The reported hijacking of a plane of Afghanistan's Ariana Airlines, while on a domestic
flight from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif, is the second major act of terrorism in
Taliban-controlled territory.
The first was the car bomb explosion outside the Kandahar
residence of Mullah Mohammad Omer, the Amir of the Taliban, on the night of August
24,1999, in which the Amir narrowly escaped death. Twenty others, including many
bodyguards of the Amir and reportedly one of his close relatives (son?), were killed.
After enquiries, the Taliban authorities absolved the US of any
blame and hinted that Shia groups, backed by external elements, had carried out the
attack. However, no arrests were made.
In our paper of September 4,1999, titled "Afghanistan: In
Perspective" (http://www.saag.org/papers/paper78.html),
this writer had stated as follows: " Next to women, the Shias have been a major
target of the brutalities and indignities of the Wahabi-Sunni-dominated Taliban Shoora and
its militia called Lashkar Mohammadi. Public observance of Moharrum has been banned. So
too the Shia tradition of their women joining the men in prayers during Moharrum and
visits to the graves of their relatives.
"After the Taliban captured Herat on the Iran border and,
subsequently, the Bamiyan province, both areas where the Shias were in a majority with a
large sprinkling of Ismailis, there were reportedly large-scale massacres of the Shias and
forcible re-settlement of the Shias in the Sunni-majority villages in the rest of
Afghanistan and their replacement by Sunnis brought to Herat and Bamiyan from other
provinces. This is being done to reduce the Shias to a minority in their traditional
homelands…….
"The Shias of not only Afghanistan, but also Pakistan have
been seething with anger against the Amir for the massacre of the Shias of Herat and
Bamiyan. The Shias have a long memory for atrocities perpetrated on them as one saw in the
death of Zia-ul-Haq in a plane crash of August 1988."
" The NWFP (the North-West Frontier Province) has many
Hazaras, the same tribe to which the Shias of Bamiyan belong, and the Hazaras are known to
bide their time, even if it meant years, before avenging atrocities committed on
them."
" The recent (August 24) unsuccessful attempt by
unidentified elements allegedly to kill the Taliban Amir at Kandahar through an explosion
outside his house should not, therefore, have come as a surprise to those having their
ears close to the ground in Afghanistan and the NWFP to detect signs of a possible tremor,
if not a quake."
Amongst the Pakistan-based terrorist organisations, which have
been closely associated with the Taliban, are the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which was
used by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for the recent hijacking of an Indian
Airlines aircraft, and the Sipah-e-Sahaba, an extremist Sunni organisation, which has been
calling for the declaration of the Shias as non-Muslims and for the proclamation of
Pakistan as a Sunni state. Both these organisations are close to Gen.Musharraf and
Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, his Chief of the General Staff (CGS), and have their training camps
in Afghan territory.
After a flare-up of anti-Shia violence in different cities of
Pakistan in the second half of last year carried out by the Sipah-e-Sahaba, Mr.Nawaz
Sharif, the then Prime Minister, had sent Lt.Gen.Kwaja Ziauddin, his ISI Director-General,
to Kandahar to urge the Amir to close down the camps of the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the HUM and
to expel their cadres from Afghan territory, to which the Amir had reportedly agreed.
On hearing of this, Gen.Musharraf sent Lt.Gen.Aziz on a secret
visit to Kandahar to convey a message to the Amir that on all matters relating to the
Taliban, the HUM, the Sipah-e-Sahaba and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the Taliban would
follow only the instructions of Lt.Gen.Aziz and not of Lt.Gen.Ziauddin. Till February,
1999, Lt.Gen.Aziz, as Deputy Director-General of the ISI, was handling the Taliban,. bin
Laden and these organisations, and, while shifting him to the GHQ as CGS in February, Gen.
Musharraf, who distrusted Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, had ordered that Lt.Gen.Aziz would continue to
deal with this subject.
The transfer of this subject from the ISI to the GHQ was one of
the reasons for the differences between Mr.Sharif and Gen.Musharraf and, on coming to know
of the secret visit of Lt.Gen.Aziz to Kandahar in the beginning of October to countermand
the instructions of Lt.Gen.Ziauddin, Mr.Sharif had made up his mind to sack Gen.
Musharraf.
The Taliban's policy of the resettlement of the Shias from their
traditional homelands was based on a similar resettlement policy which Gen.Musharraf had
followed in the Gilgit area in 1988 and was pursued with added vigour after Gen.Musharraf
seized power on October 12,1999.
Mr.Ilyas Khan, a Pakistani investigative journalist, wrote in the
"Herald" (January, 2000), the monthly of the prestigious "Dawn"
group:" The Taliban have reportedly killed thousands of unarmed ethnic Hazara Shites
in Bamiyan and Mazar-e-Sharif, and have carried out a ruthless scorched earth policy in
the Shamali area, a 100 km stretch of land between Kabul and the Hindukush mountains.
Apart from burning down houses, orchards and crops to permanently displace the people of
Shamali area, they also resorted to the forced separation of (Shia) women from their
families and their deportation to a women's refugee camp in Samarkhel, about 10 kms east
of Jalalabad."
This scorched earth policy, very similar to the 1988 policy in
the Gilgit region, was carried out under the supervision of Pakistani army officers
deputed by Lt.Gen.Aziz and a large number of Pakhtoon Sunni ex-servicemen from NWFP and
Balochistan have been resettled in place of the Shia farmers.
This has led to an exacerbation of the Shia anger against the
Taliban leadership and Gen.Musharraf. Since the removal of Ismail Khan, the Governor of
the Shia-majority Herat province, in 1995 and his subsequent capture by the Taliban, the
Shias of Afghanistan have been without one of their legendary heroes and protectors and it
should not, therefore, be a surprise if they had carried out this hijacking reportedly to
demand his release.
The Northern Alliance of Mr.Burhanuddin Rabbani has denied any
involvement in the hijacking. However, the demand of the hijackers for the plane to be
taken to London is significant. The brother of Mr.Ahmed Shah Masood, the legendary
military commander of the Northern Alliance, had been living for many years in London. He
had helped a large number of Shias of Afghanistan to migrate to the UK and also enjoys
considerable support in the local Shia community from India and Pakistan.
B.RAMAN
(7-2-00)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com)
