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‘Punjabi Taliban’ and the attack on Pak army HQTahir Ali 
The October 10 attack on the Pakistan Army headquarters inRawalpindi has set off a series of speculative ‘news’: that theattackers were ‘Punjabi Taliban’, that they were from the IleyasKashmiri Group, that the attackers owed allegiance to the AmjadFarooqi Group, that it was carried out by the Jaish-e Muhammad, thatLashkar-i-Jhangvi had something to do with it…These attributions, which have taken up considerable space in thelocal and international media, indicate only one thing: that withinPakistan, there are dozens of suspect groups that have both thecapability and the motivation to carry out an attack of this nature.Outside of thus underlining what everyone here knows, however, thestories have no probative value.Confusion has been compounded by the fact that the sole terroristcaptured alive – Aqeel, aka Doctor Usman – is supposedly part of theIleyas Kashmiri group, while the only ones to claim public creditfor the attack has been the Amjad Farooqi group, with which Aqeelhas no known connection.Matters will hopefully become clearer once the doctors attending onAqeel manage to get him sufficiently recovered from his injuries tostand the rigors of questioning. In the interim, speculation willnecessarily continue.The Ileyas Kashmiri group has in recent times been linked withalmost every major terrorist attack within Pakistan, includingvarious attempts on the life of then President Pervez Musharraf,attacks on various Inter Services Intelligence installations, the2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad and on the SriLankan cricket team in March this year. By contrast, no one hasnamed the Farooqi group as being responsible for any of thoseactivities, and hence it came as a surprise when a spokesman of thegroup telephoned a local TV channel to claim credit for the attackon the army GHQ.Ironically, the Farooqi group has been operating for a few yearsnow, but has thus far kept a very low profile, leading to asituation where others have been blamed for its actions. The groupis a splinter of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, which was once headed byAmjad Farooqi, the person behind the killing of Wall Street Journalcorrespondent Daniel Pearl.Amjad Farooqi, popularly known as ‘Bade Bhai’, was killed in 2004,and the L-J fragmented. One of his senior colleagues, Qari Zafar,gathered up a core group and based himself in Karachi, banking onfinancial support from various Saudi Arabian individuals and groupswith whom Zafar has good relations. Zafar was also known to be closeto Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistan Taliban, and iscurrently believed to be operating out of South Waziristan.
 
 Farooq, another of Amjad Farooqi’s close associates, simultaneouslyformed his own outfit with the help of a bunch of L-J cadres andnamed it the Amjad Farooqi group, trading on the name of the one-time leader of the LJ with whom he is believed to have been veryclose.The group has managed to keep its head below the radar. An exceptionoccurred in early 2006, when Farooq and his men went to Wana inSouth Waziristan, where they were welcomed by Haji Omer, then headof all Taliban factions in the region.It is worth noting here that South Waziristan is broadly dividedinto two parts – the Mehsud region and the Wazir region, inhabitedby Mehsud and Wazir tribesmen respectively. On date, Waliur Rehmanheads the Mehsud militants, while Mullah Nazir is head of theWazirs.Haji Omer, during his tenure as commander-in-chief of all Taliban inthe Wazir region, had welcomed militants from around the worlds –Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, Chinese and non-Pashtoon fighters from allaround Pakistan.It was in this encouraging environment that Farooq’s groupstabilized and grew, adding more young fighters drawn from thePunjab region to its ranks.Once the group gained strength, it began a program of systematicattacks, not on prominent Shias as is popularly supposed but on theISI and Pakistan’s military, which it proclaimed as the number oneenemies.Locals in Wana call it the ‘Bhai Jaan group’, and the Punjabis areamong the most respected militants in the area. Its growing fameattracted high profile recruits including ‘Commander’ Asim, one ofthe terrorists involved in the December 1999 hijack of IndianAirlines Flight 814 that resulted in the freeing of Maulana MasoodAzhar and two others.The media, and even experts, have tended to mix the Bhai Jaan groupwith the Ileyas Kashmiri group, though the differences in aims,ideologies and targets is very clear.The Farooqis are staunchly affiliated with the popular Deobandischool of thought, while Kashmiri’s men are mostly Sulfis or‘Wahabis’. Ideological differences also reflect in personnel: IleyasKashmiri is mostly staffed with former members of the Lashkar-e-Tayeba, while the Farooqi group avoids recruiting from those ranksbecause of the LeT’s known relations with the ISI.Also, Ileyas Kashmiri avoids any statements or actions aimed againstthe Pakistan government; maintains that India is enemy number one,and is focused on attacking India not only in Kashmir but also inAfghanistan.
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