Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

The Conflict Within
Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Sajjad Ali Shah, asked the
authorities to send him a list of the judges who avoided such cases. 20
LeJ retaliated by plotting to kill Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his
brother Shahbaz and other senior members of his government. In
January 1999, Nawaz Sharif escaped an attempt on his life when a
bomb tied to a bridge close to his house in Lahore exploded just a
few minutes before his cavalcade was to pass. 21 Basra, who was at the
top of the list of most wanted terrorists, remained elusive. The Taliban
authorities ignored several requests from the Pakistani authorities to
extradite him saying that he was a great ‘mujahid’.
On 14 August 2001, General Musharraf outlawed LeJ and ordered
a nationwide crackdown on the sectarian militants. The decision
came in the wake of a series of attacks on Shia mosques and Christian
churches. In a nationwide speech on the 55 th anniversary of Pakistan’s
independence, the military ruler vowed to root out what he described
as the ‘most shameful and despicable examples of terrorism’. 22 Five
months later, on 12 January 2002, he banned another five militant
and sectarian organizations, including the SSP. It was largely pressure
from the international community in the aftermath of 9/11 that forced
Musharraf to act against the Islamic extremists.
The fall of the Taliban regime came as a huge blow to LeJ and other
militant groups, which had used Afghanistan as a base for ideological
and military training for years. Basra fled to Pakistan with hundreds
of his followers who had fought alongside the Taliban against the US
forces. The militants returning home launched a new jihad against
‘internal enemies’. In coordination with al-Qaeda and other groups,
LeJ unleashed a series of terror attacks targeting western interests and
Shia and Christian worshipping places. The footprints of LeJ could be
found in the attacks on the US Consulate in Karachi in May 2002 and
in a car-bomb attack outside the Sheraton Hotel, which killed some 12
French engineers. 23
On 30 January 2003, the US State Department added LeJ to its list of
terrorist organizations and to those outfits covered under the executive
order. Announcing the decision, a State Department spokesman said
that LeJ activists had ties with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, in addition to
LeJ involvement in the killing of American citizens. Investigations had
shown that the group was responsible for the deaths of two American
consulate officials who were killed when gunmen ambushed their
vehicles on a busy road in Karachi in March 1995. Garry C. Durrell,
aged 45, an undercover CIA official who was sitting on the back seat