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width="1" height="1" //divpThe pitted roads around Multan, the city of saints, stretch flat across
the fields. They lead past rundown factories, workshops, shabby roadside teashops and mile after
mile of flat fields broken only by the mud and brick houses of the villages of Pakistan's rural
poor. One road leads south-east to the nearby city of Bahawalpur, the biggest recruiting base of
the militant groups currently being blamed by India for the Mumbai attack; another leads north-west
to Faridkot, the home village of Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan
national named yesterday in the Indian media as the only gunman involved in last week's atrocity
now alive and in custody./ppAlready a picture claimed by the Indian media to be Kasab, showing a
young man dressed in combat trousers, carrying a backpack and an AK47, on his way to to Mumbai's
main station to carry out his deadly work, has become an iconic image of the assault on the
city./ppTwo other militants have been named. Like Kasab, according to the Indian media reports,
they are said to be from the Multan region, southern Punjab. They, too, are said to be members of
the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and to have followed a
five-month training period to prepare them for the attack. The charge of the group's involvement,
denied by its spokesmen, has explosive political consequences for the volatile region and must be
treated with caution. In the long-running contest between India and its neighbour, propaganda and
misinformation is far from rare. But if the details now emerging are confirmed, the link to
Pakistan may spark war./ppFor though it is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian government
has limited control over local militant groups, it is clear that Pakistan's military and security
establishment does./ppLashkar-e-Taiba was originally founded with the support of the Pakistani
military intelligence service, the ISI, to fight as 'deniable' proxies in the contested territory
of Kashmir, part of a decades-old strategy by the militarily weaker Pakistan to 'bleed' its bigger
rival. The ISI also has connections with Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that New Delhi security
officials has accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks./ppFor the moment little is known about
the three men named yesterday or their accomplices. But their place of origin comes as no surprise
to experts. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed draw the majority of their recruits from the
southern Punjab. Last week The Observer travelled to the twin towns of Multan and Bahawalpur, the
centres of the region, to investigate the reality of the groups' power on the ground, their
relations with the Pakistani intelligence services and the factors which drive young men, possibly
including the Mumbai gunmen, to join them./ppTrace a line from where US special forces battle
Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers
meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the
bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to
shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the
new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the
line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that
Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights./ppFor most
militants in the region the story - and that of Azam Amir Kasab is unlikely to be very different -
starts at school. The southern Punjab has one of the highest concentrations of religious schools or
madrassas in south Asia. Most teach the ultra-conservative Deobandi strand of Islam that is also
followed by the Afghan Taliban and, crucially in this desperately poor land, offers free classes,
board and lodging to students./ppIn Bahawalpur the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, believed responsible for
a string of brutal attacks across south Asia, including the murder of Jewish American journalist
Daniel Pearl, has been linked to two such madrassas. One is the headquarters of the group - a
semi-fortified and forbidding complex in the centre of the town. The other is the Dar-ul-Uloom
Medina, where the brother-in-law of Rashid Rauf, the Bahawalpur-based suspected British militant
thought to have been killed in an American missile attack eight days ago, is a teacher. Surrounded
by some of the 700 students, he told The Observer that 'jihad' was the duty of all his young
charges./ppThe pupils at the more radical Bahawalpur and Multan schools grow up soaked in extremist
ideology. The most senior cleric in Bahawalpur, Maulana Riaz Chugti, said his students could only
go 'for training or to fight' after their studies or when the schools were shut for the holy month
of Ramadan./pp'To fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir and to struggle against the forces who are
against Islam is our religious duty,' Chugti, who oversees the education of 40,000 students, told
The Observer./ppIn Bahawalpur both the effects and the limits of the recent reversal of policy by
the ISI, the powerful Pakistani military intelligence service, are evident. A crackdown on the
militant groups was launched after they were blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament in
2001 which almost brought India and Pakistan to open war. The groups, previously seen as a
strategic asset, were suddenly seen as, at least for the moment, a liability. When their operatives
were linked to plots to assassinate the then President, and evidence of collusion with al-Qaeda
itself became clear, the pressure mounted on the ISI to rein in their former
proteacute;geacute;s./pp'The militants have had to lower their profile,' said one local security
official. 'They are no longer recruiting or preaching or raising funds openly. Things are much more
difficult for them. If they recruit at all they do it individual by individual, not en masse like
before. There is no production line.'/ppBut the groups - along with break-away outfits with their
roots in sectarian Shia-Sunni violence in the region - still have a significant presence in the
region, particularly in remote villages such as that of Azam Amir Kasab. 'They may be semi-retired,
but in my village there are 300 men who have fought in Afghanistan and have training and can be
activated with one phone call,' one local former militant said. That fighters for one operation
should come from the same place was not surprising. 'When I went to Afghanistan I went with five
guys who I knew from school,' he said./ppThe young men of the southern Punjab have been found
across a broad swath of south Asia and even further afield. In Kabul in August, The Observer
interviewed Abit, a 23-year-old from Bahawalpur who had surrendered to Afghan police seconds before
he was supposed to blow himself up in a huge truck bomb. Other militants from the town have been
found as far away as Bangladesh. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have even been located in Iraq./ppThe
groups are also of great interest to British intelligence services, who fear their key role as
intermediaries between young volunteers from the UK's Muslim community - such as Rauf - and
al-Qaeda leaders based in the volatile tribal zones along Pakistan's western frontier. The groups,
the sources say, have a UK support network to supply funding./ppThe groups' relationship with the
intelligence services is complex. Front organisations for the groups have even put up candidates in
recent elections and travel without fear throughout Pakistan. Earlier this year The Observer
interviewed a representative of one group alleged to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the foyer of a
luxury Lahore hotel./ppLocal politicians said groups in the region were still powerful enough to
intimidate the local government and security forces and even to collect tax or mediate in legal
disputes in some areas. Roshan Gilani, a Shia community leader in Bahawalpur, said music shops had
received Taliban-style threats, telling them to close or risk violence. Prominent Shias have been
told they are on a hit list./ppUntil the Mumbai attacks, the recent series of bombings in India had
been attributed by most analysts to a home-grown militant outfit: the Indian Mujahideen. With many
highly educated and middle-class recruits among its ranks, and led by a 36-year-old computer
engineer, the group's members have a very different profile from the Pakistani groups' recruits.
But though their paths may be very different, the militants' eventual destination - fanaticism,
violence and hate - are the same./ppIntelligence agencies have done much research since 9/11 into
how individuals become terrorist killers. Dehumanising the enemy is seen as key. Civilians are no
longer seen as innocent but as complicit in a war waged by their governments against Islam. Group
dynamics also play a huge role, particularly when teams of militants are isolated from normal
society for long periods of time. Training camps - such as those in which Azam Amir Kasab is said
to have spent months - are the perfect way of reinforcing solidarity and the new 'world view' which
will allow them to execute murderous operations, such as killing diners in a hotel restaurant in
cold blood./ppIndian authorities believe local members of the Indian Mujahideen may have acted as
scouts to prepare the ground and gather intelligence before the attack. Security services now
recognise that militant groups looking to prepare attacks seek out resources and often enter into
temporary coalitions with other outfits when necessary. Though criminal links to Islamic militants
are rare, they are not unknown, and there are some suggestions that local underworld networks may
have been exploited to get the attackers to the targets by sea./ph2India's terror
groups/h2pstrongLashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure)/strong/ppBattling to end Indian rule in Kashmir,
this Pakistan-based group is routinely blamed by Indian security forces for attacks. The surviving
gunman arrested in Mumbai is said to be a member./ppstrongMaoists, also known as
Naxalites/strong/ppPrime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoists are the most serious threat
to national security. Their battles with police cause a steady death toll./ppstrongLiberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam/strong/ppThe violence caused by this Sri Lankabased separatist group spilled
into India in 1991 when a suicide bomber killed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi./ppstrongSikh
separatists /strong/ppPresident Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her in 1984 in revenge for the
hundreds killed when the military, aiming to suppress separatist militants, stormed a temple in
Amritsar. Riots followed./ppstrongStudents Islamic Movement of India/strong/ppAn Islamist
fundamentalist organisation. Indian police suspect involvement in the attack on Jaipur this
summer./ppstrongUnited Liberation Front of Asom/strong/ppFormed in 1979 to establish a 'socialist
Assam' through armed struggle. One of many such groups in north-east India./pdiv style="float:
left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia
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