Lashkar's renewed blossoming shows war hasn't coerced Pakistan Army into giving up on Kashmir

The Print

3 days ago

Then, on 28 May, just two weeks after the 100-hour India-Pakistan war set off by that carnage, Saifullah was on stage vowing jihad without end against India—a warning that India's cruise missile attacks haven't coerced Pakistan into ending its covert war in Kashmir. Even though New Delhi believes the punishment it delivered has drawn new red lines, deterrence cannot be inferred from conjectures. The harms one adversary considers unacceptable might not be so for another. To conclude that some degree of deterrence has been secured, evidence has to be sought in the real-world actions of the adversary.
Eighteen years ago this summer, then-Lashkar-e-Taiba commander in charge of operations in southern Kashmir's Kulgam, Saifullah had dramatically escaped across the Line of Control, together with his new bride, Shabbira Kucchay. From his home near Kasur in Pakistan, the National Investigation Agency alleges , he led forces which harried Indian troops, executed dozens of civilians, and conducted the communal massacre in Pahalgam.
Tu paani band karega, to hum saans band kar dengey ': The crowd swayed listlessly in the Lahore heat, perhaps to keep off the flies, as the anthem threatening to choke India's breath blared out through low-grade loudspeakers. 'Light up your phones to welcome this man of courage, the hero of Kashmir, the conqueror India,' the sweat-drenched compere shouted over the music, a miserable remix of an ageing disco-era Bollywood hit. Finally, making his way through a swarm of selfie-seeking fanboys, Sajid Saifullah Jatt emerged on the stage in Lahore: The appearance of the jihadist icon, a carefully-crafted message from the Pakistan Army.
For now, there's no evidence at all that ought give India comfort. Far from hiding their links with terrorists, as Pakistani officials were compelled to do after 26/11, high officials have given slain Lashkar personnel state funerals, joined their functions, and allowed the organisation to hold processions across the country.
Even before the Pahalgam attack, Pakistan-based journalist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid reports, Lashkar leader Naseer Ahmad told a gathering in Muridke that 'the ideological offspring of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed will continue his jihad.' Earlier, Lashkar co-founder Amir Hamza, internationally-sanctioned for his role in raising terrorism funding, delivered a sermon in Murdike urging 'jihad against the infidels.' Local Lashkar leader Rizwan Hanif, speaking in Bazaar Khaigala of Rawalakot, urged followers to prepare for 'our jihad against the cow-worshippers.'
The speaker of Punjab's Legislative Assembly, Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan, shared a stage with members of the Lashkar's political front this week, praising its jailed chief, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, and promising future support.
Little doubt exists that these public declarations of support would not take place without permission from the Pakistan Army. Two years ago, facing the risk of sanctions from the multinational Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on terror finance, Pakistan had jailed several key Lashkar terrorists, and pushed its activities underground. Today, jihadist groups—not just the Lashkar, but also the Jaish-e-Muhammad—have been freed from their cages.
There's no knowing, just yet, what ends Field Marshal Asim Munir—who served as Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief during the 2019 Pulwama attack—is seeking through this escalation. The commander might see it as retaliation for Indian support for secessionists in Baluchistan, or be securing his credentials as a hawk among other Generals displeased by the decision to hold power for five entire years.
The guardians of the Islamic state
Located at the peripheries of Pakistan's national project, Islamism was to have a profound effect on its evolution. The state, Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abul 'Ala Maududi argued, 'and all that it contains belongs to God, who alone is its sovereign.' This language was appropriated by the country's military. The 1962 constitution of Field Marshal Ayub Khan's regime established a council to enforce legal compliance with religious ideology. The war of 1965 saw fallen soldiers for the first time being hailed as religious martyrs.
Following the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, the tensions over Pakistan's identity grew deeper. The new prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, increasingly relied on religious polemic, and his 1973 constitution made Islam the state religion.
These organisations would flourish in the regime of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who recruited Islamist groups to support his campaign against the Soviet Union. The Ahl-e-Hadith, the religious order from which the Lashkar flowered, was not among them.
Founded in the mid-19th century, by Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan of Bhopal and Nazir Hussain Dehlavi, the Ahl-e-Hadith claimed lineage from the ideas of the anti-colonial cleric Shah Wali Allah. The sect's members, largely landed elites who had experienced downward mobility during colonial rule, blamed their plight on the decadence of Islam.
Elements of the Ahl-e-Hadith, known as the Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, participated in the anti-colonial jihadist operations in the North-West Frontier Province, historian Lal Baha records. Their strength rarely exceeded a few dozen men, and their base at Chamarkand was largely ignored by colonial forces. The organisation may have also played a marginal role in supporting Pakistan Army-backed irregulars who attacked Kashmir in 1947. The Ahl-e-Hadith split into several factions soon after, each focussed on building seminaries and mosques across Sindh and Punjab.
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The Afghan jihadists
From the work of Lashkar propagandist Amir Hamza, we know some young Ahl-e-Hadith seminarians began pushing to join the jihad in Afghanistan soon after the Soviet invasion, even though they had no armed group. Led by Abdul Qahar from Sargodha, a small group travelled in 1977, followed by students from seminaries in Gujaranwala and Faisalabad. Then, in 1983, to-be Lashkar deputy Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi took another group of volunteers from Gujaranwala to the Nuristan region in Afghanistan, where there was an old Ahl-e-Hadith presence.
The push to form the Lashkar, though, came from Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, an ethnic-Gujjar who had moved to Lahore during Partition, from what is now Haryana. Teaching at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Saeed came into contact with Afghan jihadist circles through Abdullah Azzam, also a teacher at the university, who was Osama Bin Laden's mentor.
Later, during a two-year stint at Saudi Arabia's King Saud University, Saeed was introduced to the powerful cleric Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, and tapped jihad donors around him. A one-time convert from the syncretic Barelvi sect, Zafar Iqbal, together with Amir Hamza and Lakhvi, formed the core of a new jihadist organisation, the Markaz ud Dawat wal'Irshad, or Centre for Proselytisation.
The organisation's rise wasn't predestined. Two influential Ahl-e-Hadith figures, political scientist Sameena Yasmin has written in her authoritative work on the Lashkar, held out. Sajid Mir—not to be confused with the Sajid Mir involved in the 26/11 attacks—continued to dominate the religious infrastructure of the Ahl-e-Hadith. Eminent Ahl-e-Hadith scholars like Hafiz Abdullah Bahawalpuri and Hafiz Mohammad Yahya Aziz also chose not to participate in the new group.
Following the founding of its first training camp at Karair, near Tangu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in February 1990, the MDI's armed wing, the Lashkar, began funnelling small numbers of fighters across the Line of Control. It focussed, though, on recruitment. Giant rallies were held in 1995, 1996, and 1997 at its new campus near Lahore, which were addressed by Bin Laden himself.
The group used the deaths of cadre to draw more volunteers. As historian Mariam Abou Zahab has written, the funerals were treated as celebratory occasions, akin to marriages, where the slain terrorist was identified as a divine groom joining the houris in paradise. Literature produced by the Lashkar claimed the killed terrorist would be able to intercede for his loved ones at the gates of heaven.
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Annihilation of India
From the outset, the Lashkar made no secret of the fact that its objective was the annihilation of India, not just the capture of Kashmir. 'Through the jihad waged by mujahideen people of Pakistan, and particularly those from Lahore, [we] would soon be able to [visit and enjoy] the real Chamba and Shimla,' Amir Hamza cheerily asserted in 1999. Later that year, cleric Sheikh Hafiz Ahmad wrote that 'Hindustan is the worst infidel in the world. These idolaters are even worse than the infidels of Mecca as they have millions of gods.
This language has increasingly infiltrated Pakistan's official discourse. Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhury has spoken of a Fitna al-Hindustan, suggesting the country is a legitimate target of an existential religious war.
Field Marshal Munir, journalist Ailia Zahra points out, has also used similar motifs. In one speech made in April, he proclaimed being 'different from Hindus in every possible aspect of life. Our religion is different. Our customs are different. Our traditions are different. Our thoughts are different.' To this, he added the proposition that the Islamic Kalima, or profession of faith, was the foundation of the state of Pakistan itself.
Ideological wars are unlike all other wars, because they seek no strategic or political ends. Islamabad has known since at least 1965 that it cannot take Kashmir by force, and yet it persists in waging a war without an end. To give up the conflict would mean giving up the idea on which the project of Pakistan rests. To prevail in this conflict, India needs weapons, but also a powerful idea it is increasingly at risk of losing sight of: The idea that nationhood can be built on something other than irreducible religious hatred.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)