New York: Notwithstanding its repeated refutal of links with terror groups, the Pakistan military continues to support a broad range of militants as part of its three-decade strategy of using proxies against its neighbours and US forces in Afghanistan, a former top militant commander has claimed.
Terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection, the militant leader said.
A former top militant commander, said he was supported by the Pakistani military for 15 years as a fighter, leader and trainer of insurgents until he quit a few years ago.
The commander is well known in militant circles, but accustomed to a covert existence, New York Times reported publishing an interview, the paper claimed he gave on the condition that his name, location and personal details would not be revealed.
The militant commander said that Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments had not abandoned its policy of supporting militant groups as tools in Pakistan’s dispute with India over Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.
“There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals,” he said and named a number of former military officials involved in the programme, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals.
Maj Gen Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after the terror attacks on Sept 11, the former commander said.
He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the centre for foreign militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.
There were about 60 people at the Taliban meeting in late 2001, soon after the Taliban government fell, the former commander said.
Pakistani militant leaders were present, as were the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Muhammad Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network.
Several retired officials of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were also there, he said, including a man known as Colonel Imam but who was actually Brig Sultan Amir, a well-known trainer and mentor of militants, and General Abbasi. (PTI)