NEWSLINKS US EDITION SOUTH ASIA COLUMNISTS DIARY SPECIALS INTERVIEWS CAPITAL BUZZ REDIFF POLL THE STATES ELECTIONS ARCHIVES SEARCH REDIFF
Pakistan's Friday Times quoted intelligence agencies as indicating that the religious clerics may not go down without a fight and were making efforts to instigate students of seminaries they controlled into starting a 'jihad' against Gen Musharraf.
"The state erected this structure over a period of two decades. It will take at least three to four years before things calm down," the weekly quoted an analyst as saying.
The analyst pointed out that the government cannot hold militants in jails for long and there was a need to eliminate the climate in which this kind of intolerance bred.
India has been alleging that the arrested militants were being quietly released, following which they went to PoK to resume their operations. This would also help Pakistan show the world that it no longer indulged in promoting cross border terrorism.
Hizbul Mujahideen supremo Syed Salahuddin had recently stated that banned outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayiba could continue their activities from PoK.
Meanwhile, intelligence agencies in Pakistan were also worried that some of these fundamentalist groups could attempt to target President Musharraf.
"We have seen this happen in Egypt, Algeria and even in India, so he (Musharraf) has to be careful," the Friday Times quoted an intelligence official as saying.
The weekly said, however, two factors have been favouring President Musharraf - support to the reformist agenda of moderate Muslims and rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which discredited the militants.
The weekly said Pakistan's militant groups pushed several people into Afghanistan to fight United States-led allied forces, a majority of whom died while the rest were in jails manned by the Northern Alliance.
Tell us what you think of this report
Call India
