Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind

JUI had its origin in the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind which was founded by a group of clerics of the Deobandi Muslim movement in pre-partition India.

This movement for Islamic revival:

• had first emerged after the 1857 rebellion against British rule.
• was a branch of Sunni Hanafi Islam
• was primarily an anti-British movement

Their creed is named after a religious seminary established in 1867 in Deoband near Delhi.

The founders of the seminary drew their spiritual guidance from Shah Wali Ullah, an 18th-century Islamic scholar who tried to bind different Islamic schools of thought.

The Deobandis argued that Muslims could coexist with other religions in a society where they were not the majority.

That was also the basis of their opposition to the division of India and creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for Muslims.

Deobandis initially stressed on how to revive Islamic life while living under a colonial regime, eschewing politics and focusing on Islamic practices and personal belief, as opposed to the overtly political goals promoted by Islamist thinkers such as Maulana Maudoodi and Hassan al Banna, the founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

These ideas inspired the formation of the JUI as a separate 147organisation after independence in 1947. The party had a significant support base in the rural areas of southern NWFP.

In the initial years, the organisation functioned strictly as a religious movement, which concentrated on setting up mosques and preaching.

But gradually it developed into a politico-religious party, taking part in the political process and elections.

The JUI leadership had traditionally been closer to nationalist and progressive parties than to the proponents of political Islam like the JI. In 1971 the party became a coalition partner of the Pashtun nationalist National Awami Party in the NWFP and Balochistan provincial governments.

With the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces in the 1980s, the party’s political orientation transformed.

With the help of funding from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, the Deobandi clerics established thousands of madrasahs in NWFP and Balochistan along the border with Afghanistan which provided volunteers to fight against communist forces.

This brought about a series of transformations of the party, first from a religious movement to a political party and then to a party involved in jihadi politics.

The decade long conflict in Afghanistan gave the Islamists a rallying point and training field. Young Muslims around the world flocked to Afghanistan to fight against a foreign invader.

The Afghan resistance was projected by the US-led Western coalition as part of the global jihad against communism. The training of guerrillas was integrated in to the teaching of Islam.

The prominent theme was that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology under threat from communist atheists. The Afghan war produced a new radical Islamic movement. Besides the holy warriors from Islamic countries, thousands more were recruited from the expanding madrasah network.

General Zia-ul-Haq not only ushered Pakistan into its longest period of military rule but also tried to turn the country into an ideological state. Zia argued that as Pakistan was created on the basis of the 2-nation theory and Islamic ideology, it was the duty of the ‘soldiers of Islam to safeguard its security, integrity and sovereignty at all costs, both from internal turmoil and external aggression’. He claimed the state was created exclusively to provide its people with the opportunity to follow, ’the Islamic way of life.’

Preservation of the country’s Islamic character was 148seen to be as important as the security of the country’s geographical frontiers.

Zia’s beliefs and politics empowered the clergy.

His efforts to Islamise the state and society found ready allies among the religious parties, many of which already had close ties with the military.

The Jamaat-e Islami and other Islamic groups were co-opted by his government with leading figures serving in his martial law cabinet. For the first time in Pakistan’s history the Islamists occupied important government positions. Being in power helped the JI penetrate state institutions.

Thousands of party activists and sympathisers were given jobs in the judiciary, civil service and educational institutions. These appointments strengthened the hold of the Islamists on crucial parts of the state apparatus for years to come.

The regional and international climate of the 1980s favoured Zia’s orthodox Islamisation, and the alliance with the West served the military’s institutional interests.

As a front-line ally of the US in the Soviet-Afghan War, the military benefited from billions of dollars in military and economic aid, while Zia promoted a militant version of Islam to fight the jihad and crush his democratic foes at home. Consequently, the Islamic movements and parties also thrived in this newfound jihadi culture. Jihad became the main pillar of Zia’s vision of an Islamic state and society. Religious parties came to use militancy to further their cause.

Afghanistan provided inspiration to an entire generation of Pakistani Islamic radicals who considered it their religious duty to fight the oppression of Muslims anywhere in the world. It gave a new dimension to the idea of jihad, which till then had only been employed by the Pakistani state in the context of mobilising the population against the archrival—India. The Afghan War saw the privatisation of the concept of jihad. Militant groups emerged from the ranks of traditional religious movements, which took the path of an armed struggle for the cause of Islam.

While the first Pakistani jihadi groups emerged in the 1980s, by 2002 the country had become home to twenty-four militant groups. Within a decade and a half highly disciplined paramilitary organisations were operating across the country pursuing their own internal and external agendas. The largest among them were the Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Harkat-al-Jihad-al Islami (HJI). All these paramilitary groups had similar motivations and goals, and recruited from the 149same kind of people (often unemployed youth from the Punjab and KP Provinces). The only difference was in patronage: HuM and HJI were both strongly linked with the Taliban, whilst LeT had strong links with Wahabi groups in Saudi Arabia.

These militant organisations were not clandestine and had not sprouted surreptitiously. Their growth, even when not sponsored by state functionaries was viewed with favour by them. Their activities were no secret and found expression in graffiti, wallposters and pamphlets all over the country, inviting Muslims to join forces with them. They also carried addresses and telephone numbers to contact for training. ‘Jihad is the shortest route to paradise’, declares one of the many exhortations in such literature. ‘A martyr ensures salvation for the entire family.’ Every jihadi organisation had funds to help the families of ‘martyrs’. Although money was not the motivation of these jihadis, funding was essential to sustain the culture of jihad. The state’s patronage helped the jihadis raise funds at public places. The militant groups developed powerful propaganda machinery. Their publications gained a large readership and their messages also became available on video and audiotapes.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the objective of the jihadi movements in Pakistan was not like that of Arab Salafists such as Osama bin Laden: to establish a global Islamic caliphate. Their objectives were more in line with the regional strategy of the Pakistani military establishment: the liberation of Kashmir from India and promoting a Pashtun government in Afghanistan. Most of these militant groups served as instruments of Pakistan’s regional policy.

In the mid-1990s the JUI was deeply involved with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghan and Pakistani students from the madrasahs run by the JUI formed the nucleus of the Taliban militia, which swept Afghanistan in 1996 to install a conservative Islamic regime in Kabul. The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan encouraged Pakistani militant groups like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e­ Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Afghanistan became a base for their operations. Their leaders shared common origins, personnel and often patrons. Many of the Pakistani militants came from the same seminaries in the Pakistani border region from where the Afghan Taliban movement had emerged. Some of these groups were patronised by 150Pakistan’s intelligence agencies which also supported the Afghan Taliban. Both were important in furthering Pakistan’s strategic interests—to extend its influence in Afghanistan.

Almost all the top militant leaders in the tribal region who later formed the nucleus of the Pakistani Taliban movement were initially associated with the JUI. Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Mullah Nazir all emerged from the ranks of the JUI which was the only political party allowed by the authorities to operate openly in the tribal areas (where formally political parties remained banned till a 2008 reform announcement that is yet to be implemented). As a result of al Qaeda’s influence, the leaders rejected the political and democratic path pursued by the JUI, which lead to a falling out between the JUI and the Pakistani Taliban.

The new generation of Pakistani Taliban became more brutal than their Afghan comrades. Beheading and public executions of opponents and government officials became common practice. The videos of those brutal actions were then distributed to create fear. These sadistic actions were unknown in traditional Pushtun culture. This behaviour was greatly influenced by Arab and Uzbek militants. The Pakistani Taliban’s creed probably stemmed from Salafi-Jihadism ideology espoused by al Qaeda. It was also the result of Wahabism found in the Saudi-funded madrasahs, which created a new kind of radical Deobandism specific to the Taliban. On 14 December 2007 some forty militant leaders commanding some 40,000 fighters gathered in South Waziristan to form a united front under the banner of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. They unanimously elected Baitullah Mehsud, already the most powerful commander, as ‘Emir’ or supreme leader of the new organisation.

The meeting was attended by almost all the top militant leaders operating in the tribal regions and NWFP or their representatives who managed to set aside their differences. Prominent among them were Hafiz Gul Bahadur from North Waziristan, Mullah Nazir from South Waziristan, Faqir Mohammed from Bajaur and Maulana Fazalullah from Swat. The presence of Gul Bahadur and Mullah Nazir, both belonging to Wazir tribe was curious because of their historic rivalry with Baitullah, from the Mehsud tribe. What had likely brought them together was the military assault ordered by Musharraf on Islamabad’s Red Mosque in July 1512007.

The Shura or central council not only had representation from all the seven tribal agencies but also from the parts of KP including Swat, Malakand, Buner and Dera Ismail Khan where the Taliban movement was active. The eight-point charter called for the enforcement of Shari’a rule and vowed to continue fighting against foreign forces in Afghanistan. The TTP also declared what it described as ‘defensive’ jihad against the Pakistani military. The newly formed TTP was in fact little more than an extension of al Qaeda. Its formation followed Osama’s declaration of war against the Pakistani state in the aftermath of the siege of the Red Mosque. Its charter clearly reflected al Qaeda’s new strategy to extend its war to Pakistan. Almost all the top leaders of the new organisation, particularly its supreme leader Baitullah had a long association with al Qaeda. Afghan Taliban leaders were also closely involved in the formation of the organisation which implicitly declared its allegiance to Osama and Mullah Omar.

The period after the formation of the TTP saw a marked rise in militant activity. Just ten days after its creation former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated a few weeks after her return to the country after a protracted time in exile. A suicide bomber blew himself up after firing gunshots at her as she came out of an election rally in Rawalpindi. The militants who missed her in the previous attack on her election rally in Karachi attack appeared to have finally succeeded in removing the leader who dared to confront them. Baitullah was blamed for a murder which was to completely change Pakistan’s political landscape.

The Taliban insurgency spread rapidly with the formation of the TTP and came to engulf all the seven tribal regions as well as parts of the NWFP. The movement was most violent in the Swat valley where the followers of Mullah Fazlullah established a brutal regime until they were driven out by Pakistani military in June 2009.

The rise of a distinctive Pakistani Taliban movement represented a new and more violent phase of Islamic militancy in the country. Suicide terrorism, which targeted both the military and civilians, saw a massive rise after the Red Mosque assault when al Qaeda and its Pakistani allies declared jihad against the Pakistani state.

This marked a shift in jihadi 152strategy making the government and military the primary targets. In time security forces accounted for more than 60 per cent of the targets as human bombers became the most potent weapons in the militant war.

More than 3,000 people, including senior army and intelligence officials, became victims of those attacks between 2007 and 2009. On average ninety people were killed a month in suicide bombings during 2009 with an attack occurring almost every five to six days across the country. Jihadi groups also expanded their attacks to Islamabad. They launched spectacular suicide raids in high security zones, including the Danish Embassy compound and the Marriot Hotel in June and September 2007, which killed more than sixty people. Both these attacks showed the growing power of the militants’ intelligence network. Both attacks were directly linked to al Qaeda backed militants.

Despite the rise in suicide bombings the number of casualties in these attacks remained low compared to other violent assaults. But they had much greater impact. Suicide bombing as a weapon had seldom been used by Pakistani militant groups before, though some jihadi groups had used fidayeen raids against Indian security forces in Kashmir. The term ‘fidayeen attack’ was used by the militants for target operations. The concept of fidayeen (self-sacrifice) was different from that of a suicide bomber who blew himself up to kill others. Until then most militant groups considered suicide to be un-Islamic. A fidayee, on the other hand, was one who had to achieve his mission even in the worst of circumstances and come back alive. Suicide attacks were rarely used by the Afghan mujahideen in the War against the Soviet forces in the 1980s, though there were a few incidents involving Arab jihadists.

The use of suicide bombings by Pakistani militants was largely a post-9/11 phenomenon. Some clerics had hailed the nineteen hijackers involved in the attack as ‘great heroes of Islam’. The more radical among them had even issued a fatwa giving religious sanction to suicide attacks against American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani soldiers fighting in South Waziristan. This sanction was also used by Muslim sectarian groups to justify actions targeting religious congregations of rival denominations.

For militants the Western presence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan was a threat to Islam itself. This view became the ultimate rationale for jihadist militancy in Pakistan. Anybody allied with the enemy 153or those who seemed to be complicit in the war on the side of Western forces such as soldiers charged with safe passage for NATO convoys, civilians, moderate clerics and more recently, the government officials were regarded as fair game.