Pakistanis are well aware of Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed's patronage and facilitation of groups linked to armed resistance in Kashmir, says Amir Mir A senior Pakistani politician and a former member of the Musharraf cabinet, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, who was detained at the Houston airport on arrival on June 27 for his alleged links with Lashkar-e-Tayiba and freed after five hours of interrogation, used to run an Inter Service Intelligence-funded training camp for Kashmiri militants in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the armed struggle in Jammu and Kashmir was at its peak.
Having detained the former information minister and chief of the Awami Muslim League, the American immigration staff took his two mobile phones into custody and copied all the data on the phones, including phone numbers.
Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed was told that he was being interrogated under directions from Washington, DC, despite the fact that he had a multiple-entry United States visa and he was set to leave for Dubai after two days. He was eventually released after Pakistani ambassador to the US, Sherry Rehman, officially lodged a protest with the US state department.
US media reports say Rasheed was detained for his links with Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the LeT founder and the alleged mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. In the recent past, Rasheed had actively attended rallies and meetings organised by the Defa-e-Pakistan Council, an ISI-sponsored coalition of pro-Kashmir extremist groups formed by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, who also heads Jamaatul Daawa.
Considered close to the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed had accompanied Hafiz Mohammed Saeed to a series of rallies and press conferences that were held in Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore where they made harsh statements against India and the US.
Rasheed, one of the few Pakistani politicians to have served not one but two military dictators (Zia and Musharraf), has always been a colourful character, mixing populist rhetoric with the idiom of the street which borders on the crass. He is famous for his tongue-in-cheek political one-liners that aim to demean anti-establishment opponents in the style of folk jesters.
While Pakistanis are well aware of his patronage and facilitation of groups linked to armed resistance in Kashmir, it really came to media limelight when the Indian government denied him permission to visit New Delhi in 2004 after Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik publicly disclosed that Sheikh Rasheed's residence and farm house have been used by jihadi organisations.
Therefore, when the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik stated at the Marriot in Islamabad on June 13, 2005, that Sheikh Rasheed had the honour of having trained around 3,500 jihadis in guerrilla warfare, it was not at all surprising for those who are aware of his past as someone who had been a hardened militant with intelligence connections and who wanted to liberate Jammu and Kashmir with the might of the gun. Yasin Malik declared: "Sheikh Rasheed has played a great role for Kashmir's liberation. He used to support the frontline jihadis from Kashmir, but few know of his contributions."
Perhaps, in the euphoria of reliving the past or overwhelmed by gratitude, Yasin Malik went on to spell out Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed's role in Kashmir's militant movement at a reception arranged by Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, then information minister, in his honour: it was at the information minister's farmhouse that some 3,500 Kashmiri jihadis, including Yasin, received training in arms.
From the reformed militant leader's perspective, there obviously couldn't have been a better tribute to shower on another Kashmiri before an august audience. But the politician in the unruly Sheikh realised that even in these days of Indo-Pak bonhomie, it is not possible to accept as minister a man who could have trained militants to wage jihad in Kashmir. When journalists questioned him after the meeting was over, he tersely remarked, "I have no idea about which Sheikh Rasheed he (Yasin) is speaking."
The wily sheikh of Lal Haveli knew quite fully well that since the heroes of the past are the terrorists of the present under the changing international climate, he should simply refuse to concede that he ever supported jihadis in Kashmir. The next day, however, groaning under pressure
from a somewhat embarrassed and equally perturbed Sheikh Rasheed, the visiting Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik had to rephrase his earlier statement by saying, "I have been misquoted by the media. What I said was that Sheikh Rasheed used to give shelter to the Kashmiri freedom-fighters at his Rawalpindi farmhouse. I never talked about a military training camp being run by the information minister there in the 1980s."