Pakistan has been the a base or played host to many terrorist groups in the past and continues to do so even today. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Al Qaeda, Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and numerous other religious-based terror groups who want to impose their writ in the guise of Islamic Sharia through the barrel of a gun. Hizbut Tahrir (HUT) is one such group that has operated with impunity from the soil of Pakistan, with numerous cells established in different cities, whose sole aim is to impose their brand of Islam in Pakistan, or in short, to establish their rule in the country. It was only in January 2024 that the UK declared the HUT as a proscribed terrorist organisation.
The organisation called HUT was founded in 1953 by a graduate of Al-Azhar University called Sheikh Taqiuddin Nabhani, who was a displaced Palestinian fundamentalist cleric. According to Nabhani, the Muslims of the world were in decline because they had given up the political system of governance established as a caliphate, and now the various countries of the Middle East were divided into different states with different systems of governance. His dream was to establish a political party based on Islamic values and believing in the system of the caliphate that would unite the Muslim countries into a single entity and establish the caliphate in the world. According to the believers and supporters of the HUT, their aim is to revive the caliphate that was destroyed in 1924 with the end of the Ottoman empire in Turkey. They aim to unite the Muslims of the world into a single nation because the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire was a conspiracy of the Western Christian countries that weakened the Muslim world and today it stands divided and fragmented.
Originally, the HUT was based in Jordan and its influence spread to Egypt in the 1970s and onwards to Tunisia in the 1980s. The HUT was banned in many Middle Eastern countries because of their anti-national activities, and then it managed to establish its cells in many universities of Europe, where it gained popularity among Muslim students. This was especially the case in British universities, where it flourished and succeeded in its aims by leaps and bounds before being banned by the British authorities. Several countries have banned Hizbut Tahrir for their various activities, including Germany, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan and several Central Asian and Arab countries. Austria banned symbols of the group in May 2021.
The intelligence agencies of Pakistan had warned that the HUT in Pakistan was planning to stage an uprising like the recent ones in Egypt and Tunisia. It was only in the early 1990s that the HUT really went into top gear
This banned organisation has been active in Pakistan since 1948 and uses modern technology for the spread of its message: through the internet, videos, CDs, email and Youtube. Another popular method is the Shabnama or the night letter dished out regularly like a newspaper.
It was in 2010 that the HUT became the subject of banner headlines in Pakistan, when a serving army officer called Brigadier Ali Khan, posted in the GHQ at Rawalpindi, was arrested and charged with having links to HUT. The intelligence agencies of Pakistan had warned that the HUT in Pakistan was planning to stage an uprising like the recent ones in Egypt and Tunisia. It was only in the early 1990s that the HUT really went into top gear and increased its propaganda and activities in Pakistan. In the past, the workers and activists of the party remained underground and continued their activities anonymously. Their workers are mostly highly educated and well qualified, with proficiency in both Urdu and English.
So far, the only widely recognised person of the HUT in Pakistan has been Naveed Butt, a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in the USA. He is seen quite often propagating the establishment of the Islamic Sharia in Pakistan under one leader, Khalfa or Amir-ul-Momineen and censuring the Pakistani government and the armed forces for being un-Islamic and corrupt to the core. According to a research paper published in 2010, the HUT considers the constitution and democratic system of Pakistan as un-Islamic. They seek to set up their caliphate in Pakistan and then to establish this system in all the Muslim countries of the world, and even in India.
Theoretically, this ideology bears close resemblance with what Zaid Hamid and his followers propagate in terms of “Ghazwa-i-Hind,” as well as with the core principles of Tehreek-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) and also with Al-Qaeda about the establishment of a caliphate system in the Islamic countries. The HUT professes to be a nonviolent organisation and believes in armed struggle or jihad only after the establishment of a caliphate in Pakistan, as opposed to the methods of other Islam-based entities in the country. The HUT has, however, never condemned the terrorist activities and violence unleashed by other religious organisations such as the TTP or Al-Qaeda in Pakistan – which raises serious questions about their commitment to nonviolence. The modus operandi of HUT is to bring armed forces personnel, members of the academia and other segments of the elite under its umbrella. Unlike other revolutionary movements of various stripes, HUT aims to bring change through the military, because it is well aware that this is the strongest institution in Pakistan.
The manifesto of the HUT promises to liberate the people from the dominance of Kufr. They forbid such professions for women as modelling, flight attendants and private secretaries. According to the manifesto, they will end the slavish foreign policy of Pakistan and no relations will be maintained with countries that have occupied Muslim lands.
Even before the arrest of Brigadier Al Khan, there had been three clear incidents that pointed towards a nexus between the HUT and elements between the Pakistan armed forces. According to an article by Seymour Hersh titled “Defending the Arsenal,” the HUT had managed to recruit a number of junior officers from the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) who had been sent to the UK for a training course. In 2009, the former CO of the Shamsi Airbase Colonel Shahid Bashir, a retired PAF squadron leader and lawyer Nadeem Ahmed Shah and US-educated mechanical engineer Awais Ali Khan were arrested for their links with the HUT and for leaking secret information to the HUT. According to Saleem Shahzad, the author of the book Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the security officer of Pervez Musharraf, one Major Farooq, was a member of the HUT – and he was subsequently arrested and expelled from the army.
The arrest of military personnel accused of having connections with HUT corroborates the idea that the organisation is seeking to achieve its goals through the military. Its continued presence, especially in sensitive security institutions as well as the intellectual elites, poses a security challenge of a unique nature to an already threatened Pakistan.