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

Pakistan’s Unholy Alliance
reasons had visibly risen. These young officers constituted the main
base for General Zia’s regime. According to a retired general, 25 to 30
per cent of the officers had Islamic fundamentalist leanings.
Many of them regularly attended ‘Tablighi’ groups that propagated
the faith. They would take time off to join missionary bands preaching
a return to purist Islamic values and recruiting other Muslim men to join
them. Thousands of soldiers and army officers would join the annual
gathering of the TJ at Raiwind on the outskirts of Lahore. More than one
million faithful from across the country and abroad attend this Muslim
congregation, the largest after the Haj in Mecca. Even the liberals
adopted the philosophy on issues like jihad and support for militancy
in Kashmir. The humiliating military defeat by the Indian army in the
1971 war, coupled with the disintegration of the country, also had a
very deep impact on the psyche of army officers. Many young officers
turned to religion for solace and became born-again Muslims.
Given this situation, it was not surprising that radical Islamic officers
made unsuccessful coup attempts in the mid 1980s. They wanted to
bring about an Islamic revolution and establish a theocratic state. The
fact that the attempts were crushed and the rebel officers were charged
with treason indicated that, notwithstanding its Islamization, the state
was not prepared to tolerate a theocratic rule.
The situation in Afghanistan provided inspiration to a whole
generation of Pakistani Islamic radicals who considered it their
religious duty to fight the oppression of Muslims anywhere in the
world. It gave a new dimension to the idea of jihad, which till then had
only been employed by the Pakistani state in the context of mobilizing
the population against the arch rival – India. The Afghan war saw the
privatization of the concept of jihad. Militant groups emerged from
the ranks of traditional religious movements, who took the path of
an armed struggle for the cause of Islam. The ISI’s active role in the
Afghan jihad brought Pakistani army officers into direct contact with
the radical Islamists.
The handling of jihad also indoctrinated the military and intelligence
officers. At least two former ISI chiefs – General Hamid Gul and
General Javed Nasir – remained actively involved with Islamic radical
movements. 21 Both promoted pan-Islamism and strove for an Islamic
revolution that would free Pakistan from perceived western, and
particularly American, cultural and political influences. General Gul,
who liked to call himself a ‘Muslim visionary’, succeeded General
Rehman in 1987 when the Afghan resistance had entered its most
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