SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 14, No. 49, June 6, 2016

AFGHANISTAN

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Peripheral Consolidation
S. Binodkumar Singh
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Amidst surge in violence and talks with the Afghan Taliban hitting a roadblock, the Afghan Government signed a draft peace agreement with the Hezb-e-Islami (HeI) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on May 18, 2016. The draft agreement was signed by HeI representatives and High Peace Council (HPC) officials in the residence of Pir (revered religious instructor, usually of Sufi orientation) Syed Ahmad Gilani. HeI has agreed to have no links with anti-Government armed militant groups.

The other salient features of the draft peace agreement prominently include: the Government would offer an official pardon to associates of the HeI militant group and would work to have the group removed from the United Nations blacklist; the group would not join the Government but would be recognized as a political party involved in major political decisions; the agreement gives legal immunity for all past political and military actions by HeI members and mandates the release of all HeI prisoners within three months; and under the agreement, Hekmatyar would have a consultant role on important political and national decisions.

However, a final agreement has not yet been reached. On May 24, 2016, Deputy Spokesman for President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, Syed Zafar Hashemi announced that there is no specific timeframe for the conclusion of the peace deal with HeI. He added that a peace process is always complicated and it would be a mistake to confirm a timeframe regarding the final accord.

Significantly, HeI and the Afghan Government remain at odds on issues such as the exit of foreign Forces. The ‘acting head’ and ‘deputy chief’ of HeI Mohammad Hakim Hakim on May 30, 2016, insisted that the Government must at least ascertain a schedule for the exit of the foreign soldiers before the deal could finally be settled.

In an apparent breakthrough for the Afghan Peace Process, on March 27, 2016, HeI, the second largest insurgent group in Afghanistan, accepted President Ashraf Ghani’s invitation and agreed to join the direct peace talks with the Government. The announcement was made through HeI’s official webpage Shahadat, and declared, “Although the Americans have not yet ended their war in Afghanistan and many of the officials in Kabul Government see the peace process as a threat to their powers and privileges, but we are ready to take part in these talks, just to prove to our nation that Hizb-e-Islami wants peace”. Later, on April 5 2016, stepping back from his demands for the complete withdrawal of foreign Forces, HeI chief negotiator Muhammad Amin Karim disclosed that Hekmatyar was no longer demanding that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan. HeI had, in the past, always demanded the complete withdrawal of foreign Forces from Afghanistan.

About 12,813 foreign troopers, including 6,954 US troops are still stationed inside Afghanistan under the Resolute Support Mission. Moreover, on October 15, 2015, US President Barack Obama stated that he would keep 5,500 US troops in Afghanistan into 2017, arguing "Afghan Forces are still not as strong as they need to be... Meanwhile, the Taliban has made gains, particularly in rural areas, and can still launch deadly attacks in cities, including Kabul.” There is, consequently, no chance of complete withdrawal of Foreign Forces from Afghan soil in the foreseeable future.

The radical Islamist party, HeI, was formed by its current chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in opposition to Mohammad Daud Khan, who had become President in 1973 after engineering a coup against the last Afghan King, Zahir Shah, with the support of the erstwhile Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Hekmatyar, a radical internationalist Pashtun, recruited profoundly from among Government secular schools and Kabul religious schools. The party drew maximum support from Nuristan, Nangarhar and around Kabul. With the passage of time, dissent grew within the party, and it split as another two cofounders Burhanuddin Rabanni and Mawlawi Mohammed Yunis Khalis established their own factions. Burhanuddin Rabbani became President of Afghanistan on June 28, 1992, and remained in power till September 27, 1996, when the Taliban seized control of Kabul.

In May 1996, Rabbani and Hekmatyar formed a power-sharing Government in which Hekmatyar was made Prime Minister. But, the Rabbani-Hekmatyar regime lasted only a few months before the Taliban took control of Kabul in September 1996. Many of the HeI local commanders joined the Taliban. In Pakistan, HeI training camps were taken over by the Taliban and handed over to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) groups such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). Hekmatyar then fled to Iran in 1997 and resided there for almost six years. However, as a result of pressure by the US and the Hamid Karzai administration, on February 10, 2002, all HeI offices were closed in Iran and Hekmatyar was expelled by his hosts. Thereafter, he is believed to have shuttled between hideouts in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas and northeast Afghanistan, and is estimated to have 1,500-2,000 armed cadres across Afghanistan.

HeI had conducted some widely publicized attacks during the past few years even while negotiations were under way. These included the May 16, 2013, suicide attack in Kabul which destroyed a US armored vehicle. 14 persons, including two US soldiers, four US civilian contractors and eight Afghan nationals, were killed in the attack. HeI also claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Kabul on February 10, 2014, which killed two US civilians and wounded another two Americans and seven Afghan nationals. In July 2015, Hekmatyar called on his followers to support the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in its fight against the Taliban. Significantly, IS has made some inroads into Afghanistan, particularly in the Nangarhar Province. It is in this context that the present agreement has added significance.

Though many commentators are of the view that this agreement will force the Taliban to come to peace table, such an outcome is most unlikely in the present situation. The killing of the Pakistan-installed head of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, near Ahmed Wal in Balochistan, squarely on Pakistani soil, on May 21, 2016, has stalled the already checkered peace process for the time being.

In fact, Taliban representatives have met with the Afghan Government only once, in the intervening night of July 7 and July 8, 2015, in Murree in Pakistan, with an agreement to meet again on August 15 and 16, 2015, in the Qatar capital, Doha. However, the talks quickly collapsed as the Afghan Government on July 29, 2015, disclosed that Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Taliban, had died in April 2013 in Pakistan – a fact that both the Pakistani agencies and the Taliban leadership had kept secret, even as they continued to manipulate Mullah Omar’s identity, issuing several statements on his behalf. Subsequently, the Taliban split into two factions – one led by Pakistan’s nominee, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and another by Mullah Mohammad Rasool.

A bitter succession war ensued within the Taliban, and this did not help the peace process. Pakistan was, however, able to force reconciliation by September 2015, and Mullah Mansoor’s authority over both the factions was restored.

On February 16, 2016, Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah called on the Taliban to come to the negotiation table, warning that they could not fulfill their hopes through war. Once again, on March 7, 2016, during a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, Abdullah declared, “The anti-government armed militants are invited to respond positively towards the legitimate calls of the Government of national unity for the revival of peace process.”

Nevertheless, the Taliban failed to attend the fifth meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, that was held in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad, on May 18, 2016. The QCG reiterated that violence served no purpose and that peace negotiations remained the only option for a political settlement, and the various QCG countries reaffirmed that they would use their respective leverages and influences to these ends. There was some florid rhetoric about the continued determination with shared commitment to advance the goal of an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process, and it was decided that the next QCG meeting will would be convened as mutually agreed.

The first meeting of the QCG was held in Islamabad on January 11, 2016; the second in Kabul on January 18, 2016; the third in Islamabad on February 6, 2016; and the fourth in Kabul on February 23, 2016.

Despite efforts to end the violence in Afghanistan through the reconciliation process, the Taliban announced the launch of summer offensive in Afghanistan, named ‘Omari Operations’ for the founder and first supreme leader of the group Mullah Mohammad Omar, on April 12, 2016. Since the launch of the summer offensive, according to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 3276 fatalities in terrorist violence have been recorded across Afghanistan till June 5, 2016; of these, 2923 have been Taliban and other terrorist cadres. The Security Forces (SFs) have lost 161 personnel and 192 civilians have been killed.

The peace agreement between the Afghan Government and HeI is a welcome step, though it presently remains tentative. The Government and some of its international allies seem to hope that it may serve as a possible blueprint for a desired peace accord with the Taliban. Such expectations are based on a poor understanding of the nature of these groups, and Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on May 14, 2016, openly declared, “The deal with Hezb-e-Islami would have no impact on the overall peace process.”

Pakistan continues to support the Taliban against Kabul, and the Taliban have established dominance over vast territories within Afghanistan. There is, at present, little incentive for the Taliban to give all this up to accept any position as a junior partner in the state apparatus in Kabul; and such an outcome would certainly not meet the ambitions of the Taliban’s Pakistani handlers. The QCG process is based on contrafactual assumptions and a denial of reality, and is, consequently, still born.

PAKISTAN

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A Nursery of Terrorism
Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

The new chief of Afghan Taliban Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada is a product of Pakistani madrassas (religious seminaries) and still leads a string of madrassas across Pakistan's south-western Balochistan. Akhundzada succeeded Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was killed in a U.S. drone strike on May 21, 2016.

Media reports in May 2016 quoted a senior counter-terrorism (CT) officer indicating that a confidential report titled “Proscribed/Jihadi Organizations” noted that major banned outfits in the country were still recruiting madrassa students to wage jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and that such non-state actors had become very dangerous for Pakistan as well. In the secret document, consisting of 111 pages, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), Punjab, disclosed that 32 proscribed organizations and nine of their splinters groups had become “a nursery of terrorism in Pakistan.” Banned organizations like Islamic State (Daesh) and Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) had also gained ground, establishing special wings in the country, with their ‘commanders’ recruiting terrorists. Adjacent areas of Bahawalpur, Muridke, Sialkot and some southern Districts of Punjab – long dominated by prominent domestic terror formations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba – have now become a breeding ground for these foreign formations.

In a bid to target domestic terrorism and restore a measure of peace after the December 16, 2014, Peshawar school attack, the Government initiated a ‘crackdown’ on madrassas under the National Action Plan (NAP). On February 24, 2016, the Government shutdown 254 suspected and unregistered madrassas across the country, Minister of State for Interior and Narcotics Control Balighur Rehman told the National Assembly. He stated that 167 suspect seminaries including 72 that are unregistered in Sindh, 13 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and two in Punjab have been closed. "The government is countering hate speech and banning dissemination of extremist material," he added. Regarding registration and regulation of seminaries, the State Minister claimed that the Government had completed 100 per cent mapping on agreed parameters in Islamabad and Punjab. Eighty per cent of the mapping exercise had been completed in Sindh, followed by 75 per cent in KP and 60 per cent in Balochistan. Rehman disclosed, further, "There are 190 foreign-funded seminaries in the country, of which 147 are in Punjab, 30 in Balochistan, seven in KP and six in Sindh."

The Madrassa Reforms Project, which was initiated by then President General Pervez Musharraf in the wake of the Lal Masjid debacle July 2007, is still incomplete despite the lapse of nine years. Under the project, some 8,000 Islamic seminaries, about 1.6 million students and approximately 120,000 teachers of these madrassas were to be registered, but only 432 madrassas have yet been registered and, of them, just 36 are getting funds from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

The number of madrassas in Pakistan has crossed 35,000, from fewer than 300 at the inception of Pakistan, according to a report issued in Karachi on July 30, 2015. Titled, The Madrassa Conundrum — The state of religious education in Pakistan, the report is authored by Umair Khalil, lead researcher of the non-governmental research organisation, HIVE. According to the report, “After 11 years of Zia’s rule, the madrassa total ballooned to 2,801 with Deobandis accounting for 64 per cent of the total and the Barelvis only 25 per cent.” After Zia’s death, the state continued to retain an interest in supporting a particular religious group to play a role in the ongoing proxy war with India for Kashmir. The increase in the number of madrassas between 1988 and 2002 showed a significant rise in Deobandi seminaries, which increased from 1,779 to 7,000. Barelvi seminaries rose from 717 to 1,585; Ahle Hadith from 161 to 376; Shia from 47 to 419; and Jamaat-e-Islami from 97 to 500. The total number of madrassas in 1988 was 2,801, which shot up to 9,880 in 2002.

According to the Ministry of Religious Affairs Data, the cumulative figure of registered and unregistered madrassas in Pakistan is 34380. While, 14,768 madrassas in Punjab, 7,118 in Sindh, 2,704 in Balochistan, 1,354 in KP and 187 madrassas in Islamabad are registered, 4,135 in KP, 2,411 in Punjab, 1,406 in Sindh, 266 in Balochistan and 31 in Islamabad are unregistered. Meanwhile, the registered madrassas across Pakistan according to the Provincial Home Departments is 35,337 out of which 16,000 madrassas in Punjab, 13,000 in Balochistan, 3,136 in KP, 2,800 in Sindh and 401 in Islamabad. Around 3.5 million students are currently perusing a religious education in 35,337 madrassas affiliated with Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat-e-Madaris Pakistan (ITMP) — an umbrella of the five schools of Islamic jurisprudence.     

An April 28, 2016, media report claimed that the number of madrassas in the country, as well as the number of students enrolled in them, continues to rise. Even though seminary boards offer different reasons for the growing number of students and institutions in the country, the administrators of all five mainstream seminary boards believe that a lack of a clear policy was augmenting negative growth as well. Sahibzada Abdul Mustafa Hazarvi, Nazim-e-Ala (President) of the Tanzeem-ul-Madaris Ahl-e-Sunnat, the board for seminaries affiliated with the Barelvi school of thought thus noted, "The Government is not doing anything, but it wants the five boards and the seminaries registered with us to be as perfect as a polished shoe... It was only due to misconduct that Wifaqul Madaris al-Arabia delisted Jamia Hafsa [the madrassa attached to Lal Masjid] in Islamabad in 2007, in wake of anti-state political activities. But what have the authorities done? The seminary still continues to hold classes, is increasing its branches, enhancing the number of students and even criticises the board for not registering it – this is the writ of Government in Islamabad." Mustafa disclosed that there were around 9,000 madrassas affiliated with the Barelvi school of thought, imparting religious education to more than 1.3 million students. He said that there has been an increase of 10 per cent in the number of seminaries and students as compared to the previous year.

About 24,000 madrassas in Pakistan are funded by Saudi Arabia which has unleashed a "tsunami of money" to "export intolerance", American senator Chris Murphy observed on January 29, 2016, in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations, adding that the US needs to end its effective acquiescence to the Saudi sponsorship of radical Islamism. Murphy noted, further, "In 1956, there were 244 madrassas in Pakistan. Today, there are 24,000. These schools are multiplying all over the globe. These schools, by and large, don't teach violence. They aren't the minor leagues for al-Qaeda or ISIS. But they do teach a version of Islam that leads very nicely into an anti-Shia, anti-Western militancy”. Senator Murphy asserted that Pakistan was the best example of places where money coming from Saudi Arabia is funnelled to religious schools that nurture hatred and terrorism. According to some estimates, since the 1960s, the Saudis have funnelled over USD 100 billion into funding schools and mosques all over the world with the mission of spreading puritanical Wahhabi Islam. As a point of comparison, researchers estimate that the former Soviet Union spent about USD 7 billion exporting its communist ideology from 1920-1991. "Less-well-funded governments and other strains of Islam can hardly keep up with the tsunami of money behind this export of intolerance," Murphy concluded.

John Cassara, a former US Intelligence Officer and Treasury Special Agent told members of the House Financial Services Committee during a Congressional hearing on February 3, 2016, that radical Pakistani madrassas were engaged in massive trade-based money laundering (TBML) to fund jihadist groups: "It was engaged in a side business dealing in animal hides. In order to justify the large inflow of funds, the madrassa claimed to sell a large number of hides to foreign customers at grossly inflated prices. This ruse allowed the extremists to 'legitimise' the inflow of funds which were then passed to terrorists."

Sartaj Aziz, the Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs, stated, on March 4, 2016, that the madrassas along the Af-Pak border and tribal areas, in particular North Waziristan, had become a hub of terrorist activities. These madrassas had a well-oiled terror infrastructure beyond imagination, running bomb-making factories, terrorist training centres and centres to train suicide bombers – all in multi-storied basements under mosques. giving details of the how deep rooted terror infrastructure had developed in Pakistan, Aziz added, "In one mosque that I visited, I remember, in Miranshah, from outside we did not see anything. But under the mosque there was a 70-room basement, three stories, in which there were four-five IED factories, four-five suicide training centers, communication network, VIP room, conference rooms, amazing infrastructure."

Astonishingly, Aziz blamed Afghan refugees, who entered the country when the US pushed the Taliban out of power after the 9/11, for these developments. These madrassas, he argued, were jointly "funded, armed and created" by the US and Pakistan to train people to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan. He further stated, “We have about 75,000 unregistered madrassas”, where people are trained, brainwashed, and prepared for terrorist activities.

The Pakistani state perspective is disingenuous, and seeks to evade the fundamental fact that the madrassas which had been producing radicals have long been its own assets, exploited as an instrument of geostrategic extension. In its report, ‘Pakistan’s Jihadist Heartland: Southern Punjab’, released on May 30, 2016, the International Crisis Group (ICG) observes, “Continued state sponsorship remains a source of empowerment for groups that fall under the category of “good” jihadists, such as the Jaish, which has networks across the province.” The report further added that “The region hosts two of Pakistan’s most radical Deobandi groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed, held responsible by India for the January 2, 2016 attack on its Pathankot airbase; and the sectarian Laskhar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which was at least complicit in, if not solely responsible for, the March 27 Easter Sunday attack that killed more than 70 in Lahore.”

ICG confirms that the Jaish-e-Mohammad’s infrastructure at Bahawalpur is intact, including its sprawling headquarters at the Usman-o-Ali Madrasa and other mosques and madrassa across the District. A Federal Minister and Member of Parliament from Bahawalpur, Riaz Husain Pirzada concurs, “the breeding grounds remain; the [sectarian] madrassa are still being financed.” According to local observers, the Jaish also continues to run a prominently-located training cell on a main Bahawalpur road toward Ahmedpur tehsil [revenue unit], which attracts young (often teenaged) recruits from around southern Punjab, ICG adds.

Worse, there is no possibility of any effective action against what are conceived of as pro-establishment and anti-Indian armed formations in the province. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, on May 17, 2016, thus declared, “legal action against militant groups such as Jamaat ud Dawa (the parent organisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) is not possible as the state itself is involved.” 

In 2013, the same Punjab Government allocated more than PKR 61 million in the budget for fiscal 2013-14 for ‘Markaz-e-Taiba’, JuD’s largest centre. In 2009-10, the Government provided more than PKR 82 million for the administration of JuD facilities. In fiscal 2010-11, Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, using his discretionary powers, allocated two separate grants for JuD facilities. The Government granted PKR 79.8 million for six organisations at Markaz-e-Taiba and a special grant-in-aid of PKR 3 million for JuD’s Al-Dawa School System in several Districts of Punjab.

Pakistan’s two faced strategy on terrorism remains deeply entrenched in the state apparatus, and as long as madrassas and other religious institutions continue to be used to raise armies of terrorists to direct against Afghanistan and India, a spillover into Pakistani territory will inevitable continue. Despite periodic and loud lamentations, this appears to be a price Islamabad remains willing to pay for its overreaching and improbable regional ambitions.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

BANGLADESH

Islamist Terrorism

INDIA

Assam

Jammu and Kashmir

Meghalaya

Left-Wing Extremism

Jharkhand

Maharashtra

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

KP

Punjab

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)