Outlawed extremist organisation Hizbut Tahrir (HT) has intensified covert anti-government operations since the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench dismissed its petition challenging the ’03 ban in May, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Events leading to the Nov26 arrest of party spokesman Saad Jigranvi in Lahore provided investigators with fresh insight into the group’s tactics as political isolation limits communication channels and the ban prohibits open recruitment.
MAIL TRIAL
Intelligence officials were alerted some months back to substantial HT indoctrination material in various officers’ mail. And while the group still urges the officer corps to engineer an overthrow of the military and civilian high command to pave the way for Islamic caliphate.
Recently distributed material features incrementally hostile language for the president, prime minister and COAS, and large posters accuse the leadership of compromising Pakistani security to serve US interests in an effort to spark rebellion, especially in military ranks.
Lately, the group has also included the judiciary in its list of enemies.
“You didn’t see them move so aggressively against the judiciary till May,” says an official close to the investigation. “Now they’ll say the courts also serve anti-Ummah elements”. Attempts at infiltrating the military are part of the group’s core strategy of prompting change through institutions as opposed to seeking popular support in the masses. Their members include mostly educated middle class individuals, and they have long advocated a non-violent route to the caliphate. And their rise to prominence has come at a difficult time for the government as it battles a different kind of Islamic extremism – TTP and its al Qaeda patrons – in the tribal area. The matter of successful infiltration, especially since the Brig Ali Khan episode last year, has led to a careful investigative purge all the way to the top, and reportedly set back efforts concerning action against militants.
PAKISTANI PRIZE
Active in more than 40 countries for more than 50 years, the group has developed a special fixation around Pakistan ever since the country “went nuclear” in ’98. Since then, HT has rotated UK-based Pakistanis through the home country to augment and expand the support base – an increasing bunch of educated, high-IQ individuals constantly coercing the army into open mutiny against the top brass, especially Gen Kayani.
Significantly, the organisation is banned in most countries it operates from, especially the Arab Middle East and across western and central Europe. Yet the Pakistani ban seems to frustrate its efforts more than other countries, and it “stays alive” by running a number of compartmentalised underground groups, each charged with further bolstering membership and advancing subversion in the forces.
But there is a clear duplicity in its outlook, investigators told Pakistan Today, and observed closely, “much of what they say is clearly a deliberate attempt to confuse people about the government and the army”. Despite boasting some considerably smart individuals, they have continuously misread the political landscape, and their warnings about the establishment caving in to US sponsors and cobbling together a Q-league like King’s Party, for example, have repeatedly turned out false. Their propaganda CD features the party hierarchy apparently reading a repetitive narrative from a teleprompter in subdued monotone, criticising almost every aspect of government without offering substantial solutions in an exercise not very different from al Qaeda indoctrination videos.
Their reading of the international change sweeping the wider Muslim world is also clearly rudimentary, and serves to miseducate Pakistani masses about important global developments. According to them, Syrian President Bashar al Assad is an American accomplice, the US and Russia are playing the Arab Spring together, and just about everybody is perverting a genuine people’s struggle for establishing caliphate in its ancient Ummayyad home, Damascus.
DEVOID OF REALITY, LAL MASJID SCARE
Their lumping of everything into pro- and anti-caliphate camps, and a deliberate misinterpretation of crucial historical events across the Muslim world, betrays a politically motivated mindset devoid of reality. They openly accuse governments that have long formed the only potent resistance to US expansion in Arabia as “agents of the west” in typical, irresponsible right-wing fashion. Yet of even greater concern are signs that part the organisation’s top structure has begun advocating militancy and violence, something it has long resisted, especially in Pakistan. Its breakawayfaction al-Muhajiroon, also UK-based, apparently diverted from the non-violent aspect of rebellion. Its representative in London, Pakistani Briton Anjem Choudhry, has attracted British tabloids through his rash positions, like calling for western women to be flogged at Trafalgar Square because of their short dresses. Anjem caused a scare in Islamabad last month by attempting a rally at the controversial lal masjid, where he planned issuing fatwasagasint Malala Yousafzai – for her pro female education position – and other prominent Pakistanis. Authorities were able to distance the lal masjid leadership in time, and the Nov30 program was cancelled.
OMINOUS SIGNS
But there are clear signs that the party is reorienting its position in Pakistan, and beyond. There seems an increasing tendency towards militancy, and published reports indicate they came under the influence of Tahir Yuldashev’s Uzbek movement in Waziristan as their frustration with the Pakistani ban mounted. It seems some in HT approved of the strategy of employing militant strategies for short-term gains.
There is also considerable evidence, at the international level, that HT has at least actively begun helping militant groups with financing and logistics. Since it has no ready militias of its own, it will have to rely on active anti-government groups to do its militant work, if it tilts that way, which puts the financing help in the right perspective, according to information available to Pakistan Today.
Pakistani authorities’ efforts to have the group banned in the UK, where it draws most of its funding from, have yet to achieve results. London’s hesitation, despite PM Cameron’s failed promise to ban the group upon taking office, lend credence to accusations that the group is run and funded by British intelligence.
“Their senior cadre is very tight lipped, and reveals precious little (about funding) during investigations,” an investigating officer told PT. “Their membership is from the middle class, and they cannot offer substantial donations of the kind needed to run such a clandestine setup”.
For the moment, despite arrest-and-bail dramas of its leading members, the party continues to operate in the shadows. And as authorities move to block its funding and counter its operations, HT continues to complicate the most pressing issue facing the government, especially the military – the war against terrorism.