LAHORE: Commander Ilyas Kashmiri, the chief of Azad Kashmir chapter of Al-Qaeda-linked jehadi organisation Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI), has been accused of plotting the assassination of Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, in collusion with Al-Qaeda.
A Hong Kong-based web newspaper, Asia Time Online (AToL), has claimed while quoting an Al-Qaeda insider that an Al-Qaeda-linked cell of militants led by Kashmiri guerrilla commander Ilyas Kashmiri had completed all plans for the assassination of the Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in 2008. However, when the matter was sent to the top Al-Qaeda hierarchy for a final approval, it immediately ordered the murder plot to be shelved, fearing that the backlash from such an incident would damage their overall objective – to win the war in Afghanistan.
The May 23 AToL report claims by quoting a top al-Qaeda ideologue on the condition of anonymity that the Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani’s daily visits to a gym in 2008 were tracked by an Al-Qaeda cell in Pakistan, which noted a security breach that left him vulnerable to a suicide bomber as he stepped out of his car. “A plan was drawn up to take him out, and a team, picked from Brigade 313’s Jundul Fida group, was selected. But the assassination plot was abandoned as the Al-Qaeda leadership felt at the time that had the murder attempt been carried out, Pakistan could turn into a battle ground between Pakistani security forces and militants – and the chief beneficiary would be none other than India and the United States.”
The AToL story quotes the senior Al-Qaeda ideologue as saying: “There is a shariat [Islamic law] under which his (General Kayani) murder could have been justified. But then there is a hikmat [strategy]under which his murder could have been a serious blunder. [Had he been killed], the Pakistan army could have launched an all-out war in the tribal areas, and we could have retaliated with equal strength. In that process, Pakistan would have become a battleground and enemies like India and the United States would have received the chance to intervene. Although in our files Pakistan does not exist, we of course don’t want the enemies of Islam to take advantage of any situation”, the Al-Qaeda ideologue was further quoted as having stated.
However, when the Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Major General Athar Abbas was asked to comment on the AToL report, he described it as utter nonsense and simply rubbish, adding that he would not like to say more than anything other than these two words.
The AToL report, which has been filed by its Pakistan bureau chief, further states that once the assassination plot was shelved, the Al-Qaeda cells were advised to work on a much broader strategy to defeat the western forces in Afghanistan. “They were told that any Al-Qaeda action against Pakistan, India and Iran was not aimed at destabilizing these countries, but to deter them from supporting the US-led war against terror in a bid to create a balance in favor of the anti-Western resistance”.
The news report then quotes the unnamed Al-Qaeda ideologue as saying that the Osama-led organisation doesn’t mean any hostility against the state of Pakistan or its state institutions. “This message was passed on by Al-Qaeda leaders when they met a top Taliban delegation in the North Waziristan tribal agency on the border with Afghanistan a few weeks ago. The delegation was headed by Mullah Bradar and he conveyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s message that Al-Qaeda hostilities against the Pakistani security forces should be avoided. The delegation even warned Al-Qaeda in a muffled way that if hostilities against Pakistan and the Pakistani security forces were not stopped, it would be seen as damaging the cause of Islam. Al-Qaeda repeated that its goal was to make the Pakistani security forces neutral in the war on terror. The overall object is to win the war in Afghanistan. To this end, Al-Qaeda will continue to engage the security forces in the Swat area. The simple reason is that Al-Qaeda fears that the military, under US pressure, has plans in place to move into North and South Waziristan, where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have key resources vital to their struggle in Afghanistan. So it is better to keep the military pinned down in Swat”, the AToL report concludes.
And now the most important question: Who is Commander Ilyas Kashmiri, the Al-Qaeda linked Pakistani militant who has been accused of conspiring to kill General Kayani. Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri is in fact the chief of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) while the Pakistan chapter of the HUJI, led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar. Commander Ilyas is a veteran of the Kashmir jehad who has spent several years in an Indian jail. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities after the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on General Musharraf’s presidential cavalcade in Rawalpindi, but released a few weeks later due to lack of evidence. He later shifted his base to the North Waziristan region on the Pak-Afghan belt and joined hands with the ameer of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Commander Baitullah Mehsud.
Having switched from the freedom struggle in Jammu & Kashmir to the Taliban-led resistance against the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Commander Kashmiri reportedly established a training camp in the Razmak area of Waziristan and shifted most of his warriors from his Kotli training camp which is 20km from Kotli in Azad Kashmir. As a matter of fact, the Harkatul Jehadul Islami went into Kashmir in 1991 but was at first opposed by the Wahhabi elements there because of its refusal to criticize the grand Deobandi congregation of Tableeghi Jamaat and its quietist posture. As days passed, the HUJI warriors were recognised as Afghans. It finally had more martyrs in the jehad of Jammu & Kashmir than any other militia. Its resolve and organisation were recognised when foreigners were seen fighting side by side with its Punjabi warriors. However, the HuJI activities in Jammu & Kashmir have progressively declined since 9/11, especially after Commander Ilyas Kashmiri shifted his base from the capital of Azad Kashmir to North Waziristan.
Interestingly, Commander Ilyas Kashmiri was recently named in a charge sheet filed by the Islamabad police in the November 2008 gruesome murder of Major General (retd) Amir Faisal Alvi, the former General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the elite Special Services Group (SSG). The 12-page charge sheet submitted by the Rawalpindi police in an anti-terrorism court on May 12, 2009 stated that the former SSG commanding officer was killed to avenge the role he had played in the fight against Taliban linked militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The charge-sheet prepared by the Koral police station states that those involved and already arrested in the murder included Major (retd) Haroon Rasheed, a resident of Azad Kashmir; Mohammad Nawaz Khan of Peshawar and Ashfaq Ahmed of Okara. The charge sheet says the murder of Major General Amir Faisal Alvi was carried out on the instructions of Commander Ilyas Kashmiri who had provided funds and weapons.
The charge sheet pointed out that Ilyas Kashmiri had already been named by the intelligence agencies for involvement in the October 2008 kidnapping for ransom of Satish Anand, a Karachi-based renowned film producer and distributor and the real uncle of Juhi Chawla, a well known Bollywood actress. After Satish Anand was recovered in the last week of April 2009 and the kidnappers arrested, it transpired during interrogations that one of them – Major Haroon Rasheed alias Abu Khattab – was a former Pakistani Army officer and involved in the murder of General Alvi. According to the murder charge sheet, the three accused – Haroon, Ashfaq and Nawaz followed Alvi when he left his residence in Bharia Town in Rawalpindi for his private office in Islamabad and killed him and his driver near the PWD Colony.
Once considered close to General Pervez Musharraf, Amir Faisal Alvi was the first General Officer Commanding of the elite Special Services Group, and had also commanded the elite Group as a Brigadier. The first Pakistani Major General to have captained the Armed Forces Skydiving Team (AFST) as a GOC, Faisal Alvi was forcibly retired from the Army on disciplinary grounds ‘for conduct unbecoming’ by then Army Chief General Musharraf in August 2005.
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