The Monster Within

(2 of 2)
T

he two groups certainly know each other. Throughout the 1990s, before marching off to fight the Indians in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad militants crossed into Afghanistan to attend al-Qaeda training camps. Pakistan's intelligence services looked the other way. Officials in Pakistan say that these days Jaish-e-Muhammad activists give shelter to al-Qaeda militants and that al-Qaeda provides funding and guidance to Jaish-e-Muhammad, perhaps contracting the group out for killings. Says retired General Talat Masood, a consultant on security affairs in Islamabad: "The military had an alliance with these jihadi groups, but they got totally out of control."

Suicide bomber Jamil was known to Pakistani intelligence. A reedy young man from the village of Rawalakot in the Himalayan foothills near the Indian border, he fought alongside the Taliban against the Americans in Afghanistan. Wounded in the fall of Kabul, he was allowed to return home to Pakistan. On arrival in Peshawar, he was interrogated by Pakistani intelligence services and dismissed as harmless in April 2002. Like many Muslim extremists, Jamil, according to his relatives in Rawalakot, viewed Musharraf as too pro-Western. Militants complain that Musharraf betrayed the Taliban and, given his peace overtures to India in early January, they now accuse him of selling out Kashmiri Muslims too. Jamil's rants against the U.S. and Musharraf were so incessant that his family kicked him out, neighbors say. But was Jamil the ringleader of the Dec. 25 plot? "Of course not," scoffs Interior Minister Hayat. "The ringleaders never blow themselves up. They get minions to do that."

However dedicated Musharraf may now be to weeding out Pakistan's extremists, the task will be long and dangerous. On Thursday, terrorists in Karachi bombed a Christian study center, injuring 14 people. Says Hayat: "Their tentacles are spread far and wide." On the run now, these groups may be more dangerous than ever. Says an ex-commander of one of them in Lahore: "The boys aren't listening to anyone. They're desperate. They don't accept that the days of jihad are over."