Well aware of the ISI and its extremist leanings, Pakistan's archenemy India quickly began sharing intelligence with the United States documenting al-Qaeda and ISI links to the Kashmiri jihadi organizations, as well as ties between bin Laden, the ISI, and Dawood Ibrahim - the last of the three being the orchestrator of the deadly 1993 bombings in the Indian financial capital of Bombay that killed over 200 civilians. Faced with overwhelming pressure and an eager enemy waiting in the wings, General Musharraf sent ISI Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed to Afghanistan to persuade Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to turn over Osama bin Laden to the United States. According to other sources, Ahmed's delegation had a different message for the Taliban: stand and fight against America, the Pakistani Deobandis (a South Asian variant of Islam related to Wahhabism) will support you. In any case, the Taliban mobilized 20,000 soldiers along its Pakistani border, a possible indication that Ahmed might have warned them that the US would attack Afghanistan from bases in Pakistan rather than from the Northern Alliance enclaves in the NE. What followed is predictable enough, given what we now know about the nature of al-Qaeda's infrastructure in Pakistan. Al-Muhajiroun called for the assassination of General Musharraf while the Punjab Post offered a bounty of 400,000 rupees for every dead American. Local al-Qaeda supporters like Qazi Ahmed Hussein and his Jamaat-e-Islami political party demanded a general strike to topple the Musharraf junta. Keep following the antics of Qazi and Jamaat-e-Islami (hereafter referred to as JeI); we'll come back to them later. Unfortunately for Qazi and his co-ideologists, their general strike drew only 5,000 demonstrators in their home base of Peshawar. Musharraf remained in power, and secret deployments of US and Japanese forces occurred without incident. On September 23, the US formally lifted sanctions on both India and Pakistan, allowing for America to send economic aid to the latter nation as a means to shore up the Musharraf government. Meanwhile, clashes in Karachi between supporters of bin Laden and Pakistani security forces left 4 dead and 50 arrested as the Jamaat Ulema-i-Islam (JUII) announced it was sending volunteers to fight alongside the Taliban against the prospective American invasion. By September 25, Pakistan was left as the only nation to recognize them. This is when the former ISI leader who created the Taliban, Hamid Gul, first appears on the radar as an advisor to the same Pakistani religious parties that are sending volunteers northwards. Things are now looking up for US-Pakistani relations, however. Musharraf, said to be an admirer of Attaturk, decided to allow US ground troops and shut down the offices of Harakat ul-Mujahideen, the largest al-Qaeda affiliate operating in Kashmir. These moves were hardly unnoticed by hardline groups like JUII, which organized demonstrations led by none other than Maulawi Fazlur Rahman, a signatory of bin Laden's 1998 declaration of war against the United States. Even saner organizations like the Pakistan Muslim League (Musharraf's own political party) got worried upon hearing reports that the US was ready to secure the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Musharraf seems to have responded by extending his term as maximum leader and supporting US military strikes in Afghanistan. Shortly after the onset of US airstrikes in Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Council and JeI met in Lahore and called for jihad against the United States. Major riots soon broke out in Quetta and other major cities, killing 3. Musharraf responded by launching a crackdown whose targets included Maulawi Fazlur Rahman, Azzam Tariq, and Sami ul-Haq, all of whom sent representatives to the Lahore meeting. As a way of securing his position in the wake of the unrest, Musharraf also began reshuffling the military to purge or neutralize any pro-Taliban elements that might well launch a coup and threatening to deport any Afghans involved in the riots. In any case, the riots seem to have fallen short of the organizers' expectations. The 17 rioters sentenced to death also may also have helped to slow the Islamists' momentum. Even so, JeI wasn't done yet. When their long-dreamed popular uprising failed to manifest itself, they turned to car bombings and shooting at US helicopters as a preferred means to express themselves. Then on October 25, one of America's worst fears came true as Pakistan detained pro-Taliban nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. Suspicions arose that he might have passed on nuclear secrets to al-Qaeda. He wouldn't be the only one nor was that the full extent of al-Qaeda's researches. While the fighting in Afghanistan continued, at least 5,000 ethnic Pashtuns and militant Islamists headed north to fight alongside the Taliban against the US and the Northern Alliance. Then, in a first of what would soon become one of many all-too-familiar stories, 15 Christians were gunned down in Bahawalpur in "retaliation" for US attacks on Afghanistan. A bus bombing in Quetta followed shortly thereafter, killing 3. If these attacks were intended to send a message to General Musharraf, they appear to have failed - he continued to back the US bombings even through Ramadan. Unfortunately, Musharraf's foresight appears not to have been carried by the whole of his government. As late as the beginning of November, elements of the ISI were still backing the Taliban. Members of the Harakat ul-Mujahideen also decided to head north to fight the US, making them the first Kashmir-based al-Qaeda affiliate to formally do so. This decision may have something to do with the fact that the initial volunteers were at this point trying to flee back home after being defeated by the Northern Alliance. As the initial round-ups of fleeing Pakistani jihadis, Taliban soldiers, and al-Qaeda operatives began, Pakistan finally stopped recognizing the Taliban. This was little more than an acknowledgment of reality, given that the Northern Alliance was now in control of large segments of the country. Having failed in their goal of either achieving a military victory against the US in Afghanistan or staging a popular revolution in Pakistan, the nation's hardline Islamists now turned to another issue that they knew would be able to capture the country's national will: Kashmir. Kashmir was relatively peaceful for most of Operation Enduring Freedom, the suicide bombing at the Kashmiri Assembly in Srinagar notwithstanding. However, things now started heating up again and the mutual shelling that we all know and love ensued. Islamists also began employing larger and more devastating versions of their previous attacks in Kashmir. These attacks served to heighten tensions between India and Pakistan. My own speculation would be that the overall impetus for this new strategy came largely from Abu Zubaydah, who left Afghanistan for the Pakistani city of Faisalabad in October 2001 and was likely acting as the overall puppetmaster for the various hardline groups in their campaign against Musharraf. At least one example of Zubaydah's efforts can be seen in the willingness by his erstwhile hosts in the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to stage suicide attacks against Indian forces. For the most early December, Zubaydah's efforts to destabilize Pakistan appear to have been fairly lackluster. As the fighting in Afghanistan continued to die down, Pakistan managed to capture Fazal-e-Raziq, one of bin Laden's top aides, in Peshawar. However, al-Qaeda's infrastructure in South Asia largely made it through the war basically intact, a fact that did not escape the attention of the CIA. Then on December 13, the Indian Parliament was attacked by members of the LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed. I suspect that Zubaydah initially planned this attack for earlier in December, but that it was temporarily disrupted by the arrest of a Bombay-based al-Qaeda leader. These ongoing tensions served many purposes, one of which was to prevent Musharraf from acting too hastily to remove religious movements that regardless of their other failings would fight to the death in any potential war with India. That may not have been the only component of their strategy, however. To understand the other component al-Qaeda's strategy, we need to recall what was happening in Afghanistan at about the same time. On December 4, Northern Alliance warlord Hazrat Ali was preparing to attack al-Qaeda's stronghold at Tora Bora, with his forces soon taking control of half of the area around the region. The US began dropping daisy-cutters on the al-Qaeda base on December 10, and there was an attempted cease-fire between the al-Qaeda and the Afghan militias on December 11. That may very well have been an escape plan for members of the organization's leadership holed up there. In addition, it has also been claimed that the head of bin Laden's personal bodyguards, Abdallah Tabarak, used bin Laden's satellite phone to distract the US while the al-Qaeda leader made his escape, possibly with assistance from the nearby Ghilzai tribe. So about the same time that LeT and JeM terrorists were attacking the Indian Parliament and triggering the predictable results, al-Qaeda's leadership were heading southwards into northern Pakistan. What this means is that the Pakistani forces who had been up until this point arresting returning volunteer fighters and interrogating al-Qaeda operatives had to be shifted to deal with the prospect of a war with India. This leaves the capture of fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban members in the hands of some less than trustworthy people. The orchestrators of the Indian Parliament attack were Mohammed Afzal, Shaukat Hussein, and Ghazi Baba. It should be noted that the latter of three is based in Bhawalpur, the same place where Pakistani Christians were attacked less than two months earlier. What followed was indeed curious. Under the increased threat of war from India, Pakistan released Fazlur Rahman and Sami ul-Haq from detention. As I said, this appears to have been another of the desired goals of the orchestrators of the attack. As a result of his desire to retain the services of the Pakistani jihadi organizations in order to fight a prospective war against India, Musharraf's crackdown ended just as it was really getting started. More to the point, by turning the issue into one about Kashmir rather than about ideology or the greater good of Pakistan, Zubaydah and the extremist groups had effectively backed Musharraf into a rhetorical corner. Things get even bleaker for Pakistan following the discovery of 8 direct lines from the ISI to Kabul and Indian demands to hand over terrorist leaders. An al-Qaeda escape attempt near Parachinar left 5 security officers dead. Pressure kept coming in from the UK and America, urging Pakistan to take action against the Kashmir-based terrorists. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider's brother was murdered in a clear warning from Islamist groups not to take the internal crackdown too far. While Musharraf's air marshal (who has been linked to al-Qaeda according to Gerald Posner's new book) rallied the troops, Indian and Pakistani forces exchanged fire on opposite sides of the border while the LeT dared Musharraf to try and shut them down. As nuclear war crept nearer and nearer, a number of interesting reports surfaced. Osama bin Laden was reportedly visiting both Fazlur Rahman and being assisted by the ISI, two parties whose involvement and continued interest in tension between India and Pakistan are a matter of public record. Assuming these reports are accurate and combining them with stories about fleeing al-Qaeda fighters heading for Kashmir after losing in Afghanistan, one begins to see that the condition of war between India and Pakistan is a very favorable one for al-Qaeda and its affiliates (a state of affairs that Joe noted as well). Whenever there's trouble, always be sure to ask the question of Cicero: Cui bono? I think the answer becomes quite clear. That being said, it seems that some of Musharraf's more Attaturk-esque side came to the fore during his speech on the birthday of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. As 2001 came to a close, he called upon his population to reject religious extremism, froze the accounts of his rogue scientists, and arrested the leader of the LeT. Unfortunately for the people of Pakistan, there was little to look forward to in the new year. (Special thanks to Fred Pruitt and everyone else over at . Without Fred and his archives, this would have taken a lot longer to compile.)