Nation haunted by jihadis hiding in the closet

Islamabad: They are Pakistan's version of Frankenstein's monster.

Secretly trained in guerrilla warfare by the army to fight Indian rule in Kashmir, jihadis have ruined Pakistan's international reputation, and fuelled militant violence that is threatening to destabilise the nuclear-armed state, analysts say.

International revulsion and Indian accusations over the slaughter of 183 people in Mumbai have put Pakistani authorities under immense pressure to uproot groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Pakistan says these groups are no longer in the country, having been banned almost seven years ago, and denies anything more than diplomatic and moral support for Kashmiri freedom fighters.

Taliban insurgency

Yet, analysts say, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has clung onto these assets, protecting them despite mounting evidence of links to Al Qaida's global jihad and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

"They are all one," said Ahmad Rashid, author of "Descent into Chaos", a book that dissects how the region has been plunged into turmoil by Pakistan's use of militants left over from the Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Rashid believes the assault on Mumbai was possibly planned and sanctioned by Al Qaida and the Taliban, who want to create a strategic diversion to draw Pakistani forces away from the Afghan border where the militants have been pounded in recent months.

The groups that actually executed the attack were more likely taking orders, he said.

"I think the strategic decision was made possibly by Al Qaida, the shura (council) of the Pakistani Taliban leadership, with some of these groups sitting in," he said.

President Asif Ali Zardari, leading an eight-month-old civilian government, has asked the world to recognise that Pakistan is a victim of terrorism too.

"Even if the militants are linked to Lashkar-e-Toiba, who do you think we are fighting," Zardari told the Financial Times newspaper on Monday to assuage outrage over the Mumbai carnage.

Zardari is an assassination target. His wife, two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed a year ago in a suicide gun and bomb attack that was blamed on Islamist militants.

The trouble is, Lashkar is not one of the groups Pakistani security forces have been fighting. And even if the civilian government wants to get rid of these groups there is good reason to doubt whether the military would let it happen.

"The challenge for the government now is what do you do about these organisations," said Samina Ahmad, South Asia project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "It's a big question mark," she said.