Militants need to be denied their causes

The brutal murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl heralds a deadly phase in Pakistan's politics. It indicates that militants, retreating from Afghanistan and Kashmir, are regrouping in contiguous Pakistan. Geography, history and ideological sympathy in key institutions make Islamabad attractive for regrouping religious militants.

The religious militants comprise persons and groups that forged alliances while fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Having defeated one superpower, they claim they can defeat another one. With skills of organisation and warfare learned during the war against the Soviets, the militants are versed in guerrilla warfare.

Well educated, their adherents include possibly nuclear scientists as well as graduates of the finest schools and universities in Pakistan and the Western world.

Sheikh Omar Saeed, the main suspect in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl,went to the prestigious Aitcheson College, established by the British for the sons of the kings of the Indian states. He was admitted to England's premier London School of Economics which he left to join the jihad. He seemed to defy death when he admitted the Pearl kidnapping claiming his fight was to keep Pakistan independent of America.

Educated and often well to do, the new militants also have backgrounds with law enforcement, military and intelligence. They bring a deadly sophistication to the war they declared against non-Muslims.

If the Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington spoke of a clash of civilisations, the militants activities could be the catalyst that breaks down relations between the Muslim and the non-Muslim world by creating fear, anger and retribution. The video of the brutal decapitationof Daniel Pearl was released on the eve of Muslim festivities marking the sacrifice that the Prophet Ibrahim made as a demonstration of his love of God.

Symbolically, Daniel Pearl was decapitated in a macabre demonstration of militant determination. He was made to say that he was a Jew and that his mother was a Jew.

This demonstrated that he was killed equally because he was an American and a Jew creating hatred against Muslims. In such moments, much as Muslims would insist on it, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the actions of an individual and the sentiments towards a community.

Frighteningly, it appears that one of the purposes of the religious militants is to create hatred and war between different religious groups belonging to the same tradition known as Ahle e Kitaab.

Muslims are presently, numerically, militarily, financially and technologically weaker than non-Muslims. Many yearn for the days of glory when the Muslim world was much stronger and want to balance the equation. The last way to do that is for religious militants to take on the superiorforce provoking it into oppressing and repressing the Muslim world to ensure its own security.

There is little debate today on the repercussions on the Muslim world that can occur as a consequence of religious militancy.

Most Muslims condemn the World Trade Centre bombings and understand America's need to strike back for its own security.

However, given the killings in the Middle East, the retreat in Kashmir, the foreign presence in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the description of other Muslim countries as "evil", the inability to distinguish between freedom struggles and terrorism, the mood in the Muslim street is turning. And dialogue between civilisations is still to begin.

Seeds of war

This, then, potentially carries with it the seeds of a war between civilisations. Already barriers are coming down, racial profiling is taking place, and suspicion has replaced trust. Movement of people stopped being open and free after the bombing of the World Trade Centre.

If militants drive out foreign capital through terror wrought by the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl, the economy of Pakistan – and other countries if they are affected,could shrink. Poverty creates desperation. Desperation creates the mood that militants need for recruitment.

The abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl contained messages at different levels. The first message wasby militants exposing the military regime's impotence. It came one week after the so called crackdown against them started on January 16.

Sheikh Omar was not arrested although he was a suspect in the murder of five Western hostages and suspected of sending hijacker Atta Mohammed $100,000 for the execution of the World Trade Centre bombings.

Secondly, Islamabad claimed that the Pearl abduction was India's work. This move to sour relations between India and the U.S. failed when the U.S. refused to buy the story.

Third, the timing of the abduction close to General Musharraf's visit to U.S. conveyed the importance of Musharraf to American geo-strategic interests. Fourth, for unknown reasons, Musharraf and his men insisted Daniel Pearl was alive even after prime suspect Omar claimedthat Pearl was dead.

Infrastructure remains

The Pearl abduction and murder is the failure of the Musharraf regime to reshuffle the federal and provincial cabinets set in place at the time when hardliners brought Musharraf to power in 1999. The Jaish-e-Mohammed Group, suspected of carrying out the kidnapping, was formed in January 2000.

This creates an interesting situation. The general makes the right noises while militant sympathisers hold key positions in his regime. Therefore it was unsurprising that Sheikh Omar handed himself to Home Secretary Ejaz Shah. In his previous incarnation, the home secretary was a military intelligence officer.

During that period, he worked for the Osama-backed movement to destabilise democracy in Pakistanbetween 1988 and 1990. Between 1990 and 1993, the home secretary had close relations with Kashmiri militants. This is the period when Sheikh Omar was inducted into the Kashmir Jihad.

Presumably Omar and the home secretary are friends. Omar's custody was kept a secret for five days again for unexplained reasons. Its announcement coincided with General Musharraf's arrival in Washington.

Pearl was kidnapped on his way to a meeting arranged by an ex-military intelligence official called Khalid Khwaja. Khwaja was also a key player in the bin Laden/military intelligence backed destabilisation of Pakistani democracy in 1988-1990.

In the Pearl kidnapping, Afghanistan, Kashmir, ex-ISI, democratic destabilisation and Islamic militancy intermingle. Sheikh Omar fought in Kashmir. His accomplices fought in Afghanistan. The ex-ISI/military intelligencewas familiar with them.

As militancy rose in military intelligence and became public, the godfathers of the fight against Soviet occupation morphed into non-state players. Today they run NGOs and businesses. They now run like a mafia that pulls the strings of government through sympathisers in government.

When they seized power, Musharraf and his men promised to curb militancy. But militancy has risen. In January, Musharraf admitted that the writ of government had collapsed. Islamabad, an emerging capital market fiv