Police has found an organization named Jundullah responsible for a terrorist attack on a Muharram procession in Karachi that killed more than 45 people. The name Jundullah had previously been linked to a similar organization based in Balochistan that had carried out attacks in Iranian Baluchistan, a third organization that carried out attacks in Indonesia and was an off-shoot of Jemaah Islamiyah, and a group in Waziristan. It is unclear how they are linked to each other.
The Jundullah in Balochistan was led by Abdul Malek Riggi, a Sunni Iranian Baloch who was fighting against Iran for their alleged mistreatment of Sunnis. With the help of Pakistan, Riggi was caught and hanged in Iran. His brother Ali Riggi took over the leadership of Jundullah, which has turned against Pakistan and is helping sectarian groups target Shias and security forces in Balochistan.
Jundullah included 20 militants, most of them working-class professionals
But the Karachi-based Jundullah is a separate group. Its creation is in fact a prime example of Al Qaeda’s changing face in Pakistan. The group was founded by Attaur Rehman, a Karachi University student of Statistics and a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami student wing Islami Jamiat-e-Talba. He was arrested in June 2004 on charges of masterminding a series of terrorist attacks targeting security forces and government installations. The eldest son of a local businessman, he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood and worked actively for Jamaat-e-Islami.
Militants gesture from the ventilation windows of a police armoured truck taking them to court for attacking the Karachi corps commander in 2004
Rehman’s journey towards terrorism began in 1991, when he went to Afghanistan to receive military training at a jihadi camp set up by Harkatul Mujahideen, close to the Afghan border. Rehman told his interrogators that he formed Jundullah after the arrest of top Al Qaeda operatives in March 2003, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks who was caught from the residence of a serving deputy mayor from Jamaat-e-Islami.
Amir Mir, a veteran journalists who looks closely at the activities of Jihadi groups in Pakistan, wrote in his book: “The other organization suspected of close operational ties with Al Qaeda is Harkatul Mujahedin al-Alami, an offshoot of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Jihadi organization Harkatul Mujahedin.”
Two militants from the group, including its emir, perpetrated a bomb attack on the US consulate in Karachi. The attack was similar to the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad which was later claimed by Al Qaeda leader and Osama Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
There are two reasons behind the creation of the splinter group – to create a smoke-screen to take the heat away from the parent organizations, and to confuse the agencies that were using a divide-and-rule strategy to get rid of the jihadi factions gone rouge.
Jundullah was initially a well-knit cell comprising of some 20 militants, most of them working-class professionals in their twenties and thirties. The group made a plan to assassinate the top military commander in Karachi, General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, who was later appointed by General Pervez Musharaf as his second-in-command. In June 2004, Attaur Rehman attacked the motorcade of the Karachi Corps Commander. Gen Hayat escaped unhurt but 11 people, including eight soldiers, were killed.
Rehman showed no sign of remorse when he was presented before a high-security anti-terrorism court in Karachi. “I have not done anything wrong,” he shouted as he emerged from the courtroom. Later, Jundullah also attacked the army, rangers, and police, and carried out a car bombing outside the US-Pakistan Cultural Centre in Karachi.
Among those arrested for their association with Jundullah were Akmal Waheed, a cardiologist, and his brother Arshad Waheed, an orthopedic surgeon. Caught in 2004, the two men were active members of Jamaat-e-Islami and were associated with their medical wing, the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association. They were accused of providing medical help and shelter to top Al Qaeda fugitives, including Abu Massab, Gul Hasan and Qassam-al-Sani, who were injured in the attack on Gen Hayat, and Attaur Rehman’s deputy Shahzad Bajwa alias Abdullah, after he sustained injuries during an attack on a Pakistan Rangers vehicle in Karachi.
The Waheed brothers were sentenced to seven years in prison. Police said they found their contact information in Attaur Rehman’s cellphone, and they had used a car rented by Rehman, who admitted close links with the two men. But Asrhad and Akmar Waheed were acquitted by an appeals court, after which Arshad Waheed moved to South Waziristan and ran a clinic in Wana until he was reportedly killed in a US drone attack in March 2008.
Jamaat-e-Islami was highly critical of their arrest, but were embarrassed when Al Qaeda’s media wing Al Sahab Media Foundation released the third part of a series of videos entitled ‘The Protectors of the Sanctuary’. The 40-minute video, their first ever Urdu production, commemorated Dr Arshad Waheed as a martyr.
Jundullah claimed responsibility for the recent bombing at Wagah border near Lahore – an assertion refuted by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan which said it was behind the attack. It is not clear if Jundullah carried out the attack, but experts do believe it has successfully integrated with Al Qaeda and had always been their favorite contractor.
