Pakistan's internal struggle over militants

At the main supermarket in downtown Islamabad, baker Naik Muhammad Khan pats balls of dough onto a wooden platter and slaps them against the inside wall of a blazing-hot Tandoor oven. Next to him sits a plastic box covered with slogans for Jaish-e-Muhammad, a Pakistan-based militant group fighting for an Islamic state in Indian-ruled Kashmir. It is filled with money.

According to a six-month-old law, the box is illegal. In February, the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf banned fundraising by militant groups and forbade them from carrying weapons. Yesterday, Pakistani officials put that policy into practice, as police in Karachi rounded up more than 200 alleged activists and confiscated donation boxes and propaganda.

But Mr. Khan says support for militant groups is stronger than ever. While Jaish activists used to empty the box every two months, he says, these days it fills up in one. "All Muslim people support these groups, and they are contributing money," says Khan, dipping long metal tongs into the oven to withdraw a slightly charred flatbread, called naan. "This will continue until Kashmir is liberated from India," he says. "If I had the ability, I would definitely go and fight myself."

After maintaining profound diplomatic, logistical, and financial ties to Kashmiri militants since the conflict began in 1989, Pakistani leaders have reached a turning point in their relations with the outside world and their own population as well.

For many Pakistanis, reining in militants would amount to a betrayal of fellow Muslims. But for moderate Pakistanis, and certainly Western officials, growing sectarian strife within Pakistan itself is evidence that the time has come to crack down on militant groups in order to bring Pakistan back from economic and political isolation, and to preserve the country's very social fabric.

"In the larger context, [the militants] are part of the government's policy to take on Indian forces in the Kashmir Valley," says Ejaz Haider, news editor of the Friday Times in Lahore, Pakistan. "So you have to decide whether to call off the policy or be prepared to take the costs of sectarian strife at home - to take on the Indians in the valley at the cost of disruption within."

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, India's northernmost, Muslim-dominated state. There have been 34,000 casualties in the current conflict, and the number rises almost daily. Peace talks failed last month in the Indian city of Agra.

In the meantime, Pakistan's internal disruption has become increasingly deadly. In a spate of attacks between radical groups representing the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shiite, several high-level politicians and businessmen have been assassinated. One of these was Shaukat Raza Mirza, the Shiite managing director of the Pakistan State Oil company, who was shot dead by two motorcycle-riding assailants while driving to the office on July 26. His murder was the 52nd politically-linked killing this year in the city of Karachi alone.

Taking credit for the murder was a previously unknown organization called Lashkar-e-Jehanghvi, which espouses rabidly anti-Shiite views.

While some political observers say these attacks have as much to do with the brutal give-and-take of the Pakistani business world as they do with religion, Pakistani police say the people who carry out the attacks are usually trained by, or members of, the same jihadi groups that are fighting for an Islamic state in Kashmir. For this reason, the government recently banned two sectarian groups: Lashkar-e-Jehanghvi and the pro-Shiite Sipah-e-Muhammad.

In a further sign of the government's seriousness, police in Karachi raided the offices of several militant groups early Wednesday, including the Kashmiri jihadi groups Al-Badr Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Muhammad, and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

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