Al-Qaeda gets a new target

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Asia Times Online

Within two weeks of United States officials laying down the law to key Pakistani players - including President Asif Ali Zardari, chief of army staff General Ashfaq Kiani and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif - that they must join forces against the Taliban, a committee has been formed to decide on the modalities for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) to join the federal government.
This coincides with a public warning by US Central Command chief General David Petraeus that the next two weeks will be critical in determining whether or not the Pakistani government survives, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen's comment on Monday that he was "gravely concerned" about Pakistan. Zardari is due in Washington this week for a meeting with US President Barack Obama.
In this charged environment, former premier Sharif has for the first time openly criticized the Taliban for their "brutal conduct" and their brand of Islam, which he pointed out included stoning to death and the amputation of hands. Sharif's statement serves as an announcement of his support for a new American-sponsored military operation in Pakistan.
This is an important and dangerous shift for Sharif and his right-wing party as it places them directly in the crosshairs of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda colleagues.
The new round of military operations has already begun in the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). In February, after two years of fighting between militants and Pakistani security forces, a peace agreement was struck in the Swat area. One of its features was that sharia (Islamic) law would be introduced. However, over the past week or so, the truce appears to be in tatters, with fierce fighting raging and both sides claiming grave violations of the accord.
A curfew has been slapped on the area for an indefinite period and additional troops have been sent in to sort out the Taliban in Malakand division if they refuse to lay down their weapons.
Unlike in the recent past, when the present Pakistani government clearly distanced itself from any military operations against militants, calling them exclusively army work and passing resolutions in parliament against them, presidential spokesperson Farahnaz Isphani is now singing a different tune.
She said in a press statement, "The people of Pakistan and their elected representatives fully back the security forces conducting an operation against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in NWFP. The security forces are involved in a fight that will decide the future of Pakistan. It is a battle for a modern, democratic, progressive and pluralistic Pakistan."
Isphani said the elected representatives were fully aware of the efforts being made by the Pakistan army in the "war on terror", and they would support military operations through all possible means. She said the government was committed to ridding the country of terrorism and hoped the president's visit to the US would help the Obama administration and opinion-makers in Washington understand the concerns of Pakistanis.
Al-Qaeda looks on with concern
Over the past few years, al-Qaeda in Pakistan has lost more than a dozen senior leaders to US Predator drone attacks and seen its support in the tribal areas shrink in the face of peace deals between tribal elders and the government.
Another major upset came from Syed Munawar Hasan, the newly elected chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest religious party. Al-Qaeda had expected a lot from him, but he came out in his first policy address and publicly announced his support for democracy and condemned all kinds of terrorism, saying that anyone who had joined al-Qaeda should leave that path. He did though condemn the pro-American policies of the government and lend clear support for the Taliban-led Afghan national resistance.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have responded to the military and secular leaders joining forces by sending their leaders in Afghanistan underground.
In jihadi circles, the traditional punishment for betrayal is death. For al-Qaeda, in the face of this "betrayal" by Sharif and others, they have adopted a different but potentially as dangerous approach.
A few days ago, al-Qaeda's media wing al-Sahab released a detailed video documentary on the life, struggles and death of a surgeon from the southern port city of Karachi, Dr Arshad Waheed. The video was uploaded on Youtube and the media were informed.
Arshad Waheed was a surgeon at a prominent hospital in Karachi when he was arrested in 2004, along with his brother, also a heart surgeon, Dr Akmal Waheed. They were held on charges of facilitating militants associated with an al-Qaeda-linked group, Jundullah. The brothers were subsequently released on bail and Arshad moved to the South Waziristan tribal area, where he was killed last year in a US drone strike. The brothers were prominent activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its medical wing, the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association.
The documentary stresses the loyalty of Arshad Waheed to the cause of jihad, and contrasts this with what it calls the betrayals of leaders like Nawaz Sharif. Sharif is pictured with various US officials and is portrayed as an opportunist who used the name of Islam and the Taliban to gain votes in the parliamentary elections of February 2008.
"No law is acceptable except the laws framed by the Koran," Arshad Waheed is shown as saying in an address to a gathering in South Waziristan. Jamaat-e-Islami leaders are then pictured meeting with various British and American officials. Some of the background commentary says, "Democracy is a sham and it takes us away from the real course of the Islamic system of life. In democracy, politics cannot serve the Islamic cause, but deviate it."
The release of the video and the interest it has stirred places Sharif and his PML-N in a bind. Now that Sharif has, under US pressure, turned on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, whose names he previously used to gain popularity, he has made bitter foes of them - and become a target.
The Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamist party whose goal is to combine all Muslim countries into a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, issued a statement:

Nawaz Sharif's reality, that is, his secular ideas, has been exposed. We warn him that mocking and criticizing Islamic penal laws like the amputation of hands and stoning to death might have acquired him American support, but not the appeasement of the Prophet Mohammad in the life hereafter.
By criticizing Islamic laws, Nawaz Sharif has actually convinced the Americans that he will leave Asif Zardari behind in carrying out American dirty work in the region. This once again proves that democracy is a sham and that the caliphate will provide genuine leadership to the Muslim nation.

The leader of the opposition in parliament and a key member of the PML-N, Chaudhary Nisar Ahmad, responded in a television show, "This is absolutely the wrong impression, that we are going to support the American cause in the region. We have opposed American policies in the region and we will continue to do that."
It appears, though, that Sharif has made his decision, even though it places his life on the line with jihadis. His support for the "American war" will keep him going in politics. Were he not to do so, the result would most likely be some form of a military coup, which would spell his political death.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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