The Afghan war has left a trail of violence
SINCE the Afghan war, Pakistan has been home to thousands of Islamic militants from various nations, including Egypt, who were trained by the CIA during the Afghan war. Campswere set up in Peshawar and near the Pak-Afghan border. After the Soviet withdrawal, this Islamic militant diaspora spread throughout the world, with many moving in and out of Pakistan.
Leading lights of the Jamaa Islamiyya have often operated from Pakistan. The group's leader, Sheikh Omer Abdur Rehman, the blind preacher convicted in the US for the World Trade Centre bombing, visited Peshawar twice and met all the major Afghan mujahideen leaders. The organisation's military commander, 38-year-old Hamza, who is based in Sudan, has also lived in Pakistan. He joined the party in 1990 after leaving the Afghan jehad.
Among Jamaa Islamiyya leaders still believed to be in Pakistan is Mohammad Shawql al-Islambuli, 40, brother of the assassin of Anwar Sadat. Islambuli was condemned to death in absentia by an Egyptian court in a 1993 trial of the "Afghan veterans" accused of trying to topple the government. He is believed to be in Peshawar along with another Jamaa leader, Osman al-Samman, 38, alsocondemned to death in the 1993 trial, and Mohammad Mekkawi, the head of military training in Egypt's other main armed extremist group, Al-Jihad. Samman spent five years in jail in Egypt before fleeing to Libya en route to Saudi Arabia before entering Pakistan.
Others who have used Pakistan as a transit point before moving to Sudan or Europe include Talaat Fuad Qassem, spokesman for the Jamaa who took political asylum in Denmark; Ayman Mohammad al-Zawahri, a Jihad leader who spent four years in prison for his involvement in the Sadat assassination case and is now believed to be hiding in Switzerland; and Rifai Ahmad Taha, an Afghan veteran with a death sentence hanging over him in Egypt who has lived in Khartoum since 1993.
In fact, since 1987, 1,142 Egyptians have registered with the Pakistani authorities in Peshawar after arriving from their country, as required under the law. Egyptians constituted the biggest group of the 8,170 Arabs who came here during the Afghan war, followed by the Saudis (981), Yemenis (946) and Algerians (792). While 3,340 Arabs left Pakistan from 1987 to 1993, in November 1993 Islamabad estimated that 2,830 Arabs still lived in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Subsequently, the Arab presence decreased as they left for other destinations, including Tajikistan where a jehad against a Moscow-backed neo-communist government was underway. And there is no saying where they will turn up next.