Pakistani militancy spreading from remote border areas to country’s heartland

Pakistani militancy spreads to country’s heartland

LAHORE, Pakistan — At least two dozen militants once supported by the government have split off to lead one of Pakistan’s newest and deadliest terrorist groups, working with al-Qaida at remote camps near the Afghan border to carry out attacks in the center of this U.S.-allied country, police say.

The emergence of the network known as the Punjabi Taliban risks destabilizing Pakistan’s political and military heartland. The group, named for Pakistan’s most populous and richest province, is closely allied with the Pakistani Taliban, which the U.S. blames for last month’s failed Times Square bombing.

Pakistani police believe they are beginning to understand the network after months of interrogating captured fighters. But the government is divided over how to counter the group, with federal officials pushing for a stronger crackdown in Punjab and provincial officials arguing that the army needs to target the training camps in the remote northwest.

Key leaders are from Punjab. They include a notorious militant once arrested for trying to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf, according to police officers and interrogation reports obtained by The Associated Press.

Terror attacks in Punjab began about two years ago, and the Punjabi Taliban is now believed to have been behind most of the major ones. Those attacks include last fall’s audacious raid on army headquarters in Rawalpindi and last month’s gun-and-grenade strikes that killed nearly 100 members of a minority Muslim sect in Lahore.

The recent killings prompted federal officials to criticize the Punjabi provincial government for not doing enough to crack down on militants. The interior minister suggested a military operation may be needed like those carried out over the last two years near the Afghan border.

But much of the rhetoric was political point scoring between rival parties that control the two levels of government. Federal officials have shown little willingness themselves to crack down on other Punjabi militant groups, which started with government support in the 1980s and 1990s to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and Indian troops in Kashmir.

The government banned most of these groups in response to American pressure following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, but many continue to operate relatively freely.

The militants who make up the core of the Punjabi Taliban were once members of these groups but defected because they believed their leaders were simply agents of a government beholden to U.S. interests, according to the interrogation reports.

The men are based at a camp in the North Waziristan tribal area where they train foot soldiers to carry out attacks in Punjab and elsewhere in the country, said Punjabi police chief Tariq Saleem Dogar. They have links with both al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban, a mostly ethnic Pashtun group from the Afghan border area, he said.

Punjabi Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, who controls the provincial police, estimated that 10-20 percent of the members of banned groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Sipah-e-Sahaba have split off to join forces with the Punjabi Taliban network.

When Punjabi Taliban militants attacked army headquarters last fall and killed 14 people, the government flew in the leaders of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba to negotiate, said Sanaullah, confirming the secret effort for the first time to the AP.

The militant leaders contacted the attackers, who lashed out at their former bosses, saying, “You are traitors, you have left the right path,” according to Sanaullah.

The negotiation ultimately failed, prompting the army to send in commandos to overwhelm the attackers, who were led by a former member of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Jhanghvi.

Sanaullah estimated the strength of the Punjabi Taliban network to be in the hundreds.

“But if they produce 100 suicide bombers in one year, that is a lot to destroy the whole of Pakistan,” said Sanaullah.

Despite this threat, the law minister has resisted a broader crackdown against banned militant groups in Punjab, arguing that the real threat comes from the training camps in North Waziristan.

Analysts contend that Sanaullah and other members of the provincial government are reluctant to go after the groups because they rely on them to deliver votes. The law minister even campaigned alongside members of Sipah-e-Sahaba in March.

Instead of targeting the groups, Sanaullah advocates trying to enlist their support to rein in the Punjabi Taliban. He also objects to calling the new group the Punjabi Taliban since it is not composed exclusively of Punjabis.

But the core leadership group is from Punjab. One of the key commanders, Maulana Abdul Jabbar, was once affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammad and most of his fighters come from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, according to police interrogation reports.

The reports identified Jabbar, who also goes by the name Maulana Umer Farooq, as chief of the Punjabi Taliban.

But Dogar, the Punjab police chief, said Jabbar was one of a number of key commanders training fighters at their camp near Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan.

Jabbar was released by Pakistan in 2006 after almost three years in jail for attempting to kill Musharraf with a bomb that detonated just seconds after the former president’s car crossed a bridge outside of Islamabad, according to local media reports at the time.

Mohammed Amir Rana, an expert on militant groups at the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, dismissed the feasibility of battling growing militancy in Punjab with a military operation, saying the answer was better policing, intelligence coordination and a clear commitment from the Pakistani government.

“This is a very complex phenomenon,” said Rana. “There is a terrorist threat, but the banned organizations have a political face as well.”

Associated Press writer Babar Dogar contributed to this report.