Over the past few years, several militant leaders have been killed in operations conducted by Pakistani military and CIA drone strikes.

But they have been quickly replaced by new and more aggressive successors.

The drone strikes have been a part of the CIA’s ‘secret war’ against al Qaeda in the tribal areas since 2004.

But after 2009, these attacks increased.

Shortly after his inauguration President Barack Obama ordered an escalation of the strikes as a part of his overall review of Afghan war strategy.

In August 2009, Hellfire missiles fired by a pilotless Predator killed Baitullah and his young wife while the Taliban leader was being treated for his kidney ailment in his house in Makin in South Waziristan.

His killing was perhaps the most successful strike in the eight-year history of the CIA’s drone operations in Pakistan.

The drone strikes have been effective in eliminating leading al Qaeda and other militant commanders. But they have also had serious blowback effects.

The escalation and increasing number of civilian deaths have stirred intense anger among the Pakistani public. This so-called secret war has become a focus of both militant rage and public protest.

The United States has never officially acknowledged that it is launching the strikes and Islamabad has denied any collaboration.

But the drone operations have been carried out with the tacit cooperation of the Pakistani government. With the reported deaths of women and children public anger has surged.

The strikes have also spurred a significant rise in the number of recruits joining militant groups. Baitullah Mehsud’s killing, hailed as such a pivotal victory in Pakistan’s war against militants, resulted in only a brief lull in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban. He was quickly succeeded by a fierce commander, Hakimullah Mehsud.

Just months after Baitullah’s death, the Pakistani Taliban took its wave of violence to a new level, launching a series of highly coordinated suicide bombings and attacks in the major Pakistani cities targeting even higher-security military installations.

The closely synchronised attacks exposed weaknesses in Pakistan’s security apparatus and demonstrated that the militants had become more daring and sophisticated in planning and tactics.

The TTP also developed a close nexus with other Pakistani militant 154factions, which had over time mutated into small cells after being proscribed by the Musharraf government in 2002.

A new generation of young educated militants from urban areas, most of them splinters of mainstream Islamic political parties including the JI joined the new jihadist movement making it a formidable challenge to the Pakistani state.

The movement began to draw young, middle-class professionals who were products of universities rather than of Islamic seminaries.

Children of opportunity rather than deprivation, they became the planners of many terrorist attacks that heralded a new phase of militancy sweeping the country after 2007.

Meanwhile al Qaeda, operating from the borderland, managed to transform and replenish itself with new recruits from among the Pakistani militant groups.

This enabled it to also survive the capture and killing of many of its senior operatives. Founder members mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya, known as ‘Sheikhs’, continued to provide ideological leadership, but the rank and file of the network increasingly comprised the new militants from Pakistan and other countries including Somalia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Bangladesh who managed to slip into the border region.

Pakistani intelligence agencies got the first clear idea of how al Qaeda had expanded its network into Pakistan’s urban centres from the arrest of Naeem Noor Khan in Lahore in July 2004.

The 28 year old computer wizard from an educated middle-class family had for years worked as al Qaeda’s communication chief. An engineer by training, Naeem had left a promising career to join the jihad.

Information acquired from his computer revealed that Naeem was a key link between bin Laden’s inner circle hiding in the mountainous tribal region and al Qaeda’s operatives around the world.

It also provided unprecedented insight into its inner workings and international operations. Naeem was lured into jihad when he was still a student at a top engineering university in Karachi. Although he grew up in a liberal atmosphere he was greatly influenced by radical Muslim causes from Palestine to Bosnia.

There were many other Pakistanis from the ranks of JI who were also involved with al Qaeda operating, thus giving the group a new depth in the country. The cadre al Qaeda attracted was ideologically and politically motivated.

Thousands of well-trained militants who were battle-hardened in Kashmir and Afghanistan provided ready recruits. 155Pakistani militant groups like JeM, HuM, LeJ and HUJI that had disintegrated into small cells became an extension.

The more Islamabad aligned itself with the United States the more young members of militant organisations turned inwards to target the military.

The Karachi-based Jundullah (Army of God) was a prime example of the changing face of al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The group was founded by Ata-ur-Rehman, a university graduate who was arrested in June 2004 on the charge of masterminding a series of terrorist attacks targeting security forces and government installations.

The son of a prosperous businessman, Ata-ur-Rehrnan grew up in a middle class neighbourhood in Karachi. Many of his close relatives were settled in the United States. He turned to militancy after completing his Master’s degree in Statistics in 1991.

Rehman was initially associated with Islami Jamiat- e-Talba, the student wing of JI.

Like thousands of Pakistani militants he went to Afghanistan in the mid 1990s to receive military training. Rehman formed the group in 2003 after Pakistani security forces captured many top al Qaeda leaders including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

A well-knit cell comprising twenty militants, most of them in their twenties and thirties, Jundullah was the most ruthless of al Qaeda linked groups involved in a spate of violent attacks in Karachi.

The group hit the headlines after an audacious attack in June 2004 on the cavalcade of a top army commander in the city. More than 11 soldiers and officers were killed in the raid in a busy street.

The emergence of groups like Jundullah showed how new jihadi cells quickly formed after others were wound up. The rise of small terrorist cells made the task of countering them harder.

These terrorist groups multiplied with the escalation in the Pakistani military offensives in the northwest and tribal regions. Some of these groups had just four or five members making them hard to detect.

Among others who were arrested for association with Jundullah were Arshad Waheed and his brother Akmal Waheed, a neurosurgeon. Both men, in their mid thirties, were also JI members. Doctor Arshad Waheed was a well- known orthopaedic surgeon running his own hospital in Karachi and actively involved with the Jamaat.

He moved to Kandahar after the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan apparently to provide medical help to the Taliban. The experience radicalised him further.

Back in Pakistan he started mobilising 156people for jihad in Afghanistan. He criticised Pakistani religious political parties for seeking to gain power through elections. Disillusioned with the Jamaat’s politics he became associated with a little known militant group, Jundullah.

Official Pakistani investigations showed that the two doctors had close links with al Qaeda. Besides sheltering terrorists they provided financial and medical help to the militants.

JI ran an intense campaign for the release of the two doctors. The two brothers disappeared after being released on bail a few months later. They were later spotted in South Waziristan where Dr Arshad Waheed got actively involved with al Qaeda and took the war name, Sheikh Moaz.

There he became a trained fighter and also provided medical training. Dr Arshad Waheed was killed in March 2008 when a CIA-operated drone struck his hideout in Dhok Pir Bagh near Wana.

An al Qaeda video tape released after his death hailed him as a martyr who was ‘unparalleled in faith, love for his religion, and belief in Allah.’

The Waheed brothers’ role in al Qaeda raised questions about the JI’s connection with the organisation. This was not an isolated case.

In 2003 Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured from the house of a leader of the party’s women’s wing in the Rawalpindi cantonment area.

The raid produced another important catch: Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, a Saudi Arabian national accused of bankrolling the September 11 attacks.

There were several other incidents where JI members were found to have provided refuge to al Qaeda fugitives. In January 2003 two al Qaeda operatives were arrested after a shootout in the house of another leader of the party’s women’s wing in Karachi.

In 2003 the security agencies arrested Khawja Javed, a leading physician, and his brother for harbouring senior al Qaeda operatives and their families on their sprawling residential compound outside Lahore.

Both were associated with JI. In 2005, security agencies arrested Ahsan Aziz, from Mirpur a town in Pakistani controlled Kashmir. He was another JI member with al Qaeda links. This underscored the support network that al Qaeda enjoyed among mainstream Islamic parties.

The association of al Qaeda operatives with JI was not accidental. The country’s most powerful Islamic political party was after all the original face of jihad in Pakistan.

In terms of its organisational capability, media skills, political experience and influence within the state institutions, JI emerged as 157the most powerful religious lobby in the country.

In many respects JI was the main architect of official Islam in Pakistan. Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, was a leading proponent of political Islam along with Hasan al Banna and Sayyid Qutb, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Maududi’s influence went beyond the sub-continent and his writings gained a wide audience in the Islamic world.

Maududi formed the JI in 1941 as an Islamic revivalist movement to promote Islamic values and practices. The basic objective of the party was to seize state power and establish Islamic rule. It pledged not to adopt any illegal or underground means to come to power.

‘It will educate people in the first course about real Islamic values and participate in elections’, the foundation manifesto declared. Maududi was a prolific writer. In hundreds of books and pamphlets he laid out an elaborate ideological vision.

He argued that Islam is as much a political ideology as it is a religion and that the basic division in the world was between ‘Islam and un-Islam’.

He described the political system of Islam as ’theo-democracy’ a system in which officials would be elected, but would be subject to divine laws interpreted by the theologically learned.

Over the years JI increasingly used force to assert its politics. The party’s first venture into military jihad came in 1971 when its cadres sided with the Pakistan Army in opposing independence for Bangladesh.

The party members were organised into two militant groups, Al-Badr and Al-Shams, and were trained by the Pakistan Army to carry out operations against Bengali nationalists seeking separation from Pakistan. JI was the only political party that actively supported the military operation which killed thousands of Bengalis and ultimately resulted in the dismemberment of the country less than 25 years after its creation.

Since the 1970s militancy became an integral part of JI politics. By 1976 the Jamaat’s street power had multiplied and the number of its members and supporters jumped to two million. The party also organised armed groups to intimidate the opposition. As pointed out earlier General Zia’s regime gave the Jamaat unprecedented influence.

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, JI found the opportunity to establish itself as the main exponent of Jihad. Maududi died in an American hospital just a few months before Soviet President Brezhnev ordered his troops to march into Afghanistan in 1979. JI, which by then had become completely intertwined with the military, played a major role in the 158Afghan jihad sponsored by the CIA and the ISI.

Thousands of its members joined the mujahideen fighting the Soviet forces. It was also the period when the party developed close contacts with Arab jihadists, many of whom were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. There was a very close ideological bond between the two parties striving for international Islamic revolution. Many of these Brotherhood fighters, including al Zawahiri, would form the main nucleus of al Qaeda in later years.

During the Afghan Jihad JI was able to build a significant infrastructure, including madrasahs, businesses and charities with the help of generous financial contributions from governments and private individuals in the Gulf States. Thousands of JI cadres received training alongside foreign and Afghan fighters, developing a close affinity with them.

By the time of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan the party had developed close ties with Islamist groups throughout the world. Islamist liberation movements seeking redress of perceived and real grievances in places remote from Pakistan, such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Southern Philippines congregated in Pakistan.

JI raised funds for these groups and provided military training for their members in addition to allowing its own younger members to participate in jihad around the world. Once an ally of the United States, JI now became part of global jihad. Hundreds of its cadres were killed fighting in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

The arrests of al Qaeda leaders from residences belonging to JI members brought the party under national and international scrutiny, but there was little evidence that the party itself collaborated in any terrorist actions.

Although JI sympathised with various jihadi movements, it took care not to cross the line from being primarily an ideological-political movement, or in Maududi’s words ’the vanguard of Islamic revolution.’

The rise in the number of cadres from mainstream Islamic political parties joining the militant war against Pakistani forces has made the threat to the country much more serious.

Over the years the Pakistani government and the military underestimated and ignored this rising threat. A policy of appeasement from 2001 to 2009 allowed the Taliban to establish control not only in all the seven tribal agencies of FATA but also sweep parts of the KP.

Taking advantage of a peace deal with the government in 2009, the Taliban led by an instigating cleric, Mullah Fazlullah, established retrogressive rule in the Swat Valley and expanded his influence in the neighbouring districts of Dir and Buner.

The advance of the Taliban to areas just 70 miles from the capital raised a nightmare scenario of militants raging out of control. At the same time Baitullah’s supporters stepped up terrorist attacks in mainland Pakistan. The alarming development raised serious concern in Washington and other Western capitals.

The Taliban advance finally forced the military to move against them.

In the first week of May 2009, the Army launched a three-pronged offensive involving 30,000 troops, backed by air force jets and helicopter gunships, turning a large area of the Swat Valley into a battle zone.

It was the bloodiest battle yet in Pakistan’s struggle against militancy.

The fighting forced some 2 million people to leave their homes creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the country’s history.

After fierce fighting, government forces were able to seize control of the region. It dealt a serious blow to the Taliban, and won the praise of the United States and other Western allies.

But it also prompted the insurgents to expand the guerrilla war into the country’s heartland. Suicide attacks on security forces and installations increased in the months that followed.

In a daring attack in mid-October, militants attacked the high security Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and held some 39 officers and civilians hostage for 22 hours.

The attackers had pulled off a security breach at one of the most sensitive national defence establishments in the country and had threatened the safety of the Army’s top commanders.

The GHQ attack was carried out with the objective of sending the message that despite the setback in Swat, the militants still had the capacity to hit wherever they wanted.

It was a joint operation by the Taliban and outlawed groups, which are dominated by militants from the Punjab.

Such collaboration had been revealed in a number of other terrorist attacks in major Pakistani cities. These signalled the existence of strong bases of support for militant terrorism in the heartland and the emergence of an ever more intertwined nexus between educated professionals and tribal militants.

The GHQ attack left the military with no other option but to move against the 160bastion of Taliban power in South Waziristan. The long-awaited offensive began on 17 October 2009, with the deployment of more than forty-five thousand troops, backed by the air force.

The massive use of force was considered critical to quickly wind up the operation. With these troops added to those still deployed in the Swat, the size of the total force engaged in the battle reached a record 100,000.

Security forces were able to drive out the Taliban fighters from most of their stronghold in South Waziristan by the end of 2009. But the military’s hold remained tentative with most of the insurgent leaders escaping to neighbouring North Waziristan and other tribal regions.

The Army extended the operation to the Orakzai tribal agency which had also become the centre for Taliban activities. Despite the military success in Swat, South Waziristan and other tribal agencies, there has been little abatement in the militant violence.

Pakistan’s major problem in dealing with rising militancy is lack of a comprehensive and integrated counter-terrorism strategy.

In the areas that have been cleared of militants there is still no effective civil administration that has been put in place making it more difficult to consolidate military gains.

The use of military force alone cannot win the war against rising militancy, which poses the biggest internal security threat to the country.

To reverse the tide of militancy there is a need to take a holistic approach which also includes the political mobilisation of the people to combat terrorism.

Public opinion has turned against militancy, the absence of a concerted government effort to leverage this as part of evolving a coherent strategy means that the most important aspect of reversing the tide of militancy remains to be addressed.

Important gains have been made in the past two years, but unless these are reinforced by non-military measures to neutralise the militants and their toxic creed and buttressed by effective governance these gains may turn out to be ephemeral.