Al Qaeda-Pakistani ties deepen

Pakistan's religious parties themselves are a reflection of official ties to terrorism here - which Mr. Musharraf insists have been severed since Sept. 11, 2001. Past administrations here nurtured and funded extremists groups both to wreak havoc in Kashmir, the neighboring state which both India and Pakistan claim, and also during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the CIA and Britain's MI6 funded the mujahideen to fight a holy war against the communist invaders.

Some of that extremism took root here. Though the fundamentalist parties in the past had more success organizing street protests than getting into Parliament, a five-party coalition of Islamic parties, known as the United Front, made stunning gains in last October's election, and now commands the third-largest block in the National Assembly.

Jamaat is the largest and most popular party in the group. It had focused most of its attention on Kashmir, not Afghanistan or the Taliban. But yesterday, a spokesman for the party told Reuters that Al Qaeda's third-in-command was "a hero to Islam."

"The Jamaat has never condemned 9/11, and denies that Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. This is a group that believes 9/11 was carried out by Jews in America," says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author on terror issues. "The really scary thing is that this is also the most moderate Islamic party in Pakistan."

Members of the coalition have sparked fears they are trying to "Talibanize" Pakistan's frontier states. Among other things, they have moved to ban movie houses, which they deem un-Islamic, and have sent police to raid wedding parties where music was playing.

Some have even more direct links to terror. Many Front leaders run religious schools that sent young Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The man who owns the Islamic school where so-called "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh studied, for example, is now a United Front senator.

As members of Parliament, these fundamentalist leaders enjoy immunity, though experts say they would have little access to sensitive information about the hunt for terrorists here or the political power to change Mr. Musharraf's policy to support the US war on terror.

But government officials still say they are concerned about the pattern of members of these groups harboring terrorist fugitives. "We certainly are," says Interior Minister Hayat. "Any Pakistani should be."

He and other analysts add, however, that they do not believe there is an official policy to support Al Qaeda fugitives by the Jamaat or other United Front members.

"Still, it poses a very serious question," says Ismael Khan, a senior columnist with the News newspaper in the Northwest Frontier Province. "The party leadership needs to answer why this is a recurring theme."

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