively they are able to document their military operations through CDs and video-tapes, the greater the chances for them to attract donations from Arabs and other wealthy, anti-Western donors.

Regarding the Pakistani Taliban, the NWFP Governor Owais Ahmad Ghani has been stating that the militants were spending about Rs 4 billion a year on weapons, rations, salaries of fighters, communication and transport. He is quick to make his calculations while arriving at this figure as he believes every Taliban fighter is paid, a claim that the TTP leaders have rejected. Governor Owais Ghani is of the view that this huge amount of money needed by the Pakistani Taliban must be coming from some foreign source. He may be right but he and the Pakistan government need to back this with some believable evidence.

The News of Sunday: During the Afghan jehad, the government of Pakistan directly and indirectly supported the Deobandi and Wahabi formations of Islamism. Do you think it will be a good strategy for moderation if the government supports the Barelvi and Sufi aspects of Islam now?

Ahmed Rashid: It is not a good idea because it has nothing to do with the democratic and political processes. The state should not align itself with any of the religious formations. In fact, it is the different extremist religious groups who are trying to align themselves with different political processes. It is actually detrimental to democracy if we now have the Barevli side posturing for more political power because the tide has turned against the Taliban version of political Islam. The state should be a neutral moderator.

TNS: Why did the government support the Deobandi and Wahabi forms of Islam during the Ziaul Haq years?

AR: From day one, Ziaul Haq aligned himself with these ideologies and the link with Saudi Arabia as a major source of funding cannot be ignored. In fact, Saudi Arabia did match the American funding dollar for dollar and, with that, the Wahabi/Deobandi sects were promoted in Pakistan. Later on, these groups were also deployed for the covert operations in Kashmir in the 1990s.

TNS: What is the solution to the religious mess that the government has created in the last three decades?

AR: The government should not support any particular group and seek the help of all the ulema without falling in the trap of sectarianism. In an ideal situation, the government should have nothing to do with any sect or denomination of metaphysics.

TNS: What are the sources of funding for the Pakistani Taliban now that the official, state-sponsored jehadism is over?

AR: There are three main sources of funding: (a) the profits of the drug manufacturing and trade; (b) private donations from Pakistan and the Arabian gulf; and (c) criminal activities. You may have noticed the rise of kidnappings for ransom. It is a major source of funding for jehadist activities in Pakistan.

TNS: What is the main difference between the Bush regime and the Obama regime's policies towards Pakistan?

AR: The Obama administration is more interested in pro-people investment in Pakistan. They will be giving 1.5 billion dollars a year for the next five years for civilian development projects in Pakistan and 400 million dollars as military aid. So you can see what the American priorities are. It will not be like Bush's policies. Musharraf was able to get away with so much without a great deal of accountability. In the Musharraf's regime, almost 80 percent of the aid was channelled towards the army and the civilian processes were not supported. Now it will be different.

TNS: Do you think the way the Americans are trying to link the new aid package with certain conditions is going to help promote democracy in Pakistan?

AR: I think the Americans should not try to micro-manage Pakistan but they can demand a broader set of conditions to be fulfilled. They can ask for deeper democracy, a more durable civilian set-up, and more transparent political processes. But, in the end, they should let Pakistan determine its own future and the pro-people policies.